Hemingway rewrites “Frosty the Snowman”
The Cold Man and the Season: A snowman can be destroyed but not defeated.
He was a cold man who wished alone and he had gone eighty-four days without taking a wish.
People thought that he was jolly. And also the type of soul that was happy. People thought many damn crazy things, he thought, as he stared at his unlit corn cob pipe whose yellow color reminded him of the color of the souls of other men made of snow who were not brave. Yellow was a good color for a pipe but a very bad color for a soul.
I am glad to have a soul that is brave and not yellow, he thought.
His eyes were black as coal, even more black than the color of the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is a type of blackness anyone who has seen will never forget. Once you had seen a thing that black you would always remember it.
He had heard the stories of the Friday of blackness and they were not a fairy tale. Like him, they were the true gen, somehow even more true than things that really happened.
The children knew about fairy tales and how sometimes they were true.
The boy, who was one of the children, brought him an old silk hat that he had found someplace. The boy was brave and did not have fear of believing in things that other lesser boys might have considered magic.
Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her, he thought.
Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so, the man thought through the cold. It was hard to think in the cold but he had lost the fear.
He stepped forward in the manner of a toreador striding into the ring, first the one foot and then the other, for that is the way a man who understands that courage is grace under pressure must behave. Courage was what made him a man, he thought.
Maybe there are bulls to fight or it may be that there are other things to fight but there was always something to fight. That was one thing that a man could be sure of.
In that moment he was alive, truly alive. Maybe, he thought, I am more alive than any man has ever been, as alive as I could be.
He understood that life was a gift that one had to spend right or one was no kind of man at all.
With life came to a man the chance to laugh. And to play. To laugh and to play. To do the things that same as you and me and everyone who ever knew what it was to be truly alive and it was a fine thing. A very fine thing, life, and he hated to leave it, for life was a thing well worth fighting for.
That is when he heard the thump. It was a sort of thumpety thump, thump, thumpety, followed by another thump. Always another thump. A fusillade of thumps.
Artillery, he thought, as he looked over the faraway snow-covered hills.
Intelligence had not warned him about the Nationalistas and their bombardiers in the snow-covered hills but he knew enough to know that the fascistas did not take a day off. Not in the war and not because of the cold.
The thumpety-thump sounded again. It sounded like a 4.5 Howitzer but he could not be sure of that.
“Do you hear the guns?” the man they called Frosty said to the children.
The children did not answer but looked up at the sky. One could be sure they heard them.
The sun was hot the day, despite the snow.
“Let us run and we will have our fun now, before the howitzers or the sun can complete their attack,” he said. He had never run from things before and he did not wish to be the type to start now but nor did he wish to just melt away.
He looked around and did not see a weapon. Now is no time to think of what you do not have, he thought, think of what you can do with that there is.
He picked up a broomstick. This day was a day to do the best with what you could find and this would have to work for there was nothing else. That is how it was then with life. Sometimes there was nothing else.
I may not be as strong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution, he thought.
He ran here and then he ran there. Catch me if you can, he thought, fascistas.
He led them down the streets of the town. There was a man in a uniform who told him to stop but he did not listen to the man, not on that day. Nor did he stop. He did not believe in stopping a thing once you had started.
As he ran he looked back at the children and waved goodbye. He hoped it would not be for the last time because he believed that he would be back.
Yes, I’ll be back again some day, he thought. He would have to be lucky but every day is a new day and it is better to be lucky but also it is good to be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.
A man, even if he was made of snow, is not made for defeat, he thought.
A snowman can be destroyed but not defeated.
Men made of snow may not last but claps live forever.
For more irreverent good writers gone bad:
Hemingway rewrites ‘Don’t Stop Believin’
A Journey of Belief
The Short, Happy Life of Frances’ Comb
Hemingway on Male Pattern Baldness
