Barefoot at the Lake

by Bruce Fogle

  ‘I don’t know why he’s here. He hates animals,’ I whispered to my uncle.

  ‘I agree with you. He’s not a nice man. Country folk only ever meet their own kind. That’s what makes them so suspicious.’

  ‘He killed his dog without asking anyone if they wanted him.’

  ‘Between you and me, he’s simply a stupid man,’ Uncle replied.

  ‘My dad would have taken his dog.’

  ‘I’m sure he would but Farmer Everett only sees dollars and cents in animals. A bullet is cheaper than dog food.’

  ‘Giving him away is cheaper than a bullet,’ I responded, and my uncle nodded in approval.

  When I had finished my lunch my uncle asked me if I would like to see all the Agricultural Society winners. The owners would be auctioning some of them, mostly to other farmers wanting to improve their stock.

  We returned to the cattle barn and I couldn’t understand a word the auctioneer was saying, he was speaking so fast, and at first I found it hard to tell who was bidding, until Uncle Reub told me to watch the men in the first four rows. Almost all of them wore denim overalls and railroad engine drivers’ striped hats. They were the main bidders and if you watched carefully you’d see them nod their heads ever so slightly. I didn’t recognise any of the successful bidders, except for Mr Preston, the butcher on George Street Mum occasionally bought steaks from. He bought an enormous Aberdeen Angus.

  I hadn’t expected to see the pretty red calf ever again but, just as we were about to leave, it was walked into the ring, this time by a grown-up.

  ‘Wait,’ I told my uncle. ‘Let’s watch.’

  The bidding started and I thought I saw Mr Preston the butcher bidding for the calf.

  ‘We must buy it!’ I whispered to my uncle.

  ‘We can’t,’ Uncle Reub replied as the auctioneer continued his high-pitched chatter.

  ‘We must! The butcher will kill it,’ I whispered, and still looking straight at the calf I shot my right arm high in the air and held it there.

  ‘We can’t bid,’ Uncle Reub said once more but I disregarded what I heard and kept my hand held high and the auctioneer continued his fast-talking.

  ‘Put your arm down. You’re underage and they won’t pay any attention to you,’ Uncle Reub said. And as he spoke he raised high his left arm and kept it raised.

  ‘Sold to the man in the bright shirt,’ the auctioneer proclaimed looking straight at my uncle and me.

  ‘Now what do we do,’ Uncle said, as much to himself as to me.

  ‘We give the calf back to its owner,’ I said firmly.

  We left the spectators’ stand and Uncle went to the cashier’s desk, wrote a cheque, was given a receipt and told to collect his livestock before the end of the day. While he did that, I wandered through the spectators asking the farm boys I met where the owner of the red calf was. I asked the boy himself without recognising him and told him to go outside the back entrance of the cattle barn and to wait there. I had a present for him.

  ‘Found him!’ I shrieked with glee to my uncle at the cashier’s desk. ‘You get the calf and bring her to the back entrance. I’ll meet you there with her owner.’ And I raced off to stay with the calf’s owner until my uncle brought the calf to us.

  Uncle had to pay extra for the halter the calf was wearing. He told me later he was pleasantly surprised at how readily it followed him from its stall down the corridor to the back entrance, then remembered it had been trained from birth for showing. Outside the back entrance I was telling the boy about our new boat.

  As my uncle approached the two of us, with triumph in my voice I said, ‘Here’s your cow back!’

  ‘Don’t want it,’ the boy replied. ‘Got another.’

  I leaned forward and stroked the calf’s head.

  ‘It’s your friend. She’s pretty,’ I replied.

  ‘Got me a better one,’ the boy answered. ‘Is that the present?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ replied the farm boy, and he turned and walked back into the barn.

  I watched my uncle’s shoulders visibly drop, then ever so slowly they gradually went back up.

  ‘Bruce, you’re a good boy,’ he finally said to me. ‘That was very generous of you. But perhaps we should sell the calf to the butcher.’

  ‘No! He’ll kill it and cut it up,’ I replied.

  ‘Did you enjoy your lunch today?’ Uncle responded.

  ‘That’s different. I didn’t know the cow the hamburger was made from. It wasn’t red with brown eyes.’

  We both settled back into our own private thoughts. Mine were all sad, that the farm boy didn’t love his calf anymore, that Mr Preston wanted to kill it, that hamburgers were made from such gentle animals with so wondrously enormous eyes. I’m sure my uncle was thinking about what we could possibly do at the end of a Thursday afternoon, in Peterborough, with a cow on a leash. Then, I don’t know where the idea came from, but I knew exactly what we should do.

  ‘Uncle Reub, let’s go back to the ticket booth and ask Mrs Nichols if Mr Nichols is here.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘We give Mrs Nichols the calf to grow up and become her milking cow. And Mr Nichols takes it back to their farm. May I tell her?’

  Uncle beamed at me. ‘Of course you may. Brucie, you may think you’re just a small boy but inside you’re something else. You’re a real mensh, you’re a man.’

  MRS NICHOLS’

  NEW COW

  At first Mrs Nichols refused to accept the calf but then Uncle Reub explained exactly what happened and that she would be doing him a great favour if she took the calf off his hands. With a twinkle in his eye he told her that if she couldn’t find it in her heart to help him out of his predicament his only other option was to arrange then and there for a calf roast for all the remaining visitors to the Ex. Then Mrs Nichols explained that her husband wasn’t there and that she was returning home with the Everetts in their car, and again we didn’t know what to do, but this time my uncle had the answer.

  ‘Do you think Dr Smith is still here?’ Uncle asked and Mrs Nichols told him that at this time of day the vet would be in the Agricultural Society office in the black barn. She said she’d go and see and came back with him.

  ‘Howdy, doc. Hello, son,’ he said. ‘So I see you’d like to go into farming.’ He stroked the calf’s neck.

  ‘Fine animal. Feed her right and she’ll grow like the blazes. Mrs Nichols tells me you’d like her to look after her.’

  ‘That’s right, vet,’ Uncle replied, ‘but I was wondering, if you have the time, whether we could kill two birds with one stone as it were.’

  ‘How’s that?’ the vet asked.

  ‘Your hospital is only a few minutes away and am I right in assuming you have a livestock trailer?’

  ‘Yes,’ the vet replied, with hesitation in his voice.

  ‘If you could help us get this calf to Mrs Nichols’ farm, that’s only a few minutes from my sister’s cottage where I have my medical equipment. I could examine those eyes of yours and give you a diagnosis of what’s happening. Professional courtesy of course.’

  ‘Sounds good. I’ll be back in a snap,’ he replied, and he was, in his green GMC pickup truck towing an open-topped wooden box on wheels. He lowered the trailer’s back ramp, walked the calf in and tethered her to a ring at the front end of the trailer.

  ‘Four in the front’s a squeeze,’ he said. ‘Son, you travel with your calf in the trailer. My boy loves that.’

  It was bumpy at first, leaving the fairgrounds, and I had to grab onto the top of the side of the trailer to stop myself from falling over, but once we were on paved roads everything was fine. When I stood my head was just above the top of the trailer, only a few feet above the truck’s cab, but driving up Water Street, with the river on my right, Peterborough looked completely different. So did the countryside. Everything looked bigger, brighter, fresher. On the straight highway to Bridgenorth the vet
drove as fast as my father did. Mum said that was too fast but I loved the wind in my face.

  At Mrs Nichols’, we unloaded the calf and took it to an empty stall in her barn. I’d never been inside and although it was almost dusk I could see that it really needed a good cleaning. While he was there the vet examined her two cows and had a quick look in her chicken coop, then we said goodbye to Mr and Mrs Nichols and drove down to the cottage.

  ‘Hey, Angus. Got in any tussles lately?’ the vet said to my dog as Angus greeted him. Mum looked surprised to see him there and her brother said, ‘Dr Smith here was in our neck of the woods and I thought I’d give him a quick eye examination. I’ll explain everything later.’

  Uncle Reub asked Mum whether she minded him turning off the lights in the living room and while she made tea for them, the vet sat in the dark in the higher of the two rocking chairs while Uncle Reub asked questions and examined the vet’s eyes. I was surprised how many questions he asked, how long it took and how close Uncle Reub had to get to the vet’s face to carry out his examination. Uncle Reub asked the vet to cup his left eye then his right eye and, holding up fingers, asked the vet how many he saw.

  After he finished he said, ‘Well, sir, the retina, lens and vitreous of your right eye are all normal, but I’m afraid you have a maturing cataract in your left eye and it will get worse.’

  ‘Jesus, does that mean I’ll go blind?’ the vet asked. He sounded frightened.

  ‘No, you’ll never go blind but you might eventually lose the sight in your left eye. You can adapt. I know surgeons who keep on operating with unilateral cataracts.’

  ‘What about removing it?’ the vet queried. ‘Will that help?’

  ‘Not much today but in ten years it will. There’s an eye surgeon in London, England – my age – who during the war noticed that RAF pilots with cockpit canopy splinters in their eyes didn’t reject the splinters. He’s having good results replacing cataracts with Perspex lenses.’

  I listened in and thought what my uncle was saying was just amazing, that doctors could do such things. The vet stayed for dinner and the two men swapped stories about what they did. Because the vet was there I was allowed to stay up late. After he left I told Uncle Reub that it was the best day of the summer.

  ‘For me too,’ he replied.

  ‘I bet it won’t be as much fun when we all go back on Saturday.’

  ‘It will be as much fun as you make it, Brucie,’ Uncle replied.

  Before I went to bed I walked through the vegetable patch, past the gull and the dog, into the wild field behind the cottage to where it met the woods. Fireflies silently turned their lights on and off and I wished I had taken a jar with me. As I watched the sparkling display, I saw a flashlight approaching and thought it was Mum coming to tell me it was time for bed, but it wasn’t. It was Uncle Reub.

  ‘I thought you’d be here,’ Uncle said.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ I replied.

  ‘Maybe that’s why I enjoy your company so much,’ Uncle responded.

  He sat down with me.

  ‘Do you remember I told you how Indians have different names throughout their lives, the first one the mother gives, then later ones that a father or uncle gives after they’ve gone on their first successful hunt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Brucie, you know I sometimes call you Brucie and sometimes call you Bruce but from now on you’re Bruce. Bruce, you went on your first successful hunt today and, by gum, you bagged yourself some impressive game. Do you know anyone else your age who successfully bought a cow at auction?’

  We both grinned wide.

  ‘Bruce, because of your successful hunt today, you are no longer a boy and I claim the right, invested in me by God, country, the wolf cub pack, your family and as your uncle, to give you an appropriate new name.’

  ‘Do you mean “Bruce”?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, you deserve a grown-up name but you are entitled to a special name.’

  Uncle stood to attention and faced me.

  ‘Bruce, forest rangers look after the woods. But the animals of this world they need someone to look after them too. I hereby name you and forthwith you will be known by all asunder as “Beast Ranger”.’

  Uncle reached forward, grasped my right hand, gave me a firm handshake, and a salute. Then he clasped his hand on and off his mouth giving war whoops, turned, and still war whooping followed the light from his flashlight back to the cottage. I giggled and followed him. As we walked inside my nostrils were filled with the aroma of fresh baking.

  Mum walked over to me and gave my head a soft caress. ‘Mrs Nichols tells me that peach pie is just for you.’

  COLD RAIN

  I pulled the covers over my head and listened to the soft wind bind the cottage in a cold Arctic hug. That evening, all of a sudden, it was dark before bedtime. The air felt different. It was bleaker, with a menace. At night the cottage was wrapped in a damp grip and the next morning a cold fog threatened. Then it rained, freezing rain for days and I knew summer was over.

  Just as I could smell the warm south invading the lake in early summer, I could smell the cold north that was testing to see what it could do to the cottage in the coming winter. That freezing wind, winter’s scouts riding down the lake from the north, was looking for the first trees to paint with frost. Water squeezed and trembled on the cottage’s windowpanes. A poplar bough beat itself against the side window, jangling the loose panes of glass in it. While the rain and wind played their duet, whitecaps charged down the lake and the waves beat like tom-toms on the beach, each wave sucking at the rocks on the foreshore. The line of poplars on the road behind the cottages bent down trying to touch their toes. The far side of the lake was lost in shifting curtains of gunmetal grey. It was horrible weather and somehow utterly beautiful.

  There was nothing to do in weather like that but to stay in the cottage and keep warm. Mum burned logs in the fireplace all day. Grace and her sister and Rob and I played crokinole and Monopoly and cards. We read Hardy Boys books and listened to the crackling radio. We talked and we argued and then we got bored and decided to go over to Grace’s bunkhouse to see if there was anything more interesting to do there. Grace went over to my uncle, who was reading. ‘You can come too,’ she said.

  The wind was too fierce for him to use his umbrella so he wore my dad’s waterproof army poncho as we walked over to Grace’s cottage.

  In the bunkhouse the girls got on their beds and Rob and I sat on the bearskin rug on the floor. Uncle sat on the chair next to the window. The electric heater had been on all day so we felt cosy and warm.

  ‘I hate this weather!’ Grace spat out, to no one in particular.

  ‘It is miserable,’ Uncle commented.

  It was Grace who asked Uncle to tell us another Sioux Indian story.

  ‘Do you want a long or a short one?’ Uncle asked and we answered, in unison, ‘A short one.’

  ‘How do the Indians remember their really long stories?’ I asked and Uncle said, ‘Where people don’t read much, their memories are better than ours.

  ‘Now then, this story is about the wind coming down the lake today,’ Uncle began. ‘The Sioux believe that the north, south, east and west winds are really spirits and all of them are brothers.’

  ‘Why not sisters?’ Grace asked.

  ‘That’s an interesting question, Grace, and you’ll learn why soon. Once upon a time the North Wind and the South Wind and the East Wind and the West Wind all lived together, in the far north, at the North Pole, in the land of the Northern Lights and sky ghosts. They were, as I say, all brothers.

  ‘The North Wind was the oldest brother. He was cold and stern, a bit like Clarence Everett. The West Wind was next oldest. He was strong and made lots of noise, Robert and Bruce, somewhat like your father with his hammer and saw. The East Wind was the next son, actually the middle son because there were in fact five of them. He was always cross and angry. A bit disagreeable, like Jebediah Sweeting can be som
etimes. The South Wind was next and he was the second youngest, always pleasant and very agreeable, like you, Bruce.’

  ‘Iris is always sweet,’ Rob interjected in a sing-song voice but this time I remembered what my uncle had told me, that strength didn’t come from your arms or legs, it started in your head then spread slow but sure to the rest of your body, and I said absolutely nothing. I didn’t even look at my brother, and our uncle continued.

  ‘The brothers paid no attention to their youngest sibling. He was the Whirlwind. Always full of frolic and silliness, much like you, Grace.’

  ‘I’m not silly!’ Grace pouted. She didn’t like being called silly.

  Uncle Reub continued, ‘The North Wind was a great hunter and he got immense pleasure from killing things.’

  ‘Like Mr Everett killed his dog!’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ replied my uncle. ‘On the other hand the South Wind hated killing things. He preferred to make and grow things.

  ‘The West Wind usually helped his South Wind brother make things but not always. Sometimes he sided with the North Wind. The East Wind was simply lazy and always tried to get out of having to do anything.’

  ‘Let’s call him Perry,’ I said. Grace giggled.

  ‘The Whirlwind, well he was like a puppy dog. He never had anything serious to do so all the time he played and danced. Sometimes he played in fields and made dust devils. Sometimes he danced on the lake and made water funnels. All the Whirlwind ever wanted to do was have fun.’

  I looked at Grace and her eyes were now dancing with delight. She always saw dust devils and waterspouts before I did and stopped whatever she was doing until long after they had disappeared, always hoping they might suddenly return.

  ‘One day, a beautiful woman came to the brothers’ home. She was so beautiful, so utterly breathtaking, all of them, every single brother, except the Whirlwind who was too young to understand the power of beauty, almost fainted when they gazed on her. She was that beautiful. After seeing her nothing else mattered. That’s what happens with men. They could only think of the beautiful woman and each of the brothers wanted to marry her.’