The Long, Cold Winter: Sunshine

This is the con­clu­sion of a three-part sto­ry. If you haven’t read part one, and part two, you’ll want to do that now. 

He was two hours off the path when he real­ized that the moon had crest­ed the cen­ter of the sky’s canopy and that the light was now point­ing in the oth­er direc­tion. He col­lapsed, pale and list­less onto the ground where wet red now tint­ed the grey moon­lit leaves that car­pet­ed the ground cap­tur­ing the icy steam that escaped his lips.

“I’m lost.” He spoke into the frozen damp.

“It’s over there.” She returned, an edge of hope tem­per­ing her exhaustion.

The man turned his head and lay his oth­er cheek on the mass of blood coat­ed leaves. He saw a thin trail of smoke twist­ing between the forest’s fin­gers toward the moon.

“Luna my love, my god­dess above, show me the path home…” He grum­bled over his thick tongue.

“What’s that?”, asked the lit­tle girl.

“I think it’s lyrics”, he respond­ed. “Words, parts of a song… from some music.  I can’t real­ly remem­ber.  Doesn’t mat­ter.  You’re right, the cabin’s right over there.  We came around the back side.  That’s per­fect. I had some­thing out back I need­ed to pick up on the way in.  Thank you.”

It was too late when he felt the nail pierce his hand.  It was already through by the time the pain reached his brain.  He clamped his teeth over his bot­tom lip to muf­fle the scream, so he didn’t fright­en the lit­tle girl.

“EEEEEAYMmmmpphhh”

“What’s wrong?! What hap­pened?!” The lit­tle girl screeched.

He twist­ed the nail from out of his palm, and dis­cov­ered it was an eye­hook. He tore off a cor­ner of the frayed red rag and packed it into the bleed­ing hole.  Rather than return­ing the cloth to his pock­et, he tore off anoth­er chunk and wadded it into the gash in his chest he had just dis­cov­ered bleed­ing from above his bro­ken ribs.  He shoved the rem­nants of the frayed cloth back into the pock­et with the hole in the bottom.

“Nothing.  I just found what I was look­ing for.” He huffed back.

He reached over his shoul­der, adjust­ed the limb she had cho­sen across his back, then pulled the leather strap that bound it taught again.

“I have to get off the ground.”

“Then get up”, her voice from nowhere behind him.

“I can’t stand.  My leg’s broke.  I think it’s bad.  My ankle, too.  Not as bad. Tore up the oth­er knee in the mid­dle of the oak.” He spoke in short sen­tences over the spikes of fire in his chest.

“There’s some­thing in front of us.  Use it.”

“I know. I’ve got­ta clip some from it.  I just can’t fig­ure how to get to it.”

“It’s clos­er than you think. You can reach it. Stretch.” Her voice was a qui­et echo in the wind­less chill.

The man stretched his blood­ied hand, muf­fling anoth­er scream at his bro­ken ribs’ protes­ta­tion. Before his elbow could come to straight his hand encoun­tered a smooth, cold, flat ver­ti­cal met­al sur­face.  He pushed with the best of his legs until his face came up to the frigid pan­el, then ran a bloody streak up the object look­ing for a hand­hold.  He found an oval shaped out­crop­ping hol­lowed in the cen­ter cre­at­ing an open­ing per­fect­ly adapt­ed to his hand.  He pulled him­self up brac­ing his cheek against the met­al box and heav­ing with his dam­aged hand until he was seat­ed on the ground against the box with the wires he need­ed to trim to fin­ish his work in the cab­in. In his oth­er breast pock­et, the one that had lost its brass snap, was a short han­dled pair of tin snips he used to har­vest thin braids of wire.  He fetched them with his good hand and slid his arm through the open­ing in the side of the box toward the ceil­ing from which the three strands of braid­ed cop­per dan­gled motion­less­ly in the still dark­ness.  His fin­gers found the low­est of the cords and he clipped a cou­ple inch­es from its end, flail­ing his arm in effort to catch the trim­mings before they were lost to the inside of the box.  This time he couldn’t sti­fle the scream when a jagged edge laid his fore­arm open and the snip of twist­ed cop­per land­ed in a cas­cade of blood now pool­ing in his lap.

The lit­tle girl was cry­ing again, deep throaty wails from the cen­ter of her chest.

“Whu…ut… sniff, Whu…uhh…Whu… uuuh­hh… uuuh­h­ht. Huh… Huh… Happened. Ah.. Ah… Are yuh… yuh… yuh… you thuh… there?” Begging. “Please don’t leave?! Puh… puh… please don’t leave me. Please?!?!” She was plead­ing, sob­bing, whin­ing bro­ken des­per­ate words.

“I’m still here”, he returned, husky through grit­ted teeth.

The man stuffed the remain­der of the frayed shop-cloth into the ragged gash in his arm.  He pulled a roll of stretchy black tape from the leather pouch on his belt, wrapped it four times around the oily poul­tice, then pushed him­self up to bal­ance on his blood­ied knee.

“I can’t walk, and I can’t crawl. I’m sor­ry.  I don’t know how to get back into the house. I’m sor­ry, I just… I just don’t know how to fin­ish this.”

“Use the limb. Please! Use the limb! Let me help, dad­dy! Please!”  She implored.

The old man’s breath caught in his chest.  He was dizzy.  He couldn’t feel the pain any­more. He unstrapped the limb care­ful­ly from his back, placed the knot­ted end against the frozen ground and hob­bled slow­ly to the front of the shack prop­ping on the knot­ted branch with each drag­ging footstep.

It was warm inside the cab­in when he final­ly lift­ed the small fig­ure from his work bench.  He placed it gin­ger­ly in the old kitchen chair against the win­dow arrang­ing the legs of thin pine so that they dan­gled nat­u­ral­ly where the hair-spun wires made knees twist­ed around the eye-hooks of the thigh branch­es.  Her right arm lay par­al­lel over the arm of the chair, and nar­row fin­gers joint­ed with whisps of cop­per grasped its edge. The left arm, with its mud­died wrist and blood-stained shoul­der, hung at her side. Its clev­er­ly joint­ed fin­gers balled against her hip.  The old man smoothed the doll’s damp olive straw-grass hair then sham­bled back to his stool and picked up an old piece of board. He put his thumb through the hole in its bor­der. Hovering a tiny horse­hair brush over the pal­let he crounched and faced the girl.

“Do you remem­ber, hon­ey… Do you remem­ber, what col­or are your eyes?”

“My eyes are brown, daddy.”

When the old man knelt with the pal­let before her, he had to wince at the sun­light that streamed over her shoul­der, yel­low and blinding.