A Preacher and His Wife

Chapter Twenty

I thought that we were seeing winter before, but as we got to late November, I learned I was entirely wrong. True winter was shocking—I'd never felt such cold before. The air stung my skin and made the inside of my ears hurt. Sometimes my muscles would burn, not just from the work I was doing but from being tense and shivering so much.

In the church on Sundays, I could see everyone's breath and all those in attendance kept on their coats and mittens and scarves. I always had to keep one mitten off to turn the page of the Bible, putting my frozen fingers into my pocket. A fair few times, I found myself reading a little slower so my hand could warm some before it had to come out again. I needed to figure a way to get something proper for the windows. I covered them with wood, but it made the church seem gloomy with no light from outside, and also, the edges still let in cool air.

When it came to working for Mr. Weber, the snow actually made things easier as we could load the timber up onto big sleds and have the horses help us with the work. Mr. Bergman and the others I worked with taught me to take my coat off while working because if sweat were trapped between two layers, eventually it would freeze, and I had a long ways to travel coming home some nights depending on where we were working.

It was wise of them, but taking off my coat first thing in the morning before any work had warmed me was brutal. I was also tempted to sleep at the camp some nights only to save myself the frigid walk home in the dark. Mr. Bergman always headed back to town, and I'd walk with him, though the idea of staying and being able to sleep a little longer and having a shorter walk in the morning looked better to me each day. I think my employer liked that I went home each night to my wife. He wasn't always on-site while we were working, but when he was, he'd say, "Give my regards to Mrs. Moore."

We didn't have enough blankets to stay warm in the night, and though Grace was working diligently on knitting something for the bed, it was taking a while, and we took to sleeping with the half-knitted blanket atop all the others, the needles she used still inside.

Poor Grace didn't have proper boots either, and we had no way of getting some for her as the road was so overrun by snow we couldn't see it, nor could Lucy make her way through it. The men who lived around town did their best to keep it clear, but it was an endless battle, and always the snow was winning.

In the morning, she'd wear my boots, which were really the shopkeeper's, outside to get the wood she needed for the day even though they were far too big for her. Sometimes I'd come home and see her footprints in the snow, knowing that she had been out in her own boots to feed Lucy or the hens, and I knew she must have been suffering something terrible.

I also covered the window at the house with wood, which kept most of the wind out, but I felt badly leaving Grace in the dreary dark place all day without even a proper chair to sit on as she worked.

The shop's supplies began to dwindle, seeing as nothing could be delivered and slowly, even the things that were made in Alston became scarce. Grace took to getting up in the night to put another log in the fire so that we wouldn't need to use a match in the morning as she was worried we'd run out.

There was a day, towards the beginning of December, when Grace told me that she'd run into Anders in town, and he said he wouldn't be slaughtering any more pigs till he had new piglets, which was likely not going to happen until Spring, except for the one he was saving for Christmas time. He said that he still had a fair amount preserved, as did the shop, but suggested that we ration it as he was worried there wouldn't be enough for the whole town to eat their fill. We'd been having pork for every meal, and to be honest, I was sick of it, but the idea of not having any meat was not welcome either.

I could tell Grace was struggling to keep up with the work at the house as I was always away. I thought to take fewer days of work so as to be home and help her, especially with the chopping of wood, but she told me the money was needed more than the hands as all we had food-wise was carrots and beets, and the hens and the price of everything was going up, in part because Mr. Davis the new shopkeeper knew he could get away with it, but in part, because there was less to go around.