Heart Earth - Ivan Doig [37]
Charlie feels pretty good most of the time. Says begets a pain in his side once in awhile, but not often.
When Dad stands up from the bumper jack to rest for a moment, my mother steps in and teeters her full weight, such as it is, on the jack handle. The jack head ratchets slowly up and catches in the next higher notch, ratchets up another oh so slow notch when she does it again. She manages to contribute half a dozen notches up the jack stem before my father judiciously takes over again.
No matter who works the jack handle, though, the rear bumper rises very little but the board submerges steadily. My father cusses, releases the jack, and layers more boards on top of the first one.
This time the jacking brings up the entire back of the car enough to slip boards lengthwise under the tires, and, the first spits of rain beginning to find us, the three of us hastily lay paths of boards in the ruts ahead far enough—we hope—to give us a running start out of the mudhole.
This time my father mans the gas pedal and steering wheel. The Ford shoots ahead the length of the first-laid boards, onto the next set, then slews off and drops, mired, again. My father cusses and we all climb out to start over on the jacking.
CRACK!
—from a lightning bolt striking the butte nearest us.
"Ivan, get in the car, right now," my mother commands, flinging the passenger-side door open and poising to follow me in. "Charlie...?"
Even in a fuming mood, my father knows enough to listen to thunder that is too close to cast an echo. He ducks into the coupe on the driver's side as more lightning slams to earth not very far away, and here we are in the insulating rubber-tired Ford. Grounded, in numerous meanings of the word.
Again we perform the kicking off of overshoes, as the rain tapping on the car roof lets us know it is going to be around for a while. I promptly squirm into the backseat and ledge myself crosswise in the rear window, a la Arizona. I find I don't fit as well as I did. True, there'd been enough rain in the Maudlow country this spring to shrink the Ford, but I knew I was growing, outgrowing. Lying curled against the car glass, this is maybe my final chance to childspy on the mysteries in the front seat.
My father lights a cigarette to try to bribe his nerves. Then he contemplates the ruts ahead, troughs of brown jelly. "We could use about a hundred feet of that Arizona desert just now."
My mother says nothing.
My father's Stetson is damp and he takes it off and crimps the crown and brim here and there to make sure it keeps the crease he likes. Under the disguise of that comes his question.
"Ye feeling all right, are you?"
I've been having a little more asthma, her report to Wally during the strenuous Morgan lambing season just past, but not so bad.
"Tuckered out on mud, is all," my mother answers. "When we get through being stuck, let's don't fight this road any more today."
My father weighs that. Beyond the mudhole are the day's chores that all need doing: fixing the fence of the saddle pasture, then rounding up into it the necessary horses of summer, Tony, Duffy, Sugar, Star.
"Berneta, we need to lay hold of those damn horses."
"This isn't getting it done."
My father inspects the rain pittering onto the windshield and now he says nothing.
Bunked where I am, I carefully stay more silent than their silence.
Sure as the world, my father rouses to the weather, the freshening season. "All this rain is bringing the grass, ye have to say that for it."
He smokes as if thinking over something my mother had just asked. "We can come out good on this sheep deal, don't ye think?"
The sheep deal. It has been in the air all the way back to Wickenburg. My father had not given up on Arizona for good, in those desert nights of talking things over, but he'd discerned that he had to be stronger in his wallet and a few other parts of himself to niche