by Gary Paulsen
He walked in the double open door of the barn as he spoke and I followed him. I had never been in a barn during milking and was surprised to see that it was full of cows. Down the center was a clean, concrete-floored aisle twelve or so feet wide, with gutters on each side. On either side of this there were cows standing with their back ends to the aisle and it seemed like most of them were going in the gutter, which was already full of runny manure and urine.
The stench was overpowering—thick and fresh and so full of ammonia it clogged my throat and I had to wait a moment to get my breath before going inside.
As I entered, Clair came out from between two cows. She was carrying a three-legged stool and a bucket brim full of milk with thick foam on top, wearing a tattered old denim coat that hung in shreds. She smiled at me. “So you’re up and about—feeling better?”
I nodded. “Just a bump on my head.” I looked at the cows. “Is Vivian here?”
“Third from the end on that side.” She waved. “Don’t get near her hind end.”
She walked past me and into a small room near the door and Harris followed. I turned but stopped. Louie was milking, sitting back in by a cow reaching up under her, and a huge cat, much larger than any cat I had ever seen, was sitting on its hind legs in the aisle in back of Louie. As I watched Louie directed a stream of milk at the cat’s mouth and the cat swallowed it as fast as it came, waving its paws in the air.
Clair had dumped the milk in the little room and had come back out and Harris looked around the corner of the door. “Come on—don’t you want to see this?”
Inside the room was a machine with two spigots. One fed into a large milk can and the other into a tall, thin bucket. On top of this device was a big stainless steel bowl full of milk and at the side was a wooden-handled crank.
“It’s a separator. You put milk in the top and turn the crank and you get cream out of one spout and milk out of the other.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Cough, spit. “It’s fun—want to do it?”
“Sure...”
I took the crank and started to turn, or tried to. It seemed to be stuck, resisted my effort. “It won’t turn.”
“Sure it will. It just starts slow. Keep at it until it whines—then it’ll be easy.”
He grabbed the handle with me and helped and we kept at it and he was right. After ten or fifteen turns it started to whine and from then on it was easy, just a matter of keeping it going.
And going.
And going.
Harris waited until the handle was turning easily and then left, disappeared completely, and inside ten minutes I smelled the rat. They milked seventeen cows by hand, the four of them—Clair, Glennis, Knute, and Louie—and every drop of milk from all those cows went through the separator.
Which I kept cranking.
Each time one of them finished they came into the little room to dump their milk in the separator and so the level never seemed to go down in the big supply bowl on the top, and inside twenty minutes my arm felt like it was going to fall off. There was an urgency to it that took over—the milk, rivers of it, kept coming and I worried that if I didn’t keep it up, they would just keep pouring and the separator would overflow.
The milk can on the floor began to fill and just as I worried that it would flow over Knute came in to dump a bucket of milk in the separator and replaced the full milk can with an empty one. All without talking and I realized I hadn’t heard him say a word since I arrived the night before.
Milking lasted perhaps two hours but it seemed a lifetime, an endless deluge of foamy-topped milk, a tidal wave of milk. Finally, when it seemed I could no longer move either of my arms and was seriously thinking of trying to use my foot, Harris came back in and grabbed the handle.
“My turn.”
His timing was perfect. Clair came in with half a bucket of milk, poured it in the bowl on top of the separator, and smiled at me. “That’s it—last one. Ready for a snack?”
I glared at Harris, realizing what he’d done to me. My arms hung uselessly at my sides, seemed so long I thought my knuckles would drag on the ground. “Snack?”
She laughed. “Sure. You didn’t think all we ate was breakfast around here, did you? Lord, we’d waste away to nothing.”
Harris did the last of the separating and the milk and cream cans were put in a water tank at the back of the small room to stay cool and we all walked back to the house.
Harris and I were walking in back of the grownups and Glennis, and I looked around for Ernie on the way back and Harris saw me and shook his head. “He don’t come when there’s big folks around—he’s yellow clear through. Just a damn coward.”
Smack. Glennis could hear a pin drop and she turned and whacked Harris across the head without missing her stride or her place in conversation with Clair.
In the house Glennis washed all the separator parts—disks and cones and weighted wheels—and hung them on wires on the porch to dry in the sun while Clair prepared the “snack.”
It was a huge pan of sliced potatoes that had been boiled the night before for dinner and now fried in fresh grease with pepper, a plate heaping with bacon, and two dozen—I counted them going in the skillet—scrambled eggs.
The style was the same as at breakfast. Knute sat silently—I was beginning to wonder if he could talk—drinking coffee from a mug while Louie and Harris fought over food as it was brought to the table.
Louie’s eating was different though still spectacular. He didn’t use a fork but raised the plate and scooped sections of food into his mouth with his knife, again widening his throat in some way to swallow everything almost whole.
When the snack was over and Louie had used a piece of bread to wipe the grease from the serving plate, his own plate, our plates, and the frying pan, then pushed the bread into his mouth as he did the pancakes, letting the grease squeeze off and into his beard and down his chin—when it was all over I leaned back and tried not to throw up. It was delicious and I had more than overeaten. I was stuffed and thought seriously of going back to bed though it was only about the time I would normally get up. I was sure I couldn’t move.
“Come on,” Harris said. “Let’s go play.”
And he ran out the door.
I hesitated, wondering if I could get up, and Clair misread my inaction.
“Don’t worry, dear—you go play. I’ll call you for forenoon lunch.”
I nodded and staggered to the door and heard Clair say to Knute:
“I like a boy with a good appetite, don’t you?”
4
In which war is declared
and honor established
Harris stopped at the gate to the yard fence—a combination of boards, nailed vertically, and square-netted sheep fencing—and studied the yard.
Ernie was near the granary, pecking and scratching with the chickens, and Harris nodded. “Good. He’s busy. You want to play war?”
I looked at the rooster. “You mean with Ernie?” I didn’t know for sure what Harris meant by “play war”—maybe not the same as me, which was setting up imaginary enemies and fighting them—but I was pretty sure Ernie didn’t take prisoners and I wasn’t about to play with him unless I had at least a machine gun.
“Naw—the pigs. I pretend the pigs are commie japs and sneak up on them. You know. Just pretend.”
“Commie japs?” I had lived in the Philippines a year after Japanese occupation and understood thinking of the Japanese as enemies but I had never heard the term commie japs. “What are they?”
“It’s what Louie calls ’em.”
“The pigs?”
“No. Louie almost went to fight in the war and he said the people he was going to fight were commie japs, so I just call the pigs that and then fight them.” He moved toward the granary. “Let’s go. I’ve got guns over here.”
His “guns” were two narrow boards—one of which he’d used to pound on Ernie earlier—but with a little imagination they worked
. I kept a wary eye on the rooster until Harris saw me and shook his head.
“Don’t worry. He won’t come at you if you see him. Only don’t you see him, then watch it.”
And so we went to make war on the pigs, Harris on the right, me on the left, keeping one eye over my back on Ernie should he decide to enter the fray.
Our enemies lay sublimely ignorant of our intentions, or so I thought, buried in a stew of mud with grain slop all over their noses, stomachs rumbling, grunting happily. There were three sows in one pen, a boar in another, and one sow in still another with ten or so piglets that were small enough to get through the fence if they wanted to.
“Look at ’em,” Harris whispered as we made our assault. “Dirty commie japs laying there like they own the world.”
I nodded. “Dirty commies.” Which was at least partially true. They were, if possible, even dirtier than Louie.
“You ready?”
I nodded again, working an imaginary bolt on my board rifle. “Ready.”
“I’ll go right, you go left.” Harris started for them in a crouch, gun raised, one foot slowly in front of the other.
“Left...,” I repeated, and mimicked his form.
My mistake was in becoming too intense. I’m not sure what I expected—maybe something along the lines of getting close to the enemy and then blasting them with heavy fire before they had a chance to escape. But I had a good imagination and inside of two steps they weren’t pigs any longer. They were commie japs who wanted to rule the world and we were the only thing between their evil ambition and the true American way, and whatever Harris did I would back him up, I would follow.
And what Harris had in mind was hand-to-hand combat.
Ten feet from the pigpen Harris looked back at me, a strange glint in his eye, and silently raised an eyebrow in question.
I nodded, ready to follow him. Ready for anything. Ready.
He waved an arm in the classic infantry follow-me wave and screamed.
“Arrrrrgggggh! Die you commie jap pigs!”
He threw his board/gun aside, hit the pen at a dead run, vaulted over the low board fence, and leapt spread-eagled on the sows.
If asked later if I fully intended to follow Harris and jump into a pigpen, I would have denied it. You could smell the pig crap fifty yards from the pen. But this was war. My imagination had taken me, and caught up in the intensity of it all I was much too far gone to know what I was doing and I landed on the sows not two feet behind him, screaming something incoherent.
It is possible the sows had never been commie japs before—although since Harris lived there it’s doubtful they could have missed out on such entertainment long. And it is also possible Harris had never jumped on them before in just this way, screaming and stabbing with an imaginary knife—although, again, with Harris there all the time it’s doubtful. But I think it’s fairly certain the sows had never been jumped on by two boys wielding imaginary knives, screaming death and mayhem at the tops of their lungs.
The effect was cataclysmic. Pig dung and mud went thirty feet in the air in a spray that seemed to block the sun and I learned—along with the fact that I had made a terrible mistake—something about basic physics: a lighter object, say a falling hundred-pound boy, cannot hope to move a heavier object, say a three-hundred-pound sow. Added to that was the realization that a sow covered in mud is too slippery to hang on to, and the final knowledge that the sows only seemed lethargic and were up and ready to do battle with any and all forces in less than a second.
We never had a chance.
I landed on a sow, grabbed, slipped, and was driven into the mud and pig crap by a hoof in the middle of my back. Out of the corner of one eye I saw the same thing happen to Harris—though he fought well on the way down, stabbing right and left—and then all was lost.
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,” 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?”
5
Where I meet Buzzer and learn
the value and safety of teamwork
Harris led me down to the barn and we had only been there a few moments when Knute came inside. He went to the back double-opening door and said quietly, “Bill, Bob, come on in now.”
We
were next to him and for a second I couldn’t see who he was talking to. Then, from a stand of poplars close to the river, two huge gray horses walked out into the open.
I had seen horses in the Philippines, and in every western movie I went to, and knew about riding them. But Bill and Bob would have made two Triggers each.
They weren’t just big, they were almost prehistoric—like two hair-covered dinosaurs walking slowly 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 ciawled 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.