Lime Creek (11 page)

And a moment later sunlight suddenly beams in their window following the bus and touching Whitney’s open hand that lies on his book and touching Luke too where he rests his head, sound asleep at last and almost home.

It had been snowing since sometime during the night. Spencer stopped at the little bunkhouse that Luke had moved into when Whitney left for the university down in Colorado. He was having to attend some cattlemen’s meeting or some such in Cheyenne. The radio says it slackens off somewhere this side of Casper, Spencer says, so I should be back by nightfall I reckon.

I told Mrs. Bowman I’d come by, Luke says. Toebowman’s birthday or somethin. Well, tell her to set up another plate then, Spencer says. You were already invited, Luke says. Spencer shakes his head and says, I
plumb forgot. And then raising his free hand as he opens and closes the door behind him, he goes to his pickup.

Luke watches him out the window as his taillights disappear behind the heavy ragged fringe of the snowfall before he even gets as far as the first cattleguard. He places another stick of firewood in the little woodstove and finishes getting dressed. He darned near just woke up and he’s already hungry, he thinks. After he gets something to eat he’ll go feed. Red and Aggie were off to see their new grandbaby, so the cattle will be impatient with him for his having to get to them by himself. Especially after the first load for he’ll be later than they’ll be expecting it but he’ll still be there.

He walks over to the big house instead of going across to Red’s where he’d normally get his breakfast. Spencer had left the light on outside the pantry door and as Luke trudges toward it through the dark snow he sees himself as a little boy still in his pajamas and saying Mama can I have something that he doesn’t remember what and she turns with her fair hair fallen on both sides of her face while she bends over Lemon who is just full-grown then and smiling up at her with closed eyes as she rubs his thick neck saying Lemon Lemon don’t you be an ol’ kitchen-dog and rocking him toward that same door with his toenails sliding on the floor and both of them
Elizabeth and Lemon knowing that she’ll invariably change her mind and let him stay before she ever gets as far as opening it for him. I’m coming honey she says still kneading at Lemon’s shoulders as if she can’t quite make herself quit like those good-luck dogs on Chinese amulets, but this one a full-fledged member of their immediate family who is gazing back at her with absolute and unabashed love.

It’s already snowed more than a foot since last night. He removes his boots using the old jack that one of the hay-hands had made long before he can remember by welding together several discarded horseshoes. Ever since he was small the kitchen always seems at least half-empty. Spencer could have the whole damn hay crew in with all their kids and their wives fixing dinner for the end of another season and to him, and he imagined to Spencer too, no matter how much commotion there was it was still always mostly empty-seeming because it was still missing Elizabeth, the one person who most belonged there.

He stood at the counter eating from the pot of cold spaghetti and sauce that Spencer had cooked up the night before until he’d made a good dent in what had been left over accompanied by a couple of slices of bread and a big glass of orange-juice. It took him most of the
morning to feed and then into the afternoon to reload the hay sleds. They were using the two lower hay corrals all the way across the south meadow which was under how much snow he didn’t know but enough so it surely wouldn’t see the light of day for probably another three months at the soonest. After he’d returned to the house again to have his lunch from the same cold pot where he’d fed at for breakfast he went down to the barn to trim Lefty’s feet and then Copper’s who’d had their shoes removed after the first bad storm at the start of October when the cold had set in strong enough so they knew that the snow was there to stay.

Tom and Jerry the two Belgian drafthorses that he’d used that morning were still playing with the last of their hay and he gave them each another measure of grain so that they swung back to their troughs as soon as they heard it plash against the worn bitten wood. The other and younger team of Buck and Buddy stood dreaming in their stalls as the snow continued all through the day and into the night again like a great shaggy wall of dark cold feathers patiently sifting down and filling all the high country at the foot of what someone a long time ago had renamed the Neversummer Mountains.

Luke rode Lefty the four miles or so up to the Bowmans’ for he hadn’t been exercised since the day before.
The snow had backed off some but when they left to go home it was coming down again heavier than ever and Luke could see when his eyes got used to the darkness where Lefty’s hoofprints from earlier in the evening were all filled in and no more than shallow dimples in the otherwise unbroken surface that as they got more than halfway disappeared altogether. The wind had picked up smartly too driving the snow into their faces and making him ride with his head lowered. He had always wondered how the snow sometimes seemed to possess a barely perceptible netherlight of its own, for even in the dark he could still see if not beyond him into his surroundings then at least that diminishing flaw where he knew the road was somewhere beneath them.

Spencer had phoned from Cheyenne to extend Toebowman his best wishes and also to have him tell Luke that they had closed the roads north and west out of the city and so he’d try it again in the morning. When Luke went to get his coat Mrs. Bowman had followed after him with Bradley right behind her, and she says, Luke, you leave that hanging right where it is. And Luke says, Ma’m? And she says, There’s beds aplenty and you’ll still be back in time to feed in the morning. Then she turns and says to Bradley, who was Luke and Whitney’s age, Whyn’t you go and see if Lefty’s got everything he needs.
And Bradley reaches over for his own coat though still in his stocking feet.

Luke says, We’re fine, Mrs. Bowman. Honest. She peers at him with that stern look behind her glasses and her hands on her hips and her mouth set hard as if a scolding was just beginning to brew, her being the closest thing to a mother both geographically and probably otherwise that he and Whitney had known for all those years since Elizabeth died when they were little. And once or twice a week, week after week and month after month and year in and year out, leaving a casserole of food or a pan of cake or whatever with Doris at the post office to give to whichever of the Davises that came in first. And if she’d hear from Doris too most likely that one of them hadn’t been out front for the school bus she always seemed to reappear, having gotten all her own taken care of, like some birdlike angel of grace with keen eyes behind her eyeglasses and kind hands rapping on the window of the pantry door until someone would come to open it and to take the covered platter from her so she could bend over and kick herself out of her galoshes which she never seemed to have the time to snap all the way shut.

We’ll be fine, Mrs. Bowman. Honest, he says again. She steps in front of him and puts her small determined
hand on the sleeve of his coat, that old sheepskin that had already seen better days when Spencer was a younger man but that had so much of his history worn into it and then of each of his boys who wore it in their turn at least to do their chores in, that it would probably remain a part of the physical assets of the ranch like the land and the buildings for the duration.

It’s stormin somethin awful out, she says, and even your paw … Yes’m, Luke says bowing his head. And you know hell’d freeze over and thaw before they kept Spencer Davis from going anywhere he’d had his mind set on. Luke nods and grins in spite of himself and says, If me and Lefty don’t know that road by now between your kitchen and barn and ours … Then he half-turns to meet Bradley’s eyes which somehow convey both agreement and disapprobation all at the same time, until she pulls at Luke’s arm so he looks back around.

Luke Davis, if you go off and get lost … No’m, he says, we’re fine. Honest. She shakes her head slowly from side to side with her eyes and her lips already softening so he can see that the scolding that was just getting up steam has all but dissipated and probably even been forgotten. You boys, she says. All of you. And your paws too, still shaking her head. But Luke can see now that she’s mostly just keeping herself from actually smiling, sort of
like when you need to go ahead and yawn but decide to try to keep your mouth shut. Well alright, she says, but you promise me if it’s too bad you’ll turn around and get back here. Ma’m, he says nodding his head.

And then Bradley beginning to unbutton his coat says, As long as he’s with Lefty. Maybe there’s two or three Luke Davises somewheres out there in the world or their equivalent, although I shudder to think it, but there’s only one Lefty. Mrs. Bowman turns and slaps at her youngest son’s arm that’s still in its coat sleeve. You hush, she says, with that little mock scowl she has up between her eyebrows which is also just this side of a smile. You come back now Luke, she says. You hear me? And he turns at the door and says, If’n it’s too bad, Mrs. Bowman, I promise.

When they got over to the other side of the ridge the wind was much worse, as if it hadn’t been all that interested in going all the way up and over the hill because it was so busy on the Davis side that it might as well leave the Bowmans for another time. And they could count on it. They all could. And so when he and Lefty started down he knew he was two and a half miles from Doris’s and then another three-quarters of a mile from the ranch road that went along the bluff on the far side of
the creek for nearly another mile before it finally turned in where it crossed the culvert and headed up toward their barn, which was a little more than another half-mile beyond.

He figured it must have been well past midnight when they crossed the creek which was no more than a depression in the smooth even surface of the snow between either banking. Lefty whinnied as they started up toward the indistinguishable shapes of the buildings made ghostly somehow by the nearly submerged glow of the light that shone down from the peak of the barn. He whinnied again either to proclaim how glad he was to finally be back home or perhaps just to let his stablemates know that he was on the way, although the heavy blanket of falling snow muffled his call so they seemed to step through and then beyond it even before it was lost in the wind.

Luke dismounted outside the sliding-door, wheeling and stepping down out of the near stirrup. His legs were like wooden posts that he planted in the snow or like shadows of the limbs that he assumed were still there even if he couldn’t quite feel them. He dropped the reins and Lefty stood beside him with his head lowered. His mane was all knotted with ice and there was a scant line of it above each of his brows. Luke patted him against his
chest. The door was frozen in its track. A long-handled shovel rested against the outer wall for just such an eventuality and he cleared away the drifted snow, baring the concrete footing and then wedging the shovel under the bottom of the door until it broke free. It was actually only frozen where the ice off the ridge of the roof melted down, the animal-heat inside making the rafters an immeasurable degree or two warmer and thus somehow aiding in the formation of the icicles that hung like an armament of great jagged daggers and swords glinting silver when there was moonlight and building drop by drop whenever the low winter sun managed to show itself.

He slid the door back just wide enough for them to enter and turned on the light, stopping outside Lefty’s stall which was the second one in. The first stall was empty. He removed Lefty’s bridle and exchanged it for his halter which he fastened about his head and then dropped the leadrope over the tie-rail. He patted Lefty again and undid the breast-strap and both cinches, catching the far stirrup onto the horn and lifting the saddle off him. He held it against his hip with his left hand and brought it into the tackroom just beginning to feel his legs again although not as far down as his feet just yet as he clicked on the light inside. He positioned the saddle
on its wall mount and then removing his hat he knocked it free of ice and snow and hung it on the doorknob.

The wind blew snow in through the partly open sliding-door but he’d only be a few minutes and so he let it stay. He remembered the vat of cold spaghetti that had one more feeding left in it and he anticipated taking care of that bit of business before he finally went back to his own place to lie down. He lifted away Lefty’s saddle-blankets with the steam rising off the horse’s back and took them with his bridle into the tackroom and then turned off the light. He used the scraper to dissipate the moisture where the saddle-pads had set and then a hoofpick to clean the snow that was still balled up under Lefty’s feet. Then he went over him with his left hand fixed to a rubber currycomb and his right hand to a soft body-brush, each working in concert with the other, his left hand coming first followed closely by his right.

He mucked out Lefty’s stall from earlier in the day using a wheelbarrow to take away the waste and then proceeded down the other runway where they kept fresh shavings in a great wooden bin. He wondered when Spencer might get back as he wheeled the clean bedding toward Lefty who stood with the open stall-door between them. He could see Lefty’s lowered head facing
the bars of his stall as if he was beginning to doze off although he couldn’t see the horse’s eyes as he approached.

Someone years ago had fashioned a hood out of sheet-metal with wedged supports on either side to more or less protect the opening to the barn, and it was always intended that some spring after the snow was gone such a makeshift structure be made a more sturdy and permanent part of the roof. But having always fulfilled its function every winter, when the time for maintenance and repairs came which was usually after calving and before the start of haying, it never seemed enough of a priority to actually get done. The chores and tasks were endless and something that worked and wasn’t broken could easily be forgotten from one year to the next.