Heart of a Shepherd (2 page)

“What if your men don't want to go?”

“It's our mission, and we'll see it done.”

Dad says it flat and cold, like a person isn't even allowed to think about not going. The chickens begin their nightly parade up from the banks of the creek behind the house to the chicken shed next to the barn out front.

“Paco and Rosita's mom and dad are on that list. It's not fair they both have to go. Rosita's too little to have her mom gone.”

Truth is, every other kid in Dad's battalion has a mom at home, everyone except me. I've got an artist mom who lives in Rome, Italy. She might be famous— it's hard to tell from her letters—but she's definitely not at home.

Dad looks at me and shakes his head. “Rosita's only a year younger than you. Your friends have got plenty of aunts and uncles. They've got a plan for this.”
He turns back to studying the land, and after a while he says, “Everyone has a plan for this.”

Usually, when I look out the back porch, I see willows hanging over the creek and red-tail hawks riding the thermals. Today, I see the pasture gate that needs a new hinge, and the south side of the barn that needs paint, and the hayfield that needs mowing, and the tractor that needs a timing belt.

Does he really have a plan for this, the cows and the sheep and the land and me?

I straighten up and measure myself against his shoulder. I've got a ways to go, but my boot's almost as long as his, now that I got a new pair, and I can wear the same work gloves he does. I might be skinny, but I'm big enough to run the tractor and the loader. Lambing and calving? It's bloody, but I know how to do that, too.

“I'm going to take care of this place,” I tell him. “It's going to be here. It's going to be just the way you remember it when you get back.”

That's my mission, and I'll see it done.

A
UGUST

The trouble with four-thirty in the morning at our cow camp up in the mountains is not just that it's darn early, it's freezing cold too, even in August. I just want to hide in the bottom of my sleeping bag, but I know better than to make Dad call me twice. I slide down from the top bunk and gasp in a big, chilly breath when my bare feet hit the cabin floor.

John's awake already, and sitting on Pete's empty bunk. He looks an inch taller to me since he got back from basic training in June. Maybe it's just the extra muscles. Now that they both have army haircuts, Jim and John could be twins. They both have Grandpa's nose and Dad's square chin, and we all have Grandma's blue eyes. Frank's still got a mop of red hair. It's all I can see sticking out of the top of his sleeping bag. Jim
pokes him a couple times to get him out of bed, and Frank growls at him in a much deeper voice than he used to have.

I shiver into my jeans, boots, and three layers of shirt, and head outside. Dad's standing by the gas lamp on the picnic table, with a towel, a razor, and an empty bowl. There's a sheet of ice on top of the water jug.

“I guess we'll have to wait and shave at home,” Dad says.

“I'm not shaving,” I mumble, unlatching the food box and rooting around for breakfast. I'm never going to shave, if I can help it. Dad decided Frank's big enough to do it this summer because he's going off to high school in a couple weeks. Between the freezing-cold water and the slightly rusty razors, I thought old Frank was going to bleed to death each and every morning.

Dad gathers an armload of wood from the woodpile next to the horse shed and heads back inside. I balance eggs, steak, and coffee beans in one hand and relatch the box with the other. There's nothing grosser than a raccoon eating half your food and pooping on the other half, so I never forget to lock up the box.

Back in the cabin, Frank is finally up and dressed. Dad fusses with the woodstove and then slides the
cast-iron skillet into place. I pull up a stool to the long table in the middle of the room, put a couple handfuls of beans into the coffee grinder, and start cranking. John clears away the cards and poker chips from last night and sets the table. Jim is the oldest brother here, so he heads out to the shed to take care of the horses.

I keep thinking one of my brothers is going to say something about Dad leaving today, but I guess not talking is a big tradition nobody told me about up here at cow camp. I've been dying to come every summer since I was nine, when Frank went with the big boys and left me the only kid at home with Grandma. You have to be twelve to go; that's the rule. Dad made an exception this year. I'll be twelve in October, and Dad won't even be back home next summer.

The first orange-pink light from the east window warms up one end of the table. Frank blows out the lamp. Dad puts the last of his Arabic CDs into the player and pops on the headphones while he cooks breakfast. He repeats the same phrases over and over, switching from Arabic to English and back again.

“How many kilometers to the well? The hospital? The police station? The nearest road?”

He turns the steaks over and cracks an egg next to each one.

“Do you need medical help? A translator? Please remain calm. Please clear the area.”

He puts two shakes of salt and pepper on each egg and turns it over.

His voice sounds so strange to me in Arabic. His words are stiff and formal, and when I hear them, I feel like he's gone already.

As soon as the steak and eggs smell done, the rest of the brothers are at the table like a shot. I don't even have to call them. Somebody should say something about Dad going. He and I are going to ride back home this morning and then drive to the airport this evening to send off his unit. Fourteen hours and he'll be in the air. But the brothers just pull up their chairs, speed through table grace, and start eating like today is the same as every other day.

Dad's no help either. He goes over the plan of the day with Jim. They drone on about where to move the cows for the best pasture. John and Frank just nod along with the rhythm of Dad's voice as he goes through the list of things to be careful about.

When I was little and my brothers got to bragging about cow camp, they always talked about the jokes they played on each other and the singing at night and the time the bishop came up to bless our cattle. This
year it's different. Frank did play a couple jokes on me, but nobody laughed much, and we didn't sing at night, not once. Dad played his harmonica a little bit, but most evenings we sat looking at the fire or playing cards while Dad listened to his language tapes or made up lists and plans.

“Ready to ride home, Brother?”

Dad breaks into my thoughts. I nod, take a last gulp of coffee, and dump my dishes in the dishpan. The brothers head out the door. Dad washes up the plates and pots. I stuff the last of my dirty clothes, three paperbacks, and a book light into my school backpack and head outside.

Jim is under the cluster of mountain larch by the horse shed. He has already got Dad's horse, Ike, saddled. Ike's tall for a quarter horse, and he's probably got some Kiger mustang in him, because he's got a dark stripe down his back and an attitude. He's as good a working horse as we've ever had on the ranch, but he doesn't think much of me.

Spud's my horse. She's just a Shetland pony. I've been riding her since I was four. I'll probably be too tall to ride her next year. Still, I'm glad she's with me now. She might not be fast, but she's plenty strong, and she'd never let me fall. I stroke her head while Jim
tightens the saddle girth. She doesn't like that part. When it's done, she nudges me on the shoulder and gives me horse kisses on my neck.

“Listen, Brother,” Jim says, throwing an arm over my shoulder and steering me toward the clearing in front of the cabin. “Grandma's going to need lots of extra hugs, with Dad gone. You take good care of her.”

Must be an oldest-brother thing to say, because Pete said exactly the same thing to me three weeks ago when his leave was up and he went back to his platoon at Fort Hood.

“I want you to call me right away if something happens,” Jim goes on.

I nod.

“Call me even if I'm in class. Boise's not that far away. I could be home in an hour and a half.”

“But Dad said no cutting class to do ranch work. Jeez, he said it like a hundred times, remember? The hired man is supposed to do Dad's work.”

“I know. I don't mean if something happens on the ranch. I mean if the Grands get sick or … you know … if something happens with Dad.”

I let go of Spud's reins and hide my head in Jim's shoulder, because I've been wanting to talk about that
for weeks now. The trouble is, there's nothing to say. He'll either be okay or he won't.

And then Dad comes out of the cabin and ties his gear to the back of the saddle. The boys crowd around him to say goodbye. Dad hugs them and whispers something to each one, and then he stands them up straight. He looks at them as if they are horses he's going to buy, like he wants to memorize every inch of them. Jim and John give him their salutes, and then Dad walks away without a single tear. I don't believe it.

I duck behind Spud so Dad won't see me cry, and then—thank God!—Frank runs over and hugs me up off the ground and shakes me like a dog with a chew toy.

“See ya, Brother! Don't do anything stupid while we're gone.”

I wiggle out of his grasp, knock his hat off, and give him an elbow punch in the stomach. “Don't worry about me. You just try not to cut your head off with that razor in the morning.”

John's right behind Frank. He puts me in a head-lock and rubs a bunch of tangles into my hair. “Get a haircut, Scruffy!” he says for the thousandth time this summer. Just because his ROTC commander makes
him get a military haircut, I don't see why I have to get one. I toss him a few punches, and then the brothers head off to the barn to saddle up their own horses.

I get up on Spud and start down the trail. Dad just sits there on Ike, looking down the mountains past Strawberry Lake to the high desert flats beyond. If there wasn't the haze, you could see the Red Rock Reservoir at the north end of our ranch, thirty miles away.

“Dad?” I say, looking over my shoulder. It's not like him to dawdle when there's a full day of work ahead.

“Do you smell that, Brother?” Dad says.

I take a sniff, but I don't smell anything special.

“That's the smell of your home. That's something you are going to want to take with you when you leave us.”

He gives Ike a nudge with his knee, and we head down the trail. I take a couple more sniffs, but I still don't smell anything but air.

We put a few miles behind us before we find some of our cattle in a meadow just up from Strawberry Lake. There's about two dozen red-and-white Here-fords and their calves, bunched up in two groups. Dad and I move in to look them over. We've been finding
pinkeye in some of the calves, so Dad brought the medicine along. I ride around the near group, and Dad takes the other. I look in both sides of each white face. Sometimes I have to shout and wave my coil of rope to get one of the cows to turn her head. My group's all clear, and I'm glad of it. A cow doesn't like eyedrops any more than I do.

Dad takes one last look at the cows and then checks the ground to make sure they aren't tearing it up too bad. There's about a week's good pasture left, so we move on.

It starts warming up after we get out of the heights. I peel off a shirt. Dad rides behind me, thinking his own thoughts, not talking to me. He's been like this all month. Every minute he's not working the land, he's doing some army paperwork or learning Arabic. Sometimes, even when I'm talking to him, it feels like he's already on the other side of the planet. I have a million things I want to say. I don't even know how to start.

About a mile further on, we hit the steepest part of the trail and the last open spot of mountain pasture. This meadow has Black Angus, and they are more spread out than the Herefords were. Right away I can tell there's a problem, because I can hear a calf crying
from somewhere, but I can't see a calf that isn't mothered up. I ride slowly around the meadow, looking under clusters of huckleberry bushes and around boulders where a cow might hide her calf right after birth. I don't see anything, and Dad is hanging back, so I guess he wants me to figure this one out on my own.

I look the cows over again, and there's one with her udder nearly down to the ground. She hasn't been suckled in hours. I give Spud a nudge, and we go take a look at her. She's standing by a long line of boulders where the meadow drops off to a gully that was a creek in the spring, but now it's just a dry wash. I peek over the edge, and there's the calf standing in the rock-strewn gully, bawling. If she's been down there all morning, she's dehydrated and exhausted by now.

No way am I tall enough to lift her up over the rocks. About a hundred yards downhill, there's a gap where I can get Spud and me down in the wash and walk the calf out. I look back at Dad, but he doesn't even nod. I guess this really is my call.

I work Spud down into the dry creek bed. Good thing she's small and steady, because it's really narrow and rocky in there, and hot with the noonday sun. We get about halfway to the calf when Spud starts acting up. She stops, backs up a few steps, and tosses her head
like she's trying to look at me and say, “Whose stupid idea was it to ride up this gully?”