Patches: 2016

Patches

      A short story

      By Dan Sturn



7876 words

   

   

    Her announcement came the morning after Dad hit her:  "I always wanted one of those black and white cows," she said.  "Like you see in the posters."

    "You mean a Holstein," I said quietly.  "A dairy cow."

    "Ole man Gumbolt down the road may have a calf or two," Dad said, eyes still

bloodshot. 

    "Dairy," I said again, a little louder, hoping Dad would come to his senses.

    "Hop in the truck, we'll see."

    My brother and I watched my older sister grinning as she waited for Dad

to open the pickup door, which he did from his seat, and then struggled to get back up straight.

    Then, once he was sitting up straight again, clutching a cold beer in one hand, Dad’s other

hand gracefully tossed an empty into an old fertilizer bucket in the back of the truck. 

Dad could hit his mark without even looking.   

    My eyes rolled when I saw Sarah's grin turn to me, smirking.  This was her revenge, for telling

on her -- accidentally -- when Dad got home last night.  He wondered why a cigarette butt lay in the ashtray,

holding it in front of my face.  I spoke the truth.  I didn't know Dad would smack my bigger sister across her face.

    "This isn't gonna be good," my brother said, as we watched the black Ford pickup

drive slowly down the lane, slowly weaving around cold mud puddles left by the early spring. 

"It'll just add to the chores." 

    "Yeah," I said, and then started walking slowly down the twisted Barnyard Lane.  "Come on, Mark," I said.  "We

better get an early start on them chores." 



    What I didn't say was: Chances are high we'll have more to do when my dad and sister return. 



                              -----------------



    I wasn't much of a lawyer at twelve, but I always thought "dairy" meant government

regulators.  I didn't think Dad was gonna like that.  But I overheard Mr. Gumbolson tell my

father that when he made the decision to go into dairy, he invited the government

right straight into his business.  He'd spit between sentences.  Like, "we're facing a total demise."  Spit.

"Corporate Farming is behind all these new regulations," spit, "cause we can't handle the compliance burden." Spit.

    Dad and his brother cash-rented 1500 acres of corn and soybeans.  Some years were

good, some not so good.  Just last year, beans hit eleven bucks a bushel, but then we didn't

have as much to sell due to the spring floods that caused the price to spike upwards.  My mom would

scold my dad, something like: "a boy his age shouldn't know so much about the stock market."  But Dad wanted

me to keep an eye on the market because, as a schoolboy, our bus went by the elevator every day.



    We lived on an eighty-acre wooded farm.  Our gravel driveway wound a quarter-mile

through a pasture, leading to what we called "Barnyard Lane."  A tall metal gate

separated the driveway from another quarter-mile long gravel lane . . . Barnyard Lane . . .  that wound

through our barnyard, connecting seven barns with two sheds, three bins, a pump-

house with the old broken tall steel windmill and the old, unused, unsafe silo.  The girls would call

it Barnyard Lane, because it hosted dashes and sprints from barn to barn.  When he was home, working on a

broken implement, or fixing something with the welder, my dad would be sending us boys

on missions to find tools, or after a piece of steel or wood or bolt or what-have-you, and of course he would

send us up to the house to get a "cold one."  Every morning, the gravel would crunch at various speeds,

footsteps made when doing-the-chores became playing-in-the-basketball-barn.  And my sisters

would vary in their own relationship to the lane.  From resting-in-the-house-with-an-eye-on-the-lane

to working-in-the-garden.  The Barnyard Lane offered a bridge through the scene of daily

drudgery, connecting the chores to the eighty-acre woods. 

    My friends loved my farm.  They got to play baseball and run around town during

planting season.  In the summer they'd sometimes get permission to come out to the farm. 

And though I couldn't smell anything on our farm like the cow-smell they'd comment about,

they couldn't smell freshly turned dirt in the spring. 

    They would always want to throw rocks in the creek, climb to the top of the

silo, and chase the sheep.  Their predictable need to do something as stupid as stir up

the livestock usually caused us more work, so Mark and I quickly learned to be rather

reluctant to inviting them out to the farm. 

    Their parents didn't seem to want them around our farm anyway.  I overheard some

comments at a little league game one day.  Not that I got to play in the little league . . .

the tryouts always started right smack in the middle of planting season.  But last year, during the

rains, Dad let me walk from the tavern over to the ball diamond to see some of my

friends play a game of baseball.

    Of course, Mark and I had long-time friends at school, friends that I had known since

the first grade.  But they were also farmers and thus rarely had time to come out to the farm

anyway, though our woods definitely made a fun hangout during those wonderful periods

of rain that kept us all out of the fields.

    When we weren't working in the fields or in the barnyard, my brother and I explored

that woods.  We'd play army, sneaking up on the older Angus cows.  One time I got close

enough to jab one with a stick.  Unfortunately I had crawled through a thicket to get that close, and

by the time I made my way out my mom was very upset with how scratched up I got.

    We raised a hundred head of breeder cattle on my uncle's farm, and two-hundred head

on our farm.  Each fall an old Angus cow would mate with one of two Hereford bulls, and

produce Angus/Hereford calves in the late winter.  We would wean them in the spring,

separating the calves into bulls and heifers.  Then we would turn them bulls into steers, and

feed them ground corn until they were ready for their destiny.  We called them white-faced

steers. 

    In the last couple of years, to my dismay, we experimented with sheep.  Since we only

had about twenty head, Dad made the sheep Mark's responsibility.  He took a lot of teasing

about them from my uncle, who called Mark the "holy sheepherder." 

    My uncle liked the new Batman series on TV, especially Robin.  He would get us "Batman

drinks" whenever we had to wait for him at the tavern.  And he'd say "Holy Cows" as he

chuckled, looking over the fence at our white-faced steers. 



                            -----------------



    My sister's dumb eighth grade boyfriends would pick on me, making jokes about Dad’s phrase,

“the deadheads.”  They liked being called The Dirty Deadheads.  One of my own friends said they

thought it had something to do with a rock band. 

    But they didn’t get it.

    Dad always declared that as we kids entered our teens, we would become “deadheads”

just like he and Mom, who had gotten married when they were fifteen.

    “The older they get, the dumber they get,” he would often say, complaining about

something we did wrong.  Like the time I lost one shoe.

    “One shoe?” my mom had asked, over and over again.  I couldn’t tell if she was laughing

or crying.  “How in God’s name do you lose one shoe?”

    I had lost it in Sunday school.  We were clowning around with a substitute teacher,

and running down the hall, sliding at the end of our run.  When the minister finally put

an end to the substitute teacher’s torture, I could only find one of my shoes.  Someone

probably hid it on me as a joke, but the minister was so mad we just slithered quietly

back to our desk, and I didn’t dare say anything about it.

    To us farm kids, Sunday school was an oasis within an oasis.  Unlike the urbanites, we

rarely missed it.  Unlike school, Mom exempted Sunday school from the "not-as-important-as-the-fields"

status.  We loved escaping the fields for an extra two hours. 

    My Mom scolded me about my one lost shoe all the way home.  When we arrived, Dad

greeted us with a “get yer boots on.”  He had already fired up the Case.  It looked like I was going to

be running the vibra-shank again.  I hated the Case.  It was the dirtiest, loudest tractor we had. 

But Dad said “it’s the only tractor with enough balls to pull that vibra-shank.”

    Mom had been hoping out loud, all the way home from Sunday school, that Dad wouldn’t

notice I had lost one shoe.  But that didn’t work. 

    That was the day I too became a deadhead, and Dad used the title every time

he smacked me.



                            -----------------



    We still hadn't finished the chores when we saw the black streak coming up the lane,

with dust rising behind it.  We could have finished them, but we decided on the walk down

the Barnyard Lane to play a basketball game to one hundred before we started the chores. 

Basketball served as a regular distraction from our chores.  Mom knew about this

diversion, and was nice enough not to point out to Dad that our chores would take far less

than ninety minutes if we didn't play basketball for thirty of those minutes.  Since our day

was usually on a tight schedule, balanced between the work of the barnyard and that of the

fields, we appreciated Mom's gesture of ignorance. 

    When we saw Dad's pickup, I still had a bucket of water in each hand, heading

towards the sheep-barn.  I hated these sheep, and I really wished I didn't have to water

them. 

    We had two haymows:  one above the cow-barn, the other simply a stack of extra hay

and straw, fenced into a raised mound of earth in the sheep-barn.  To make hauling manure

easier, a poured concrete foundation went three feet up the barn wall.  The sheep pen itself

was like a moat of manure and mud around the makeshift haymow.  To keep out the

weather, we boarded the windows with plywood, leaving a dark, dingy pen with nothing in

it but an old rusty broken pump and a galvanized steel water trough.  The metal roof

wasn't patched, so light streamed through holes, revealing currents of dust twisting and

turning in the stale air. 

    Since the pump didn't work, Mark and I shared the watering duties.  We had to haul

eight five gallon buckets each morning and evening until Mr. Phillips, the local plumber,

happened to visit the tavern at the same time as Dad.  Of course, Dad would also have to

be sober enough to remember the broken pump.  And then Mr. Phillips would need to be

sober enough to remember to come fix the pump. 

    I only had these two buckets left before I could go up to see if Sarah talked Dad into a

dairy calf.  Part of our latest deal was that Mark had to feed the cows eight of the twenty-

eight bales of hay in exchange for my help watering the sheep.  His forgetting his end of

that deal wasn't new.  Mark went right up, forgetting that the cows still needed four more

bales.  Given that he was only nine years old, my mom still insisted that I finish his chores

whenever he became forgetful, instead of beating him up, which I thought would be more

productive.

    After I finished dumping the water and putting the buckets back, I ran to the cow-barn,

climbed into the haymow, and pushed the last four bales through the hole in the loft.  As I

climbed down the rope on the other side of the barn, I could see the Holstein calf running

past.  My sister came next, running with a rope in her hand and giggling. 

    Mark came last, walking a little and then running some, head shaking the whole time. 

"This ain't gonna be good," he had said.

    "Dan," she yelled.  "Grab him."  I dived just in time to stop the poor little calf dead in

his tracks, then sprang to my feet and headed him off before he went into the barn where

the cows ate.  Them old cows wouldn't take too well to a foreign calf.  I remembered when

my uncle brought over a black-angus heifer he bought at a 4-H fair.  It wasn't that young;

it had already been weaned.  It didn't last a day.  We found her, trampled, in the muddy

corner of the cow-barn. 

    I had the Holstein cornered by the woven wire fence by the time my sister and brother

caught up.  Sarah ran right up to him and threw her arms around his neck. 

    "Aw poor little thing," she said, giggling.  "Isn't she cute?  Isn't she a beautiful little

thing?"

    I looked down, underneath.  I agreed about it being cute, but "she" was a little

Holstein bull.  I smiled to myself.  It hadn't occurred to me that Dad would get a Holstein

bull.  That clarified everything..  The government regulations didn't apply to dairy cattle

unless you sold milk.  And this little guy wasn't going to be producing any milk!

    I decided not to tell my older sister that the little guy was a bull.  After all, the prospect

of feeding and caring still held her interest.  I didn't want to discourage her.

    And cute he was.  Short little horns already popped out of his head.  Just little bumps

that someone as inexperienced with cattle as Sarah wouldn't notice.  But I noticed them.  I

was used to Angus/Hereford calves, and they didn't show horns until at least six months. 

    Beyond the little bumps, its head had a unique shape  . . . a little longer than the

Angus/Hereford calves.  And it had the black and white patches sought by Sarah. 

    It weighed about 50 to 60 pounds . . . very easy to control at this age.  I picked him up,

put him on the other side of the woven wire fence, and held him there until Mark showed

up with the rope that Sarah had dropped.  They tied it around his neck and then ran

giggling behind him as he hopped and pulled them back towards the house. 

    By the time I got to busting open the last four bales of hay, the cows had eaten through

most of it.  Thus, it broke a lot easier, and I didn't have to spread it as far. 

    I too couldn't wait to play with the Holstein.  Our contact with new calves was always

limited to the short time between their birth and when their mothers had thoroughly scared

them against us.  The prospect of handling the Holstein kind of grew on me real quick.  I

ran all the way up the Barnyard Lane to the shed, where Mark and Sarah played with the

Holstein bull.  They both petted him and Sarah tried to get on his back until Mark scolded

her for it. 

    "It's just a calf, Sarah." 

    "But she's a strong calf," Sarah said.  Then, seeing both of us shake our heads, she added: 

"What do you know?"

    "I know that she's a he," Mark said indignantly. 

    I started to pet him.  "What do we call him," I asked.

    "I still like Bingo," Mark said.

    "He looks more like a Patches," Sarah said, recalling a song from a couple years back. 

She hummed it a little, then said:  "It's final, he's Patches!" She giggled again, patting his

head.  "Wait 'til Karen and Dee see my new pet."

    I was tempted to remind Sarah that Patches wouldn't always be a pet.  He'd eventually

be dinner.  But I stopped myself.

    "My new pet," she repeated. 

    And Patches stayed her new pet for about a month.  She especially enjoyed bottle-

feeding him.  One bottle three times a day, though, became three bottles three times a day,

and when the bottle became too small, she had to feed him with the small steel bucket that

had the nipple in the bottom.  The bucket could get heavy, and messy.  The effort to feed

him eventually became too great. 

    Sarah's pet eventually became my pet. 

    And after another two weeks, Mark and I grew tired of playing with him also, and he

with us, and he ended up out in a barn lot by himself-the same one where we kept the

sheep.  Sarah no longer wanted him, and my brother's prediction came true:  Patches

simply added to our chores.



                              -----------------



    We played basketball twice each day: before chores in the morning, after chores at

night.  Dad had rigged a basketball hoop in the cow-barn, up in the loft, next to the

haymow.  There were a few slits in the floor . . . holes left by boards long lost.  Mark and I

threw empty herbicide bags over them.  These bags were tough and would last a long time. 

They'd cause us to slip at times, but we were skeptical about just nailing some new boards

over the holes.  We worried that the nails would puncture our only basketball.  Dad didn't

want us using his plywood anyway.

    The hoop wasn't as tall as it was supposed to be, which affected my shooting at

school.  But that was okay, because any taller and Mark wouldn't be able to score. 

    We usually played a game to 100.  Since I was three years older than Mark, I could

control the game to provide just enough time to do the chores after a come-from-behind

victory.  The final score was usually 100 to 85, or 100 to 95, or 100 to 99 - all depending

on how frustrated I wanted to get my brother.

    I could be mean to my brother.  I considered it a tradition passed down to me from my

sister.  Besides, he deserved it, always getting me in trouble for not doing his part of the

chores. 

    One time Mark asked me if God was only with us during the good times. 

    "What do you mean?"

    "Well, like when you beat me in basketball," he said, "is God with me then?"



                              -----------------



    He would curse the sky.  I would see him and my uncle looking up at dark clouds and

shaking their heads.  They would usually start their drinking this way. 

    I even saw my uncle shake his fist at the sky once, during the middle of a downpour. 

And my grandpa was known to throw beer cans at the clouds. 

    There wasn't a lot that my dad was scared of, but I'm telling you I have seen him look

at the sky with fear in his eyes.  They'd be bloodshot red from a morning of drinking, but

they'd be full of fear.



                              -----------------



    Fortunately, I wasn't working in the fields, even though it was a spring morning.  We

had the good fortune of a strong rain yesterday.  All I had to do was finish my chores and

the rest of the day was mine -- at least until Dad returned from the tavern.

    Mr. Phillips' truck came lined with toolboxes and drawers on each side, concealing

interesting wrenches and pipes and chemicals and meters and chains and screws and

washers and other contraptions.  In addition, he had a torch and welder built right into the

back of the truck. 

    He had stopped to open the gate that separated the rest of the world from the barnyard,

and waited for me to finish running up the Barnyard Lane to meet him.  He threw the

passenger door open for me.  "Climb on in, Danny boy!"

    "How's it going Mr. Phillips?"

    "So where's this sheep-barn," he asked, ignoring my question.  "Yer old man wants

me to fix a pump in it."  I pointed the way as we drove down the Barnyard Lane.  I

watched as he filled a long narrow toolbox with an assortment of tools, and took it over to

the pump.  He looked around and then went to the electrical panel over by the haymow. 

    The sheep and Patches kept bumping up against him, so I had to hold them back.  I

never did see how he fixed the pump.  I just heard the water splashing behind me and

grinned at the thought of my lightened load each morning and evening.

    "You just saved me 16 buckets a day, Mr. Phillips!"

-----------------

    On a cold spring day, we corralled Patches with the other little bulls to turn them into

steers. 

    It was so cold, steam rose from the cow pies.  It was way too early in the morning . . .

all around Mark and I were bloodshot eyes. 

    And the cows and bulls always seemed to make extra manure on a morning like this.  I

could even smell the smell of cattle that the Urbanites always complained about.  To me it

smelled good.

    It was so cold my mom even sent Sarah to the barn with a thermos of hot chocolate.  I

just know she deliberately spilled some on my thin red fingers.  She just sneered.

    My dad, my uncle, and my grandpa chased the little 200-pound bulls to a contraption

we called "the chute."  My uncle kept saying stuff like "Pow, Wham, and Boom!" to make

it fun.  After a few beers, he'd also say stuff like "Holy Shit--I mean--Chute," and "Holy

Balls, Batman!"  Then he'd chuckle while my brother and I grinned. 

    As the bulls ran through the chute, my brother's job was to slam a handle down at just

the right moment, closing padded bars around their neck.  This would hold them in place,

though they would kick fiercely with all four hooves, trying to break free.  My job was to

twist their tail and hold it tight on their back to numb them, and keep them from kicking. 

Once numb, my grandpa would prepare for the deed while my dad forced huge pills down

their throats. 

    Some would have little bumps on their heads, and Dad would cut these baby horns off

with a large pinchers.  Blood would squirt up like a water fountain at school, and keep

spurting long after, until it slowed to a surge that kept time with the frantic beat of the little

steer's heart.  Mark would spray the remaining hole with disinfectant.  They put blue die in

it so you could follow your aim, which helped because as the steer jolted around wildly,

sometimes you'd miss and hit the eye or nose. 

    After all, the bulls weren't just standing there calmly cooperating.  On the other end,

Grandpa was changing them into steers.  The urbanites from across the road, out of

Chicago to experience the country, could know each time the feat was accomplished.  If

they listened, they would hear a low, vile, pale moan gushing from the bull just turned

steer. 

    Soon the pen was full of Angus/Hereford steers.  Blood still squirted from some of

their heads.

    When it came time to twist Patches' tail, I found my duty difficult.  By then, the

Holstein stood almost twice as high as a normal bull.  I had to reach up just to grab the tail,

and Patches could kick out farther and harder than the little bulls.

    "You got him," my Grandpa asked sternly before he went down. 

    "I think so." 

    Grandpa stood back up.  "Don't think so.  Know, dammit."  He grabbed Patches' tail

and brutally twisted it up onto his bony back.  "Here."

    I grabbed his tail and tried my best to hold it there.  Patches groaned louder and deeper

than any of the other bulls when my Grandpa made the first cut. 

    Then Dad grabbed the pinchers.  But they wouldn't fit around Patches' horns, which

were already about three inches long.

    Dad handed the pinchers to Mark, vowing to try again after he shoved the pill down

Patches' throat.  But Patches spit it out.  "Forget it," Dad said calmly to my brother, who

was stooping to find the pill.  "I ain't gonna be able to cut them horns off anyway.  We'll

get the vet for this one."

    Mark took this to mean we were finished with Patches, and lifted the door-handle. 

The half-bull backed up, stepping on my foot, which caused me to release his tail. 

"Dammit," my grandpa said, rubbing his head, falling backwards in a panic. 

    I hit Patches on the hip and pushed him forward, and he went ballistic, blood spurting

from down there, and caught Dad in the chute, knocking him down, trampling on him,

fighting to get out.    My brother just stood there, panic in his eyes, blood all over his coat. 

"Slap him back, slap him back," my uncle yelled.  Then he pushed Mark aside and slapped

Patches back far enough to slam the pads around his neck again.  "Holy Holstein," he said

under his breath, as he helped Dad to his feet.

    I'll never forget the sound Dad made, murmuring in pain.  I didn't realize Dad could

feel pain.  It had just never occurred to me.

    "God Damn You!" I yelled, pounding on Patches, tears streaming down my face.  I

didn't care if I would get in trouble for swearing.  "God Damn You."  I grabbed that tail

and yanked harder than I had ever yanked anything in my entire life.

    When it was over, my grandpa pulled me off Patches.  He sternly reminded me that it

was not Patches' fault.  I let go of his tail.  "And you can't hold it against the Holstein just

'cause he has a big spirit," Grandpa said.

    I turned away, watching my uncle walk my dad slowly up to the house.  Limping,

holding his shoulder. 

    Grandpa probably saw the look on my face, because he handed me what was left of

Dad's beer, and let me finish it before we went back to work.  To a twelve-year old boy,

guzzling a half-can of Grain Belt beer made up for the anguish of seeing your dad badly

bruised.



                              -----------------



    Patches turned out to be the tallest steer ever.  And big.  He weighed at least 1200

pounds by the following spring.  He stood an easy two feet above the other steers, so bony

that we wondered if his meat would ever be any good when he finally reached his destiny. 

Dad never got around to calling the vet out, probably because we were all afraid to put

Patches back in the chute.  Thus Patches had long straight horns. 

    He didn't get along with the other feeder steers, so we continued to keep him in the

sheep-barn, in a pen adjacent to Mark's sheep.  Both Patches and the sheep shared the

same water trough.  Mark and I would laugh as we watched Patches stooping to drink

water.  He was so tall.  Mark called him the giraffe. 

    By then, Mark had bought into the notion that he was the family sheepherder.  He had

purchased a few more sheep as well as allowed a year's worth of lambs to grow into ewes

and bucks.  He planned to raise a herd, and train some show-sheep like the pretty girl that

lived down the road.

    Mark and I would argue every morning about who should have to feed Patches.  My

position held that since Patches was in the pen with the sheep, and all the resources were

right there, it might as well be Mark's job.  But Mark maintained a position based on the

technicality that I was responsible for the steers and after all, Patches was a steer.



                              -----------------



    It was because of this ongoing debate that we took turns feeding Patches.  During one

of the frantic debates to come, we both agreed that this arrangement caused all the trouble. 

Had we only assigned responsibility, we might have avoided the ordeal.  If we had only

clearly defined our roles, we might have prevented my brother's pneumonia.  Of course,

we learned at the end of this ordeal that sometimes we have no control over events. 

Sometimes we must experience hell to find heaven.



                              -----------------



    For on one cold spring evening, when we finished our basketball game just before

dark, we went to finish our evening chores.  To our dismay, Mark found the sheep-barn

flooded.  Two feet of water held in by the concrete foundation.  Two feet!

    Our first concern was the sheep, which we frantically decided to let out of the pen. 

Better to get in trouble for letting the sheep out than to get in trouble over their death. 

    Patches was a different story.  To let him out would create too much attention.  We

decided to move him to the high end of the barn, by the gate.  I threw a rope around him

and tied him to the gate.

    That done, we looked at each other.  "What are we going to tell Dad," Mark asked. 

    "Wasn't it your turn this morning?"

    "No it was yours."

    "Uh-uh, it was yours."

    "Danny, please, say it was your turn," my brother said, holding his butt with both

hands in anticipation.  "Please?"

    I just looked at him.  I wasn't as much worried about the punishment as I was about

the work we would need to do in order to drain the pen.  But then a thought came to me, as

dusk turned to dark.  What if the pen dried overnight? 

    "Get some straw," I told Mark.  We spent the next hour breaking open bales of straw,

trying to sop up the water. 

    "Good thing we wore our boots," Mark said, sloshing in the mud.  It wasn't working,

but I was hoping that maybe overnight the straw would miraculously suck up the water. 

Then, when the sheep were discovered grazing in the barnyard tomorrow morning, we

could just claim to have had our head stuck up our ass, as Dad puts it, and left the gate

open. 

    Before we could finish breaking open the bales of straw we threw into the pen, we

heard our mom yelling for us to come up to dinner.  Mark frantically hurried his pace,

causing muddy smelly water to splash up on his coat.

    "Go ahead," I yelled to Mark from the haymow.  I wanted to put some straw down by

Patches, as he seemed to be getting cold so close to the gate.  The water there just covered

his hooves.  It took about six bales but eventually Patches could lie down.

    By the time I appeared in the kitchen, the family had finished dinner.  Dad slept in his

chair, and the girls weighed the chances of changing the channel without his noticing.  It

was Wednesday night:  Batman started at eight. 

    I decided to go straight to bed, and motioned Mark to join me.  Mom figured we were

just going to play.  Mark didn't like missing Batman, but he agreed we needed to rise early

to cover our tracks.



                              -----------------



    We had risen, dressed, and were almost out the door when Mom stumbled into the

kitchen to make Dad his coffee.  She was impressed and wanted to know what was up.

    "Oh, we just want to get in some good basketball before school, you know," I lied. 

    On the way down to the barn, we agreed that Mark would do the normal chores, while

I finished sopping up the water.  We both crossed our fingers about the water as we

debated whether we would need help rounding up the sheep. 

    "We could just leave them out, say they got out this morning," Mark said.

    "But all that's going to do is bring Dad down to the barn, and he'll be able to tell," I

insisted.  I hoped we could make it look as though the sheep got out while Mark was

feeding them this morning.  We could get the girls to help round them up before Dad even

got dressed. 

    "But if we round them up, there's a good chance Dad will come out to help," Mark

said.

    "I don't think so.  Did you see how sound asleep he was last night?  He's going to be

hurting this morning."

    "But the girls will see-"

    "No they won't.  They'll be in a hurry to get prettied up for school.  I'll let them go

back to the house before we even shut the gate.  Don't worry about it."

    "But what if they see?"

    "Then we'll deal with them.  I'll offer Sarah a deal."

    Sarah hated me because I had a history of “squealing on her” whenever the eighth

grade boys snuck over.  She just thought I was a little brat, a snitch for our drunk

father.  But the main reason I tattled was Sarah let them pick on me at school.  She

should have at least tried to protect me from “The Dirty Deadheads.”  Instead, she egged them on.

    “Sarah hates you,” Mark whined.  “And she hates me worse.  She’ll crucify us.”

    Mark didn’t realize that my eternal battle with my sister and her boyfriends actually

helped in situations like these.  I would let Sarah have a pass on one of their visits if I

had to do so to keep her quiet about the sheep barn.  Mark didn’t understand this

though, because in order for it to work he couldn’t be in on it.

    “You’ll see,” I said to Mark, who was looking up at the cloudy sky, making

the sign of the cross over and over.  “I’ll convince her.”

    By the time we got to the barns, I had won our debate . . . not so much because of my

logic, but more due to my raised fist.  Our hearts sunk though, when we arrived at the

sheep-barn.  The water still stood at the same level as the previous night. 

    By the time Mom was yelling out the kitchen door that we'd miss the bus if we didn't

put the basketball away and get our butts up there, we had accepted that the truth would

just have to come out.  We'd have to make it out like we left the water on last night, which

wouldn't fly too well because we were supposed to water in the morning, not at night. 

Mark agreed to say that he had forgotten to water them in the morning as long as I agreed

to say that I was the one who turned the water on last night, and then we'd act like we

thought the other was going to turn the water off. 

    But the plan totally failed when Dad, fuming and ranting and raving over the mess,

asked why Patches was tied up.  Not being able to coordinate an on-the-spot twist to our

lie, we finally confessed, which caused the rope Dad had just taken off Patches' neck to

land squarely across Mark's butt. 

    School was cancelled for us.  I'll never forget the smirk on Sarah's face as she found

the number for Mom to call us in sick.  I'll never forget how she said goodbye to Dad as he

left to go rent a pump.  And I'll never forget how I felt watching the girls walk up the lane

to the sanctity of school.

    We spent the entire day wading in the cold water, shoveling straw out of the sump

pump that Dad brought back, driving up the lane faster than Mark or I had ever seen him

drive up that lane.  We drained the barn area by area, digging a hole for the pump in the

center of each area.  While one of us dug the next pump hole, the other would strain the

straw away from the pump with his bare hands.  Green-gray water splashed on us as we

rearranged the hoses. 

    My hands never felt so cold.  The mud and manure and sheep shit and straw and guck

around our feet left us queasy.  I felt so stupid, abandoned by my self-respect. 

    When it was lunchtime Dad, still furious at us for having our head up our ass and then

being so stupid as to lie about it, made us stay out and work while he went into the tavern

for lunch.  "Stupid deadheads," was the last thing he said as he drove away. 

    That hurt.  My dad called a lot of kids deadheads.  That was the first time he applied

the term to me.

    To make matters worse, about three in the afternoon it started raining.  Not that the

rain would come into the barn . . . it was obviously and unfortunately waterproof.  But the

rain only made it colder, and contributed to the dismal dreary mood.  My brother started to

get sniffles and though his whining irritated me, I started to worry about him by the time it

got dark.  Dad finally came home from the tavern and shined his lights into the barn.  We

were hoping that since it was dark we could finish the rest tomorrow.  But Mom didn't

want us missing any more school, since spring planting season was around the corner and

the principal was already complaining about how much school we missed last fall during

harvest season.  The pounding rain on the metal roof only made matters worse,

highlighting our exhaustion as we hoped we'd at least get a break for supper. 

    Finally, Dad said, "Good enough."  We put dry straw down, then rounded up the sheep

and Patches and chased them into the barn.  With all the commotion, we hadn't yet filled

the water trough.  "Ya had all stinkin' day," Dad yelled, rolling his eyes.  So I stayed in the

barn, breaking open bales of hay for Patches and the sheep while I filled the tank with

water, then headed for the house.  The kitchen clock said 10:15 by the time we got there. 

Mark was hungry but I just wanted to go to sleep.  I was too tired and cold to eat. 



                              -----------------



    Unlike the previous morning, Dad had to threaten to come up the damn stairs and kick

my lazy ass out of bed if I didn't rise and shine right now!  It was five-thirty in the

morning; they let us sleep in a half hour.  Actually, they yelled at us about every ten

minutes for half an hour, but that was sleeping in where I lived.  The last meal I had was

breakfast yesterday morning, and Mom chuckled while I ate three plates of ham and eggs. 

    Mark cried all through breakfast.  He wanted to stay home from school, and mom

checked his temperature according to tradition.  Even though he ran a 99-degree

temperature, mom decided he should at least do chores and then we'd see. 

    That's why Mark left before I did.  I think he wanted to finish his chores in a hurry so

he could quickly climb back into his warm bed.  My temperature didn't register any higher

than normal.  I took my time walking down the Barnyard Lane, worrying how I would

make it through the day.  My friends would cover for me in PE, but I still had to march in

Band, and we were preparing for the Easter Parade in Chicago.  I was dreading the exercise

when I heard my brother wailing in the sheep-barn.  I wasn't even halfway down the

Barnyard Lane when I heard him, he howled so loud.

    I ran to see what was wrong: maybe he fell in the haymow or something.  And when I

got to the barn, I started wailing myself.  It was full of water.  Two feet of water.  Just like

the other night.

    Dad didn't take the news very well at all.  And not only did I have to spend the day

standing in mud and manure in exhaustion, but when I could find time to take a break, it

was hard to sit down on my red butt. 

    This time I knew I had shut off the water.  At least I thought I shut off the water.  But

Mark found it blasting water out just like the other night.  And boy did I feel stupid. 

    "After all you went through yesterday," Dad yelled, "how could you be so stupid as to

leave the water running again?"  He shook his head in disgust -- all morning long -- saying

things like:  "I don't know what we're gonna do with you.  Where is your head?  You're

entering the deadhead stage and you ain't even fourteen yet.  Don't you ever listen?  What

an ignoramus.  Don't you ever learn?  Deadhead.  When the hell are you going to learn? 

Wouldn't it be easier to just pull your head out of your ass?"

    Because we were quickly learning to drain a barn by now, and didn't waste time going

to rent the sump pump, by noon we had made enough progress to warrant a break for

lunch.  Besides, my uncle had come over, laughing at us, saying "Holy Water" and "Holy

Sump Pump, Batman," and making fun of Mark for being a wet sheepherder, and

chuckling at Dad as if he was only joking, and digging a few holes himself, and showing

us how if you keep the hoses straight, the water pumped faster.  He helped us.  Then he

winked as he coaxed Dad out to the tavern for lunch. 

    While Mom made lunch, we changed into dry clothes.  She still fretted over missing

two school days in a row, so we read our textbooks while we ate.  After lunch, my dad and

my uncle still hadn't returned, so Mom let us take a short nap on the couch, as she sat by

the window looking up the lane. 

    When she saw black streaking up the lane, she quickly woke us, helped us strap our

boots, and ushered us out the backdoor, so we could run down the back way to the barn

while Dad came in for another couple cold ones.  Mark fell right smack in a mud puddle,

cussing that we hadn't taken the Barnyard Lane.  As I pulled him up I told him to go

change again.  "No way," he replied.  So we started again, this time running slower

through the muddy lots, until we came to the sheep-barn door.

    This time we finished while it was still light out.  But we could have finished even

sooner, had we not kept interrupting the process to run up to the house for more beers. 

Dad continued to berate me throughout the afternoon, and by the time my uncle helped me

roll up the hoses and haul them up to the shed, I was spitting mad. 

    Who stood out in the rain all day long, every spring, pounding steel posts into the

ground while it was still soft from the spring rains?  Who ran the barbed wire three times,

then pulled it taut with the fencer, and wired it to the steel posts?  Who gets up at five

every morning to feed these damn steers and then gets on a tractor and runs the disk ahead

of your vibra-shank sixteen hours every day in the spring so you can plant your damn corn

and beans before the end of June?  Who helps you shovel the damn bins while his friends

play baseball every spring-every single spring-standing in sweat and dust with the

scoop, scraping the rotten cakes here and there to slowly mix the bad with the good so your

friends at the elevator won't notice as much?  Who tries not to smell that putrid sour moldy

smell of rotten caked beans, while willing to stick his smaller hands into the soupy black

muck and pull it out from the auger when jammed? 

    "Holy Tears, Batman," my uncle said, burping.  I could smell the beer on his breath. 

"Hey Danny, cheer up.  It's just as hard on your dad, seeing you have to miss so much

school."

    I stared directly in my uncle's eyes.  Then I nodded slowly at the unopened beer in his

hand.  His eyes flashed some pain.  He stepped softly through the shed door, tossing his

full beer into the garbage barrel. 

    Mark and Dad were breaking the last few bales of straw by the time we returned.  Dad

didn't look at me as he asked, "Did you hang them hoses in the shed?"

    "Yeah.  All ready to go," my uncle responded.  "If you want I can return the sump

pump tomorrow."

    "Well we oughta be able to," Dad said, looking at me, leaning on a pitchfork.  He then

walked over to the pump and grabbed the handle.  "I'll shut it off this time."  He lifted the

pump handle, turning it on, then said, "Oh, it's full."  Then he flipped the pump-handle

shut.  It made a crisp click as it hit the off position.  "Now it's off . . . now it's on," he said

as water spashed into the tank.  "And now it's off."

    I shook my head.

    Dad saw this, so he added, "Deadhead."



                              -----------------



    The last time I prayed to God, I learned I shouldn't, because I asked God to help Notre

Dame beat USC, and God answered by helping Anthony Davis score six touchdowns. 

God delivered the biggest loss in Notre Dame football history.

    But this time was different. 

    That's right.  As I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, too exhausted to sleep, I prayed to

God.  I prayed for a return to hell, for a return to that waterhole, to that mud and shit and

guck. 

    I had already spent two days standing in hell.  Two days.  Two days that would have

normally been in the sanctuary of school.

    "God, if you really exist," I demanded, "you'll show me a sign tonight."  I wiped tears

out of my eyes as I rolled over, looking up at the ceiling above my bed, as if looking up

might help my prayer.  "Are you there?" I asked out-loud, tears rolling down onto my

neck.  "Prove that I'm not stupid, God.  Flood that barn.  Blast water all over that damn

barn."



                              -----------------



    My brother wailed and wailed while I stood on the gate looking into the sheep-barn,

and I deliberately kept the grin on my face when Dad's black pickup pulled up.  He saw

my grin.  He looked past me, into the barn, and when his gaze returned to my grin, his

rough face changed.

    I thought I was going to like seeing his face, in this moment of Spiritual Triumph. 

Instead, I felt terrible.  I had seen Dad mean, I had seen him mad, I had seen him scared. 

But I had never seen this face. 

    While praying to God, I had pictured myself grinning right in my dad's face.  I had

pictured my face inches form his, grinning.  If God would only help me out here. 

    But instead, I tried my best to hide my grin. 

    Still, that grin remained on my face the entire morning, as I silently shoveled straw

away from the sump pump, quietly watching Dad scratching his head.  He mumbled to my

uncle a few times, looking at the pump and then at the sheep. 

    My life up to that point had very few high points.  But in the moment it took my father

to walk across the pen to me, looking straight in my eye as he taught me to do when I was

in trouble with him . . . in that moment . . . . it went so fast . . . . but in that moment the,

all I could notice was the light beaming through the holes in the metal roof. 

    That light showered me as Dad put his hand on my shoulder.  For the first time that

Saturday morning, I noticed the clouds outside had disappeared.  I noticed sunshine

dripping into the dark sheep barn as Dad clearly articulated the words, almost in slow

motion, looking straight in my eye. 

    "I'm sorry," he said.



    This time Dad stayed and helped the entire day.  In fact, he sent Mark up to bed, with

a 101 temperature, before it was even noon. 

    The work went much faster.  We worked straight through, except a short time when I

noticed my dad and my uncle nodding their heads, talking quietly, looking at Patches.

    A couple of times Dad would gently pat me on my shoulder.  He would ask me for

advice on how to get the straw out of the pump without getting his whole sleeve wet.

    By now, I had to be the best darn barn-drainer in America. 

    At about three in the afternoon we finished.  While Dad broke open bales of straw, I

personally wired the pump-handle shut.  My dad gave me a beer and he and my uncle and I

sat there in the haymow, watching the pump.  We waited quietly.  I even got a second beer. 

    Sure enough, after about an hour, Patches started scratching his head . . .  on the pump

handle. 

    My uncle shook his head, chuckling and burping.  "Holy Horns, Batman," he said. 



   

The End.