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The lights winked out.
Emily let out a small scream. I yelped.
“Not to worry,” Codrin said. “We’ll have a fire going directly. Candles?”
“I…I don’t have any,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t think anything like this could happen.”
Codrin turned on the flashlight on his phone. “We’ll be fine. Matches?”
“Sorry,” I said. “It seems I’m woefully unprepared for a Chicago winter. But don’t worry.”
I turned on my flashlight on my phone and headed for the kitchen. The gas stove fired up, adding an eerie blueness to the gloom. I grabbed a newspaper off the stack in the corner, folded it tight, and lit it from the stove. My homemade torch gave me more light—and ashes. I hurried to the family room and handed the newspaper to Codrin.
“Thanks,” he said. “Now, we can have a fire.”
He lit the kindling, and the orange-red flame was the most welcome sight I could think of.
“I’m cold,” Emily said.
“I’ll be right back.” Using my phone, I retrieved blankets from the linen closet. I handed one to Emily and one to Codrin. He immediately joined Emily on the couch. I sat on the other side of Emily, spreading the largest blanket over the three of us. The fire put out a small glow and a pitiful amount of heat. We turned off our phones since we wouldn’t be able to charge them. Snuggling under the blankets, I wondered how in the world I found myself hiding under a blanket from a blizzard.
That’s when I started to cry.
Luckily, Emily’s eyes were closed. Codrin, however, knew. He immediately started to tell a story.
“Hey,” he said, “did you ever wonder how the Easter bunny manages to dye about a billion eggs and deliver them all in one night?”
“The Easter bunny isn’t real,” Emily said.
“Well, the one that you see in cartoons isn’t, but there are a million Easter bunnies around. That is how you get the eggs.”
I could tell Codrin was doing his best to distract Emily, to keep the mood light and funny. I appreciated the effort, but it didn’t brighten my shadowed mind. I listened to the story, and the tears stopped, and Emily was soon asleep between Codrin and me. It reminded me of the times Emily would crawl into the bed between Wayne and me. A bad dream of some sort had driven her into our room. It was the revenge of the children, according to Wayne.
I missed Wayne.
Like Codrin, Wayne would have taken charge of the situation and made the best of it. The wind whistled past the windows. An occasional gust would rattle a window here and there. I hoped the house would hold up, as having some glass shatter would turn the room into a deep freeze.
“You can sleep,” Codrin said. “I’ll take care of the fire.”
“When do we start breaking apart the furniture and adding the wood to the fire?”
He chuckled. “When I was growing up, my mother put some ornamental birch logs in the brass firewood rack. They were nice, and we were told to never burn them. They were just decorations. One night, some of my friends came over. My parents were in Florida because it was winter. You know how it goes. Some beer, some yelling, some bad ideas. I fell asleep, and the guys decided a fire was in order. In no time, the birch logs were burning brightly. After all, they were very dry. When I woke, I noticed what had happened. That was when I told the guys we needed birch logs.”
“Nothing like panic,” I said.
“Indeed. Well, we started looking. We did find some logs, but they were wrong…too big, too small, too expensive. That was when Footsy, a non-genius, told us about the birch forest only minutes away. Saws and axes were dumped in the trunk, and we lit out for the forest.
“The trees were actually a couple of hours and a slog along a narrow trail away. We needed a tree about five inches in diameter. There were several to choose from. We picked one, and after making sure we were alone, we went to work. We didn’t have a chain saw, so we made do with hatchets, axes, and hand saws. In no time, the blades were dull. We had nothing to sharpen them with, so, like young idiots, we kept at it. Sheer muscle power managed to chop out a part of the tree. Then, we pushed the tree over. It fell, just like it was supposed to…almost.”
Codrin laughed. “We had not checked out the path of the fall. Our tree got hung up on another tree. It wouldn’t fall. We tried a number of dumb ideas before we wrapped our jackets around the trunk and pulled. Took some time, but eventually, the tree moved and fell, almost killing us. Like I said…dumb. We set the tree on the stump and proceeded to cut out logs. It was difficult and time-consuming. Yet, we managed. Blistered and arching, we gathered our logs and headed back.
“We reloaded the brass rack, and the others left. The day was over, and not one of us wanted anything but sleep. A couple of days later, my parents came back. The next day, when I came home from school, I found my mother adding the birch logs to a fire in the fireplace. I was shocked. ‘I’ve decided to change the decorations,’ she said. I laughed at that. We had done all the work for nothing.”
“That happens sometimes,” I said. “But your parents knew, didn’t they?”
He nodded. “Later, when mom was in the hospital, I told her about the logs. She said she knew I had somehow replaced the logs. We laughed together. I was reminded that parents were never as uninformed as we thought. They simply didn’t want to say too much.”
“I’m learning that,” I said. “You have to choose your battles wisely.”
