Heart of a Shepherd (13 page)

I just sit and look at the charred ground and twisted metal that used to be the barn. There was a cottonwood shading the south side. It had a tire swing, and when I was little, Pete used to push me so high, my
feet would reach the crown of the hills. The scorched skeleton of a trunk and one branch are all that remain. A lump of half-melted truck tire lies at the base. It's the tree that brought down the barn.

The house is heat-blistered but still standing, only because Grandpa spent his last hour at home mowing down the dead grass so it wouldn't carry the flames to the walls of the house.

Grandpa hated mowing. “That's what sheep are for,” he would grump at Grandma when she made him trim the lawn for company. But he knew danger. I'm sure somewhere in his journals there is an accounting of every danger this family has faced and Grandpa's plan to fix it.

He knew it was a hazard to keep a tree near a building where a burning branch could fall and light up the roof. There's not even a shrub in reach of the house. But he knew I loved that tree and still rode the swing. I should have outgrown swing-riding years ago. Now there's nothing left of the barn except the concrete floor and a heap of scrap metal still warm to the touch.

Frank, Jim, and John came down from the mountains yesterday when they reopened the road to our place, and Pete just got in from Texas this morning.
Before, whenever the boys came home, there'd be a racket of teasing, bickering, and wild stories, and Dad and Grandpa would be right there, making us behave and putting us to work. Now it's tomb quiet, even with all five of us. We've become a house full of men who don't know what to say to each other.

After a while, Pete finds me. He's in his class B uniform for travel, with the light green shirt and the pants with a stripe and the shiny black shoes. I slide over so he can sit by me on the porch step. He's taller than Dad now, and their voices are so much alike I can't tell them apart on the phone.

“I'm going to miss that tree,” Pete says, and tilts his head toward where the barn used to stand. “Grandpa used to push me on that swing sometimes when Mom was busy with the babies.”

I just nod and lean my head on his shoulder because, honestly, I've never thought of what it was like for him to be twelve, like me, and have four little brothers tearing up the place. Loud, I guess.

Pete slides an arm around me and says, “Jeez, Brother, it was lightning. Even God doesn't know where lightning is going to strike. Nobody is mad at you, not about Grandpa or the barn or anything.
Besides, we can rebuild it. Dad and Grandma and I have a plan.

“I promised,” I say, and then I have to sniff up a whole glob of snot that suddenly appears in my nose. “I promised to take care of this place for him. I promised to keep it the same.” I've been squeezing that thought in and swallowing it down ever since we got back to the ranch.

Pete must be able to tell, because he just nods and says, “You can throw up if you want. Might be a good time for it.”

The minute he says it, I start gagging like a dog. Pete just sits there, patting me on the back like this is some kind of completely normal behavior.

A bunch of barfs later, Pete says, “Sometimes an empty stomach is better for news.” He hands me his handkerchief to wipe out my mouth. “I just got off the phone with Dad. His plane landed in Germany an hour ago, and he'll be home late tomorrow. Father Ziegler is going to drive him here from Fort Lewis. He'll probably miss most of the wake, but he'll be at the funeral Saturday for sure.”

Home—he's coming home! I never imagined it would be like this.

*  *   *

We spend hours getting ready for the wake. People and dishes of food arrive steadily. Jim and Frank set up tables in the yard. John and Pete get an extra generator running and string up outdoor lights. By late in the afternoon, cousins, nieces, and nephews roll in from Chicago and Boise and Yakima.

Everyone is quiet at first. They say their bit to Grandma and look at all the pictures of Grandpa, but pretty soon folks loosen up. Mary Gail steers them to the tables, and they get to work on the platters of sandwiches and covered casseroles that are stacked three deep on the kitchen counter. After supper, the stories start flowing. Folks get to laughing, and Grandma is in the thick of it, telling the wildest stories of them all.

Most of the evening, I just sit on the edge of things and take it in. I hear a dozen versions of the Grandpa stories I've known all my life: how he grew up on a dairy farm in Nebraska, how he met Grandma while he was driving an ambulance in World War II, how he faced down a cattle rustler in the fifties without even pulling out a gun, how he writes to Quaker pastors and senators and bishops, and even presidents.

I just float over the top of all this talk, putting in the nods and “ums” where they go. I can't believe Dad
is going to come home to this. I've imagined him coming home a thousand times—the parade, the spotless house, the cows and horses healthy and strong, and all the pieces of the operation in working order. Now he'll come home to this—a burned-out ranch that looks no better than a bombed street in Iraq. We've got a house, but no barn. Horses, but nothing to feed them. The pigs pulled through, but all that's left of the chickens are a handful of feathers and coyote prints in the mud by the river. The sheep will be fine with Ernesto, but what on earth are we going to feed the cattle this winter, with all our hay burned up?

The wake goes on, and I'm glad it's getting dark so Dad won't see the worst of it right away. Pete puts some plywood over the burned grass in the front yard, and pretty soon there is dancing and singing.

Dad comes home in the middle of it. I don't even see him at first. I just hear a hundred separate conversations join into one cheer as Father Ziegler drives up the gravel road to the house. Grandma gets to hug Dad first. Apparently, this is something a hundred people can agree on without talking about it, because everyone automatically stands back for her. But then Pete pokes me out in front of him. When Grandma steps aside, I finally get a full look at my dad.

He's not as tall as I remember. His face is browner than Ernesto's. He scoops me up in a hug like he used to and lifts me off the ground, but my toes dangle in the dirt, which they didn't used to. He has a lot more muscles than before, and his body smells like—I don't know what—not like anything around here.

He sets me down and says, so everyone can hear, “You brought your grandfather's body home and even wildfires didn't stop you. That was brave. Thank you.”

If it was just him and me, I would have argued or at least explained that it was more a miracle, or at least a decision by his horse, Ike, than any doing of mine. I just tagged along and did the singing and praying. But he says it so stiff and formal in front of everyone that I don't know what to say. And then the moment passes, and the brothers crowd in for their hugs. I don't mind. I'm happy to stand back and watch while everyone else kisses him and asks their questions. Dad and I are going to have weeks, months—forever, really—after everyone else goes home.

Once the crowd thins out and the party moves to the cleaning-up-the-dishes part, Dad puts his arm over my shoulder and says, “Let's walk up to the reservoir.”

I get a lump in my throat when he says it because
that's our star-watching place and I haven't gone up there in a whole year, not since before Dad left for Iraq. We walk away from the house, up the river, and then along the path that leads to a stretch of grass above the reservoir. He's walking a lot slower than he used to, and he brought a flashlight, which isn't like him either. The fire didn't make it up here so it's still green, which smells like heaven after the dry, ashy smells around the house.

I lie back in the grass, thinking about what I can say to him about that moment after the fire when Grandpa was lying on the ground and his soul left his body like rays of sunlight, and about the moment I knew for sure what I'm meant to become.

But Dad doesn't sit down with me, and before I can even begin, he says, “I've got three days. I'm sorry, son. I wanted to tell you before someone else does. It's just emergency leave. I have to go back the day after the funeral.”

“What?”

I sit right up and stare at him. It can't possibly be true. We were barely making it with Grandpa's help.

“You're going to leave me and Grandma here alone? You already served longer than you are supposed to. It's not fair.” I feel my muscles wind up tight
like I'm getting ready to hit someone. “Why can't it be someone else's turn?”

Dad paces while I talk, and every little noise of a mouse or a bat makes him jump. Seems to me that even with all the extra muscle, he's not as solid as he used to be. I watch him peering into the dark shadows around the reservoir. I don't know what he thinks he's going to see.

“Be as angry as you want about me going back to Iraq, but I know you understand. I've heard the story about you and the wildfire from a dozen people to night. Tell me this, son: Why didn't you and Grandpa get in the truck and go to the fairgrounds like everybody else?”

He says it almost like I'm a soldier of his and not his own boy.

“Jeez, Dad, Ernesto was out there all alone, just him and Donner and the sheep. We couldn't leave them!”

“So you rode out against an unstoppable force of nature. Why?”

“We didn't have to stop the whole fire, just the part of it that was close to our sheep. I didn't mean for Grandpa to die, Dad. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. “

I look up and see that Dad is almost crying.

“My soldiers are still out there,” he says, “and they are in danger every day. “

I stand up and put my hand in his, because I do understand. It is breaking his heart to leave, but he'll never rest until they all come home.

My hand anchors him, and he stops pacing. After a minute, he sits on the grass and I sit beside him. We look up at the stars.

“One good thing about the desert, you can see stars from horizon to horizon; none of this mountains-cutting-off-half-the-sky business.”

I move shoulder to shoulder with him and look up. The summer constellations are moving on and the fall constellations are rising, but I can still pick out the Summer Triangle.

“Deneb, Altair, Vega.” Dad says their names solemnly, like a prayer. “I don't get much chance to go to church these days, but whenever I see those stars I pray for you.”

I nod, thinking about all those three hundred-some nights that I searched for my Herdsman and prayed for Dad on the way in from barn chores at night.

He gives me a nudge with his shoulder and says, “Mostly, I pray my sons won't have to go to war.”

“I thought you wanted us to go in the army. Why didn't you say something when Pete and Jim and John signed up?”

“I wasn't a veteran then. I don't want them to see the things I've seen.”

“But, Dad, I finally decided what branch of the army I want to be in. It sort of came to me while I was bringing Grandpa's body home.”

“You did? You want to be in the army?”

“Yeah. Chaplain Corps.”

Dad smiles, and I can feel his shoulders relax a few inches. “Well, I guess I could make an exception for a priest in the family. Father Alderman—I like the sound of that.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Maybe a little. I'm pretty sure your grandpa wouldn't have been surprised. He told me before I left that he wanted you to have this when he passed.”

He reaches in his jacket and pulls out Grandpa's black leather journal. “There are about thirty of these altogether at the house, and they are all for you. Grandpa told me once that his father asked him to keep a journal when he got drafted back in 1943. Good advice. I've been writing in a journal, too. It has kept
my feet on the ground and my mind steady during this command like nothing else has.”

I flip on Dad's flashlight and open the book. There is Grandpa's typewriter-perfect print and a date on the top of the page. I always thought Grandpa was just writing about the events of the day in his journals, but the book is nothing like a diary. There are quotes from the Bible and what Grandpa thought about them; lists of books he liked; the names of people he prayed for; and the weather report, in a tidy two-inch square at the top of each page. It's like holding a handful of diamonds—my grandpa's whole prayer life in books that I can keep forever. I've only read a few dozen lines, but already I can hear his voice and feel his steady hand on my shoulder.

The first thing I think about when I wake up on the morning of Grandpa's funeral is the Mass, and making it his one last beautiful thing. Father Ziegler went over the Rite of Christian Burial with me yesterday, and we talked about some changes we will make to honor his faith and all his Quaker friends who will come.

I run through the parts of the Mass, lying on the top bunk because Frank insisted on the bottom one
even though it isn't really his room anymore. Jim and John are doubled up in the other bedroom, and I don't think Pete slept at all. He was looking over Grandma's account books in the kitchen long after everyone was in bed, and he's up, talking on the phone now.

When I hear Grandma start her usual pot of morning oatmeal, I get up. John's in the kitchen, rattling pots and bragging on the cowboy griddle cakes he's going to make for all of us. Jim is eyeing the steak and eggs in the fridge. Me, I don't think I could get down toast and butter, but before we hit a full debate on the topic of breakfast, the ground starts shaking.

It's not the disaster-movie kind of earthquake, but a rumble strong enough to move my juice glass across the kitchen table in tiny hops. I jump up, jam my bare feet into boots, and run outside.

There is a long cloud of dust coming up the road, and out of it pulls a truck with four latrines on it. The potty truck pulls into our front yard. Right behind is a truck full of lumber, a flatbed with three months’ worth of hay, a trailer with a dozen calves, and a school bus full of folks I've never seen before in my life.

Frank and Pete follow me outside, but Dad is already there.

“Who are these people?” Frank says.

The bus parks and the driver hops out. He is a serious-looking man not quite as old as Grandma, but definitely older than Dad. He walks right up to Grandma with his baseball hat in hand. There is another man about Pete's age right behind him.