15. Wolfe
wolfe
We worked all day Thursday, catching up on the lanyards, stopping a short while for BLTs eaten standing up, holding the sandwiches over the sink like a pair of bachelors. When the sun went down, the cold deepened.
For dinner, we ate meatloaf I’d made, using a pound of ground meat, and only half of it was leftover to slice up for sandwiches, much to my dismay.
After dinner, I put on my coat and boots and walked around the outside of the cabin, checking the headline to the pipes, checking the foundation because another blizzard was coming and I wanted to be able to sit in front of the fire while it wailed, and not have to trudge out into it, not for anything.
Blue watched from the open doorway, letting the heat out, his arms across his chest. Watching me as though he feared that, like some sailor, I might disappear among the waves of white.
Foolish notion on my part. He probably wasn’t thinking any such thing, but was waiting for me to build up the fire.
Temperatures had dipped to forty below overnight, according to my weather app, which I checked when I woke up, realizing that Blue was starfished around me, plastered to my side.
I squinted up through the half-opened blinds at the morning sky, a swath of dove-gray, as though the world had been wrapped in soft cotton wool.
The air felt warmer now, and it wasn’t because the sun was up. A pre-blizzard breeze was blowing across the landscape. I remember this happening last year. Like a promise of spring, only to be followed by a hard slap of icy, sideways wind. Mother Nature’s trick.
That’s when I realized I hadn’t quite eased Blue’s arms from my neck. I should have. But I closed my eyes and savored that closeness. Fingers on my skin. The warm line of his body, those narrow hips, his hipbones jutting into me. Hair once more tangled, so I’d get to comb it, maybe.
I’d have to comb it. Right? He might let me, but I didn’t want to keep asking because the hair combing would turn into something more layered. My hands on his slender hips. My face tucked into the curve of his neck.
Even metaphorically, I didn’t have enough ramen noodles for something like that, even if I would make it a soft fuck, the softest ever. But Blue wasn’t some newbie who’d just arrived at Reynoldsville State Prison. He didn’t deserve to hook up with someone like me.
I rustled myself out of bed and jumped in the shower.
I usually showered at night, but I needed a damn minute.
I shaved, made tea, and pretended that Blue’s rumpled state as he slid into the chair across from me, hands wrapped around the white china mug, eyes half closed as though he meant to keep on sleeping where he sat—that his rumpled come-hither state didn’t make my heart dance a shimmy beneath my breastbone.
That’s when I saw the comb. His hand had been covering it, and now it sat there, a bald, naked request. Next to it was a brush, an old blue plastic brush with white bristles.
The name Avon on the handle was faded. I couldn’t remember where I’d gotten that brush, but there it was.
My heart jumped when he held it out to me.
“I found it in the bathroom,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s eat breakfast first.”
Eggs on toast. Bacon. Cake donuts and tea. I rushed through making and eating, all the while saying nothing of consequence besides asking for the butter to be passed to me. I left the dishes in the sink. They were soaking, I told myself.
Blue sat in the chair, shoulders relaxed, head dipped down, hands on his thighs.
I combed his hair. Strand by silky strand until it was soft as sunlight, falling across his cheek.
Then I brushed it with the old blue plastic brush, thinking all the while, as I pulled the bristles across his head, that his hair deserved something better than plastic. But that was for another time.
I needed to finish so we could get on with our day and attend to the tasks that lay before us. I was lucky to have Blue’s help, his enthusiasm and willing hands. The last thing he needed was me mooning over him like some lovesick fool.
In the workshop, we made lanyards, and Blue reworked his stamp designs. I made a tracing of the designs to make sure they would fit the amount of leather in the key rings, photographed the tracings, and opened my laptop to make the order for the stamp.
The blank leather key rings themselves had been special ordered through the feed and grain, back when I thought the order would help Oralee and her business.
The box was still sitting there, somewhere, at the feed and grain, with the gloomy Mr. Malone standing guard.
I’d have to make a trip into town. Next week, maybe.
“It’s warm in here,” Blue said.
I reached over, just about between his legs, and turned the space heater off. Then I got up and turned the other one off.
“It’s a Chinook,” I said, gesturing at the windows, at the dove-gray softness. When he looked at me, puzzled, dark brows drawn close, I said, “That’s a warm wind that comes from the west. It melts the snow. This one, it’s soft now, but will pick up speed because a blizzard is behind it.”
As he looked at me with those blue eyes of his, I realized how nice it was to have someone there to share ideas with, to discuss the small things with. If it hadn’t been so cold at night, we could have gone out to look at the stars together.
“We should go out after lunch,” I said. “And get some fresh air while we can.”
There was plenty of air all around, all the time. But there was a special sweetness in a Chinook wind that I liked, the softness of it against my face. The way the snow melted in curls, secret rivulets running beneath the surface.
Down by the river, standing among the cottonwoods, the air would smell sweetly green with the promise of life, which was part of the trick because by nightfall, the wind would be blowing sideways, thick with snow and we’d be buried in frozen white.
Lunch was meatloaf sandwiches, and then, yes, I finally did all the dishes, with Blue at my side, drying them and arranging them on a towel. The wind kicked up a bit as we bundled ourselves and stepped into the air that swirled above our heads as though tossed by a giant hand.
I led the way, north of the cabin and down the slope to the Yellowstone River, making a path in the deep wet snow to where there was a little hillock that overlooked the river and the clawed branches of bare cottonwood trees.
Across the river was where the pine trees grew, in flocks of dark green, their branches bestirred in the gentle, invisible wind.
There was plenty of snow everywhere, but I knew it would be especially deep on the south slope of that hillock. I stood on that little slope, with my back to the cabin, my face to the north, absorbing the crispness of that air with closed eyes, absorbing the stillness that rose around me.
This was why I’d purchased this piece of land with a mortgage I couldn’t afford, because of this, this endless peace, decorated with trees and sky, the call of birds with the changing of the seasons, and, sometimes, the chorus of wolves howling way off in the distance.
Only this time I wasn’t alone. Blue stood a little way behind me.
“Come here,” I said. “Come stand beside me and I’ll show you.”
Blue did as I asked, his blond hair streaming from beneath the toque I’d gotten him at the surplus store. He still needed a better coat, but for today, he would be fine.
I spread my arms and did a trust fall with the earth, falling into the soft, deep snow, letting it embrace me. It curled around me as I looked up at the gray sky, speckles of snow falling on my face. Energy soaked into me.
“What are you doing?” asked Blue, suddenly looming over me, framed by that soft gray sky. “Are you okay?”
“I’m making a snow angel,” I said. “Join me.”
Flapping my arms and legs like a fool, I felt melting snow soaking into my clothes as I carved a space, a heavenly figure with wide wings.
Sighing, my body relaxing when I stilled, knowing that the hardest part about making a snow angel was not falling backward into the snow, but getting up without ruining the effect.
I paused, looking up at him. He’d not moved.
“Snow angel,” I said again, as if those two words would explain the whole concept.
There was an exact moment when the memory came back to him; I saw it on his face.
It was a memory from childhood, perhaps, though when it was from I was unsure, since the part of Virginia he was from didn’t get a whole lot of snow. Neither did Cape Girardeau.
I’d never seen more than an inch of snow on the ground at one time in my whole life.
I’d learned about snow angels from Ricky Patterson, in South Dakota, right after I’d gotten out of prison, and nothing had more amazed me than an older man with arthritic hands and a serious air laughing as he fell back into drifts of snow to make something whimsical that would vanish in the first hard wind.
He’d told me that’s how life was. You existed, you created, and then the world moved on, and I’d better get used to it.
“Okay,” Blue said. He turned his back to me, spread his arms wide, and fell into the snow as if he’d been doing it every day for a million years. No fear. I watched him out of the corner of my eyes as he flapped his arms and legs, a glimpse of boot tip, a flurry of snow.
I heard his voice ask, “Are we making girl angels or boy angels?”
“Neither,” I said, then, because I didn’t know, I added, “Or either.”
I was raised Southern Baptist, so I didn’t believe in angels. But, as I eased myself to standing and looked down at Blue, his arms and legs wide, the snow behind him scraped into wings and a long, white, flowing gown, I decided that maybe I did know.
Blue was beautiful in the snow. His toque had come off, and his blond hair trailed across the whiteness beneath his head.
His blue eyes glowed, and the smile across his face would forever mark the day as something special.
Blue, smiling. Happy. Darkness erased. And in my mind, I decided angels were young men with blue pea coats and brown boots.
I held out my gloved hand and pulled him up, and together we admired our snow angels. My wings were wider. His ethereal gown was longer. The wind around us grew, and I thought we’d turn back, but Blue looked down the slope to the river, as though he wanted to go see.
“Okay,” I said. I could not resist those eyes.
We slogged through the snow, melting patches sinking us up to our knees, wind-scoured slates of ice making us slip and reach for each other. Finally, we arrived at the Yellowstone River, where the sandy banks made narrow places completely free of snow and ice.
The river itself was clogged with both, and chugged slowly past, chunks of ice, a broken tree branch, bare of leaves. Above us the cottonwood branches stirred, wind sifting snow onto our shoulders.
In the middle of winter, the river would be solid and could be crossed on foot. Someone else owned the land on the other side, but I didn’t think he’d mind when I crossed at Christmas to gather pine boughs to make the house smell nice.
I wondered if Blue would be here with me when I crossed the ice to gather stolen boughs.
“This is beautiful,” he said.
I turned to look at him, at his blue eyes looking out over the half-frozen water, his nose nipped pink with cold, hair trailing around his face, blond lace on his dark blue toque.
“It is,” I said. “Part of the reason why I picked this spot.”
“I can see why,” he said, and I believed he meant it.
The wind picked up, hurtling through the cottonwoods, making their branches shake off the last of the snow in preparation for more snow, which there would surely be. A scarf of cold air looped around the back of my neck, a biting kiss of invisible ice on my face.
“Let’s go back,” I said.
Blue followed in the tracks I made as I went up the slope, and by the time we were halfway to the cabin, the sky had darkened, and snow snakes slithered across the surface of the snow, freezing it, making it hard.
The wind bit at the backs of our knees; I pulled Blue ahead of me so I could take the wind. We were on the path I’d made before, which made the going easy. At the cabin, I opened the door and ushered him in before me.
“Stew,” I said as I stomped snow from my boots and shook the snow from my coat.
“Okay,” said Blue easily, as though my thoughts for what to have for dinner were a promise of good things and not just a simple meal. Making a moment I could keep with me when he went.
We made the stew together, browning squares of chuck, peeling and slicing vegetables, using butter and bacon grease for flavor.
Halfway through the cooking, I made biscuits to go on top, covering the pot with a lid to let the stew bubble and the biscuits rise.
Smells filled the air, and when we sat down, the stew filled our bellies.
All the while the howl of the wind grew, pressing against the doors and windows, turning from an invisible force to one lathered in white, slashing sideways through the air. The temperature dropped. I built a fire.
It was not my first winter in the north, but it was my first one in this cabin. Maybe I would not have to spend the coming winter alone, as I had planned. But if Blue got his memory back, there was no way I’d ask him to stay. Not for my sake.
It was near midnight when the height of the storm came, a wild howling that swooped around the eaves of the cabin and rattled the windows.
We were warm in bed, each of us awake, glancing at each other in the darkness, as the storm became a live thing, wild angels, perhaps, who wanted their revenge on us for leaving their likeness in the snow.
“Are we going to be okay?” Blue asked, a whisper above the pillowcase.
“Yes,” I said. “The cabin is solid. It’s an October storm. It’ll pass.”
He turned onto his side to face me, his body a comma beneath the bedclothes.
Our breaths settled, and the winds howled, and the cold grew colder.
I imagined I could see my breath in the dark air, but that was foolishness.
The house had heat. Our bodies had heat.
We would not freeze nor be blown away. Blue’s breath steadied as he fell asleep, and mine joined him.