It was a cold winter, boy. Snow on the ground from Thanksgiving on. The sky was overcast and there was this haze. Sometimes the haze turned into mist and drifted the valleys.
It was a terrible time for Dad. He brooded and worried about where we were going and ought we to buy a place or not. Mom was feeling bad too, and just fumbled around. I was the only kid at home now that Naomi was at nurse’s training and I heard Mom say she wished Naomi was closer because she was about to go crazy alone. Most of the time the only sounds were the howling of the north wind. We finished stripping in early December because the crop was so short. When everything was totaled up, we lost almost three thousand dollars for the year.
I saw Fred a lot. I’d get home from school, do the milking and feeding, grab a bite and a flashlight and run to the Mulligans so we could set the deadfalls. We had saved two bushels of apples for bait. Anything that could be stored for winter, we stored. Hickory and walnuts, even acorns. Trouble was, the squirrels and groundhogs and had pretty much got everything.
Most of the time we were together, Fred would talk about Annie Lee’s baby. It got so that was all he wanted to talk about. He and Annie Lee decided if it was a boy they were going to call him Alfred and if it was a girl, Alfreda. Alfreda didn’t sound like much of a girl’s name to me, but seeing as how things were, I let on I thought it was beautiful.
Through most of the late fall, things went okay for the Mulligans. There was plenty of firewood and rabbits, and Mom gave Fred my old clothes. She sewed some for the girls too, and a few church folks pitched in with salt butts.
In late December the hard cold hit, and the mist drove everybody into their houses. It was funny about that mist, how it hung over our valleys and hills and wouldn’t go away. The sun couldn’t burn it off and little swirls sometimes come all the way to the ground. Everybody talked about it at first, and then nobody did. Matter of fact, people kind of stopped talking. If folks met they’d mumble to one another, then stare out through the mist and shuffle back to their homes.
In mid-January the rabbits disappeared. We run the deadfalls day after day. Nothing! Wudn’t even any tracks! When the salt butts from the church folks were used up the Mulligans didn’t have anything to eat, other than some skim milk, flour, and chickens we gave them. One bushel of sweet apples was left from what we used to bait the deadfalls, and Fred and me decided the family might as well go ahead and eat them since there wudn’t any rabbits.
About this time, it turned really cold. Night seemed to go on forever and folks got strange. The animals got even stranger, especially the dogs. They wouldn’t stay around people if they could help it, and when you called them, they just slunk away. Pers’s old coonhound near tore one of the Langley boy’s arms off when he tried to pet him, and a Langley knows more about hounds than anybody. Pers went for his shotgun to kill the old devil and it run off and never come back. At home, our one-horn buck knocked Dad down and when he got up, the buck come again until Dad had to nigh beat it to death.
The worst come a couple weeks later when Uncle Lex went out to feed his hogs and didn’t come back. Aunt Belle went to look for him and found an awful sight. Wudn’t much left of Uncle Lex. Couple folks got together and buried what the hogs didn’t eat.
With all the strange happenings, lack of food, mist, and terrible cold, Fred was happy. We’d be sitting around the Mulligan stove watching the fire flicker through its isinglass window and he’d break out singing “Old Dan Tucker” or “Filipino Baby” like he was Ernest Tubb or he’d grab Annie Lee around her middle and squeeze and she’d let out a yelp and yell, “Fred Cody, you’re gonna hurt me and I’m gonna put a knot on your head,” but she’d be grinning when she yelled it, and her face would just beam. Fred would laugh like a fool. The bigger Annie Lee got, the happier the family got. The Mulligans were the happiest folks around and everybody thought they were miserable something awful.
Late one afternoon I was getting ready to go to the Mulligans’ when Mom said no.
“Morris, the radio says snow, high winds, and severe cold tonight. That’s a long walk to the Mulligans’ house. Suppose there’s a blizzard?”
I could see Dad thinking but he knew I really wanted to go. “If there’s a blizzard, he could probably stay there.”
Mom looked at Dad like he was crazy. “At the Mulligans’?”
“Yeah,” said Dad, shrugging his shoulders. “Why not?”
“What would he eat? They need every scrap of food they have for themselves.”
“He’s eaten supper.”
“Supper? A supper like that wouldn’t keep a bird alive. It’s cold and dangerous in that old firetrap. Don’t you give a damn what happens to him!”
Generally, that would have made Dad mad. Now, he kinda slumped in his chair. “M’dom, he’s fine. He wants to help his friend. They’ve been through a lot together.”
That seemed to bother Mom, and she got tears in her eyes and spoke soft. “Don’t I help the Mulligans? Who cranks that cream separator every night and gives them milk? And clothes. How many clothes have I—”
“I know, M’dom. I know you have. You’ve done more than me. It’s wrong that I haven’t done more, but I’ve been feeling so bad that—”
“You always feel bad!” she yelled, and it went on and on like that until they forgot about me, so I got my mackinaw and slipped out.
God, it was cold. The snow and ice had frozen the barn door tight and I had to climb the hog lot gate. I thought about Uncle Lex and was glad we didn’t have any hogs. When I climbed to the top of the gate behind the barn, I looked out at the mist which was layered above the little valley and hid most of the volcano hill. It didn’t move. It just lay there like a spooky white blanket. I realized then that the wind had quit blowing. I jumped down and walked a ways, then stopped again. It was strange. Wudn’t any sound of any kind. I dug my heel through the top of icy snow to make a little noise and an awful wail seemed to rise into the air. That scared me and I took off as hard as I could go, raced across the frozen creek, past the hickory and locust grove, and in no time I was at the gap. The wire loop fastener at the top of the gap was frozen to the post and when I touched it my fingers stuck giving that awful feeling and I jerked back.
Getting into the next field looked like it was going to be a problem since I didn’t have any gloves and you got to use your hands to climb a fence. Then I remembered that the fence had a hole in it down by the pond. Soon I was in the field that led to the Mulligans’ gate.
The wind began picking up making the cold worse. Then the wail come again and I tore out running. By the time I got to the house I was chilled to the bone and scared to death. I pounded on the door and yelled, “Fred . . . Fred!”
“Hello, Samuel,” Fred said soft-like when he come to the door. His face was all lit up and his eyes was strange like they seen an angel. Then I realized what was happening. Annie Lee was having her baby.