Read Online A Christmas Blizzard by Garrison Keillor - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Garrison Keillor
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the middle, that is frozen solid at the top—something has to give. The earth cracks wide open and limbs fall off trees and pin you to the ground. Or maybe you walk across the snow and step into a bear trap. Whack ! it breaks your leg. Or you step into a deep hole, and there’s a bear in it, a bear who has eaten nothing but dirt and leaves for weeks and is very hungry. Winter was a world of anxiety for young James. Bears, bear traps, trees falling, and then there was the fear of Communists. They could come skiing down from Canada, across an undefended border, and line the children up in the play-ground and give them a choice: either say “I hate America and I don’t believe in God whatsoever” or else put your tongue on a frozen pump handle. What would he do then? He knew what he’d do, he’d renounce America and God and the Communists would all clap and cheer but God wouldn’t like it and in the next instant the boy would be in hell, flames licking at his feet, burning people walking by.
“What are you so quiet about?” said Leo.
“It’s not the right road,” he said.
“It’s not?”
It was not the right road. It was the road that went past the road to the airport and by the time they figured that out, James had come to the sad realization that he was not going to fly to Kuhikuhikapapa’u’maumau tonight. It wasn’t going to happen.
He told Leo to stop and he got out of the car and stood in the street, in the hush of snowfall. Nobody was out shoveling, everybody was sitting tight. The electric carillon at the Methodist church was playing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” where the sermon on Sunday, according to the marquee, would be “Behold Him, O Ye Peoples.” Whiteness glittering everywhere, the wind whipping up little eddies of snow on the drifts across the frozen tundra. The old house on the corner was Daryl Holmberg’s and there was old Daryl in the living room, blue TV light flickering on his sleepy face, his old classmate, a Methodist deacon now but back then he liked to torture smaller nerdier boys and throw jagged iceballs at people. James’s dad’s friend Archie Pease, who lived across the street wrote a column for the Weekly Binder (“Pease Porridge”), and next door was Rochelle Westendorp, the town librarian, who was mad at James for being so rich and not giving much to the library. And Paul Werberger, a bachelor who lived with four dogs and six cats and collected old magazines and played the banjo. And then his Aunt Mona’s house was up ahead, a little cottage under a giant Norway pine, where she lived until Gene passed away and then she fled North Dakota for Ventura, California, and never was forgiven for it. Ventura was warm and sunny year-round, and she loved it there and did not miss anybody at home very much, and never came back to visit. So when she died, alone, happy, in her home on Catalpa Avenue, the relatives raised the money to fly her body back and bury it in the cold ground of Looseleaf, North Dakota. All alone, by the back fence. Mona Sparrow, 1915-1998.
12. A night on Lake Winnesissibigosh
A nd now they were at the airport, and the Lucky Lady was good and snowed-in. A stiff wind out of the northwest whipped the snow across the flats in eddies and a drift had formed around the plane’s nose, almost up to the fuselage, and there were deep footprints through the snow to the stairs. He walked up and opened the door and heard loud static and blips from the radio and fragments of sentences, a distant male voice, very clipped and official. Buzz was sitting crosswise in the left-hand seat. Buddy was sleeping in the back of the plane. Buzz turned the volume down. James peered out the windshield. The lights at the end of the runway—gone. The revolving beacon atop the terminal—visible dimly.
“We’re stuck, aren’t we?”
Buzz nodded. “Turns out to be a bigger storm than what they thought,” he said. “Two storms converged. Curvature of the jetstream
“What are you so quiet about?” said Leo.
“It’s not the right road,” he said.
“It’s not?”
It was not the right road. It was the road that went past the road to the airport and by the time they figured that out, James had come to the sad realization that he was not going to fly to Kuhikuhikapapa’u’maumau tonight. It wasn’t going to happen.
He told Leo to stop and he got out of the car and stood in the street, in the hush of snowfall. Nobody was out shoveling, everybody was sitting tight. The electric carillon at the Methodist church was playing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” where the sermon on Sunday, according to the marquee, would be “Behold Him, O Ye Peoples.” Whiteness glittering everywhere, the wind whipping up little eddies of snow on the drifts across the frozen tundra. The old house on the corner was Daryl Holmberg’s and there was old Daryl in the living room, blue TV light flickering on his sleepy face, his old classmate, a Methodist deacon now but back then he liked to torture smaller nerdier boys and throw jagged iceballs at people. James’s dad’s friend Archie Pease, who lived across the street wrote a column for the Weekly Binder (“Pease Porridge”), and next door was Rochelle Westendorp, the town librarian, who was mad at James for being so rich and not giving much to the library. And Paul Werberger, a bachelor who lived with four dogs and six cats and collected old magazines and played the banjo. And then his Aunt Mona’s house was up ahead, a little cottage under a giant Norway pine, where she lived until Gene passed away and then she fled North Dakota for Ventura, California, and never was forgiven for it. Ventura was warm and sunny year-round, and she loved it there and did not miss anybody at home very much, and never came back to visit. So when she died, alone, happy, in her home on Catalpa Avenue, the relatives raised the money to fly her body back and bury it in the cold ground of Looseleaf, North Dakota. All alone, by the back fence. Mona Sparrow, 1915-1998.
12. A night on Lake Winnesissibigosh
A nd now they were at the airport, and the Lucky Lady was good and snowed-in. A stiff wind out of the northwest whipped the snow across the flats in eddies and a drift had formed around the plane’s nose, almost up to the fuselage, and there were deep footprints through the snow to the stairs. He walked up and opened the door and heard loud static and blips from the radio and fragments of sentences, a distant male voice, very clipped and official. Buzz was sitting crosswise in the left-hand seat. Buddy was sleeping in the back of the plane. Buzz turned the volume down. James peered out the windshield. The lights at the end of the runway—gone. The revolving beacon atop the terminal—visible dimly.
“We’re stuck, aren’t we?”
Buzz nodded. “Turns out to be a bigger storm than what they thought,” he said. “Two storms converged. Curvature of the jetstream
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