December-28-2008-click-here-to-play
(Edited down from the original by Ted Loder from his book, Tracks in the Snow, 1985, 1997, Innisfree Press, Inc).
Read by Winton Boyd on December 28th, 2008
Consider, if you win, two old women walking to lunch, as snow begins to fall. Could they be … ‘?
“It’s snowing, Rose,” observed one of the women named Phoebe.
Rose, the other woman, engaged in what truly were her own thoughts, mumbled to herself, “Do you think green would match the trees if I opened the door to sneeze when the gardener squeezed and the air is nice if it’s blue as ice but Mrs. Vassick ain’t so full of spice and … “
“Rose. ROSE!”
“Yes’? Oh, Phoebe, it’s you. Yes, it is. Yes. What?” “It’s snowing, Rose.”
“Well, yes it is
“Rose, I heard no two snowflakes is alike. Not one like another.”
“Is that a fact?” exclaimed Rose. “Well now, ain’t that something. How did they find that out, Phoebe?”
“I don’t know. I just heard it’s so.”
“My. Now, ain’t they getting smart,” said Rose. “They just know everything these days, don’t they. Imagine knowing ain’t no two snowflakes alike. Imagine knowing these snowflakes we’re mashing under our feet right now ain’t like no other snowflakes anywhere forever and ever.
“Rose, how many snowflakes do you think there are?”
“Well, let me see,” Rose answered. “A lot! Certainly a lot. Oh, a very lot. A thousand, probably. Oh, more. More than a thousand. A hundred thousand? thousand thousand? Oh, I know it’s a very, very lot.
“Who makes snowflakes?” asked Phoebe.
“Who makes snowflakes? Oh, well now … let me see. I don’t know, do I, Phoebe? I should know, but I forgot. I’m going to cry
“Rose! Don’t cry, Rose. It’s all right. I’ll tell you who makes snowflakes. God makes snowflakes, that’s who.” How do they know that, Phoebe?”
“Reverend Thurston says so, in chapel,” answered Phoebe.
“He says that God makes everything. Remember?”
“Did he say that? Oh, yes. Of course he did. I remember now. Ain’t that something. God makes everything. Snowflakes, too. Certainly, of course.”
“Besides,” confided Phoebe, “last night I heard little voices and they kept saying, ‘God made us, God made us.’ Over and over. And I looked all around, and it was the snowflakes talking through the window. Did you hear ‘em?”
But Rose was off in her own thoughts again, talking to herself.
Two women, curious and unlikely creatures, on their way to lunch as the snow falls in a curious and unlikely corner of the planet – The State Hospital- where they are for curious and unlikely reasons, though perhaps no more curious and unlikely than any of us curious and unlikely creatures are, wherever it is that we are.
The last of the many jobs Phoebe did to support her invalid mother was selling hot dogs and soda as street vendor. Her cart was mounted on a three-wheel bicycle she rode about town. When her mother died, Phoebe kept riding her cart, selling her hot dogs and listening to the voices she’d begun to hear about a year before.
Rose had been married. Her one child, a son, had run off to join the Merchant Marine at seventeen and had not been heard from again. Rose’s heart was broken. After her husband died, she’d ended up living alone in a small apartment on his pension. At first she had a cat to talk to, but after a while she’d begun talking not only to the cat but to herself. Slowly she seemed to lose track things, including the thread of her own conversations.
For both of them, home eventually became the women’s geriatric ward at the State Hospital. Another curious thing about this curious place was that many of the buildings of The State Hospital were connected by underground tunnels that were used for walkways as well as passages for plumbing and heating lines. It was an old building, built before electricity or inside plumbing or central heating. So when each of these conveniences was added, all sizes of conduits and pipes were attached to the walls. When you entered the building, you felt a little like Jonah in the belly of the whale, watching and listening to its vital juices pass through its tracts and ducts and glands.
In fact, much of the life of the hospital took place in those tunnels and in the veritable warren of storage rooms and closets running off them. It was into the belly of this whale that Rose and Phoebe made their way lunch. They had just come to their table and sat down when Dr. Kaplan announced that the Trinity Church youth choir would be singing Christmas carols for them that noon, and the auxiliary of the local Rotary Club would pass out gifts. The gifts turned out to be a box of Kleenex and a bag of candy for everyone. Phoebe gladly noted that the bag of candy had a package of gum in it.
Since the snow continued to fall, Phoebe and Rose and most of the other patients used the tunnels to return to their afternoon activities. On their way back, the group stopped and gathered in a large storage room where several mattresses had been put an the floor and an old record player stood in one corner. At odd hours, especially at night, patients would sneak down to this room for little parties, all officially forbidden but unofficially sanctioned by the hospital authorities. Such activities obviously helped patient morale and so helped the hospital run more smoothly. And on this particular day, Phoebe was busy trading her candy to women for their gum and giving kisses and other small favors, along with the promises of future considerations, for the men’s gum. By the time she returned to the laundry, she had eightv-seven packages of gum and promises of at least twenty-three more. During the following week, though no one really noticed, Phoebe left no wads of chewing gum anywhere. And every night, late into the night, Phoebe sat on the edge of her bed chewing stick after stick of gum until her jaws ached.
“Phoebe, what are you doing?” asked Rose sleepily on her midnight return from the bathroom.
“Chewing-gum, ..”I’m making something is why. For Christmas.
“Something for me?”
“Not exactly for you, Rose. It’s a … surprise. It’s mainly for Cod. ”
“God? You’re making something for God’? Ain’t that something.
During that week, Phoebe chewed one hundred thirty-seven packages of gum. She used all the money she had saved to buy more, and she begged from doctors and nurses and attendants, and traded with other patients, and even took some from the commissary when the clerk wasn’t looking. And every night she chewed. By the week before Christmas she had asked Rose to help her.
“But I don’t like to chew gum, Phoebe.” said Rose. “I just ain’t got no good teeth.”
“You gotta help, Rose. Or I won’t finish my surprise in time for Christmas.”
So the night before Christmas Eve, Rose and Phoebe sat on their beds across from each other and chewed the last packages of Phoebe’s hoard of gum. When they had finished, they gathered the fresh wads of chewed gum, snuck out past the night attendant who was asleep in the little glass-enclosed office, and went downstairs into the basement. They made their way along the dimly-lit tunnel to a small closet off one of the storage rooms. Phoebe lit a candle she had hidden there.
“See, Rose. That’s what I been making,” said Phoebe. “That’s where the gum I been chewing went. See. What do you think?”
“Why, that’s the biggest wad of chewed up gum I ever seen, Phoebe. Ain’t that something. It certainly is. It certainly is something, ain’t it? You been making that? It’s something. What is it, Phoebe?”
“It’s a statue, Rose, can’t you tell? Here, I’ll pick it up so you can see. See, the gum got all hard when I stuck it together. Now, what do you think?”
“Let me see,” answered Rose, “1 should know what that is… It’s a cat is what it is. Like my cat. Emily.
“It’s not no cat,” said Phoebe. “It’s a lamb. Can’t you see the wool? Curly all over it. Now, this gum we chewed tonight is for one ear and a little tail. Stick some on right there, and … there. Like that. Squeeze it a little. There. Good. That will be hard in the morning. And see there, his legs bent under him, ’cause he’s lying down. And this here’s the nose. Could of been a little longer, maybe, but I run outta gum. It’s a lamb, Rose.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Put it on the altar. In the chapel. For God.”
It’s like, how did Reverend say it, it’s ‘symbotic.’ That’s it. ‘Symbotic.’ Gum is what I love. So this lamb is symbotic of me, of my love. So it’ll be like me, on the altar. You see, like Jesus was symbotic of the lamb. Or the lamb was symbotic. I ain’t too clear on that. But I just thought, since God’s got so much to do, with the snowflakes and everything, and … I ain’t got much. But … to cheer God up and help out, I’d give this … symbotic … gum lamb … of my love … or something like that.”
Then it was Christmas Eve, that holiest of times. After the lights were out, Phoebe and Rose snuck out again. It was easier this time, since most of the attendants were off. Down they went to the basement, into the tunnel, on to the little closet where Phoebe picked up her chewing gum lamb which, crude though it was, bore a striking resemblance to a real lamb, since the wads of gum did look surprisingly like tufts of wool. Then slowly the two friends made their way to the dining room and on up to the chapel above.
The chapel was plain, the floor wooden and creaky. The big windows were of clear glass through which, this night, came the soft light of a full moon.
“Shhh,” whispered Phoebe.
“Shhh’?” asked Rose. “Why? Somebody sleeping in here’?”
“No. Ain’t no service now. Just don’t want nobody to hear us.”
“Why? What are you going to do, Phoebe?” asked Rose.
“I ain’t exactly sure. Say something, Rose. Something religious. You know. Anything.”
“Religious? Something religious. Let me see. I should know something. I … Oh, yes. ‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not”
“Sshhh, Rose! Do you hear something?
“Listen, Listen. Where is it? Voices. Where are they coming from? Where? Where? Come on, Rose. We got to follow’ em. Come ” on.
They left the chapel and stood in the hallway, listening. To their left were the big wooden doors leading to the women’s ward, second floor, and to their right, the same kind of doors leading to the second floor of the men’s ward. Those doors were kept locked and looked formidable, But from behind the doors on the men’s side came the sound of voices, weak but panicked voices, moans and screams without much volume, as from old men, sick, tired, confused. What looked like smoke was coming from under the doors, “Look, Phoebe. Look. Look,” cried Rose.
“I see. I see. Come on. Quick, quick.”
As fast as they could, they moved down the hall and began pushing on the doors. “Push, Rose. Push. Push,” yelled Phoebe. “As hard as you can. Push.”
“I am. I am, Phoebe. As hard as I can.”
Big as the doors looked, they were old and had been ignored for years. Their locks were old-fashioned, too, and gave way rather easily. The women pushed into the men’s ward. It was full of steam – hot steam that made it hard to see and harder to breathe. Side gates were up on most beds and many men were unable to get out of them without help. They were gasping, coughing. Those closest to the leaking steam pipe were being scalded as the steam gushed out from the pipe where it ran along the wall two- or three-feet off the floor. The pipes were unusually large because they not only carried steam for the entire wing, but also went from the heating plant, through this building, down into the tunnel and on to three more buildings,
“We got to help these men get out, Rose,” shouted Phoebe. “Through the doors. Quick, quick.”
Somehow Rose and Phoebe were rejuvenated rather than panicked by the crisis. Coughing, they edged into the room, reaching the first men.
“I can’t … see too good … Phoebe,” Rose sputtered, reaching to take one of the old men’s hands, then saying to him, “Here, this way … this way. Come on that’s it. Climb out over the end. Never mind those bars Come on … Phoebe, Phoebe, where are you?”
Phoebe was crawling along, pushing her lamb ahead of her and toward the hissing sound, following it to its source. The steam hissed and roared, tore at her lungs, clawed at her face, scalded her flesh, and seared her eyes whenever she opened them. Finally, she stood, held her gum lamb in front of her, and pushed it with all of her strength at the hissing sound. Slowly the sound muffled. She pushed harder. The steam dissipated slightly. With her hands she could feel where the joint had pulled loose. The heat softened the gum. As best she could, she stuffed it around the leaking wound in the pipe. Then she turned to help the man in the nearest bed.
He was moaning. She tried to push the bed down the aisle toward the door. She couldn’t see very well. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut. The pain came with a roar and then a yawning silence. She fell into a merciful blackness.
The next thing she knew, she was lying on her back and someone was holding something to her face, telling her to breathe. It hurt to breathe. She squinted into the light. Rose was holding her hand and crying, “Oh, Phoebe. Oh, Phoebe.”
Phoebe could hear something way off. Was it a siren ‘? Or music? She lifted her head, listening. A voice spoke: “Easy. Just take it easy.”
She peered as best she could through her swollen lids and could just make out that she was in the chapel, up near the altar. People were moving around. They were all in white, like angels. Other people were lying in the nearby pews. She could see another person in white, bending over her, looking at her with a bright light, talking in a deep voice to someone she couldn’t see: “Some pretty bad burns here. Luckily, everyone got out alive. This woman is the worst. She’s burned pretty bad. The word is that she helped save the others. I don’t know what she used, but apparently she managed to stop the steam long enough for everyone to get out.”
Her friend, Rose, standing nearby, replied, “Her gum lamb. That’s what she done. Put her gum lamb on that busted pipe. Ain’t that something? Oh, Phoebe. You got to be all right. You got to be. You hear me? You will be, won’t you?”
Phoebe smiled and nodded. She had given what was ‘symbotic’ of her love where it was needed. She didn’t understand it all, but she was pretty sure God would. In spite of what the Reverend had said to her, she believed what she’d done was a desecration, sort of like the baby Jesus in the stable. Like it, but different. Like snowflakes are alike, but different. She’d helped a little. She lifted her head again, and listened.
“Do you hear something, Rose,” she rasped. “That music, do you hear it?”
“Music ? Well … maybe I do. Yes, I think I do, Phoebe. Ain’t that something? I do. I certainly do. I hear it, Phoebe. Really I do. I do hear it.”
Ah yes, that music, do you hear it? Before you answer, you will do well to remember who really asks. For when the chariots of the Lord roll out on shafts of light and through timeless darkness, and break rank to wheel around planets such as our own, finding their way to curious and unlikely corners of it, for curious and unlikely reasons, bearing curious and unlikely messages, embodied in curious and unlikely creatures such as … well, who knows’?
Things are wilder by far than we think and more wondrous than we may yet have dared to believe. Do you hear the music?
