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not fire, it is rain into sleet into hail into heavenly assault of white ice like the veil between heaven and earth rent, the whole world torn asunder. I thought we would die there, all of us together. Papa did not stop.
    He drove those mules balking, he lashed them with the whip, their hooves caked and slipping, and you could see the ice chunking on the traces, the reins, the mules’ necks and ears and withers all gray-white and spattered, the ice getting thicker and thicker, the wagonwheels slipping and catching and spinning, and Bertha carrying on something awful, I could not hear the calf at all now, and I had to at last, I had to, reaching my arm out. “Papa!” I cried. “Papa!”
    He turned only a little, a little half turn, and his face was the face of an ice man, his mustache and sideburns white with ice, his brows white, his lashes, and he looked at me and did not see me, and he turned back again, slapped the whip.

T he wagon stopped, and I don’t know if it was the same day or the next one, for there was no such thing as time then, only the endless now of the crossing, but I do know it was after Little Jim Dee peed the bed because that smell was all around and part of it, and I know it was daytime, for the whole of the white blinded me when Papa called me to bring him the hatchet and I pushed back the flap to see out.
    At first my eyes squinted shut nearly, and this not because of the sun, for there was no sun, no light but ice light, no horizon or source or direction but just endless white blinding me. When my eyes opened all the way I could see the wagonseat nubbed with the grit of ice pellets falling, and this seemed to me a good thing, not so slick as the frozen rain. But when I crawled out onto it I could find no firm place to put my hands but the depression where Papa had been sitting, and even that place was quickly icing in, though the veil was thinner and the pellets fell with spaces of air between them and not so very fast. I could not stand up. On my knees in the well I tried to lift the wagonseat to reach in where Papa kept his tools and get the hatchet. The lid was frozen shut. My hands already that fast were completely numb. Papa was hollering, his voice rising, not hard, not angry, just coming up to me louder from where he was at the back of the wagon, and I wanted, oh, I wanted to do it quick, what he asked me, but the ice was pelting fire needles on my face and fingers, and my eyes were stinging not with sunlight but with the force of ice, and I could not lift the lid. Then Papa was beside me, his hat brim folded down gray and solid, an inch thick with ice. He said nothing, but from where he stood on the ground reached up and with the heel of his gloved palm smashed the box lid upward, hit it again, and the ice seal broke and the lid jumped. Still kneeling, I pushed the lid up and got out the hatchet, and Papa said, “No, Mattie, reckon I’m going to need the axe.”
    I lifted the axe with both hands and handed it down to him. Papa turned and, keeping his free hand to the side of the wagon, disappeared in the white. Dan turned behind Papa, his splayed feet slipping, his black back and tan nose grizzled with sleet, and then, stepping deer-careful upon the pelleted earth, he disappeared too.
    I could hear muted whacks coming from the back of the wagon, and I wanted to know what Papa was doing. I went to climb down. My shoes slicked right out from under me when they touched the wheelrim, and my hands could not help me, for there was nowhere but ice to touch, and down I went, skidding, the ice slicing my cheek where I fell. I got up and fell again, got up, and fell, and finally bellied to the near wheel and grabbed hold of a wheelspoke. My skin stung like it would freeze to the wood, but I held to it long enough to get my feet underneath me. I could hear Thomas inside the wagon, calling me, mumm mumm mumm, how he did then, but I went on, keeping a hand to the side of