Christmas with Tucker

by Greg Kincaid

  AROUND FOUR O’CLOCK on December 21, I grew restless, wondering if my mother was going to make it. Without phone service, we could only assume that she was headed our way. How she would get through the last thirty miles on these roads was another question.

  There was no more putting it off: I needed to start packing. It was hard. I tried to make two piles: things that should go to Minnesota and items that should stay in Kansas. Trouble was, I still couldn’t figure out exactly which pile to put myself in. Tucker, standing there in my room wagging his tail, made that choice even harder.

  While I was regaining my strength and caring for Tucker, my grandfather had been strangely absent, working on what seemed to be a secret project off-site. When I asked him where he’d gone off to in the maintainer the night before my little mishap at the pond, he’d been vague. Now he was gone again for hours when he wasn’t doing the milking or other chores. He wasn’t grading roads on this ice, and whatever he was doing seemed to involve daily walks to and from the farm. He did let on that he’d been at Hank Fisher’s house, but what was he up to there? Maybe, I thought, he was working on some secret Christmas present for Grandma Cora and using Hank’s tools, though Grandpa did not seem to have enough holiday spirit to be playing elf these days.

  My grandmother, though grateful that I was okay, was not too happy about my cattle-rescuing effort, and her mood was as bad as I had ever seen it. Grandpa’s project was also irritating her. She said she still had no idea where he’d gone that night, though he’d returned home right after Thorne brought me back to the house.

  He had developed a nasty cold that seemed to be turning into a full-blown case of the flu, which he considered nothing more than a nuisance. She was very worried about him and, as I stood there in the kitchen, her voice rose to a point of irritation that was uncommon for her.

  “Your grandfather got an extra dose of stubborn and only half a dose of common sense. He’ll likely die from pneumonia before spring planting.”

  “Is he that sick?”

  “I’ve never seen him sicker.”

  “Well, maybe I should help him?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I feel fine, Grandma. I’m ready to get at it again.” For the last few days, I had been exempt from milking duties, but now I was actually eager to help out again. I felt useless sitting around the house, and I certainly did not want to pack.

  She turned away in a huff. “Did you think you were a polar bear jumping into that freezing water? You swimming in the pond in the middle of winter and him hiking around on the ice all day—what is wrong with you two?”

  “Nothing. I feel fine.”

  “That’s not what I meant, George.”

  My feet were still tender but much better, and I could walk with almost no pain. I put on my coat and hat, and got Tucker’s leash out. He grew excited the minute he saw it, as eager as I was to get outside.

  “Where are you two going?” Grandma asked suspiciously, probably worried that I’d disappear with Grandpa.

  “Afternoon milking, that’s all.”

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “You are a McCray.”

  The wind was whistling, but the temperature did not seem unbearable. There was no sign of my grandfather anywhere in the barnyard or the implement shed. The maintainer was gone, but I hadn’t heard Grandpa start it up or drive it off the property. Keeping Tucker well heeled on the leash, I pushed open the big sliding door into the milking barn. To my surprise, milking away, like nothing had happened, was Grandpa.

  My grandmother was right. He looked tired and whatever he had been working on seemed to have taxed him to exhaustion. I put my hand on his shoulder; otherwise, I’m not sure he would have even noticed us standing there, watching him milk.

  He looked up with his blue eyes that were mired in dark black circles. “Well, hello, George. Looks like you are feeling a lot better. I wish I could say the same.” He reached over and patted Tucker, too. “Hello, old boy. You’re quite the rescue dog, aren’t you?”

  Skipping all pleasantries, I just asked, “Are you ever going to tell us what you’ve been working on? I haven’t seen much of you for the last couple of days, and Grandma is going crazy wondering.”

  “I can tell you this much, George. You are going to like it.” He coughed several times and offered nothing further by way of an explanation.

  Hoping to get a real answer this time, I continued, “Did the maintainer get stuck on the road that night? I didn’t see it in the shed.”

  “Nope. Hank Fisher and I have been working on some alterations. Should be ready—real soon.”

  “Hank?”

  “Hank has an electric generator. With no power, I needed it for the arc welder.”

  I still didn’t understand what he was doing or why he seemed so evasive.

  He coughed again and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his shirtsleeve. “Don’t worry, George, you’ll see. You know, it was your idea; you said that we had to do something.”

  It was a two-mile walk to Hank’s place and I couldn’t imagine walking that distance in this weather, but somehow Grandpa had been making the trip on foot. “Isn’t it hard walking that far on the ice?”

  He leaned off the milking stool and lifted up one of his legs with a grin. He pulled his pants up above his ankles and showed off the bottoms of his boots. “With these little rascals, it was a nice morning for a walk.” He had taken roofing nails and hammered them into the soles.

  “It worked?”

  “Like a dream. That’s where I got the idea, the night before you took your swim.”

  “What do you mean?” He obviously wanted to surprise me, but I was growing impatient.

  He sniffled but did not answer, so I asked, “Do you feel all right?”

  “Lousy. I need to get some sleep.”

  Just then I heard the heavy rumbling of a big engine growing closer; the maintainer had pulled into the driveway. I hurried outside and my grandfather came along behind. Hank Fisher was behind the wheel and he had a giant smile on his face. He got down out of the cab and my grandfather shook his hand.

  “Howdy, neighbor.”

  Hank pointed to the maintainer with pride. “Well, what do you think?”

  My grandfather walked around the machine, inspecting. “You did a great job.” He stopped at the wheels. It seemed that they had made a few modifications based on my suggestion.

  Now I knew what they had been up to. I put my hand on one of the giant rear tires. “Wow!”

  Hank stood back, proud of his work. “It was quite a job,” he said. “First, I had to find every logging chain I could get my hands on and cut each one to the right length. Welding the logging chains and the clasps together was the easy part. These babies are what took me all night.” He ran his hands over hundreds of small steel studs that had been welded onto the chain.

  “How did you do it?” I asked.

  “I had to cut steel rods into small studs. Then I laid the chain out flat so I could weld the studs onto the chain. I’m hoping the welds will hold. We won’t know for sure until we drop the blade.”

  My grandfather coughed out his thoughts. “We’ll need to adjust the grading angle so that we turn the gravel over without pushing it off the road.” He pulled a locking pin up, which allowed him to swing the blade so that it was perpendicular to the maintainer. He locked it in place by dropping the pin back down in the hole.

  Hank nodded. “We can try to bring the drier gravel up from the bottom of the roadbed and bury the icier gravel.”

  “The studs alone won’t be enough, but I got another idea that will hopefully make the difference. It’s an old trick I learned years ago with deep snow,” Grandpa said.

  I could feel his excitement growing and I urged him on. “What?”

  “When the snow is deep, the maintainer will do just fine on level ground and will do even better on the downhill stretches. It’s pushing snow uphill where you need more traction and power than t
he maintainer can deliver. George, remember that night after you got stuck in the yard? I said I needed to try something.…”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that was it. I tried grading only on the downhill sections and flat sections. In the barnyard, you were trying to push on a slight uphill grade. When I turned down our hill, going west, it was much better. It was almost there. If we only grade going downhill, with the chains and the studs, I think we can make it.”

  Something was missing. “I don’t understand. How can you only grade downhill? What about the uphill sections of the road?”

  “Easy. Lift the blade, and drive up the hill without grading, then we’ll turn around and go back down the same hill with the blade dropped.”

  I knew he was right. It would work.

  I was pushing my luck, but something inside of me wanted to do this. “Can I take the first go with it?”

  My grandfather smiled at my enthusiasm, but he would have none of it.

  “George, this is going to be tricky; you need to let me check it out. Maybe you can give it a try later. Driving on ice is different. You should never slam on the brakes; you’ve got to tap them rapidly. Otherwise, you might skid and rip the studs off the chains.”

  Realizing that my last foray onto the ice had not turned out well, I only nodded my head and meekly offered, “I can do that.”

  “I’ve never done this myself, so I can’t really tell you how to do it. My best guess is that we should not grade any deeper than necessary. Hopefully, one to three inches will pull up enough dry material to clear the gravel roads.”

  “How about the asphalt roads?” Hank asked.

  “We’ll take it down to the roadbed, if we can.”

  My old Santa Claus of a grandfather looked like he was about to throw up. He bent over, anticipating nausea, before regaining his composure. “Let’s all get a good night’s sleep and then start up tomorrow morning. Hank, would you like a ride home? It would give me a chance to test it out.”

  “You look miserable, Bo. I’ll walk back.” He lifted his legs to show off the same modification to his shoes. “You’ve done it a half-dozen times in the last few days—it’s my turn.”

  My grandfather did not argue, and as we headed back into the house, it occurred to me that there was a chance, just a chance, that Cherokee County might still have a Christmas. “Do you think we can grade all the roads in two days?”

  My grandfather clapped me on the back. “We’ve still got problems, George.”

  I knew what he meant. In those days, there were no salt trucks to help melt the ice or sand trucks to help gain friction. Most vehicles were rear-wheel drive; there were no radial tires and very few people even had snow tires. Without the maintainer pushing the ice off the road, most of our neighbors would be lucky to even get out of their driveways. If they could get out of the driveway, they would not get far.

  My grandfather further defined the problem. “There are trees down everywhere, blocking the roads. We’ll need chain saws and men to run them and tractors to pull limbs off the road. We would have to have an army of men to get this done before Christmas. We can only do what we can do. We may not get far, but we can get some of the main roads cleared.”

  If it had been up to me, we would have started a night shift on the spot, with me taking the first turn, but so far my efforts at taking charge had not gone so well.

  As I looked at my grandfather that evening, all tired and worn-out, I realized that it just was not going to happen. It wasn’t until many years later, when I had my own family, that I realized what he was going through. As children, we feel like the adults in our lives are always pushing us to do more than we want or feel like we should have to do. I didn’t understand then that for every inch he pushed me, I had been pushing him the length of an old-fashioned yardstick. He had had enough.

  Chapter 32

  TWICE DURING the night, I had to get up and tuck my sheets back under the mattress. Laying at the foot of my bed, Tucker had been fidgeting and shifting himself around nervously, and no matter how hard I tried, the blankets did not seem suited for him. With his canine version of tossing and turning going on most of the night, it seemed like the alarm would never go off. Finally, I could stand it no more and rolled out of bed just shy of 4:20 in the morning, armed with a plan. Frankly, Tucker hadn’t been the only thing keeping me up. I’d been mulling over an idea and I was ready to put it into action.

  The milking I could do on my own—that would give my grandfather a head start. For once, he could sleep in while I got the chores completed and the old diesel engine on the maintainer warmed up for a day of hard work.

  After bundling up against the chill in my dark bedroom, I took the leash and a flashlight from the tool drawer in the kitchen, and Tucker and I made our way down to the barn, with only a narrow beam of yellow light to guide us through the ice-covered barnyard.

  Without power, we were still milking by hand. My grandfather was right: the Babson Bros. automatic milking machine was an unparalleled invention, and I couldn’t wait to get it back. The milk we were pouring out every day was making a frozen mound behind the barn large enough to feed an army of cats. There were raccoon tracks all around the milk mountain, where those resourceful creatures were determined to break off icy chunks for food.

  By 7:30 the sun was up, the chores were done, and the ice was cracked, and I started the maintainer to warm it up. I had been expecting my grandfather to join me all morning long but was not too worried when he didn’t show. When I got to the house, with a load of firewood in my arms, my grandmother had breakfast waiting for me. “Where’s Grandpa?” I asked.

  “He spent most of the night in the bathroom. He is exhausted, sick, and won’t be out of bed for a week—if he’s lucky. Just like I told him.”

  My heart sank. Of course, I felt sorry for him, but what about the roads? What about Christmas? He had worked so hard and now it was all for nothing? Although I was getting used to the rule book being ignored, surely this was not fair. I’d gotten up extra early just to help Grandpa get out the door and onto the maintainer so that we could get our shifts rolling, but now my plans were wrecked. And so was Christmas for Cherokee County.

  Around 8:00, Grandpa stumbled into the kitchen. My disappointment was so deep, I could hardly look up at him.

  He interrupted the silence. “Picked an awful time to get sick, didn’t I?”

  He looked worse and I knew he had no business being out of bed. I mumbled, “People get sick. I did the chores.”

  “Crack the ice?”

  It was embarrassing that he had to ask, but I knew it was a fair question. “Yes, that, too.”

  “Is that the maintainer I hear running?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know you were sick.”

  “Well, you might as well shut it down. Maybe tomorrow.”

  My grandmother moved into his space like a pouncing cat. “Tomorrow! I don’t think so.”

  Big Bo McCray knew he had met his match, and he quickly turned tail and headed back to the bedroom, mumbling over his shoulder, “We’ll see.”

  I sat at the kitchen table, feeling defeated once more. But while I was running my hand through Tucker’s fur, a rough outline of a new and improved plan began forming in my mind.

  A week before, I had guided the maintainer up Blackberry Hill to visit Wild Tom Turner. There was a strange feeling in my stomach, an ache just below my solar plexus, as I headed up that driveway that led to Turner’s trailer. Many years later, I would come to recognize that dull aching feeling in my stomach as the way my conscience tries to tell me to think again. Now, for the second time in a week, I experienced that feeling, knowing that I was about to do something I should not do, but willing to do it anyway. If they got really mad at me, what would they do—banish me to Minnesota?

  After I shoved my arms through the sleeves of my coat and pulled on my hat and gloves, Tucker and I headed back outside. Once inside the implement barn, I sat on the seat of that maintai
ner, and instead of shutting it down, I did what I had no business doing. After all, I am a McCray.

  “Tucker, get up here with me!” I moved over and he situated himself in the bed I had made for him.

  With the maintainer in reverse, I backed out of the barn. Tucker and I were headed out to clear the roads of Cherokee County. We didn’t bother looking back.

  Chapter 33

  WITH MY feet parked by the steel heater that blasted warm air from the bottom of the maintainer, and my coat buttoned to the top, I shifted the transmission into first gear and eased out of the barnyard. As a renegade road maintainer, there was no stopping at the house for food or drink. I was sure Grandma Cora could hear the big machine go by, and that she’d see me from the kitchen and tell my grandfather, but no one was about to chase me down on this ice.

  At the end of the driveway, I turned east and headed down the hill. The maintainer was sure-footed with the chains and homemade studs that Hank Fisher had spent the night welding, but the real test was dropping the blade.

  I wanted to wait for a flat spot, with shallow ditches on each side, to test out the modifications, but I would be on a downhill slope for a while. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the adjusting lever and let the blade down easy, an inch at a time.

  The maintainer jerked to the right, causing me to lose control just as I had in the driveway a few days before. I panicked for fear that I would flip the maintainer, and I did the worst thing possible and applied the brakes too hard. The maintainer started to skid out of control. Determined not to fail before I even got to the bottom of McCray’s Hill, I remembered what Grandpa had told me. While it seemed counterintuitive, I tried releasing and tapping the brakes. The maintainer started to straighten and the skidding stopped. Pushing the blade farther down to the road surface gave me even more stability. I could hear the sweet sound of ice coming up and off the road. I turned around and looked behind me.

  The maintainer was the world’s largest ice cube maker, spewing chunks of ice off each end of the blade! Grandpa was right—the momentum of going down the hill was just what we needed.