Snowfall

Despite Jake’s profound deafness, he swore for a moment that he’d heard something. He’d at least felt the sound, a tremble in his small, feather-light bones. This pushing noise that seemed for a moment to sit on his chest and trap breath in his lungs, it brought him from deep sleep to a sort of half-awake that didn’t feel real.

He stayed in this space between dream and waking for awhile, barely shaking in his hammock bed which was buoyed by a loose spring at each end. Deaf since age three, Jake had developed a “feel” for sound, and thought it best to ignore the immense noise that had tried to shake him from his warm slumber. The sound was too big, a sound for Mom and Dad to investigate and deal with.

There was a moment following the noise when the temperature in his basement room soared, and Jake shifted from side to side, sweltering in the heat and memories of the fever which had stolen sound from his young body. He stirred and gently cried, the tears rolling almost cool over his burning cheeks.

He woke three hours later, in a pitch black room full of stale air. He was sweating in his pajamas, and his lower back felt clammy, slick. He tossed aside the down comforter his parents bought him last year for his fifth birthday, eager to feel some cool air on his sticky skin. He swung his legs over the side of the hammock and dismounted with a small hop. His feet slapped the floor of the basement. Cold sank into the pads of his toes and his heels. He wished his whole body could be filled with that cold, and thought for a half-second about taking off his gray pajamas and lying naked on the floor. His stomach, grumbling and contracting tight, suggested another agenda.

Jake rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and flicked it off his fingers. It took him twelve shuffling steps in the dark to find the far left wall where the staircase was. It was his staircase, the entrance to his lair, his room, his favorite place in the whole house. The wooden steps rising up to the kitchen entrance were trampled smooth by his constant trespass. Halfway up the stairs he knew he would find the light switch.

Jake stepped with care up to the middle of the staircase. His small hand reached through the dark and silence of the basement and he found comfort as he touched rigid plastic. He flipped the switch up, expecting to see the soft light of the bare bulb hanging central to the room. Instead he saw continued darkness, pervasive. He flipped the switch up and down, up and down, with the same result. This happened once before, and he had told Dad, and Dad had run down to the basement with a flashlight and put a fresh bulb in the socket while Jake sat upstairs slurping sugary cereal milk from the bottom of his favorite bowl, the one with the red fishes on it.

The thought of cereal reoriented Jake, and he padded up to the top of the stairs. He’d tell Dad about the light bulb later, and Dad would fix it because that’s all the light Jake got down there. Jake chose to live in the basement, even though it had no windows. To Jake it felt like a hideout, a secret dungeon, and it saved him from sharing a room with his two older brothers, Doug and Sean.

Jake opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, which was also dark, though not jet black like his room. The kitchen was awash in the soft gray light that slipped in through the cracks of the curtains.

He walked over to the light switch by the stove and flipped it. No result. He stood in the dim gray light, confused. He thought every light bulb in the house must have broken on the same day.

He opened the fridge and a soft wave of cool air embraced him, causing goosebumps. He couldn’t believe what he saw inside. The fridge light was out too. It didn’t matter; he knew exactly where Mom kept the chocolate milk. He opened the flaps, and even though he knew it was trouble, started drinking right from the carton. He gulped back the thick chocolate milk with his lips pressed tight against the waxed cardboard, to keep from getting a brown moustache. He closed the carton and stuck it back in the fridge.

With the sweet milk resting in his belly he became more curious than hungry, and wondered where his parents were. Either Mom or Dad usually waited around with him until Marcy showed up.

Jake loved Marcy, the lady that took care of him during the summer while his parents and brothers worked. She smelled like cucumbers and brown sugar, and Mom said she was the only nanny in the county who knew sign language. She also knew where Mom hid the Tootsie Rolls, and when Jake figured something out Marcy would give him a handful. Jake only ate a couple of them a day, relishing the thick texture and the way they filled his senses as he chewed. The surplus Tootsie Rolls he saved were stashed in a brown paper bag that he hid at the bottom of his toy chest.

Jake noticed that the house felt smaller in the dark. Mom said that the house was little and cheap since the Army used to keep soldiers in it. She said that when the base moved to the other side of town the old concrete soldier houses got fixed up and sold off. This made Jake feel safe, like he lived in a castle made for warriors. He thought maybe someday he’d be a soldier.

He began to feel strange as he crept through the house, looking for someone, anyone. He wished, as he often did, that he could hear. He would just tune his ears in and follow the sound of his Mom or his Dad to the source, like he used to before he got sick and hot and the world became silent.

Every room in the house was empty, and Jake began to worry, and figured that Marcy must be on her way. Otherwise his parents never would have left him alone.

He walked into the living room and sat down in front of the television. He thought he’d watch some cartoons and before he knew it Marcy would be at the door, smelling like sugar.

The TV wouldn’t work either, which was probably for the best. Mom and Dad didn’t let him watch any shows for the last couple of weeks. They said there was nothing on but the news anyway, and he got scared when he watched the news.

Anxious, and a little worried, Jake crawled over to the window at the front of the house. He reached up and pressed his hand to the heavy, dark green velvet drapes. He pushed them to the left, looked outside, and understood what was going on.

It was snowing, and in the middle of Summer no less! The electricity must not work when it gets cold in the Summer. Mom and Dad were probably outside, shoveling the driveway or the roof.

Jake placed his right palm, open, against the glass of the window to see how cold it was. The glass was warm, almost hot, and Jake noticed his breath wasn’t freezing on it.

The idea of a Summer snowstorm filled Jake with a sense of wonder and excitement. He thought for a second that maybe God was giving him this miracle to apologize for making him deaf, but he felt instantly guilty for thinking so.

Jake stood up and walked to the front door. His hand reached to the doorknob and found it was warm. Overjoyed at the thought of this unexpected Winter he threw the front door open and ran outside.

The snow was virgin, and rested a foot thick across the whole neighborhood. Clouds hung heavy and black across the sky, and Jake saw flashes of lightning trapped within them. He looked for the sun in every direction and saw only clouds, and the peculiar gray light that matched his pajamas. He wasn’t cold, and felt the shift of a warm breeze across his skin.

Jake didn’t see a single person outside, including his parents, but the miracle of Summertime Winter had filled his mind and he didn’t worry. He was amazed by the storm. The gray snowflakes were coming down so thick he couldn’t see across the street.

He held out his hands and caught some of the flakes in his palms. They would not melt, and when he blew his hot breath on them they didn’t turn to water. Instead they fell to pieces and swirled away.

He trudged out to the center of his front yard and turned around, gazing at his house in the dusky light.

He couldn’t believe his eyes. Someone had painted his whole house the darkest black he’d ever seen. On top of that, they’d painted people, beautiful, bright white people, on the front of his house. There were two people running, maybe playing, and standing closer to the door, near the front windows, the silhouettes of his parents stood with arms outstretched to the sky.

Jake was laughing as he looked at the mural, a soft, rasping laugh that felt good in his throat. Wouldn’t Marcy be surprised when she saw the painting?

Upon seeing the shapes of his parents, Jake was filled with a sense of their absence and couldn’t wait to see them after work. For now, he could play.

He lay down on his back in the warm sheet of snow that blanketed his front yard and began to move his legs and arms slowly, rhythmically, up and down.

As he packed the soft ground beneath him he felt the wind change directions, blowing fast and warm against the left side of his face.

Jake perfected his snow angel and took a moment to appreciate what he had created. He breathed deeply, instilled with a sense of calm as his chest rose.

Jake watched the snow drift down, blinking and laughing as it landed on his eyelashes.

He let the hot wind flow over him. It soon filled the air with color, and Jake inhaled its lullaby deep into his body.

He slept quiet in the arms of his angel, while the misplaced Winter stormed around him.