I finished my cup of tea and checked my watch. It was almost eight.
“Omigosh, kids, we’re really late. It’s a long drive home and you have school
tomorrow.” The thought flitted through my mind that we could take the shortcut. No, I
admonished myself, not in the dark.
Pushing my chair back from the table, I started gathering our winter attire.
Frantically because we were late, but reluctantly because I so enjoyed Breggie’s hospitality.
We had lined up our boots on a mat in Breggie’s unheated back porch. When I
stepped out to retrieve them, I noticed how cold the air had become. Through the window I glimpsed Breggie’s garden plot, a wide snow blanket illuminated by the porch light. Beyond her garden the tiny village of Rosehill was dark, except for moonlight glinting off rooftops.
I turned the boots upside-down over the kitchen heating duct to warm them and
glanced at the table where my children were each devouring a second slice of Breggie’s
delicious Arretje nof. They washed down the rich cake with a final swig of milk and raised
their hands so Breggie could wipe chocolate smears from their fingers.
Our coats were hung on hooks above the heating duct so they were toasty warm.
“Let’s go,” I said, shrugging into my parka and shoving my feet into still-cold boots.
Breggie plucked the kids’ parkas from the hooks. “Dank u wel, Oma Breggie,” both children chanted as she zipped their coats up to the neck. They delighted in using the
Dutch expressions she had taught them. My son would have flinched if anyone else fussed
over him, but he made an exception for Oma Breggie.
Breggie had become our honorary grandma when we lived in the village teacherage. She and her husband were the school caretakers and the only people who opened their homes and hearts to us while my husband and I taught there. Breggie and John had landed in this tiny Saskatchewan village over thirty years ago, when they immigrated to Canada after World War II. They knew how closed the rural community was to newcomers, meaning anyone who wasn’t descended from homesteaders.
Although we had moved to the big city of Regina, I enjoyed spending time with my Dutch friend whenever I had a free Sunday. Breggie was the best cook I knew and always put on a welcoming spread. I understood the value she placed on lovingly prepared food, after she described the starvation years under Nazi occupation.
Whenever we visited Rosehill, Breggie assembled some of her handiwork for us to take home. Tonight there were two quart jars of dill pickles, a large bottle of Saskatoon
berry sauce and hand-knit mittens and scarves for the kids. Carrying Breggie’s small box of gifts, I hustled my children out the door and into my Ford Fairmont sedan.
It was an hour’s drive home if we took the shortcut, but the shortcut was a rough
and narrow road. We used it on the way out, but then it had been a sunny afternoon.
The paved grid road led north from Rosehill, until we met Highway 39 angling north-west from the American border to Moose Jaw. The sensible route required turning left onto this well-traveled route to The Jaw and then backtracking on the Trans-Canada.
This was the moment of decision. I could be a responsible mother of seven and
ten-year-old children and take the well-used highway. Or I could save 45 minutes and
head straight north into the black hole of a prairie winter night. Hmm, two long sides of a
triangle or one short side? Wouldn’t it be even more responsible, I reasoned, to get the
kids home sooner and into bed?
While I dithered at the crossroads, the gravel shortcut beckoned to me. It was the
middle of December, around zero Fahrenheit, but completely clear, no snow expected. What could go wrong? I sliced across Number 39 and continued north.
On the deserted eight-mile trail, my headlights pierced the black void with a pale
arc of illumination. A few pinpricks of light suggested farmsteads far off in the pitch-dark
prairie. Ahead a steady stream of tiny lights flowed eastward—the busy highway heading to Regina.
I didn’t remember whether this rough road had ditches to catch me if I misjudged…or would I just keep driving across empty stubble fields? Oh well, I thought, I
don’t need to know the width of the road, as long as my high beams confirm a
gravel surface for a hundred feet ahead.
Above the thin strip of black prairie the sequined dome of our universe glittered
with winter constellations. I took my eyes off the pebbled path in my headlights for just a
moment, glancing through the top of my windshield.
“Look kids, there’s Orion!”
No way to miss that belt and sword as the Great Hunter strode across the sky. The
immense dome around him was dazzling; every minor star pulsed and the Milky Way meandered across the heavens. The spectacle mesmerized me.
Suddenly the universe blurred. Constellations flew in all directions. My hands
clenched into a tight grip on the steering wheel as the car whirled out of control.
Behind me my children shrieked. I detected an undertone of excitement, not fear,
in their expressions. After all, we were spinning on a completely flat surface without a single obstacle to hit. The car finally plowed to a stop.
I had no idea what caused my car to skid, other than my inattention to the road.
Anyhow, I didn’t have time to ponder the cause; now I had to deal with the consequences.
I got out to survey the damage. Unfastening their seat-belts, the kids scrambled
over each other to gawk at my inspection of the undercarriage of the car. With boots sinking
into snow I cursed and held up my loose-fitting pant legs. Moonlight revealed my rear tires
lodged in three-foot drifts that had accumulated in the ditch. The hood was tilted slightly
upwards and facing south-west. I had plowed right through the ditch and up the far side.
My first thought: “Oh, this road does have ditches.”
My second thought: “Do not consider leaving the car to walk for help. There is no human habitation for miles.”
My third thought: “My car’s angled towards the traffic driving south-east from
Moose Jaw. I’ll flash SOS with my headlights. Surely one of those drivers is a retired war
veteran who will recognize Morse Code.”
Nudging my son from the driver’s seat, I sat behind the steering wheel and
composed my reassuring narrative. “Kids, I’m going to blink SOS with my headlights to call
for help. Those cars will see my signal.” I pointed to the intermittent headlights driving south-east.
Ever the realist, my son pursed his lips. “There’s not that many cars.”
“We only need one,” I answered cheerfully.
“How do you blink SOS, Mommy?” My daughter had full confidence in my problem-solving skills.
“It’s long, long, long…short, short, short…long, long, long.” A note of doubt crept into my voice. “Or is it the other way round?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said my son. “The blinks will all run into each other. Just get started.”
The car’s high beams illuminated spikes of stubble projecting from the vast field of snow beyond the ditch. With my left foot I pressed down the high beam button—momentarily down to low beam skimming the top of the ditch—then up again. I repeated the procedure for three longs, three shorts and another three longs. Tiny headlights of a southeast-bound car came into view and appeared to glide along a flat conveyor belt on an immense black screen.
The headlights didn’t even slow while the vehicle passed our intersection.
Peering through our side windows, the kids and I shared a prolonged huff of disappointment.
When the next set of headlights appeared, I flashed again. No response.
After spending some time rooting for this hopeful (more accurately, hopeless) activity, my daughter piped up, “Mommy I’m cold.”
The temperature was falling and we were not dressed to camp overnight in a capsule of uninsulated metal. I turned up the car heater. Contorting my body between the bucket seats, I wrapped Breggie’s scarves around my kids’ heads and pulled her mittens over the gloves they were wearing. Feeling a bit frantic now, I returned to signaling.
The next complaint came from my son. “Mom, I’m hungry.” He had to tug down his snugly wrapped scarf to talk.
“Uhh…” I said, “all we have are dill pickles.”
Hearing a groan, I added, “I could dip one in Saskatoon sauce for you.”
I was keeping things light for the kids, but internally some serious concerns
started to niggle. If I kept the motor running with the tailpipe buried in snow, we might die
of carbon monoxide poisoning. If I turned off the car and kept signaling with the headlights,
I would drain the car battery. Besides, my efforts at communication were not succeeding.
I flicked on the overhead light to check my watch: 9:22 pm. We had been here an
hour and no one had responded to our SOS. My son reported six cars since we got stuck, not
exactly rush-hour traffic. I switched off the headlights and the motor.
I wondered how long it would be before my husband thought to phone Breggie,
who would already be in bed. Then Breggie would have to wake John to take his car into the
cold night to search. I could hear his vigorous Dutch expletives as he cursed the idiot who
probably tried to take the shortcut. With a deep sigh, I realized John’s rescue might be hours
away. I needed to take survival action now.
Retrieving the emergency kit from the trunk required plodding through deep snow in the ditch. My fashionable knee-high leather boots were serviceable enough, but they zipped up under my equally fashionable wide-legged woolen pants which would snare every snow crystal they brushed against and drip for hours inside the car. Unzipping the boots, I wrapped my pants tightly around my legs. When I pulled up the zippers, my legs felt like stuffed sausages and the pants puffed out above the boots like an Elizabethan courtier. No matter, nobody would see me.
Trudging into the deep snow, I found the emergency kit and tucked the kids together under the reflective aluminum surface of a survival blanket. Thanks to the TV blitz about winter-driving necessities, the kit also held two boxes of granola bars, a couple of fat candles and a pack of matches. The kids were happy to see those commercial granola bars, a new product that had come on the market three years earlier. Much better than Mom’s homemade.
Why hadn’t the winter safety campaign advised me to stow a shovel? I replayed
the ad in my head: “Do not leave the car,” boomed the portentous TV voice. “That distant
farmhouse is farther than it looks. You will freeze to death before you reach it.”
Yeah, yeah, I thought, but why in Heaven’s name didn’t you mention a shovel, which is the very survival necessity I need now?
Removing the dill pickles and Saskatoon sauce from Breggie’s cardboard box, I flattened it and returned to the ditch to scoop snow from under the car. The cardboard buckled and I folded it into smaller and smaller pieces until I ended up hacking at the snow with a cardboard cube. My fingers were freezing and I started to feel desperate.
After a while the rear door opened and my son leapt out, munching a granola bar. “A car is coming, a car is coming!” Dancing a jig, he pointed south along the gravel road.
I crawled up from the ditch and saw two circles of light approaching. “Merciful Heavens,” I cried, brushing snow from my parka. Both of us jumped up and down, waving our arms. My daughter joined us, excited to participate in the calisthenics.
The advancing driver slowed to a crawl, probably thinking the black blobs ahead
were mule deer on a brief foray from the shelter of a nearby coulee. His headlights finally lit
up three grateful humans wearing ear-to-ear grins. A little Volkswagen Beetle pulled to a
stop and a man got out.
“Mrs. Patton! What are you doing here?”
My kids and I were illuminated, but he was a black silhouette against his
headlights. It was reassuring that he knew me, but I had no idea who he was. I must have
worn a stunned-deer-in-headlights look, because he introduced himself in detail.
It was Ron Gordon, son of the first grade teacher I remembered from my three
years at Rosehill Regional School. He had visited the teacherage occasionally and was my
husband’s most dedicated math and science student. Ron was on his way back to Regina for
an upcoming university exam.
A seasoned rural driver, Ron absorbed our predicament in a flash. He rummaged
under his hood and pulled out a large flashlight. “Get in my car, kids, and bring that survival
blanket. Volkswagens aren’t too warm inside.” When he beamed his light at the Beetle, I
noticed it was sunflower yellow.
We examined my stranded Fairmont, which looked strangely like the fuselage of a
gunned-down aircraft in the stark glare of his light. I explained sheepishly how I had taken
my eyes off the road to point out the constellation of Orion.
We both looked up. Orion was still overhead, flashing his sword at us, dominating the sky. I shook my fist at him.
“Orion, eh?” Ron said. “What a bully, to push you into the ditch like that.”
With his strong light Ron examined the bottom of my car, jammed tight into the ditch snow. “Buttercup over there doesn’t have the horsepower to pull you out. We’ll have to put more muscle on the job. I saw the yard lights on at the Marley place, a few miles back on the Rosehill road.”
We settled into Ron’s small car and, with several careful manoeuvres, he turned it around. We crossed Highway 39 and increased speed on the paved grid road. I took this opportunity to unzip my boots and extract my pants so I looked more like a citizen of my own century. If Ron had noticed my unusual fashion look, he didn’t mention it. About three miles along, he turned into a lit farmyard.
“Old Bert Marley lives here. A lifetime bachelor, a touch on the cranky side, but I’m sure he’ll get his tractor out for an emergency. My grandmother taught him back in the thirties, so maybe he’ll be friendly to me.”
When Ron knocked at the side door, a large man wearing overalls and a flannel shirt appeared. Under the harsh porch bulb I watched the man’s expression change from a grimace of annoyance to a gruff nod of agreement. He pulled on his outer clothes, strode to the barn, and disappeared in a small side door.
A minute later the broad barn door opened and a large green tractor putted out. Inside the heated cab the lifetime bachelor stared straight ahead, not acknowledging the crowded yellow car waiting to follow him. In Ron’s tiny Beetle we shadowed the Green Giant, proceeding at a leisurely tractor pace. At the crossroads Highway 39 was deserted in both directions, so we didn’t even stop.
I felt comforted by the redheaded young man in the driver’s seat beside me. A local farm boy, he knew the entire community, spread out across thousand-acre farms. But he had been a loner at high school because he didn’t embrace all-night drinking parties. He was intent on mastering math and physics and my husband had delighted in offering him greater depth than prescribed by the curriculum. Chatting with him about university life, I saw he was no longer lonely. He had found a community of like-minded nerds.
When the big tractor reached my black car mired in ditch drifts, we watched Mr. Marley pull ahead slightly and stop. He climbed down the tractor’s ladder and hooked a chain under my car’s rear fender. At this point I realized I had a business transaction ahead. Checking my wallet, I found a twenty dollar bill, a five, and some change.
“Ron, I should pay him. Do you think a twenty is enough?”
“Twenty’s fine. That should cover his gas.” He turned and winked. “And his inconvenience.”
Oh, oh, I thought, he must have been cantankerous when Ron first approached. I flashed the young man a grateful smile.
Clutching the twenty in my glove, I stepped into the cold. The rear door squeaked and my kids stood beside me. We watched our car creep back onto the secure surface of the gravel road, facing the wrong way mind you, but that could be corrected with an inch-by-inch turn-around. Mr. Marley climbed down his ladder and bent to unhitch the chain.
Before I could offer the money, my son ran forward. “That’s a really cool tractor, Mr. Marley. Can I sit in the cab?”
I held my breath, waiting for grumpy Bert Marley to snap at the boy. Instead, the weathered old face studied him, then let a small smile escape. Mr. Marley motioned toward the three-step ladder. “Up you go then. Don’t touch anything.”
“Me too,” said my daughter, always trying to keep up with her older brother. Ron lifted her to the floor of the cab and stood by the open door, supervising.
Mr. Marley turned to address me. The menacing frown lines in his face had softened to a wistful look. “Your son reminds me of my younger brother. He was fascinated by farm machinery, could fix anything. Went off to the war in Europe and got himself killed.”
For several moments he gazed away and my breath caught in my throat. I realized I was witnessing a rare glimpse into his buried grief.
I thought of Breggie and all she had endured in Holland during enemy occupation. Breggie presented a generous, kindhearted face to the world, but I knew she still harbored anguished memories of wartime brutality.
Here was another person scarred by war experiences. He handled it differently, by withdrawing from his home community where he might have found compassion and support. After all, he wasn’t even a newcomer. Didn’t Ron say he had lived here as a child?
Mr. Marley cleared his throat and returned to our conversation. “It makes me happy to see a modern youngster be excited by a tractor.”
“Thanks so much for coming to our rescue,” I said awkwardly, feeling inadequate to the intimacy of the moment. I wanted to say something comforting, but didn’t know how. Instead I reached forward to shake his gloved hand and slipped the twenty dollar bill from my glove to his.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking at the bill.
“Just a gesture toward your expenses.”
“Well, I’ll be,” he said, turning the bill over. He cocked his head to one side. “Isn’t it two weeks before Christmas? Consider my tow a Christmas present.”
Before I could protest, he stuck the folded bill into my coat pocket, and returned to his tractor. Observing his gait close by, I detected a limp. Had he injured that leg?
“He refused to take any money for his help,” I told Ron when he brought the kids back.
“And he smiled at your kids. I’ve never seen him this friendly before.” Ron let out a slow whistle. “He was badly shot up during the war and his brother was killed. My parents told me he withdrew into his farm like a hermit after he came home.”
The big green tractor crawled ahead on the trail to a place where a small lane led into the field. Mr. Marley shunted to the side and waited while Ron supervised me inching my car around on the narrow gravel surface. Finally our little caravan rolled north, me in front, Ron behind.
When we passed the tractor, the old hermit opened his door and yelled something. I rolled down my window and he repeated, “Merry Christmas to all!”
“And to all a good night,” I sang out my open window. My son waved and my daughter blew kisses. We continued forward in silence. I don’t know what my children were thinking, but I was wondering how many other people carry the burden of war, like a slow drip of acid gnawing inside them.
When we merged into the flow of vehicles on the busy Trans-Canada, my daughter finally spoke. “I’ll never forget the night of Orion.” She’s forty-seven years old now, and she remembers the adventure as vividly as a starlit sky on a clear winter night.
I also hold the night of Orion in sharp focus: the night a stranger used his tractor to extract us from the ditch where we were stuck. I’ve wondered ever since whether we nudged him just a bit from the place where he was stuck too.