Adam Stemple
When a wood stove’s your only source of heat, it seems like there’s not a woodpile in all of creation that’ll last the whole of a northern New Hampshire winter.
Out the window, even through the fogged up glass, I can see my woodpile is low. Alarmingly low. It must be days since I’ve split wood. Maybe weeks. Perhaps I’ve been lazy, though a long life of hard work would suggest I wasn’t. Maybe too stiff and sore. But pain is more often mindset than malady. I’m not injured. My hands are crooked and gnarled, but they can hold an axe. Maybe I’d finally decided to give in to the cold. They say it’s an easy way to go. Peaceful, even.
I don’t want to go peacefully.
The axe handle is cold, even in my gloved hands. But I’m cold everywhere, feet numb, thighs chafed, face reddening like a burn but from a polar opposite cause. My chest should be warm under the triple layer of thermal undershirt, red-checked flannel, and down coat, but I have to breathe. I let the cold air inside me and it frosts my lungs, spreading outward to freeze my ribs, make my heart labor to keep beating. When I let the breath out, it’s barely warmed enough to cloud the air.
Years ago I would have scoffed at this weather, split logs in just an undershirt and jeans. Let the movement warm me, steam rising off my bare arms where hot sweat met the freezing air, a cord of wood growing steadily beside me. But my arms are weak now, muscles feeble, skin too ghost thin to keep out the wind. Even my back—once the central piston of a machine that not only chopped wood, but baled hay, loaded trucks, marched a thousand miles or more on the Fort Devens parade grounds, lifted children and grandchildren overhead to delighted squeals—even it suggests I lie down. Though with no wood it’s unlikely I’ll get up again.
Would that be so bad?
It’s a traitor’s thought, though not an uncommon one. My strength is fading, my memory near gone. My children want to put me in a home. Let me waste away in relative comfort and complete obscurity. I don’t blame them. It’s the smart thing to do. Their mother raised them to be smart. My father raised me to be tough. So I won’t go. I’ll die here in the woods, in my home. Probably with an axe in my hand.
I swing and the log splits cleanly. No need to pull it back, head caught in the wood, slam the whole thing down on the stump I’m using for a base to finish the split. It’s a rare event and it makes me feel suddenly whole. Like the years of decline are the memory and powerful youth is the now. I revel in the sensation, eyes closed, head lifted, untouched by the cold for the slightest of moments.
I lived wholly in my body for so long, in its strength and competence, its quick reflexes and indifference to injury. I ignored the slight twinges as I aged, the morning aches that could be banished with an Irish coffee or a couple of Tylenol. Even the lapses of memory were far enough apart to be ignored, a few misremembered names here, some missed appointments there. But the years pass faster than it takes an axe to fall, and as I heave back for the next swing, my back seizes, my right leg goes numb, and I topple into the snow.
I’m on my back and it’s dark. I don’t know how I got here, but I know I won’t leave. The cold is in me now, immobilizing, immortalizing—at least till spring. Only my eyes still move, and I scan the night sky uselessly. The stars respond with a light snowfall. The flakes rest on my eyelids, weighing them down, and I strain to keep them open. But no matter how many fights you win in your life, you always lose the last one.
Finally, I am forced to close my eyes. The dark isn’t as cold as I thought it would be.
It’s the end, and all I feel is regret. I should have told my children I loved them more. Should have treated my wife better. Should have worked less and played more. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so bitter at the end. Wouldn’t have died alone in the snow.
Then do something about it.
It is my father’s voice, sullen and mean, but never wrong. Not really. And as always, it makes me mad.
Anger can be a gift. Its spark, its heat. It restarts my heart, melts the ice encasing my limbs. I can feel my blood pumping, moving away from where it had pooled center mass, heading back out to my extremities. The minor appendages move next. An index finger twitches, a big toe shifts in its boot. Groaning with the effort, I move my arm a single inch. It isn’t much. But it’s a start.
With life comes pain. Pins and needles shoot through the entirety of my body, jolting pain in my back and leg. But pain is only a warning and I’m already aware of the problems my nervous system is screaming about. I can shut it out. Or I can at least try.
I force my arm across the snow, pulling it slowly until it’s close enough to reach into the coat pocket I keep my phone in.
It’s not there.
I’m not surprised. It rarely is. I often forget to bring it with me, leaving it on the counter, in the bathroom, charging on the coffee table.
I don’t really want to call for help, anyway.
With no assistance coming, rolling over is the next step, and probably the most dangerous. I’d rather get to my feet and walk into the house, but with my back barely working, I can’t even sit, let alone stand. So rolling over it is, and I just have to hope the effort doesn’t make me pass out. If I pass out with my face in the snow, that’s the ballgame.
Die fighting, at least, I tell myself, and the voice I hear is not just my father’s now, but his father’s, too, and all our fathers back to the first of us, a hominid probably just a little taller, a little rangier, a little meaner than the others.
I fight. I fight the cold, the pain. I fight my lesser self, the one who weakens, the one who capitulates, the one who regrets. I fight till I am a creature made only of anger and agony and I throw myself over as if tackling the ground. As if I can grab the world and make it stop spinning. Make time stop stealing the strength from me piece by unmemorable piece.
The effort leaves me gasping, but there’s no time to rest. Stillness is death now. Pressing myself up, I balance on my hands and one knee, my right leg dragging lifeless behind me. I crawl awkwardly to the front stairs, three short steps that look like a mountain. I drag myself up, cracking my fingernails on the iced-over concrete despite the gloves, even snapping one off to keep from sliding back down the icy slope my steps have become, knowing that to do so would be the end.
The anger is fading, but I am so close now that hope takes up the slack, dulling the pain with the knowledge that I am atop the stairs and need only drag myself over the threshold to be safe and warm. Even my right leg reanimates to help with the last hard push and I am finally inside, cold still, but warming now.
There is nothing left. The darkness comes swiftly and I think it’s sleep but I’m not sure. I’m too tired to care, anyway.
At least I’ll die triumphant, I think, and warm. I drift away.
I wake on the floor by the front door. The house is cold. And it smells only of pine forest and crisp air. No woodsmoke.
“Gotta load up the stove,” I say to no one. I have no pets, my wife has passed, my grown children live in the city.
My back aches and my right leg feels funny. I’m wearing coat and boots and gloves. I’m not sure why, seeing as how I’m inside. None of that matters right now. All that matters is wood for the stove. Through the open front door, I see my axe laying outside in the snow.
It’s time to chop wood.
Adam Stemple is an author, poet, musician, and web designer, roughly in that order. He can be found online at adamstemple.com.