High, Wide and Lonesome: Growing Up on the Colorado Frontier by Borland Hal

Author:Borland, Hal [Borland, Hal]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781453237977
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

10

AT FIRST I COULDN’T quite realize that Father was gone. Every time I turned around I expected to find him there.

I would get up early, the way I always did, and dress very quietly and go outdoors and look at the morning. After I’d swapped a whistle or two with a meadow lark and washed my face down at the pump I would go to the barn and start the chores. I would put corn in the feed boxes and talk to the horses and speculate on how soon Daisy was going to have her calf. Then, without knowing it, I would wait for Father to come and brush Bessie and start milking. Just for a moment or two, I’d wait. Then I’d catch myself and get the brush from the box with the curry comb and go to work. I would put the brush away and get the pail and stool and press my head into Bessie’s flank, the way Father did, and talk the way he did: “So, Bessie, so. Keep that foot out of the pail. And give me the milk. Let it down, Bessie.”

Mother was always up and had breakfast ready by the time the milking was done, but I would always be surprised to see only two places set at the table. She would pour the coffee and put the pancakes on my plate and say, “Well, I wonder how your father is doing this morning.”

After breakfast I would pump water for the stock and bring in a fresh pail for the kitchen. Then I would start to clean out the barn, listening for Father to say, “If we put down fresh bedding now we won’t have to do it later.” And pretty soon I would say it myself and go ahead and put down the bedding.

By then Mother would have fed the chickens and started her housework. I would wait there in the barnyard, expecting Father to say what had to be done that day, hoe the corn or the beans, tighten a loose wire or fix a gate at the stack yard, grease the wagon, mend a broken halter. Then I’d know I had to decide, and I’d take the hoe and tell Mother I was going to hill up the beans. And I would go up to the field and start on the beans, which weren’t doing very well with only a couple of light showers since April.

I would hoe a while, then rest, thinking maybe I could go over to the big prairie dog town that afternoon. I’d ask Father pretty soon, I’d think. Then I would remember and know I shouldn’t go before I finished the beans. My shoulders would begin to ache, but I would keep at it, knowing Mother would let me go if I asked her but also knowing I should finish the job I’d started.

Mother would call me to dinner, and again I’d be surprised at only two places at the table. And after dinner I’d go back to the beans, or the corn, or whatever it was.

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