Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [57]
“Put your mittens on,” I say.
After we pass the halfway point, I realize that I’m hungry. I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and I hardly ate that. I fish in my pockets for a piece of gum or a crumpled cracker in cellophane, left over from a school lunch. Charlotte stops in front of me, and I tread on the backs of her snowshoes.
“What?” I ask.
When she says nothing, I peer around her. In the distance I can see a moving beige shape.
“Crap,” I say.
I walk forward to meet my father, because I know he’ll be even angrier if he’s forced to make his way to us. We meet on the path in our snowshoes. His fury is tight and monumental.
“What in God’s name are you up to?” he asks through his nearly frozen mouth.
“I was just —”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he asks, interrupting me. “She might have fainted again. You might have gotten lost. You both might have died.”
I hardly recognize my father’s contorted face. He points in the direction from which he came. “I want you in that house just as fast as your legs can get you there,” he says. He looks around me at Charlotte. “And as for you . . . ,” he begins.
But the ruin of Charlotte’s face silences him. The scratches are more prominent now, and her eyes are swollen.
“What happened?” he asks.
Neither Charlotte nor I answer him. I can’t think how I’d even begin to describe what took place within the orange circle. I know, as one does at twelve or eleven or ten, that I have witnessed something I shouldn’t have witnessed, seen something I shouldn’t have seen. I know already that I will not be able to erase the image of Charlotte cuffing the snow in a frenzy.
I walk through the trees, knowing that my father will have to wait for Charlotte. I don’t want to be told to go to my room. I’ll go there of my own accord and climb into bed and pull the covers over my head. With any luck I’ll fall asleep and wake up with no memory of the last hour.
The path is easy to follow: three people in their snowshoes have trampled it. My father, in his anger, has made the deepest cuts of all. Snow begins to fall before I reach the house.
I’ve always been amazed by the onset of a snowfall. First a few tiny flakes dot the air, so that I’m not sure if it’s actually snowing or the wind is blowing it off the tree branches. Then there is a gentle and pervasive fall that resembles the snow of movies or of Christmas cards.
Before I’ve walked fifteen minutes away from Charlotte and my father, I feel as though I’m caught in a blizzard. I think of waiting on the path in case the snow covers the tracks before my father and Charlotte reach the point where I’m standing, but then I reason that my father will surely know the way. I don’t want to think of their silent trek, Charlotte walking ahead, my father taking up the rear, two strangers in the woods.
At the house I unbuckle my snowshoes, go inside, find a package of Ring Dings in a cupboard in the kitchen, and hurry up to my room. I let my wet and soggy clothes slide to the floor until I have on only my underwear. Looking into the mirror over the desk, I see that my face is chapped red and my hair is stringy. I walk to the bed, sit at its edge, and stuff the Ring Dings into my mouth.
Still chewing, I lie down and pull the covers up to my chin. The world beyond my window is opaque. I hear a door open and close and the stomping of boots against the mat in the back hallway. The door opens and closes a second time, another stomping of boots. There’s no exchange of words, merely a stocking-footed tread on the stairs. I hear the creak of the guest room door, then a second tread on the stairs, this one heavier than the first. My father’s bedroom door swishes closed. I lie in my bed and listen, but there is only silence.
I awake to a knock on the door. It seems colder in my bedroom than it ought to be. I prop myself up on my elbows. I notice that it’s dark outside.
“Nicky,” my father says.
“Just a minute.”
I toss the covers aside,