ONE
1
Struggling through his arithmetic homework in the warm glow of the hearth, the dark-haired ten-year-old boy suddenly looked up at the window. He was aware that the soft crooning of the wind had stopped and a deep silence had filled the woods. He could see bare branches waving against a gray slice of sky, and a quiver of excitement coursed through him. He put aside his pencil, pad, and book—gladly—and then rose from where he'd been lying on the floor. Something was different, he knew; something had changed. He reached the window and stretched upward to peer out.
At first nothing looked different, and he was mildly disappointed; all those numbers and additions and subtractions were rattling around in his head, clinking and clattering and making too much noise for him to think. But then his eyes widened, because he'd seen the first flurry of white flakes scatter down from the sky. His heart skipped a beat. "Daddy!" he said excitedly. "It's snowing!"
Reading his Bible in his chair before the fireplace, John Creekmore looked out the window and couldn't suppress a grin. "Well, it sure is!" He leaned forward, just as amazed as his son. "Glory be, weatherman was right for once." It rarely snowed this far south in Alabama; the last big snowfall he could recall was back in 1954, when Billy had been only three years old. That had been the winter they'd had to accept charity canned goods from the church, after the stone-scorching summer had burned the corn and bean crops to stunted cinders. Compared to that awful year, the last few crops had been real bounties, though John knew it was never a good thing to feel too blessed, because the Lord could easily take away what He had provided. At least they had enough to eat this year, and some money to see them through the rest of the winter. But now he was infected with Billy's giddy excitement, and he stepped to the window to watch the flurries beside his son.
"Might fall all night long," he said. "Might be up to the roof by mornin'!"
"Gosh!" Billy said, his light hazel eyes—so striking against the darker coloring he'd inherited from his mother—widening with pleasure and a bit of fear too; he could imagine them all getting very cold and hibernating like bears, snowed in until April when the flowers came out. "It won't be that deep, will it?"
John laughed and ruffled the boy's curly, reddish brown hair "Naw. Might not even stick. The way it's comin' down now, it's just bein' windblown."
Billy stood watching it fall for a moment more, then he shouted, "Momma!" and scuttled across the room, through a short hallway, and into the room where Ramona Creekmore sat propped up on pillows in bed, patiently mending a brown sweater she'd stitched for Billy as a Christmas present. It was less than a month since Christmas, and already Billy had worn the elbows out climbing trees and running wild in the woods. "Momma, it's snowing outside!" he told her, pointing out the small window near her bed.
"I told you those were snow clouds, didn't I?" she said, and smiled at him. There were deep wrinkles around her eyes, and strands of gray in her hair. Though she was only thirty-four, the years had been hard on her; she had almost died of pneumonia just after Billy was born, and she'd never fully recovered. She stayed in the house most of the time, doing her intricate needlepoint, and drank homemade herbal potions to fight off chills and fevers. Her body had gathered weight from lack of exercise, but her face was still fine-boned and lovely but for the faint dark circles under her eyes; her hair was still long and lustrous, her Indian complexion giving her a false appearance of perfect health. "Coldest weather of the year is still ahead, long as those blackbirds perch in the trees," she said, and returned to her work. It constantly amazed her how fast he was growing; clothes that fit him one month were the next ready to put back into the Hawthorne cycle of hand-me-downs.
"Don't you want to come see?"
"I know what it looks like. It's white."
It suddenly struck Billy that his mother didn't like the cold or the snow. She coughed a lot at night sometimes, and through the thin wall he could hear his father trying to soothe her "You don't have to get up, then," he said quickly. "It's better if you stay right here."
John came up behind him and pressed a weathered hand against the boy's shoulder "Why don't you bundle up and we'll take a walk."
"Yes sir!" Billy grinned widely and hurried to the closet for his battered green hooded parka.
John took his blue denim jacket with the sheepskin lining out of the closet; he slipped it on and then worked a black woolen cap onto his head. In the ten years that had passed, John Creekmore had grown lean and rugged, his wide shoulders stooped slightly from his seasonal labors in the field and the constant work of keeping the ramshackle cabin together through summer heatwave and winter frost. He was thirty-seven, but the lines in his face—as rough and straight as any furrow he'd ever plowed for a crop of com—made him out to be at least ten years older; his lips were thin and usually set in a grim line, but he was quick to smile when the boy was around. There were those in Hawthorne who said that John Creekmore was a preacher who'd missed his calling, settling for earth instead of reaching toward Heaven, and they said that when angered or antagonized his steely blue gaze could drill holes through barn planking; but his eyes were always soft when he looked at his son. "I guess I'm ready," he said. "Who wants to go walkin'?"
"Me!" Billy crowed.
"Time's wastin'," John said, and reached out to his son. They linked hands and John felt the immediate warm pleasure of contact with the boy. Billy was so alive, so alert and curious; some of his youth rubbed off on John when they could be together.
They pushed through the plain pine door and the screen door and out into the cold gray afternoon. As their boots crunched on the frozen dirt road that connected the Creekmore property, all two acres of it, with the highway, Billy could hear the soft hiss of the tiny snowflakes falling through the dense evergreens. They passed a small round pond, now muddy brown and veined with ice. A white mailbox dotted with .22 holes leaned toward the paved highway, and bore the legend j. creekmore. They walked along the roadside, toward the main part of Hawthorne less than a mile ahead, as the snow fluctuated between flakes and sleet; John made sure the boy's hood was up good and snug, and the cord tied securely beneath his chin.
It had already been a hard winter, with January not even half over yet. There had been several freezing rains, and a fierce hailstorm that had shattered windows all across Fayette County. But as sure as day followed night, John thought, spring would follow winter and the real work of farming would start again; there would be corn and beans, tomatoes and turnips to plant. A new scarecrow would have to be put out in the field, but in these troubled times it seemed that even the crows were willful and refused to be bluffed. He had lost much of his seed to birds and bugs in the last several plantings, and his corn had grown weak and stunted. This was good land, he thought, blessed by God; but it seemed that finally the earth was beginning to give out. He knew about rotation planting and nitrites and all kinds of chemical soil foods the county agent tried to sell him, but all those additives— except for plain old fertilizer, which was as basic as you could get—were violations of God's plan. If your land was played out, so be it.
But times were troubled everywhere, John thought. That Catholic was president now, the Communists were on the march again, and people were talking about going up into outer space. Many autumn and winter afternoons John ambled down to Curtis Peel's barbershop, where the men played checkers in the warm wash of a potbellied stove and listened to the news from Fayette on the ancient Zenith radio. Most people, John was sure, would agree that these were the Final Days, and he could point to the Book of Revelations to show scoffers just exactly what evils would befall humanity in the next ten years or so—if the world lasted that long. Things were even troubled right here in the Hawthorne Baptist Church; Reverend Horton did his best, but there was no fire nor brimstone in his sermons, and worst of all he'd been seen over at the church in Dusktown helping the blacks with their potluck supper Nobody liked to shake Horton's hand anymore after the services were over.