1st 5 Pages Jan. Workshop Rev 2: Rose

Name: April C. Rose
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Title: Winter on Brimstone Hill

I roll over to check if the milk is frozen. It is. It’s going to be a bad day.

Maybe, just maybe, I’m hallucinating. If I pretend to fall back asleep
and go through the whole process of waking again, then perhaps
there’ll be a fine icy film over the milk and nothing more.  It’s
worth a try.

Convincing myself it’s going to work is almost easy, but when the
sleeping bag comes down, the day looks pretty bleak.  The milk, neatly
stacked in three crates of glass bottles, appears solid.

I could pray that the bottles won’t break as the room warms with
daylight. I could pray, but I won’t. In any case, there’s no use
wasting energy over frozen bottles.  If it’s going to get cold, it’s
going to get cold, and all things—milk among them—freeze. There’s a
life lesson for you.

I pull the folded clothes from my nightstand into the warmth of the
sleeping bag.  I am the salamander that used to live in the cellar.
Joseph and I used to amuse ourselves by enticing it with earth- or
mealworms.  It shot from under the stone long enough to bite down on
the morsel before retreating.  The salamander couldn’t guess we
weren’t going to hurt it. It didn’t need to move fast, but I do.
Otherwise, my body heat will escape.  The chill will never leave me
then.

At least my bedroom isn’t as damp as our cellar. That’s something.

I also manage to get my underwear on right on the first try. That’s
also something. You’d think I’d be a pro at dressing within the
sleeping bag’s confines by now, but it’s so worth it. I stay warmish
and avoid more “Did you see Sarah’s wrinkly shirt?” episodes. Score.

My hand gropes for the Big Man aviator frames I call glasses. They
hearken back to Tom Cruise and the 1980’s, but without the cool
factor. And hey, they work.  Why someone would beg her parents to
spend twenty dollars extra to buy girl’s frames when she can have her
peers make fun of her for wearing gigantic frames is beyond me. I
mean, what’s not to love?

The clock reads five a.m.  My glasses let me see that.

Only sixteen more hours left in the day.

Grace will sleep a while longer, being too young for chores and
school, and it’s another hour before Joseph wakes to tend the
chickens. He’s lucky; throw some scratch down and refresh their water
and they’re fine. I don’t have to be in the kitchen to know my father
sits at the head of the table with a coffee cup in one hand, and Mom
sits to his right with a deck of cards in hers.

I climb from bed to examine the bottles. The wooden floorboards,
painted grey to hide two hundred years, creak under my weight.

The milk sloshes inside the bottles as if it were on the top shelf of
a too-cold refrigerator. Oh, good. It’s not completely solid.

Just to be sure, I check an apple from the box at the foot of my
bed—even better. And the potatoes—nice. Maybe all will be well. I
don’t want to lose our farm’s entire winter store barely into
November. Last year it was almost March before that happened.

Fifteen hours and fifty-eight minutes more.

I turn off the old lamp Mom gifted to me when the storeroom became my
bedroom. They were my sixteenth birthday presents. It was the best
gift anyone could ever give me—my own space. Well, sort of. I have to
share a room with perishables, but so what? I only have to worry about
that during the winter. The summer’s a-whole-nother story.

In the kitchen, it’s exactly as I anticipated. My parents listen to AM
radio, the steady tick tick tick of the electrical fence interrupting
the morning show with DJ Dan. The only other noise is the burble of
the coffee pot on the wood stove and Mom’s cards flicking onto the
table.

I press my feet into my muck boots and shrug into Mom’s oversized wool jacket.

I’m turning the doorknob when my father speaks. “Not going to say
‘morning,’ are you?”

“Good morning,” I say, chastising myself for the slip.

“It doesn’t mean anything now that I had to tell you to say it.”

“I’m sorry.”  My voice is soft, little.  It’s not my real voice; it
doesn’t belong to me. He inspires this voice; it belongs to him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he says.

“To milk the goats.”

“How many times have I told you not to mumble?”

Mom stops dealing the cards to the piles on the table.

“Sorry,” I say.  “I was going to milk the goats.”  I put more force
behind my words, but they still come out tight.

“Look at me when you speak to me.”

My eyes dart up to meet his.  I don’t want to stare into the green we
share, but I have to.  I can pretend I’m stronger than he is.  This
time, my words carry.  “I was going to milk the goats.”

He turns back to his coffee, Mom’s cards flick onto the table, and I
escape to the barn.

Fifteen hours and fifty-three minutes.



Chapter Two



“Dodge,” I call. The saanen frisks her way through the pen and greets
me with a nuzzle.

I bat her through the doorway and laugh. “I know what you want, you old nanny.”

Instead of going to the milking stanchion like the other goats do when
it’s their turn, she persists.

One Easter, that’s all it took. Unbelievable.

Her nose presses against my pocket, knocking me against the wall.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I say. “Patience is a virtue.”

Patience lifts her head from her grain.

“Not you, silly.”

As soon as I unwrap the egg and Dodge satisfies her addiction to cheap
chocolate, she jumps on the stanchion like the good little goat she
is.

Thank you, Dodge. I won’t miss the bus today.

My head rests against her belly, soaking in her soft warmth. She may
be annoying and stubborn, but she’s always happy to see me. I guess
I’d be too, if someone came bearing chocolate and relief.

I work the bag balm into Dodge’s swollen teats, at the same time
liberally applying it to my own hands. It doesn’t matter. My hands
chap and my knuckles splinter by the time I finish milking.

My parents aren’t in the kitchen when I set the bucket of milk on the
stovetop and turn on the gas.  I light a match and hold it to the
burner until the flame spits.  Then I stopper the sink.

The heat from the woodstove behind me entices me, summons me, but I
ignore it to skim the hair and dirt from the milk.  The milk’s
temperature rises. Burned hair and animal stink fill the air, and I
fight down my gag reflex. The milk is nearly done.

I remove the steaming milk from the flame and place the bucket in the
sink to cool.  My movement is too quick. The cold water splashes.

I step backwards, but not fast enough. The water runs down my front
and onto the floor.  I inwardly curse my clumsiness and grab a towel
from the formica countertop.

After mopping the spilled water, I turn back to the cooling milk.
This time I curse aloud.

“Crap.”