December 7, 1941 – Detroit, Michigan
A single light burned in the window of the neat bungalow and that was the window that the three shadowy figures crept under. "Quiet," one hissed softly at one of the others when they tripped over something that had been hidden in the dark, "do you want to wake the whole neighbourhood?"
"I seem to remember that you made quite a racket yourself at my house," the second boy whispered back. "I heard you before you even threw the pebbles at my window."
The first boy didn't answer. He just started searching through the pockets of his jacket for something. After a second, he spoke again, "Well then how come it took all of the pebbles to get you to open the window?"
The second boy shrugged. "I wanted to see if your aim had improved any."
Reaching down, the first boy improvised a snowball. "We'll have to make do with this and hope that it doesn't wake up his parents."
"You'd better not wake his parents," the third boy cautioned. "You know that Mrs Kinchloe's the best cook on the street and I'm not risking loosing access to her cookie jar."
"That's why we're letting you take full responsibility for this one, Tommy," the second boy agreed. "Your mom's second best and she can't cut you off.
"Thanks, guys," Tommy answered. "And you sound like you're five years old. Geez, you don't want to loose access to the cookie jar? What's that?"
"Listen to yourself. We sound childish for not wanting to loose our cookies. You're the one who drags us out of bed every year to go play in the snow. And we're how old now?" The first boy was indignant and he forgot to keep his voice down.
"You going to stand under my window all day arguing or are we going to go?" a voice said from behind them.
The three boys spun around nervously, caught in the act. Tommy still held the incriminating snowball in his hand. "Oh, Kinch, it's just you," one sighed.
"Yeah. Did someone bother to plan out where we're going this year? Or is it going to be another one of those years where the Jones' kids wind up with Mrs Samson's snowman?" Kinch tucked the ends of his knitted mitts into the cuffs of his jacket.
"You know very well that the only reason that year was so confused was that you were in the hospital. And you won't let us forget it. Not that anyone minded. I think Mrs Samson liked the excuse to have the kids over in her yard," Tommy retorted, lobbing the snowball off in Kinch's direction. It was a half-hearted toss and fell to the ground at Kinch's feet.
"Billy, did you bring everything?" Kinch inquired. "Because if we have to go scrounging for carrot-substitutes at three in the morning again…" He let his voice trail off as he shook his head.
"It's all waiting on the corner. I didn't feel the need to haul it all the way over here." Billy glared over at the third boy. "And it was Derek's job to bring the carrots that year. I just got stuck with the blame."
"Do the three of you feel like standing out in the snow for four hours discussing this or are we going to get moving?" Tommy asked, starting off down the street. "I've got class in the morning and would appreciate at least a few hours of sleep."
"Ugh," Billy responded, following hard on Tommy's heels. "I've got Communications final in three days. I hope they're going to be extremely generous with the partial marks. My parents have shelled out so much tuition money I think they'd shoot me if I failed."
Kinch and Derek were quiet as Tommy and Billy started complaining about their profs and their upcoming finals. The conversation continued as they collected the bag of supplies and made their way to a white house at the end of the street. "Hey, Kinch, Derek," Billy said as they quietly pulled open the gate and walked up the carefully shovelled path, "how are your classes going?"
"Fine," Derek answered, perhaps a little sharply. "I mean, we take the same classes you do, right?"
"Yeah," Tommy answered, his tone carefully nonchalant. "We just wondered how they were going. You two don't talk much about them." There was an awkward pause for a second. Then Tommy asked, his voice still carefully casual, "This one's the fort, right?"
Kinch rolled his dark eyes. "Yeah, but remember, it has to be accessible by Mr Clemmons's walker." The other three laughed and Kinch shot a grateful look at Tommy. School was sort of a touchy subject. Derek especially had always had a hard time accepting that he and Kinch would always be separated from Tommy and Billy, no matter how hard they worked or how smart they were, just because of the colour of their skin. It had never stopped the four boys from being friends, but sometimes the gap was there. It was something that they had all had to work to bridge, especially as they grew older and met people from outside their little neighbourhood.
Derek didn't know it, but both Tommy and Billy had been ostracized at their schools from time to time growing up because their best friends were two black boys. In elementary school, Billy and Tommy had been able to beat up the kids who said nasty things about Derek and Kinch. It hadn't changed their opinions at all, but it had stopped some of the comments. But as they grew older, they had had to just let the comments slide. They didn't have much of a choice; the two of them couldn't take on the entire world.
"Standard snowman then?" Billy questioned, digging into the bag for a carrot.
"Tommy and I'll go across the street and get started on the fort for the Tillmans," Derek offered. "You two want to finish here and bring the flags over when you're done?"
"Sure," Kinch answered. "I wouldn't mind some sleep tonight either." Bending down, he started compacting the snow into a round ball that he could shape into the body of a snowman. On the other side of the path, Billy was doing the same thing. And across the street, Tommy and Derek were laying out the foundation for a snow fort.
"We don't usually get snow like this until later in the year," Billy noted. "Not usually until closer to Christmas."
"I wouldn't complain. You remember the year that we couldn't get out until after Christmas? The kids were all so disappointed that Jack Frost and his helpers hadn't been out to make their forts," Kinch reminisced.
"Yeah. I honestly thought that Millie Jones was going to cry that last morning before we came. Every morning she'd wake up and race to the front window to see if anything had happened during the night," Billy laughed, pushing the growing snowball across the yard, picking up mass as he went. "Then the morning after she was so excited that she managed to convince her mom to let her come out and play in the snow before school."
"Whose idea was this in the first place?" Kinch asked, rolling his own snowball across to where Billy had let his come to rest. "I don't even remember anymore." He lifted his ball of snow up on top of Billy's, holding it in place while Billy smoothed snow around the joint to make sure that it would hold.
"You know," Billy commented, "I always thought that it was Tommy's idea. But tonight when he came to my window to get me, he said something about it being my idea. And I know that I didn't come up with it."
Kinch's brows furrowed as he stepped away from the developing snowman. "I know it started the year that the girls wanted to go carolling and we refused."
"I thought it was the winter that Mr Samson died."
"Wasn't it the same year? I thought that the girls wanted to go carolling because they thought it would cheer people up."
"Yeah," Billy agreed, already starting to roll the ball that would be lifted in place to form the head. "And Derek's mom mentioned that Mr Samson had always made the big snowman that just seemed to appear one night in the Samson's yard and that Mrs Samson would probably really miss it."
"Right. I had forgotten about that. Maybe it was Derek's idea."
"I know that it was Tommy's idea to do something for the Tillmans the next year because Mr Tillman lost his job that fall. You remember how excited they were that this fort had just suddenly grown on their front yard in the middle of the night?"
"I sure remember how confused my mom was when all of my winter things were soaking wet the next morning. Good thing I had left my window open after I snuck back in. I just convinced her that some snow must have blown in during the night and I didn't notice. I don't think she believed me, but she never said anything about it again."
"You're lucky," Billy said, lifting the head up into place and waiting while Kinch did the job of securing it. "My mom nearly had a fit when she saw my wet stuff. She never figured out that I had been outside after I had sent to bed, but I was grounded for two days for not properly caring for my stuff. She thought that I had forgotten to hang it up after coming in at dark."
"That's why you missed the skating party?" Kinch asked. Billy nodded morosely. Kinch chuckled, "Serves you right for trying to do a good deed."
"It took two years to learn the lesson. Remember the second year I couldn't use my new sled for a week?" Kinch nodded, pulling two dark lumps from his pocket and pressing them into the snowman for eyes. "She caught me with wet stuff again that year. After that I always made sure to stretch my mitts and scarf over the radiator before I crawled back into bed." Kinch laughed again, the sound echoing across the empty street.
"I can't believe you got caught twice."
"Neither can I," Billy stated, twisting the carrot into place. "I can't believe that we haven't actually been caught by someone. It's been like eight years and people still haven't caught on."
"Or at least they haven't said anything," Kinch countered. He was pretty sure that they had been caught at least once. Or that someone had figured out what was going on.
"What do you mean?"
"It seems like every year my mom will mention, off-hand, of course, that so-and-so had had a tough year or it's a shame that such-and-such a person won't be having such a great Christmas." Kinch reached down to grab the bag of stuff as they passed on their way across the street to help finish up the fort. "So I always made sure that we made it to that house that year."
"You know," Billy commented, "my mom's done the same thing. Mentioning that something's happened to this person or that, but usually I'm not even in the room. It's just those conversations that you overhear from the next room. Those have been the houses that I suggest."
"Maybe you didn't learn the lesson about putting your stuff out to dry," Kinch pointed out. "Maybe your parents just clued in to the fact of what we were doing." Billy shrugged.
"I don't really care how it happened, so long as I wasn't being punished for it." Billy paused in his step. "You know, what happens when we can't do it anymore?"
"You getting to old for this?" Kinch joked, sticking out a foot to trip up his friend as Billy started forward again. Billy didn't fall for it, just stepped around Kinch's foot and tried to push him into the bank at the side of the road.
"You know we won't be around forever."
"I know," Kinch answered, suddenly more serious again. "I guess Jack Frost and his helpers will just have to disappear completely. It's not like we can stick around just to make snowmen at Christmas-time. Especially if things keep going the way they have been overseas. We both know that we won't be able to stay out of it forever. We'll be getting draft notices soon."
"I got mine already," Billy admitted. "It's just a shame. So many kids are going to be disappointed."
Kinch sighed. "I know. But we've all got to grow up sometime." Always the most serious of his friends, it was slightly ironic to hear that statement coming from Kinch's lips in that fashion. But it was true.
"We'll have to keep our eyes peeled for replacements," Billy commented, trying one more time to hip check Kinch into the snow.
"Yeah," Kinch commented, his voice still serious as he tackled Billy down into the snow.