Whiter Than Snow (20 page)

Squinting into the sunlight glaring off the vast snowfield beyond the window, Grace Foote watched a cornice of snow break off and drop onto the slope beneath it. The snow puckered and began sliding, was funneled into a chute that was formed by a rocky outcrop. Coming out the bottom of the chute, the snow slid a hundred feet farther, until it reached a ridge, and then with a loud
woompf
that Grace could hear through the glass, the harder top slab of snow collapsed onto a layer of sugarlike crystals beneath it that rolled and slid like marbles. That vast snowfield beneath the Fourth of July Mine, five hundred feet high and a thousand feet wide, split in half, east to west, cut by a ragged horizontal line that was like a tear in a white silk gown.

As the snowpack crumpled, releasing the upper layer of soft, wet snow, the face of the mountain began sliding with a terrible hissing, scraping sound. For a few seconds, the edge of the avalanche moved slowly down that slope. Then the slide gained momentum, crashing downward with a roar like a giant waterfall, gathering rocks and stubs of trees that had pushed up through the toxic yellow waste beneath the snow and the remains of buildings and machinery, taking everything in its way, tumbling and smashing the debris like ore in a stamp mill.

Grace stared as if she were looking at a painting that had suddenly come alive, fascinated at the power and majesty and raw beauty of the avalanche. And then she realized what was happening, what that premonition she’d felt was about. Her eyes swept down the mountain ahead of the snowslide to the children walking along the road that led from the school on the west of the slope to the town on the east. They had stopped to look up at the mountain of snow bearing down on them.

For no reason that she could recall later, Grace counted the children in the slide’s path—seven, eight, nine. Sensing the danger, one or two of the little ones bolted down the road, as if they could outrun the mass of white. Grace’s throat tightened as she thought that Schuyler might be among the children, and she searched frantically for the little figure. “Run!” she whispered, although she was inside the house, alone, the doors closed. “Run!” But she knew there was no way the children could escape the slide that rushed toward them at the speed of a freight train. She stood frozen at the window as the mass of snow reached the children, saw a black shape tossed into the air, but she could not tell through the veil of white mist whether it was a child or a tree. From the time the cornice broke off until the slide ended in the gully below the road and started up Turnbull Mountain, no more than thirty seconds had elapsed.

Not waiting for the snow in the air to settle, Grace rushed to the telephone and dialed the operator. “There’s an avalanche below the Fourth of July,” she said.

“Well, I thought I heard something,” the woman replied in a gossipy voice. “I’m not surprised. The snow—”

Grace cut her off. “There are children caught in it. At the bottom, on the road. Notify…well, notify whoever you’re supposed to.” She hung up before the operator could reply and picked up a second phone, one with a direct line to the mine office, and when it was answered, she didn’t waste time asking for her husband. “This is Grace Foote. There’s been an avalanche.”

“We know. We’ll get someone to clear the road.”

“You don’t understand. There are children—”

“Day of judgment—children! On the road? Are they all right?”

“I don’t think so. I think the slide caught them, maybe nine of them.” She took a breath and added, “Tell my husband that our son may be among them.”

“Oh, Mrs. Foote…”

“Now! Do it now!”

Grace hung up the phone and grabbed her coat, slid her feet into heavy boots, and rushed outside, where white flakes hung in the air, scattering the light so that the snow left behind in the slide’s wake sparkled as if it had been sprinkled with diamonds. A fire alarm split the air as she grabbed two shovels propped beside the porch and started down the mine road toward the slide, but a group of men passed her, running, and one said, “We’ll take them shovels, Mrs. Foote.”

“There are children—” she began, but the man cut her off, saying he knew, and the two men rushed on.

Grace looked around for something else she could use to dig—a spade, a pick—but all she could find was a washtub in a yard, an old and battered tub, and when she went to it, she saw that its bottom was rusted through. Well, it would have to do. She picked it up and dragged it along the street toward the slide, hurrying, for it was in her mind that she had to dig out the children herself, that she was the only one who knew where they were.

When she reached the place where the snow had closed off the road to the schoolhouse, however, she found others there, already digging in the snow, the men with shovels, the women with basins and dishpans and even their hands, and more rescuers coming. Grace looked down at the tub and realized she could not dig with it, so she left it beside the road and went to stand with a group of women gathering at the eastern edge of the slide.

“There’s one’s okay. We heard it cry. It must not be all the way buried if we heard it cry,” a woman told her, taking Grace’s fingers. It was a familiarity that would not have pleased her in the past, but Grace was grateful for it and squeezed the woman’s hand. They were all the same here, mothers hoping that the wail they heard came from their own child. “Please let it be Schuyler,” Grace prayed. “He’s such a little boy, only seven. He hasn’t had a chance yet.” She realized the other mothers must be saying the same prayer.

Grace wondered then if she had overlooked something that portended the avalanche, some omen, some sign she had ignored. Was the disaster her fault? Had she caused it by violating some superstition? And then she pushed the thought from her mind. Fool, she told herself. You are a self-deluded fool. Forget that rubbish. Forget about yourself. This is no preordained event. Nothing is preordained. It is a random act of nature. Pull yourself out of your self-pity. This is what matters—Schuyler, these people, not you. She called to the men who were digging. “I saw the children, nine of them, I think. They were there in the middle. Some were just starting down the road, on the west side. None on the east.”

The men spread out in their digging then, a few looking up the slope toward the Fourth of July, because it was possible that a second avalanche could come down on them.

Hurrying down the street to his house, the old Civil War veteran Minder Evans heard the sound and knew it was an avalanche. He couldn’t see the slope below the mine, but he was aware that the mountainside was where the avalanche would be, that vast open space where years of hydraulic mining had cleared the area of trees. As he’d walked Emmett to school that morning, he’d looked up at the crust of snow at the top, the long cornice of white that could break off and trigger a snowslide. He’d lived in these hills a long time, some fifty years, and he’d seen the power and destruction an avalanche brought.

Then he heard the siren, loud and piercing, like the wail of a freight train that would not give up. Minder would help. That was what you did in a mining town. He was an old man, but he would do his part, because in an avalanche, every worker was needed. Anyone who was pushed under in the slide would live only a few minutes—five, maybe ten, fifteen at the most—and then he’d suffocate in the wet snow, heavier than the muck in a mine. A man could dig a prospect hole in that land of decomposed granite faster than he could dig through a snowslide.

The old man stopped first at his house and took the shovel off the porch, and as he did so, he was struck suddenly by the thought that the grade school had already let out—he’d heard the bell himself as he was coming back from the burial ground—and that children walked home along the road at the bottom of the Fourth of July Mine. Children like his grandson, Emmett, and maybe Emmett himself. The boy was always one of the first to leave the schoolhouse, anxious to see Minder, to tell about his day, that poor boy whose mother was dead and his father gone. That was why Minder rushed home each afternoon when he heard the bell, to be there when Emmett arrived.

The shovel in his hands, Minder made his way toward the avalanche. There were others hurrying along the paths that had been carved out in the snow, but the old man outran them. Emmett had to be safe. God, that angry God whom Minder had rejected wouldn’t take the boy from him, would he? Minder had lost everyone else. Couldn’t he be spared this one small soul? Or was it some final retribution? Would Minder be left with nothing? Wasn’t it enough that he had been weighted down with guilt all these years? Was he being punished again for what had happened so long ago when the
Sultana
exploded? Minder thought that maybe he alone wasn’t being punished but that Emmett, too, must suffer for Minder’s weakness, just the way his friend Billy Boy had. Billy Boy had told him once about the sins of the fathers being passed down from one generation to the other one. It was in the Bible, Billy Boy had said. So even Minder’s own death would not end the terrible chain of events he had set in motion.

He reached the snowfield and began to dig. Mrs. Foote, the wife of the manager of the Fourth of July, had seen the slide, had told them where the children were. That was a help, although the little bodies could be anywhere, flung a hundred feet away by the force of the snow. It was hard to see with the fog of snow crystals glistening in the air. But the men had found one of the children—found it alive. Minder heard the cry and rushed over, but the wail was not Emmett’s. He would have recognized Emmett’s cry. Still, finding the child was a hopeful sign. Maybe others were alive, too. Maybe Emmett. So the old man began to dig a little farther away, began digging as if his life depended on it. And it did.

Washing dishes, Lucy Bibb did not hear the slide, did not know that half the mountain had slid down into the gulch. But she felt it. As she wrung out the washrag, she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle and her hands itch, and there was a chill, as if the door had blown open. But it hadn’t. When she looked out the window, she saw the queer wintry light, and at first, she thought the cloudy air meant that snow was about to fall. But when she opened the door to throw out the dishwater, she heard the siren and thought perhaps it was a fire, that smoke had clouded the air. A fire was a terrible thing in a mining town in winter. Not only were the buildings old and dry and close together, but the water in the fire hoses froze. A fire could take the entire town. She stepped outdoors to see if she could tell where it was. But the moment she was outside, Lucy saw the snow suspended in the air, and she knew that there had been a snowslide, and a big one.

She heard the sound of boots in the snow behind her and yelled, “What happened?”

“The Fourth of July broke loose,” a man replied, rushing past. “Somebody says there’s kids….”

“Kids?” Lucy called after him. “Whose kids?”

“Lady, I don’t know. I got to get there.” And he rushed past her in the snow.

“Bless God!” Without stopping to take off her apron or put on her coat or her rubber shoes, Lucy started after him, the dishpan in her hands, sloshing water onto her starched apron. She had forgotten to empty the basin. Others joined her, pouring out of houses and stores, carrying shovels and spades and picks, whatever they could put their hands on. But no one ran faster than Lucy. She reached the huge bank of snow left by the avalanche and asked a man who was digging, “What children?”

“Nobody knows. They say there’s nine.”

“Nine?” Charlie and Rosemary could be among them, she thought, a sense of terror coming over her. They would have hurried out of school that afternoon to see the new puppy that Henry had brought them only the day before. They would have rushed out on a tear, maybe the first ones to leave the school. Lucy stared at the wall of snow that filled the road, then found an empty place and began digging, forcing her dishpan into the heavy snow. She made little headway, since the snow was compacted, but she would not stop. She would dig all the way to hell if she had to.

In a minute, a man took the pan from her hands and said, “Mrs. Bibb, you stand over there with the women, please.”

“No. There are children buried, maybe my children.”

“You’re in the way,” he told her roughly. “We got shovels; we got machinery coming—plows, diggers.” He added, “Please.” The man took the dishpan out of her hands and flung it away.

And so Lucy joined the group of women who were standing together, forlorn, a little out of the way. There were perhaps thirty of them by then, gathered in clusters, holding hands, more arriving. Some cried. Others prayed. One woman shouted curses. An immigrant girl with a thick woolen scarf tied around her head muttered something in a foreign language to the woman beside her, the manager’s wife. Mrs. Foote replied in the same language and put her arm around the woman, who’d begun shaking and speaking incoherently. Even those who didn’t understand the language knew that the young woman was babbling.

Lucy backed into the crowd, aware now that her shoes were soaked and her feet cold. She began to shiver and thought she should wrap her apron around her shoulders, but it was wet from the dishwater. Just then, someone moved next to her and opened her cloak and wrapped it around the two of them. “Thanks,” Lucy muttered, turning to look at the woman, and she saw with a start that she was her sister. Lucy had not been that close to Dolly since they were girls, had not spoken more than a dozen words to her since Dolly married Ted.

Dolly did not greet her. Instead, she seemed to feel it was natural that the two sisters should stand together in a time of trial. “There’s one that’s all right,” Dolly said. “We heard it cry. Maybe it’s one of ours.”

“Pray God!” Lucy replied. “Pray God, Doll.”

“They got a hundred or two men digging. They’ll find them,” Dolly said.

“They’ve got to,” Lucy replied. And the two sisters put their arms around each other and held tight.

Joe Cobb did not hear the slide, did not know that there had been an avalanche until he heard the machinery in the mill go silent. That happened only for a reason, maybe an accident. He hoped not. He hoped that it had been only a breakdown, because he’d seen mill accidents, and they were terrible things. A man would reach into the machinery and catch his jacket, and before he could cry out, his arm had been pulled from its socket. A worker could crush a hand or foot. Or he could shove a pole into the chute to push aside a rock that had caused a jam-up and get himself buried under a ton of ore. Mining and milling were dangerous work. Joe thought the mountains took their revenge on the men who ripped up the earth to follow the slender veins of gold, then crushed the rock to get it out. No, he hoped it hadn’t been an accident.