Coming Home, a Christmas story
Cole Spradlin had stayed way too long in Boise, and now, driving home to Idaho City, the snowflakes spun and whirled and plummeted like a million angels had torn open their pillows in the most monumental pillow fight in eternity. The wind drove out of the west, and Cole dreaded the long haul up the canyon ahead. Two hour-old sleet made of Interstate 84 a long black ribbon of glass, the dotted lines now only ghostly forms through the snow floor. He could only imagine how the balding tires on his trailer were going to manage the oil slicks that were sure to be masquerading as snow-swept asphalt roadway between him and home.
The eve of Christmas Eve had fallen like a vengeful gray monster on the Boise Valley. And perhaps worse than this battering winter storm, with the economy as wounded as it was few people were spending, and the Spradlin family was in a bad way. Against all odds, Cole had stayed an hour longer at the trade show in Boise than his winter sense advised him to because a potential customer had told him he would be back to look at a fifteen hundred dollar king size bed Cole had spent many hours crafting out of native aspen wood brought down from the mountains above Idaho City. He knew the price sounded high to anyone used to seeing the sterile, white lodgepole pine furniture offered at most furniture outlets, but even at fifteen hundred dollars he wasn’t making a profit of more than six hundred dollars. And with the time that had gone into that bed it added up to less than eight dollars an hour.
The trade show officially closed down at five o’clock, but Cole hadn’t even started putting things away until four-forty-five, in hopes of his customer returning with cash. By the time he knew they had lied to him or changed their minds, worried rumor among the other vendors was that in some places there were already three inches of snow in the valley, with no sign of a break in the weather. It was a cinch that Idaho City could brag double that amount.
Cole had lived in the mountains long enough and had listened to people exaggerate the weather long enough that although the reports worried him he reserved his judgment of how much snow had really fallen. But he had filled with dread when he went out to get his pickup and trailer and pull into the arena to load his log furniture. The sky glowered down ceiling-high, a deep, purplish gray but a-glow against the flickering lights of the city. In the orange-tinted parking lot lights the quarter-sized snowflakes glittered and danced, and landed in fluffy piles, where the big, ruthless paws of the wind scattered them pell-mell. It was feather snow, but that wasn’t going to make any difference. With so much snow in the valley, Idaho City and home would wallow a foot deep by the time he made it back. It was unlikely the road plows would be able to handle the load.
Worst of all was that staying over-long at the show was going to cost him making it home to his family Christmas party at a decent time, even if the roads had been good. As it was, with the bald tires on the trailer, he had to hope he would make it home at all.
Pulling off I-84, Cole surveyed the state road with dread. There were a small number of tire tracks already in the snow, but the snow was gathering in them and hiding any sign of tread pattern. The trailer swung a little too wide as he made his turn, sliding on the packed snow. He eased it back up to speed, but the speed dictated by road conditions was forty miles an hour tops, at least until he got a feel for how well his trailer tires were going to handle it.
Out through the purple-gray gloom Christmas lights glowed on scattered houses and on the trees in some of the yards. It was a beautiful sight, especially with the multi-colored lights all diffused in the fog and falling snow. But it was a deadly kind of beauty. He knew that not far ahead all of these lights ended, and for many miles there was only an occasional ranch house huddled in the murky shadow—and none of them his. He almost wished he had built his house down here closer to Boise. Normally, he loved Idaho City, its small town charm and remote location in the depths of the evergreen woods. But tonight, for perhaps the first time ever, he could have loved a peaceful cottage in some nameless, faceless, ticky-tacky Boise suburb.
The road climbed steeper and steeper, and one by one the houses sloughed away and grew farther and farther in between. Soon they were no more. Occasionally, a car would pass him headed toward the interstate. Sometimes he would see headlights approaching from the rear, and he slowed down to let them pass, these other poor travelers headed up all the snow-bedecked miles of road to remote Idaho City. Other than these headlights and taillights and the roadside mile markers gleaming in the dim light of his headlamps there was no light at all. The stars and the moon were rolled into a blanket of cloud and snow and either lost in peaceful dreams or laughing in glee about the fools on Idaho’s roads.
Cole had only gone five miles or less up the canyon when he saw the car. The faint red tail lights glittered through the sideways-falling snow ahead, but they were much too far to the left to be on the road. And there was nothing but sagebrush and grass in this area. Someone had slid off.
In this day and age of cell phones, Cole’s first thought was to keep on driving. Whoever was in that car had known the dangers of this road as well as he did, and they could just call the state police and have them up there in twenty minutes or less. After all, he was already going to miss too much of his family party, and he had sworn to Lisa and the kids to be home as soon as he could. It wasn’t his fault if some sorry traveler didn’t know how to drive on winter roads.
What’s more, this party was going to be the last time he might see his dad for a long time. Daddy had found himself unable to keep up payments on his place on the edge of town in Idaho City, and he had had to sell out. He was moving to Salt Lake City to live with Cole’s sister, JoAnn, and her husband. With his dad being eighty-four years old, there was no telling how long he would be around. Cole couldn’t just skip out on what might end up being the last meaningful get-together they had.
Besides, there was hardly a safe place to pull over in this narrow area. Chances were he would get hit trying to help these people, and who would that benefit? So as he got close to the car, although his former life as a city police officer and firefighter in Idaho Falls made him look out the corner of his eyes at the stranded car thirty feet off the road, his hands were glued to the wheel and he was determined to drive on by.
Then Cole heard the voice, a voice as clear as if the speaker were beside him on the seat. It said, “Do unto others as thou wouldst have them do unto you.”
Cole swore. He looked around in dismay, at the dark trees and the mountains and the tumbling snow. This night was going to be endless. His guts told him that.
Closing his eyes wearily, he took his foot off the gas, and applied the brakes carefully, eventually coming to a stop in the deep snow along the roadway some hundred feet past the stranded vehicle. He didn’t want to drive too far off into the soft grass and brush, especially since the roadside fell off steeply here, but he was more concerned about sticking out in the road.
He sat in the semi-warm cab for a moment and took in a deep breath, sighing it out. Well, the least he could do was to check on the passengers in the car. If no one was hurt, maybe he could phone the police for them, if by chance they had no cell phone, and be on his way home to Lisa and his dad.
Feeling magnanimous for stopping at all, Cole stepped out of the truck, and if he hadn’t been holding onto the door handle he would have gone down. He swore again and pulled himself back up erect, standing still for a moment to collect himself. He almost cursed a third time when he slammed the door and looked down to see how deeply his tires were buried in the snow. But he guessed two cuss words a night was plenty.
His pickup, a ’72 Chevy, was two-wheel-drive, and he had the sick and sudden thought that he wasn’t going to be pulling back up on the road himself. Sour-faced, he looked toward the stranded car, which appeared to be a large white or at least light-colored sedan. Throwing all morality aside, he cursed them from not learning how to drive, cursed himself for playing the good Samaritan, and he cursed the snow. Christmas was ruined. First, his big sale had fallen through, so the extra cash he and Lisa had counted on for Christmas presents did not exist, and second, he was going to have to store that behemoth of a bed somewhere until the spring fair came. The icing on the cake was missing his family Christmas party—perhaps worse, if he couldn’t get back on the road.
The irony, he thought to himself. Stop to help some idiot who can’t drive, and now he was stuck too, and in all reality who knew when help might happen by? The police vehicles weren’t apt to be much better at getting around in this hell of a winter storm than his pickup.
Before heading back to where he could see movement in the stuck car, he pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket. How he hated that thing! He had never wanted one in the first place. But sometimes it did come in handy, and this was one of those times. He dialed his dad’s number, where they were having the Christmas party, and it was dead silence. With alarm, he looked at the screen, and it read NO SERVICE. Cole couldn’t believe what he was seeing! It was all going from bad to terrible, and he didn’t even know yet if he could get that other car back on the road. Being by himself, and with the depth of the snow here, he was almost certain he couldn’t. And now, not being able to phone the police for help, he was going to have to take them somewhere. He could feel that in his bones. He couldn’t just leave them here to fend for themselves.
With a sickness starting in his stomach, Cole jerked his collar up around his neck and started trudging through the foot and a half deep snow toward the car. He could see their tire tracks leading from the highway. They had actually spun in a circle before luckily landing upright far off the road.
The driver of the car, who appeared to be alone, began to stir again as he approached, and soon he saw the dome light come on as the door opened. What appeared from twenty yards away to be an older lady stepped out of the car and stood in the snow waiting for him, huddled up in her coat. Again, Cole took a deep breath and said a little prayer. He had to change his attitude. He was sure this lady didn’t want to be out here in the snow any more than he did, and he had no right to blame her. It might have been his own mom—only his mom had died two years ago.
As he got close enough to feel like the woman could hear him through the wind and muffling snow, Cole yelled out, “Hi! Are you okay?”
“I think so,” came back a sweet sounding voice. “You shouldn’t have stopped. You might be stuck too.”
This comment immediately melted Cole’s heart. Here this old lady was, stranded in the middle of nowhere, with help who-knew-how-many minutes—or hours—away, and her car stuck good. And all she could think of was his well being. He wanted to slap himself for the names he had called her earlier.
“I couldn’t just leave you out here,” he said, able to speak without yelling so loud now that he had reached her. “My name is Cole.”
The woman thrust out her hand, which was covered in a knitted green glove, probably home-made, like the ones his mother used to wear. “I’m Wilamena Giovanni,” she said. “I know—it’s a mouthful!”
Cole laughed. “I’ve heard bigger names. So let’s see what we have here. Did you try to drive out yet?” He looked at her big white sedan, a new model Lincoln Continental.
“I did,” Mrs. Giovanni said, “but it wouldn’t even move. It just spun and spun, and I didn’t want to make it icy under the tires, so I stopped. Plus it was making a strange noise.”
“Good for you,” replied Cole. “Well, listen—my pickup might be stuck, but at least it’s warm—sort of. What do you say we get you up there and inside, and I can pull out a shovel and see about digging you out?”
“You are so sweet, young man,” she said, and she smiled up at him.
Cole wasn’t quite certain how the smile of Wilamena Giovanni hadn’t melted the snow all around them, as warm as it was. She was a tall woman, perhaps five eight or nine. Although slightly stooped of shoulder, and her hair a silvery gray, she still cut quite a figure for her age. Her eyes were a beautiful blue, at least from what he could see in the dim light coming off the snow, and her face was strong but handsome. She must have been a beauty in her younger days.
Cole held out an elbow to Mrs. Giovanni, and she took it, giving him that smile again. “I’m glad I found such a gentleman clear out here in the toolies.”
Carefully, they picked their way back through Cole’s tracks, which were being quickly filled in as the wind jetted bitter snowflakes across them. When they reached the pickup, they walked around the trailer, and for the first time Cole noticed that its tires were buried possibly deeper than those of the pickup. He cringed but said nothing. He didn’t even swear in his head, and of that he was inexplicably proud. Helping her into the truck, he went back around and started it again, then left it running while he took his flashlight, dug a shovel out of the snow in the bed, and started back to her car.
Five minutes’ digging didn’t get him any closer to moving Mrs. Giovanni’s car, and he got out to give things a closer look. He was kneeling down in front of it when he happened to notice the strange tilt of the left tire. With a feeling of dread climbing in his chest, he scraped out a better spot under the front bumper and got down on his side to shine his flashlight up under the motor. It was as he feared. The car’s axle was broken. Snow or no snow, that was one Lincoln that was going nowhere.
With a sigh, he sat back up, feeling defeated. The snow was pounding him, and the wind gnawed on his ears until they were numb. Even his scalp was starting to lose feeling, right through his hair. Cole Spradlin didn’t want to move. He sat there in the snow, feeling it start to melt right through the seat of his pants, and stared at the driving snow. Finally, he sighed once more and looked up the slope toward his pickup. Well, it was time to find out where this Wilamena Giovanni had been headed tonight, up or down the canyon. He couldn’t just leave her out here, not without any phone service to call for help. He was going to miss his dad’s party entirely now, but there was nothing to be done for that. He just prayed they would all know he was okay. He would worry more about them worrying than he would about his own safety. He could handle himself in the snow.
Cole trudged back up to the pickup, his heart heavy. Even as pleasant as this woman was, he sure wished she had stayed home on this night, of all nights. Her presence here was taking away his last chance to see his dad, at least for this winter. Daddy was leaving for Salt Lake in the morning. And the way log furniture sales were going these days, his chances of getting down to Salt Lake even in the spring or summer were looking pretty dim.
Besides Lisa, his dad was by far his best friend. They had done everything together, hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, riding horses. They even sang and played the guitar together, not the garbage that was playing on the radio these days, but the old, magical cowboy songs, the songs he had grown up with by artists like Eddy Arnold, Marty Robbins and the Sons of the Pioneers.
He couldn’t believe his daddy was going away. For a moment, tears brimmed Cole’s eyes, but he was almost to the pickup door, and he forced them away and sniffed against a runny nose. He was going to miss his dad, more than he even knew how to handle. They had ceased manufacture of men like Frank Spradlin.
Cole opened his pickup door and gave Mrs. Giovanni an apologetic look. “Ma’am, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but you have a broken front axle.”
“Oh no!” she exclaimed, her hand coming to her breast.
“Did you feel anything hit the bottom of your car when you went off the road?”
“Oh yes! Very badly,” she exclaimed. “But I got out and looked for damage and didn’t find anything, so I thought I was all right.”
“You must have hit a rock,” he surmised. The wind was battering his ears, whipping at his hair, sending bits of ice down inside his collar. They were having to yell at each other to be heard. “Hang on, I’ll come around,” he said, and he plunged through the snow to his side and struggled in, slamming the door with that hollow sound of old, hard steel.
The wind still beat at the truck, whistling and howling around the windshield and along the iced-over hood. But even so, it was like they had suddenly dropped together into a well of silence. “Whew!” he exclaimed. “That’s crazy out there.”
“Young man, I’m so glad you came when you did, but I don’t want you to worry any more about me. You understand?”
“Worry about you? Ma’am, there is no way in the world I’m going to leave you here with that car, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Where were you headed, anyway?”
“I live in Idaho City,” she said with no small amount of pride.
“Really? Well, so do I!”
“Isn’t that nice.” They quickly exchanged information on where their respective houses were, and Cole laughed.
“My daddy loves your area. He always wanted to build a house up there in the woods when he retired, but my mom was bent on living in town and owning this big, two story, sided house with a fancy picket fence. Daddy was just glad she didn’t insist on staying in downtown Missoula, where they used to live. He never much cared for the city. But anyway, Daddy loved Mom so much he caved in, and she got her big, sided house in town. At least he got Idaho City.”
“Aw, how sweet. Do they still live there?”
“Well, my mom died a couple of years ago.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks. It was rough, but she suffered quite a while. And Daddy, he tried to hang onto that white house, but he couldn’t keep up the payments. He spent way too much money on my mom’s medical bills that last year—pretty much used up his savings. So he had to sell out. Tonight we were having a party at his place, and in the morning we’re sending him off to live with my sister in Salt Lake City, Utah.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
“I know, I wouldn’t want to live there either.”
“Oh no! I didn’t mean that,” she corrected. “I only meant it was a shame he has to leave Idaho City. It is such a beautiful place. I’ve loved it since I was a child.”
Cole gave a laugh of understanding. “Well, I still wouldn’t want to live in Salt Lake. But you’re right—leaving Idaho City is a shame. It’s going to be the death of my dad. He never wanted to live anywhere else. It took him forty-six whole years to finally make it back there after he left and ended up in Missoula.”
“My! That is sheer determination,” said Mrs. Giovanni. “An admirable quality. But I love Idaho City so much myself I can easily understand his drive.”
Cole smiled at her warmly. She was such a beautiful, elegant lady, so easy to warm to, so easy to get to know. He felt like he was somehow related to her, like they had known each other for years. “Well, ma’am, let’s see about getting out of here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll drive you home tonight, if this old truck will make the pull up the canyon. Then in the morning after Daddy leaves I’ll come back down here with you, we’ll get a tow truck for your car and make sure it gets safely to the shop. I know a great mechanic in Boise. It won’t cost you more than a couple hundred dollars—in fact, I’m pretty sure he owes me a favor.”
“You silly young man!” she said. “You shouldn’t be going out of your way for me. You have a very important party to be at tonight. You don’t know when you will see your daddy again. Please don’t you worry about me. I will be fine.”
“That’s insanity right there, ma’am,” said Cole. “We’re both going to Idaho City anyway, and you are a captive in my truck—my hostage. You’re going home tonight, safe and sound, and that’s that.”
Mrs. Giovanni gave a gentle laugh, and her soft hand came out and lay on Cole’s. “Thank you so very much, young man. You know, I always wished I had a boy like you.”
Cole smiled back at her. “No boys?” he asked.
“No, just no boys like you. My little Nick, he stopped going to church when he was fifteen. Can you imagine that?” She sat silent for a moment. “Just stopped going. He said he didn’t believe anymore. He started drinking. One night the state police called me and then came to my house. My Nick had died driving drunk—he ran off into the canyon. He took a beautiful young lady with him, and the friend who had gotten him into drinking in the first place. Such a shame.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t imagine losing a child.”
Mrs. Giovanni smiled and dabbed at a tear. “You’re sweet to say that. You know, I think if Nick would have had some years to mature he would have come back. And I truly believe my Nick could have been a good man like you some day—if I could have raised him in the right place.”
“Do you think Idaho City wasn’t right for him?”
“Oh, heavens! No, no. It wasn’t Idaho City. My no. My father got a job in Pocatello when I was seventeen, and we had to move. We went first to Pocatello, and then out to Omaha, Nebraska a year later. I met my husband, Peter, out there in Omaha. He was a real estate salesman, and very well established. Very young, for his business, but very well liked and successful. We raised Nick there in Omaha.” A sad, faraway look came into her eyes.
“Any other children?”
She looked up at him, then quickly away. But not so quickly that he didn’t see a rush of tears come into her eyes. “No, my ‘parts’ stopped working.” She forced a little laugh, trying to sound light-hearted. “I was unable to have more children, after Nick. I used to want a little girl. I would have named her Brielle.”
Unbidden, Cole felt tears come up in his own eyes. He was embarrassed, but ever since having his own children, watching them grow, he had seen in himself these vast emotional changes. Little things made him cry, things as simple as Hallmark commercials on television or the public display of affection between a parent and child. It was always the sappy things, the stories of love, or love lost.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sure you made a wonderful mother.”
A sob escaped Mrs. Giovanni, and her hand came quickly to her mouth as she turned her head to look out the passenger window. He heard her choke out the words, “I’m so sorry.”
Instinctively he reached up and rubbed her shoulder. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I’m the one who should apologize for bringing up any sad memories.”
“It isn’t your fault, young man. When a woman gets old—at least this is true for me—these memories are just . . . there. They come, and they stay, and always they are right there waiting for the right cue to come out and make me cry. I’m a silly old woman.”
“And I must be a silly old man,” said Cole. “I do the same thing myself.”
She composed herself and dabbed at her eyes daintily, then finally turned back to face him. “I can believe that, young man. I see the softie in you. You know what? I sure like you. If I had had another son I hope he could have been the gentleman you are.”
Cole cleared his throat and squeezed her shoulder, then let his hand fall away. “Well, I’m going to give this a shot. Say a prayer if you have any pull upstairs.”
With that, he eased down on the clutch, wiggled it into first gear, and feathered the gas, started to let out on the clutch. He immediately felt the tires start spinning. He would have been surprised if they hadn’t. He tried for a few more seconds, but it was obvious there would be no easing out of this place.
He sighed and looked over at Mrs. Giovanni. “Well, aren’t we a pair? One good thing is I have a tank full of gas, and if we have to we can just sit here all night with this old Chevy running and tell each other stories about . . . well, just whatever we want. Maybe we can sing some songs too.”
She laughed. “Fine, but only if you like the right kind of music.”
“I’m not sure what the ‘right’ kind is, but I like old cowboy music—and Celtic.”
The old lady’s eyes searched his warmly. “That doesn’t surprise me. I always liked cowboy music too. My husband didn’t much care for it though. He wasn’t much of a music fan. But when I was young I knew a boy who played the guitar and sang like a bird. I fell in love with that kind of music over sixty years ago. Sixty-seven, to be exact.”
“Well, maybe you’re in luck, if you like hearing a cat with it’s tail slammed in the door, because I have a guitar and I play and sing that old music myself.”
A merry laugh escaped Mrs. Giovanni, and her eyes sparkled. “To judge by your speaking voice, I am going to guess that you sing marvelously. I would be honored to find out.”
“Okay, you’re on. But before I give up and start singing the night away I’m going to dig out a little snow and put on some tire chains. I shouldn’t have tried this road without them in the first place.”
“Would you like some help?”
Cole started to laugh, then thought better of it. “No, ma’am! I wouldn’t want you freezing out there in the snow.”
“Well, I’m getting out whether you say so or not, so you might as well accept. You don’t think I’m a weakling, do you? I don’t live outside Idaho City for nothing.”
Cole studied her eyes for a moment, imagining the look of her as a younger woman. That face was so full of joy, so full of an eagerness to help, to please those she loved. “I’ll admit I sure could use a good flashlight holder.”
Giggling, she said, “Well, that is sure something an eighty-two-year-old woman can handle! I’m your man!”
Before Cole could come around to the passenger side, Mrs. Giovanni had climbed down out of the truck herself, and in the whipping and slashing wind she came around with the flashlight and met him at the front of the hood. Cole dug the tire chains out of his trailer while Mrs. Giovanni stared in wonder at the furniture loaded carefully in its dark depths.
“I so love that look,” she said. “Aspen makes such beautiful art. That boy I used to know, the one who sang, he wanted nothing but to fill his house with such fine things—beautiful handmade log furniture, old saddles, rugs made out of bear skin and buffalo hide, and the big mount of a longhorn bull on his wall.” She stood for a moment lost in memories as Cole looked at her. “I should say our wall,” she said in fond reminiscence. “He always said he was going to marry me and build me a huge log house full of woodsy things and horse and cowboy and Indian art.”
“What happened to that boy?”
Mrs. Giovanni’s face grew sad. “Long ago I lost him.”
“He died?”
“No, I simply lost him. Too many moves, and back then we didn’t have so many ways to find people. I tried to send letters, but nothing ever came back.” She stood there lost in thought for a long time, then said, “I suppose he found another girl who was prettier and more worthwhile than I was and filled a log house with all of those things for her instead. I couldn’t very well blame him, since I was the one who moved away first.”
“Well, I’ll say one thing, ma’am. I doubt he found anyone prettier and more worthwhile than you. If he thought he did, then that was certainly his loss.”
She laughed. “You’re making an old woman blush. You need to put on those chains, or I will have to do it for you. And can you do me a big favor? No more ‘ma’am,’ all right? Please call me Wilamena. Or Billi. That’s what my dad used to call me. And other people, too.” Again, she seemed lost in faraway thoughts. Instinctively, Cole knew her mind had gone back to her young man with all the dreams. He thought suddenly of his dad. He wished somehow he and Wilamena had been able to meet while he was still living in Idaho City, because judging by their similar tastes they would probably have hit it off. He tucked that thought away in his mind to ponder another time and turned to the job at hand.
It took almost a full hour of digging and hacking at ice to get the chains on and pickup back out on the road’s edge. Just before Cole could get in, after helping Wilamena into her seat, he saw headlights appear in the snowy gloom, coming from the direction of Idaho City.
Within less than a minute, those headlights began to look familiar, and as they slowed and began to pull over he knew. It was his dad, coming down to look for him.
The old man got out of his four door Chevy, which he had bought back when he still had an ample savings account to accommodate Cole and his family as well as himself. At that moment his dad looked every bit the big, powerful man he used to be, the big mountain man, man of the woods, scoutmaster of twenty-some years.
Frank had a cane now, which sometimes he used and sometimes he didn’t. But he still stood six-foot-two, even hunched slightly over, and his big hand dwarfed the head of the cane. His snowy white beard was trimmed short, hiding only his jawline, and his mustache was groomed perfectly. Even as an old man, he had pride. And even at eighty-four years he cut quite a figure of a man.
As close to a run as he could still muster, Frank came over to Cole as Cole heard other doors slamming on the truck and saw the shapes of his wife and children peering at him through the driving snow and wind. “You okay, son?” asked Frank.
“I’m fine, Dad. Just got stuck in the snow trying to help out a lady who ran off the road.”
Frank walked over and let his cane hit the ground as he gave his son a huge bear hug. “You about scared the daylights out of all of us, buddy. I can’t afford to lose many days off my life, at this age.”
The old man’s eyes crinkled, and Cole’s filled up with tears. Things never changed. No matter the tough situation he got himself into, his best friend came to his rescue.
Then Lisa and the kids were at his side, and everyone was hugging him and crying. Lisa kissed him so hard on the mouth it almost hurt, and then she took him by lapels of his coat and shook him. “Don’t you ever scare me like that!”
He tried not to laugh, but he did. “I’m sorry, baby. I tried to call, but there’s no service here.” He pointed to the broken down Lincoln Continental, way out in the dim, snowy shadows. “This old lady ran off the road and broke her axle. I couldn’t just leave her here. Believe me, she’s been trying to get me to.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. She lives in Idaho City, too, but she keeps saying she doesn’t want me to waste my evening when I have more important things to tend to.”
“Well, we’ll put a stop to that right now, won’t we?” said Lisa brusquely. “We’re taking her home, right?”
“Yeah. I just barely got unstuck myself and chained up. Just started to head out when I saw you coming.”
“Cole, I want you to do me a favor. I know how you’ve been needing this evening party with your dad, and I knew you wouldn’t miss it if you had a choice. I’m sorry it got so late, but I know you would never leave anyone stranded like that. I would love to ride with you back home, but right now I want something else more. I want you to talk your dad into riding with you in your truck. He was worried sick about you, sweetie. He really wanted this evening for the two of you. I don’t want to take that away. I’m going to see if he’ll let me take the kids in the truck—and I can take your friend, too. Then you and Dad can go home together. It would be good for you both.”
“Okay, you’re on.” He gave Lisa another big hug, then pulled away. “You’re the best wife in the world, you know that? I feel bad about pawning my new friend off, though, but I know Dad’s truck’s a lot warmer than mine. I’ll go get her. And you’d better get back in the truck before you get blown away.”
Lisa looked around her at the snow that was still pounding down, sometimes seeming to come from every direction. She didn’t fight him, but grabbed the children and herded them back to Frank’s truck.
Frank went with them, picking up his cane on the way, and insisted on helping Lisa into the truck after she got the kids in. Cole saw them pause at the passenger door though, and Frank bent his ear to his beloved daughter-in-law.
Cole yanked open the pickup door and smiled at Wilamena, apologizing for letting in the snow and the piercing wind. “Wilamena, I’d like you to do something for me. I wouldn’t do this if you didn’t live in Idaho City and I didn’t know we would have many more chances to visit, but my wife suggested it. Would you mind riding home with my wife, Lisa? Dad’s truck’s a lot warmer anyway, and that will give me a chance to have a last talk with Dad before he heads down to Utah.”
“Certainly, young man,” she said as she laid a hand warmly on his forearm. “May I call you Cole?”
“I hope you will.”
Impulsively, the old woman suddenly leaned close and gave Cole a big hug, and he hugged her back. It was like hugging a long lost aunt.
In the blinding snow, Frank and Wilamena passed each other as they made their way to opposite vehicles. Frank got in and slammed the pickup door, and Cole got in the driver’s side. With the wind at bay, they both sighed and looked at each other. There were tears in both their eyes. “I’m glad you’re safe, buddy,” said Frank. “My guts told me you were okay, but this road has killed a lot of folks.”
“Thanks for coming, Dad. It means a lot to me.”
Frank nodded, but he didn’t seem able to speak. With the chains on, the truck pulled out of the snow and back onto the highway fairly easily, although the road itself was covered with three inches of snow now and it promised to be a long trip home. Just what Cole and Frank needed most.
A long silence filled the truck, silence broken only by the tires crunching in the new snow, the windshield wipers flapping, and the howling winter wind.
“Not much like Christmastime, is it, Cole?”
Cole looked over at his dad and smiled. “Nothing like ‘Winter Wonderland.” But I bet it will be in the morning.”
“Maybe.”
“Dad, how are you going to make it down there in the city? That’s not your kind of place.”
Another long silence. “I love your sister, Cole. Love her family, too. But you’re right. I don’t know how I’ll do it. I’ve tried to think of any way to stay up here, but it’s time to move on, I reckon. Your mother would have wanted it that way.”
“She wouldn’t have wanted you to lose the house.”
“Well, I guess maybe that was God’s will. Who knows? Your mom and me, we sure never figured on her gettin’ that cancer, I’ll say that. That disease can eat up a retirement account like nothing you ever saw. It scares me a lot for you not to have insurance.”
“Let’s don’t talk about that, Dad. We don’t have time for that kind of discussion. You’re leaving tomorrow.”
Frank tried hard to look at his son, but like Wilamena had done earlier he ended up turning his head and looking out the passenger window as the snow swirled and broke around them. Cole glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure his dad’s truck was still safely behind them, and it was.
“If any house or apartment comes up for rent in Idaho City, what do you think about moving back? Or what if Lisa and I build a new house and attach a little place to it, just for you?”
Frank laughed sadly. “You’ve always been my best buddy, Cole.” His voice cracked, and he had to look down and swallow a few times. “I’d do that in a heartbeat if I thought we could. But you aren’t much better off than I am. We both know you can’t build a house, and I can’t even help you, physically or financially. We’re both pretty much stuck. JoAnn and Doug have their little place on back already. I guess God intended it to be that way.”
“They’re right in those suburbs, Dad. They’re smack in the middle of a bunch of houses you can hardly tell apart from each other. No hunting close by, no fishing, no country—at least in Missoula you had that. It’s just all houses, all the same cookie cutter houses. You can’t live like that.”
“I’d stay in Idaho City if I could, son. You know that. Did I ever tell you about the little gal I used to know there? Maybe I showed you her picture.”
“Only about a hundred times,” said Cole, laughing.
“She loved that place too. She loved it more than anything. I never could understand why she left and never wrote me or tried to call or find me. Long time ago,” he said with a sigh. “Well, no matter now. That’s a lot of water under the bridge, long before you kids—and your mom.”
“Tell me about that girl, Dad. You showed me her picture, and one time you told me she was really your meant to be, not Mom. I didn’t understand then, but over the years I came to.”
“I hope you don’t ever think I regret your mom, buddy. I loved her with everything that was in me.”
“I know, Dad, but you’ll be with her again some day. That little girl, now—what about her?”
His dad laughed. ”Not much to tell, I guess. Met her in school. I saw some little wood stove bellows she and her mom used to paint for folks, as a collectible kind of art, and we just got talking about art and things. We started going for walks. I had the horses then, and she lived in a house in the woods. Nice big place. Beautiful. Good strong log construction. Man, she loved those horses!” His eyes lit up, and he laughed. “She was a natural rider, the best I ever saw. Best cook, too. Made a rhubarb custard pie once for my family—that’s what she called it—rhubarb custard. Anyway, she made the mistake of letting me try a piece first, while everyone else was gone somewhere, and I had to fib to her later and tell her I let everybody have some. Truth was I hid it in a box out in the tool shed, because the weather was cool that October. Then I used to sneak out there and have a piece or two, until it was all gone.”
“You thieving rascal!” Cole teased.
“Well, I finally told her I ate it. I told her that just before I left on my mission.”
Cole’s father had gone on a mission for their church at the age of nineteen and spent two years in Maine. What happened in his absence had caused him pain for many years, pain so deep he seldom spoke of it, and Cole only knew the faintest details. Maybe it was time to hear it all.
“What happened, Dad? You never made it back here?”
“Well, you know. Not until I retired, anyway. I wanted to, but in my line of work there was no money up here.”
Frank Spradlin’s father had gotten a job as foreman at a huge lumber mill in Missoula, Montana, and when Frank returned from his church mission in Maine he followed them there, although reluctantly. Instead of working in lumber, Frank got a job as a fireman for the city of Missoula, and there he stayed. After retiring from the fire department he worked as an insurance adjuster, investigating fires for insurance claims. But as soon as he was able to, at sixty-five, he came home to his Idaho City.
“You know, I waited for a long time before I went out with anybody. I looked for my little gal up here for a couple of years. I even drove up here once, and the house was empty. Empty. I remember walking around that big place, looking at the timber around it, thinking of the walks we used to go on in the forest. She was some gal, Cole. You would have loved her. She wasn’t your mom, but she was sure something. We did a lot of dreaming, she and I. That’s a long time ago.” His old, rugged hand gripped his cane harder, tapping it twice on the floor as if to accentuate his words.
“Just so you know, Dad, I don’t blame you at all for thinking of that girl. Those are sweet memories. God didn’t give them to us just to throw away.”
Frank nodded, gazing at the floor. “I remember the first time we touched. I had found this little pink pebble along the river bank, shiny, just like someone had polished it. I called her and told her I had something for her, and when I saw her I held out my hand. Our hands touched when she took it, and . . . I know this sounds pretty strange, but it was like this feeling of electricity went through me, like some kind of magic. I was head over heels for that girl. I loved your mom with everything I had, but that little girl and I, we had everything in common. Everything. I never stopped missing her.” He laughed sadly. “I guess I never will.”
For the remainder of the journey, they talked about old hunting trips, and catching a big cutthroat trout out of the Missoula River in eighty-two. It had nearly drowned Cole, but he wouldn’t let go of his pole. He came up out of the rapids soaking wet, but he had a fish. For years his dad had kept that fish mount on his wall. Now it was on Cole’s.
His dad had made a rug out of the elk that nearly killed Cole’s horse one year, during the rut, and the huge rack and skull hung out on Cole’s covered porch, because there wasn’t enough room in the house.
They talked about the time they were driving up the canyon and their old ’55 Chevy pickup caught fire under the dash. It shocked them both so much that they dove out of the truck with the fire still licking the ignition wires, and before Frank could think to jump back in and set the brake it rolled backwards down the hill and off into the river. The fire went out, but of course the old Chevy was history. It was a long walk home, but they were laughing by the time they got there.
Memories flooded Cole’s old pickup, and he treasured every one. At last, they came past the border of Idaho City, and the town was beautiful in its new blanket of snow. The wind was hardly blowing up here. For some reason it very seldom did. The snow was simply settling down, its big goose feather flakes piling up everywhere, weighing down the roofs, covering cars. Cole knew about where Wilamena lived, so he drove that way with Lisa following them.
When they were almost there Cole saw his daddy’s eyes light up, and he began to look around. “This is where she used to live. Right in this area. Man, I loved this place.”
Cole smiled. Seeing his dad this way made him happy, but he couldn’t help the horrible sadness at the thought of his leaving. He pulled to the roadside to let Lisa pass, and his wife went only another hundred yards or so and stopped in front of a grand log house with a light still glowing in one window.
Cole looked over at Frank, and his eyes were fixed on the house, staring. “Dad? Dad? You okay?”
Frank pulled himself out of his trance. “I’m sorry, buddy. I just got taken by surprise. This is the house. This place right here. This is where my little friend used to live, back in the forties.”
Frank got out at the same time Cole did, and with his cane in hand he walked a few feet away and stood staring at the big log house. Cole went to stand beside him.
“I haven’t been over here to see it since we moved back here. Couldn’t stand to think of the memories and wonder where she ever went. Why she never tried to find me. She promised she would.”
“Excuse me, but . . .”
The voice sounded suddenly beside them, and it was Wilamena Giovanni. The snow was drifting down, tumbling in big clumps of flakes, sticking to her hair, melting on her wrinkled but rosy cheeks as Cole turned to her.
Wilamena was looking past Cole, a strange look on her face. Cole turned and looked at his father, who was watching the woman expectantly. Lisa and the children had come to stop beside the older woman, their boots buried in the snow.
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop to get your name down the canyon,” Wilamena said, seeming to gather herself as she peered at Frank through the falling snow, lit by the light from her house. “My name is Wilamena.” She said the name a little hesitantly, turning her head a bit as she said it, as if to better catch Frank’s reaction. “Some people call me Billi.”
Cole was watching Wilamena when he heard his father’s cane whoosh into the snow. Looking over at him, he had never seen a more dismayed look on his father’s face, not even the morning he came out of the trees to find twelve-year-old Cole standing over two huge mule deer bucks he had just killed by shooting through one and right into the second, which was hidden behind him. One of their racks was thirty-five inches wide, the other thirty-seven.
“Billi? Billi Nelson?” Frank took a halting step forward, then another. His face was pale, even in the darkness. “Billi, it’s me, Frank.”
The old woman’s knees buckled, and she almost collapsed. Cole caught her, or he was sure she would have landed in the snow. He helped her to stand back up, and her eyes were filled with tears. “Frank? Is it really you?” Her hands came up to her mouth, and for several seconds they just stared at each other. Then, as if she were carried, Wilamena started forward, walking as if something were trying to hold her back and something else was pushing her forward. Unabashedly, she threw her arms around Frank Spradlin, and they stood embracing in the snow so long that the children started shuffling their feet uncomfortably.
Cole realized he had tears on his cheeks. The surrealism of this situation was almost eerie. Wilamena Giovanni was the girl, the girl in the old photo his father had kept all those years.
After a long, long time Wilamena Giovanni pulled away from her childhood friend and held his cheeks in her hands. “It really is you. I looked for you for so long, Frank. I wrote and wrote, and only some of my letters came back as undeliverable. I lost my Frank.” Wilamena began to weep openly, and Frank took her in his arms again and held her.
“I tried to find you too, Billi,” he said into her ear, his words only slightly muffled by her silver hair. “I searched and wrote you for two years. I even came back here to see if I had done something wrong, and you were gone. The house was empty.”
“It was for a couple of years, and then Bobby bought it from Dad and Mom. You remember my brother Bobby?”
“Of course.”
“Well, Bobby passed on back in the seventies, and his son-in-law bought it. Then last year he had to move to Arizona to take a big job, and when I heard the house was empty again I sold my home in Omaha and moved back.”
“You’ve lived here since last year, Billi? How could I not have seen you?”
Wilamena laughed. “Well, you wouldn’t have known me, would you?”
“I suppose not. I suppose not.”
“I heard you lost your wife,” said Wilamena. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Billi. It was hard. She was really sick for a long time. But she got tired of fighting it. She was ready to go. And you? Who is your husband?”
“My husband worked his whole life, ever since he was twenty-four years old, trying to make himself a millionaire. When he made it, he was so proud of it that he kept going. When he had ten million dollars in investments of all kinds, rental properties all over Omaha that were being managed by four different men, and a cabin on a lake in Canada that we never had time to go to, he had a heart attack and died. I told our lawyer to sell everything but our home and invest the money, but I didn’t need any of that wealth to be happy. I only needed my Idaho City. And here I am. And here is my Frankie.”
She started to say something else, but the look in her beautiful blue eyes was full of such amazement that she had become speechless. She slowly started to shake her head, and then she went to Frank Spradlin’s arms again.
And Cole knew his sister JoAnn was losing a house guest before she had one. If he had never known anything in his life before, he knew two things on this beautiful December night: first, that God had made him stop in the canyon that evening to help a stranded traveler.
And second, this embrace by long lost childhood sweethearts would last two lifetimes. It was going to be the merriest Christmas ever in Idaho City.
