JOHN HENRY WOKE UP feeling so tingling and toasty, he figured he’d died and gone to the other place. But when he opened his eyes, his mother’s face was hovering over him. She had on the same Christmasy-green sweater as when they’d opened their presents in front of the fire, but her hair was strangely out of place—in fact, messier than he’d ever seen it. She leaned down and gave him a kiss on the forehead.
“My brave, brave boy,” she said.
As she sat back up, John Henry made out a TV set beyond her head. The TV seemed to be suspended from the ceiling. “Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re in the hospital, love.”
“Mm. Drink something. The doctor said you’d be thirsty.”
She held a blue plastic glass to his lips. The sip hole in the lid protruded sort of like the nipple on a baby’s bottle. Pushing himself back against the pillows, he took the glass himself and screwed the lid off. His fingers were bright red and prickled as if he’d gotten into the nettles behind the Cooleys’ chicken coop—though, of course, the nettles were buried in snow this time of year.
He was pretty thirsty, so he drained most of the ginger ale, even though it was lukewarm and didn’t have much fizz. After he set the glass down on the traylike bedside table, his mother took both his hands in hers.
“What a Christmas!” she said, shaking her head in wonder.
Off to his right was a steamed-over window with a radiator underneath it. To his left another bed, the head hidden by a partially drawn curtain. Someone was moving behind the curtain; a foot wrapped in gauze was poking out of the blanket at the bottom of the bed.
“The nurse is with Tim.”
A large black woman with heart-shaped earrings stepped out from behind the curtain.
“You’re back with us,” she said, smiling.
“How’s Tim?” John Henry asked.
“He’s a little woozy still. I’m hooking him up to an I.V. to keep his fluids up.”
“Can I see him?”
The nurse pulled the curtain back, revealing a standing rod with a plastic sack of clear liquid hanging from it and, beyond that, Tim’s rosy face on a pillow. He appeared to be asleep.
“Is he going to be okay?” John Henry asked.
“It’s looking good,” said the nurse, turning back to hooking up the I.V.
“Thanks to you,” Mrs. Tuttle murmured, squeezing John Henry’s tingly hands on the white thermal blanket.
The rumpled blanket reminded John Henry of the tracked-up hillside where he’d found his brother. He remembered trying to drag him up the hill and realizing it was impossible and lying down in the snow and giving Tim bear hug after bear hug to keep them both from dozing off.
“How’d anyone find us, Mom? Weren’t we way over on the far side of Aunt Winnie’s hill?”
“It was the sergeant. I don’t know how we’ll ever be able to repay him.”
“What sergeant?”
Though Mrs. Tuttle had spent most of the last couple of hours with the man, she realized she didn’t know his name. She’d been in such a panic the whole time, she’d never bothered to ask. “A young policeman from Williston.”
“That twerpy guy who’s been trying to grow a mustache?”
“Well, I don’t think I’d call him twerpy, but yes, he does seem to be working on a mustache.”
“He told me to slow down on my bike last summer. He saved us?”
Mrs. Tuttle nodded.
“Did he use snowshoes?”
“No, he—”
“Hey, what happened to mine? They’re Mr. Cooley’s.”
It felt oddly nice having his mother hold his hands, but he pulled them away so he could lean over the railing. There were no showshoes in sight. But on the right side of the bed there were a couple of interesting buttons. He pushed one. The back of the bed rose up.
“Cool.”
He pushed the other and the foot of the bed started to rise.
“Please, honey,” Mrs. Tuttle said. “I’ve had enough levitating for one day.”
“Enough what?”
“Going up. We just got out of the helicopter.”
“What! You got to ride in a chopper?”
“So did you. That’s how we found you.”
“No way!”
Mrs. Tuttle nodded. “Thank God the sergeant had a license to fly the thing.”
“I was in a chopper? Where’d it land?”
She pointed up. “There’s a helipad on the roof of the hospital.”
“No way!”
“How fast did we go?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Where’d you take off from?”
“The airport. The sergeant drove us there in his squad car.”
“His squad car! Did he use the siren?”
“As a matter of fact he did.”
John Henry smacked the blanket, making his hand tingle more than ever. He couldn’t believe he’d missed a chopper, a squad car, and a siren.
“The runways were shut down on account of the snow,” Mrs. Tuttle said. “But helicopters don’t require runways, thank goodness.”
“How big was it?”
“Not very big. Four bucket seats. And what a racket!”
“I can’t believe I didn’t wake up! Is it still up on the roof?”
“I certainly hope the sergeant hasn’t taken off. I haven’t had a chance to thank him properly. John Henry!”
He’d catapulted out of the bed. But as soon as he was on his feet, he had to grab the bed rail to keep from falling down. His feet were totally numb. They were also in funny red socks. And he was in a pale-green gown with an open back.
“I can walk,” he insisted.
But he let his mother maneuver him back into the bed. He felt pretty shaky, and he really didn’t want to be seen in a dress.
Standing at the bedside, his mother combed the hair off his forehead with her fingers. “You can visit the helicopter another time, lambie. It’s freezing cold up there.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“Waiting outside. They only let two people in the room at a time.”
Deprived of the helicopter, John Henry leaned away from her and jabbed at the buttons on the other side of the bed till he was like a piece of ham in a sandwich.
“For heaven’s sake.”
She moved around to that side of the bed and took over the controls, lowering the foot of the bed. As she sat back down, the nurse turned around.
“He’s all set,” she said. “Would you like some hot chocolate, young man?”
“Yeah!” John Henry said.
“Yes, please,” Mrs. Tuttle corrected him.
“Yes, please.”
When the nurse left, he looked over at his sleeping brother again.
“Were we frozen solid when you found us?”
“Pretty much,” Mrs. Tuttle said.
“What happened? Tell me everything, Mom. Start at the airport. You got into the chopper …?”
“Once they cleared the snow off it. They used one of those blowers, like I’m always telling your father we should get for the leaves. I got in back, and he sat up front. The sergeant showed us how to strap ourselves in and went through his checklist and fired up the rotor. Before you know it, we were rising up into the sky like a giant dragonfly.”
“Wow!”
“It was cold at first, but by the time we were flying up Winnie’s hill, the cockpit was fairly warm. We followed the road. Your father operated the searchlight.”
“A searchlight!” Yet another missed-out-on novelty.
“It’s mounted outside, with a handle on the inside. You can switch between wide and narrow beam. But we couldn’t find any sign of you. Not even tracks.”
“I followed Timmy’s tracks up through the woods.”
“Well, we landed in Winnie’s backyard. And we were incredibly relieved when we saw your footprints going in the front. But the house was empty, and no one had stoked the wood stove. And there were no footprints going out. How could that be?”
“I saw Tim’s tracks heading out the back. So I went that way.”
“Huh. I guess the rotor blew the tracks away when we landed.”
Mrs. Tuttle was looking at the window. Though it was steamed over, you could make out the snow piled up on the window ledge.
“Are you cold, Mom? You’re shivering.”
“It’s just— It’s all coming back to me. It was only an hour ago, but it seems … It was all such a nightmare, finding the house empty. We had no clue where you were. Trev said you’d probably gone back down to our house, but it was so cold out … We were desperate.”
“You went back up in the chopper?”
“Mm. We zigzagged back down the hill toward Williston. One clearing we flew over was all crisscrossed with tracks, and there were two dark shapes in the middle. But when your father switched the searchlight to narrow beam, they flashed their white rumps and ran off.”
“Deer.”
But it was the black bear they’d spotted in another clearing that had sent her into a tailspin. Bears were supposed to hibernate, but there was no mistaking the creature who looked up irritably at the light source in the sky and lumbered off into the woods. Of course it was possible the boys had made it home—possible they were picking crispy skin off the turkey. But in her heart she’d been sure they hadn’t been able to make it all the way back down the hill in that weather. Huddled in the backseat of the helicopter, she started to sob. From above they couldn’t even distinguish animal tracks from human tracks! The jiggling contraption was so noisy, they couldn’t hear her up front. She reproached herself again for being hard on Tim about the painting, and for being so caught up in her causes that she hadn’t spent as much time as she should have with her boys. And now they were lost on the frozen hillside!
The search seemed more and more hopeless, but the sergeant was willing to keep at it as long as their fuel supply held out. In a last-ditch effort they were flying out over the far side of the hill when Mrs. Tuttle peered out the window and gasped. She blinked the tears out of her eyes and looked again.
“Trev!” she screamed, grabbing his shoulder. “Down there!”
Dr. Tuttle directed the searchlight’s wide beam onto the clearing below.
“Jeez,” said the sergeant. “I don’t think deer did that, or a bear either.”
The clearing was covered with tracks, tracks that formed the outline of a face—the face of a cheerful old woman who looked remarkably like Winifred.
“Give me a break,” John Henry said when his mother described this to him.
“I know it sounds crazy, but there it was.” Mrs. Tuttle’s eyes misted up again at the thought of it. “You two were curled up together right in the corner of her mouth.”
“You’re making that up.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Can we check it out in the chopper tomorrow?”
“I’m afraid landing and taking off wiped out most of it. But it was there. You boys must have tramped it out with your boots by sheer chance.”
“Uh-uh.”
“But how else could it have gotten there?”
“It wasn’t me, Mom. I had on snowshoes. They didn’t break the crust.”
“Was it really Aunt Winnie?”
They both looked around abruptly. Tim, his head turned on his pillow, was looking at them intently.
“Timmy!” cried Mrs. Tuttle, moving over to his bedside. “How are you feeling?”
There was a purplish lump on his forehead, so to gauge his temperature she pressed the back of her hand against the side of his flushed neck. He felt warm but not burning up.
“Was it really Aunt Winnie?” he repeated.
“Yes, it really was,” she said. “There was no mistaking it.”
Tim gave her a long look. Then he turned his head and looked at John Henry. Then he looked back at her, nodded slightly, and closed his eyes.