CIRCLES
Published by Ross Martin Madsen at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Ross Martin Madsen
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Time is not important because it is imaginary. At best it provides an agreed upon framework for life but does not govern behavior. We cannot escape the eternal NOW, because the past is gone and the future is yet to happen. Learning from either is an accident, not a certainty. To the living, each era manifests the same trials and each moment the same challenges as past epochs.
Place is largely irrelevant. Wherever we're born, from the wealthiest mansion to the meanest hovel, we all face the common human experience. How we deal with what we have is the test; the measure of each person.
Growing older is the only thing that matters. Change is life's singular constant, identical because it happens to us all, yet different for each of us. It is the same yesterday, today and forever. We cannot escape the inevitability of human beings aging and overlapping.
We are circles, chain links of life, connected by points of love, hate and chance. We exist separately but equally, unique yet similar in the same instant, sharing experiences, classified by reactions, defined by responses, and characterized by actions.
Each generation travels a remarkably similar path from infancy, through childhood to adolescence and maturity, finally finding rest in the grave. Along this common path we all re-learn the lessons of previous generations. We continually make the mistakes they made while seeking the same goals they struggled to achieve. We don't seem capable of accepting the warning of those who have trodden the path before us and that is why history repeats itself in spirit if not in content.
* * * *
I learned these truths from my grandfather’s journal. As I read them, scrawled in pen on yellowed paper, it seemed tragic he hadn’t shared them with me personally when he lived with us the summer before he died. But . . . he was fragile and spent most of his time in bed eating chocolate chip cookies against doctor’s orders, sleeping too much, or listening in on the world through the speakers of a small hand held transistor radio. The airwaves brought him the exploits of our local AAA professional baseball team, the ranting of political pundits, cowboy music and religion on Sundays.
He smelled of age and infirmity.
Conversing with him was slow and difficult, hardly worth my time. He repeated the same stories over and over and I was busy relearning life's lessons on my own and couldn’t fit visits to a sick Grandfather into my schedule. Besides, I felt uncomfortable around the rough and gnarled farmer from Gunnison, Utah. His asthma and diabetes made him an invalid and his breathing attacks scared me. He kept to himself in his room at the back of our house, and I didn’t bother him out of a sense of privacy I told myself. He was only with us for a few months each year. So it was easy to stay away from him and let my parents provide for his needs.
Our family's turn to care for him had just begun when he passed away in his sleep. My Mom went to take him breakfast one morning and found him dead. With his passing I lost the opportunity to learn firsthand the insights he had gouged out of an eighty-six year life span.
I didn’t find the treasure Grandpa left behind until years later after the passing of my Father. Dad had kept Grandpa’s journals to himself, not wishing to share them with his sisters Verda, Mable, or Affalone or with any of his children for some reason. He never said why; then both Mom and Dad died within months of each other. I finally came to possess the four black leather journal notebooks. Nobody else in the family wanted them when the ransacking of my parent’s assets took place after Dad’s funeral, and I didn’t have the heart to just throw them in the trash. So I deposited them in a place of honor on the left side of the upper shelf of the bookcase in my living room. There they gathered dust for years and remained unread until one nostalgic moment during and especially cold Utah winter’s evening I decided to thumb through them and determine if I really wanted to keep them or not.
Who knew anything about Grandpa’s childhood? He was a stranger.
Who knew anything about his parents or his sisters? They were strangers.
To me they were just names on our family tree, but part of their lives were right there in his journals, waiting for someone to recognize and appreciate their simple beauty.
January 25, 1919
I remember snow crunching underfoot, sending chills up and down my spine.
“It's been a hard labor,” Dad said.
His breath billowed from his mouth and nose like smoke from a fire in his belly. There was a salt and pepper stubble of beard on his jaw. He hadn’t shaved yet. The labor had started in the early hours of the morning before the sun had cleared the mountains to the east of Gunnison and he had gone straight out to help without thoughts of personal hygiene.
His eyes, focused on the path between the house and the cow pen, had a look of anxiety in them. His arm draped around my shoulders, but gave no comfort. It was there to steady my course, not to make me feel good. The set of his jaw told me we were headed toward trouble.
The winter of 1919-1920 had been unusually bitter in central Utah. Deep snow with a hard crust, covered fields, buildings and farm equipment with little promise of melting for several more weeks. I burrowed my face into the woolen scarf that crossed my mouth and nose. I didn't want the cold air to bring on an asthma attack.
Bad time of the year to have a calf, I thought.
“It’s too big,” Dad continued, “and Jezebel's all tuckered out from working so hard. We're going to have to help or we might lose them both.”
The closer we came to the feed shed and the lean-to attached to it side, the louder Jezebel sounded. She breathed hard and bellowed from pain. We rounded the corner, and I stopped short. Jezebel's blood stained the snow and straw bright red.
“I told you it wouldn’t be pretty,” Dad said as his arm around my shoulder gave me a gentle push forward to move me off the spot where I’d stopped. I stumbled a few steps closer to the bellowing cow and stopped again. “I'll pull on the calf, you pull on me,” Dad ordered as he took off his coat, dropped it over the rail of the wooden fence surrounding the cow pen and rolled up his flannel shirtsleeves.
He bent over and carefully reached inside Jezebel’s womb. He looked back over his shoulder at me. I couldn't seem to move my feet.
“Come on now. No time to be squeamish,” he urged.
“Okay,” I said.
I took off my mittens and stuffed them into the pocket of my coat. Cautiously I wrapped my arms around his thick waist. I could barely lock my fingers. My face smashed against his back and the seams of his bib overalls.
“Pull,” he ordered.
Closing my eyes, I yanked as hard as I could. My heels dug into the snow, searching for support but found only more snow and ice below the surface. My feet slipped from under me and I ended up sitting in the snow behind my Dad.
“Not like that,” he said. “Don’t jerk at it. Pull steady and strong.”
I repositioned myself behind my father and this time I pulled until my arms ached. Gradually the calf slid out of its mother. The head and front shoulders came first and finally the hindquarters in a rush. I tumbled backwards and my hip slammed into the ground again as Dad and the calf sprawled on top of me. Dad struggled to get off but the calf kept kicking and bawling, dreadful mad about being born. Finally we untangled and scrambled to our feet.
“You okay?” Dad asked.
“Okay,” I fibbed, my hip throbbing.
Jezebel lay panting on the ground. Her great moon round eyes rolled back into their sockets. Dad picked up two handfuls of snow and used them to wash the blood from his hands and arms.
“Go get the rifle,” he ordered, wiping his wet hands on his bib overalls. “I'll tie off the calf’s chord and see how Jezebel does.”
“You're not going to shoot her?” I asked.
“I don't know,” Dad shook his head. “She's lost a lot of blood and she’s all torn up inside. I may not have a choice. Now go get the gun.”
I turned and headed for the house. Smoke curled from the chimney over the coal stove where Mom cooked breakfast. The sun still hadn’t cleared the mountains to the east but there was light. I could see our small two-story home with its bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living room on the bottom floor and two attic bedrooms tucked up under the roof. The light coming through the window by the front porch seemed to call out, “Come in out of the cold.” It spoke of warmth and safety.
You can't do this, I thought all the way to the gun rack at the foot of the attic stairs. I don't want Jezebel hurt.
I pushed aside the coats and sweaters hanging over the rifle and shotgun nestled in the gun rack mounted on the wall behind them. I grabbed the Winchester lever action rifle from its cradle, dragged it free of the clothing and stomped back across the kitchen. Leaning the rifle against the counter, I climbed up onto the lip of the sink. Balancing there, I flung open the doors of the cupboard over the window in front of the sink and snatched a box of shells. I slipped back down onto the floor and seized the gun. It seemed to weigh a hundred pounds as I carried it toward the door.
“Where are you going with that?” Mom demanded as she blocked my way outside.
“I think Dad's going to shoot Jezebel!” I replied through clenched teeth. I couldn’t look her in the eye, so I stared at the faded pattern of flowers in the linoleum under my feet.
“Oh no,” her voice held a note of despair as she pulled me close and ran stick thin fingers through her hair.
“Oh yeah,” I answered into the fabric of her apron, desperately wanting to drop the rifle and shells and bury myself in her arms. Instead I backed away from her, and sliding around her, I slammed the door and then the screen door behind me.
Each step toward the lean-to was punctuated by an intake of frigid winter air. I didn’t cover my face so I knew the asthma would come, but I didn't care.
Dad took the rifle and checked the chamber.
“Did you bring some shells?”
I shoved the box of bullets at him.
“Daddy, do you have to shoot her?” I whined.
He leaned the rifle against a post, put the box of shells in his coat pocket and came down to my level.
“I don't know son,” he whispered as he knelt in front of me his carrot thick fingers grasping my shoulders. He looked me dead in the eyes over the top of his glasses and continued, “I don't want to, but I may have to do it.” His thin salt and pepper mustache moved up and down with his lips as he explained, “How many times do I have to tell you not to get so attached to the animals?” He paused but I knew he didn’t want me to give an answer. “Now take the calf into the house. It needs to be out of the cold so it won't freeze. I'll see what can be done for Jezebel.”
Without another word to my Dad I gathered the calf into my arms. Still wet from the womb, it trailed steam as I staggered under its weight toward the house. Fingers of asthma constricted my chest. I gasped for breath but still managed to squeeze out words I hoped God would hear. “Please don't let Jezebel die,” I prayed. “She's a good cow. Gives lots of milk. She doesn't deserve to die.”
Halfway to the house the shot rang clear and long, driving itself into the center of my soul.
The calf struggled and bawled for its mother.
I wanted to scream, to drop the mucus-covered calf and run to where I knew Jezebel lay dead. Instead, I carried the shivering new born onto the porch, struggled with the screen door and kicked the metal plate at the bottom of the front door.
Mom opened it from the inside.
“I heard the shot,” she said. “I'm sorry.”
“So am I,” I wheezed with difficulty. Barely able to force out the asthma choked words over the calf's bawling for its mother.
“Oh no. Not another attack,” Mom acknowledged with worry written in her face.
“I’ll be all right,” I gasped. “Would you get me a blanket and some rags?” I ground the words out of my mouth. “Buckstrap needs the warmth.”
“Buckstrap? Is that what you're going to name it.”
“Yes,” I answered. It was the name I had planned ever since I knew Jezebel was with calf.
“You need the warmth as well,” Mom said as she headed toward the attic stairwell located just inside the door to the bathroom. She turned to the left as she passed through the door and entered the bathroom instead of hooking to the right, scooting under the clothing hanging on the wall and climbing the narrow ladder-stairway to the attic bedrooms. She turned right around the closed in stairwell, into the bathroom and out the second doorway on the opposite wall into her bedroom.
“You are not to go outside again,” I could hear her order over her rummaging in her closet. “Ah, here they are,” Mom declared.
She came back through the bathroom and around the stairwell into the kitchen with several old blankets and a handful of rags. She closed both the door to her bedroom and then the door to the bathroom behind her as she came. Dropping the bedding by the coal stove, she knelt, arranged the blankets into a nest for the calf and stood up. Straightening the apron around her waist, and pushing her gray blonde hair back into place she asked, “Will that do?”
“Yessum,” I grunted as I put the calf down on the blankets and took the offered rags from her hand.
Warmed by the heat of the stove the calf settled down somewhat and stopped struggling. I started wiping the blood and mucus from its neck and back, doing the job its mother should have done.
“There's a bottle under the sink,” Mom offered, “and I think there may be a rubber nipple in the storage cupboard under the stairway. We'll have to hand feed the calf for a while.”
While Mom went after the nipple I dipped some milk from the can by the icebox and poured it into a pot. Warming it on the stove, I tested its temperature several times. When it was ready I found the bottle under the sink and poured the milk into it.
Mom came back with the nipple. She had cut a large X in the tip to make is so milk would come out faster. I fastened it over the bottle's opening. “At least she’ll get some of her mother’s milk for a while.
Buckstrap sucked greedily when I gave it to her.
“You eat,” I whispered. “I'll take good care of you.”
There was a rumble of footsteps from the attic stairs. The door to the stairway and bathroom burst open and my two sisters tumbled passed the coats and gun rack into the kitchen.
“What happened?” asked Sarah.
“We heard a gunshot!” Amy was breathless.
“Oh,” they sighed together as they noticed the calf and me by the stove. They squatted beside us, their eyes filled with questions.
“Jezebel's dead,” I answered, my eyes brim filled with tears. They had the decency to look sad and didn't use it as an excuse to poke fun at me.
Dad came in, stamping the cold from his boots. He leaned the rifle against the wall. I stared at it. He stood quietly by my side until the calf finished feeding. I took the corner of one of the blankets and continued to rub the calf to help it dry.
“Jezebel lost too much blood,” he finally explained. “I couldn't save her.” Dad glanced at Mom. My eyes still swam. “At least we'll have enough meat the rest of the winter,” he offered as he knelt beside me and examined the calf. “I think its ears may be frozen.”
“Maybe so,” I answered. “But froze or not I'll take care of Buckstrap even if they both fall off.”
“You know we'll have to sell that calf as soon as it's big enough,” Dad warned. “I'll need to get a new milk cow and I can't afford to feed two animals.”
“You told me I could raise Jez's calf once it was born, I'm holding you to that.”
“Animals are animals, Son. Never love them like you would a person,” Dad replied. “It can only bring grief.”
It was the first time I remember ignoring my father's advice.
CHAPTER ONE
August 15, 1920
“You going to do it this time Reggie?” Meg hollered at me from her front gate.
She draped over the top rail with her arms wedged between the pickets. The pickets around her yard were like neat white soldiers constantly at attention, guarding their family's two-story house from uninvited intrusion. Posts and three strands of barbed wire encircled our yard making our side of the street less fashionable but still serving the same need for protection and privacy. In a way the tiny barbs were more formidable.
Meg had one foot on the bottom rail of her gate and used the other to kick against the dirt. Chewing on her right braid, which always seemed to be stuck in the corner of her mouth, she pushed off and rode the gate as it swung open and then closed.
“I am,” I replied.
“Can I come and watch?”
“No,” I answered and strolled along on the opposite side of the street.
“You'll need a witness,” Meg called after me allowing the braid to flop back onto its proper place on her right shoulder.
No I don't, I thought. Especially not one who's mocking me. You can stand and swing on your front gate 'til doomsday for all I care.
“If you do it and nobody sees you, Ostler won't believe it,” she shouted.
Jake Ostler can suck eggs, I thought. This whole thing's his fault anyway.
“You can't do the Challenge by yourself.”
I can too, I thought and continued to ignore her. That always made Meg madder than a wet hen. I didn't care if no one saw me the first time. I'd know I’d done it. That's all that counted.
Dust squeezed between my toes. In summer, shoes served no purpose other than to make your feet sweat and scrunch your toes together like sardines in a tin. I walked a ways passed Meg's gate and stopped to yank a stem from a clump of grass around a fence post. I jammed it into my mouth. The growing green part tasted juicy sweet as I gnawed on it for a while.
I bent over a second time and picked up a stick lying on the ground. I casually snuck a look at Meg, but her gate was empty.
What's she up to, I thought. Going to try following me I'll bet. I couldn't stop her so I shrugged and started up again. She better not get in the way.
The stick clattered along the top strand of the barbed wire as I walked, hopping every time a barb stuck it. A low flying meadowlark skimmed by in front of me and I let go with the stick. It missed.
The bird flung back its song, “Gunnison-is-a-pretty little town.” Least wise that's what Dad says they sing. I didn't know whether Gunnison was pretty or not. Never been anywhere else to compare. All I knew was summer was blistering hot and winter was colder than a well digger's backside. You could walk clear around the town in an hour and pert near throw a rock the full length of Main Street. Well, maybe not the full length. I tend to exaggerate some, but Gunnison's not big, small but comfortable in most places.
I breathed in summer. It filled my lungs with warmth, the smell of trees, and the odor of dusty central Utah farm fields. Heat waves rippled and danced the distance.
Wiping the beads of sweat from under my nose with the back of my hand I remembered how I hate my freckles. They seem to drip off my face and run down my neck under my shirt, spilling from beneath my rolled up shirtsleeves to cover my arms and the back of my hands. They give Jake Ostler something else to tease me with. He doesn't tease Meg about hers. Maybe because Sheriff Gardner is Meg's dad and Jake don't want trouble with the law.
Where is Meg, I wondered. Sneaking along behind me I’ll bet.
Couldn't let her think I was scared of the Challenge so I added a little swagger to my walk in case she followed. I didn't really want to get where I was headed, so I decided to take my sweet time getting there. Maybe Meg would get tired and go home.
I came up on Main Street from behind the Co-op. Gazing in the store window only made me jealous of those who can afford the finery for sale so I shuffled by in a hurry and went next door to the Casino Movie Theater. They hadn't changed the bill in two weeks, Tarzan of the Apes starring Elmo Lincoln, and Child of the Prairie with Tom Mix. It took movies a long time to make their way to Gunnison so they tended to keep showing them until the posters and the moving pictures were old hat. I’d seen both movies and almost had them memorized, but I still spent some time in front of each poster studying the pictures.
After awhile I turned and jogged across the wide dirt road. New concrete sidewalks were planned for Fall. Nineteen twenty would be a year to remember.
Looking over my shoulder down the street to see if I could catch any glimpse of Meg, I saw Lurv Ludvigson's new 1919 Hudson Essex Model A car parked in front of the bank. He'd brought the first Model T Ford into Gunnison several years earlier and had an image to maintain.
“Get on home little chick.”
The words froze my legs.
Fred Ostler, Jake's dad, stepped out of the pool hall doorway. “Chickens belong in a coop,” he said, taking the ever-present toothpick out of his mouth.
“Don't call me chicken,” my words squeezed out between clenched teeth.
“Call you anything I want.”
“I'm not chicken,” I muttered.
“Jake says different.”
I hate Jake Ostler and some of it spilled over on his dad as we eyeballed each other for a cool ten seconds. A couple of his pool hall buddies, Art Durham and Charlie Slobberboose, stuck their heads out of the door.
“What’s up?” chuckled Charlie.
“Found myself a little chick,” Fred tossed the remark over his shoulder to them.
I knew if I stayed they would gang up on me, so I turned and stomped off down Main Street.
“Buck, buck, buck,” Fred Ostler and his friends cackled after me and then snickered as they turned back to the pool hall and more important pursuits.
My blood boiled and I oozed anger. Clenching my teeth and fists, the rest of Main Street was lost to me in a red fog. I wasn't aware of anything except my dislike for Jake Ostler and his father until I was opposite Washington Elementary School, whose two stories of red brown stone, stood vacant, waiting to swallow me in two weeks and end my summer vacation. The school stared silently at me and I stared back. The anger cleared from my mind but I was ready to do anything to get Jake and his dad off my back.
* * * *
I turned left after I passed the school and entered the standoffish part of town where the more well to do folks lived. Course they needed the money the rest of us spent in their stores so they could be well to do, but that didn’t get in the way of their being standoffish. Mixing at Church on Sunday didn’t seem to change things either. Heaven help the attendance if one of the men from the wrong part of town was asked to be Bishop of the Gunnison Ward. Dad said it had happened once and for three years the well to do in town stopped coming to meetings out of spite. The Bishop got frustrated and finally moved away. The next man called by the Church was from the correct part of town and things went back to normal.
The rest of Gunnison, with its weather beaten homes surrounded by vegetable gardens and out buildings for live stock, appeared friendly enough. But the part of town I now headed into was dominated by Dahlrymple's Feed and Mill located halfway down the next cross street; it radiated meanness. Orneriness oozed out the store’s windows and doors. Dahlrymple didn't seem to like anyone; least of all eleven-year old boys like me. He owned the town's only feed store, otherwise people would have avoided him like a hog pen on a hot day. His sour disposition also made his barn, and no other, the best place for the Challenge.
* * * *
The moment I arrived at the intersection and glanced toward the feed store, I saw Angus Dahlrymple staring straight at me. It felt like his eyes bored a hole into my head and he knew every thought I had. The old man bent over and with coat hanger thin arms picked up a sack of feed. He deposited it on top of several others in the back of Jonah Perkins' wagon. During the whole time he never took his eyes off me.
Aw nuts! I thought. It's almost like he expected me.
“That'll be twelve fifty,” I heard Dahlrymple say to Jonah Perkins while brushing his hands clean on his work apron. Even as Jonah counted out the money the old man continued to glare at me.
Swallowing hard, I changed directions, heading for the irrigation pond instead of the barn. I can always double back, I thought.
I crossed the street, and stood on the opposite corner. Should I go home and come back later, I thought. Turning, I found Angus Dahlrymple smoothing the wisps of hair on his balding head and still watching me as though I were a criminal. Even from a distance I sensed a jeering smile on his lips.
That smile drove all thoughts of going home from my mind. I'm not letting Jake Ostler's grandfather get the best of me too, I thought as I whirled and headed in the direction of the pond.
CHAPTER TWO
August 15, 1920 (Continued)
I pushed the loose board in the back of Dahlrymple's barn to one side and squeezed my head and shoulders through the hole. Throughout the winter and during much of summer months the back half of the barn was filled to the rafters with hay and this secret entrance led to a chamber we had excavated. We had also created a tunnel down the wall until we could exit the hay toward the front of the barn.
It was now the end of summer. Much of the hay had been consumed or sold and the new crop hadn’t been harvested yet, so the way in was open, direct and not covered. There was still a large pile of hay halfway up the far wall and two thirds of the way into the center of the barn. The barn was divided into two parts. Stalls and loft to the front and open area to the back where the hay was piled.
The loose board slapped shut behind me. Startled, I sucked air into my lungs and holding it there, I looked in every direction.
This is stupid, I thought. I hope nobody heard that. My heart pounded in my ears. Slowly I breathed out. Calm down. You don't want an asthma attack. I hadn't had one in three months. Not since I'd had my tonsils yanked in the spring. It was a benefit I hadn't expected. Too bad I hadn't had them out before the Challenge last summer, I thought. It had been a stupid asthma attack at precisely the wrong time that kept me from doing it the first time.
No excuses now, I told myself. No one else is here, I thought as I began picking at the cockleburs I'd gotten in my pant legs while running through back fields.
The walls of the barn and the piles of hay muffled the sound from outside, making it a softer, quieter place. Beams of sunlight, passing through cracks in the barn's walls and roof, illuminated dust particles floating in the air. They danced before my eyes like a kaleidoscope.
The sound of sparrows flitting in and out of their nests in the rafters and the gentle creak of barn wood straining against the wind, made me uneasy. The barn was a trickster. It tried to seem friendly but I knew better. I remember feeling swallowed as I continued picking at the cockleburs, putting off the inevitable. I wish Meg were here, I thought. Scurrying noises sent chills up my spine. Mice! It had to be mice.
At the end of the stalls in the middle of the barn I saw the ladder leading to the loft. There it is, I thought. I forced myself to stand. No way around it this time, I reasoned with myself. I guess I'd better get to it.
I moved to the ladder and grabbed one of the rungs. It felt smooth. I can't do this, I thought. It's dumb to try.
Ignoring my fear I slowly began to climb. There was no fluid movement. I edged straight up the rigid ladder, hugging it tight. I placed one foot onto the first rung and straightening out my leg, dragged up the trailing foot. Taking it one rung at a time and then sliding my arms up the sides of the ladder I inched my way toward the loft.
High places still make me giddy. They bring on anxiety attacks that can lead to asthma. Don't look down or you'll fall, I kept telling myself.
Painstakingly I crawled up the ladder until I could fling my weight forward and step shakily onto the floor of the loft. It groaned under my weight. It's going to crash, I thought as I crouched with legs separated and both arms out for balance, waiting for the loft to plunge to the ground.
“This is really crazy,” I whispered.
Slowly, groping for anything solid to grab hold of, I inched across the loft toward the far side of the barn. Creaking and moaning followed my every step. I spotted the hayrack rope tied to one of the vertical beams that supported the loft floor. I reached it, untied it, and tugged to see if it would sustain my weight.
Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. Nuts! What am I doing? I could get hurt, I thought.
Until now I'd avoided looking directly over the edge of the loft to the haystack below. I knew what would happen and it did; I was not disappointed. I felt my stomach rise then fall. Wave after chilling wave of nausea almost made me vomit. The loft floor felt like it dropped away, leaving me to fall like a rock. The world reeled, and I staggered backwards. Still clutching the rope, I sat down on one of the hay bales in the loft. My heart pounded in my throat. But the asthma didn't come.
“I have to do this,” I kept repeating aloud. “I have to do this.”
Forcing myself to stand was one of the hardest things I'd ever done. I felt wobbly as a newborn calf.
I tested the rope again, and took a deep breath. This is it; I thought and stepped to the edge of the loft. I reached as high up on the rope as I could manage until I stood on tiptoes. Closing my eyes against the empty space, I hugged the rope and lifted my feet from the floor.
The wind raced by my face as I knifed through the air. My heart beat wildly. When I reached the highest point of my outward swing I tried to let go of the rope and drop into the hay I knew was below me but I couldn't. I had a white knuckle grip on the rope and my fingers refused to obey.
On the backward swing my feet missed the loft floor. I managed to drag my toes across the boards but could still not let go of the rope. Scrapping my feet across the loft floor slowed me, though I still swung out over the hay. I knew I would not be able get back to the loft at all on the return swing. I would have to let go of the rope and drop into the hay if I were to get down at all. I couldn't dangle in midair forever.
Each arc out was smaller than the previous one until, after several pendulum swings, my fingers finally obeyed my brain and I let go of the rope. My arms and legs churned like windmills as I fell. I hit the hay and sunk like a stone in water.
Darkness surrounded me and I felt the heat of the hay with its suffocating closeness. I had hay in my hair, mouth, eyes, and down the back of my shirt. It itched and tickled at the same time. I didn't dare breath. I didn’t want to suck anything into my mouth, so I clawed wildly at the smothering hay. One of the handfuls felt hard. My fingers locked automatically onto it and I carried it to the surface of the hay where spitting and coughing I raised both my arms toward the sky and yelled, “I did it!”
After the moment of pure exaltation I remembered to drop the hard ball of hay I had clutched in my left hand. I thought I might have grabbed a field mouse but a pearl handled pocketknife rolled out.
Probably belongs to one of the other kids, I thought. Must have fallen out of their pocket when they did the Challenge. I stuffed it into my bib pocket with the intention of finding its owner.
Not wanting to stay buried in hay one second longer than absolutely necessary, I began to wade my way toward the edge of the haystack. I shoved the dry alfalfa behind me, feeling hip deep in mire and moving in slow motion. I pulled at the hay for several moments and then stopped.
That wasn’t so bad, I thought. Now I can show Meg. And after she's seen me do The Challenge I'll drag Jake Ostler to see, then maybe he'll shut up and quit calling me chicken.
With that glorious thought, I flung myself over the edge of the haystack and tumbled to the bottom of the pile. I came up gasping to find myself looking into the business end of a Browning Auto-5 pump action shotgun.
“Caught you didn't I?” Angus Dahlrymple croaked with obvious pleasure. He chewed a bit on the pipe stem in his mouth and blew smoke at me.
I'm dead, I thought as Dahlrymple kept poking the shotgun under my nose.
“Take you to the Sheriff, that's what I'll do,” he cackled. “I'm tired of you kids sneaking in here for no good reason. Mischief that's what it is. Somebody could get hurt and I'd be to blame. Now get up.”
I started to do as he'd demanded when a flash of movement behind Dahlrymple caught my eye. I couldn't see properly because he blocked my view, but there was a scraping noise and a sudden rattling off to Dahlrymple’s left. His head jerked in the direction of the noise.
The next thing I knew, Dahlrymple pitched forward, bashing his forehead against the barrel of his shotgun. His pipe and gun flew in two directions as he sprawled on top of me, limper than a sack of grain and twice as heavy.
I struggled clear of him in time to see Meg heading for the loose board exit.
“Meg,” I yelled. She didn't stop.
I scrambled to my feet and raced after her, looking over my shoulder to see if Dahlrymple chased us. He lay where he had fallen, unconscious I assumed, with crackling death fifteen feet above him in the hay.
I caught up to Meg before she got clean out the hole.
Grabbing her dress skirt so she couldn't get away, I shouted, “Come back. Dahlrymple's in trouble.”
“So what,” she said. “He tried to shoot you didn't he?”
“Yes, but there's a FIRE!”
CHAPTER THREE
August 15, 1920 (Continued)
“Fire?” Meg crawled back into the barn. “Did you say fire?”
“Yes!” I screamed. Red orange tongues of flame licked greedily at the hay above Angus Dahlrymple's head. Smoke began to fill the barn. “Run for help,” I yelled. “I'll try to put it out.”
“It's too big!” exclaimed Meg.
“Don't argue! This is not the time for arguing. It's getting worse.”
I looked around for something to use to put out the flames. There was a shovel in the corner. I ran over and grabbed it.
“But . . .” Meg continued to object. I cut her off as I ran back to the fire.
“The whole neighborhood could go up like a torch! Go get help.”
“What about Dahlrymple!” she hollered.
“I'll get him out. Now go!”
“All right!” Meg screamed at me as she dashed to the front doors of the barn and ran out leaving them open.
I swung the shovel bringing it flat side down on the flames. I hoped it would smother the fire but it only sent burning pieces of hay in all directions. After I hit the fire several times it was actually worse than before. Now there were several fires and I knew I’d lost the fight.