It's really cold here. Winter is coming. Some people read and some don't. I think some people don't read only because they don't have reading material around the house. They don't have bookcases filled with books filled with short stories. I think there are emotions that rarely get felt. They're either buried somewhere or just not evoked by anything on a regular basis. We all have this common THING. This history of kindness or cruelty, tenderness or abuse. On either side of the line, I think we can at least imagine what it is to stand on the other side. This might be a stretch, but I think literature often is able to evoke those emotions, without us having to actually go through the experience. There is such a universal component to many stories, and it's that core that enables us to empathize, sympathize and see the familiar in others. I may be wearing my rose colored glasses (I have several pairs) but I really believe that we all would choose good over bad. I just read this short story. It's really short. It's kinda poetic. I wanted to share it.
What Happened During the Ice Storm
by Jim Heynen
One winter there was a freezing rain. How beautiful! people said when things outside started to shine with ice. But the freezing rain kept coming. Tree branches glistened like glass. Then broke like glass. Ice thickened on the windows until everything outside blurred. Farmers moved their livestock into the barns, and most animals were safe. But not the pheasants. Their eyes froze shut.
Some farmers went ice-skating down the gravel roads with clubs to harvest the pheasants that sat helplessly in the roadside ditches. The boys went out into the freezing rain to find pheasants too. They saw dark spots along a fence. Pheasants, all right. Five or six of them. The boys slid their feet along slowly, trying not to break the ice that covered the snow. They slid up close to the pheasants. The pheasants pulled their heads down between their wings. They couldn't tell how
easy it was to see them huddled there. The boys stood still in the icy rain. Their breath came out in slow puffs of steam. The pheasants' breath came out in quick little white puffs. Some of them lifted their heads and turned them from side to side, but they were blindfolded with ice and didn't flush. The boys had not
brought clubs, or sacks, or anything but themselves. They stood over the pheasants, turning their own heads, looking at each other, each expecting the other to do something. To pounce on a pheasant, or to yell Bang! Things around them were shining and dripping with icy rain. The barbed-wire fence. The fence posts. The broken stems of grass. Even the grass seeds. The grass seeds looked like little yolks inside gelatin whites. And the pheasants looked like unborn birds glazed in egg white. Ice was hardening on the boys' caps and coats. Soon they would be covered
with ice too. Then one of the boys said, Shh. He was taking off his coat, the thin layer of ice splintering in flakes as he pulled his arms from the sleeves. But the inside of the coat was dry and warm. He covered two of the crouching pheasants with his coat, rounding the back of it over them like a shell. The other boys did the same. They covered all the helpless pheasants. The small gray hens and the larger brown cocks. Now the boys felt the rain soaking through their shirts and freezing.
They ran across the slippery fields, unsure of their footing, the ice clinging to their skin as they made their way toward the blurry lights of the house.
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
That story makes me feel really good. I feel like those boys knew what to do, even after they were given bad examples and even after they set out to do something not so good. It's like they made a different choice, a better choice, and I really like that. That's all.
"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
From Chapter 1, Intention
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