Christmas with Tucker (5 page)

It took only moments for me to recognize what a good dog Thorne had stumbled on to. As I got ready for school that morning, it was clear that both my grandparents had reached the same conclusion.

No one in the house could pass the dog without petting him and making some favorable remark about either his appearance or his friendly demeanor. When I got out of bed that morning, I almost tripped over him. He had spent the rest of the night on the floor, at my bedside. Having a dog felt so normal, if not
necessary—it was as if the McCray family had suddenly discovered the benefits of running water.

Looking back on it now, Tucker was the only living creature in our house who wasn’t feeling sad, and perhaps that’s why he established himself so easily in our hearts and minds. When he wagged his tail and acted content, he reminded us how happiness looked and joy felt. We sensed that there was a huge absence in our lives, and though Tucker couldn’t fill it, his presence hinted, gave us some hope, that those vast empty spaces might someday be full again.

On Thursday afternoon, after dropping my lunch pail and books in the house, I trudged around the farm, doing my chores with Tucker by my side. It had been a while since I strayed far from the barnyard, and I thought today would be a good day to do some exploring. Grandpa caught up to us and seemed to have a new project in mind for us.

“Hold him for a second.” He slipped a bit of twine around Tucker’s neck and roughly measured its diameter, tying a small knot in the twine and stuffing it into his pocket. “I’ve got some leather scraps around the shop. I’ll make him a collar. Do you want to help?”

“Nah, I think I’ll take him for a good long walk down to the creek.”

Grandpa reached into his jacket and pulled out a letter. “I almost forgot. This is from your mother.” He handed the slim envelope to me, along with the rope we were still using for a leash. “You better take this, too. Just in case he tries to run off. Don’t let him in the barn when I’m milking. I don’t want him spooking the cows.”

“I won’t. Thanks, Grandpa.”

I pocketed the rope and the letter. I wondered if he’d speculated on its contents and how he felt knowing that I’d told Grandma I might want to leave the farm before year’s end. I knew that my grandfather, like Grandma, wanted me to feel that I would always have a home with them. I didn’t want to hurt him in any way.

As Tucker and I walked away from our homestead, the late-afternoon sun reflected off his brushed coat in hues of deep burnt pumpkin and cinnamon that reminded me of autumn. The clouds hung low in the sky and made the blue space above us seem closer, yet still immense. It was brisk for November, but bearable with a sunny and gentle breeze that carried a musty timber smell up from the creek.

As we walked out of the barnyard, we passed by Dick and Dock. Both of the giant beasts were resting their heads on the top rail of their corral. Tucker ambled over to investigate the pair, but when he got too close, they kicked up their heels and disappeared into the barn.

“Come on, Tucker, let’s go.”

We headed east along the path that went past Thorne’s cabin. At the edge of the fence line, we turned south, through the hay-fields, and down to Kill Creek. Once we crossed under the fence, I slipped the rope around his neck so we could practice working on the leash.

When we got to the creek, I released Tucker and skipped stones. While I counted skips, Tucker sank down to his eyeballs in the creek, holding his head just above the water and lapping up cool drinks of the murky water with his tongue.

While resting in a little patch of grass by the bank, I
watched the dog play in the water and tried to take in the pleasing aroma of the wild onions that were the last remaining bits of plant life tenacious enough to stand up to the advancing march of winter.

I pulled the envelope from my pocket, removed the letter, and started to read:

I folded up her letter and put it back in my pocket. The house in the picture seemed huge by our standards and my bedroom was already decorated with a football bedspread and bookshelves. I had always wanted bookshelves in my room.

When I turned to the north, a growing chill was in the air. The sky was going from blue to gray and puffs of darker clouds were rolling in on the horizon. With each gust of wind, the few leaves that remained on the trees were letting go, accepting their place. Unfortunately, I had no such clear convictions. Kansas. Minnesota. Minnesota. Kansas. Where was my resting place?

The dog’s nose was deep in a mouse run and his tail wagged rhythmically. I wondered how dogs sensed or thought about
home
and if Tucker might have something to teach me on the subject.

“Tucker, come on. It’s time to walk back.”

“SNOW DAY!”
my grandfather yelled, his voice booming up the staircase.

Nowadays, when children hear grown-ups say “snow day” they rejoice because it means school is canceled, and they can sleep in and dream of a day spent sledding or building snow forts. But back then, those two words meant something entirely different in our house. It did not necessarily mean that I had no school. What it did mean, I did not especially want to hear at 4:30 on a Friday morning.

Tucker liked bunking with me, and I was happy to have a warm furry thing near me in the early-morning hours. He seemed ready to do his part to make sure I got up on time. Try as I might, he was hard to ignore. Once he heard my grandfather’s call, he began yawning, scratching, and stretching.

Already my grandmother was brewing coffee, and when its aroma mixed with that of fried potatoes, eggs, and bacon, it was a strong call to draw me out of bed, though I remained huddled in a cocoon of warm covers for a few more precious minutes.

There was an additional sound on that November morning:
the powerful, deep rumble of the diesel engine on the maintainer as it first turned over. As the engine smoothed out, the muffled coughs of that old steel dragon gave way to a roar that was out of place on a cold winter morning.

I could hear my grandfather put the throttle into idle, allowing the engine to warm up; he often let it warm up for a good half hour, especially on very cold mornings. The cab door slammed shut. Grandpa was on his way to the house to make sure I was moving around. There was no need to pull back the curtain from the window; I knew what I’d see outside—snow.

Tucker, now wide awake, sensed that some action was afoot. He pricked his velvety red ears as if to say, “What is this ‘snow day’ stuff?”

The back kitchen door slammed and Grandpa yelled up the stairs a second time, “Snow day!” I was more than wide awake now, knowing that I’d have to take over my father’s responsibilities and do the morning milking, so that Grandpa had adequate time to do his job, too—all before I caught the bus and put in a full day at school.

Tucker jumped off the bed, sensing the work that needed to be done, and looked at me. I thought I heard him say, “Let’s go. Don’t you know? It’s a snow day.”

“Not you, too! Okay, okay!” Between my grandfather’s calls and Tucker’s coaxing, I somehow moved past the adolescent brooding and resentment that had gripped me when Grandpa Bo first laid out the extra morning chores. Egged on by Tucker, I felt the tasks now more of a challenge than an unjust imposition, and I would rise to them—even if I was rising very slowly in this cold weather.

Forcing myself out of bed, I pulled my jeans over the long underwear that kept me warm. All the while, Tucker circled
around me impatiently. I scolded him. “Look, Tucker, I don’t have fur like you. I have to wear this stuff. You’ll just have to wait.”

Peering downstairs through the floor grate that allowed the heat from the kitchen to flow up into my bedroom, and which also was our unofficial intercom system, I yelled to my grandfather, “I’ll be there in a minute!”

Tucker and I spilled down the stairs and into the toasty kitchen, ready to work. My grandmother hugged me as if she had missed me terribly. Her affection chased away any lingering chill in the early-morning air. She had her winter clothes on and was ready to help out with the milking.

“Snow day,” she repeated, holding me tightly. I ate quickly. Grandma Cora’s cooking, like glowing embers in the pit of my stomach, sustained and warmed me for hours—if not a lifetime.

There were twenty impatient cows to milk and only two hours to do it before I had to be ready for school, so Grandma and I got to work in the predawn hours. First, my grandmother filled two buckets with hot water from the kitchen sink and mixed in the special soap we used on the cows’ udders and teats to kill any bacteria that could contaminate the milk. I patted Tucker on the head and reminded him that this was the one chore for which he would have to stay behind.

We put on our boots and headed out the back door, each carrying one pail of hot, soapy water that steamed all the way down to the barn in a cold morning air that both assaulted and embraced us.

There were floodlights illuminating the barnyard, so we could see how hard it was snowing. Already, there were two or three inches on the ground.

After pulling off my warm mittens, I lifted the latch from
the hook and slid open the south barn door. As I let in the first six cows, Grandma poured their feed into the troughs. There might not have been much variety in their diet, but still each cow eagerly made her way to the breakfast table. To get to the trough, each cow pushed her head straight through the milking stanchions, which I closed behind them so that they were securely in place.

We were lucky, or so my grandfather reminded me. As far as modern inventions went, a close third behind the wheel and indoor plumbing was the Babson Bros. automatic milking machine.

The milk from our cows went first into a large stainless-steel container that was attached to the machine. To the uninitiated, it looked like a giant steel urinal attached to a motor.

As I strapped the Babson Brothers’ finest invention to each cow, my grandmother scrubbed away, preparing for milking. My father or grandfather could complete this series of tasks with effortless motions, but with freezing fingers, and less experience, I moved clumsily. It was 6:30 before Grandma and I could close the barn door and call the job finished.

By 7:15, on that Friday morning of our first snow day, I was cleaned up and standing out by the road, waiting for the bus. Far to the west, I could hear the distant roar of the maintainer vanquishing our first snowfall by pushing it to the shoulders that flanked the roads. If it had only snowed a little bit more I might have been able to avoid school. Winter was only just beginning to stretch her legs.

“WAKE UP
, McCray!”