Have you ever gotten so sick of something that it drove you crazy? Have you ever sat back and put up with something so long and then one day decided. "THAT'S IT! I've had enough of this!" Desperate times can bring out fight in you that you never knew you had.
My name is Jack Frost, but it used to be Jackson Overland a long time ago when I was just a normal human guy. This is the story of when that thing I just described happened to me.
My mother was a seamstress and my father was a toy maker. The three of us were usually pretty happy when I was little. We weren't rich by any means, but my parents made ends mett and it was enough for our pretty simple life. That was way back when my father was a good man who loved his family.
One week before Christmas on the year I was eight years old, my dad's hand slipped while he was cutting wood for a special order rocking horse. He sliced the tips of his ring, middle, and index finger on his left hand and his entire right thumb clean off. Ouch, right? Well, you sort of need all your digits to do detailed work like toy making, so his injury put him out of business. It was a pretty big blow to the pride losing his fingers and his life long passion all at once, so he got angry and depressed.
A crisis can make or break a man, and it broke my dad. He sold his workshop and all his tools and invested it all into a new profession: drinking. He drank himself stupid night after night. The drunker he got, the angrier he got. The angrier he got…you guessed it: the drunker he got. Eventually it got to the point where my mom couldn't pay for both food and whiskey with her sewing commissions. She begged him to stop drinking so the family could eat, but he refused to give up his precious whiskey. It was really bad. The year I turned ten though is when it got REALLY terrible.
My mom took to hiding money from my dad so she could use it to buy food before my dad snatched it up and blew it all on booze. One night when he was in one of his infamous moods tearing up the house like he always did, he threw an old tin box against the wall not noticing or caring that it only missed my head by an inch. It broke open and all the money my mom had hidden from him fell on the floor. He was furious, madder than I'd ever seen anyone before. He called my mom every terrible name in the book and accused her of steeling from him.
That night was the first night that he hit her, but it defiantly was not the last.
At this point you're probably wondering, why didn't she just leave the jerk or kick him out? Divorce the deadbeat already! Well, it wasn't so simple back then. It was 1703 in British colonial Pennsylvania when my dad first hit my mom. Divorce was legal but extremely rare, and a little boozing and a slap on the face wasn't case for it. The husband pretty much had to be either cheating on his wife or putting her life in immanent danger for the church and the court to let her divorce him, and even then society looked down on her for it. Every single American woman reading this should say a prayer in thanks for the rights and freedoms you have in today's world. Thank the Lord that there are laws and programs to help and protect you and your children if you have them, and that you're not trapped the way my mother and I were.
Anyway, after that night, he hit both of us a lot. He hit my mom when she didn't make enough money or cook his dinner just right. He hit me when I didn't bring home enough game (back then I was considered old enough to hunt by myself, but I wasn't very good at it) or chop enough firewood.
Just when we thought things couldn't get worse, well guess what. They did. Mom got pregnant, but you couldn't call it that in polite company back then. You had to say, "with child." But whatever you call it, she was going to have a baby and Dad was none too thrilled. He didn't know why she wanted to get pregnant and called her all sorts of things that, again, you couldn't say in polite company. Of course he never thought of the fact that he had a hand in creating the child too, but no one was going to bring that up. Mom and I were both too afraid of him and that sort of topic was yet another thing you didn't talk about in polite company. Not that Dale Overland was exactly polite company, but I digress.
Fast-forward a little over eight months to a hot, muggy summer night. I had just turned eleven that spring and Mom looked like she could have the baby any day now. I was upstairs in the loft in bed, but I couldn't sleep. Between the sweltering heat of mid summer and the sounds of my parents shouting at each other, sleep was hopeless no matter how tiered I was. You know how when you're extremely tiered and trying to sleep that your senses go on alert and you can here every tiny thing, even things you would normally ignore? Yeah, I hate it when that happens. It happened that night and I could here every word my parents said to each other like they were standing right next to me.
"When are you going to get your hands on so more money, Jenny? I'm thirsty!" He was slurring and shouting,
"Well, you son is HUNGRY! Jack hunts and brings home the little food we have because you won't do anything but drink and shout! Our eleven year old boy is a better man than you!"
"Shut up, Jenny!"
I flinched when I heard a smack and a cry. He slapped her again, I could tell.
"Do you care about your children at all, Dale?"
"What children? We only got one."
"There's one upstairs and one in here."
"Why did you want another damn baby? You can't take care of the one we already got!"
"I take every job I can find to buy food and supplies for this family. You're the one who drinks it all! YOU are the one who can't take care of his son!"
I heard Dad grumble something and them Mom screamed and there was a loud crash.
Remember how I started this story? When you've had all you can stand and you just snap? That's when it happened. When my mom talked about the baby like it was already here, that's when I realized that it WAS just as much a suffering child as I was. It donned on me that if he was hurting her, he was hurting the baby, too. And I'd be dammed if I was going to let anything or anyone hurt my baby brother or sister.
I threw my blanket on the floor, jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs. I saw my mom lying on the floor on top of a pile of boards that used to be a chair.
"What are you doing down here, boy? Go back to bed!"
"No." My voice cracked and I sounded a lot less brave then what I wanted to, but I didn't care. I stood between my mother and my drunken father. "Stop hurting her."
"This is none of your business, Jackson!"
"My mother and the baby are so my business. So go away."
His grip tightened around the empty bottle he was holding. "What did you just say to me?"
"I said go away. Ride off and find a nice gutter to pass out in and sleep off that drunk. You can come home when you figure out how to be a husband and a father again."
"This is MY HOUSE boy!" He raised his hand to slap me, but stopped when my mom spoke.
"But it's in my name!" She tried to stand and I helped her up. I made sure to keep myself between her and him. "You put the deed in my name as a wedding present. So it's MY house, Dale! Leave. Spend the night somewhere else and come home sober."
"I've never heard anything like this!" He stepped closer and I stepped forward to meet him. "A boy and a woman kicking the man of the house out on the street. What if I say I'm not leaving?"
"Then WE will leave!" I answered him. "You can be drunk and alone for the rest of your miserable life. How does that sound?"
I never knew until that moment that it could be quiet and loud at the same time. There was no sound in the room but my ears were ringing like a dinner bell and my head was pounding like an Iroquois drum.
"I'm gonna go get me some more whisky," my dad grumbled. He took his belt that held his (empty) coin purse, pistol, and powder horn from the hook by the door and left. He slammed the door behind him making the whole house shake.
There wasn't any time to rest or celebrate because just as soon as we heard his horse gallop away, Mom grabbed her stomach and screamed.
"MOM!"
"Jack, go get the midwife." She was out of breath and I could tell it was hard for her to speak. "Take the forest path just in case your father is still out there."
"Let me help you to the bed first."
She nodded and I let her lean on me and helped her into her bed.
"Hurry, Jack!"
"I will."
I was a quarter mile to the midwife's cabin, and I ran as fast as I could the entire way. I was glad to see a candle still burning, meaning she was still awake. I pounded on the door and it was only a few seconds before it opened. She looked at me once and knew what was happening.
"Hang on," she said and stepped back inside for her satchel. "Hurry up, now," she said when she came outside. She followed me home.
Now, I could describe everything that happened next, but that might be too long and too disturbing for most readers. Basically I boiled water while my mom…well…had a baby.
Baby Emma's first cry was the most amazing thing I've ever heard. I couldn't believe how tiny she was! I had seen babies before, but I had never held one. When the midwife handed her to me, I was terrified.
"Keep your hand behind her head or you'll break her neck," she warned me. Well thanks. That made me feel much better. No pressure or anything… Well, I didn't break her neck. Mom said I was a natural at holding babies. Maybe she was right. Or maybe it was just that I knew I was the only one who was going to protect my family and I HAD to be good at holding my new baby sister.
My father never came home. No one knows what happened to him or where he went, but I never saw him again. My mom and I weren't too torn up about it though. Sure it got tough sometimes with just the three of us, but we managed. I wasn't afraid of much after that night. What could have been scarier than standing over your injured, pregnant mother while staring down your drunken, piping mad father? I gained courage and strength that night that seven years later would help me save Emma again, and later, the world.
I became a man the night Emma was born.
More importantly, I became a guardian that night.