When the Pale Snow Falls

When the Pale Snow Falls

In the fall, the little farm towns of Lake County, Indiana (like any farm-town anywhere) suffer the drone of the electric grain dryers; with the humidity of summer long gone, a chill sneaks past the still-warm sun of blue-skied October days. Fields, stripped of their green and golden jewels of corn and soybean, lay barren, ready to endure the long-hard frost of winter and on one day, and one day only¾the last day belonging to the month of October¾the veil between the living and the spirit world hangs thinnest in the cold autumn night air. It’s on this night, if you pause, on a seldom-traveled asphalt road just east of Route 41 and south of 135^th Avenue in the county of Lake, that you might hear the despair of madness and feel the quake of a life quivering at the hem of the veil.

Cletus Kuster made his way from the neatly appointed house he’d built nearly two decades ago in ’09 toward the nearly twin round barns where he’d watched many a sun set betweenst them. His walk was sulky and slowed¾he was, at 57, beaten, but it wasn’t age that pulled him low¾as he grieved for the winter sun. Cletus had bought the land in 1900, settled himself into a small dug-out earth home till he worked nine crop seasons, affording him to take a wife and build the white-round-house his steps now led him away from. His hands, calloused and gnarled at 37, still managed to slip a small gold band onto Lucinda’s ring finger that long ago August¾giving him rise to hope the love of a woman would keep him from the loneliness a man can get himself to, when left to his own morose thoughts and ponderings.

Cletus had ventured west, from Albany, leaving his aging German immigrant parents behind, in the care of his only sister, Marta. When he married Lucinda, he’d hoped for a family¾children with a dollop each of yellow-white hair like his own when he was a boy¾but it wasn’t to be. Much as Cletus often doubted the existence of a partial and bigoted God, he couldn’t help but harbor the thought he’d been singled out by the Almighty for his doubt, and punishment cast was no children to grace his table nor to ease the labor of his work-weary body. Lucinda had both withered and sharpened for the implications of this lack, and both Kusters had forgone church services years back.

They’d taken on runaways through the years to assist at planting time and in the fall when the fields were forced to surrender their bounty and laid to fallow amidst the autumn dust. Cletus tried to make reason with the events that took place during those times of strangers at his table and taking their nightly rest in his barn¾but it was easier to justify it with silence and dismissal.

This winter, this cold day, this brittle hour of darkness, found Cletus alone on his land. With Lucinda gone now, he followed his thoughts deeper into little traps he couldn’t escape from. He’d seen the fields swept clean once more, the waning fertile ground becoming more stubborn each year, holding back from him that which he must take to survive. He’d butchered the few remaining Holstein and chickens last month, sold the animal’s flesh and put the money in an envelope marked “To the church, in honor of The Holy Innocents.” His mind played tricks upon him, little voices (his own?) sang taunting songs at all hours, and he felt a pressure upon his soul.

He listened, this late winter afternoon, the shrouded sun hovering near yet another death on the horizon, to the sound of the raw, dry crunch his leather boots made as they met with snow on the ground. It was cold, colder than it should be this early in the winter and pipes had burst in the kitchen last week. Lucinda had been grateful when Cletus had indoor plumbing put in years back¾the water supplied by his own deep well. Men had to come and work a temporary fix, but would be back in the spring to dig out the old lead pipes, and re-work them to lower levels to avoid another freeze-burst. Cletus could remember that, just a few days ago, when the men left, the blue sky seemed to slip off to somewhere distant, and only gray became the backdrop for the indifferent winter sun.

Entering the first round barn, once painted a fresh shade of proud-red, Cletus worked the heavy rope he’d brought up from the cellar over the lowest beam (a good 10’ off the dirt floor) and fashioned a hangman’s noose best he could figure¾he tested its strength more than once¾and satisfied with his work he stepped a few paces away and sat on his old trunk he’d brought from Albany all those years ago. He tried not to remember what was in it, to not hear the silenced rhymes and laughter. He tried to focus on the fields, the planting he needed to do for next year, but tomorrow-thoughts wouldn’t come. When Lucinda had broken the original lock a few years back (after working a kind of horrid guess in her already ill-tempered mind) she became a docile partner to the wicked craft of her husband. Cletus could hear her now¾as she protested a few days ago, after the workers had left, that she’d never tell, she hadn’t, had she? But Cletus was a man to keep things in order: his house, with its neat white perfect roundness, not a single decoration to mar its pale exterior, his barns and his neatly laid fields. Yes, Cletus thought, I can hear your sounds you made, your escaping air sounds, your wet sounds, your little whimper and your initial silence. But back in the house, just now, where she lay, his mind could hear her still¾pleading, suggesting, as she had done when she backed away from his hard-worked hands.

Cletus felt the children and the teens again, the wayfarers and the darkies who’d come to the North for something better. Cletus had helped them, helped them all. Even the little ones he’d brought from Albany, under him now, in the trunk. Thinking was done and over, his mind spent of sanity, he grabbed an old wood milking stool, hoisted the noose part of the rope over the beam and fastened it ‘round his neck¾and quick as a thoughtless action he kicked away that stool and the madness of Cletus ended as his tongue rolled limp and his neck stretched to an unnatural arch.

Now, if, by chance, when the veil is thin, you idle your engine on that road, or make the mistake of trying to pass by the old round white house on foot, its faded-red round barns still standing, you might hear the last cries of the children, the lost, trusting ones who looked to Cletus for shelter¾and the animals¾all blood running west, towards the burst pipe field where Cletus knew the workers would find the bodies¾the bodies he’d forgotten about, dislodged, and eradicated from his mind. He couldn’t have dug them up and moved them¾to admit they even really existed, that he’d ever taken a soured hand to an innocent child, or stolen the breath from a freed slave’s son¾no, that he couldn’t do, because when the pale snow falls, the blood is still too bright.