Uncle Daney's Way

by Jessie Haas

  “Well … my uncle does.”

  “My father and my uncles have a big cordwood operation,” Roger said. “We have eight or ten teams working most of the time.”

  “Do you drive one?”

  Roger nodded. “Oh, yeah!” He flexed his arm, and a big muscle popped up. “Takes all I got to hold ’em sometimes. Better than lifting weights!”

  “Oh.” Cole wanted to look down at his own muscle, but he didn’t think snipping juniper roots with a pair of brush clippers had built him up much. “My uncle’s horse is pretty old,” he said. Then the bell rang. Cole took his seat at the back corner of the room, and Roger went to sit with his friends again.

  That week Cole took Nip up the shoulder of the Hogback and got all the small and medium-size junipers. Uncle Daney sat on the flat below and watched, but he didn’t say much. At first Cole felt bad about that, as if he were eating a candy bar in front of a hungry little kid. But Uncle Daney didn’t seem to feel bad, and after a while Cole began to enjoy himself, up there on the hillside alone with Nip. His voice sounded crisper and surer, and Nip responded almost as quickly as he did to Uncle Daney.

  Nip was in good shape now. Long, smooth muscles creased his haunches. Veins stood out on his legs and belly. Even his coat seemed brighter with the work. He was ready to come back to level ground and tackle the big junipers, Uncle Daney said.

  Cole wondered. The first bush they tackled was almost as wide as Mom and Pop’s trailer. He had to crawl a long way to find the roots, and then they were too big to cut with the brush clippers. He had to run all the way back to the barn and get a saw.

  After he’d cut the first few roots, he backed out, and Uncle Daney said, “Hup!” Nip hit the collar hard. The whole harness creaked loudly, and for a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then something popped under the juniper, and it gave a little. “All right,” Uncle Daney said, and Nip eased off the pressure. “Slide in under there, Cole, and see if you can cut some more.”

  More roots were exposed now. Cole sawed, Nip pulled again, Cole cut again, and finally, with a great tearing sound, the juniper came out of the ground. Uncle Daney let Nip drag it about fifty feet before he stopped him. “Gotta let him feel like he’s gettin’ somewhere. Bad for a horse to let him get set like that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Tryin’ to pull somethin’ he can’t budge. Gets him discouraged. If it happens too much, he’ll quit tryin’.”

  Cole looked at Nip, standing where Uncle Daney had stopped him. Even at this distance he could see Nip’s sides heave. The juniper behind him looked like a crouching black bear.

  “Should we keep him at it?” he asked, looking around at the dark, spreading monster junipers.

  “I dunno.” Uncle Daney rasped a hand over his stubbly chin. “Might see if Ray West—uh-oh! The jig’s up!”

  Cole looked, and there was Pop, walking along the pasture fence. They had been working so hard on the big juniper they’d forgotten the time.

  Pop was walking slowly, and now he stopped. He looked at the patches of bare dirt, some with a pale green fuzz of grass sprouts starting. He looked at the two big piles of junipers, both higher than Cole’s head. And he looked at Nip, and Cole, and Uncle Daney. He took his cap off and scratched the back of his head, and then he came over.

  “How far do you figure to take this project?” he asked.

  “All the way!” said Uncle Daney. “Only thing is, I don’t know about them rosebushes. Can’t get close enough to wrap a chain around ’em.”

  Pop looked back across the pasture. “If you just get the junipers, we’ll be most of the way there. Rosebushes don’t amount to much.”

  “Might burn ’em,” Uncle Daney said with an eager gleam in his eye. Cole could just see him, dousing a rosebush with kerosene and starting a fire that would burn off the whole Hogback.

  “That might do it,” Pop said. He stood for a moment, looking around at the strangely open, blotchy pasture. “Seems a heck of a lot bigger,” he said. “Well, supper’s on. Daney, you want a push back?”

  “Nope. We’ll be along in a minute,” Uncle Daney said. “Bring Nip back over here, Cole, and we’ll unhitch him from that juniper.”

  Together Pop and Cole walked toward Nip, standing with his head down, waiting. “It’s been a big help having Nip around,” Cole said, when it looked like Pop wasn’t going to say it.

  “I know, Cole.” Pop put one hand on Nip’s neck and held the other out, flat. Nip dropped his nose into Pop’s palm. Then his big tongue came out, once, as he licked Pop’s hand. Pop sighed.

  “Help isn’t money, Cole, and money’s what it takes. I just hope Daney’ll realize without me having to tell him.” He gave Nip’s neck a friendly slap and walked on toward the trailer.

  After Cole had brought Nip back and they’d unhooked from the juniper, Uncle Daney said, “Give me the whippletree. Got an idea.” He laid the whippletree across his lap, braced one end under the arm of the chair, and got a good grip on the other end. “Nip, walk.”

  Nip started, and paused, feeling the strange weight and the different angle of the tugs. He looked back. “Walk,” Uncle Daney said again. Nip put his ears out to the sides, of two minds about this, and walked.

  Cole felt the same way. A great idea, maybe, but he hovered right behind the chair. He saw Uncle Daney’s arms tighten and bulge, his muscles bigger than Roger Allard’s.

  Then the little front wheels hit a hump of ground and turned sideways. The wheelchair bucked. “Whoa!” gasped Uncle Daney, and dropped the whippletree. Nip stopped, putting his ears back.

  “Worked pretty slick,” Uncle Daney said when he’d caught his breath. He took hold of the wheels and started to move himself along, and Cole got behind and pushed. Nip wasn’t the only one who had gotten stronger; the wheelchair went across the bumpy pasture grass much more easily than it had in the beginning. “Ought to be a way to rig her so I can just hitch on—tip her back so them front wheels don’t dig in.”

  “What about winter?” Cole asked.

  “Put runners on!” said Uncle Daney with a cackle. “Then we’ll move!”

  “No. I mean, hay. Pop can only afford enough hay to winter one calf—”

  Uncle Daney smacked his palms down on the wheels, hard, and stopped the chair with a jerk. He twisted to look up at Cole, his eyes blazing. “I ain’t askin’ your pop to buy hay for this horse, young feller! He pays his own way, same as I do!” He turned and started moving again, leaving Cole behind.

  Cole caught up and pushed without saying anything, listening to Nip behind them and the whippletree bumping along the ground. But as they crunched onto the gravel driveway, he couldn’t help asking, “How? How can Nip earn any money?”

  “When I got it figured out, sonny, I’ll let ye know!” Nip’s hooves thudded on the bare barn floor. Without anyone telling him, he turned around and stopped, facing out the door. His big face looked mild and thoughtful, as always.

  Slowly Uncle Daney wheeled up to him. Nip dropped his head, and Uncle Daney’s rough, scarred hand rubbed the white spot between Nip’s eyes. “You’ve got a head on your shoulders, young un,” Uncle Daney said after a moment. “You think of something!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  COLE THOUGHT, as spring rolled on. He knew Ray West earned prize money at the plowing contests, but those were almost through already. Besides, Nip didn’t know how to pull a plow.

  There was the pulling contest at the fair—big teams pulling big sleds full of stones. They won prize money—but he’d never seen a single-horse pulling contest.

  They could pull junipers for hire. He and Nip and Uncle Daney knew everything about pulling junipers. But any farmer around here with a fieldful of junipers had a tractor to pull them out with if he wanted to do it. The only thing Cole could think of was pony rides, and that was so silly he didn’t mention it.

  They busted junipers out of the ground every afternoon all spring, and Ray West got the biggest ones with his team. By th
e time school was out, Cole was beginning to wonder what he’d do all summer.

  “Weed,” Mom told him. She and Uncle Daney were riding in with Pop, early the first morning of summer vacation, because Uncle Daney had to straighten out something about his government checks.

  Cole expected to find a jungle of weeds. He hadn’t paid attention to the garden all spring; he’d been too busy.

  But the garden looked neat and cared for. Mom? Cole wondered. Then he noticed the thin tire tracks, down all the rows. Only the onions and the corn needed a quick hoeing, and then Cole was at loose ends again.

  What had he used to do with himself before Uncle Daney came? He wandered out to the barn, looked up at the harness, hanging in the beams. Then he stood in the big doorway and looked out across the pasture at Nip, the color of an old penny; the steer; and up the Hogback, dark and looming. Where the pasture rose up its shoulder, he could make out the trail he used to walk every day after school.

  He had missed the arrival of the thrushes. They were all around now, their silvery, fluting songs tumbling through the air. He had almost missed the lady’s slippers. He’d come just in time for the Solomon’s seal, with its foamy white spikes, and where he and Pop had cut trees last fall, the ground was light and frothy with new ferns.

  There were the stacked logs, waiting for the day Pop could borrow or rent a tractor again. There were the brush piles, high and snaggly, with birds and chipmunks whisking in and out. There were the trees Pop had marked to cut next and the good-size maples that would be their sugar lot. The quiet seemed odd. Cole could hear the ghost of the chain saw’s roar, hear it roaring again in the future. The grove was beautiful, but he climbed quickly above it.

  From the top of the Hogback he could see a long way. He could see fields, a swamp, sun gleaming off the dome of a silo, the steeple of the church. He could see steam rising up from the river valley. That was the mill where Pop worked.

  Pop needed money for a tractor and a truck before he could go into business for himself. Uncle Daney needed money so he could buy hay for Nip. But there was no money, as far as Cole could see in any direction. The only money he knew about came from the mill and from the doll factory on the other side of the valley. It seemed wrong to Cole, as he looked across the green land, that there should be no money here where it looked so rich. Soberly he walked back down the Hogback and spent the rest of the morning watching TV.

  When Uncle Daney came home, Cole told him about the log pile. He wasn’t quite sure why, so all he did was mention that the wood was up there, that Pop would have to wait till fall to get it down.

  After lunch Uncle Daney said, “Go catch Nip, young un. Want to show you how to hitch on to a log.”

  Mom was taking his tray back to the trailer. She stopped and turned around. “No, Uncle Daney! One of you in a wheelchair is enough!”

  “Lou,” said Uncle Daney, “I got hurt ’cause some danged fool that knew better was drinkin’ on the job. I’m seventy years old—”

  “You’re older than that!”

  “Maybe. Anyways, I figger I’m living proof it can be done safely—and he’ll never learn any younger.”

  Mom pressed her lips together. After a moment she slowly nodded. “I suppose it’s no more dangerous than having him out helping his father with the chain saw.”

  “Less,” said Uncle Daney promptly. “A chain saw hasn’t got a brain, and Nip does.”

  There were a few logs left from the pile in the pasture. Uncle Daney explained how to wrap the chain around one. Then Cole hooked Nip on to the log and practiced all afternoon, dragging it back and forth across the pasture.

  “See how tight you can turn,” Uncle Daney said. “Watch the log. Stay back! That’s why Nip’s trained like he is, so nobody’s got to go hoppin’ around on the log gettin’ hurt.”

  Soon Cole had the hang of it. He figured out his turns like geometry problems—sharp angle, wide angle, straight line between two points.

  The next day he drove with the log up and down the shoulder of the Hogback. “Up there,” Uncle Daney said, picking out a poplar at the top of the cleared slope. “Then figure out how to get back-down again. You don’t want it bangin’ Nip’s heels, remember, and you don’t have a goldanged thing to hold her back with.”

  From the top of the slope Cole looked down, across the blotches of dirt and the new green fuzz of sprouting grass, to Uncle Daney waiting by the log pile. The sun shone off the wheels of the chair. Uncle Daney looked very small.

  Cole laid out a path in his mind, snaking across the shoulder of the Hogback in fat, lazy curves to the bottom. And then he started down.

  At first he was afraid. The log looked sharp and heavy and very close to Nip’s heels. If it banged into him, Nip might start running. He could get hurt, and maybe even Cole and Uncle Daney could get hurt before it was over.

  Nip was worried, too, Cole thought. He obeyed promptly and smoothly, and he never looked around anymore in that questioning way when Cole told him what to do. But his ears tipped back toward Cole and the log sharply, nervously.

  Nothing bad happened. Slowly Nip’s ears relaxed, and after a few times Cole’s heart stopped giving that quick double thump when he told Nip, “Walk.”

  Ray West stopped by near lunchtime. “Figure to make a logger out of this sprout?” he asked Uncle Daney with a wink at Cole.

  “Bill’s got a pile of logs up the hill there,” Uncle Daney said, “and no way to get ’em down. Figured we’d save him borrowin’ a tractor.”

  Ray West squinted up the Hogback. “A horse is better for work like that, anyway. Don’t tear up the ground, like a tractor does.” He glanced at Cole. “You folks got a sugar lot up there?”

  “Workin’ on it,” Cole said. He felt good saying that—like Roger Allard talking about his father’s cordwood operation.

  “Well”—Ray West turned to Uncle Daney—“got a line on a cart for you if you want one.”

  Uncle Daney’s eyes brightened, but he shook his head. “Got no money, Ray.”

  “This cart don’t cost money. It’s sittin’ at my brother’s place, rottin’. I’ll fix it up for you if it’s something you want. Got nothin’ much to do with myself now the plowin’ contests are over. Got to stay out of the old woman’s hair somehow!”

  So Ray West helped Uncle Daney into the cab of his truck, put the wheelchair in the back, and they drove away. Cole watched them go. Then he climbed the Hogback to see where he would lay out the skidding trail.

  Pop didn’t want to use Nip to bring the logs down. “I don’t know much about horses,” he said, “but I know enough to know I could get in real trouble. No, thank you, Daney.”

  It was a hot evening, and they were eating in the aisle outside Uncle Daney’s stall, on a card table Mom had brought out. Cole heard the final note in Pop’s voice, but Mom sat back, smiling into her iced tea.

  “Ain’t askin’ ye to use the horse,” Uncle Daney said. “Cole can do that. All you got to do is help him clear the trail. Do the chain saw work. I don’t believe in boys usin’ chain saws.”

  “What about boys skidding logs, Daney? Look at yourself!”

  “Seventy-five years old!” said Uncle Daney. “Figure I’m livin’ proof—”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ALL WEEKEND COLE and Pop worked to lay out and clear the skidding trail. Cole had thought hard about where to put it, to avoid the steepest slopes, to make wide, gentle curves and yet not waste too much time walking or too many good trees. When he was through, he wished Uncle Daney could come check his work. But that was impossible. Pop cut the trees and then cut the stumps flat to the ground, while Cole cut brush. Then there was nothing left to do but try it.

  On Monday night Pop got home around six-thirty. “Couple hours of daylight left,” he said to Cole. “Let’s go see if we can bring a log down.”

  Cole harnessed Nip, and they started up the trail. Uncle Daney waited by the log pile. Cole looked back once. He couldn’t tell how Uncle Daney felt. Cole
turned and walked on with Nip and Pop. He felt good going up the Hogback with a job to do. But he felt mean, too, as if he’d just taken something that didn’t belong to him.

  When they reached the pile of logs, Pop rolled one down. Cole wrapped the chain around it. Then he brought Nip around and hitched on.

  “All right, Nip. Walk.”

  Nip looked back, pointing his ears and the blinders of his bridle at Cole. Then he heaved a big, satisfied sigh and leaned into the collar, starting the log down the trail.

  “Seems right at home,” Pop said. They followed Nip and the log down the winding trail. Cole watched closely, but the log never seemed to speed up and threaten Nip’s heels. So he had done all right. He was ready to speak at every turn, but Nip simply followed the road. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t need Cole to tell him.

  When they got down to the bottom, Uncle Daney was frowning. “Why in the heck did you come down? Don’t you know how to use a skiddin’ horse?”

  “Afraid not, Daney,” said Pop, laughing. He bent down and unhooked the chain from the log.

  “Go on back up with him and hook on again, and then you stay there. He can bring the log down by himself.”

  “I guess he probably could,” Pop said, scratching under his cap. He looked embarrassed. “But … can you take the chain off the log, Daney? That looks like the weak link to me. Course, I can send Cole down, and I can chain-saw by myself, but it’s easier and safer with someone else there.”

  Uncle Daney scratched his chin. “Don’t think I can unhook in this contraption,” he said. “Can’t reach. I could sit on the ground, though—”

  Pop shook his head. “Too dangerous. You could get stepped on, or the log could roll on you.”

  “Why don’t we ask Mom?” Cole said. “Uncle Daney could yell, and she could come out and unhook. If she wouldn’t mind.”

  “All right,” Mom said when Pop asked her. “I’d rather have you get the wood out a little at a time than work yourself to death in November.”