By Robert Wyrick
Nothing is colder than a winter’s night from childhood and this was one of those nights from long ago that remains frozen in time and space. I couldn’t have been over four, for the old man’s tombstone reads nineteen thirty-eight and that would have me about that age. I was rolled in a blanket and draped over my father’s shoulder. Both arms held me tight as he walked at a brisk pace across the field toward a flickering light in the distance.
The moon hung fixed overhead, emitting a yellow glow that played on the frost covered field, casting strong shadows as the two figures walked through the night. The blanket covered my head, but through a small slit I could see my mother walking behind at a hurried gait to keep pace. Her head was wrapped in a heavy scarf tied beneath her chin. The thick waist length coat that swallowed her stopped short of the red pocket on the front of her flowered apron. Her eyes, cast downward, betrayed no emotion other than the singular mission of keeping pace with father and me.
Cold air pierced the warm air in the tiny cocoon, striking my chafed face nestled close to my father’s unshaven cheek. I heard him breathe and smelled tobacco that lingered long after he had rolled and smoked the last cigarette in the tiny cloth pouch he carried in his shirt pocket. The crisp sound of footsteps on the frozen sod kept tempo as we made our way methodically toward the light.

I must have waked when we reached a large, dark, weathered house and stepped onto the front porch. The door slowly opened and a stooped, granite faced woman, obviously attempting to be quiet, was betrayed by a rusted hinge that defied her soft touch and gave forth a mournful squeak, breaking the silence that had filled the room.
Father loosened his grasp and I slid gently to the floor where he unwrapped me. I stood at his feet as he shed his coat and hat, handing both to the woman who had unsuccessfully attempted to open the door without making a noise.
Across the room was a large fireplace where a pile of evenly stacked logs emitted a yellow and orange flame. A host of dancing shadows played on the feet of three men who sat in straight cane chairs staring silently at the fire. The fireplace was framed by a dark mantlepiece centrally decorated by a large clock that was persistent with its loud tick. On each side of the clock was a host of uneven and multi-colored bottles emitting the aroma of liniment and camphor. This was the telltale sign that someone in the house was sick.
In a darkened corner across the room was a bed piled high with heavy quilts. They hid an old man who lay silent, with eyes closed and mouth partially open, forming a cavern in the bottom of his whiskered face. The covers moved up and down as methodically as the tick of the mantle clock, but the old man did not make a sound.

Father took his place in front of the fire with the other men as they quietly shifted to make room for the newcomer. The woman took vigil at the old man’s bedside and sat motionless, only to shift her feet to make room as mother stooped to look into the old man’s face before departing to join the other women in the kitchen.
I did not want to stay with the old man, but this was where the men were. Besides woman want to touch and smile and say I’m cute. My blanket lay folded in a black chair across the room from the old man’s bed. This will be my place I thought as I slid backward into the chair trying to emulate the men by not making a noise.
No one moved, but the leaping flames in the fireplace lent an air of consistent motion to the darkened room. No one spoke, yet the tick of the clock and crackle of the fire made the silence deafening. Time hung suspended except for the creeping hands on the face of the clock as it stared down from its perch on the mantle, stubbornly metering each tick, neither giving nor taking a second as the hours passed.
I knew the old man was not asleep even though his eyes were closed as he lay very still under the mound of covers. No one spoke as I pulled the blanket over my head and went to sleep.
The fire was dying as vestiges of the once large back log lay tranquil in the fireplace, its embers slowly turning from red to ashen gray. Each man sat nurturing his private thoughts, none sharing with the other what the night held. The old man had been their neighbor as long as anyone could remember. They recalled his youth, but what they now beheld was unsettling, as they knew full well who was of the next generation.
The old woman sat erect by the old man’s bedside, methodically twirling a small fragile, gold ring on the third finger of her left hand. Its edges were feathered and worn, but like the union it represented, had remained intact, unbroken, from years of hard times. Her eyes remained fixed on the lifeless old man but beheld the image of an earlier time; the spring of their life when he, as a dashing lad, had swept a shy and naïve maiden off her feet and out of her senses. The world was at their doorstep and hope sprang forever eternal.
The tortured eyes of the old woman, who had struggled valiantly to see beyond the reality of the moment, welled with tears as she looked at the old man. Tonight, she knew her tears were for him, but tomorrow and all nights to come the tears would be for herself.
A wisp of graying hair hung limp from a decorative comb loosely planted in the once tight pompadour forming a bun at the back of her head. Tears streamed down her cheek and fell on the old man’s beard as she slowly leaned from her chair and gently kissed his forehead.
The old man did not feel the pain that had filled his withered body. The precious breath that had been so belabored seemed of no consequence as he saw about the room with closed eyes. He saw his mate kiss his forehead and wondered at her grief, as he was no longer suffering. The form lying on his bed no longer beckoned his return and he felt release and a sense of eternal freedom. He saw all things, inside and out: the past and future, dark and light, hot and cold. He felt infinity and unity with all things, but like the sleeping child understood none of it.
Beyond the room and across the miles of frozen plains were lighted cities bristling with activity.
Automobiles jostled in the streets as masses moved to and fro like bees in a hive, each seeking what fate held in store. Music played and couples danced as the black of night slowly turned to the gray of dawn.
Further away were seas that touched nations with men of other thought and tongue. A vast war machine cranked, then revved its mighty engines, splitting morning air to race headlong into the terrible holocaust of human conflict and lay in its wake the carnage of mankind. Time sped by in its flight, but fate had destined this night to remain frozen in time and space, forever burned in a child’s memory, to live so long as this story is told.