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Show in my father's house/ 220 be one cloud which hung over me, making my head ache. At recess, we were held inside, studying a history lesson on Abraham Lincoln. As we read the Gettysburg Address, I imagined that my own wounds, and Aunt Helga's were being healed. When the teacher held up Lincoln's portrait, the craggy face impressed itself on my heart as a paradigm of peace, alongside my inner portrait of Christ. I longed for an end to all civil wars. At three-thirty, the teacher walked up and down the rows, checking our seats. Michael sprawled and stuck his foot into the aisle. He grinned up at her but she avoided him as one would try to overlook a dead bird. At the bell, we surged from the room in one joyous wave, swelling out the door into the deep piles drifted against the building and fence. We rushed onto the playground and played in frenzy, to make up for the long day indoors, pushing the packable snow into balls. Some were thrown, but the snow packed so well in the warming air thtt. we kept rolling them until they were huge, five or six of us pushing together until the snowballs were taller than any of us. We competed, pushed, rolled and grunted as the balls became too big to be pushed any farther. And then all was quiet and there was only Michael and me and a girl named Sally pushing against the biggest snowball on the vast white playground studded with giant balls. We stopped and stared in the sudden silence, red-cheeked and panting, listening to our breath and the distant howl of evening wind as the sun slunk toward the low Nevada hills. I broke the quiet with a laugh, throwing my arms up. "Look! |
