“You’ll see. I’ll be a holy terror again.” She tried to sound like her old self, but the strain in her voice came through despite her best effort. My uncharacteristic silence made her try it over. “The only thing about it is, I have so many stitches that the doctor doesn’t want me exerting myself any for a while yet.”
A while yet. That was what I needed, too, to stick with Herman until haying was finished. Before I could think how to wish her well and simultaneously tell her to take her time at it, her voice rallied again. “Donny, this is quite some surprise, hearing from you like this.”
“Yeah, well, Aunt Kate and I were wondering how you are, and she told me to pick up the phone and find out, just like that.”
“Wasn’t that thoughtful of her. Put her on please, I’d like to tell her so myself.”
“Oh, she’s not here.” I had the receiver practically in my mouth and my hand over it to keep nosy Mrs. Costello from hearing. “She went to the grocery store for bread to make toast for breakfast.”
“I’m glad you’re getting along so well with her. She can be a handful.” Hearing that, I was elated, justified in lighting out for the Promised Land with Herman. I was so jubilant I almost missed what Gram was saying next. “I’d ask what you’ve been doing, but your wonderful letters describe it all so well. How are you and Laddie doing?”
In that summer of many names, Donal and Donnie and Red Chief and Snag and Scotty, and Dutch and Herman and One Eye and Fritz, not even to mention the hoboes’ variety, I drew a blank on that one. “Uh, who’d you say, again?”
“The collie dog Aunt Kate got for you, it’s right here in your letter, silly.”
“Oh, Laddie. You know what, he ran away. Quit the country.” I dropped my voice. “Couldn’t take any more of Aunt Kate, I guess. She ordered him around all the time, poor pooch. Anyway, nobody knows where he went.”
“That’s awful,” she exclaimed, “the poor thing just loose like that.”
“Yeah, but maybe he’s better off, without being bossed to death like that.”
That carried us through, until we wished each other the very best and hung up until the next time.
29.
THE GOOD WEATHER of that Big Hole summer and the bountiful windrows of a record hay crop turned the Diamond Buckle crew into haymaking fiends, the loaf-shaped stacks rising in the fields fast enough to please even Jones. Harv really did prove to be a man and a half on the stack, handling many tons a day with his tireless pitchfork. Some days we skidded the stacker to three new fields, we were such scorching haymakers.
Those days fell away like fleeces, and I was caught by surprise when payday abruptly arrived, along with lifted spirits in the bunkhouse that it happened to be a Saturday night and time to go to town. Which of course meant to the Watering Hole.
? ? ?
I WAS ECSTATIC at getting my first paycheck. Until I looked at it and looked again, made out as it of course was to Scotty Schneider.
For an instant, Herman raised an eyebrow at Fritz Schneider on his, then grinned. “The Kate would have a cat fit, if she could see.”
“Yeah, but,” I still was seeing trouble, “what are we going to do with these? I mean, since they’re not in our real names, isn’t it forgery or something to cash them?”
“Ja, probably,” he met that crime with the usual salute. “But no choice do we have if we want our money.” Seeing that this didn’t reassure me one least bit, he tried a lighter approach. “One more name maybe can’t hurt, Red Chief.”
“You’re the one who made us into Schneiders,” I reminded him shrilly.
“Scotty,” he bore down on the word, “calm down some, please. All is not lost. Maybe they do not ask any too much questions in Watering Hole. Isn’t that how they do in the West?”
“It still feels to me like something against the law,” I muttered.
“Hah. Add to the list,” said the most wanted man in the Big Hole.
? ? ?
GOING TO TOWN on a Saturday night meant spiffing up, baths having been taken in a galvanized tub filled from buckets on the stove—we cut cards for first water, and Midnight Frankie with mysterious inevitability won the right to squat and bathe in the clean tubful with the rest of us to follow in the increasingly gray bathwater. Now what passed for town clothes had been dug out, clean shirts and hair slickum so prevalent on the crew it was remindful of kids dressed up for the first day of school. Herman was the true fashion plate, sporting the mermaid tie, which drew winks and remarks about what he was fishing for with it. My rodeo shirt, somewhat faded and showing wear from its summer of long bus rides and strenuous occasions, was the best I could do, but I was trying to buff my stubble-scuffed shoes into respectability when I happened to notice that my moccasins were not where I kept them beneath the foot of my bunk.
Alarmed, I scrambled down onto hands and knees to search under the bed, but they were definitely missing.