Christine Schicker

At the End of the Fall

"Wake up, Jacob. It's time to get up." Colleen bent over her boy, who formed a small mound on the bed underneath layers of thin blankets. The sheets half covered his freckled face, and Colleen smoothed her hand over his coarse straw-colored curls.

"Get on up now, the bread won't bake itself."

Jacob pushed the covers off and sat up without a sound. It was too early to fight against the coaxing voice of his mother.

"That's my boy. Now get dressed and I'll have some breakfast done."

When she left the room, Jacob covered himself up with the blankets again, trying to reclaim the warmth he had built around him during the night. It was cold in the flat. It was always cold, although he never could complain about it. When he did before, Mama would always tell him about the people living outside on the streets, and how they had nothing to cover themselves up with but newspapers and cardboard boxes for roofs. Jacob asked her once if Papa was outside living under newspaper, but she only smiled a little and said that Papa had a stronger roof than that.

Mama was singing and rattling pans in the kitchen, so Jacob tossed the blankets away and tiptoed across the cold wood floor to the chest of drawers. He took out a woolly gray sweater and brown pants that were worn at the knees and pulled them on over his thermal underwear. He had a hard time getting the sweater on; the wool scratched his face, and the sleeves seemed smaller than he had remembered. There was very little light in the room, just a sliver of it edged the window shade, and the outer reaches of the kitchen lamp spilled over into the hallway in a pale yellow wash. Jacob stretched his arms out around him in wide circles, searching for his boots. The sweater strained underneath his arms and around his shoulders, and he heard a ripping sound as his fingers grazed the scratched leather surface of one boot. He raised his arm to search for the tear, and found that it was in the same place Mama had sewn together twice before. The material there was worn through, and she had to tuck under folds of it so the thread would hold, making the sweater tighter and more impossible to wear each time.

Mama started singing louder, which meant that breakfast was done and she was waiting for him. He walked down the hallway into the kitchen. "Mama, my sweater," Jacob said, pointing to the tear.

"Well my goodness, you're just growin' so big every day. Must be all the food you're eatin' that's givin' you big muscles. Isn't that the same spot I sewed before?" She knelt down to Jacob to look at the tear. There was nothing holding the thread in place, it was woven loosely among the frayed ends of torn gray wool. "Well, I'll fix that old sweater up tonight with a patch of some pretty material. Why don't we find you somethin' better to wear for today."

Mama helped Jacob take the gray sweater off and then walked down the hallway to Jacob's room and came out with a black one. He held his hands up high as she pulled it down over his head and tickled his stomach. Their laughter intermingled - high-pitched, deep, fluctuating and tender.

She tousled Jacob's hair and stood up to get a look at him. "Well now, if that ain't a handsome boy. Let's fill that tummy of yours up with somethin' warm."

Jacob slid into his chair and watched his bowl as Mama filled it up with watery oatmeal. She walked around the square table and filled her bowl the same, then placed the empty pot back on the gas stove. Jacob dangled his feet above the floor and ate the oatmeal even though it tasted bland. He wished he could have honey on it, but Mama only had a little jar of that left, and it was being saved for when they had hot tea in the evenings after work.

That was his favorite time, when he and Mama would sit at the kitchen table waiting for the water to boil. She would set out their best china cups and place a teabag in each. A small pitcher half-full with milk and the honey jar would be in the middle of the table with pretty silver spoons next to their saucers. Mama would talk about how much he had helped her at the bakery that day or about how he'd be starting school soon. She'd sometimes talk in a low voice about things that were in the newspapers, staring off at a place on the wall, but then she'd always shake her head, as though awakening from sleep, and would smile at Jacob across the table. He would lay his head on folded arms, listening drowsily to his mother's voice. He liked the sound of it, soft and clear and always there - talking, whispering, confiding in him things that were serious and real, though not always understood.

When they finished their breakfast, she helped him on with his coat, took him by the hand and left the flat for the long walk to the bakery. Every morning they did this except for Sundays when nothing was open but the churches - the long, cold walk in the first pale throws of daylight that made Jacob's throat sore to breathe and his ears and nose numb from the rawness of wind.

Colleen owned and sustained the little bakery in the middle of Thirty-fourth Street. It was set among larger buildings, banks and bookstores, delis and dress shops. And then there were the abandoned places, run-down factories with cracked and broken windows across the street, crumbling concrete steps that led to the doors of old tenements. The butcher on the corner had closed his place for good. There was a sign on the store that said so. Jacob knew because Mama had sent him down there one day to buy some ground beef, and there was a little paper clock taped to the window that was set to the time when the butcher would be back. Jacob didn't know what time it said, but he waited there until it grew late and Mama came looking for him. She bent down to him and pressed his face into her shoulder and then lifted him up in her arms and read the sign on the door, written in faded black ink. "Things go so easily. A person can't depend on anything," Mama had said. After that, she never sent him to buy meat anymore, and Jacob knew it was because of something the sign said.

Colleen let go of Jacob's hand to open the back door with her keys. It squeaked on its hinges as she opened it. Jacob squeezed in past her and ran to sit down on his short wooden stool that she had made special for him by sawing off the bottom legs. "Are we making doughnuts today, Mama?"

"No, Jacob, no doughnuts today. But we'll make some nice bread now won't that be fun?"

She lit the ovens and took a tray of yesterday's loaves to put in the front case. Jacob followed her to the front where he ran to switch the lock on the door and flip the "open" sign around to face the outside. He looked out the large glass window at the street that was just beginning to stir with life. A woman in a long brown coat and a tight-fitting hat was waiting for the streetcar. An old, stooped man with a cane shuffled past her and crossed the street, heading towards the bakery. When Jacob saw him coming, he ran away from the window to stand behind the counter with his mother. The silver bells on the door rang as the man came in.

"Well, hello Mr. Cutter, how are you today?" Colleen was taking the loaves off the tray and putting them behind the glass counter. She glanced and smiled at Mr. Cutter as she spoke.

"Oh, this cold weather isn't good for an old man. Makes the joints stiff. I said to Mrs. Cutter just last night, I said this winter is going to be a hard one. I can feel it in my knees, see. Last time they were this bad we were living up north of here when it snowed straight for five days or more. Got up to two feet of snow right up to our front door." Mr. Cutter leaned heavily on his cane and rested one hand on the counter; Jacob could see the thick, wrinkled skin pressed on the glass.

"Is that so? Well, if worse comes to worse, I guess me and Jacob'll have to move in here to stay warm by the bread ovens." Colleen and Mr. Cutter laughed. "What can I get you today?"

"Oh, we could use another loaf of bread in the house. Mrs. Cutter just goes through the groceries quicker 'n anything I've ever seen. She says she just swears by your bread for dressing. Won't make it at all with anything else."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it." Colleen took one of yesterday's loaves from the tray and put it on the counter. "You know, if you have the time to wait a little, we'll be starting to make the fresh loaves. You could have one hot from the oven."

"Oh, no, no, that's all right. I want to get back home before the weather gets worse. There'll be snow before the day's over."

"That'll be five cents."

Mr. Cutter reached into his overcoat pocket and put the nickel in Colleen's hand. "Thank you ma'am."

"Good-bye, Mr. Cutter. Can I expect you again next week?"

"Sure as sure, I'll be here."

The silver bells rang again as Mr. Cutter left and crossed the street from where he had come. Jacob had never spoken to him, but his presence was familiar and relaxing. He carried with him a smell of cigars and mothballs.

"Well, should we go bake some bread, Jacob?" Mama asked this question every day as though Jacob held the deciding vote on how the day was spent, but he would always just smile and run into the kitchen ahead of her.

The two of them stood at the large wooden counter, Jacob standing on his low wooden stool and Mama beside him. She put large spoonfuls of flour on the counter and piled it up into little hills. She cracked several eggs in clean, easy breaks and let the slimy insides fall in the middle of the flour piles. After she mixed in the eggs, water, and yeast, it was Jacob's job to knead the dough - stretching it, rolling it on the table, punching it with his small fists. As they worked together, Mama told him stories about when she was a girl, and days before that from stories her mama had passed on to her. There were wonderful places across the ocean and ships and babies and warm, sweet summers. She made it all seem so real to him that he forgot where he was, and when the stories were over, he stared down into the dough, wondering why it was there on the counter and how he came to have pieces of it between his fingers.

They made bread all afternoon, shaping it with their hands while they laughed and exchanged little phrases and jokes only they understood. When it was time to close the bakery and make the long walk home, the bells had not rung since Mr. Cutter left that morning. Mama and Jacob walked home together hand-in-hand in the clear night - it hadn't snowed like Mr. Cutter said it would.

She put the water on for tea when they came back to the flat, their faces ruddy and numb and their breath tight in their chests. After they drank the tea, cupping their hands around the hot porcelain to warm, Mama brought out her sewing bag filled with thread of all colors and scraps of material, and sat down to fix Jacob's gray sweater. She sewed, humming The Last Rose of Summer, as Jacob played with his toy train on the floor. It was a toy Papa had bought him a long time ago - at least it must have been a long time ago because Jacob couldn't remember when it was given to him. It was a single red caboose. Jacob knew that cabooses came at the end of trains, and he had asked Mama once why he didn't have the other parts of the train, the engine and the middle cars. She had looked at him for a long time without saying anything. "Sometimes Jacob, you can't have everything all at once," she said, and then told him that Papa had given him the end because it was the most important part. She told Jacob that she would take him down to the toy store and have him pick out another train-car someday to surprise him, when he had been especially good. It had been a while ago when she had said that, but Jacob remembered and felt certain that Mama would keep her promise.

Lately, he felt he had been doing an extra good job at the bakery, and that maybe the trip to the toy store was drawing near. He walked beside Mama to and from the bakery every day with eagerness and a fluttery sense of expectancy. Any day, it could be any day now. He imagined his new train-car sitting in the window of the toy store - bright, glossy, and green. It was a wonderful thought, but every day, he and Mama would walk straight to the bakery and straight home with no stops in-between.

Nothing changed much during these days except for the weather, which turned unusually mild. There were several days when Mama allowed Jacob to sit on the front steps or the sidewalk in front of the bakery. He would sometimes wander off for short distances, peering into alleys or around corners and watching the streetcar disappear down the line. There was never much for him to do. All the older children were in school, and the ones his age and younger were at home. Jacob imagined them playing outside in green backyards, playing tag or hide-and-seek while their mothers brought out trays of doughnuts and hot chocolate. They probably had honey on their oatmeal in the mornings too. He would sit on sewer-tops and think about these things while unknown people glided past him, the bottoms of their coats brushing against his back as they billowed along.

One day, Jacob went back to the bakery to check in with Mama, and he found her sitting idly at the big wooden table, which was covered with scattered slips of paper. She was looking away from the back door and didn't hear him until he came right up to her, and then she acted startled to see him, turned to him with red eyes and smiled tenderly and tousled his hair and kissed his forehead.

"Jacob, my boy, Mama's just resting for a while," she said. Jacob felt it was the strange weather that was making her so tired lately. They would have tea in the evenings after these warm days, but since they had used the last of the honey, Jacob didn't see the point anymore, especially since Mama would always say she was too tired to talk and wanted peace.

And then the snow came, four weeks after Mr. Cutter's prediction. It blew in with great force after one balmy evening. The sky turned steely gray, and a multitude of white crystals fell on the streets and rooftops and cardboard boxes. Jacob started complaining about the cold, and Mama didn't tell the stories anymore about the people living on the streets.

It was dark in the morning when she woke him up for work in the middle of a blizzard. He could hardly get his feet out of his own footprints, and it took them twice as long to get to the bakery. Towards the end of the day, when Colleen was just about to close up, a young woman and her daughter came into the shop, setting the silver bells ringing as they came. She was a very tall woman wearing a coat edged with fur, and her daughter's face was pink from the cold and framed in dark ringlets. Jacob hadn't even seen them coming and wasn't given enough time to run back behind the counter to his mother.

"Do you have any fresh bread, please?"

"Why of course - let me see. There's one or two . . ." Colleen fumbled around with the loaves.

"You see, I wouldn't have come but I was just on the streetcar and I remembered I've no bread back at the house. Laura and I have been out all day and I told the cook it wouldn't be much trouble for me to pick up a loaf of bread on the way back. No use for her getting out in all this, I said."

As she was speaking, the little girl named Laura was looking shyly at Jacob. She was wearing a green coat and white stockings and had an enormous white bow in her hair. "Hi," she said, but Jacob turned away and pretended he was busy with the sign Mama had told him to tape to the window. The woman took the bread in a paper sack, turned swiftly around, and led the white-stockinged girl away from Jacob. As they left the bakery, just before the door closed behind them, Jacob heard the girl whisper, "Mama, those people sure looked poor." It was the last thing he heard before the bells clashed against the glass door.

Jacob watched them disappear into the whiteness, and then he heard Mama walk into the back room. "Lock the front door, Jacob," she said at a distance. Jacob turned the silver lock and looked up at the bells. They chimed delicately and then subsided. He walked into the back room and found Mama sitting at the table with her shoulders hunched and her arms crossed loosely on her lap. Her body looked slack and tired, and Jacob came up to her and put his hand on her back. "Jacob, my boy," she said, as she smoothed his hair down with a light touch, "I think it's time to go home."

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