I lay there a moment, staring at the ceiling, Outside our one small window, the cold winter’s moon shone brightly, filling the bedroom with frightening shadows. I began to hear noises, scary night noises that made me scrunch down and pull the covers up to the tip of my nose. I held my breath—maybe my good right eye being sealed shut was a good thing.
My left eye dared move, a little at first then back and forth, checking into each dark corner and when it discovered nothing lurking there, it crept down the nearest wall to the Big Ben alarm clock sitting atop the night stand. I blinked, twice, and then twice more, harder, struggling mightily to focus on the luminous hands and dial. What time did it say? Was it 4:30 or 5:30? Oh if only my good right eye would open. My brother and I had things to do, exciting things, things that had to be done before our parents woke up, or all would be lost.
I turned and looked at the lump next to me. There lay my older brother. He was seven; I was five, but we were the same size so people thought we were the same age until they discovered he was book learnt. He knew stuff, all kinds of stuff. I envied him for that. I couldn't wait to start school so I could get book learnt. All I knew how to do was tie my shoes.
I poked him. He snorted a sleepy snort. I jabbed my elbow into his back. A groan. I didn’t blame him. It was cold. Maybe forty below. I didn’t know how cold forty below was, but whenever adults said forty below, they always shivered so it sounded like a real cold number. Maybe he’d frozen. We didn't have a furnace, only a wood and coal burning pot belly that didn’t get stoked until the old man got out of bed, and since it was Saturday, his one day to sleep in, the stove would sit cold and lonely for another good while. He slept in some on Sunday too, but not as long because he liked to make the house cozy while mother and my brother and me got ready for church. He never went, but he always gave us a nickel for the collection plate.
Our home was tiny: two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. Each fall, about the end of September, the old man put hay bails around the outside of the house, about two feet up the walls. That stopped the unforgiving winter wind from swooping under the house and up through the floor. Then extra sets of windows, we called them storm windows, were installed, secured in their openings with wing nuts. The windows never seemed to fit even though they were marked with exotic code like WWB, which I subsequently discovered stood for West Window Bedroom. How clever, I thought, but I must tell you that despite their exotic markings, it was the old man's profanity—the richest in the land—that got them finally installed.
The point in telling you all of this is that we were well insulated, and once the pot belly got fired up, it didn't take long for the house to get toasty warm, and when mother—we never called her the old lady, either mom or mother—swung the big kitchen stove into action, the sounds of the tea kettle whistling and the aroma of eggs and toast and bacon and oatmeal made it seem all the warmer. But that came later; right now it was just really, really cold.
I poked my brother again, and he snorted again. OK, I thought, if that’s how you want to play.
From
the coziness of the goose down comforter, I stretched an arm out to
reach my clothes. They had seemed a lot closer when I went to bed. Now,
they were juuuussssstttttt out of reach. Finally, by putting my left
hand on the frosty floor and stretching my right arm as far as I could
without exposing too much of my top and making sure I didn’t fall out of
bed, a horrible fate, I managed to snare my sweater and socks, and then
my pants, heavy serge plus fours that laced and tied below the knee. We
called them breeks, but, of importance at the moment was their icy cold
leather knee patches. I pressed them against my brothers back. He sat
bolt upright and let out a yelp. Then I did what any loving brother
would do: I punched him and hissed, "Shut up. Don't wake the old man."He was a good natured beast, gregarious, outgoing, and friend to everyone. He didn’t hit back. I knew he wouldn’t. But he didn’t look awake enough so I gave him a quick shove and he spilled out onto the bare linoleum. We didn’t have carpet; I guess because we were poor, but this isn't a story about being poor. Most of the people we knew were poor. No really rich people lived in our village so no one really thought much about being poor. But back to the linoleum: when it got cold, it was like ice. My brother let out another yell as he landed, not from pain, but from the shock of his warm exposed skin meeting the linoleum’s early morning rime. Even his unexposed skin wasn’t well protected by his flannel pajamas worn to see-through thin.
I don’t know if the old man heard his first yelp. I knew he heard the second because he yelled, "Settle down you guys. Don't make me come in there."
He always said that, and he only said it once. 'Coming in there' meant a whack on the rear end with a slipper. Sometimes both of us got it, but usually the one he thought the main troublemaker of the moment. "Stop it.", I said, loudly enough for the old man to hear, sneakily pushing the blame onto my brother.
My brother grabbed the jumbled heap that was his clothes and darted back to the warmth of the bed. We lay still for a moment, waiting, listening for the thud of footsteps marching to our room. Silence. We breathed a sigh of relief; there would be no whacks on this morning. Good. We had things to do. We were eager to start the adventure we had carefully plotted the night before.
Casting aside our pajamas, we pulled on our now warm clothes, threw back the bedding, and ventured forth, shivering with excitement and the cold. We tiptoed to the kitchen where our snow suits, his blue, mine red, and mittens hung on peg boards above our boots. After a lot of twisting and turning and grunting, we were ready to face the great outdoors.
Looking like two miniature Michelin men, we waddled outside. Our breath escaped in endless puffs as we swung our bodies first one way and then the other, taking stock of our pre-dawn surroundings. Our battle-scarred old yellow tom cat stuck his head around the corner of the house. He wasn’t pretty: one ear gone, one eye battered shut, but Mother loved that cat; he was a great mouser. He meowed. It wasn’t a cute meow, like you hear on TV; it was a scratchy yowl, like you might have heard from a saber toothed tiger back in dinosaur days. We ignored him. He disappeared.
We looked over our shoulders, fearful the old man might have heard us, fearful he would come roaring out to put a stop to our adventure. All remained quiet.
"We made it." my brother whispered.
“Yeah,” I whispered back.
The old man had probably heard us, but in a small prairie village, miles from the nearest town or city, surrounded by land as far as the eye could see, danger and trouble lacked serious potential. Besides, with my brother and me out of the house, his undisturbed Saturday morning sleep could be extended. We had a younger brother who slept in their bedroom. Maybe he kept them awake, but I really can't recall him having much of a presence for the first ten or so years of his life. Then he got bigger and tougher, and his presence became a lot clearer.
Through the fresh snow, our tracks zigzagged from the back porch to the outhouse. We didn’t have indoor plumbing so the outhouse was always the first stop. A thunder mug resided under the bed, but that was for emergencies. “Real men use the outhouse,” the old man always said. In fact, those might have been our first words after we were born. Real men use the outhouse. Yeah, real men use the outhouse. Let me tell you about the outhouse, any outhouse: number one was OK, but it was hard to not pee on the seat when you were a kid. In the winter, pee freezes; number two wasn’t fun.
We
departed the outhouse, stopped to make snow angels, then hurried on. We
had to cross our enormous yard with its big vegetable garden now
covered in snow as was the large flower garden and the two big lawns.
Several sheds, one for coal, one for the old man's special stuff, a tool
shed and an empty chicken coop sat along one side next to the alley and
south of the outhouse. We had chickens once, one of the old man's
make-money schemes that didn't. It didn't even pay for the chicken wire,
but it made a great club-house so we were glad he got into chickens and
especially glad he got out of chickens. Though had he made stacks of
money at it, we would have liked that more.After the snow angels, we waded to the old man's special stuff place. We weren't supposed to go in there, but we always did because he attended every auction sale in the country and bought other peoples' junk for twenty-five cents a box so there was always something to capture our interest.
We poked around for a bit, but we knew we mustn’t dawdle, though we must have picked up a carpenters level and hack-saw and carted them out because they were found in the spring about ten feet from the door, badly rusted and ruined. I guess we dropped them along the way, I can’t remember, but I do remember the old man writing a few new chapters to the book of profanity when he plucked his precious tools from the spring mud, a look of great loss on his face.
My brother charged ahead, down along the row of willow trees to the Caragana hedge, its gnarled, wiry branches menacing without their green summer coat. We edged through a small opening. My heart began to beat faster. The vastness of the snow-blanketed prairie lay before us. Our plan was swinging into action. There would be no stopping us now.
Then my brother made a sharp right turn and trudged toward the old chicken coop. This wasn't in our plan.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Clubhouse or not, I didn’t want any part of that scary old place in the dark.
“Just c’mon,” he said.
I stood there, uncertain. My nose trickled. I licked my upper lip. It tasted salty. He pulled back a section of the chicken wire, now hanging loosely from one of its posts, and started forward. I waited, fearful of what he might do next. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew the worst hobgoblin in the world lurked inside, hiding there in the dark, waiting for kids, waiting for breakfast. I got ready to high tail it. He pushed at the door.
“Don’t open that door,” I said. “Are you crazy?”
He kicked it with his foot. It creaked open a bit. Then he just kind of stood there. Frightening shadows that groaned and moaned began to appear everywhere and I smelled the must of old chicken feathers, or maybe it was the smell of the hobgoblin. I took a few steps back.
"Let's not go in right now", he said. "Maybe on our way back."
Whew! I was proud of my brother. He was book learnt. He knew things. I started breathing again. He led the way. We left the property and headed for our final destination, but now I started breathing really fast; a major obstacle, one far scarier than the chicken coop, stood directly in our path.
The
town skating rink, its dilapidated, weather beaten old shack standing
eerily alone against a backdrop of endless blue-white snow. The rickety
old boards weaving 'round the ice surface were banked by shoveled snow
piled high around the edges.He led the way to a gradual incline that gave us easy access to the ice. “We could use the gates,” he said, “but that’s no fun.” I was afraid. This was way out of bounds. We weren’t supposed to be here, but he knew about this stuff.
Soon, we were running and sliding across the ice, spraying the fluffy new snow as we skidded to and fro, trying to avoid make believe opponents. He was Syl Apps of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I was a nameless Chicago Black Hawk. My brother knew Toronto was in Canada where hockey was invented; his heroes played for a Canadian team. I couldn’t imagine Chicago not being in Canada, and it sounded like a tougher team: BLACK HAWKS!
After awhile, my brother declared victory, parading around with an imaginary trophy, The Stanley Cup he called it, held high over his head. He asked if I wanted to hold it. Eagerly, I took it from his outstretched hands and hoisted it over my head, and the fans roared even louder.
Then he decided it was time to leave what he kept referring to as Maple Leaf Gardens. I looked at him. I couldn’t imagine hockey being played in a garden, but if one as smart as he said it could be, then it was true. He was book learnt. He was the smartest kid in the whole world.
We shuffled to the end of the skating rink farthest from our home. I had never been past the skating rink before. There was nothing beyond except open, flat land that my brother called the prairies. He said they ran all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. I knew the nearest city was a long ways away, sixty miles I heard the old man say; I wondered if the Atlantic Ocean was as far.
He boosted me over the boards and onto the top of the snow bank then I waited while he struggled and got himself up. There we both stood, like two little cattle barons staring out over the vast expanse of prairie that lay before us, prairie that ran all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
I sucked in such a great gulp of air I thought I’d choke. A quarter mile away, looming up through the graying of a new day struggling to be born, stood our objective. I was really scared. The chicken coop with its horrible hobgoblin and the forbidden skating rink were nothing in comparison. My brother heard me gasp.
"Scared?"
I turned to look at him, trying to keep my feet from heading for home. "Nah. You?"
"Nah, let's go."
We slid down the embankment and started across the open prairie, wading through snow up to our knees and, in many places, up to our waists. It was slow going but my brother led the way so he got the worst of it. Adrenaline shot through my body like electricity. I had to go to the bathroom really bad, but the excitement was too great; our progress couldn't be stopped. On we marched, closer and closer. I wet my pants. I didn't care. This was the greatest adventure ever.
Then a voice called. My heart began to sink. I tried to not turn and look, but my body seemed out of my control. Oh, no! Just as I feared. It was the old man. He’d walked down to the skating rink and waved at us across the field. "C'mon boys, time for breakfast.”
I glanced at my brother. Old man or not, I knew we would keep going; we were too close to quit now.
"Coming!" he hollered.
Coming?…Coming? He's giving up? I felt crushed, destroyed. Tears came to my eyes.
"Don't worry,” he said. “We'll come back. Next time no one will stop us. We'll start earlier. It'll be even more exciting."
I wiped at my eyes. Yeah, more exciting, we could do it again tomorrow. My brother was smart. He was book learnt. He knew stuff.
“Coming!" I hollered.
