Maybe she still would have spurned him, but certainly after she’d returned, lonely, heartbroken, pregnant, alone, he could have asked again.
His pride simply wouldn’t allow it.
They’d returned downstairs for their jackets, hats, and boots while Dottie and Violet were hunting through the attic, and now Gordy buttoned up his jacket as Jake squeezed his way through the opening without a problem.
The wind sounded like a locomotive howling, and while the blizzard seemed to have abated, the wind scooped up the snow, turned it into a cyclone. The wind-chill might be forty below, or more. Gordy could make out the barn, however, through the swirling snow, and the cake of accumulation on the roof. He’d have to take a shovel to it and the roof of the house after the storm blew over, or it might cave in.
While Gordy was out in the cold, he should also find and dig out the cellar door, try to get inside and feed the coal furnace, stir heat back into the house.
Jake crouched by the window entrance. “C’mon old man, it’s your turn.”
“Keep your paws off me—”
But Jake grabbed Gordy’s jacket as he wiggled his way out the window. Gordy closed the window behind him, his chest on fire.
He still couldn’t shake the persistent ache in his lower back—probably from last night on the floor. But the cereal this morning had left him feeling nauseous also.
Or, it could be the height. The bathroom window emerged onto the mudroom addition so that the roof extended wider from the house. Still, he imagined that one wrong step might sled him down the side and fling him into space.
“I really do feel old,” he said as he inched his way down the side of the roof with Jake.
More than that, this little excursion to the edge of eternity made him consider that he should ask Dottie for her hand again.
Will you marry me?
How difficult could those four words be?
Perhaps as hard as
I love you.
The wind shook his perch and threatened to whisk his legs out from under him. As if proving his fears, Jake slipped, landed on his backside, and Gordy grabbed at the scruff of his jacket as Jake’s legs dangled over the edge.
Jake kicked his way back to the roof. “In my head, this was a better idea.”
Gordy stifled a grin as he finally scooted to the edge of the roof. The snow drifted up over the house like a hand, covering the mudroom door and the front porch. Probably it also covered the back of the house.
It occurred to him that they might have checked those windows first before hopping out on the roof.
Still, now that he overlooked it, the drift seemed to nearly reach the second-story roof. He could just reach out his foot and—
His stationary foot slipped, kicked out, and the force of it sent him skidding.
And then he was airborne.
He tried to wind his arms, to maneuver himself upright, but he landed—
boof
!—face up in the snowy drift, staring at the sky as he attempted to catch his breath. It had snuffed out, the wind stealing it with a howl.
“Are you hurt?”
He looked up. Jake peered over the roof at him.
Five feet up. He’d barely fallen five feet, and he felt like he’d been run over by a horse. He sat up. “Get down here.”
Jake pushed off and landed next to him, on his feet then falling down beside him. “I feel old too.”
“Don’t talk to me.” Gordy scooted down the bank, landing on his feet, then plowed through the snow to the barn.
While he fed the horse, Jake dug out a couple of shovels. He handed one to Gordy.
Gordy noticed he was employing that strange breathing again—slow, in through the nose, out through the mouth. “Are you going to be okay?”
“It’s just the cold. I have to slow my breathing, keep it steady. I’ll be fine.”
“Do not die on me. I can’t carry your carcass back up that snowdrift.”
Jake gave him a narrowed-eye look and Gordy smiled. Yes, the kid reminded him of Nelson.
Ice covered the drift against the house, a thick layer of wind-polished snow that required chipping and not a little grunting until Gordy had worked up a thick layer of sweat dribbling down between his shoulder blades. His nose, however, he could barely feel, for the wind. A couple of times he stopped, trying to make out his farm, but the bullet-gray sky still hovered too low. That another storm might be in the making seemed possible.
They finally broke through, and as he cleared around the door, he saw Jake grab his knees, close his eyes.
“Go back to the barn, son,” he said, and to his surprise, Jake obeyed. Gordy had wrestled the door open by the time he returned.
“It’s the cold. And the work. I’ll be fine,” Jake said as he waved to Dottie through the mudroom window. They hiked down to the snow-covered tree.
Gordy could use a rest, his back turning to fire after all that shoveling. When had he gotten so old? He watched Jake shake the snow off the tree.
What a stubborn old man he’d been. Stubborn, stupid, and, apparently, old. He should ask Dottie to marry him before he croaked. He gripped his knees.
“You okay?” Jake said, now peering under the tree, as if hunting for something.
“Go up to the barn. You’ll find an ax in the utility closet. Let’s get this tree inside, let the ladies pretty it up.”
Jake hiked back up to the barn. The cold had begun to freeze the sweat inside Gordy’s jacket, and he started to shiver.
By the time Jake returned, Gordy’s teeth chattered.
“Go inside, Gordy. I can do this.”
“Naw—I’ll help you.” He got up, groaning. Maybe he
should
go inside. But he wasn’t quite ready to be mothballed yet. Grabbing the top of the tree, he steadied it for Jake’s blows. “Just chop off the top. Leave the rest.”
His entire body shuddered as Jake chopped at the cold tree, the blows radiating down his arms, into his brittle bones.
The final whack dislodged the tree from the base and the force of it pushed Gordy back into the snow. He lay there, staring at the pewter sky, closing his eyes
. Yes, Dottie, I should have asked again.
“You’re not going to die on me, are you, old guy?”
Gordy opened his eyes. Then, because he could, he whipped out his leg and tripped Jake. Jake fell in the snow beside him.
Jake lay beside him, gasping. “Okay. Fine. Sorry I called you old. Maybe decrepit would have been better.”
Gordy tossed snow at him as he climbed to his feet. He grabbed the end of the tree. “You can just lay there and get some shuteye while I drag this up to the house.” He left Jake in the snow as he carried the tree to the house.
Maybe they’d have a merry Christmas after all. Especially since he planned to ask Dottie to marry him the first magical moment he could find.
And this time, he’d do it right.
* * * * *
He was going to die, right here in the snow, with the wind gluing his eyes shut.
And just when he thought he’d laid hold of a piece of the man he’d lost, back in the battlefields of Belgium. A man who helped others.
A man who ladled out real hope again.
Perhaps he was supposed to be here, to help put a smile back on Arnie’s face, if just for a day.
If he didn’t die first. Jake lay there, watching Gordy drag the tree up to the house, his chest webbing. He needed to get inside. But maybe if he just kept calm, kept breathing, he’d be fine.
He felt as if he might be breathing through a straw, sinking deeper underwater. He blamed the chopping. And the cold. And jumping from the roof. And chopping their way into the house.
And his insistence that he hide his condition from Violet. At home, in this weather, he would do everything, from rubbing his chest with camphorated oil, to preparing a toddy with honey and whiskey.
If he got desperate, he had a machine and a mask that opened his airways.
But of course, he’d left that back in Minneapolis.
He closed his eyes, tried small, more shallow breaths, calm breaths, listening to his rasping. Maybe he should get into the barn, but the hay there might only make it worse.
And he’d smoked the last of his asthma cigarettes.
He always feared that someday he’d start to wheeze in public, that a crowd would form, and then, while everyone watched, he’d suffocate to death on the sidewalk.
But worse, just might be sprawled in the snow, alone.
He’d simply gotten too excited about giving Arnie a Christmas.
No. He’d gotten too excited about the way Violet looked at him, a sparkle in her eyes. Really looked at him. Not as a substitute for Alex, but Jake, the guy who could bring magic to Christmas Eve.
Some magic.
Because being Jake wasn’t going to make her forget Alex. Being Jake was lying in the snow, gasping for air.
He didn’t want to be Jake.
Jake wasn’t enough. Hadn’t been enough when he was hauling the wounded back to the field hospitals, hadn’t been enough when he was dispensing chocolate in the foxholes, hadn’t been enough when he was offering up passages of hope in makeshift chapels, or eulogies at too many battlefield funerals.
He should have picked up a gun instead of a Bible to serve his country.
He pressed his hands on his chest, breathed in through his nose, but the biting wind only made his eyes water, hiccoughed his breath.
He sat up, wheezing.
Gordy had disappeared into the house.
He needed to get inside, to relax.
He needed an inhalant of medicine.
He needed to be whole again.
Please, God, can’t You be on my side here?
The wind brushed the tree back where he’d chopped it. Where the tree covered the ground remained a deep well, and he could nearly see the ground. Beyond that, the taillights of the Plymouth emerged. And near the back—
His suitcase. Oh, he nearly cried out with joy. He had another pack of cigarettes inside his suitcase, just in case. Crawling toward it, he picked it up, found his feet.
The wind fought him, but he reached the barn then wrangled his way inside. The silence accentuated his wheezing as he stumbled to the end of the truck, nearly fell into an empty stall. The smell of hay on a summer day could probably kill him, but today, in the crisp air, no allergens moved to irritate him. He fumbled with the frozen suitcase, finally coaxing the snaps open.
Inside were the letters, a change of clothes, and—hallelujah!—a pack of cigarettes. He pulled them out, his breathing more labored. He couldn’t control it now, started to feel the black panic rising deep inside him. Breathe. In through his nose, out…slow down, not so fast.
He pulled out a cigarette, his hands shaking as he tried to light it. But the wind, even in the protected barn, fought the flame.
His eyesight had begun to narrow, a black tunnel.
Breathe. Slow. Easy.
His head spun.
He fell back on the frozen, hard earth while his lungs began to close like a fist. He closed his eyes.
He would have liked to kiss Violet. That thought pulsed inside him as he shuddered, wheezing, forcing himself to keep his breathing slow and shallow. He should have. He should have leaned down and pulled her to himself and made her forget about Alex.
Jake could nearly smell her, the scent of roses and cinnamon. Could nearly feel her hair tickling his face.
Yes, he would have liked to kiss her, to tell her the truth—that he’d been in love with her for years. Would have liked to have been the man she had written to, hoping he’d remember her after the war.
He would have told her that he was proud of her and that she didn’t have to hide her past, because he knew it already. And that he loved her.
Yes, he would tell her all that, if he could just breathe one day longer.
He pressed his hands to his chest.
In. Out. Breathe.
Live.
* * * * *
The generator resembled the inner workings of her father’s diesel tractor. Violet checked the hoses, the fuel line. In case the injector might be clogged, she disconnected the fuel line then unscrewed the injector. Taking it apart, she took out the BB and the spring, cleaning them with a rag Dottie dug up, then cleared out the hole on one end with a toothpick.
She put the entire assembly back together while listening to the thumping outside, then the clanking as the men chipped away at the door.
Oh, she didn’t want Jake to see her with grease saturating her fingers. If Alex hadn’t told him she’d changed tires and overhauled engines for four years, she didn’t want to cement that image in Jake’s head. She rather liked the way he looked at her, without some sort of wariness or even defense.
She’d finally understood the stigma while stationed in Berlin, during the aftermath of the war, when all she did was patch up engines and overhaul carburetors. She’d been walking back to her barracks, and the chatter from a cadre of privates lifted to her ears.
“Maybe she can work on my engine.”
She felt dirty, had even stood in line for a shower, retreating to her bunk despite a USO event. The shows weren’t for the women, anyway, the acts intended to please the men. She’d stared at the dusky ceiling, recalling the expressions on her brothers’ faces as she’d sat at the dinner table with stained hands, so much like her father’s.
When she’d enlisted, she felt proud, but that day in Berlin, she’d wanted to hide. To start over. To be someone else.
Why couldn’t she enjoy knitting and cooking and crocheting and gardening, like other women? Why hadn’t God made her pretty, and womanly?
Violet screwed the fuel injector back together, hearing steps in the kitchen. Heavy steps. She opened the dining room door. “Mr. Lindholm!”
He was hauling in a beautiful green fir, still dripping with snow. Arnie looked up, and the expression on his face made it all worth it.
“C’mere,” she whispered to Gordy, “I need your help.”
He propped the tree in the hallway, near the front door, and clomped into the room. Sweat glistened on his face, and he was pale.
“Are you okay?”
“Just one of Santa’s elves,” he said, and grinned. “And call me Gordy, please.”
Oh, she liked him. For years, he’d been the hermit farmer out of town. How wrong the schoolchildren had been to call him Mr. McGregor.