Penelope (Penny) Burkholder Hilyer burped.
Both Penny and Mark had full cups of percolated coffee before them.
“Here,” Penny said. “You can take mine.”
“I don’t use sugar in mine,” her father said.
“It doesn’t have sugar in it,” she said. “I don’t ever use sugar anymore.” She pushed the cup toward him, somewhat uncomfortably on account of her stomach.
“It’s cold,” Lewis said, folding the cup in his hands. But he drank it anyway.
Lewis (Lewiston) Burkholder had never wanted to be anything but a farmer. A livestock farmer—he never liked the driving-tractor part of farming. Lewis was about ten years shy of Social Security payments, if there was any money left when it came his turn. He made too much money anyway, almost eighteen thousand dollars last year. As a young man, he’d shown sheep and cattle at livestock exhibitions in Chicago and San Francisco, California. Lewis was the three times reelected chief of the White Post Volunteer Fire Department, treasurer of the state Border Collie association, and he worked six days a week, fifty-one weeks a year except for the vacation he and Beverly took at Virginia Beach each year. Not a paid vacation. He had to pay a neighbor to look in on his stock. Maybe this year his new son-in-law would do it. On second thought it didn’t seem likely.
That worthy wore an off-white shirt with pink flowers along the yoke and little pearl buttons on the cuff. Faded jeans, scuffed pointy brown boots. Only lacking the damn cowboy hat.
Lewis had never met any other Hilyers. None of them had seen fit to come to Penny and Mark’s wedding.
Penny asked, “How was Nop?”
Lewiston Burkholder had a real soft spot for his daughter, the apple of his eye. He replied briefly, “Nop was fine. Held one of those heifers off me while I banded a calf. Nice calf.”
Before she left home to go to ag school out in Ohio, Penny had worked dogs right alongside her daddy. Some days she just couldn’t do anything wrong. That was, let’s see, three years ago, when she was just sixteen, before she met up with Mark Hilyer and got married and pregnant, not in that order either. Oh, she’d been a real dog handler, Penny had.
At his name, Nop looked up from where he lay beside the Stink Dog.
The Stink Dog said, “Nop, thou must be wary of cows with new young.”
Beverly set a plate before Lewis. Sausage, three eggs and biscuits. The plate was one of the blue-enamel plates they sell at the Farmer’s Co-op in New Market.
The Home Comfort stove was the first thing Lewis and Beverly had bought when they came back from their wedding trip and it had taken every bit of the three hundred dollars they’d saved up between them. Oh, it had been thin pickings then. Lewis’s parents helped all they could, but the Obenschains never kicked in a nickel. They gave plenty of advice and felt they’d done their part.
Lewis and Beverly had lived in the tenant house on this very farm; the house was torn down now and had been falling down then. No kitchen table, chairs wired together from attic junk and their big new stove gleaming and gleaming like a bank vault. They hadn’t had anything but each other and had been happy. Sometimes Lewis wished he and Beverly could relive those days.
Beverly took his cold coffee and replaced it with hot instant. She already had the percolator going.
Mark cleared his throat. “Fellow came by from the Buckhorn Hunt Club. Dark-haired fellow named Ashby or Asher, something like that.… Says you know him.”
Lewis grunted. The Buckhorn Hunt Club drove deer through his woods on Doe Day every year. Lewis’s land wasn’t posted, but most hunters asked permission since the road to the wood lot passed right by the two-story frame house where the four humans lived with two dogs. The dogs were more comfortable with the arrangement than the humans. The Stink Dog wished someone was working her again. As she reminded Nop, “The master was crushed and we both felt bright pain. Now he works and I do not. Why is that, Nop?”
Nop licked her silky cheeks in lieu of an answer he couldn’t provide. “Do not worry,” he said. “Thou art a good dog.”
She always lay with one hip high because of the discomfort caused by the pins.
“Fellow, Ashby, or whoever, said he knew you. He’s put his jeep over the bank—you know that red bank by that camp of theirs. I guess they were pretty drunk.”
“Ashby? Fat fellow, short black hair, little mustache?”
“That’s him.”
Lewis grunted again. The food was sending warmth through him. His ribs, which always ached in the cold weather, seemed to creep back into place once he warmed up. He sopped up egg with biscuit.
His only daughter said excuse me and hurried through the dining room into the bathroom where she was sick. Lewis Burkholder set down his biscuit because he wasn’t hungry anymore.
The Stink Dog wasn’t hungry because she lay around all day, round and sleek as a torpedo.
Nop was ravenous, but the air was charged and no dog likes to eat in the presence of danger unless he must.
Trouble in the air—Nop could smell it. The young man was the trouble—Nop knew that too—knew it from the way the young man sat on the very edge of his chair and his place at the far end of the table.
Mark Hilyer had slightly too long, slightly too glossy brown hair and his mustache was more intention than fact. He probably didn’t weigh a hundred fifty pounds and he hardly ever ate anything. Nop had no dislike for Mark but never went to him from choice when he could go to Lewis or Penny.
“That fellow, Ashby, wanted me to come up with the tractor and drag him out. It’s worth fifty dollars.”
Lewis pushed his plate away. “No,” he said.
The younger man pursed his lips. “You gonna be needing it?” he asked.
“It’s Christmas Day. A Holy Day.”
Mark filled his cheeks with wind. His face was pale.
Nop began to bark. He rushed into the front parlor and put his forefeet on the window sill, wagging his tail, nose to the glass, barking.
“Hush, Nop,” Lewis said. “There’s no one out there.” He unbent very slightly. “Did anybody hear someone pull in?”
Brightly, his wife went to the window. “He’s just barking, Lewis. Are you done eating, then?”
Mark Hilyer lighted a cigarette. The flame trembled slightly and they all noted the tremble, even the dogs.
Nop returned, wagging. The Stink Dog stood beside Lewis’s leg and growled at Nop when he came too close.
“Stink,” Lewis warned. “You can stop that foolishness.”
And he rose from the table without making the explanation that weighed down his tongue like a sack of rocks. A tractor can never pull a vehicle back onto the road once it’s below the road surface. You need a wrecker for work like that. Any jeep that went over that red bank needed a wrecker from Mike’s Wrecker in Spotswood, no doubt about it. There are things a tractor just can’t do. Not even Lewis’s spanking new John Deere.
Mark was already getting into his jacket. A leather jacket cut just like a Levi’s jacket and just as worn as the rest of his cowboy gear. “It can’t be done,” Lewis said. “A tractor can’t lift a car. It can pull in a straight line, that’s all. Ashby needs a wrecker.”
“Never know until you try,” his son-in-law said, brightly.
Penny came out of the bathroom, face scrubbed and her cheeks flushed. “You goin’ out?” Penny asked.
“Yeah.”
She looked her question. Nop went to his bed and lay down. Soon the danger would go out of the air, he could smell that.
Stiffly, Mark Hilyer looked out the window. “Yeah. I thought I’d go down to Crossroads Exxon. Think I’ll go down and help Teddy Rexrode on his car.”
“I’ve tried it,” Lewis said.
“What?”
“You said, ‘You never know unless you’ve tried.’ I’ve tried to jerk a car up a bank with a tractor. It can’t.”
Mark said, “Seems like there isn’t anything you haven’t tried, is there?”
“N
ot much!” His own outburst surprised Lewis.
Nop lay low and bristled.
“Yeah. Well, I’ll be back in plenty of time for supper.”
“Mark,” Penny said. “That’s your best shirt.”
A faint smile. “I guess it is.”
When the door shut behind Mark, Nop went to his bowl and ate hungrily, bolting his food down with an occasional anxious look over his shoulder. He didn’t like people standing near while he ate.
Mark’s VW starter whirred, growled and whirred again before it hiccupped and caught. Time and time again Lewis had heard the boy warn Penny, “That old motor’s coming around for the second time and it needs a good warmup,” but today he shot away while the motor was still running ragged.
No helping it. Lewis cracked the oven door and said, “My, that bird sure does smell fine.”
Penny scraped her chair back and stalked out of the kitchen. Lewis kept his face toward the stove so he wouldn’t see her go. She slammed the bedroom door.
Lewis sighed. “I wish I knew what gets into me.”
“Darned if I don’t wonder myself. The way you treat that boy you’d think he was a criminal instead of your daughter’s chosen husband.”
“She didn’t have very much choice,” Lewis said, dryly.
“Lewis Burkholder, where have you been? I know of four girls from right around here who went ahead and got rid of their baby instead of having it. Penny could have done that and you tell me who’d be the wiser? She had her choice, Lewis, and it seems to me that Mark had a choice too. He didn’t have to marry her, you know!”
Lewis bit his tongue. Any man would be a fool not to want to marry Penny. Why, she was so pretty and so quick and it wasn’t just the dogs she was good with—any kind of livestock. If some old cow or sheep was down, wasn’t anybody better to have nearby than Penny Burkholder. Lewis had it in his mind to say those things but saw, from the set of her mouth, that Beverly had other things on her mind. Beverly could be sweet as syrup, but once you went too far with her there was no turning back. Lewis tried, “What time your family coming over?”
“I told you already. Three o’clock—same as last year and every year. Lewis, what have you got against that boy?”
“Oh hell. Hell, Beverly, I don’t know. I wish he had some kind of job. This farm can’t support two families.”
Beverly rarely spoke up when Lewis said Hell or Damn, and he almost never used any stronger language than that. But, with Beverly, there was no turning back. “I always thought a man who stooped to profanity lacked the ability to express himself.”
“There’s two families on a place that was only meant to support one.”
“One more mouth to feed, Lewis.” Beverly held up one finger. “We always fed Penny, and Mark makes one more, and since when couldn’t we feed family in trouble? When Aunt Alice was so sick we took her in, didn’t we? We didn’t have any trouble finding food for her plate and we managed to bury her decent too.”
“That boy plain aggravates me! Always wantin’ to do this thing or that thing and no more sense than … than … no more sense than a fool! Pullin’ a car up the red bank with a tractor!” Lewis snorted.
“He just wanted to earn some money, Lewis. He’s been huntin’ work just everywhere. Friday he went all the way down to Dayton to make an application at the poultry plant. They said they always laid off after the holidays.”
“There’s always work for willing hands.”
Stink crept to sanctuary behind the living-room couch. Nop scratched at the door. When the top dogs are quarreling, it’s time for the underdogs to make themselves scarce.
Beverly had her hands on her hips. “When you hear of some work, you be sure to tell Mark. He was hopin’ to find some work towing a car.”
“I told you and I told him. It can’t be done. Not in a million years.”
“Lewis, will you let that dog out before he peels the paint off the door?”
Nop was released to freedom and the open air. All his oppressions lifted right off him. He was a young dog in the pride of his strength. Like a brusk watchman, he roamed the farmyard, checking scent: mice, barn cats, the Stink Dog, the lingering oily smell of a polecat who’d passed through three days ago, moles beside the gatepost, the hot smell of winter birds.
Nop voided himself in the corner he always used for that purpose and trotted off, ignoring his scat. He marked some of the trees and bushes that served as billboards:
NOTICE! INTRUDERS MAY EXPECT TO ENCOUNTER A STUD DOG ON THESE PREMISES!
Beverly and Lewis tired of saying awkward things to each other. Lewis switched the radio on. Christmas carols. Lewis felt ashamed. He felt tired. He wished things were different. He wished it was lambing time when a man could get too busy to think.
He plugged in the Christmas tree and it glowed its cold glow. Beverly never was one to hang an icicle straight. He straightened several.
Beverly followed him into the living room. “The tree’s right pretty.”
“I cut it down in the Junction Bottom, you know, near that big dead elm where we had the picnics. Remember, Penny used to call that elm the ghost tree. Most of the limbs are off it now. The trunk’s still standing.…”
“Sometimes I wish Penny was still a little girl.”
Lewis met his wife’s eyes and they were brimming with concern and he wanted to say something, do something, that’d make everything all right. He didn’t have it in him. Lewis Burkholder smiled, patted his wife’s arm and turned away.
Though Lewis had made it through two years at Virginia Polytechnic before the draft took him for Korea, he never acquired a taste for reading. When Penny was born, it was Beverly who bought the encyclopedia (Grolier’s 14th Edition) that still graced the lower shelves of the corner cupboard. Beverly subscribed to the Reader’s Digest (“Improve Your Word Power”) and Woman’s Home Companion (“Six Ways to Beautify a Kitchen with Green Plants”).
Beverly had read articles about “The Midlife Crisis” and “Male Menopause” but wasn’t convinced that these interesting problems were her husband’s. Lewis Burkholder wasn’t quite like the men those articles talked about. Lewis wasn’t quite like anybody.
Beverly slipped the sweet-potato casserole into the oven at 350. Soon the Hicklins and Obenschains would arrive. Lewis was still fiddling in the front room. He got so restless in the winter months!
Beverly dated Lewis’s trouble from the day the cow hurt him and the dog. Before the accident Lewis and Beverly had been muddling along, just like they always had—maybe a little testier than usual, but basically on an even keel. Lewis was impatient for Penny to finish ag school, and any time he got the excuse of a dog trial in Ohio, he’d stop and visit her. When the trials were too infrequent, he’d hitch up the gooseneck trailer and hang around the Friday market until somebody needed a livestock hauler going west.
(Penny never introduced him to Mark. She never introduced Lewis to any of her boyfriends.)
One day in July—it was a hot day in July—the cow hurt Lewis and the Stink Dog. The vet bill was almost a thousand dollars. Selling the cow brought three hundred of it. Lewis could have got more for the cow if he’d sold her as a brood cow, but he sold her by the pound for slaughter.
The vet saved Stink’s life but said she’d never be the same.
Beverly thought Lewis was never the same either. Oh, he still had his young dog, Nop, but Lewis had had something special with that Stink Dog, something real special.
And next thing they knew, Penny came home without finishing the fall term to announce that she and this Mark Hilyer were going to get married.
Couldn’t they wait?
No way.
Lewis didn’t hide his distress. The wedding was a quick affair at the county courthouse and Lewis didn’t know Mark well enough to ask him why his folks hadn’t showed up.
Beverly had put her hopes on Christmas, praying that the Big Holiday would help pull her family together.
Last night they put up t
he tree and decorated it, just like they’d always done on Christmas Eve. Penny didn’t feel well. Lewis went to bed early. Mark went to see about Penny and never returned, and Beverly finished the tree herself, humming “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” slightly off key.
The Hicklins, Joyce and Eugene, were the first guests to arrive. Joyce was Beverly’s first cousin. Eugene worked in the NAPA Auto Parts and Joyce was a nurse’s aide. They’d been separated once but got back together a year ago and everybody had their fingers crossed. During the separation, Joyce had taken up with another man, a lab technician from where she worked, but since then, he’d quit and left the county.
Joyce Hicklin wore her hair in a blond beehive and her long eyes, outlined with green eye shadow, were her best feature. Eugene was comfortable as a saggy armchair. He had a comfortable belly and his thighs rubbed together when he walked. He was disappointed Mark was out and started to say how he might mosey on down to the Crossroads Exxon, but a hard glance from his wife nipped that idea in the bud.
Gene had brought his new coon dog along. Dixie Rebel Yell sniffed the corners eagerly until she caught sight of the Stink Dog. Dixie squatted and wet.
“Omigod! Stop that!” Gene’s blow rolled the puppy over. Stink, who’d been prepared to offer the formal growl that establishes dominance on these occasions, got excited by the blow and snarled deep in her throat and the puppy yelped, half in surprise, half in fear. Nop hurled himself at the back door trying to get inside where, obviously, a dog was in trouble.
Joyce hurried for a paper towel, Lewis quieted Stink with a word and the puppy sheltered herself behind Penny’s legs.
“Don’t worry yourself,” Beverly said. “It won’t be the first time my floor was wet by a dog. Is that Mama and Papa out there? I believe it is.”
Nop barked furiously when the Obenschain’s Chevy pulled up. He barked because he felt left out of things.
The Obenschains were one generation away from Old Order Mennonites and their plain black car was considered somewhat radical by their neighbors (and coreligionists) who farmed with the most modern equipment but drove horses and buggies to the store and church. Carl Obenschain was a slight, nervy sort of man. His wife, Emma, had the unlined, sweet, assured face of someone whose life is lucky, ordered and close to the earth.