Luna (22 page)

Jason drove slowly down a curving stretch of fairly flat land while the two on the back tossed off chunks of bales onto the snow. The cattle came running, bawling, and ate it almost as fast as it landed.

When they were finished, all of them managed to squeeze into the cab to drink the first thermos of coffee and eat the sandwiches and cake she had packed. Kent took a flask of rye from under the seat and poured a small amount into each of their cups.

“Keeps you warm,” he remarked, without looking at any of them, but Selena could feel Jason’s pleasure since it was the first time he had been given any.

They ate without talking, squeezed in together, glad of the warmth, the truck windows fogging up from their breath so they couldn’t see outside. They were packed in so tightly they could hardly lift their arms to eat.

“I thought they looked a little ganted up,” Selena said.

“It’s damn cold,” Kent said. “I don’t like the looks of that sky.” He chewed his sandwich thoughtfully, peering out through the patch he had wiped clear on the windshield.

“Temperature’s dropping,” Mark said. “My toes are telling me that.” He laughed in a boisterous way, a little embarrassed at this admission, but knowing that he was older and had proven himself and so could allow himself this, like a man could.

“I’ll ride the minute anybody gets cold,” Selena said. She added, “As long as the truck runs, nobody needs to freeze.” Kent said nothing more, wiping the windshield again to check the cattle and the sky, then leaning back.

“No wind,” he said. Nobody responded, chewing soberly, hearing this pronouncement both with gratitude and anxiety, knowing it could start to blow any minute. And that would mean a blizzard with all the new snow lying around. Selena prayed the weather wouldn’t get worse.

Jason said, “I don’t care if it storms,” and Selena, irritated, wished he would get over his adolescent bravado, which she knew only masked fear.

When the cattle had cleaned up the half-load Kent and Mark had thrown to them and were bawling for more and beginning to tear at what was left on the truck, they hurriedly finished their coffee, and Jason, Mark and Kent got out, doing up zippers, flipping up parka hoods, pulling on mitts, and remounted.

“Now, remember,” Selena called out the window, “if you get cold, trade with me.” None of them replied, their horses turning, their hooves crunching in the snow.

It was her job now to lead the way back to the ranch. The idea was that the hungry cattle would follow her because they could see the hay on the back of the truck and would keep trying to catch up with her to steal some of it. She had to keep just ahead of the cattle so that they couldn’t quite touch it, but if they got discouraged and slowed down, she had to stop the truck, break open a bale, and throw a little onto the snow to attract them back to her. In practice, although this worked to some extent, they always had a few old cows in the herd who inevitably took the lead, who knew the way back to the ranch and would have been there before the first storm struck, or shortly after, if there hadn’t been fences and closed gates to stop them. They didn’t need anybody to lead them. The riders rode behind to prod any slow or sick ones, and on the flanks to keep them together. Later, the cattle would string out and herding them was easier.

With the sky closing in and visibility so poor, she wasn’t sure she would be able to find the way through each field. She would follow their tracks where she could see them, but the landmarks she normally used, like the elevators at Mallard ten miles away, had faded into the general gloom and couldn’t be seen. If she couldn’t tell which way to go anymore, Kent would ride up and give her local landmarks—two hills that made a peculiar silhouette, or a rock that lay along the outline of a distant hill—and if visibility got really bad, he would ride ahead of her and show her the way.

She didn’t know why he should always be able to find the way while she couldn’t. Maybe he had a better sense of direction, but maybe, too, it was that he felt the responsibility for not getting lost as his, while she had abdicated her responsibility to him, and that was why she could get lost.

She started the truck and drove away, watching through the rearview mirror, stopping, then starting again, till the cows were following her. She drove that way for half a mile or so till she had climbed the first hill and the lead cows were still plodding along toward the hill. At the top, she
turned the truck around so that she was facing the herd and could see the riders fanned out at the back. That way she could tell if everything was all right, or if anybody needed her. She climbed out, stiff from sitting so long, and walked around the truck, checking the load and looking off into the blue and purple distance in each direction, as if she expected to see something useful out there. She waited, slapping her hands together for warmth, the motor idling roughly, till the lead cows had almost reached her. When neither Kent nor the boys tried to signal her, she got back in and drove on, picking her way carefully down the slope.

The wind was picking up. Occasionally the gusts were strong enough to pick up the fresh, soft snow on the surface and to blow it along as high as the knees of the horses. Once or twice in the next hour it blew up so high that she had to brake till the gust of snow passed, so that she could see where she was going. Most of the tracks she was trying to follow had already filled, and she had to guess at her direction for long stretches till she found an open place where a few of them had been swept clear by the wind, and she could reorient herself. At every hilltop she stopped, either turned the truck around, or got out and stood watching the herd and the riders spread out behind her. She wanted desperately not to get lost, to find her way on her own, and the fact that Kent hadn’t ridden up to her to redirect her was proof she was still going in the right direction.

The cattle had finally begun to string out, settling in for the long, cold walk home, the old cows in the lead. From now on the herding would be easy. The hard part was enduring the cold.

At the top of one of the hills she saw Mark suddenly break away from his father, spurring his horse to a lope, coming toward her. She waited and in a minute he was beside her. Without speaking, he dismounted and handed her his reins. There were white spots along each cheekbone. She refrained from saying anything, knowing he knew they were there. Maybe now, she thought, he’ll take a wool scarf when we trade back.

“You can ride for a bit, Mom,” he said, as if he were doing her a favour. She almost laughed. Still, cold or not, it was good to get out of the stuffy confinement of the truck. She wrapped her scarf around her parka hood, tying it in the front, then mounted clumsily because Mark’s horse was too
tall for her and in her winter boots and heavy clothes she felt too weighted-down to spring up onto it. She waited as Mark drove away and the herd passed by her, their heads down, lumbering forward as if she weren’t there.

It had gotten colder out, she felt it as soon as she was in the saddle and up higher. The herd moved slowly, heads down, one foot in front of the other, mile after mile. Their backs were humped up from the cold, their normally pink noses bluish, and their hooves cut and bleeding from sinking into the crusted snow. But she worried more now about her family. Cows could survive weather none of them could. When the herd had passed, she turned her horse and moved in to ride at the end of the mile-long line of cattle.

It was the shortest day of the year and already it was growing dark. She searched the heavy sky for the sun and found it, a paler smear behind the clouds, low in the southern sky. A strong gust of wind caught her and she turned her head and huddled down into her collar, blinking to hold back the water that a sudden blast of cold wind always brought to her eyes, and that would freeze on her face. When it had passed, she lifted her head again, then shoved her left hand, mitt and all, into her jacket pocket, holding the reins with her right hand. Only her face and hands were cold, her back was still warm inside her down-filled parka and she hadn’t been out long enough for her feet to get cold, although, she thought with a measure of resignation, that would happen soon enough.

Kent rode up beside her and she freed her chin from her scarf to turn her head and smile at him.

“How far are we from home?” she called. He was shrugged down inside his parka, his hood and collar up, the earflaps of his cap down. She thought how he had been out for hours, since the first light, with only the noon break in the truck. She marvelled at his ability to endure the cold, and doubted if she would be able to stand it the way he could. Was he really stronger? she wondered, or was it only that he was more determined, had more at stake than she did. The ends of his silk neckscarf fluttered against his cheek and he brushed them down with his leather mitt. He turned to her and she was startled by the brightness in his eyes. It was his ‘winter’ look. It meant that things were hard, that he held out no hope for respite, that everything depended on his strength. Sometimes it made her angry.

“I figure maybe seven miles,” he said. “It’s hard going for them in this deep snow and they’re weak from those goddamn storms.” His horse swerved, sidestepping something that neither of them saw. “If we don’t start making better time,” he called, “we’ll have to leave them in that coulee bottom on Albert’s and go home ourselves. It must be damn near thirty below now.”

Thirty below! She had been protected in the truck, had been thinking about other things, and hadn’t realized how bad it had become. She had noticed that even with the heater on high she had barely been able to keep the windshield clear, and that the snow had hardened even more, so that the tires wouldn’t grip going uphill and squeaked on the dry snow.

“Kent,” Selena begged him, knowing it was futile, “trade off with Mark, won’t you? He’s warm enough to go back out for a while.” He turned his head from her so that he was looking straight ahead down the long line of snow-covered, dark red cattle plodding through the crusted, glistening snow which had turned a deep mauve in the dying light, and to the old truck, lumbering along far ahead, a dark spot in the grey light.

“I’m okay,” he said, then urged his horse into a slow lope and rode away to her left, toward Jason on the far side of the herd and ahead of them.

Men! she thought, wishing there was a woman there for her to say it to. They can’t ever give themselves a break, but even those familiar words brought her little comfort. She changed hands again, this time pushing her right hand into her pocket and holding the reins with her left. She began to rhythmically flex her toes inside her boots, trying to get the circulation moving enough to stop the tingling that had begun in them.

Kent and Jason were riding at a trot now along the far side of the herd, which ignored them, towards the truck. Mark pulled the truck to a stop, and the old cows, which were not far behind, caught up and kept going, ignoring it, too. They wanted to get home, and knew they were almost there.

Selena was greatly relieved to see Jason dismount and climb into the cab. Unless the weather improved—fat chance of that—Jason had ridden as far as he was going to today. One less person to worry about. She only hoped he hadn’t frozen his feet or hands. Kent was removing the bridle
from Jason’s horse, replacing it with the halter Mark handed him through the window. He clipped on the halter shank, mounted holding it, and rode back toward her, leading Jason’s horse, while the truck speeded up and was soon in the lead again.

Kent had settled in to ride slowly on the left of the herd ahead of her. After a few minutes, her toes aching with the cold, she dismounted and began to walk in the path made by the cows, leading her horse. She had begun to shiver inside her heavy clothes, but she wasn’t worried, knowing she would soon warm up with the effort of walking. The trick was to not start sweating, because then you’d never get warm.

It must be at least four o’clock, she thought, judging by the light. That meant at this time of year there was only about an hour of good light left. By six it would be pitch dark and they’d have only the headlights to help them find the way.

Walking like this on uneven ground, stumbling now and then, sinking in up to her knees when she missed the path the cows had made, the occasional gust of wind swirling snow up into her face, she was warming up rapidly. But even with her parka hood pulled up and as far forward as it would go, so that it blocked her side vision, her face was cold, her nose especially, and she didn’t know how much more cold she could take. She didn’t want to let Kent down, to make him feel that there was nobody he could count on, that he had no help. But, she thought, he thinks that anyway.

It seemed to her that he would never let her share, not really, that in the end, no matter how hard she worked and tried to understand his feelings, he pulled it all in to himself and thought of it as his own—the work, the worry, the ownership, the suffering. She felt helpless whenever she confronted this masculinity in him, and useless, and occasionally a little angry too. All right, she would think, turning bitterly away, when he got that look in his eyes and lifted them over her as if she were no longer there. Let him. When he needed help with a cow in the chute or one that was calving out in the field, or somebody to bale hay, he called on her soon enough.

Behind her, her horse paused, tugging on her arm, and she turned her head, sliding back her hood a little to see what was bothering him.
Nothing. She pulled on the reins till he started moving, then began to walk again.

She lifted her head and saw that Kent had ridden up to the truck again and that Mark had pulled it to one side of the line of cows and was waiting for something. Then Kent rode away and she realized that he had told Mark to spell her off. Mark’s man enough to spell
me
off, she thought, but not man enough to take Kent’s place. She had to laugh a little to herself, as she made her way to the truck, leading the horse. But she was grateful to get back in and drive. She handed Mark the reins without speaking. He would stay out there till he froze to death and nothing she said would make any difference. It would take Kent to chase him back inside.