Christmas with Tucker (15 page)

Once out of her view, I stopped and peeked under the foil. Thorne’s plate had several pieces of cornbread and the remaining space was filled with fresh-out-of-the-oven Christmas cookies—cut into the shapes of trees and snowmen that were colored red and green and covered with sprinkles. Tucker’s plate had a soup bone with plenty of meat carelessly left attached. I shuffled down the icy road, trying not to fall and spill the food, smiling most of the way.

As I suspected, both Thorne and Tucker were pleased by my delivery, and playing the role of Santa improved my spirits, too. The soup bone was a big hit and Tucker immediately went to work on it.

When I got ready to return, Thorne put his hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you come around tomorrow, too, when you can stay longer. Maybe, if it’s a little nicer out, you can take him for a walk.”

I reached down and gave Tucker a farewell hug. “I’d like that.”

Tearing himself away from his treat, Tucker looked at me
gratefully and seemed to say, “That’ll work, but could you bring another bone, too?”

The lunch menu that afternoon was exactly what I expected: soup, cornbread, and Christmas cookies. As soon as we had the dishes cleaned and put away, my grandmother and I carried up boxes of decorations from the basement and we finally attended to the tree I had dragged from the creek.

We put lights on it and I hung what was left of the cookies that she had baked for Frank Thorne, as well as all the decorations from past McCray Christmases. As I handled the old ornaments, it was easy to let my mind drift back to happier times, when we’d all been together. Grandma Cora had grown quiet, too, and I’m sure she felt the same odd mix of melancholy and forced holiday cheer that was taking hold of me.

It was too early to start making new Christmas memories, it seemed, but I didn’t want my grandmother to slip back into sadness, thinking of her lost son. There seemed to be a few extra cookies and the kid in me took over, once again. When my grandmother wasn’t looking, I would pop them into my mouth and quickly chew and swallow them, another McCray tradition.

“Something seems to be getting into our cookies,” Grandma announced.

“How can you tell?”

She reached out with her thumb and touched my cheeks. “He’s got green crumbs all over his face, and he’s got the same silly grin on his face his dad used to get.”

I smiled even bigger, and I think we were both glad to have acknowledged my father, even in this small way. By doing so, it
was as if we could now allow ourselves to have a little fun decorating the tree.

When we were finished, Grandma plugged in the lights and, with the power out, they did not come on. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I guess that pretty much sums up our year, doesn’t it, George.” I am sure at that moment that neither of us knew whether to laugh or to cry.

THE NEXT MORNING
, I knocked on Thorne’s door and he tossed out a friendly “Come in.”

The little house was still reasonably clean and warm, and Thorne was busily tinkering with a carburetor that rested on the kitchen table. He pointed to a leash that hung by the door, knowing precisely why I was there. “Take the leash and be careful. It’s pretty slick out there.”

I snapped the leash on Tucker’s collar and we headed out the door. “Thanks, Mr. Thorne. I’ll bring him back in a few hours.”

It felt good to have Tucker walking beside me. We made our way to Mack’s Lake and knocked around his old cabin, but it was too cold to stay out for long, so after we took in our frozen surroundings we headed back to civilization.

We were living atop a polar ice cap that had hills and crystallized trees pushing up through the ice like statues protruding from stone ruins. With four legs, Tucker moved through the glassy terrain easier than I could, but still he had to be careful.
With so little traction, I slipped around and could not get my footing.

There was the eerie sound of tree branches cracking and snapping all around us, like distant cannon fire. Periodically, giant crashing noises came from the forest that flanked Kill Creek. Ancient tree trunks snapped under the weight of the ice and fell to the ground with thuds that echoed for miles along the riverbank. Tucker and I steered clear of the tree cover as we walked toward our farm.

My grandfather had worked all day with his chain saw, trying to clear the yard of branches and debris, and he still had a lot more to do. Tucker followed me around for an hour or so while I tried to stack the logs and branches that Grandpa had cut out of the way. There would be plenty of firewood for years to come.

After two weeks of being the first assistant to the Senior Road Maintainer, I naturally thought of my job. I walked to the end of the driveway and looked in both directions to see a tangled mess of ice and fallen debris. Eventually, I took Tucker back to Thorne’s cabin. Thorne was still intently working on his project, so I said a quick goodbye to Tucker and just released him inside the door. As I headed home, I grew a little gloomy. It was hard to think of Tucker like a neighbor friend whom I could walk with from time to time but not do much else with.

All of these snow days were also making me miss my friends. I wanted my normal routine back, even if it meant going to school.

The time I had left in Cherokee County was running out with each passing day. As best I could, I tried to accept that this was the way things had to be.

When I got home, my grandfather stopped his cutting and
we did the milking together. For yet another day, our cows’ efforts were ultimately poured on the ground. We started inside for dinner and I wondered aloud why we could not at least make some effort to beat this weather.

“Grandpa, I want to start up the maintainer and give it a try. It doesn’t feel right doing nothing.”

“George, you’ve never tried to drive a maintainer on ice. It can handle a half inch, but a whole inch of ice is too much. You’re going to have to trust me; it can’t be done. You’ll slip all over the place.”

I dug my heels in. “I want to try.”

He turned and walked away. “Suit yourself.”

After I warmed the diesel engine, it turned right over, sputtering, and then it evened out. With very little light left, I put the maintainer in reverse and eased slowly out the barn door. The weight of the maintainer cracked through the ice and reached the solid frozen grass beneath me. There was enough traction to back straight out. Encouraged, I moved through the barnyard and to the entrance of our gravel driveway without slipping around too much. Slowly lowering the blade, I tried to inch forward and turn over the gravel. The second the blade hit the ice, the resistance caused the machine to lose traction, and my wheels started to spin.

Backing up, I tried again at several different speeds and blade angles. Same result. Sitting there in the cab, I could hardly stand it. My own anger and frustration started to build. Backing the machine up, I got a good running start. When I had built up enough momentum, I dropped the blade violently, hoping to crack the icy surface. The maintainer spun hard and rocked up into the yard, where I had no business being. When I tried to back out, the maintainer’s tires spun.

I was stuck. Reversing didn’t work, either.

Knowing my grandfather would be unhappy with me, I started to feel very foolish.

He walked out the back door, right past me, without saying a word.

Not knowing what else to do, I just sat and waited. Soon I heard the sound of the big International Harvester tractor coming toward me in the last light of the day. He parked the tractor pointing downhill from the maintainer, where he would have more traction, and then got out of the cab and connected the tractor to the grader with a long chain. The tractor’s tires were twice the size of the maintainer’s, so it had much better pulling power. Still, there was no guarantee he could pull me out.

My grandfather walked up to the cab door. When I opened it, he didn’t appear mad. In fact, he just smiled and said, “Can’t grade in the ice, George.” Apparently, Big Bo McCray had passed some of his legendary stubborn streak onto his grandson.

For once, it was me who didn’t say a word.

“Put the transmission in reverse. When the chain is taut, let out the clutch slowly. I’ll try to pull you to level ground. Let’s hope we don’t both get stuck.”

It took us several tries before he was able to get me pulled back to a flatter area where the maintainer’s wheels didn’t just spin. Maybe it was because I didn’t know better, but I didn’t want to give up.

After we had both implements back in the barn, I got my nerve up to keep pushing. “Grandpa, why can’t we hook up Dick and Dock, like you used to before you got the maintainer, and try to grade the old-fashioned way?”

“George, Dick and Dock are twice as old as me in horse
years. They’d barely make it down the driveway before they dug in their heels and turned back to their warm stalls. And what if one of them slipped and broke a leg?”

“Well, don’t we use chains on the car tires sometimes? Couldn’t we put chains on the maintainer, too?”

“They don’t make chains that big. Besides, with ice this thick, I doubt chains would make a difference. A car just has to push itself forward; a maintainer has a much harder job. It has to move itself forward and scrape thousands of pounds of ice off the road at the same time. That takes traction, and lots of it.”

“There just has to be some way.”

My grandfather looked pained. It didn’t occur to me that this was bothering him just as much as or more than it was bothering me. “Why don’t you go inside and let me think about it. Sometimes we just have to accept that there are things we can’t fix. Things are not always the way we want them …”

His words trailed off and I heard something I didn’t think was possible. There were no tears in the eyes of Big Bo McCray, but there was a pained break in his voice that probably surprised him as much as it did me. I walked over to my grandfather and put my arms around him. He gave me a big hug. “I’m sorry, George. None of us like to feel helpless.”

He squeezed me a little tighter and for a moment it felt very much like I had a father again. He released his grip and turned and walked away. Walking back to the house, I felt a little sorry for the way I had behaved.

By the time I got back inside the kitchen, it was dark out and Grandma had lit the kerosene lamp. My grandfather did not come up to the house for dinner.

At first, Grandma did not seem that worried. She just left
his plate of food covered in the oven and we ate without him. By 7:15, when there was still no sign of him, she began nervously looking out the back door.

“Do you want me check on him, Grandma?”

“No, I’m sure he’s fine. It’s just not like him to stay out so late.”

A little past 7:30 that night, we heard the maintainer engine turn over.

“What is he up to out there?” my grandmother asked.

The maintainer eased out of the barn and turned into the driveway and stopped. The light from the headlamps reflected off branches encased in glass. The cab door swung open and my grandfather came up to the back porch. I did not realize why at the time, but he moved sure-footedly on the ice.

Grandma pushed open the back door and called out to him.

“Get inside, Bo! It’s late!”

But he made no move to come into the house and just looked at her.

“What is it, Bo?”

“Maybe I’m a fool, Cora, but George is right. People are counting on us. There is something I want to try. It just might work. Don’t wait up for me; I’ll be back when I’m finished.”

“Bo, you can’t go out in this ice. You and George couldn’t even get out of the driveway. This is crazy. Where are you going?”

“It’ll be fine. I’ve got it all worked out.” He turned and headed back to the maintainer, climbing into the cab and releasing the brake. I watched silently as he headed down the driveway at a snail’s pace.

Grandma was furious. She paced about the kitchen for the rest of the evening, carrying on an angry monologue under
her breath, and eventually she went to bed early without saying goodnight.

With the exclusive use of the kerosene lamp, I wandered into my parents’ room and looked around. It seemed that I had been avoiding this room for many months now.

There were still pictures of my dad on the bedside table and on the wall along with the other family photos. This room had been his when he was a boy and the same dresser had stayed in there all of these years. I opened some of the drawers in the chest. There were four or five worn-down pencils, some firecrackers he had taken away from me, change, ticket stubs, and the yellow pocketknife, with a bone handle, that I gave him for Christmas. A strong feeling came over me that my dad would want me to have that knife, that somehow it was rightfully mine. I slipped it into my pocket and held it close. It felt good to have something on me that connected us.

There was no reason for me to sleep upstairs where it was so cold and leave Grandma downstairs by herself, so I just climbed into the double bed. It seemed luxurious having that giant bed all to myself. It would have been even better with a big, furry, red pillow, even if it did tend to wiggle and lick my face. Reading by the dim light of the lamp, I quickly felt drowsy, so I turned it off and listened to the wind blowing against the window. The iced-over branches sounded like wind chimes knocking up against the house. While wondering what my grandfather was up to, I drifted off to sleep.