Heart Earth - Ivan Doig [49]
As if dislodged by her view of it, the grouse plunges out of the tree, wings set, sailing down the mountain. Quick and far; a hundred yards, two hundred, three hundred, the breathtaking unflapping glide goes on. At last, still without the tremor of a wing, the grouse vanishes into another tree.
All as it was; mountainside of businesslike sheep, her horseback self, tin roof of the Rung cabin far below. She notices Flop straying off in inveterate curiosity and calls him in, her voice drumming back from the mountain. That air dance of echo allures her. The play of words crisscrosses in her trial shout:
"Ringling, Ringer, Rung!"
***
Charlie Rung teeters in the cabin doorway, a dozen summers before, drawn by a disturbance in the air. The toot of a grouse, was that?
He squints at the meadow, quiet with hay and the blossoms of his potato patch, then up the slope of Hatfield at his handful of cows, their heads already dug into the grass again.
Not sure now he heard anything, he regrets the nips of his chokecherry wine. Homebrew for lunch is not a sound idea.
He steadies himself to look around the place, sort out what wants doing next. As ever, his eye can't get past it; the stack of house lumber, no longer the fresh yellow of when he hauled it here three years ago, four? Took receipt of it straight out of the boxcar at the Maudlow depot, borrowed the Morgans' big wagon and labored the wood in load by load, damn near tipping over every time coming up that gulch. And there the pile sits, board footage for four rooms downstairs and three up, not counting attic and screen porch. Rafters and studdings and gables and shingles, the whole shebang.
The thing of it is, the house exists in Charlie Rung's mind. The only discrepancy is that it needs to be framed up and nailed together. Time he did that. He can't fully fathom how it hasn't happened already. Hadn't he done fine with the barn? And been triple careful with the walls of the cabin, so as not to wake up some clear January morning frozen stiff? But the carpentry of the house he has not quite attended to.
Middle of June, already. Haying is about to need doing, then the barn patched and mucked out for winter, then sixty bushels of potatoes to be dug and gunny-sacked and stored in the root cellar for winter, and cord after cord of stovewood to be chopped for winter too, and he is no youngster any more. All at once he knows he will never budge that lumber.
***
Blat is in the echoes now, the sheeps' medley of a thousand calls of baa bouncing here to there on Hatfield Mountain as the ewes are mothering up their lambs. They're ready to shade up, and Berneta too drops down for a rest. Army of mothers, encampment of wool at the top of the mountainslope. Berneta unwraps her sandwiches for lunch and gives Flop a share.
***
Out of the barbershop Dad and I march, shining at the back of the neck, and hurry through egg salad sandwiches at the lunch counter of the drugstore. The day is going and, last bite down, so are we.
Onward to conspiracy. This is the part that is secret from Berneta. My father had confided it to me as soon as we turned Prince Al loose. I outright dance to the idea, and my father looks like he could spring down the street in a burst of jigsteps himself.
At our destination, though, two of the women shoppers who seem to be the occupying force of Bozeman are passing by, one shaking her head and telling the other: "You ought to just see the prices they've got in there."
"'Spensive?"
"Awful. I walked in and walked out."
The Doigs are not daunted. In we plunge, my father's jaw geared forward into determination.
Shelves, counters, racks,