Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [137]
FOOd. watr.
tea
camPStove
Flansh light
sleeping bag
Many nights after milking, Dad played softball in the cow pasture with us. We used milk replacer bags for bases and rotated available kids in from the outfield to take their turns at bat. When Dad batted, John and I ran back to stand against the woven wire fence, but it rarely did any good, as Dad would snap the bat around and drive the ball high into the white pines, where it would tumble down in increments, clunking off the big limbs and snapping twigs. We played right through dusk and into the dark, until the ball was just a gray smudge and the dew was fallen. Some nights he took a few of us fishing in the canoe. I can remember him paddling back across Bass Lake in the dark, the smell of the warm water, the sound of the Hula Popper smacking the lily pads. Years later Mom told me that many of those nights he couldn’t feel the paddle in his hands, his carpal tunnel was so bad. He would be up half the night in pain, with the next day due to start before the sun. By the time the last cow was milked the following evening, he must have been aching for sleep. And yet he made time for us. “If you tell your child you’re going to build a treehouse, build it,” says the writer Jim Harrison, “or you’ll live forever in modest infamy.” Amy’s camping list is in clear view on my desk and will remain until she and I spend a night in that tent.
I am on the road, half a state away with my usual trunk full of books. My cell phone rings. It is Amy, her voice brimming with excitement. “Guess what I am holding! Right in my hand!” I play naive. “A toad?” “No! I just got it! It’s still warm.” I hesitate, generating the next wisecrack, and she can’t wait any longer. “An egg!” “No way!” I say. “No! Really! It’s still warm! It’s brown!” “Well, that’s wonderful, Amy.” And it is. The egg cupped in my little girl’s hand is the tangible result of conversations held clear back before Anneliese and I were married. And the eager pride in Amy’s voice reminds me of what Anneliese often stresses—that we are doing these things as a family. Even if I did spend the night in a Super 8 beside the interstate.
Home again, and Jane and I are going walkabout. I have her rigged on my shoulders in the backpack. Distributed throughout the aluminum frame and snugged straps, her weight dissipates to nothing. After all, she weighs little more than a good-sized chicken. As we step into the yard, I twist my neck to get a look at her face and find her looking out over the valley below. Her eyes are wide and steady beneath the brim of her floppy cap. How far out of infancy do we lose this gaze, with its utter absence of expectation or prejudice? What is it like to simply see what is before you, without the skew of context?
We begin on the easy path—a mown strip leading to the ridge past the old circular steel corncrib behind the granary. The crib stands empty beneath its rust-streaked galvanized cap, the iron mesh twined around the south side with a few stray ivy runners. For years it has done little more than sift the wind. At sundown it silhouettes against the sky like some ghostly aviary.
The leaves are well-turned and beginning to fall. Pale brown swatches of ripening corn stripe the far hillside, and crimson swatches of sumac fill the swales like coals banked against winter. The clouds are wispy in a pale blue sky, and the air is just crisp