LITMIR.BIZ

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Dan, I betcha I can hold my breath longer’n you can,” Jack challenged me. So we tried that a while, but we both got dizzy, and pretty soon we were running and yelling again. The Old Man hollered at us a couple times and finally came out to the kitchen and gave us both a few whacks on the fanny to show us that he meant business. Jack wouldn’t cry—he was ten. I was only eight, so I did. Then the Old Man made us go into the living room and sit on the couch. I kept sniffling loudly to make him feel sorry for me, but it didn’t work.

      “Use your handkerchief” was all he said.

      I sat and counted the flowers on the stained wallpaper. There were twelve rows on the left side of the brown water-splotch that dribbled down the wall and seventeen on the right side.

      Then I decided to try another tactic on the Old Man. “Dad, I have to go.”

      “You know where it is.”

      When I came back, I went over and leaned my head against his shoulder and looked at the newspaper with him to let him know I didn’t hold any grudges. Jack fidgeted on the couch. Any kind of enforced nonactivity was sheer torture to Jack. He’d take ten spankings in preference to fifteen minutes of sitting in a corner. School was hell for Jack. The hours of sitting still were almost more than he could stand.

      Finally, he couldn’t take anymore. “Tell us a story, Dad.”

      The Old Man looked at him for a moment over the top of his newspaper. I don’t think the Old Man really understood my brother and his desperate need for diversion. Jack lived with his veins, like Mom did. Dad just kind of did what he had to and let it go at that. He was pretty easygoing—I guess he had to be, married to Mom and all like he was. I never really figured out where I fit in. Maybe I didn’t, even then.

      “What kind of a story?” he finally asked.

      “Cowboys?” I said hopefully.

      “Naw,” Jack vetoed, “that’s kid stuff. Tell us about deer hunting or something.”

      “Couldn’t you maybe put a couple cowboys in it?” I insisted, still not willing to give up.

      Dad laid his newspaper aside and took off his glasses. “So you want me to tell you a story, huh?”

      “With cowboys,” I said again. “Be sure you don’t forget the cowboys.”

      “I don’t know that you two been good enough today to rate a story.” It was a kind of ritual.

      “We’ll be extra good tomorrow, won’t we, Dan?” Jack promised quickly. Jack was always good at promising things. He probably meant them, too, at the time anyway.

      “Yeah, Dad,” I agreed, “extra, extra, special good.”

      “That’ll be the day,” the Old Man grunted.

      “Come on, Dad,” I coaxed. “You can tell stories better’n anybody.” I climbed up into his lap. I was taking a chance, since I was still supposed to be sitting on the couch, but I figured it was worth the risk.

      Dad smiled. It was the first time that day. He never smiled much, but I didn’t find out why until later. He shifted me in his lap, leaned back in the battered old armchair, and put his feet upon the coffee table. The wind gusted and roared in the chimney and pushed against the windows while the Old Man thought a few minutes. I watched his weather-beaten face closely, noticing for the first time that he was getting gray hair around his ears. I felt a sudden clutch of panic. My Dad was getting old!

      “I ever tell you about the time your granddad had to hunt enough meat to last the family all winter?” he asked us.

      “Are there cowboys in it?”

      “Shut up, Dan, for cripes’ sakes!” Jack told me impatiently.

      “I just want to be sure.”

      “You want to hear the story or not?” the Old Man threatened.

      “Yeah,” Jack said. “Shut up and listen, for cripes’ sakes.”

      “It was back in the winter of 1893, I think it was,” Dad started. “It was several years after the family came out from Missouri, and they were trying to make a go of it on a wheat ranch down in Adams County.”

      “Did Grandpa live on a real ranch?” I asked. “With cowboys and everything?”

      The Old Man ignored the interruption. “Things were pretty skimpy the first few years. They tried to raise a few beef-cows, but it didn’t work out too well, so when the winter came that year, they were clean out of meat. Things were so tough that my uncles, Art and Dolph, had to get jobs in town and stay at a boardinghouse. Uncle Beale was married and out on his own by then, and Uncle Tod had gone over to Seattle to work in the lumber mills. That meant that there weren’t any men on the place except my dad and my granddad.”

      “He was our great-granddad,” Jack told me importantly.

      “I know that,” I said. “I ain’t that dumb.” I leaned my head back against Dad’s chest so I could hear the rumble of his voice inside my head again.

      “Great-Granddad was in the Civil War,” Jack said. “You told us that one time.”

      “You want to tell this or you want me to?” the Old Man asked him.

      “Yeah,” I said, not lifting my head, “shut up, Jack, for cripes’ sakes.”

      “Anyhow,” the Old Man went on, “Granddad had to stay and tend the place, so he couldn’t go out and hunt. Dad was only seventeen, but there wasn’t anybody else to go. Well, the nearest big deer herd was over around Coeur d’Alene Lake, up in the timber country in Idaho. There weren’t any game laws back then—at least nobody paid any attention to them if there were—so a man could take as much as he needed.”

      The wind gusted against the house again, and the wood shifted in the heating stove, sounding very loud. The Old Man got up, lifting me easily in his big hands, and plumped me on the couch beside Jack. Then he went over and put more wood in the stove from the big linoleum-covered woodbox against the wall that Jack and I were supposed to keep full. He slammed the door shut with an iron bang, dusted off his hands, and sat back down.

      “It turned cold and started snowing early that year,” he continued. “Granddad had this old .45-70 single-shot he’d carried in the war, but they only had twenty-six cartridge cases for it. He and Dad loaded up all those cases the night before Dad left. They’d pulled the wheels off the wagon and put the runners on as soon as the snow really set in good, so it was all ready to go. After they’d finished loading the cartridges, Granddad gave my dad an old pipe. Way he looked at it, if Dad was old enough to be counted on to do a man’s work, he was old enough to have his own pipe. Dad hadn’t ever smoked before—except a couple times down in back of the schoolhouse and once out behind the barn when he was a kid.

      “Early the next morning, before daylight, they hitched up the team—Old Dolly and Ned. They pitched the wagon-bed, and they loaded up Dad’s bedding and other gear. Then Dad called his dogs and got them in the wagon-bed, shook hands with Granddad, and started out.”

      “I’ll betcha he was scared,” I said.

      “Grown men don’t get scared,” Jack said scornfully.

      “That’s where you’re wrong, Jack,” the Old Man told him. “Dad was plenty scared. That old road from the house wound around quite a bit before it dropped down on the other side of the hill, and Dad always said he didn’t dare look back even once. He said that if he had, he’d have turned right around and gone back home. There’s something wrong with a man who doesn’t get scared now and then. It’s how you handle it that counts.”

      I know that bothered Jack. He was always telling everybody that he wasn’t scared—even when I knew he was lying about it. I think he believed that growing up just meant being afraid of fewer and fewer things. I was always sure that there was more to it than that. We used to argue about it a lot.”

      “You

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