A Marriage Carol (3 page)

A snow globe shaken and dropped.

STANZA 2:

I awoke, cold and alone, the keys still swaying in the ignition. Acrid smoke filled the car—the air bags had deployed and were now limp soldiers. The windshield was smashed and the windows around me were frost covered. It felt like a vehicular igloo. I rubbed a hand over the ice on the window but had to scrape with a fingernail to see. There was nothing but piled snow outside, and the door wouldn’t budge.

I climbed over to the driver’s side and opened the door. The warning bell weakly alerted me that the key was still in the ignition.

“Jacob?”

Nothing but the sound of wet snow falling. The car
had come to rest in a snowbank, pushed into a clump of thin birch trees growing by the curve, but there was no sign of my husband. I looked for tracks on his side of the car but there were none.

I pulled my feet inside, closed the door, and felt my head. No significant bumps. I pulled the rearview mirror down to see if I had ruptured a major artery but the mirror came off in my hand. No blood, but the mirror showed lines and wrinkles I hadn’t noticed. Thanks to Clairol, my hair had maintained a deep auburn. Brown eyes that looked tired and empty. No makeup, not even lipstick. If I had worn a head covering I could be on the cover of an Amish tragedy.

I turned the key and the engine sputtered, coughed, and sneezed, but didn’t start. My breath became a fog when I exhaled, and my hands were quickly turning to ice. I opened the door again and yelled for my husband. Nothing but the echo of my voice and the
tick, tick
of ice and snow descending.

I dug into my purse and pulled out my cell phone. I could tell the kids we’d been in an accident and then I’d call 911. There was no reception in the area. No bars on the phone.

That was where Jacob went, to find a place to call 911.
But why would he leave without telling me?

My teeth chattered, and every time I shoved my hands into the overcoat they felt colder. The cloud cover blocked the sun but gave enough light to see the landscape. Through the intensifying snow were rolling hills and trees, dense wooded areas as well as pasture with several inches of covering and in some places a few feet of snow where the wind had fiercely blown.

I took the keys and set out on foot, looking around the curve and down the hill for the tractor trailer. The road under the top layer of snow was an ice rink, and I lamented not wearing hiking boots. Maybe Jacob had followed the truck, trying to aid the driver who had no doubt plunged into the abyss. As I rounded the curve below our spinout, I expected to see flashers in the fog, the contents of the trailer spilled on the road or the hillside below, but everything was clear. There were no skid marks, other than ours. No gaping hole in the barbed wire fence. No deceased driver.

“Jacob!” I yelled, my voice echoing off the wet hillsides and trees. The only thing worse than hearing my husband’s voice was not hearing my husband’s voice.

My cell phone still had no signal, and the battery was low. Darkness was coming quickly and the cold moved from my fingers and toes inward and upward. The only footprints leading from the car were my own and I followed them back. We had spun a 360 and another 180 into the snowbank against the trees. Other than the deployed airbags and windshield, there didn’t seem to be more damage, but I wasn’t worried about the car at that point.

Through the trees and snow I spotted a glimmer of light, a faint glow on the hillside. If it was a house, there had to be a road, but a quick look at the winding road that wound upward and away from the house led me to believe the fastest route was on foot across the pasture and up the hillside. Perhaps Jacob had gone there to get help.

I slung my purse over my shoulder and started down the hill, gaining unintended momentum and stopping myself by grabbing a fence post. I climbed through the barbed wire and a few steps later tripped on something and fell, the contents of my purse spilling into the snow. My face, my hands, my legs were now wet and stinging, the wind biting. I located my wallet, phone, and keys and
left the rest. I zipped the coat as far as it would go and set off through the pasture. Snow snuck into my shoes, and my ankles and shins were the next victims. What I wouldn’t give for a fresh pair of Jacob’s unstylish tube socks I berated him for wearing.

When I hit the hillside, I lost sight of the glow. Dead leaves and dry branches cracked and hissed underneath the layers of snow. An eerie darkness enveloped me, and I wished I had a flashlight. Why hadn’t I stayed on the road? If it wasn’t for the little trees that gave me leverage to pull myself higher, I might have given up.

“Jacob?”

An enormous crow landed in a tree above me and cawed, daring me to continue. I was too exhausted to snap off a tree limb and throw it at him and too cold to make a snowball. He cawed again as I grabbed the tree and pulled myself forward and then awkwardly took to his wings and flew across the white meadow, dipping and wobbling until he thumped onto an old stump. That’s when I saw the car on the road, headlights scanning the hillside as they passed the curve, not even slowing at our spinout. If I had stayed I could have flagged them down. I’d be warm. Or maybe in a car with a serial killer.

Where is your husband when you need him? I never went for the strong, silent type, or the macho male/weekend warrior, but I would have taken a gun-toting, beer-guzzling squirrel hunter right then—to swoop me up and carry me the rest of the way.

The cold and wetness stung my face, and so did the briars I crashed through near the top of the hill. I wiped something wet away from the scratches and tears filled my eyes. My nose was dripping, my lips were numb, and my hair wet with melting snow that had fallen from the trees. My thighs, not the highlight of my anatomy, burned from the long pull uphill, but were also chilled and frozen. I was glad I didn’t have a mirror right then, because I would have needed counseling to shake the indelible image.

At the top of the hill I saw the warm glow of the house in the distance. Feet frozen, I moved through a tall drift toward the yellow light. My face was so cold I was afraid my skin would crack if I opened my mouth to call out, so I just put one foot in front of the other. I navigated the backyard slowly, aided only by the light from the back windows. There was a child’s swing set I didn’t see that caused a problem for my forehead and a trestle I navigated
around, but I finally made it to the side of the house and around a shoveled but ice-covered walkway.

A lamp near the driveway gave enough light for me to find the wraparound porch. It was a two-story home, wide and tall, with one light on upstairs. In the front window stood a Christmas tree with sparkling white lights that could have been featured on the cover of
Better Homes and Gardens
. The six-panel front door was painted a deep red, with a door knocker in the shape of an engagement ring—or so it seemed to me. Above the knocker was a beautiful wreath fashioned from evergreens and mistletoe. If I hadn’t been so cold I would have admired it longer, but I reached out a frigid hand to the knocker. As I did, the curtain inside, which covered the small windows beside the door, moved slightly, and a tiny dog pressed its nose to the glass and barked.

The sound of heavy footsteps on hardwood. The door opened and an older man stood there, reaching to gather me into the warmth of the room. He was tall and heavyset, and looked like some actor who always gets picked for the part of the president or angry police sergeant
who’s frustrated with his officers. He carried an afghan and swept it over my shoulders with one quick throw and pulled it tight around me.

“You’re freezing,” he said, closing the door and getting on one knee before me. “Let’s take those shoes off and get you over by the fire.” He took off my shoes and slipped my dripping wet socks from my feet. I looked down on his bald spot, the gray hair forming a perfect
O
at the top of his head.