Heart of a Shepherd (5 page)

If animals could really talk on Christmas Eve, like they do in all the legends, they'd be saying, “What the heck are you still doing in the barn? Your chores are already done, kid.”

Dad's horse, Ike, shakes his big head at me as I go back and forth with the push broom. Patton and Bradley, our cutting horses, make worried snorts as they watch me hide all the unfinished fix-it-up jobs on the workbench. I've been at the barn chores an hour longer than Grandpa, and the extra sweeping works open a tear in my leather glove. Cold air whispers across my palm. I walk over to the bare lightbulb by the barn door. The rip is straight down, from my thumb to the wrist, just like the one I got in the other
glove last month. Grandpa will help me stitch it up. He used to be an army medic, so he does all the stitching around here, clothes and injured animals, too. I fish around in the workbench drawer for the roll of green army duct tape. It's not pretty, but it will keep me from getting a blister while I haul the last of the muck out of the barn. I should probably sweep up the sawdust and get the wood scraps out to the woodpile. Custer, the barn cat, weaves himself between my legs and looks up at me like I'm a crazy person.

I can't help it. All my brothers will be here tonight, and I just want them to see that Grandpa and I are doing things right; we aren't too old or too young. I want to show them that I'm putting in a man's day even though I'm a full-time sixth grader.

I hear Grandma's truck pull into the driveway, so I run out to see my brothers. Frozen mud-ripples crunch under my boots, and breath-smoke trails behind me. In a second, I am in the swarm of my brothers, and each one has a go at cracking my ribs with a big bear hug. Pete's carrying a box with stamps from Italy, my Christmas box from Mom. It'll be the same as always, I bet— a sweater in a color I wouldn't wear if you held a gun to my head, and a big stack of the coolest books ever.
Grandma sweeps us all up the front porch, with the good smell of roast beef, biscuits, and apple pie helping us along.

She stops at the flag by the front door, like she has every day since Dad left for Iraq, to give it a stroke and whisper a prayer for him. The rest of the brothers pile into the kitchen while I lurk in the front hall and watch her. There are lumps of ice all along the edge of the flag. She slips off her gloves and cups her hands around the frozen edge, blowing to melt it. My mind zooms to Dad out in the gritty ghettos of Baghdad, where Christmas is just another day and nobody will touch him gentle like Grandma would. I can't think about him alone on Christmas. I won't. He wouldn't even want me to. Grandma lets the melted flag go, and I duck into the kitchen so she won't know I watched.

The brothers are all stomping around, giving each other directions on how to set the table, like this is somehow tricky and needs a four-man consultation. The house seems small with all of them in it, and I feel like the little kid I used to be when they all lived at home.

Once dinner is ready, Grandma gets the Baby Jesus figure. We all follow her as she carries it to the Nativity scene on the mantel, and we sing “O Come,
All Ye Faithful.” Then we stand around the table and sing some more carols. I love it when we sing together, but the brothers can't carry a tune in a bucket. Grandpa has a great voice, but he just doesn't sing out the Hosannas with the same gusto Dad does. Musically, we are in deep trouble without him. Nobody even complains when we cut the singing short and get down to the business of eating.

Usually Grandma runs the conversation at dinner, but she's quiet today, and the brothers work through the beef, potatoes, gravy, biscuits, and cranberry sauce with silent devotion. Grandpa's hand shakes a little, like it does sometimes at the end of the day, and he hardly eats, which is nuts, because he works harder than me, and I'm starving!

Once the boys move into seconds, Grandpa gets news out of them: the weather and the soldiers in Pete's platoon in Texas, Jim and John's final exams at Boise State, and the dorm pranks Frank is in on at the high school. Nobody asks me about my news because everything I'm doing, they've already done. Finally, Pete asks about the lambs, and I mumble that I lost one because we're all being very careful not to say anything about death.

And then Pete says, “Well, how many have you saved?”

“Seven,” I admit, because after Frodo, Bilbo, and Merry, there were four more.

“Seven—well, that's a good start. You'll get eight or ten pounds of wool from each one starting in the spring, and if you take good care of them, they should double in a year. You'll have a good-sized flock pretty soon.”

“Now, that's a solid start to your college,” Grandpa says. “You build yourself a good flock to sell and you won't have to worry about getting one of those army scholarships.”

“I guess one of us better plan on staying with the land,” Pete says. “If we all go on active duty, who will run the place?”

He sounds so much like Dad when he says this that I'm just itching to kick him under the table. It's bad enough that no one thinks I'm much of a rancher; since when am I not good enough to be in the army? I'm not going to be this short forever.

“What do you want to study?” Grandma says, passing around third helpings.

I just shrug and rearrange the potatoes on my plate.

“Dude, don't go for engineering. No girls,” John says. “And don't become a teacher either, because those classes are just packed with bossy girls.”

“The army likes engineering grads,” Jim says. “They pretty much get their pick of which branch they want to sign up with.”

And then we are onto the topic of what branch of the army Jim will go into when he graduates next year, and I get to thinking about the long line of soldiers that have marched away from this table, which is great if you're the patriotic type. But it's not so great if you are the one waiting for your dad to come home.

After dinner is the best part of Christmas Eve. Grandpa gets out our favorite Monty Python movie, and us boys drag our pillows and blankets off the bunks and out to the floor under the Christmas tree. We laugh at all the stupid parts and say all the good lines and act out the fights, including catapulting our old teddy bears over the tree and down the hall. Traditionally, Grandma does the dishes while we watch, saying “Outrageous!” and “Blasphemy!” every ten min utes, and sounding more Irish as the movie goes on.

But this year Grandma just leaves the dishes in the sink and goes to bed, and Grandpa actually falls asleep in his recliner before we get to the killer-rabbit part.
Pete turns the volume down and shushes us about saying the lines, and suddenly it's not such a funny movie when everyone is behaving.

“Come on,” Jim says. “Let's get those dishes. It's a lot of work to have guests. God knows, the Grands don't need extra work.”

“Guests?” Frank says, trailing us into the kitchen. “We aren't guests; we live here.”

I've got nothing to say about this because I'm the only one who lives here now, which gets real obvious when I'm the only person who remembers where the soap and clean dish towels are.

“All right, men,” Pete says, putting on his command voice. “I'll scrub; John can dry and put away. Jim, clear the table and counters, and Frank, sweep and mop.”

He forgot a job for me. Dad never forgets a job for me.

I'm an inch from turning around and slugging him, but the Nativity on the mantel catches my eye, and something about the Holy Family all snug and together in the stable melts me.

“I guess I'll make everybody hot chocolate,” I say, pulling a step stool over to the cupboard. I make killer
hot chocolate. I get out the big pot, the cocoa, the sugar, and the milk jug. It's Christmas; maybe I'll make a whole gallon.

Jim launches into another of his “perfect date” stories while we work. Nobody actually believes he's been on a date, but I love the part with the girl, the rope trick, the parking meter, and the awkward conversation with the Boise patrolman. He's just about to launch into another when John says, “Hey, I wonder what Grandma's got in the sinners’ cupboard.” Pete reaches up and brings down an almost full bottle of Irish whiskey.

What a stupid idea.

“Hey, guys, the hot chocolate is done,” I say to distract them. I pour beautiful steaming cocoa into the china coffeepot and line up a row of mugs.

“Excellent!” Pete says, pouring himself half a cup of cocoa and topping it off with whiskey.

Oh, man! It was perfect. It smelled perfect. It was heaven by the spoonful, and he dumped gasoline in it. Jim and John are right behind him, and Frank too— that traitor!

Fine. I take my cup to the far corner of the kitchen and hoard all the whipped cream. I figure the brothers
are going to get all rowdy now, so it's weird when they just stand around saying nothing and looking at the half-mopped floor.

“Do you think they are going to send your unit to Iraq anytime soon?” John says, not looking at Pete.

Pete shrugs and takes a slow sip from his cocoa. “Not for a while yet. We're gearing up to train deploying troops for now, but if we're in Iraq for the long haul …” He looks at Jim, and then John. “I bet we'll all get our turn out there.”

The four of them nod their heads over their hot chocolate and study the ground. It's not like anyone needs to say it, but how are we going to keep the ranch going with everybody gone? Pete pours a second round of whiskey.

Finally, Jim says, “The Grands look so old, all of a sudden.”

“Yeah,” John says, “and since when does Grandma go to bed at eight o'clock and leave the kitchen a mess?”

“Grandpa doesn't stand up as straight as he used to,” Pete adds.

Like bad posture is some kind of moral failure.

“I don't get it,” Frank says. “The hired man does all the really heavy work, but Grandpa looks exhausted
every time I see him. You know, they only came to one basketball game this year, and it was just down the road, in Vale.”

“The cold is hard on him,” Pete says. “Look how skinny he's gotten.”

Now being skinny is a crime? I scoop up an extra spoonful of whipped cream and drown it in my cocoa.

“Remember when Dad and Grandpa used to take us out on the hay wagon Christmas Eve to look for the Christmas star?”

And then they go on about all the great things that happened at Christmas in their childhood but not in mine, Christmases when Dad and Mom were both home. My gut starts churning, and even the hot chocolate doesn't sweeten me up.

Then conversation switches back to all the things that need doing around the ranch and whether Grandpa will be strong enough to do them. Pete says, in his most annoying trying-to-be-Dad voice, “We should make a plan for what to do, just in case—”

That's it. I can't take another word.

“We're fine!” I shout. “We're doing just fine. It's you—all of you. You're the ones who are gone!”

And then I just can't cry in front of my brothers, so I attack.

I kick Frank in the shins as hard as I can and he falls down, cussing as he goes. He knocks into Jim, so I ram Jim in the gut with my head. Jim trips over Frank and goes down laughing, which makes me even madder. I swing punches at Pete and land some good ones, but he won't even fight back. Then John comes up behind me and scoops me off the floor, pinning my left hand to my ribs. I flail around with my legs and reach for the only weapon I can find, the hot chocolate pot. I grab it and crash it down on Pete's head as hard as I can.

It explodes in my hand.

Frank and Jim start howling as the rest of the hot chocolate rains down on them, and John drops me so I'm standing on Jim's hand. Pete staggers over to the sink, groaning.

“Dude,” John almost whispers, “you assaulted an officer, and he's bleeding!”

“Explain this,” Grandpa says in a voice that is even more scary because it's calm and comes out of nowhere.

I turn around and there he is, standing in the doorway looking bone-weary, and I am standing in a puddle of brothers and hot chocolate with the broken handle of a coffeepot in my hand and blood on my knuckles.

“Ignatius kicked the shit out of us, Grandpa,” Pete says with his back turned. “He did a hell of a job.”

Groans of agreement come from the floor.

“Dude,” John says again a little louder, “you are really bleeding.”

It's true. Still gripping the edge of the sink, Pete lifts his head up. Two rivers of blood roll down either side of his face.

“John,” Grandpa says, “my medical kit is in the barn.”

John's out the door so fast, he doesn't stop for a coat. Frank and Jim untangle themselves and stagger to their feet. Grandpa walks around the pool of cocoa. He looks from the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the counter to each of us in turn, and that's about all the scolding I need. I feel terrible, and I didn't even touch a drop.

Grandma is not at a loss for words. She starts in on the scolding, full volume from her bedroom at the far end of the hall. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! For heaven's sake, boys—brawling on the holiest night of the year! What would your father—Lord help us!”

She comes into the kitchen, and we quick line up, tall to short, because the truth is, we've been in trouble with Grandma before. She looks up the row—from
me, still holding the coffeepot handle, past Frank and Jim, to Pete, bleeding down into his collar.

“Angels and saints,” she says, not shouting now.

The front door bangs and John dashes in, breathing hard and shivering, with the medical kit in hand.

“Set it by my chair, John,” Grandpa says. “I'll wash first. Pete, lean over the sink. Boys, I want all the broken pieces off the floor.”

Grandpa washes his hands and then takes Pete's head and rinses it in great bloody gallons of cold water. I shouldn't watch. Blood makes me dizzy, even natural blood from lambing and calving. But there's Grandpa, up to his elbows in it and calm as a summer day. Grandpa sees me watching him and says, “Head wounds bleed a lot. Pete's going to be fine.”

I nod.

“Go.
Wash your hands twice. Do a good job.”

“What?”

“Brother, there are probably little shards of china in this cut, but I can't see them, and I won't be able to pull them out. You are the only man here with a clear eye and a steady hand.”