Christmas with Tucker (21 page)

Trying to break the solemn mood, I put the ancient tin cup to my lips, drank the imaginary contents dry, and let out a long “Ahh.”

The moment touched Grandpa. The cup was not valuable to anyone else, but it signified something important to him. I drew nearer to give him a hug. “Thank you, Grandpa.” He held me tight in his still strong arms. Of course, I was thanking him for much more than a cup.

Many years later, my mother told me something that had never crossed my mind. Losing my father had broken Bo’s heart, but on that Christmas day, the thought of me packing up and leaving just about finished him off.

My grandmother spoke up. “Now that you’re an official road maintainer, you’ll need a good cup to drink from. That cup has sat by our sink for sixty years; now it can sit by your sink in Minnesota.”

EVEN ON
Christmas day, there were chores to do. We trusted Tucker around the cows now, but I still kept him tethered with his new collar and long leash in the barn while I milked. I insisted on taking both shifts that day, but I had a new partner that afternoon.

“You didn’t think I knew how to do this, did you?” My mom swung the Babson Bros. milker into place.

“You’re good, Mom, but I think you need a little more practice.”

She looked up from the milker. “I’ve got two more days to learn, before we leave.”

I tried to smile. “That’s right.”

She seemed to be testing the waters with her next comment. “I am looking forward to being your mother again.”

“You don’t need to worry, Mom. Grandma has been taking good care of me.” It didn’t occur to me how it might hurt her to hear this.

“I’m glad for that …” Her words trailed off and she worked quietly until we were finished and walked back to the house.

The day’s activities and a dinner of turkey and dressing made us all tired. That evening, I just read and once more enjoyed the presence of my family and my dog. My sisters gestured to the puzzle table. “Grandma, why don’t you help us?”

Grandma Cora stood in the dining room with a pained look on her face. I don’t think she knew how to go back to that table, where she had passed so many hours with my father, without feeling his absence. It was safer to avoid it. When she didn’t answer, it was clear to me that the idea of puzzling was causing her discomfort.

“I don’t think she wants to do the puzzle,” I blurted out.

Apparently my observation did not help matters. She turned and walked away. My sisters realized what they had done and raced after her into the kitchen, with my mother close behind.

There were tearful sobs and apologies. It was quiet for a very long time, and I began to wonder what they were doing and why it was taking so long. My grandfather set down his newspaper and was shifting his weight nervously.

Suddenly, my grandmother’s clear-as-a-bell voice echoed through the house. “Come on, girls.”

Seconds later the McCray women emerged from the kitchen, composed and determined. They stopped for a moment, and with a measure of strength and beauty that I would never forget, my grandmother spoke just two simple words. “It’s time.”

They sat down at the puzzle table, grasped hands, and closed their eyes. They were silent for a few moments and I felt a knot form in my throat. When my grandmother opened her eyes, they were clear and alive. An unclaimed joyful presence seemed to flow in the room like a refreshing spring breeze.

She tucked a stray white hair behind one ear, smiled, and said, “We have work to do.”

With eight hands they made fast progress.

Around 11:00 that night, with the last embers of the fire pulsing with a warm dry heat, Hannah calmly observed, “Finished.”

I was half asleep on the sofa, but I smiled from my daze.

Grandma Cora motioned to me. “Come see, George.”

Rolling off the sofa, I went over to the puzzle table. What I saw took me by surprise. It was an aerial photograph of our farm cut into a puzzle.

Grandma grabbed my hand and said, “You know, George, your father liked to give me puzzles that were darn near impossible to put together. This time he almost did it.”

It was late, so I just leaned over and kissed each of the four women I loved most in the world on the cheek and went to bed. Within a few minutes, my sisters and Tucker followed behind. It seemed that he, too, needed a good night’s rest. Tomorrow I would have to finish packing. Again, it seemed that some rule was strangely off-kilter. Young men should not have to leave the homes they love—nor should they be separated from their parents.

I couldn’t sleep. Around midnight, I heard voices coming up through the floor grate. Like me, they were all wondering what would come next.

My mother’s voice was agitated. “He is just playing at packing. He hasn’t asked about his new room, our house, or his new school. Don’t you think if he wanted to go, he would say something?”

My grandmother tried to reassure her. “Sarah, this is the only home he has ever known. He can be both sad to leave and happy to be back with you at the same time.”

My mother seemed to know exactly how I felt. “I don’t think that’s it; it’s clear to me that he doesn’t want to go.”

“Of course he wants to be with you and his sisters.”

“Has he ever said anything about not wanting to go?”

My grandmother was silent for a few moments before she did something I never thought possible. She lied. “No, honey, George would never say that.”

Finally, my grandfather asked in his to-the-point way, “Is he old enough to decide on his own?”

My mother’s voice cracked. “I won’t do that to him. It puts him in an awful place: choosing between people he loves. This isn’t about me and my needs. It’s about what’s best for him.”

I heard the old kitchen chairs being pushed away from the table. Tired, weary, and familiar-sounding steps creaked on the staircase. I closed my eyes, the way kids do when they pretend to be sleeping and a parent comes into the room, just as my mother pushed open the door.

I felt her weight on the bed as she came and sat beside me. She ran her hands through my hair for a few moments. Tucker got up from his resting spot on my bed and walked over me to get to her for a pat, which gave me the perfect excuse to “wake up.”

I sat up and my mom took me in her arms like she was just giving me a big goodnight hug. She held on to me for a very long time. It was a hug she knew would have to last for many years to come.

“George, I want to talk to you. Are you awake enough to listen?”

MY MOTHER’S
winter visits back to the farm in the years to come were some of the best times of my young life. Even after my sisters were married and had families of their own, Mom faithfully returned every December for the holidays. I spent Thanksgiving and six weeks of the summer in Minnesota. In between, we exchanged endless letters, spoke regularly by phone, and made extra trips when we could. There may have been some distance between us, but there was no lack of connection.

It’s been a long time now since she made her last Christmas visit to our farm in Kansas. A very long time. That’s what makes today so special.

She should be arriving any minute now. I have Tucker’s collar, my grandfather’s tin cup, and the last puzzle my father gave Grandma Cora, all sitting here beside me. Mom’s memory is fading. The doctor encouraged us to show her objects when we recount the past to her. It was up to me to be the curator for this exhibit, to put together just the right pieces from our family museum.

When the time is right, I want her to sit by the fire, hear our stories, and be comforted by our history—to know how important her place is. There are things I want to tell her, things I want her to understand. I don’t know what she remembers, what is lost, and how much more time I have to let her know how I feel. I practice the story one last time.…

Grandpa was the road maintainer for Cherokee County. His name was Bo McCray and my grandmother’s name was Cora. After Dad died, I stayed here on the farm, with my dog, Tucker, to live with my grandparents. They helped bring me up. Of all the courageous people from that period in my life, my mom was one of the bravest. She let me stay here because she knew it would have hurt me too much to leave.

Having children of my own, I know how hard it must have been for her. Sometimes the strongest people in the world are the ones who let go so the rest of us can hang on.

In the winter of 1962, I learned how to be a maintainer. Some might think that it wasn’t an important job, but I’m convinced that most of the important tasks in our lives all amount to the same thing: clearing away the burdens that block our way.

Tucker and I had five more warm summers and cold winters together before he became an old man of a dog. Many of those winters had snow days, but nothing like the snow we experienced that year. How it piled up.

Within a few years, I was driving Grandpa’s old Ford truck to school and dating a young woman. Mary Ann had been my best friend on the bus for years. She was an angel in that Christmas pageant. When the pageant was over, I looked at her in a different way. I am still looking at her like that forty years later.

Grandma Cora told me that Tucker could hear me approaching
in that Ford truck from miles away. He would begin pacing the back of the porch, his tail wagging furiously and letting out little happy greeting barks when I pulled into the driveway. He was a beautiful dog—the dog of a lifetime.

When I graduated from high school, I went to Vietnam. Tucker and Cherokee County were left behind on a Friday and I would not return for two very long years.

Tucker hardly left the back porch for months. He assumed I would return home after school, just like I did most every other day of his life with us. He thought there was a rule. I knew how he felt—day after day, hoping that someone you love is going to come, as always, right through that back kitchen door.

On an April morning, Tucker became restless. Grandma Cora watched as he got up and looked south to Kill Creek. He whined and ran off for Mack’s Ground. Maybe he was looking for me. Maybe he just knew his end was near and wanted to spend his last days in full flower.

People saw him all over the county that week and they would say, “Isn’t that George McCray’s big red dog?” They would call and let Grandma know that he had been roaming far afield, but no one could ever catch up to him.

After a week, he returned home exhausted but content. He collapsed on the back porch and never got up again. He died there, having led a full and happy life. A truer and better friend I have never known. He was a gift. I will always miss old Tucker.

Grandma Cora and Grandpa Bo found it hard to say goodbye to him, too. They carried him to Mack’s Ground and buried him by the lake, the place where he was the happiest. He still rests there. Grandpa made a simple wooden bench and placed it beside the lake. To this day, my family and I can walk to Mack’s
Ground, sit by the lake, skip stones, and, when the weather permits, dangle our feet in the cool water. Sometimes I tell them about Tucker. His collar has hung in the barn all these years.

I’ve got it here beside me now.

Grandpa and Grandma are long gone, too. I miss them more than words can tell. When I come in from a day of running McCray’s Dairy, from working in the barns and meadows and fields that still surround our farm, I take a long drink from this old tin cup that I still keep by the sink. When it’s empty and I’ve quenched my thirst, I say “Ahh,” long and slow.

There is one last thing I will share with my mother. I will tell her that I’ve had a good life on the farm pictured in Grandma Cora’s puzzle by trusting in my father’s simple rule: no matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead.

That’s the only way to keep the roads clear.