Harris and me : a summer remembered (4 page)

What actually happened is now blurred in confusion. I was up, Harris was up, I was down, Harris was down, we were pushed, pummeled, tossed and rooted, pounded into the muck, rolled into balls, and tossed like garbage back out of the pen.

"I'm blind! I can't see!" I screamed. I had pig crap under my eyelids. "Where are you? Harris!"

Something grabbed my hand and jerked, and I pulled back, thinking one of the sows still had me.

"It's me," Harris yelled in my ear. "Come on— we've got to get to the river." And he was laughing. "You look like a giant pig turd. Come on, let's get in the river."

A small river—little more than a creek, really— flowed along beside the farm in lazy S's that made shallow pools. Harris took my hand and dragged me through the pasture fence, across rough ground that kept tripping me, and into three feet of cold water.

I went down like a whale, sloshing back and forth, my mouth and eyes open—I had the muck inside my mouth as well—and didn't come up until all I tasted was water.

Harris was on the bank, dripping wet, rolling and slamming the ground with his fists, laughing so hard I thought he would choke.

"It wasn't funny." I said. "I think I ate pig crap."

"Minnie . . ."He choked back, trying to talk.

"Minnie?"

"Minnie . . . almost died when you landed on her . . ."He was off again, gasping and wheezing, and when I thought of the sow I landed on—apparently Minnie—and remembered her little pig eyes

looking up at me as I came down, I started smiling, then giggling, and pretty soon both of us were rolling on the side of the river and we didn't stop laughing until I heard Clair yell something from the house.

Harris rolled to his feet. "Come on."

"What is it?"

"Lunch/ 7 he yelled back at me, running toward the house. "Forenoon lunch."

"But we just ate a few minutes ago."

"Did not. Hell, it's been close to an hour, maybe more. Come on —you want Louie to get all the cake?"

It wasn't a full meal—like the two breakfasts. There was sliced Velveeta cheese, some homemade bread, slices of meat (I found later to be smoked venison), pickles, and a large cake with chocolate frosting in a rectangular metal pan.

The problem was that the food was all sitting on the table ready for us and Louie was already there free feeding, so when we got there a lot of the sandwich fixings were gone and about half the cake, and Louie was sitting at the table with crumbs and bits of cheese and bread all over him. Knute was drinking another cup of coffee, staring at the table, and we ate silently, standing, dripping by the door, each with a sandwich in one hand, a piece of cake in the other.

Nobody asked why we were soaking wet or what we had been doing, which I thought strange until I remembered that they had been exposed to Harris

much longer than me and were probably used to anything.

"The east forty is ready for mowing."

For a moment the words didn't register—seemed to be the voice of God talking. A deep voice, almost booming, and I actually looked up to the ceiling. Then I realized it was Knute. I stared at him but nobody else seemed to take notice, and he was still sitting, drinking coffee, staring at the same point on the table. But his words seemed to excite Harris, who smiled and went outside still eating cake.

I followed, licking frosting from my fingers, and caught him at the gate when he stopped to make sure he could see Ernie.

"What's up?"

"Pa's going to mow."

"So?"

"So we get to ride the team ..."

"Oh." I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. "Good. That will be fun."

". . . and hunt mice."

"Mice?"

"Man"—Harris shook his head—"you don't know nothing, do you?"

up from the river—and when they moved closer I could see that very little of their bulk was fat. Bunched beneath the skin on their rear ends and in their shoulders were great bulges of muscles.

Everything about them was massive. Huge heads that lowered to nuzzle Knute's hand while he stood in the back door of the barn, enormous round feet that sunk forever into the mud in back of the barn, great, soulful brown eyes that somehow made me want to hug the giants.

Knute turned and walked back into the barn and the horses followed like puppies. At the end nearest the front door was a double stall, and Bill and Bob moved into it. Knute came out of the pump house with a lard pail full of oats and poured half for each of them in a small wooden feed box nailed to the side of the manger.

Hanging on nails by the door were great loops of leather and chain with round collars over them, which I had seen earlier but hadn't understood and didn't want to ask about because I was sick of looking stupid.

Knute took the collars down and put them around the horses' necks while they were eating and then began draping the leather and chain over them, and I realized it was all harness.

Harris was all over the horses while Knute worked. He crawled under them, over them, handing ends of

straps to Knute—who was back to silence—and the horses stood peacefully even when Harris stooped to walk between their back legs and out into the aisle to stand next to me.

Knute stood quietly until they had finished their oats. He then held their bridles loosely and, standing between their heads, backed them out into the aisle and walked them out of the barn to the row of machinery by the granary.

I got the impression that he didn't really need to lead them. They knew exactly where to go and what to do. When they came to what I learned was the mower they turned themselves around and backed, one on either side of a long wooden tongue, into position for pulling.

Knute hooked their trace chains into a big cross-piece of wood hooked to the mower and brought the tongue up to attach to a crosspiece from one horse to the next.

"Come on/ ; Harris said, and I was surprised to see he was carrying an empty feed sack he'd picked up somewhere. "We got to get on."

"Get on what?"

"The horses . . ."

Harris jumped into the space between the horses by climbing on the mower and hopping along the tongue until he was even with their shoulders. Then he grabbed two horns that stuck up on top of the

collar and climbed up until he was sitting on the right horse.

"Come on," he said. "Get up on Bill. You want to be left behind?"

As a matter of fact I was thinking that exact thing just then—that rather than climb up onto a horse as big as most trucks, I would definitely rather be left behind. But pride won out and I hesitantly made my way onto the mower in back of the left horse, Bill, and took one careful step after another to climb the tongue until I could pull myself up on his shoulders. He was so wide my legs seemed to go straight out to either side and I could feel him breathing beneath me like a warm bellows, great drafts of air as his shoulders worked slowly.

The ground seemed miles away and when I heard a sudden mechanical clanking and the horses moved slightly, I grabbed desperately for the horned things around the collar.

"Let go the names," Harris said. "And raise your leg and put it under the reins. Pa can't drive with you sitting on the reins."

I turned and Knute had raised the sickle bar so it stood almost straight up and worked a lever to disengage it and was waiting patiently for me to do what Harris said.

"We want to hurry," Harris told me while I sorted my legs out from all the lines and straps and rings.

"We want to get out of the yard before Buzzer knows we're going ... Oh shoot. Now it's too late."

I had just gotten squared away and was about to ask who Buzzer was when out of the corner of my eye I saw the cat come to the barn door and sit, watching us. "You mean the cat?"

Harris nodded. "It's better if we get out without him seeing us."

I had seen the cat briefly earlier, during milking when Louie squirted milk into his mouth, but I hadn't appreciated just how large he was; he was the size of a collie, maybe just a bit bigger, with large forelegs and huge, round pads on his feet. On the end of each ear there was a bedraggled tuft and his coat was spotted, almost dappled.

Knute steered the team toward a gate in a pasture fence that led us directly past the front door of the barn and Harris leaned across the space between the horses to talk quietly.

"You don't want to touch Buzzer."

I nodded. "You're right. I don't want to touch him." It seemed an odd thing to say since Buzzer was sitting down on the ground and I was what felt like eight feet in the air.

"He ain't normal or nothing," Harris continued. "Louie found him in the woods one spring when he was looking for wood to cut. Buzzer was just a kitten

then and Louie brought him back in his pocket. He grew some/'

"I guess . . ."

I was going to say more but we were right next to the door and the cat suddenly bounced up—it seemed without effort—and landed on the rear end of the horse I was riding on.

I started, expecting the horse to react, but nothing happened. Bill just kept plodding on with Buzzer sitting on his butt, leaning out a bit to look ahead around me.

"No matter what he does, don't you touch him," Harris repeated. "Only Louie can touch him. Buzzer can be a little edgy about being touched if it ain't Louie."

I nodded and whispered to him, "Why is he riding on the horse with me?"

"He likes it when Pa mows 'cause he can get the mice. That's why I wanted to sneak out. He makes it hard to catch the mice because he's so fast. Just watch what I do and do the same. Sometimes we can get out without him if he's sleeping, but if he sees the mower he knows what's going to happen and he comes along and ruins it for everybody."

I wasn't sure what Buzzer was going to ruin—I couldn't, for instance, understand why we were going to get mice. As far as I was concerned Buzzer could

have them all. I was ready to get off and let him have the horse as well.

Knute had stopped at the gate and Harris jumped down, opened it, closed it after we were through, and scrambled back up on Bob while we were still moving.

Once through the gate Knute turned the team and we walked slowly along the fence that went next to the driveway back out toward the main road. I kept a leery eye over my shoulder, watching Buzzer, but the big cat just sat there, looking at the sky and flying birds while the horses walked.

In a quarter mile or less we came to a stand of densely packed alfalfa almost waist high, and Knute stopped the horses at the corner of the field and lowered the sickle bar. He took a can of oil from a little holder beneath the seat on the mower and squirted oil all along the sickle bar, then sat once more and worked a lever to engage the clutch.

Harris got down and motioned for me to do the same. "We got to walk in back of the mower now and catch mice."

It was, finally, too much. "Harris, why do we want the mice?"

"For the money."

"What money?"

"Louie. He pays us a penny for each two mice we get him. Except for Buzzer, of course. Louie don't pay

Buzzer nothing 'cause Buzzer he just ruins 'em all to pieces and won't give them up anyway. Last summer I tried to take one away from him and get the money for it and he like to killed me. That's why I say don't you touch him nor take none of his mice."

"I won't."

I was going to ask why Louie paid for the mice— I thought, after watching at breakfast one and breakfast two and lunch, that he might eat them—but Knute made a squeaking sound by pursing his lips and the horses started forward, pulling the mower. With the clutch engaged, the wheels drove the sickle bar back and forth as the mower moved and sharp, triangular-shaped blades snick-snicked back and forth rapidly and cut the hay as neat as scissors.

I stood behind with Harris and watched the hay falling back across the sickle bar. The motion was mesmerizing. The bar slid along cutting and the alfalfa dropped and dropped in a never-ending row.

"Come on." Harris started following the sickle bar, walking eight or so feet in back of it. "Watch for 'em now, keep watching ..."

I was more involved in watching Buzzer. He was between Harris and me, walking along, studying the newly fallen grass ahead alertly, taking one careful step after another. Suddenly he pounced, rising in an arc and down, with his feet buried in the grass. He brought one pad up with a mouse hooked in a razor-

sharp claw, gave me what I took to be a threatening look, and popped the mouse into his mouth. If he chewed at all, it was just a single bite and down it went.

"Rats," Harris said. "See? Right there goes half a cent. He always gets 'em first. I think he hears 'em or something."

He waved for me to follow and I stepped forward, keeping well wide of Buzzer. Harris hadn't taken two steps when he jumped, forward and down, grabbed at the grass, and raised his fist clutching a handful of grass and a mouse. "Got one!"

I nodded but noted that Buzzer was watching as well, with a faintly proprietary air, and I wondered just which mice he might consider his and which he might consider mine.

For the time being it didn't matter. The alfalfa that fell back across the sickle bar was so thick I didn't understand how Harris or Buzzer could see mice.

I kept walking along. Harris got two more and Buzzer got three more and I still hadn't gotten any. Harris was starting to give me distinctly dirty looks and I decided I better get busy and had no more than lowered my eyes for another look than I saw a little form scurrying through the grass.

"Got one!" I yelled, a bit prematurely as I jumped for it. I missed, saw it wiggle again, grabbed at the

grass, and felt the mouse wriggle inside my hand. I looked up and there was Buzzer—staring at me full on in the face with his wide yellow eyes. He pointedly looked down at the mouse, then up at my face again.

I nodded—"My mistake"—and gave him the mouse, throwing it to him. He caught it in midair and swallowed it whole.

"Ahh, come on," Harris snorted. He'd been watching the whole exchange. "That ain't fair—he didn't earn that one. He's just taking them from you."

"It's all right. I don't mind." I didn't, either. When he looked at me that way I would have given him anything he wanted.