Читать книгу Red Earth White Earth - Will Weaver - Страница 15

5

Two days before Christmas came the first real snow. It snowed all day. All night. Until noon the next day. Thick, wet snow that, in three claps between mittens, made solid snowballs. When their arms hurt from throwing, Guy and Tom and Mary Ann rolled up bigger white balls for snowmen. The weight of the larger balls drew up grass and leaves from the lawn and left a map of brown trails across the white yard. On the farm buildings the snow dulled the ridges of the rooflines, lay drooped over their eaves like bread dough left rising too long in a bowl.

That afternoon Guy’s father paid Jewell Hartmeir a visit. He brought with him the long-handled, aluminum snow rake.

“Maybe one of the boys can try that out tomorrow,” Jewell Hartmeir said, leaning the snow rake against the barn.

Martin looked up at the Hartmeir barn roof. “I wouldn’t wait,” Martin said.

“I would,” Jewell Hartmeir said. He glanced up briefly, then spit brown on the snow.

“Get in the damn truck,” Martin said suddenly to Guy. Guy obeyed. On the way home Martin swore again, then said, “At least nobody can blame me.”

That afternoon, on his way to the barn for chores, Guy heard on the faint north wind cattle bawling. They didn’t stop.

Martin and Helmer and three neighbor men worked with chain saws and a pistol. Cattle bawled and voices screamed from underneath the twisted tin and broken lumber of the Hartmeir barn. With the chain saws the men cut through metal and wood. Behind the men and saws, Guy and Tom threw aside the wreckage. Whenever a chain saw stopped, the pistol whumped as Martin shot another cow.

The men found Jewell Hartmeir pinned, cursing, in the gutter. He was okay but for a long scrape down his face. Martin cut him free and he stood up dripping manure and shouting for his boys.

Billy and Bob they found trapped alongside a big, dead Holstein whose broken back supported a rafter. Martin cut a jagged door for them and they scrambled free. Chuck, the youngest, they pulled crying from beneath some timbers. The foot on his right leg was turned backward.

“Bub—Bub! Where’s Bub? Bub and Mary Ann!” Jewell shouted.

There was silence.

“Bub, answer me, goddamn you!” his father shouted.

“That was him screamin’ earlier,” Chuck blubbered, his chest heaving. “Bub was further on but he ain’t screamin’ no more. Mary Ann neither.”

Toward the middle, flattest part of the barn, the chain saw blades dulled from the tin and nails and did not cut as much as smoke. The men threw the saws aside into the snow, where they hissed and sank from sight. Then the men worked forward with axes and handsaws and hydraulic jacks.

“Need somebody small,” Martin shouted back, out of sight beneath the tin and boards. “And a flashlight.”

Jewell Hartmeir looked at his boys, then to Guy and Tom.

“I’ll go,” they both said at the same time.

“Git them a light,” Jewell shouted.

Guy crawled forward to his father. Tom was right behind. “What are you doing in here?” Martin said.

“We’re smallest,” Guy said.

His father stared. Then he said, “Okay. Long as I can see you both, and you come out when I say.”

Guy and Tom nodded. They crawled forward. In the darkness and dim beam of the light, cattle still bawled and groaned. The wood and metal around Guy thudded and quivered from their kicking.

“Mary Ann—Mary Ann!” first Guy and then Tom called. There was no answer.

Guy worked his way forward on his belly until his flashlight shone on boots. Two sideways soles of boots. A cow’s head lay alongside the boots and its eyes reflected green. As the flashlight struck its eyes the cow flailed its head and struggled to get free. Every time the cow kicked, the boots jerked.

“Pistol, we need the pistol,” Guy called.

“Pistol,” Tom called back to Martin.

Then Guy felt the pistol butt tap on his boot. He took the heavy gun in his right hand, steadied it with his left, then aimed it down the beam of his light to a spot between the green eyes of the cow. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. In the small space around him the pistol’s noise crashed like a giant fist on all sides of his head. Afterward he felt the rapid death kick of the cow. In a minute the kicking slowed. When Guy’s hearing returned, the cow’s slow kicking sounded like cows’ hooves running through mud. Blood bubbles popped from the cow’s nose. When the cow finally lay still Guy crawled over its neck and shone the light forward. Bub lay pinned with his head against the cow’s hooves. His face had been kicked until it looked like some small animal run over again and again by cars on the highway until you couldn’t tell what it was. “Jesus,” Tom whispered from beside him.

Guy turned off the light. He swallowed to keep from puking.

Then he heard a whimpering. He turned on the light again. From behind Bub’s big body they saw yellow curls and round eyes. They scrambled forward.

Mary Ann was sandwiched between Bub and heavy timber, two of whose spikes had nailed her right hand to her brother’s back. Guy and Tom braced against the wood and with their feet pushed Bub away. They jerked her hand free of the nails, then together carried her toward daylight.