12 Across the Border
By Bill Russo
This is the first item in a new series of tales
intended to serve as companions to the popular E-book
Christmas Classics Refreshed https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731417
12 Across the Border
By Bill Russo
The Border Crossing Station at Madawaska, Maine is the Northern-most in the 48 interlocking United States. It is located at the end of a one thousand foot bridge connecting Madawaska, the furthest outpost of the nation to Canada’s Maritime Provinces, at Edmundston, New Brunswick.
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| Built in 1921, the Madawaska-Edmundston Bridge, over the St. John River, carries one million vehicles a year from the Northern-most city in the U.S. into the Maritimes in the Atlantic Time Zone - one hour ahead of Boston Tim |
Though a weight limit of five tons has been imposed on the hundred year old bridge, it still sees more than one million passenger and commercial vehicles pass over it every 12 months.
There’s also a walkway, and in warm weather, hundreds of people use it to cross from Canada to shop for American products in Madawaska or to stop in at one of the town’s restaurants, such as Rick’s Burgers and Wings, a local landmark where Canadian money is always valued the same as American cash.
But in winter few people dare to try crossing the bridge on foot. It gets extraordinarily cold in Northern Maine. The record low at Madawaska is 40 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit.
Oddly enough in the Centigrade Scale (also called Celsius), forty below zero in F, is also forty below in C! Negative 40 is the only point at which the two scales use the same number to record the temperature.
Factoring in the wind chill, traversing the bridge in January could mean braving arctic-like temperatures of negative 60 and even as low as one hundred degrees below zero!
The swift running St. John River often freezes over in January. By March or April the break-up of ice begins as shown in this 1950s photo.
The Madawaska Border Station is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. There are no holidays for the BPAs (Border Patrol Agents). Though the community is quiet and peaceful, the agents have thwarted hundreds of criminals engaged in illegal activities. They recently discovered more than $280,000 in undeclared currency in the trunk of an inconspicuous passenger car.
Madawaska is 330 miles North of Montreal, Canada. It is considered one of the 4 corners of the
U.S. Mainland
Despite the harsh weather, vehicular traffic in winter remains heavy. As stated however, few souls are brave/foolish enough to attempt to walk the windy, icy causeway during the coldest times of year.
So the two Border Patrol Agents on duty one frigid New Year’s Eve, a few years back, were shocked on a bitter, frozen night, when the bridge lights and the illumination from a star-glittered sky, revealed a group of figures slowly making their way from Edmundston towards the station in Madawaska.
The agents had ceremonial glasses of grape juice on their desks and were just about to toast the entrance of a new January, when they saw the strange cluster of walkers.
The Madawaska Border Patrol Station
As the bells of St. Mary’s began to peal the arrival of the New Year, the first of the walkers reached the Madawaska Checkpoint.
With each peal of the bells, another figure stepped in. By the 12th ring, the 12th and final figure reached the Border Station.
Border Patrol Agent (BPA) Roland Daigle went outside to process the walkers, while SBPA (Supervisory Border Patrol Agent) Gerard St. Amant remained inside to place a call to the sector chief in Houlton. Noticing that the dozen figures at the gate were ‘different’, he thought it best to contact somebody higher up the command tree.
“Good morning.” said the first walker.
It being a few seconds after midnight, BPA Daigle returned the greeting, “Good morning. Please state your name and your occupation.”
“Here is my passport in which you will see my name and my profession.”
“It says your name is January. Just January?”
“Yes officer. It is my name and it is my job. I come as you see me, clad in heavy coat and fur-lined boots. I am a seller of goods. Thirty one items I carry in my line and though they be frozen offerings to most people, on the inside my office is warm and bright.”
The odd looking, white bearded man stopped speaking and walked to the end of the line.
Then, he who was second in the line became the first, and spoke. In a booming voice he shouted, “My job is carnival, masked costume parties, and vendor of amusements. I’ll arrange all of this and more for you.”
“Stop the shouting,” ordered BPA Daigle, “and tell me your name.”
“I must scream to make myself heard for my time is short. I have not long to live. By point of fact, I have the least time of all my family you see. Just 28 days, have I. I am called February. Sometimes they toss in an extra day, but not so often that I can get used to it.”
Turning, the one called February, ambled to the rear of the queue, and the third walker crept to the front of the line. Gaunt, frail, tall, and thin as a rail; he opened his mouth but no sound came out.
He wore a black business suit, the fabric of which was nearly as lean as he. In the buttonhole of his jacket was a tiny cluster of flowers. They were even shabbier than the cloth of his threadbare coat.
“Speak up please. Name and occupation,” requested Border Patrol Agent Daigle.
“March! March! Say something. Speak up and then go to the back of the line. I want to get through the border and feast on midnight mutton and drink champagne until the sun comes up,” said the fourth walker in the line.
Finally a sound did come from the third walker. “He’s trying to put words in my mouth. I am March, but he’s trying to make an April Fool of me. He’s always rushing me and trying to take my time. Here’s my passport. March is my name and my job is that of ‘bringer’. I bring the wind that turns the mills and generates the power. Without me the world would stop turning.”
With amazing alacrity for one so seemingly weak, March whooshed his way to the end of the line so fast that it blew the jester hat from April’s head, prompting the fool to state, “I am April and that is true. My job is to make a fool of you. To do that, I’m out of time; and so I go to the end of the line.”
After him, a lady stepped to the front of the file. She introduced herself as Madam May. Though it was 25 below zero she wore only a summer dress with open toed sandals. Her gown was green and the footwear matched.
Her golden hair danced in the breeze.
May’s perfume made the Agent sneeze.
She held a watch with a golden fob.
Without giving any details of her job,
she smiled and said ‘God Bless You’,
then walked to the end of the queue.
Next at the top of the line was another young woman. Beautiful, delicate, and graceful was the girl called Miss June. She had the appearance of one who was waited upon, though her gaze might make one’s eyes slitted and sleepy.
In her honor it was said that people held feasts on the longest day of the year. In no hurry was Miss June as she walked slowly toward the border agent, passport in her tiny hand. Even more casually she floated silently to the rear of the 12 walkers.
Her brash younger brother July was now at the head of the column. Chubby and dressed in ragged shorts, he had a straw hat on his head. A towel of white cotton ringed his neck and in one hand he held a motley colored bathing suit.
Miss June and brother July’s Mother was next. Madam August proudly took credit for being a wholesale dealer of fruit. She possessed more than a dozen lakes containing thousands of fish. She was large, smelled like baking bread, and had a body as soft as a feather mattress. She could use her hands to quickly assemble a meal for five or fifty people. Slapping her passport into Agent Daigle’s hand so hard he winced, she strode to the back of the line.
Up next was a painter. A beret on his head, his smock was streaked with a thousand colors and he could use every one of them to change the world from green to a dizzying array of reds, yellows, and a hundred shades of brown.
His name was September. His job was to clear the summer dishes from the table of earth and spread a blanket of spent leaves on the ground that one of his older brothers would later mix with water and snow to refresh and renew the landscapes.
Mr. October came next, announcing his name and stating that his job was to gather. It was his duty to assemble the bounty of summer and prepare for a feast that would be given by a brother who was standing behind him.
But when brother November tried to describe the feast he was to prepare, he could not squeeze even a single word in between his wretched sneeze. Finally when his coughing slowed down enough, he apologized for having a cold but gave thanks that usually it was gone by the fourth Thursday of his month.
Finally a very aged lady came to the front of the line. She was Grandmother December. Her hair was white and thin. Her skin was like the pages of a three hundred year old book. Her voice was barely a whisper, but her eyes shone like bonfires of yesteryear.
In her arms was a small green plastic pot. Filled with enriched soil, there was a tiny fir tree growing in the middle.
“I carry this tree and will keep it with me and help it to grow huge by the eve of Christmas. I’ll put bright lights on it. Candy Canes and strings of popcorn will fill its branches. It will stretch from the floorboards all the way to the ceiling. The lights from this one tree will spread the word of goodness all over the world.”
Looking at Agent Daigle, Grandmother December asked him to have his supervisor, Agent St. Amant, put an end his call to the sector chief and come outside.
Not knowing why, the border official did exactly what the elegant old lady requested. Soon the two officers were standing outside facing Grandmother December. The air around them was negative twenty-five and yet it seemed warmer than a July afternoon.
“Now that you know who we are,” she said, “will you allow us entry into the United States?”
“I know that you will bring us good things Grandmother December,” said Gerard St. Amant, the agent in charge. “I know also that no matter how good your intentions, you will also bring us some bad things.”
“I’ll allow you and your family entry to Maine and the rest of the United States, but I will retain your passports and after each month I‘m going to write down what happens. In one year’s time, when once again you come to the checkpoint seeking entry, I’ll review the performance of each and every one of you. Depending on how things go, there may only be seven or eight months in the following year.”
Grandmother December smiled at the young border agent and replied, “Thank you Agent St. Amant. We will try our very best to deliver only good things in the coming year. We must try very, very hard, for our family is dreadfully small and we cannot afford to lose any more members.”
“You see,” she added, “once upon a time, many hundreds of years ago we made the same agreement with another border agent. At that time there were 27 months to a year.”
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