Heart Earth (12 page)

Hurrying to beat the rain, we ferry the boards to the car and my father seizes the widest one and lays it into the soupy area beneath the rear bumper as a base to set the jack on. He rolls his sleeves to the elbow. "Time for the Armstrong method," he says as general encouragement. However frazzled the rest of my father may be, his arms always are strong and they now pump the jack handle vigorously,
whup
-down
whup
-down
whup
-down. During these exertions my mother stands arms-crossed and watches him as if trying to reach a diagnosis.

Charlie feels pretty good most of the time. Says begets a pain in his side once in awhile, but not often.

When Dad stands up from the bumper jack to rest for a moment, my mother steps in and teeters her full weight, such as it is, on the jack handle. The jack head ratchets slowly up and catches in the next higher notch, ratchets up another oh so slow notch when she does it again. She manages to contribute half a dozen notches up the jack stem before my father judiciously takes over again.

No matter who works the jack handle, though, the rear bumper rises very little but the board submerges steadily. My father cusses, releases the jack, and layers more boards on top of the first one.

This time the jacking brings up the entire back of the car enough to slip boards lengthwise under the tires, and, the first spits of rain beginning to find us, the three of us hastily lay paths of boards in the ruts ahead far enough—we hope—to give us a running start out of the mudhole.

This time my father mans the gas pedal and steering wheel. The Ford shoots ahead the length of the first-laid boards, onto the next set, then slews off and drops, mired, again. My father cusses and we all climb out to start over on the jacking.

CRACK!

—from a lightning bolt striking the butte nearest us.

"Ivan, get in the car, right now," my mother commands, flinging the passenger-side door open and poising to follow me in. "Charlie...?"

Even in a fuming mood, my father knows enough to listen to thunder that is too close to cast an echo. He ducks into the coupe on the driver's side as more lightning slams to earth not very far away, and here we are in the insulating rubber-tired Ford. Grounded, in numerous meanings of the word.

Again we perform the kicking off of overshoes, as the rain tapping on the car roof lets us know it is going to be around for a while. I promptly squirm into the backseat and ledge myself crosswise in the rear window, a la Arizona. I find I don't fit as well as I did. True, there'd been enough rain in the Maudlow country this spring to shrink the Ford, but I knew I was growing, outgrowing. Lying curled against the car glass, this is maybe my final chance to childspy on the mysteries in the front seat.

My father lights a cigarette to try to bribe his nerves. Then he contemplates the ruts ahead, troughs of brown jelly. "We could use about a hundred feet of that Arizona desert just now."

My mother says nothing.

My father's Stetson is damp and he takes it off and crimps the crown and brim here and there to make sure it keeps the crease he likes. Under the disguise of that comes his question.

"Ye feeling all right, are you?"

I've been having a little more asthma,
her report to Wally during the strenuous Morgan lambing season just past,
but not so bad.

"Tuckered out on mud, is all," my mother answers. "When we get through being stuck, let's don't fight this road any more today."

My father weighs that. Beyond the mudhole are the day's chores that all need doing: fixing the fence of the saddle pasture, then rounding up into it the necessary horses of summer, Tony, Duffy, Sugar, Star.

"Berneta, we need to lay hold of those damn horses."

"This isn't getting it done."

My father inspects the rain pittering onto the windshield and now he says nothing.

Bunked where I am, I carefully stay more silent than their silence.

Sure as the world, my father rouses to the weather, the freshening season. "All this rain is bringing the grass, ye have to say that for it."

He smokes as if thinking over something my mother had just asked. "We can come out good on this sheep deal, don't ye think?"

The sheep deal. It has been in the air all the way back to Wickenburg. My father had not given up on Arizona for good, in those desert nights of talking things over, but he'd discerned that he had to be stronger in his wallet and a few other parts of himself to niche us a new life there. The other side of the Arizona mirror went toward north: one more mountain summer in Montana, a last high season of livestock while they were drawing fancy prices. The sheep of war. In a band of sheep—a thousand ewes, their thousand and some lambs, and their wool—you were looking at a profit of several thousand dollars, and these were dollars of 1945. Wages would never add up that fast, even if they could be found and hung onto.
Would be nice here for the summer,
my mother allowed herself to pine momentarily at the Morgan cookhouse near the end of that spring,
trees in the yard, a lilac bush out in front.
But the capable Morgans ran their ranch by themselves once lambing was over, and she recognized that by the first of June we would have to put our belongings in the Ford again. Somehow, summer had to be mined for all it was worth. So when my father began to think out loud about a sheep deal, she was ready to listen.
Looks like we should be able to make quite a little
money at it.
The sheep deal was a masterpiece of carvery. Dad and his favorite brother, Angus, a good business head, went in together and bought the band of a thousand ewes and their new lambs from Frank Morgan, turned right around and sold them for delivery that fall. Shearing time came before that, so the wool money came to us and Angus. But the summer range to run the sheep on needed to be rented from the Morgans, at so much per head; on the other hand, Dad would ameliorate that charge with some work for the Morgans—

When everybody had taken every whittle they could out of the hypothetical profits, up we would go into the high country with the actual band of sheep.

"Looks like,'letter becoming life in the dreamchamber of the Ford, "we should be able to make quite a little money at it," my mother repeats her vote for the sheep deal, for the summer of calculated risk we are trying to get to. "Give you a chance to take life a little easy, too."

"What, easier than this?"my father indicates our immobile condition. "Just sitting here letting the tires rest?"

"I'll rest you," my mother rejoins. I can't see her smile, but her voice has it.

"This sheep deal, Berneta." This arrives serious, pledge-like, from my father. "If it ever gets to be too much for ye, we'll back down out of there."

"Don't worry, I hired out to be tough," she heads him off on that. She makes a fist and rubs a hole in the breath fog on her window to peek at the weather.

"See there, the rains letting up," my father points out. "Ivan, you're not having much to say for yourself. What do ye think, ready to build some more road?"

Back to the jacking, and trying to roof the ruts with boards, a task which I adore. Then a miracle.
Bob Campbell,
one of Dad's army of Scotch relatives riding the Big Belt coulees,
happened along on a saddle horse and gave us a pull, and we finally did get out.

As he coils his lariat Bob Campbell tells us what we already have figured out, that any passing shadow of a cloud is enough to turn the Maudlow country into a gumbo quagmire. Then he cheerily wishes us luck and resumes his riding. Which again leaves the three of us, and the nearby homestead-haunted butte, and the horizon mountains, a bit farther from us than usual, of our past. Such home as we have is this country where my parents are trying and trying to taste the risk for each other. Married to the place.

The Rung cabin in the Bridger Mountains where Berneta, Charlie, and Ivan began their herding summer of 1945.

For the first time in half a year,
Berneta's letters seem to catch their breath.

***

June 8, 15, and 19, 1945. Her glad reports begin with what neighbored our meadow cabin on the face of Hatfield Mountain,
a nice stream.
Where my father,
getting caught up on his fishing,
made its waters our supperland of rainbow trout. Almost as softly as if talking to herself, she puts to the pages the three of us starting up our spiral staircase of summer.

We aren't working very hard at present. Were out for a horseback ride this afternoon, first time I've been on a horse for ages. Ivan & I rode Duffy, Charlie rode Sugar.
That tandem ride likely was our last; this was the getting-big-for-my-britches period when I took it into my head to require not only a horse all my own but the ruggedest possible saddle, a sawbuck packframe, for myself.

Received our band of sheep last Mon. Nice bunch of lambs, 1230 of them. Sure hope they weigh good this fall and we can keep the loss down...

We have a herder for now, but when the sheep go on the Forest Reserve the 1st of July or about, Charlie, Ivan & I may herd them. We aren't sure yet. Charlie is going up to look at the Reserve range & see how tough it is....

Don't know just yet when we will shear. I shouldn't have a lot of work to do after shearing, and that should only last one day unless a rainstorm catches us....

Ivan is busy drawing pictures. Does pretty good. He'll soon have a birthday, doesn't seem possible he'll be six....

***

When my father shouldered open the door of that cabin of then, packhorses and wife and child and twenty-two hundred sheep at his back, a mouse nest fell down onto the brim of his Stetson. Ceiling paper drooped in shreds. The greenblinds on the windows were speckled with mashed flies, the floor was soiled with mouse droppings and pack rat leavings.

The place was a sty, but not for long. The floor of a housing project cubicle on the factory outskirts of Phoenix, maybe Berneta would wash with tears. But this cabin on the summer mountain she launched into with soapy water. Led by the hurricane broom of my father, who cocked a look out every window he swept past to check on the behavior of the sheep.

To dream us this last time, into the twists of June, I harbor there at the very first hours of the swabbed cabin.

And watch Berneta as she gives her mop a conclusive wring. On the go, beds and plenty else to be seen to, she brushes by the foot of the scant cot beneath the south-most window and sings out, "Ivan, look how you'll just fit." I inspect, solemnly bob my head, and claim the bunk with my tarp-wrapped bedroll. A corner of my own, all I ask. My parents will share the plank-sided bed in the opposite corner, snug for two but they do not seem to mind the prospect. No pillows to this sheepcamp existence, so Berneta mounds our three mackinaw jackets at the head of her side of the bed to prop herself against asthma in the night.

Bleary windowpanes to be washed next. Berneta debates to herself whether to do away with the nasty green-blinds—nobody for five miles around to see in on us—but ends up scouring the fly matter off them. Blank windows have never seemed right to her.

Even though the morning outside is wearing its summer best—
hasn't rained the last 2 or 3 days, really seems good to see some sunshine
—I tag after Berneta there in the cabin. Follow her eyes while she inventories this domestic side of the sheep deal, the three-month one-room future. The cookstove is frankly puny, a midget two-lid job not much more than kneehigh even on her, but it will fire up fast and then not hold hot through these summer days. The elderly table, scarred and stained from extra duty as a butcher block, at least presides at the proper window, the west one which lets in a good view of the willow course of the creek. Across the room, the canned-goods cupboard for once is huge enough, homemade logic of someone who, like her, has needed to store away most of a season of groceries at a time. And she is glad of the smaller cool cupboard, the outside cabinet of shelves handy beside the door and tinned against rodents; leftovers will keep for a day or so in there, and for longer term, butter and cheese and any grouse my father manages to hunt can be sealed in jars and coldstored in the creek.