Baby It's Cold Outside Read online

  Too quickly, Violet pulled her hands back, clasped them.

  Dottie bowed her head. A prayer. She knew many, but the words stuck in her throat, inaccessible.

  The owl clock on the wall ticked. Again. Her heartbeat swished in her ears. Pray.

  Then, in the tick of silence, she heard a small voice in the back of her head, a memory, sweet and swelling through her. Come Lord Jesus… She repeated the words. “Come Lord Jesus…be our guest.”

  Gordy joined in, his voice strong. “And let these gifts—”

  Violet added on her voice. “…to us be blessed.”

  “Amen,” Jake said.

  “Amen,” Dottie echoed softly.

  Outside, the wind gave a long, shrill moan.

  * * * * *

  If only Arnie’s mother had allowed him to take his sled to school, he might have been able to use it to slide home, or maybe even hide under, and escape planet Mungo.

  But she hadn’t been in the mood to listen to his pleading this morning, that he’d need the sled for his interplanetary trip to outer space, to fight Ming the Merciless. And now, without it, Flash Gordon had crash landed, his ship buried under an avalanche. Thankfully, he had his ice suit and heat gun. He had to be on the lookout for snow dragons, perhaps kill an ice bear and use its carcass for warmth.

  Anything to survive this storm and save his true love, Dale Arden, who was held captive by Queen Fria in the ice kingdom of Frigia. He just had to make it to the castle, hide there, and gain his strength. There, he’d wait for Dr. Zarkov and Prince Ronal to join him so they could attack the ice brigade.

  He refused to cry, it would only alert the winged serpents. They would swoop down, maybe even gouge out his eyes.

  He tripped, fell into the icy drifts, and his schoolbooks scattered, out of his reach. Already, the darkness, the mourning wind, and the brutal snow had turned him near blind. He may have cried out when he fell, but the howl of the blizzard ate it.

  He shook now, the feeling in his toes lost, his body nearly numb. He just had to make it to the castle. To Dr. Zarkov. He had a penetro raygun to unfreeze him.

  Crawling now, he listened to other voices.

  One hundred times, Arnie Shiller. “I will not daydream in class.”

  I will not daydream in class.

  He could still hear the screech of the chalk on the board, the smell of the dust in his nose as he clapped out the erasers. By the time he finished, the rain, like the pecking of the Hawkmen at the window, had turned to the bullets of Ming the Merciless, piercing his invisible ice suit. He still had to stop by the creamery and fill the bottles, and with the rain pummeling his wool hat, turning his mittened hands soggy on the school steps, he had nearly run out of daylight.

  He’d run inside, grabbed his coat and his stack of books, and left before Mrs. Olafson could order more disciplinary chores. Without a doubt, he’d have more lines to scribble tomorrow, or even after Christmas vacation.

  The creamery had closed for the night, the window dark when he arrived. He pressed his nose against the glass in case Mr. Gunderson still worked the counter. The sleet only slithered under Arnie’s collar.

  He’d carried the bottles in their wire basket out of town, pressing through the storm, until a gust of harsh wind yanked them from his hand. He heard them shatter but didn’t turn back.

  Night unleashed then, poured down upon him in a torrent of icy powder. He balled one hand into a fist in his mitten, the other holding the strap of books.

  His father would want him to make it home, to be the man of the house. Of course, he didn’t actually remember his father speaking these words, but his mother said so, and he believed her. She needed him, Flash Gordon, to haul out the clinker so the coal stove wouldn’t jam, and to secure the shutters against the storm.

  She needed Arnie to return home because his father hadn’t. He’d perished in the soil of Europe, fighting them Germans.

  Sometimes Arnie heard his mother at night, sobbing.

  In the morning, she’d smell of the whiskey she kept in the cupboard.

  Arnie had passed the community center and the Catholic church, his eyes falling on the nativity scene, wrapped in plastic, yet still lit up. It beckoned for a moment, the manger appearing warm in the midst of the storm. But he pressed on, past the ball field and even over the bridge. He recognized the bridge because he heard the Frost River rushing under the hum of the storm, and he ran his mitten along the stone walls until he reached the end.

  His storm house lay ahead, somewhere in the biting darkness.

  They assigned every child in school who lived on the farms beyond Frost a “storm house,” a shelter in case of blizzard.

  Because his farm lay a mile out of town, on the Third Street extension, he’d drawn Mrs. Morgan’s place. He’d walked by it a thousand times, every day to school and back. The big green house on the hill, with a tower for archers and a balcony where someone might leap to their death. Ogres and dragons guarded it, hiding Hansel and Gretel and the witch who waited to eat him.

  Only the waist-high stone wall protected him from his fairy tale nightmares of Mrs. Morgan’s Storm House.

  He saw her sometimes, at the library. She had straw-dry, bristly hair, pulled back in a bun, and dark, almost stony eyes. She issued him his library card, handing it to him with scaly hands, her mouth a tight line of disapproval as he formed his name.

  He’d walked—or even run—by it, yes, a thousand times, a prayer on his lips that he’d never have to run there for refuge.

  But the cold pressed into his bones tonight, and his feet had become anvils.

  If he kept going, perhaps Queen Fria might ski by, take him prisoner. How he’d relish banishment in the atom furnaces right now. He’d even work as a slave for food, although he’d stopped feeling the clench in his stomach long ago.

  Dragging forward, he dreamed of the Hawkmen, shrieking from the sky, and the roar of Thun, Prince of the Lionmen, hunting for him, his ally in the storm.

  He slammed into something, so hard he bit his tongue. He couldn’t feel it anymore but tasted the blood. He reached out and pressed his icy mittens on the something, barely feeling the bumps.

  Mrs. Morgan’s stone wall.

  Now, he just had to find the castle. But fatigue turned him inside out, and he wanted to rest, just a little. Just—

  “Flash, don’t give up!”

  But the mountain stretches high to the clouds. I can’t find the top.

  He pulled himself over the stone wall, crumpled on the other side.

  Flash fights his way over the wall of doom and into the icy fields of Frigia. He claws his way up the hill, as the winged serpent’s hairy arms grab at him, douse him with the flash-freeze powder. He struggles through, hearing Dale call to him.

  “Save me, Flash Gordon!”

  Displaying super-strength, he breaks free and climbs toward the light.

  His hand banged against something smooth, hard, and he ran his arm up, found a handle.

  Not the castle, but safety, all the same. An ice cavern built in the hills around the castle. He opened the door, rolled inside. Found a spaceship inside. Not warm, but enough to keep him dry and out of the wind.

  He climbed in and shut the door.

  Safe from the icy breath of the winged ice-dragons, Flash Gordon has no idea that he’s stumbled inside the lair of the wicked Queen Fria. What exciting and terrible experiences await our friend? Be sure to listen in again next week for the continuation of the Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Friday, December 23

  Dottie awoke to the nostalgic smell of butter frying in a cast-iron pan, the nutty sweetness saturating a wintery Saturday morning. She kept her eyes closed, drawing in the fragrance of it. Nelson, making flapjacks.

  He would be downstairs, wearing her frilly green polka-dotted apron around his waist, that cockeyed grin on his face, wielding a spatula as he coached the pancakes to a golden brown.


  She didn’t want to imagine the mess—the broken eggshells in the sink, flour dusted on the floor, the cinnamon shaker overturned on the counter, the batter dripping on her Formica counter.

  She simply allowed the image of Nelson, his tawny brown hair tousled, his broad shoulders sculpting out his white undershirt, his jeans hanging low on his hips, to saturate her mind, fill her with a tangy warmth she could taste. He’d probably be barefoot, and when she walked into the kitchen, knotting her robe at her waist, he’d turn and grin at her, his blue eyes sparkling with mischief. “Mornin’, Ma.”

  “Making a mess again, I see, kid.” She’d slide onto one of the oak chairs at the table—she should probably take out the leaf, make it smaller, but she and Nelson did just fine taking up one end—dressed in the red silky robe he’d given her on his fourteenth Christmas, and wait for breakfast.

  Saturday mornings she lacked for nothing, her charming son stacking his fork with pancake, slippery with syrup. He’d grin at her as he spoke with his mouth full, chewing over his day.

  “Mr. Lindstrom and I are going to check on the cows out in the far pasture, then I’m going down to the school for the Saturday afternoon basketball program. Is it okay if the guys come over for the Green Hornet tonight?”

  When wasn’t it okay?

  Behind her closed eyes, she got up, pressed a kiss to his head, bussed his empty plate, and piled it into the sink. He’d join her, then, wiping the two plates, cleaning up his mess, reeling out stories of the dance the night before, or perhaps his newest theory on how to get her father’s old 1929 Ford roadster to run again. Something about the fuel line, or a water pump, or…she could never keep track of it.

  She had no doubt he’d get it running, someday.

  How she loved wintry Saturdays.

  The walnut double bed squealed as Dottie rolled over. She opened her eyes. Stared out the window.

  Snow buffeted the window pane, ice edging the inside of the sash, lacy frost scrolling patterns across the pane. And, as she lay there huddled under her quilt, Nelson and the taste of joy dissipated, leaving only the hollow ache inside.

  No Nelson in the kitchen making flapjacks. No team of fellas sprawled in her parlor, listening to the Green Hornet on the Silvertone.

  Reality rushed back at her as she stared into the murky gray morning. Instead, strangers—okay, not exactly strangers, for she’d known two of them for most of her life, but one stranger and two…interlopers…invaded her home.

  Dottie closed her eyes again, wishing away last night. The stilted conversation around the watery soup, the dry biscuits. She’d made up the bed for Violet in her parents’ old room and given Jake the bed in the narrow spare room. She supposed she might offer him Nelson’s room, but she couldn’t bear it, and besides, the room needed dusting, an airing out. To Gordy she’d given—well, she’d wanted to give him the barn, but no, she gave him her father’s den on the main floor, tucking a blanket into the leather divan. If he didn’t fit, the floor would work fine for him.

  Oh! See, she didn’t really want him to sleep on the floor, but she needed someplace to store all her anger. Her grief.

  She pushed the covers back. Hopefully the storm had abated and today her houseguests would trudge back to their own homes. She slid her feet into a pair of worn gray slippers, pulled an old green velour robe around her, cinched it, and went to the window.

  Her breath caught. She couldn’t see ten feet beyond her house, the world white—or rather gray, in an almost sickly pallor. If the sun had risen, it couldn’t temper the storm. Maybe twenty inches had fallen, perhaps even more. The accumulation already reached a quarter of the way up the sill of her bedroom window, clogging out the light.

  No, unless the storm abated soon, she had another day of houseguests.

  Hadn’t she suffered enough?

  She went to the bureau, ignoring the old woman in the mirror, and ran a brush through her pale hair before tying it up in a tight bun. Then, trying to decide on the decency of emerging from her room in her bedclothes, she reached for a pair of jean trousers and a white collared shirt.

  She added a red scarf and knotted it at the nape of her neck as she headed to the bathroom.

  The white ceramic tile collected the cold and she ran the water for a couple minutes before it turned lukewarm. Splashing her face, letting the water drip off her chin as she stared in the mirror and inspected the new wrinkles around her eyes. Probably it didn’t matter. She brushed her teeth, then tried out a smile.

  It seemed foreign on her face.

  Was that humming? Directly below her, in the kitchen, and through the grate in the floor, she heard an ear-bending rendition of “Jingle Bells.”

  That Gordy. Not only had he invaded her kitchen, but now he was humming?

  Still, she sank onto the edge of the claw-foot tub, listening to the male voice, letting it churn up memories. Her father, chopping wood with five-year-old Nelson, handing him one log at a time to add to the pile in the mudroom. A dusky memory of her mother, rolling out pie crust, cutting off a piece for her to make her own pie, dusted with cinnamon and sugar.

  Dottie pulled back the eyelet curtain and stared outside. The snow pummeled the window, thick, bulky flakes, and she could barely discern the fir tree outside her window, weighted with the burden of snow. Somewhere, in all that whiteness, her giant white pine lay toppled, but she couldn’t make it out. Small mercies, perhaps.

  In a different time, she might have been beguiled by the magic of the season, of a Christmas season blizzard. A white, merry Christmas, with a houseful of friends and family making memories.

  But who did she have to make memories for?

  She let the curtain fall. Gordy needed to stop singing or she’d throw him out into a snowbank on his britches.

  She opened the bathroom door, and the aroma of breakfast rushed up at her. What right did the man have to invade her kitchen too? He had some nerve, that Gordy Lindholm, digging into her food stores, helping himself to her hospitality duties. But he’d always acted like what was hers belonged also to him.

  Her anger seemed a live coal in her chest as she gripped the oak railing and padded down the stairs. The fire in the hearth had died—the stoker humming in the basement. And from the kitchen the humming had switched to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

  Of all the songs to choose…

  She skidded to a halt under the arch between the rooms, her heart choking off her breath.

  Not Gordy, but Jake stood at the stove, in his undershirt and trousers, a flour cloth tied around his slim waist, holding a spatula. Humming. And making…

  “What on earth is going on in here?”

  He whirled around, his mouth open, eyes wide. “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Morgan—”

  “What are you doing?” She couldn’t shake the anger now sputtering to life inside her. Who did he think he was, to just— “You just help yourself to my kitchen?”

  He stared at her as if her tone had stripped the words from him. “Uh…I get up early…I thought…”

  She didn’t know what to make of it, or the blush on his face, the way he swallowed then finally turned back to the stove and flipped the pancake before it burned.

  She stared at her counter. No spilled flour, no broken egg in the sink, no cloud of smoke.

  He slid the pancake onto a plate.

  She stared at it—flat, and crispy. “I think you forgot the baking powder.”

  “It’s blini. It’s Russian. You serve it with jam. My housekeeper taught it to me. Takes just a couple eggs, some flour, a scant amount of sugar and salt. I used some of your powdered milk, although I cut it in half…” He stared at her, what looked like apology on his face. “I’m sorry. I was trying to help.” He stared at the blini. Back at her.

  He had such remorse on his face, she didn’t want to be angry with him. It was just…the smells, the song on his lips. The fact that she liked seeing a young man in her kitchen, stirring up mischief.

  She picked up
the plate. “Jam, you said? I think I have some apple butter in the pantry.”

  He nodded like he already knew that.

  She set the plate on the table, retrieved the butter, then opened the drawer and found a couple forks, knives.

  A pot of coffee perked on the stove.

  She poured the coffee into a cup, found another, and set him a place. Then she slid onto the chair and stared at the thin pancake. It curled, crispy on the edges, but otherwise cooked to a perfect brown. “How do I eat this?”

  He turned, a smile darting up his face. “I’ll show you.” He took his own plate to the table, sat down beside her, in Nelson’s place. Spreading a thin layer of apple butter across the blini, he then folded it in half, then half again to make a triangle. When he cut it through and pierced it with his fork, it resembled a stack of flapjacks.

  He stuck the pile in his mouth and smiled at her. “Yum.”

  She buttered her blini, folded it, and filled her own fork. Yum, indeed. “Do we have enough for the others?”

  “Why should we keep breakfast to ourselves?”

  She didn’t answer. Good thing he’d made the coffee too strong, because she needed something to blame for the sting in her eyes.

  He looked past her to the window as he reloaded his fork. “The storm doesn’t seem to be letting up. We may be stuck here all day today.”

  If God was merciful, He’d send a sudden spring thaw.

  * * * * *

  Call him a pitiful man, but Gordy had always dreamed of waking up in Dottie’s house. Always dreamed of smelling breakfast frying in the kitchen, always dreamed of sitting down at the large oak table, having her join him, asking him what his plans for the day might be.

  “I’m going to get the Ford Ferguson running, and then maybe clean the barn.” Not exciting conversation, even in his head, but it didn’t have to be. In his head, they were an old married couple, so comfortable with each other, they didn’t need to speak. He might slide his hand over to hers, wrangle her sweet elegant fingers between his, despite the roughness of his work-worn hands, and meet her beautiful blue eyes.