Sunday Morning Meds--The Rivers Form

“But at your rebuke the waters fled, 

at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; 

they flowed over the mountains, 

they went down into the valleys, 

to the place you assigned for them.”  Psalm 104:7

To record all of this, there would have to be a helicopter running for centuries on solar power, I suppose. It could be positioned almost anywhere; but I would choose some place on the eastern edge of the Rockies, where I’d position that whirlybird a mile high or more and start the camera rolling in time-lapse mode.

One can only imagine. An endless sea shakes out waves rhythmically, when suddenly, unperceptively at first, a mountain begins to emerge, jagged, triangular. Years pass, and that single peak is surrounded by a host of younger siblings, all of them rising until that sea forms waterways that rush with tidal-like power.

We’re a long way from the Plains, from the flat land, but if that camera pans east, it catches the way the water bellies down over a region where there are no silhouettes—or none so startling as the peaks beneath us, now hugely revealed.

           

We don’t have that huge of a camera, so the helicopter sallies off in that direction, where the water levels out and recedes from land, then falls into crevices, cracks, and fissures, and ten thousand lakes in a place someone will call, an age or three from now, Minnesota. A vast network—a spider web—of rivers push the land into valleys and settle in, as permanently as anything can in nature.  

It’s time-lapse photography, but the phenomenon is stupefying. All that water settles into routine, that mass of chaos into order.

That’s what the psalmist sees. There, to the east, the Mississippi widens, while beneath us the Missouri, the Mud, spatters on south. Everywhere from this height, myriad meandering tributaries have formed, lifelines on your hands. And it all works. Land has been called into being from a vast sea, and that immense space is veined with life, with rivers.

I know scientists who would laugh at the film we just shot because the whole process didn’t happen in the manner we’ve just now caught on tape. There were vast seas all right—and there were frozen, vast seas. There was an ice age or two, and immense bulldozing glaciers. And there was mystery.

I don’t think the poet has it right, scientifically. The psalmist knew very little geology, had no clue about glaciers or aquifers. But when he sat in his helicopter and recorded what he saw, the images arranged themselves in such a way as to form the face of the Creator right before his eyes. That much he caught dead-on.

When the first Dutch folks wandered up to northwest Iowa, they determined what would be their land by setting in the requisite stakes. But once it was all official, they brought their families, one of the first things they did was cut back the tall prairie grass to the rivers because the only way they'd know where they were in that sea of grass was by way the rivers.

Because the heavens declare the glory of God, all nations hear the sermons. Psalm 104 is how the psalmist thinks about the preaching God does in land and sea all around.

And I, for one, am blessed by what he sees of God’s own world around him, and thankful for his gift, in part because I know what’s in his heart and soul—because I've seen rivers too, and I've listened too to what he hears and sees of the Creator.

The Blizzard of 1888

A January thaw is what all of us look forward to right now, a breath of warmth that reopens our hope that someday soon April will return. Two cold-of-winter days, maybe three, of forty degrees. No wind.

Heaven comes to Siouxland.

That’s the relief people felt early on January 12, 1888, when most of those who’d put down homesteads had just arrived.

Here’s how David Laskin describes that morning:

Everyone who wrote about January 12 noticed something different about the quality of that morning—the strange color and texture of the sky, the preternatural balminess, the haze, the fog, the softness of the south wind, the thrilling smell of thaw, the “great waves” of snow on the prairie that gleamed in the winter sun.

And then this: “The one aspect they all agreed on was the sudden, welcome rise of temperature.” A January thaw, a morning to remember, but a balmy prelude to horror.

Laskin’s book, The Children’s Blizzard, tells the story. When that strange warmth suddenly lifted, hundreds of people, most of them children, perished in a blizzard that made prairie skies dark as night and created massive drifts in winds that drove crystallized snow into your face so ferociously it filled up what flesh it didn’t tear away.

Seven miles east of Freeman, South Dakota, five boys died, lost in the unremitting blast of snow. Three of them were Kaufmanns--Johann, Heinrich, and Elias. What they and two other boys intended was simply to get to safety at the Graber house, a quarter mile east of the school, Ratzlaff #66. The wall they hit was a zero-visibility blizzard.

The victims’ families were all “Schweizers,” German-speaking Mennonites booted from Russia, who’d come to the Dakota Territory with fifty other families seeking the religious freedom they’d looked to find for 200 years--and the opportunity to live a good and safe life. None of them had it easy; sometimes their children would alternate attending school because families didn’t have shoes enough to go around.

But there was promise here in Dakota.

Then came “the Children’s Blizzard.”

Those five Freeman boys just disappeared; and even though search parties went out the next morning in the swirling remnants, no one found them until three days later, on the Sabbath, when a man spotted an arm jutting from a snowbank, an arm belonging to the eldest Kaufmann, Johann, who was likely holding up a coat to shield the younger boys from the killer.

They ended up two-and-one-half miles southeast of Ratzlaff #66, buried by the blizzard, just forty feet from the farm house of the man who found them.

The story goes that man went to church with the news that Sunday. I don’t know if he interrupted worship. I don’t know what they might have been singing, but I can guess how hard they prayed.

No one knows precisely how many people perished in that massive blizzard. Most estimate the grim death toll at somewhere near 250.

It all began with a sweet January thaw that quick as a fox descended into madness. At Valentine, Nebraska, the temperature was 30 degrees at 6 a.m., six degrees at two in the afternoon. and 14 below at nine that night.

Somewhere out in south central Nebraska you’ll find a highway marker that tells that neighborhood’s chapter of the story, but there’s nothing up at all east of Freeman, where five boys died. There’s no sign, no story, only endless rows of corn and soybeans. Even the farms are gone.

All the way from Russia, those Schweizers carried with them an old Mennonite hymn, something with a first line that went like this: “Wherlos und verlassen sehnt sich oft mein Herz nach stiller Ruh”—“When I’m lonely and defenseless,/my heart longs for rest and peace.”

Maybe that Sunday, that old favorite was the one they went back to, all of them. If not that Sunday, surely the next.

Small Blessings

From her chair in the living room, she knew something was wrong because the sound she was hearing just wasn't right, as if the door was open or something, which it could be, she thought, because maybe her husband hadn't thought of closing it. She swung her legs from the hassock, reached for her cane, pushed herself up from the chair, and took those first slow steps toward the bathroom, where things just didn't sound right. 

And she was right--he hadn't shut the door. But that wasn't all of it either. When she got into the bedroom, she realized that he'd not only forgotten to shut the outside door, he'd also forgotten the curtain behind him, and when, finally, she was able to get past the edge of the bed, she saw him standing there under the shower all right, but she also saw that the water was gushing, really, into her bathroom, all over the floor.

It was all she could do to get there. Yelling was something she really couldn't do anymore, something she left behind like so many other things, so she hurried into the bathroom herself rather than try to yell and walk at the same time. And she shouldn't have hurried because when her shaky feet hit the slippery tile of the bathroom, she went down--not badly either. She knew immediately it hadn't been a bad fall, not like some falls people suffer in the home, but it was bad enough. She could feel the pain in her hip, and she knew that's where the problem would be, and that the pain and the break or whatever would mean hospitalization, and there was no way her husband, standing there in the shower, the curtain wide open, could be alone.

So there she lay on the floor, unable to get up, her husband naked as a baby in the shower, probably wondering just exactly what he was doing there, she thought.

She tried to yell above the stream of water, but she couldn't. So she simply had to wait, there, on the floor of the bathroom, sprawled out like a child, watching her husband trying to figure out what he was doing in the shower.

When he turned, finally, and saw her there, he was dumbfounded. Some time ago, already, he'd lost the ability to think the problem through--just exactly what he had to do with his wife at his feet, sprawled on a bathroom floor that was rapid flooding. He couldn't do a thing. It was as if he was paralyzed. He had no idea what to do, standing there on a wet floor with his own wife lying at his feet.

It took some time before people found them there, the two of them, just one old couple in the home.

*

We have the single bed that their children had moved in to that bedroom for their father. It was clear, after the incident, that she was unable to care for her husband anymore, that he had to go to a place where he could receive the level of care and supervision he needed, care she simply couldn't give the man she lived with for 68 years.

It wasn't easy for my wife to find an adult, single bed. This one was a Godsent, the only one in town. We bought the bedsted too, and the frame, and the sheets and mattress pad. We bought everything because the children of the old man with Alzheimer's had moved him down the road to more comprehensive care. They didn't need the bed anymore, that bed they'd owned for only three weeks.

And what we told ourselves last night when the whole deal was through was what an incredible blessing it was to be able to secure not only a adult, full-length, single bed for my father-in-law, but all the necessary accessories.

For about a week now, the old man in the shower hasn't complained, hasn't pleaded with his children to take him home from his new digs. He didn't want to be alone in this new home, the one without his wife. He didn't know exactly where he was, but he knew he wasn't home.

But that fear or whatever is gone now, one of his sons told us. It's done. When he visits his father, his father doesn't beg to come home. He just smiles.

Small blessings. Like that bed the old man slept in for three weeks. Small blessings.
__________________
From the collection: November 16, 2007

Peal out the Watchword

She died young, just 42, but then most biographies claim she never was particularly healthy. She was, I suppose, the quintessential church lady in the Victorian tradition. She never married. Her father was a preacher and songwriter, her brother a preacher and an organist, all of them Anglican. They were, after all, English.

The old hymn we sang Sunday morning isn't the only one in the hymnal she penned. If you have any church background at all, you recognize titles. If you're my age, you don't even need to be holding a hymnal to start humming: "Take My Life and Let It Be,"

. . .consecrated, Lord to thee.
Take my moments and my days
Let them flow in endless praise.
Let them flow in endless praise.

Right now, there's some voice in you that's singing.

Francis Havergal wrote that hymn. Read these titles and you'll hum more tunes: "Like a River Glorious," "Who is on the Lord's Side?" Miss Havergal wrote at least a dozen others not counting the one we sang Sunday morning--"Peal out the Watchword."

Hear it? If not, you might with the first stanza:

True-hearted, whole-hearted, faithful and loyal,
King of our lives, by Thy grace we will be;
Under the standard, exalted and royal,
Strong in Thy strength we will battle for Thee.

Once we started that oldie, something came back. But "Peal out the watchword"? I had no idea what that line meant. It's cheerleading--that's for sure.

But hat I didn't know, didn't mean I didn't know the hymn. Weird. I'm quite sure that the Psalter Hymnal of my youth didn't include it--"Watchword" is, after all, a little sporty for Dutch Calvinists mid-20th century, done up as it is with a sawdust chapel feel. I don't remember ever singing that hymn, but somehow I knew it, even though its title line could have been written in Swahili.

The church we often attend is, sad to say, in its dotage and will likely soon go. The old place, 124 years old, has more worship in it, but its members are elderly. My wife and I aren't elderly--we're only retired. I like to joke we are its Young People's Society. In truth, we're about median age.

On any given Sunday there's about thirty of us, all told. When the pastor says to greet each other, we do--everyone greets everyone. It's really quite rich. Nobody performs. Liturgies pass unnoticed. No one is pushing for "Our God is an Awesome God," and there's no movement that I know of to replace the hymnals. We've got no screen or praise team. Don't mention this anyone, but the truth is we don't sing all that well.

One of these years old First Pres is going to be gone, and, if the recent history of Christendom in rural America holds true in Alton, Iowa, some charging fundamentalists will buy the old place for a dollar, rip out the choir loft and the pews, create a stage for the snare drum, rewire the sanctuary for the guitars and amps, and start railing on the evils of gay marriage and the common core.

Thus is life in rural America, I suppose.

So, one of these years Miss Havergal, the Victorian spinster, will be gone too; and nobody, old or young, will be singing her words or wondering what she meant with "Peal out the watchword."

She wrote those words in 1874 as a kind of New Years resolution for the society of young women she was part of, a rousing chorus to urge them all to stay strong in faith--"True-hearted, whole-hearted."

Sometimes, Lord knows, that ain't easy.

Book Report: Born a Crime

I'll be honest. If you think Donald Trump is an answer to prayer--lots of people do--then you'll hate Trevor Noah. No question. Noah's politics are decidedly left of middle-of-the-road, and, nightly, he skewers the PEOTUS as viciously as the PEOTUS skewers whomever fails to bow before his many thrones. (Most recently, the "highly-overrated" Meryl Streep). 

Trevor Noah doesn't always use nice language, but then neither does Trump, so they're flush on that one. Lots of people I know would call him a smart ass--and he is. But it's his job, his work, his calling. Besides, he's doing something I didn't think any one could: replace hall-of-fame-r Jon Steward before an immense audience Stewart created.

Seriously. Imagine replacing the star of The Daily Show. Impossible.

And Noah is a kid, not even thirty, who's South African, born and reared half a world away from the U. S. of A's political swamps. Honestly, I wondered whether the show's producers had simply set the kid up for a fall so Jon Stewart would disappear more quickly and be replaced by someone with five stars.

Not so. Trevor Noah took over The Daily Show. And even though John Stewart can grab an audience and a headline whenever he wants to, today nobody watches the show for any reason other than tuning in to hear a smart-mouth, mixed race kid from South Africa. 

I don't know that he has other books in him. The longer he succeeds with the crowd who love him, there'll be publishers galore who'll be more than happy to shop his words out to an adoring public and thank him with six or eight figures. 

But what Trevor Noah has done with the memoir of his life is really something; and even if you hate him, even you think him a profane liberal Obama-ite--all of which he is--I think you'd like Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood.

He was. Trevor Noah was "born a crime" under South African apartheid, a child of the determined effort of a mother so resolutely Christian as not to be believed. She determined she wanted a child, then chose a Swiss (white man) friend, and got herself pregnant. No marriage involved. Love?--I don't know, but they were friends, very good friends.

And of course all of that was illegal under apartheid, as their marriage would have been. But his mother's resolution didn't give a fig about the law, and thus was Trevor born, a kid who was a walking, talking crime, soon enough a multi-lingual smart ass.

The stories Trevor Noah tells treasure his mother, her indefatigable faith, her iron-clad reliance on prayer, her determined will to raise her boy to be the same kind of believer she is--three different churches every Sunday, weekly prayer meetings and youth church; the kid did it all. 

But then his mother is neither sweet and kind or darlingly pious. Trevor Noah respects her; more than that, he loves her. But he doesn't pull a hand break on her problems, the major one of which is her subsequent marriage to a man who loves her but can't live with a woman more successful than he is. There's violence in his story, shocking violence. To say Trevor Noah was reared in a dysfunctional world would not be off base, but his mother's intense Christianity is never at fault. Born a Crime is not stand-up comedy; it's personal and heart-rending. 

Trevor was forever an outcast--not black, not white, and always, wherever he went, recognizably "different." They were poor and penniless. In a particularly startling passage he remembers eating worms, describes the look and feel and texture so well his description almost makes you retch. There's nothing romantic about Trevor Noah's childhood.

Except his mother's never-failing Christian faith. I'm not making this up.

Read the book and you won't see the same kid on the nightly set where once upon a time Jon Stewart held forth, where a score of stars and comics got kick-started into careers that have only grown since they started out on their own. 

The cover is just right, I think, because what looks like a comic book actually is not. It's a scene on a Soweto-like street made obvious by a South African woman who isn't a cartoon looking up at an ad on a nasty wall that's very much real. The cover is it's own work of art because what it suggests so poignantly is that what you'll find in the memoir is much more than what meets the eye.

You will. 

Morning Thanks--a seaman

Start here. He was a seaman, a sailor, merchant marine. Twice in his short life on board he lived through shipwrecks. He married someone local, lived with her on a small island, and had children--four of them.

Three of them died, two in just a few weeks, victims, I suppose, of some contagion that probably killed others. Think of it, three times in two years they put children into the ground in a churchyard full of people with names just like his and hers. 

When their only remaining child was four years old, he took his family on a huge trip across the ocean. It was 1868, and they left for America in the company of twenty or thirty others from the island, in part, or so it's said, because his theology wouldn't accept the truth as offered in the church where he was reared. Three years after the Civil War, he and his wife and daughter emigrated, then headed west to a brand new community in a place called German Valley, Illinois, because a woman on the island knew someone who knew someone--it was one of those things. 

It didn't take long before he and most of they group they came with kept going west, then stopped where more people sort of like them were putting down roots--Germans, not Dutch like he was, but people who carried steadfastly a similar theology, in a place named Ackley, Iowa. 

A couple decades passed. He must have gotten a little itchy, not alone. Loads of people were moving west in the 1880s, so they went too, likely took a train out as far as they could go, then a wagon, maybe even a covered wagon. I don't know. There were five kids by then, four American-born. He found the kind of cheap land he was looking for in a place called Douglas County, Dakota Territory, just a bit north of a brand new burg named Harrison, where the residents, like him, were Dutch.

He and his family didn't last long in the brand new state of South Dakota. He probably wasn't the farmer he thought he could be. Besides, they suffered droughts that wilted crops and thinned animals. He must have questioned whether his family could live out there on the frontier.

Besides, the Indians, not all that far away either, were rambunctious, and on the other side of the state there was a battle, a big one--hundreds died--at a creek called Wounded Knee. He probably didn't think of it that way, but in reality it wasn't a battle at all but a massacre.

Nothing could have prepared him for life with Indians. Just down the road, even the Yanktons, were doing that devilish Ghost Dance. People he knew could hear their infernal drums going all night long. 

So they left, went back east to central Iowa, to Parkersburg, where he quit the farm, lived in town, down by the river.

Meanwhile, their kids got married, so by the turn of the century he and his wife, alone now, moved to northwest Iowa, where one of them lived. One of his boys became a preacher and took a church in the region, then filled a local pulpit one Sunday, maybe five miles from the town where he and his wife lived. That Sabbath, he and his son took the wagon to the church down the road. Must have been a joy for him to hear his boy preach the gospel. 

That night, a heart attack killed him. His wife said she heard him breath hard, then stop altogether. 

He's buried here, in Orange City, beneath a barrel-like tombstone that sits almost awkwardly amid the graves all around.

He was my great-grandfather, and that's what I know about his life. This week, reviewing all of this for his extended family, I discovered he was my age that night his wife discovered him not breathing. Our mutual lifetimes are almost exactly the same. By his great-grandson's bio, he died less than a month ago.

What an immense difference in the character of our lives. I'm not pouting. I'm not rethinking anything in my almost 69 years. I've got no particular regrets. I've been greatly blessed. I'm merely marveling aloud, something literally wonder-full.

In C. C. Schaap's obituary, the Dutch newspaper, De Volksvriend had this to say about him: 

We may be deeply moved by the departure of this honorable man. For city and society, it is a painful loss when these kinds of people particularly are taken from us--not only because of their exemplary walk, but also because of the prayers they offered.

My great-grandfather died almost fifty years before I was born, somehow closer to me than he ever could have known. 

This morning I'm thankful for him and his wife, Neeltje, and what they left me--very, very thankful.

Sunday Morning Meds at the Fossil Beds

“He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. 

 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; 

the waters stood above the mountains.” Psalm 104:5-6

It was 104 degrees, and nobody. . .let me restate that, nothing should have been where I was standing. Maybe some weeds. And rocks, of course—millions of them, sandy and bleached. A tree perhaps, mesquite. Little else.

We’ve named that kind of place as “Badlands,” and I was in the middle of Nebraska’s version, eons from anywhere, it seemed—at least 15 miles of white, dusty gravel from any paved highway. I’m often awed by that much open landscape, but out there that time, very much alone, the world I was in felt eerie, even though it was noon, maybe one in the afternoon.

People had been there—there could be no doubt about that. When my car thrumped over a cattle grate, a sign attached to a fence post “Now entering private property.” Here and there, pounded into the dust, were more signs declaring that there would be no fossil hunting at that spot of lonely, private property.

Standing there at what must have been a fossil bed, I reverted to childhood, to my Christian school education because the spiritual restraints jerry-rigged into me in those formative years created in some sense of offense in me a half century later. Beneath my feet was something, a fossil bed, couldn’t be read as being there for a million years. Like dinosaurs and mastodons, pre-historic creatures and their fossil trail were either evolutionist fabrication—lies, or God’s signatures delicately written into the landscape at creation just a couple thousand years ago.

If they really were lies, why were landowners protecting them? “No fossil hunting. Private Property.” Why would God almighty plant evidence for creatures that lived more than 6000 years ago?—and why was that evidence right here, way the heck out there in the middle of what seemed a moonscape few ever entertained a wish of visiting?

And if he all the fossils at my feet seemed much older than the Bible said, I couldn’t help wondering, even as I stood there, whether God was snickering as he created this stuff, giggled as if he were playing this great practical joke?

Forgive me. I’m exorcising ghosts from old closets, an exercise brought on by the fact that certain verses—if not the entire song—of Psalm 104 seem to many—my friend Charles Spurgeon for one—a poetic retelling of Genesis 1. That perception is never quite as clear as it is here, in verses five and six. This is a creation song.

Some time ago now, in Kansas, the State School Board was reconstructed when conservatives, creationists, lost an election. A more moderate board rescinded statewide testing standards that encouraged science teachers to emphasize alternatives to the theory of evolution.

Is that battle over? Hardly. “It will continue forever,” said one creationist. “It will never end.”

He may be right. But the beauty of these lines from this worshipful psalm, an ode to creation itself, emerges from description, not prescription.

I need to go back there again, sometime, out to the wilderness. The beauty was eerie, haunting, and spiritual. God is out there too, even though I was likely the only humanoid within miles.

And so are the fossils, thousands of them. Blessed be his name.

This morning it's -7

Just exactly how cold is it?

When I was downtown yesterday, a half-dozen people were walking around with forks stuck to their tongues.

Really, you feel as if there's a bear in you, wanting a long, long rest. You honestly get to feel as if the best remedy for the block of ice you hit if you just step outside is simply to stay inside and go back to bed for a month, maybe two, maybe more. 

How cold is it? Yesterday, one of the sputzies at the feeder got confused, flew into the window, and shattered. The window's fine.

We lived for several years in Arizona, where Arizonians roll their eyes at the gaggle of old men and women, northerners in pastels who clog the streets escaping the cold that's right now outside my door. Back then, I rolled my eyes too--I'll admit it. Never said much about it, however, because the snowbirds left behind winsome piles of cold, hard cash. Now I've become one of them, tempted to find a trailer somewhere in the Valley of the Sun. But I'm not going--not yet. Still, if snowbird-ing is the only alternative to cabin fever, I'm going out to buy some polyester. 

How cold is it? Some farmers down the road have moved their outhouses inside.

I've got snowshoes and insulated pants, more flannel shirts than I can shake a stick at, not to mention a jacket feather-packed for the Yukon. It's hanging down here in a closet right now, sweating. I've got thick wool socks, a generous selection of boots, a half-dozen stocking caps and neck warmers, and two pairs of gloves that double as mittens, one in camo. What's more, I can choose my long johns--cotton or something almost silky. I can take the cold.

No, I can't.

How cold is it? Words come out in ice chunks that have to be thawed before you know what you're saying. 

This isn't my first winter--it's my 68th, I think, and I've weathered this level of cold when it lasted much longer, when the yard was a collection of windward snowdrifts, and when the wind--can it get any worse?--is fully capable of skinning you without using a blade. 

How cold is it? It's so cold, the dog ran off when he saw the leash and returned with a newspaper. 

It's so cold, I can't even pronounce the word April, much less imagine it.

It's so cold I could write only my initials in the snow.

It's so cold even our funds are frozen.

It's so cold Donald Trump stopped blowing hot air. 

It's so cold hell doesn't scare people like it should.

It's so cold shadows freeze.

At least the flies are gone, and we've got no mosquitoes. It's time to pray for a January thaw.

Winning at winning

If I'm not mistaken, it was the superstar Willie Mays who tried to play without knees, tried to play when he couldn't cover ground as he once did in centerfield for the Giants, tried to play when he should have stayed in the dugout, tried to play because he'd always been a gamer and he wanted to go out that way, even though he couldn't--tried to play when he shouldn't have.

Monday's Outback Bowl featured a similar story in C. J. Beathard, the Iowa Hawkeyes' dream quarterback two years ago, when he took over under center. His first year was scripted by something almost divine; the Beathard-led Hawkeyes went undefeated during the Big 10 season, 10-2 overall. The kid was a winner.

But this season was not so heavenly. After some doleful defeats, the Hawkeyes came back to defeat #3 Michigan and #12 Nebraska and end with a sweet five-game winning streak, enough to earn another bid from the Outback Bowl.

But Monday, January 2, they got killed by the Florida Gators, and C. J. Beathard had his absolute worst day as a Hawkeye. Injured all season-long, he stretched something when he tried to push the ball over the goal line and score--that's the moment above. From that moment on, he turned into another Willie Mays, a sorry figure doing his best against injuries that kept him from playing at the level he wanted. He tried, but witnessing his failure was pure agony.

The Outback Bowl commentator made very clear his disagreement with the Coach Ferentz's decision to let him play, and the arguments the commentator gave were sound. Not only did Beathard's injuries make winning impossible, but, he said, the kid's inability to perform handicapped the work of all the rest of the team. Because Beathard couldn't run, everyone else failed. That's not fair, the commentator said. And he was right.

But Coach Ferentz kept playing him, kept him in the game, even though the only completions Beathard could make were to Gators, not Hawkeyes. For Hawkeye fans, it was very, very sad. Even ugly.

When Ferentz was questioned about continuing to play his quarterback even though the kid's play was pathetic, he said the Iowa football program owed it to him. “Certainly he was limited in what he could do," Ferentz said after the game. "He wasn’t going to run. But he wanted to compete. We certainly owed it to him. He’s had a tremendous career, and laid it out there for us, game in and game out.”

Talk about tough calls. Iowa gets trounced but Beathard gets a shot at dignity that he's earned after two great seasons at the helm of a football team nobody would have picked to have done as well as they did. Ferentz says he earned that shot.

It was one of those moments when competing moralities collided head on. By playing him, Ferentz limited Iowa's chances to win. But by playing him, he refused to take away his quarterback's opportunity to engineer what he'd done successfully for the last two years, a win. Ferentz doesn't say he owed it to Beathard to play him.

Fans will shake their heads, just like the commentator, I suppose. But Ferentz seemed to say thereby that there are times in the life of all of us when winning isn't the only thing. 

Or that winning is something more than winning. It was a sad day for Iowa, but I can't help but admire the commitment.

Snowstorm (x)

Finally, the last installment. As a young writer, I was clueless about things like length. Sorry it took so long, but I must admit I did enjoy going through it after all these years. And, if you're wondering, it was greatly embarrassing often. Still fun, however. And it's -20 or something this morning, the right time for this story. Sometime, have a look at Koozer's Blizzard Voices or David Laskin's The Children's Blizzard, great reads. A tragic time out here on the plains.
_________________________

There was a sound, or at least she remembered telling herself she heard one, half asleep in what must have been the middle of the night. Her mind focused drowsily. She knew she heard someone or something walking slowly over the wooden floor. Her heart thudded in her chest as she numbered the children. 

The footsteps halted. She looked up at a figure at the door, a figure encased in snow. It was Johnny Mulder. His head was covered by his hat, and a scarf was wound about his neck. In his arms were a half-dozen snow­y logs.

"Had to go, ma'am," he whispered faintly. "Thought I'd get some logs once too." He laid the logs quietly on the floor, took off his hat and scarf, and, after putting several drier logs in the stove, lay back in the place he had been earlier. The stove cracked and snapped and pushed out more heat into the little circle.

“Thank you,” she whispered into the darkness. "What's it like?"

"It's howling a ton," he said, turning over on his shoulder.

"Bad?"

"Worse," he told her. 

"Not letting up?"

"Got any rope here? I'll string a line to the privy. Soon enough, kids'll have to go."

"We'll figure something out," she said.

Then it was quiet, the shadowy sounds of a dozen kids night breathing.

"We'll be okay," Johnny whispered. 

Felt almost like medicine to her, just to hear that. "We'll find some way to make do," she told him. "And it's cold out there?"

"Freezing cold," he said. "We ain't leaving."

*

There was no dawn really. The darkness of the night carried on a slow but futile struggle with the light, until, at last, what lanterns still burned faded in the face of a blinding gray morning unrecognizable through the windows. Katharine never really slept soundly. Her dreams were plagued by half-formulated plans of what she'd have to do.

First, would be a decision about the food: should she allow them to eat what remained of their lunches, or should she try again to have them put it off until at least the afternoon? The answer would be determined in the course of the weather: if the storm gave no promise of breaking, she had to hoard the little food that remained. The windows were thickly coated on both sides.

She saw a movement where Johnny was lying.

“Johnny,” she said, "you awake?"

He sat up quickly.

“Do me a favor, please? —go outside and check,” she told him. "I can't see anything in here. Just look. And bundle up.”

He pulled his cap down over his ears, wrapped his knit scarf about his neck, and tip-toed toward the door. It was morning, but the darkness inside--and outside--kept the children from waking. The wind burst through the doorway when he stepped out, bringing in a cascade of fresh snow. By the sheer volume, she knew what he was going to say.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” he said, when he came back in. “Snowing hard, maybe not as hard as yesterday or last night even.”

“Letting up?”

“I'd like to think so.”

“Guessing?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m just a kid,” he told her, smiling. Then he sat back where he had slept the night before, pulled his jacket over one of the little kids, and lay back.

She didn't know how he meant what he'd told her, but it was what he wanted her to hear--"I'm just a kid." Maybe so. Maybe not.

*

In an hour or so all the children were awake and grabbing a bite of what little food remained in their buckets. Those who had something extra shared with those who had none-after they were prompted by their teacher. Not everyone was happy, but all of them knew now that what was going on around them was something that had never gone on before. 

Soon the chairs were set back behind the rearranged tables, and, as if nothing at all had happened, another school day began with a morning prayer. They were at least a half hour early, she thought, but there they were, in school--what better way to spend the time than school itself? 

She thanked God for their protection, asked Him to bless each of their families and their cattle, and asked forgiveness for their sins. She was just finishing up when the door opened and two snow men walked into the schoolhouse, white from head to foot, even their hats heavy with snow that fell in chunks as they stomped their feet and clapped their mittens together.

Icy scarves were wound around their heads and necks. Only their eyes could be seen. "We brought food," one said and grabbed a bag they'd dragged in behind them. 

"Nobody's moving in this blizzard," the other one said. She still had no idea who they were.

"Ya' did the right thing, Miss Baarman," the first one said, unwinding that scarf until, red as an apple, his face began to appear. It was Mary's father. Before anyone else knew it, she was in his arms. "I don't know what might have happened if you'd sent 'em home," he said, hugging his daughter. "I don't want to think about it."

Katharine Baarman picked little Nick up and hugged him as if he were her own child. All of it seemed too much just then, what Mr. Boersma said, the food in the bag, the rescue. The other guy said something to Boersma, then walked back out for a moment and marched back in with the horses, pulled them in right into the room behind him. The kids loved it--went crazy.

"They can't be out," Boersma told her. "You got no horse barn here--you ought to maybe. We'll see about that." 

There they stood, two work horses, six feet at the shoulder, snorting, shedding snow.

The other man slowly unwound his scarf, and when he did, she actually shuddered. It was Marvin Fedders--she should have known because he'd talked about doing some work for Boersma. Try as she might, she could not have held back tears. 

She'd never seen such a shine on his cheeks. With Nick still in her arms, she walked over to where he was standing, and when she did, Emma took Nick from her. Even though she knew it was risky, sheer happiness made her hug the man as if he were everything the girls wanted him to be. It wasn't a long hug, and there was no kissing--but there they stood, beside the horses, in each other's arms. 

"I guess we're just going to have more scholars for a while," she said, pulling away from his arms and looking at the horses. "Four more--what do you think, children?"

They howled in laughter.

She walked back to the front of the room and stood at her desk, while the men opened up the bag and started handing out bread and cake. When they were finally eating, she circled around, and spotted Johnny Mulder sitting at his place in the back, eating a sandwich. There were apples too, and cookies. 

"Don't eat everything," she told them. "We still don't know when we'll be able leave."

When she came to the back of the room, Johnny looked right up at her, paused a minute, swallowed, and said, "I'm sorry about what I did."

She smiled, broadly. She wasn't expecting that. She nodded. "You were a great help," she said, because he had been. It wasn't easy to say that either, but then she told herself that maybe Johnny had learned something in the storm, maybe he had, she thought. Maybe they all had. Maybe she did too.

She reached down, touched his shoulder, and smiled.

_____________________ 

When I wrote this story, 35 years ago, I knew very little about the Blizzard of 1888, the "Schoolhouse Blizzard," as some called it. All I'd read was the account in a local history. I didn't know it was a killer, a mass murderer, didn't know that it swept through a region hundreds of miles wide. Not far from here, five boys froze to death trying to find their way home. The most heralded hero was a Nebraska teacher named Minnie Freeman, who led 15 children through the blizzard to her home a half-mile away from school. All of them survived. In all, 235 people are known to have died in that violent storm, most of them schoolchildren. Many bodies weren't found until spring.

Snowstorm (ix)

What was clear was that they weren't leaving the schoolhouse. But then, what could she do? She had to keep them occupied. . .
____________________________ 

What was surprising is that no one had come through that door. She couldn’t imagine why not, why worried parents hadn’t hitched up the team to the sleigh or wagon or whatever to pick up the children. Was the blizzard that horrible?--and if it was, were they themselves in danger here? 

Then again maybe they had. Maybe some had determined to come and didn’t make it. She dismissed that thought out of hand, wouldn't let herself think the blizzard could be a killer.

She drew the children in a circle about the stove and had them begin singing, not just the old standard psalms and hymns, but any song they wanted, some American, some old Dutch favorites. When they slowly tired of that, she started them on Christmas carols and filled another half hour.

"Miss Baarman, I'm hungry," someone said. It was not the first request for whatever was left of their lunches, and it wouldn't be the last. It seemed hours ago that she’d told them to save a bite or two because they might get hungry later on.

“Can you wait awhile yet?” she said, smiling—everything with a smile, “--it's not quite time for supper." That was a lie, but she had no idea how long they’d be here, alone in the storm. Surely it would be overnight now, but how long after that? Everything had to be measured. Why didn't anyone come?

When voices trailed away, and all interest in singing died away, she knew she had to try something new, something that would keep them from realizing where they were and what kind of danger they were seemingly in. She asked the boys to gather all the chairs and stack them together at the back of the room. 

All her requests had been honored in a moment since she’d picked up that hot marble. The children were all on her side it seemed now, and among the most ready was Johnny Mulder, who took four chairs himself and directed the younger boys where to put theirs. He didn't smile. Even though he was, she thought, admirably restrained, she remained wary. 

“Now listen very closely,” she said, gathering them around her once again. “I’m going to let you do something very naughty for a while, but I want to explain it first.” Always a bright smile, she told herself. The children looked each other almost guiltily. 

It was now dark, completely dark outside. That no one—that none of their parents had come in through the door—scared her, made her hands shake again. Someone should have come. At home, their parents must have been encountering their own similar problems. No one was moving. The wind howled.

“Arrange the tables any way you like and play games right here inside the schoolhouse,” she said, then raised a hand and a finger. “Go on and rough-house, but be careful no one gets hurt or nothing gets broken."

The children were thrilled. They all turned to Johnny Mulder, who looked at her as if to ask permission. She nodded. He seemed to understand, looked around the room as if assessing what was there for them to use, and then started laying down rules for some kind of game.

Soon, the desks snaked all around. Johnny had them grab their coats and pile them up at the end of the line, a huge pillow on the floor so that, one after another, each of them could race down the crooked runway and dive into the cushion of coats. He kept watch. He didn’t try it himself, and neither did a few of the younger girls. Instead, he stayed at the end, fluffing up the coats and nursing a sore knee or skinned hand.

Emma faked an injury. The kids loved it as he paid special attention to her, pretending he was doctor. Emma loved it too. Mary Boersma rolled her eyes.

Then it was "leap frog" over the desks, and an improvised kind of "tag," and even an inside version of "pom­pom-pullaway." Soon enough, the windows were completely steamed. One by one, when the younger children began to tire they’d pick up their coats and find a place somewhere at her side. She hoped she had enough oil in the lanterns, enough candles if she needed more.

But the games continued. Nick fell on the floor and was kicked, accidentally, by Henry. A trickle of blood fell from his lower lip. Johnny told him to be a man, but that didn't seem to help so he brought little Nick to her, said nothing, didn’t even look at her. She pulled Nick into her lap. Soon enough he was giggling at the party going on all around.

"I think I want to go home," Nick told her, almost out of nowhere.

"Soon enough," she said, smiling, pulling his hair back around his ear. "Soon enough." 

She tried her best to keep that smile bright, but she couldn’t help wonder how things were going to turn out, why parents hadn’t come to pick up their children, whether she’d made the right decision to stay, and what the children were going to eat. What she feared was panic, which could happen, she knew, because it could happen even within her. The power of the sharp, icy wind and the press of the dangerous cold outside made the little schoolhouse seem so terribly vulnerable that she didn’t allow herself to imagine what might happen, what could. 

One by one the children tired, took a seat by her side, or sat quietly, watching the others. Soon they were exhausted. Johnny turned the tables on edge and made a circle around the old stove, a trick he learned, he said, from some prairie birds. There they sat within, a fort of desks around them. The coats on the floor in the circle created a wide bed, and in a short time, the littlest kids were off to sleep in the laps of the older ones, far away from the schoolhouse and the dangerous menace all around.

Katharine sat with her back against one of the tables, resting comfortably now, with only the older children still awake. The worst, for tonight anyway, was over. The youngest children, those who would have felt most fear at being away from their own families and homes, were already fast asleep. They lay all around her, on her lap, propped against her side, leaning against her, asleep in the warmth of the inner circle.

It was probably an hour or two more before the rest were sleeping. For a while, quietly, they had all told their favorite stories--of Indians, of the big ships, of the old country-then, slowly, they too began to drop off to sleep to the sound of the wind. 

Twenty children were lying peacefully before her, all bundled together the way cattle in the fields bundled in the face of a storm. Her own eyes, weary with the burdens she had carried for too many hours, grew heavy and misty. Her back against a table, she fell asleep, the blizzard gales howling like wolves just outside the door.
________________ 

TO BE CONTINUED

Snowstorm (viii)

She hadn't guessed Johnny would have hurt her deliberately, but he had. She'd burned her fingers when she picked up a hot marble he'd sent rolling innocently to the front of the room. The pain reached all the way to her heart.

_______________________

Katharine Baarman sat on her haunches, fighting back tears, trying to draw some sense from the storm within her. That kid had deliberately rolled up a burning-hot marble just to torture her—and he’d done it right in the middle of a reading she’d specially hoped would keep them all from realizing just how dangerous their situation could be, stranded here as the now were, without food, without water, and for how long no one knew. The awful blizzard might continue for another whole day, maybe more. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t send them home. 

“I was just trying--"

She didn’t know what to say. There was nothing she could say or should. She could not give in to self-pity. She couldn’t.

"Johnny Mulder, you stand up!" she said as she herself got to her feet.

He stood slowly, but with a reluctance and a sadness that surprised her because he could have simply continued to berate her with some kind of insolence. But he didn’t.

She knew she had to be careful. She could feel her hands shake in anger, so she put them on her hips to try to control the rage. "Johnny," she said in a voice she had breathe deeply to control. "Johnny Mulder, I have no proof that you did this thing—this marble. Could have been anyone, I guess." She tried to speak very slowly. "I have no reason to pick you out from all the others, but I know it was you."

She moved back behind her desk, deliberately, to allow some time to pass, to try to keep her anger and hurt separate from whatever punishment he deserved. She put both hands on the desk in front of her and tried hard to stare at him.

"I hope that someday you will feel exactly what I feel right now,” she told him. He didn’t look belligerent. He seemed almost cowering. “Not the burns on these fingers, but the burn you just gave me here in my heart." She gathered her strength in steady breaths. "Someday when you want to explain something you love to your children, when you want them to share something you enjoy, when you do something special and they reject you or spite you or run you over, I want you to remember that marble," she pointed to the floor, "and me, right now, right at this moment, right in the middle of this storm."

The children were petrified. Things had never come to this before. No one moved. The wind moaned and howled.

"Once when I tried to be ... " she hesitated, "to be good, to be strong, to be ... to be of help, you deliberately hurt me—you went out of your way to hurt me."

His guilt—she could see it--became too hard to deny. She was looking into the eyes of a Johnny Mulder she’d never seen before, a Johnny Mulder was actually fighting tears. “Do you have anything to say?"

He raised a hand to his head, combed through his hair with his fingers, and looked down at the floor. "No, ma'am," he said, and sat down.

The roar of the storm broke the silence that was too menacing to ignore. She glanced out the windows to the west, scolded herself for not sending them home an hour ago, when the storm was just coming in, when they could have made it. It was her fault they were still here.

She glanced at Johnny Mulder, who was tracing the lines in his desk with his fingers. She had the strange sense that she’d won something with him just then. And the truth was, he’d been more helpful than she could have guessed already that day.

She had to go on.

Surprisingly, none of the children had asked about the end of the school day. They seemed to sense that going home was to be determined not by the clock, but by the storm. She did her best to keep their minds off the darkness, the heavy snow slapping up against the schoolhouse, worked hard to keep them working hard, laughed to get them laughing, smiling and helping in a way she never would or could have done otherwise, her strength not her own, she told herself and God in a thousand short prayers.

She collected some snowflakes on a frozen log, brought them inside, the door almost tearing from her grasp, and showed them to the little children with a pocket magnifying glass. The astonishing designs enchanted them, prompted all kinds of oohing and aahing. She had them spell "s-n-o-w-f-1-a-k-e" correctly before they were permitted to leave the cold corner of the schoolhouse and return to the circle of heat around the stove.

By late afternoon, most of the children were huddled close.

The porous schoolhouse walls admitted a chorus of icy drafts that defied the radiant heat of the stove and created a chill anywhere beyond fifteen feet. The lanterns seemed to grow stronger in the failing light of day. Even the youngest seem to know that they were stuck here now, in school, that they weren’t going to go home. 

________________ 

TO BE CONTINUED

Sunday Morning Meds--Fire as a servant?

He makes winds his messengers,

flames of fire his servants.” Psalm 104:4

The story, in Chadron, Nebraska, that summer, was what the fire didn’t take. It didn’t take the town, even though it consumed huge tracks of land just south. It didn’t take a life, although hundreds of firefighters, many of them volunteers, battled it through 60,000 acres of pine forests and grasslands. It didn’t take the spirit of the place, even though it blackened and charred some of the most beautiful landscape of northwest Nebraska.

To call it “the fire” is something of a misnomer, because “the fire” was really five separate blazes, each of them ignited by lightning in a Wednesday night storm. No careless smokers, no untended campfire, no looney pyromaniac, no tipsy camper—all five started by lightning in a tinder box of hundred degree temps, bone-dry air, and robust winds. For a time, the largest, the Spotted Tail fire, was roaring along towards town at thirty feet per second.

By Friday night and Saturday, it had nearly half the city of Chadron evacuated, and everyone frightened. It took three houses, but miraculously sidestepped several others before stopping on a dime behind the football field of Chadron State College—but after consuming the landmark “C” hill that overlooks the town.

The fires moved so quickly and so voraciously that the curator of the town’s Fur Trade Museum could do little but watch as firefighters stood guard. It was impossible for her to gather all the one-of-a-kind artifacts, but she was fortunate—as was the town itself, when the raging fire spared the place.

Three families—and three families only—looked at charred remains of their country homes, nothing but foundations. I’m sure those families found little comfort in a verse like this—praise to God for messenger winds and servant fires.

Others, hundreds, I’m sure, offered thanks that more wasn’t destroyed. Half a town, evacuated, probably bowed their heads in joy and relief when the raging flames backed off at the football field. For almost 72 hours in Chadron, Nebraska, who was on the Lord’s side seemed clear—it was the firefighters, battalions of them, including dozens of local construction units manning bulldozers. Nobody prayed for the fire; nobody sided with the flames. No one saw those five fires as servants of the Most High.

Were they?

That’s the toughest question of all. Does God author our calamity?

I know this. The near catastrophe drew the people of Chadron together as loving neighbors, humbled them, and made them thankful; signs around town still sing the praises of the firefighters. For three days in Chadron everything stopped and people prayed. The next year, in June, the “C” hill was emerald, brimming with blooming new life. I can make a case for the fire as servant.

But I won’t because three families have lost everything. There is a time for everything, the preacher says, a time for silence too. No one would have put up a banner downtown Chadron that broadcasts this particular proud verse of praise.

It is amazing how broad and wide the Bible is, how unending, how amazing, even how mysterious—not unlike the yawning Great Plains landscapes all around Chadron, Nebraska.

Only bigger. Much bigger. The Bible broadcasts all of our voices--and His. It’s that big.

Snowstorm (vii)

The story you're reading is just about forty years old. This version differs immensely from the original--not in substance, but in style. There are things I just wouldn't do anymore, things I changed because I couldn't live with what I'd written that long ago--changes in point of view, for instance, and a stilted style I chose back then because I wanted to sound as if I were writing this at the turn of the 20th century. Those things are gone. 

What hasn't changed is the story line: how a young teacher dealt with the reality of a brutal and dangerous storm just outside her door--and the mischief of an older boy within. There are two sources for the story--one is a yarn I found in an old history book and the other is my mother, who was a young schoolteacher long, long ago in a country school. She never forgot how one day an older boy made her so angry she could hardly go on. That's a story she told me years and years go. We've now come to my mother's story of the storm-within-the- storm. 

_____________________    

Miss Baarman had determined that the children would inevitably ask her to read something too, once all of them had had a turn. She thought of Whittier. It was a gamble, she knew, but they’d loved the story when first she’d read it, and something about reading it again now, putting them in the middle of a world just like the one they’d see just outside the windows—if they could see anything at all. Reading that old poem might just bring comfort, she thought. 

"I thought it might be fun today especially,” she told them, “to read 'Snowbound' again."

All assented, all around.

"I know we read it about a month ago, but with snow falling so beautifully outside our windows right now, it’s just a natural, don’t you think?”

"Read it, Miss Baarman."

"Yes, read it!"

"Goody."

If any kid weren’t interested, they weren’t speaking up. Besides, Teacher wasn't always willing to read to them.

She began slowly. The girls loved it, but they loved almost anything she’d read. Dirk sat up straight, all ears, arms up on the desk, head in his hands, eyes bright. The whole Whittier portrait was not only enticing, but enchanting, even though, all around, swirling winds whipped across the Iowa prairie.

The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm.

No one looked out the window. Whittier's words were just too good, she thought, the reading weaving a spell for all of their vivid imaginations.

In those moments she’d look up, she did notice that the oldest boys were not as fully taken. Johnny Mulder’s hands were up in front of his as if to cover his eyes. He chewed at the cotton sleeve of his shirt, seemingly distracted.

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door.
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.

The rest of the children were lost in a dream, and it thrilled her because somehow she understood that their listening to the inside story made what was happening outside far less frightful than it could be. They were soaring along through their own imaginations, up so high that all the world was with them.

And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!

Then Johnny Mulder grunted as he raised his hand to get her attention.

"So days went on: a week had--"

Made her downright furious. She couldn’t believe he wanted her attention. The kids were spellbound. Her eyes stabbed into his. "What do you want?" she said, the book still up in front of her eyes.

The whole class turned. His voice was cocked with politeness and mock respect. "I dropped my bookmark by the stove," he said, as if it were of grave importance. "May I please retrieve it, please?"

She burned at his ridiculous, impetuous rudeness. She wanted to say, "No, of course not!" but she didn’t. "Yes, and hurry, please!" 

She looked down at the book, refusing to watch him carry the kids’ attention to him. Most of the others turned with her, anxious to hear the end.

She resumed reading the moment Johnny rose from his seat and took a few steps to the bricks around the stove. She started again because she knew it was a fight she had to win—it was going to be her reading of the poem against whatever mischief Johnny Mulder could muster, whatever attention he craved, no matter what kind of show he would create. She put her finger up to the text as if she was herself a grade-schooler and threw herself into the reading. She heard him blow his nose ridiculously loud, but she refused to acknowledge the silliness or anything about the boy, refused even to look.

Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.

She could feel—and it made her furious—that the kids were distracted. Something rolled innocently across the hardwood floor so loud a resonant hum drew confused stares from students on both sides of the middle aisle. She stopped reading. It kept coming, kept rolling through the silence all around.

She glanced momentarily at the marble and closed the book, keeping a finger in the page, then faced the class with a smile meant to be sweet and nice. What she saw, however, was a crowd of faces tense with anticipation. Somehow, it never dawned on her that there might be a relationship between that marble and the tension she couldn’t help notice on all of their faces.

When finally it banged against the front of the room, she walked over,stooped down, and picked it up—ready to explode at Johnny Mulder. There was no reason for him--

She could not have held the marble for more than a fraction of a second. It was almost aflame. She shrieked and flapped her hand above her head, making her limp fingers fly as if to shake off the burn. Then she jammed her thumb and forefinger into her mouth and closed her eyes, all of this without getting up from her haunches. There she sat, cowering in hurt, wounded and angry. It was all done deliberately. He meant to hurt her. He meant only to hurt her.

"Why? Why now?" she said, fighting back tears she knew she shouldn’t let fall.

No one moved.

_____________________ 

TO BE CONTINUED