Uncle Daney's Way by Jessie Haas

Author:Jessie Haas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497662629
Publisher: Open Road Media Teen & Tween

CHAPTER EIGHT

COLE DIDN’T WANT Pop to be trapped.

They had to keep Nip. As soon as they had the cart, there was no other choice. Uncle Daney was out every day, sometimes alone, sometimes with Cole. Often he drove into abandoned fields and sat while Nip grazed. The grass they had seeded was growing well, but it was still too young and tender for hard grazing. Now that he had another set of wheels, Uncle Daney could take Nip farther and graze him more.

He went visiting. He stopped in people’s dooryards, and they came out and leaned on the cart to talk with him. He stopped in the middle of dirt roads to talk with men who leaned out the windows of their pickups. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t get out of the cart alone. Half the people around here visited only from the cabs of their trucks and left the engines running. Uncle Daney was just like everybody else now. Pop couldn’t take that new freedom away from him.

On the other hand, there still wasn’t any money. Pop had sold a cord of wood to one of Uncle Daney’s friends the day the cart came. Cole figured he could claim a little of that money for Nip if he had to. But the chain saw needed repairs, and when Cole saw the bill for that, he understood the hole Pop was in.

He looked in the help wanted ads every night. Nobody seemed to need his help.

While he thought, summer was passing too quickly. Cole measured by the work they did. One bushel of beans canned. One log down the Hogback. One tree cut before Nip came back. Day by day, log by log, it went.

In August Uncle Daney taught Cole how to find chanterelles. “Them’re the one mushroom I dare eat!” he said, and he told enough stories of towering loggers dead in a moment to keep Cole from wanting to experiment. He found plenty of chanterelles, but not enough to sell. Mom fried them up in butter.

Then it was blackberry time, and Uncle Daney drove Cole far afield to overgrown roadside pastures and the edges of new clearings. “You check over there?” he’d ask. “Oh, there’s a big, juicy feller! Get him—no, to your left! Higher!” Blackberrying with Uncle Daney was a test of Cole’s patience.

They did get enough berries, though, to send into town with Pop and sell at the store. That was enough to keep Cole going. Five dollars, eight dollars, ten dollars …

Once they went farther than usual and came on a place where the Allards were cutting firewood. There was a rough road into the woods, littered with flakes of bark, and Uncle Daney turned in. Logged-off areas were good for blackberries, and they grew thick along the edge of the road, berries the size of Cole’s thumb.

Uncle Daney pulled the cart close to one side of the road. That way he could reach from where he sat and pick the highest berries. Not many went into the bucket.

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