Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (39 page)

“Oh, shut-up!”

For several minutes I tried to smash the ice with a short limb but got no where. It was too solid. I said, “The tip of her wing is broken. I think the best thing to do is cut it off. She’ll never be able to fly with it anyway.”

But we didn’t have anything to cut it with. We would have to do it at the house.

So Patricia held the goose, and I carried the frozen block as we waded back out to the road. While we struggled through the powder, it began to snow again. By the time we got to the road the flakes had changed to pellets. When we turned west to hike the quarter mile to the house, we had a sharp headwind that pummeled our faces with ice.

A couple of times the goose got its head loose and tried to bite Patricia. My wife was always able to grab her before she could. Each time it happened there was a flurry of flapping, and once she yanked the ice out of my hands. But I caught it before it fell very far. When we reached the house, both of us felt really beat up and exhausted. My hands were numb from carrying the block. And the goose was too tired to resist anymore.

Inside the back door we laid her and the ice down on a rug in the mud room. Patricia stood up and said, “We’re trying to save her life, and all she wants to do is kill us.”

With a pair of wire cutters I clipped the wing where it went into the block. She didn’t act like it hurt her and there was no blood. The wing was probably too frozen for her to feel it or bleed. Patricia painted iodine on the wound while I fetched a cage from the barn. It was made for hauling chickens. The door was too small for a goose, so I cut the top open and laid her in it on a bed of straw. Then I asked, “Now what?”

Patricia said, “If she’s still alive in the morning, we’ll decide what to do then.”

She made it through the night. And everyone we talked to thought we should keep her in the house until she got her strength back. If we turned her loose now she’d be easy pickings for the coyotes and other critters.

So I fixed a pen for her in the mud room and we named her Lucy. Within a few days she calmed down and quit trying to bite us when we fed her. She still hissed once in a while, but usually she’d just cock her head and look at us with one eye. And every time someone walked in the back door, Lucy would honk. Just what we needed, a watch goose.

Two weeks after saving Lucy, I was in the barn helping Patricia with evening chores, when I heard her yell frantically, “Bud, help me! Hurry!”

She had gone outside to check the water trough. So I scurried around the barn to find her kneeling in the snow with both hands in the trough cradling a pot belly pig. Patricia had a shiver in her voice. “I found her thrashing around in there. I think she’s drowning.”

Grabbing the little pig, I threw her onto my shoulder which made her belch water down my back. A coating of ice was forming on her hide, and her body was trembling in my arms.

I turned to Patricia. “Meet you in the house.”

I moved as fast as I could, but the lane–all fifty yards of it to the house––was a solid sheet of ice. Each step was a slippery endeavor. Every inch of the way the pig continued to convulse on my shoulder.

When I finally got to the back door and yanked on it, my feet went out from under me. I landed on my butt, which sent the pig flying off my shoulder and out of my grasp. It flopped and slid a dozen feet down the lane, with more water gushing from it.

On hands and knees I crawled across the ice, grabbed her by a rear leg and dragged her to the door. Still on my knees, I went inside and pulled the pig in with me. Then I toted it up the five steps and laid her down on the same floor where we had the goose two weeks earlier.

Lucy’s pen was just a few feet away, and she went wild. She honked, shrieked, hissed and flapped her good wing so frantically that I was afraid she’d hurt herself. So I swooped up the shuddering pig, grabbed a couple of towels off the nearby dryer, and took her into the kitchen. There, I laid her down on a throw rug and commenced to rub her with the towels.

“How’s she doing?” Patricia asked. She had just come in from the barn. I’d been rubbing the pig for at least ten minutes.

“I’ve got all the ice off her but I think the convulsions are getting worse. She must be in shock.”

Patricia knelt down. “What should we do?”

“I’ve never dealt with a hypothermic pig before. Have you?”

Patricia called a veterinarian, who told her to fill a tub with lukewarm water and keep rubbing until the pig quit shaking. “If it lives through that, then keep it inside where it’s warm, but not hot. A cold corner of the house would be good. Call me in the morning if she’s still alive.”

When we finally took her out of the tub, three hours and ten minutes had passed. I know, because I timed it. And one of us was rubbing her every moment.

In the northwest corner of the kitchen, I made a corral out of boxes and chairs, and bedded it down with straw. When I put her in it, she was as limp as a live pig could ever be. The only thing she moved were the nostrils on her button-shaped nose. When I laid her down, a faint grunt came out of her. Otherwise, she was completely still.

In the morning she was lethargic, but alive. The vet said, “Keep her out of the cold until she gets strong again. It may take a week or two. When she starts driving you nuts, it’ll be time to put her back in the barn.”

Then the vet asked Patricia, “Have you named her yet?”

“She’s my Little Mermaid.”

My fondest memories of that snowy winter are of Della dashing through it with us in the sleigh. We only did it one time at night. It was mid-February. The sky was cloudless, the moon full and the air crisp. Della’s bells jingled in rhythm to the frosty crunches of her steps, as she pranced smartly through the orchard with ears erect.

While we slid by the rows of slumbering apple trees, their moonlit silhouettes looked like they were silently applauding us. The orchard was like a fairyland, and we were the only humans in it. Norman Rockwell could not have conjured a more beautiful scene.

On the hilltop above the pond, I stopped Della so we could gaze at the brilliance all around us. The moon skipped millions of diamonds over the snow, and sent shimmering ribbons across the ice below us. It was splendid!

We sat in silence for a few minutes before my bride said, “I’ve got to say, that even with all the hassle, and how hard it makes our work, I still like snow.”

“Oh yeah? What about your honeymoon? Sometimes it’s a hassle and a lot of work. How do you feel about it?”

Patricia snuggled her cheek against my shoulder. When I looked into her eyes, they were sparkling like the moonlit snow.

I love snow!

A one-mule open sleigh
.

CHAPTER 16

T
HE
B
OYS
A
RE
B
ACK
I
N
T
OWN

W
E DREADED THE RETURN OF
the Mexicans.

When they came back, it would be us two middle-aged gringos with eight young Mexican men–only two of whom spoke English–living in the same house. And the Harding house had only one bathroom and one kitchen. The bathroom lights quit working long ago. So they hung a work light in it–the kind mechanics use under your car. It was attached to a long orange extension cord that ran out the door, down the hall and plugged into Chooey’s room. So you couldn’t shut the door completely–much less lock it–because of the cord. Plus, there was paint and plaster that hung in festoons from the bathroom ceiling. And when you sat on the toilet it rocked.

The kitchen had no cupboards, shelves or counters. It did have an enamel sink, electric stove, two refrigerators and a Formica-topped kitchen table in the middle of the room. The only light was a hundred-watt bulb dangling over the table, and the only place to set a pan was on the big cast iron radiator next to the stove. Over the years lots of greasy pans had slopped onto it, and obviously the mess wasn’t always wiped off. I didn’t know there were so many shades of burnt.

Before the Mexicans returned, we fixed ourselves a suite of two rooms upstairs at the back of the house. It had a private stairway that led down to
the kitchen, and it was close to the bathroom. (The door now closed and locked. I fixed the lights and the toilet no longer rocked.) Plus our suite had a view of Della’s paddock.

We knew when the Mexicans came back, we’d have no privacy. We learned that early one morning our second week in the house when we were still sleeping in the game room. The sun was just below the horizon, but there was enough light that Patricia and I could appreciate what we were seeing as we made love.

“Bud, wait!” Patricia stopped me. “Did you hear that?”

Mexican voices were in the house yelling for a man who had lived there during apple picking. Suddenly a light in the next room came on as our blanket door flung open. Three men stood there staring as we scrambled for covers.

I yelled, “What the hell is going on?”

They just stood there with the blanket pulled back.

I screamed, “Put the damn blanket down!”

The one holding it babbled some Spanish. A bald man behind him grabbed the blanket and dropped it as he said, “Excuse us, Senor. We’re looking for Enrique.”