Christmas with Tucker (18 page)

Something was missing. “I don’t understand. How can you only grade downhill? What about the uphill sections of the road?”

“Easy. Lift the blade, and drive up the hill without grading, then we’ll turn around and go back down the same hill with the blade dropped.”

I knew he was right. It would work.

I was pushing my luck, but something inside of me wanted to do this. “Can I take the first go with it?”

My grandfather smiled at my enthusiasm, but he would have none of it.

“George, this is going to be tricky; you need to let me check it out. Maybe you can give it a try later. Driving on ice is different. You should never slam on the brakes; you’ve got to tap them rapidly. Otherwise, you might skid and rip the studs off the chains.”

Realizing that my last foray onto the ice had not turned out well, I only nodded my head and meekly offered, “I can do that.”

“I’ve never done this myself, so I can’t really tell you how to do it. My best guess is that we should not grade any deeper than necessary. Hopefully, one to three inches will pull up enough dry material to clear the gravel roads.”

“How about the asphalt roads?” Hank asked.

“We’ll take it down to the roadbed, if we can.”

My old Santa Claus of a grandfather looked like he was about to throw up. He bent over, anticipating nausea, before regaining his composure. “Let’s all get a good night’s sleep and then start up tomorrow morning. Hank, would you like a ride home? It would give me a chance to test it out.”

“You look miserable, Bo. I’ll walk back.” He lifted his legs to show off the same modification to his shoes. “You’ve done it a half-dozen times in the last few days—it’s my turn.”

My grandfather did not argue, and as we headed back into the house, it occurred to me that there was a chance, just a chance, that Cherokee County might still have a Christmas. “Do you think we can grade all the roads in two days?”

My grandfather clapped me on the back. “We’ve still got problems, George.”

I knew what he meant. In those days, there were no salt trucks to help melt the ice or sand trucks to help gain friction.
Most vehicles were rear-wheel drive; there were no radial tires and very few people even had snow tires. Without the maintainer pushing the ice off the road, most of our neighbors would be lucky to even get out of their driveways. If they could get out of the driveway, they would not get far.

My grandfather further defined the problem. “There are trees down everywhere, blocking the roads. We’ll need chain saws and men to run them and tractors to pull limbs off the road. We would have to have an army of men to get this done before Christmas. We can only do what we can do. We may not get far, but we can get some of the main roads cleared.”

If it had been up to me, we would have started a night shift on the spot, with me taking the first turn, but so far my efforts at taking charge had not gone so well.

As I looked at my grandfather that evening, all tired and worn-out, I realized that it just was not going to happen. It wasn’t until many years later, when I had my own family, that I realized what he was going through. As children, we feel like the adults in our lives are always pushing us to do more than we want or feel like we should have to do. I didn’t understand then that for every inch he pushed me, I had been pushing him the length of an old-fashioned yardstick. He had had enough.

TWICE DURING
the night, I had to get up and tuck my sheets back under the mattress. Laying at the foot of my bed, Tucker had been fidgeting and shifting himself around nervously, and no matter how hard I tried, the blankets did not seem suited for him. With his canine version of tossing and turning going on most of the night, it seemed like the alarm would never go off. Finally, I could stand it no more and rolled out of bed just shy of 4:20 in the morning, armed with a plan. Frankly, Tucker hadn’t been the only thing keeping me up. I’d been mulling over an idea and I was ready to put it into action.

The milking I could do on my own—that would give my grandfather a head start. For once, he could sleep in while I got the chores completed and the old diesel engine on the maintainer warmed up for a day of hard work.

After bundling up against the chill in my dark bedroom, I took the leash and a flashlight from the tool drawer in the kitchen, and Tucker and I made our way down to the barn, with
only a narrow beam of yellow light to guide us through the ice-covered barnyard.

Without power, we were still milking by hand. My grandfather was right: the Babson Bros. automatic milking machine was an unparalleled invention, and I couldn’t wait to get it back. The milk we were pouring out every day was making a frozen mound behind the barn large enough to feed an army of cats. There were raccoon tracks all around the milk mountain, where those resourceful creatures were determined to break off icy chunks for food.

By 7:30 the sun was up, the chores were done, and the ice was cracked, and I started the maintainer to warm it up. I had been expecting my grandfather to join me all morning long but was not too worried when he didn’t show. When I got to the house, with a load of firewood in my arms, my grandmother had breakfast waiting for me. “Where’s Grandpa?” I asked.

“He spent most of the night in the bathroom. He is exhausted, sick, and won’t be out of bed for a week—if he’s lucky. Just like I told him.”

My heart sank. Of course, I felt sorry for him, but what about the roads? What about Christmas? He had worked so hard and now it was all for nothing? Although I was getting used to the rule book being ignored, surely this was not fair. I’d gotten up extra early just to help Grandpa get out the door and onto the maintainer so that we could get our shifts rolling, but now my plans were wrecked. And so was Christmas for Cherokee County.

Around 8:00, Grandpa stumbled into the kitchen. My disappointment was so deep, I could hardly look up at him.

He interrupted the silence. “Picked an awful time to get sick, didn’t I?”

He looked worse and I knew he had no business being out of bed. I mumbled, “People get sick. I did the chores.”

“Crack the ice?”

It was embarrassing that he had to ask, but I knew it was a fair question. “Yes, that, too.”

“Is that the maintainer I hear running?”

“Yes. I didn’t know you were sick.”

“Well, you might as well shut it down. Maybe tomorrow.”

My grandmother moved into his space like a pouncing cat. “Tomorrow! I don’t think so.”

Big Bo McCray knew he had met his match, and he quickly turned tail and headed back to the bedroom, mumbling over his shoulder, “We’ll see.”

I sat at the kitchen table, feeling defeated once more. But while I was running my hand through Tucker’s fur, a rough outline of a new and improved plan began forming in my mind.

A week before, I had guided the maintainer up Blackberry Hill to visit Wild Tom Turner. There was a strange feeling in my stomach, an ache just below my solar plexus, as I headed up that driveway that led to Turner’s trailer. Many years later, I would come to recognize that dull aching feeling in my stomach as the way my conscience tries to tell me to think again. Now, for the second time in a week, I experienced that feeling, knowing that I was about to do something I should not do, but willing to do it anyway. If they got really mad at me, what would they do—banish me to Minnesota?

After I shoved my arms through the sleeves of my coat and pulled on my hat and gloves, Tucker and I headed back outside. Once inside the implement barn, I sat on the seat of that maintainer, and instead of shutting it down, I did what I had no business doing. After all, I am a McCray.

“Tucker, get up here with me!” I moved over and he situated himself in the bed I had made for him.

With the maintainer in reverse, I backed out of the barn. Tucker and I were headed out to clear the roads of Cherokee County. We didn’t bother looking back.

WITH MY
feet parked by the steel heater that blasted warm air from the bottom of the maintainer, and my coat buttoned to the top, I shifted the transmission into first gear and eased out of the barnyard. As a renegade road maintainer, there was no stopping at the house for food or drink. I was sure Grandma Cora could hear the big machine go by, and that she’d see me from the kitchen and tell my grandfather, but no one was about to chase me down on this ice.

At the end of the driveway, I turned east and headed down the hill. The maintainer was sure-footed with the chains and homemade studs that Hank Fisher had spent the night welding, but the real test was dropping the blade.

I wanted to wait for a flat spot, with shallow ditches on each side, to test out the modifications, but I would be on a downhill slope for a while. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the adjusting lever and let the blade down easy, an inch at a time.

The maintainer jerked to the right, causing me to lose control just as I had in the driveway a few days before. I panicked for fear that I would flip the maintainer, and I did the worst
thing possible and applied the brakes too hard. The maintainer started to skid out of control. Determined not to fail before I even got to the bottom of McCray’s Hill, I remembered what Grandpa had told me. While it seemed counterintuitive, I tried releasing and tapping the brakes. The maintainer started to straighten and the skidding stopped. Pushing the blade farther down to the road surface gave me even more stability. I could hear the sweet sound of ice coming up and off the road. I turned around and looked behind me.

The maintainer was the world’s largest ice cube maker, spewing chunks of ice off each end of the blade! Grandpa was right—the momentum of going down the hill was just what we needed.

I was ready to spring my plan into action.

First stop was our nearest neighbor to the east, Frank Thorne. After I bladed the ice right off his driveway, I jumped down and ran to his door.

I was out of breath, but when Thorne came to the door, I blurted out, “I wanted to thank you.”

“It was nothing, kid.” He seemed to be avoiding my gaze. “How are you doing? You were in pretty bad shape last time I saw you.”

“I’m all better now. It was nice to have this guy around to keep me company,” I said, nodding at Tucker.

“I had some things I needed to do and I couldn’t let him tag along—thanks for watching him again.”

He reached down and patted Tucker on the head.

“It was no problem.”

“Hang on to him a little longer. I can see he’s enjoying riding
around with you on that big machine. What do you want, George?”

Excited, I struggled to get my words out. “I was wondering … could I get … your help on something?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “A McCray asking a Thorne for help?”

There was a lot of hurt in his words, but I pointed out to him an undeniable truth. “Mr. Thorne, you already helped a McCray the other day. You saved my life.”

From the gleam in his eyes, I could tell that he was a little proud of himself—deservedly. “What do you have on your mind?”

Once I had explained the problem, he looked at me in a curious way and said, “Stay here.” He shut the door and I waited in the cold morning air for him to return. When he did, he was dressed warmly, a chain saw in one hand and the keys to his old brown truck in the other.

WHEN MY
grandfather awoke from a nap later that afternoon, my grandmother insisted that he get up and out of bed and eat in the kitchen. He told me later how her mood had changed. One minute she’d exiled him to the bedroom, and now she wanted him up and about. Perhaps to make sure he stayed in bed, she had not shared with him that I had headed out of the driveway on the maintainer earlier that morning.