When the Snow Fell

Seventeen

It had never happened before.

That Miss Nederström had been round to Joel’s house to see him. But the following day, a Sunday, when Joel was still asleep in bed, there was a knock on the door. Samuel was sitting at the kitchen table, patching a pair of pants. He knew who Miss Nederström was because he had seen her at end-of-term meetings.

“What has Joel done now?” he asked in horror when he opened the door and saw who it was.

“Is he in?” asked Miss Nederström.

“He’s asleep,” said Samuel. “He must have come home pretty late last night. He spends too much time gallivanting about when he should be in bed. I keep telling him. But it’s beyond me, what he was doing out in that storm.”

Miss Nederström had come into the kitchen.

“So you haven’t yet spoken to your son, Mr. Gustafson?”

“I’ll wake him up right away,” said Samuel, trying to appear angry with Joel.

She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t wake him up. He needs to sleep. I think I can fill you in on what happened.”

They sat down at the kitchen table. Miss Nederström accepted the offer of a cup of coffee.

Then she told Samuel what had happened the previous day. How Joel had dragged Simon Windstorm a couple of miles through the raging storm. And how he had then gone to fetch help.

“Mr. Windstorm is seriously ill,” said Miss Nederström. “But for Joel, he’d have been dead.”

Samuel had listened in astonishment to what she had said. He wasn’t sure that he understood everything, but it was clear that for once, Joel hadn’t been stirring up trouble.

“Maybe I ought to wake him up,” Samuel said.

“No, let him sleep. He must be absolutely exhausted.”

They both peeped cautiously round the door to Joel’s room. He was lying with his eyes closed and the quilt up to his chin.

They tiptoed quietly back to the kitchen table.

What they hadn’t noticed was that Joel was awake. He had screwed up his eyes and seen them as two blurred shadows in the doorway. He had realized that it was Miss Nederström and Samuel. When they went back to the kitchen he sneaked up to the door and listened. He gathered she had come to ask how he was. Not to tell Samuel how difficult he was being at school, when he was there.

“Joel learns things so easily,” she said. “But he’s careless. And he has so many other things buzzing round in his head.”

“It’s not always so easy for me to take proper care of him when I’m on my own,” said Samuel. “But I do the best I can.”

Miss Nederström left shortly afterwards. Joel had managed to hasten back to bed.

He heard her walking down the stairs.

Samuel came to Joel’s room. He pretended to be asleep again, but he couldn’t fool Samuel.

“I heard you standing behind the door, listening,” he said.

He sat down on the edge of Joel’s bed.

“What’s all this that I ought to know about?” he said. “I want to hear it from you now. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“You must be tired out?”

“Not any longer.”

Then Joel told his dad what had happened. Samuel listened without saying a word.

“Simon was heavy,” said Joel to finish off with. “I didn’t think it was possible for a person to weigh as much as that.”

Samuel stroked him lightly over the forehead.

“It was as if you’d saved a shipwrecked sailor,” he said. “A man overboard, but in the snow. There were enormous breakers in the sea of snow. The gale was howling. But you managed to get him to the shore. Alive.”

Joel understood what Samuel meant. Even though he had never rescued anybody from the real sea.

“It was like swallowing a lot of freezing cold water,” he said. “All that snow blowing into my face.”

Samuel sat looking at him for ages. Joel liked being looked at by his father.

“Come and lie down in my bed,” said Samuel eventually. “We can read a bit of Mutiny on the Bounty.”

Joel jumped eagerly out of bed. He was aching all over. But it was a long time since he and Samuel had read a book together. Far too long.

Samuel pulled the quilt up to both their chins. Joel felt as if he were hibernating together with a grizzly bear.

“I stood waiting for you outside the shoe shop,” Samuel said. “I don’t mind telling you I got pretty angry.”

“Maybe we can buy the boots next Saturday instead,” said Joel.

“You can buy them yourself,” Samuel said. “I’ll give you the money. It occurs to me that you don’t need me with you when you’re buying new shoes. Unless I’m much mistaken, you’re starting to be grown up.”

“I’ve been grown up for ages,” said Joel. “It’s just that you haven’t noticed until now.”

Samuel nodded.

“Maybe I haven’t wanted to notice,” he said. “You see, if you grow older, so do I. And I don’t want to. I think I’m old enough as it is.”

Joel suspected that Samuel disliked talking about growing old. Samuel took hold of the book.

“Shall we start at the beginning?” he asked.

“You can choose,” said Joel.

“Then we’ll read the end first,” said Samuel. “That’s the best bit.”

Then he read about the mysterious island that had suddenly appeared on the horizon. When the mutineers had started mutinying against one another. When Fletcher had hardly been able to control them any longer. The island rose out of the water like a gigantic rock. They had beached the Bounty in the shallows and gone ashore.

It was like entering paradise.

And they were still there now. After many hundreds of years.

Samuel closed the book and dropped it onto his stomach.

Both of them lay there in silence.

The wind was howling outside the window, but Joel could hear that the storm was beginning to ease off.

The walls of the house were creaking and crackling. It was like being on board ship. As if they were tossing about on the sea somewhere, in the captain’s cabin.

“I’d like to go there,” said Joel. “To Pitcairn Island.”

“So would I,” said Samuel. “To Pitcairn Island.” That was all they said. Joel dozed off and slept for another hour.

Late in the afternoon Joel went to the hospital to visit Simon. Samuel went with him. Joel had promised to show Samuel afterwards where he had found Simon. It had also occurred to Samuel that somebody ought to feed Simon’s dogs.

“He keeps hens as well,” said Joel. “And a cock that lives in his truck. And perches on the steering wheel.”

The snowstorm was over now. Snowplows were still driving round in the streets. The snowdrifts were deep.

When they came to the hospital they were told that they couldn’t see Simon. He was still asleep. And he was very ill. They waited until a doctor came out to speak to them. Joel recognized him immediately. He was the one who had looked after Joel when he’d almost been killed by that bus. But the doctor didn’t recognize Joel.

“So you were the one who found him, were you?” he said, ruffling Joel’s hair.

Joel didn’t like his hair being ruffled. Not even by a doctor.

“That was very well done,” he said. “A heroic feat.”

Then he turned serious.

“But I’m afraid it’s not clear what the outcome will be,” he said. “He’s had a cerebral hemorrhage. And Windstorm is an old man. It’s too soon to say if he’s going to make it.”

Joel was quiet when they left the hospital. Samuel noticed.

“He might pull through,” he said. “Let’s hope so, at any rate.”

“It wouldn’t be fair if he were to die,” said Joel.

“Death is never fair, I suppose,” said Samuel. “And no matter when death comes, it always makes a mess of everything.”

They continued to Simon’s house in the trees. The dogs were waiting outside the house. They whimpered when Samuel fed them. Then Joel and Samuel tracked down the four terrified hens and the cockerel. They were huddled together at the very back of the woodshed.

Then Joel and his dad set off into the forest. Joel wasn’t absolutely sure where he’d found Simon, but he found the right spot in the end.

Samuel shook his head.

“It’s nearly two miles,” he said. “How on earth did you manage to drag him all that way back to the house?”

“I just had to,” said Joel uncertainly.

He couldn’t understand himself how he’d done it.

When they got back to Simon’s house, Joel wanted to take the two dogs home with them, and look after them for as long as Simon was ill. But Samuel said no. They belonged to Simon’s house. That was where they should stay, nowhere else. But Joel would have to feed them every day.

On their way back through the little town they paused at the shoe shop. Joel pointed out the boots he wanted. Samuel turned pale when he saw the price. But he didn’t say anything.

Samuel made dinner that evening. Joel would have preferred to do it himself, because it was hardly ever up to much when Samuel did the cooking. But Samuel could be stubborn. He had decided that Joel needed a rest. While Samuel worked, Joel lay on his bed and thought about all the things that had happened over the last few days. He even brought himself to think about the Greyhound and her laughing friends. It seemed to be easier now that he had dragged Simon through the raging sea of snow. He still worried about going back to school the following day, but he knew he was going to go, no matter what.

Samuel had fried some pork and potatoes. Joel carefully scraped away all the burnt fat.

“Was it good?” Samuel asked.

“Yes,” said Joel. “The best I’ve ever eaten.”

But he sighed quietly to himself when Samuel served him another helping.

Grown-ups sometimes had difficulty in understanding what other people really meant.

They went to bed early, Samuel and Joel, that evening.

And Joel slept.

The fried pork was slowly digested in his stomach. Samuel snored, and the mouse gnawed away inside the wall.

Joel had a dream.

He was crossing over the empty street with Wyatt Earp and his brother. Shuffling and coughing behind them was Doc Holliday. The red dust whirled around their feet. Their spurs jingled as they walked.

It was time now. Time to confront Ike Clanton and his gang. They were going to fight a duel at the OK Corral. A few minutes from now a lot of people would be dead. Joel was walking just behind Wyatt Earp. He was wearing boots with spurs. He was in front of Doc Holliday, who was coughing drily. He would soon die. Of tuberculosis. But first they needed to sort out Ike Clanton. They couldn’t wait any longer. The moment had come. They could see Ike and his men approaching. Through the heat haze. The sun was turning the air into fog. Then Joel noticed that the Greyhound was there as well. And Ike Clanton’s men roared with laughter. Wyatt Earp stopped dead. Everybody stopped. Suddenly they had all vanished. Joel was standing there on his own. He was gripped by panic. The sun was shining straight into his eyes. He couldn’t see a thing. He groped for the pistol that ought to be at his hip. A Smith & Wesson, with the wooden butt removed and replaced by one made of pure silver. But there was nothing there. His holster was empty. Outside the saloon sat Miss Nederström in a creaking rocking chair, fast asleep.

Joel was so scared that his body was screaming inwardly. The Greyhound started running towards him. She grew bigger and bigger, like a giant bird with flapping wings.

He sat up with a shriek. It was dark in the room. At first he didn’t know where he was. Then he saw the gleaming pointers of his alarm clock. He was back home again. It had only been a dream. A sling that had fired him to the OK Corral and back.

It was a long time before he could get back to sleep. The dream had been a warning. He would have to go back to school, and that would be like approaching the OK Corral. Without Wyatt Earp. And without Doc Holliday and his tubercular cough.

But when he arrived at the school playground, nothing was as he’d been expecting. The Greyhound was there. And all the rest of them.

But nobody giggled. Nobody pointed.

Nobody pursed their lips or put their head on one side.

Joel realized he had Simon to thank for that. When he entered the classroom he was still unsure of what would happen. But the Greyhound looked guilty. And Miss Nederström started talking even before she played the morning hymn.

She told the whole class what had happened. Joel thought it sounded like an adventure tale. Had he really been the one who had dragged Simon all that way? Or had he dreamt that as well?

Everybody seemed to know about it already. Joel started to wonder if this is how he would be remembered in 2045. The man who once dragged Simon Windstorm through a raging sea of snow.

He thought about Simon Windstorm. Who had a cerebral hemorrhage. And the dogs whining outside his front door.

When the first break came he plucked up courage and asked Miss Nederström what a cerebral hemorrhage was.

“Something that bursts inside your head,” she said. “But don’t think about that, Joel.”

“What else is there for me to think about?” he asked.

Miss Nederström said nothing. And the break was soon over.

After school Joel went straight to the shoe shop. He tried on the new boots. They didn’t chafe his ankles. He paid, and was given the old boots back in a cardboard box. Then he hurried up the hill towards the hospital as fast as he could. In his satchel he had a few bones Samuel had given him that morning. He hesitated over what to do first — visit Simon or feed the dogs. It was a hard decision to make. But the dogs were bound to be pleased to see him, and so he started with them.

This time they came running towards him. Joel sat stroking them for a while before looking for the hens. They were all in the truck today. Joel crumbled up some dry bread and put it inside the truck for them.

Then he couldn’t wait any longer. He would have to visit Simon. He had a stroke of luck when he got to the hospital, and bumped straight into the doctor he and Samuel had spoken to the day before.

No change. Simon was still unconscious.

Nobody could say if he was going to live or die.

Joel had tears in his eyes. Not because he wanted to. Why should Simon die now that he was in hospital instead of lying in a snowdrift?

Joel left the hospital.

He noticed her immediately.

The Greyhound. She was standing outside the hospital gate.

And she looked nothing like a gigantic bird with flapping, threatening wings.