The Meadow by James Galvin

Author:James Galvin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When they surveyed the state line between Colorado and Wyoming it didn’t come out right. Both states are almost four hundred miles square so it wasn’t much of a surprise to the surveyors when they ended up with a fifty-foot discrepancy. They never fought over it because it wasn’t an overlap—they both came up short.

According to Colorado that ribbon of land fifty feet wide and four hundred miles long was in Wyoming. According to Wyoming it was in Colorado. According to App Worster it belonged to him since nobody else wanted it. He’d lost the meadow on Sheep Creek and figured he could build a claim shack on that strip and neither state would require him to prove up, which would be helpful since he knew there was nothing under the state line but rotten granite. App guessed right. Even after the second survey, which came out right, neither state seemed willing to notice which side of the line App’s house really was on. He lived there thirty years, to the end.

When he nailed the last shingle on the roof, whose ridgepole ran east-west, he stood up there and spread his arms out wide and tilted back his head and shouted at the sky, “Mine!” and laughed and cried at the same time. Then he said out loud to himself, “Sure hope I never have to fence the bastard in.”

Both Ray and Jack were born in that claim shack. App still hoped to get the ranch back, but when his second wife died he gave it up. He gave up a lot of things then—everything but waiting. He shipped off his three sons by rail to the state of Washington to live with his dead wives’ other sister (the one of three he hadn’t married). But one year later they arrived back at the station in Laramie, each with a bulk freight tag around his neck. Three tags that read: App Worster, Laramie, Wyoming.

Many ranchers were building vast mileages of fence in those days, so there was no lack of work cutting fenceposts on Boulder Ridge. Before long App bought a flatbed to haul posts, and a car, a Model-A, to drive to town. When the ridge was too snowed in to work, he let the boys drive the car to school at Tie Siding.

The country between the claim shack and the school was open prairie. After a big storm it blew into drifts and clear spots. Neighbors gave the boys permission to take down fencewires if they had to when meandering among drifts looking for a way through.

Driving across a prairie in winter, it doesn’t matter where the road is. You keep to high ground, exposed to the wind. You puzzle your way, sometimes backtracking, sometimes digging through. You try not to think of yourself from an aerial view.

The Worster boys always had a lot of fun driving to school. The Model-A was a good car in snow, far better than its modern equivalent. Its wheels were thin enough

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