Little Drummer Boy

Chapter 5: Do You Want to Build a Snowman

Chapter 5: Do You Want to Build a Snowman

By the time we got home, I noticed that the school busses were starting to make their way along the roads. I saw a couple kids walking home, a few younger ones playing in the snow, one of them trying to make a snowman that seemed to fall apart with the slightest pressure.

It didn’t seem to matter though, flimsy as the snow was they were still overjoyed at it

“That looks like fun,” Jace said.

Sometimes we get so caught up in our lives, of the things that was have to do, that we ignore some of the most simple things life has to offer. Sure, it might not be something we need; it might not be something that will make me money or raise my gpa, or build my social standing with friends and strangers. But some things don’t have to be.

“Do you want to build a snowman with me when we get home?”

He shouted for joy, nodded and smiled all at the same time.

It didn’t take long for us to carry everything into the house, Jace going as fast as he could, throwing the bags on the floor of his room before coming back to get another load. He did learn to slow down while walking on ice; that is one lesson that doesn’t fade easily.

After we had gotten everything inside, I looked at the snow fallen on our lawn, trying to remember exactly how to do this. Sure, we make balls of snow, put them on top of each other and that was the basics of it. I put my gloves on, and picked up a handful of snow, a slight breeze blowing some of it in that gap between my glove and coat, sending another chill down my back.

“We start with the base, right?” Jace asked as he knelt down, and began pulling snow together in a smile. However, I noticed his hands were bare.

“Why don’t you go get your new gloves?” I asked.

“Ah,” he said getting back up, and dropping the snow that he was holding. “I guess that would be a good idea. It didn’t seem that cold though.”

I hadn’t noticed before than how calloused his hands seemed. The skin seemed rough, something I recognized to a degree on my dad’s hands, though not to the degree that Jace’s were. Dad’s were from working in the factory, but what about Jace? “I think I saw them in the bag I put on my bed, I’ll be back.”

While waiting for him to return, I started to build the base of the snowman, rolling the snowball as it picked up mass, patting it down to ensure it stayed together, all the while trying not to break something so fragile. Even if something seemed so well put together, a strong force in the wrong place could cause it to collapse under the weight of everything it carried.

This wasn’t just true of inanimate objects.

I saw the school bus drive by, stopping about a block down the street to let a few students off. Some I knew, most I at least knew of, though not all. Two of my fellow high schoolers started walking down the road toward me, their home just a couple streets away. “You skipped school to play in the snow?” Jeanne asked, her and her brother Tristin walking up to me.

“It’s a bit more than that.” Right as I said that, Jace came back from the house with gloves on his hands now.

“Oh, hi,” he said, seeming hesitant around these new people.

“I have someone I’d like you to meet,” I said getting up and walking over toward Jace. “This is my new brother Jace. There are two of my friends; Tristin is a junior at the high school and Jeanne is a freshman.”

“Oh, okay.” He took small steps toward them and reached his hand out. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“I hope we can be friends Jace,” Jeanne said shaking hands with him.

“It is a pleasure to meet your acquaintance,” Tristen said.

Jace then pulled away from them, and went back to the base of the snowman, carefully trying to pile more snow on it. I noticed him flinch when a small chunk of the snow fell off. “Is he from that foster program you were mentioning?” Tristen asked.

“Yeah. We didn’t really get much warning with him; he came to live with us yesterday.”

“He seems nervous,” Jeanne said.

“I guess it’s to be expected through,” Tristen said.

As he said this, Jeanne walked over to Jace, bending down and helping to form the snowman. “You want to keep this part mostly like a ball so it still has the right shape, like this.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Hey Tristen, we don’t have to be home right away, do we?”

“I don’t see why we would. Mind if we join you for a bit, Caleb?”

“Not at all.”

Some friends building a snowman. Perhaps those who were supposed to outgrow it by now, but didn’t care. Sometimes what people think doesn’t matter, sometimes grand things like world peace or the ways the electron moves around the atom don’t matter. Someone once told me that the simple life was the best life. While I can’t tell you if that is true or not, I can say that we had fun.

We probably spent a couple hours building him, getting his body as big as we could while still making it manageable. It took all four of us to lift the middle on top of the base, and we were quite glad that the snow was able to be packed enough to be able to carry it. Finally we got the top on, and by that point, it was only about a foot shorter than Jace.

We started looking for some sticks to put on him for arms, but Tristin got a call, and had to go. Something about days of school and a promise to set things on fire. I don’t remember exactly what it was, only that the absurdity of it made Jace laugh a bit before the two of them had to leave.

…

After dinner that night, we had another family meeting. This one more about Jace starting school next week, and needing to find out how much education he had. Of course, that involved some questions about his past, and like before, he wasn’t willing to give much away.

“Ren taught us what we needed,” he finally answered after some gently probing from my parents, who at that point were quite frustrated. It made me wonder what would happen when more important people had questions and they wouldn’t take a request to change the subject as kindly.

“So you didn’t go to school?” Dad asked

Jace shook his head.

“What were those lessons like?”

“They were just um, her teaching us.”

If all you ever saw was the color blue, and you met someone who only knew the color red, how would you describe blue to them?

We didn’t get much more out of Jace that night, though I didn’t miss the fact that he said “Ren taught us.” So I knew that there had to be others with him, maybe siblings. But I didn’t think it was like our family. Still, I wondered what his family was like, if they were all as nervous as he was.

In the end, it was decided that I’d go back to school tomorrow, and either Mom or Dad would stay home with Jace the rest of the week, getting things ready for him to start school the following Monday. Of course, plans never last long.