Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [207]
“Yiu go back,” he said. “If Ay don’t run into your pa Ay bring the doc myself.”
“I’ve got to get Mrs. Olpen.”
The mare side-stepped, pulling at his arms. From the jenny John gave Ollie a long appraising squinting look, the look of an adult asked permission for something dubious. “Ya,” he said finally. “O.K. That’s gude idea. But yiu be careful.”
He turned the jenny and kicked her into a trot down the partly graded canal line. He rode loose and heavy, his toes pointed out. His relaxed weight made the jenny’s trot look smooth. He did not look back. Ollie watched him, feeling hollow and relieved, his burden divided. But then he thought how long it would be before John, or his father, or the doctor, or anyone, could get out from town, and he remembered the animal sound of his mother’s pain. In a moment he was galloping back along the canal line toward the river trail.
He had the Olpen place in sight from a good way off-log cabin and stable, hay-roofed shed, pole corrals, a gnawed and tattered haystack, tall cottonwoods. As he got closer he saw Mrs. Olpen come out into the yard, and chickens running stretch-necked in every direction, scattering the cottonwood fluff. He came in at a trot, with his arm across his face to hold out the dust. When he could see, there was Mrs. Olpen, leathery, slab-sided, standing by the chopping block with a Plymouth Rock hen by the legs in one hand and a kindling ax in the other. Rough men’s boots poked out from under her skirt. With her ax hand she held back a string of hair from her eyes, squinting upward.
“Havin’ it, is she? Needs me?”
“Yes, she’s sick, she was crying. Miss Linton said . . .”
“Just a second.”
She laid the chicken sideways on the block-round eye, leathery lid, open beak–and with one short blow chopped off its head. The ax remained stuck in the block beside the small, perfect, very dead head; the headless chicken flopped and bounced around them, scattering blood and stirring up cottonwood fluff. Ollie held the hard-mouthed mare in tight. Mrs. Olpen wiped her hands on her apron and then reached back to yank the strings. “Sally!” she bawled. “You, Sal!”
Wading through dust, feathers, and cotton, she hung the apron on a post, hoisted her skirts, and climbed through the corral fence. Ollie, looking at the horse inside, felt desperate. It was a Roman-nosed plow horse of the kind his mother always called Old Funeral Procession.
Impulsively he slid off, pulling the reins over the mare’s ears. “You can take mine. I can walk.”
But Mrs. Olpen glanced once at the mare’s slick wet back and shook her head, just one complete wag, over and back. The plow horse resisted the bit and got a crack across the nose. Ollie, reins in hand, felt the insides of his legs go cold in the evaporating wind. Down on the river bank the two youngest Olpen boys came out of the willows carrying fishpoles, and the sun glinted off the silvery side of the fish they carried between them. “Sal!” yelled Mrs. Olpen, cramming the plow horse’s ears into the headstall.
Someone yawned loudly from the house. Ollie turned, and Sally Olpen was in the door, gaping and stretching. She started deliberately down the yard, stopped and scraped her bare foot disgustedly against the ground, and came on again. On the side of her face was printed the pattern of a doily or cushion cover. Her black eyes glittered sideways at Ollie; she leaned on the corral poles and yawned, shuddering and shaking her head.
“Git that chicken plucked and drawed,” her mother said. “If I ain’t back tonight, you and Herm are to help Pa milk, hear? You git supper, too. You’re It.”
“What’s the matter? Where you goin’?”
Mrs. Olpen, not answering, laid on the plow horse a blanket crusted with sweat and hair. She moved slower than