The Cow-Pie Chronicles (19 page)

Niki walked up so close to Tim she was nearly touching him. Then she smiled. “You were great!” she said. “Jerry was so jealous of you he asked me to meet him at the roller-skating rink tonight.”

Tim was speechless as Niki wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him on the lips then happily bounced away to the house.

“I think I'm gonna puke,” Frank said, leaning on the handle bars of the motorcycle. “What'd you do to deserve that?”

“Acted like a real jerk, I guess,” Tim said.

“You must be good at it. I never saw her kiss anyone before.”

Tim held his hands out in a cocky pose and smiled, “Hey, if you're going to do something, do it right!” he said. “Let's eat. I'm starving.”

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Chapter 22

Tim returned home just before dark that Saturday evening. He was so excited about everything—especially the kiss—that it felt as if his feet would never touch the ground. Tim didn't know how life could get any better.

Dana was sitting on the front steps when he rode up the driveway. He hopped off the bike and leaned it against the steps.

“Guess what happened to Dad,” Dana said.

“Something wrong?” Tim asked.

Dana gave Tim a smile, beaming with excitement. “Nope, he got a new job at a big dairy near a city! Can you believe that? A city!”

Tim was stunned. It couldn't be true. “You're lying!”

“Am not! Ask Dad.”

“Where is he?”

“In the backyard,” Dana said

Tim ran through the house and out into the backyard where his dad was sitting in a lawn chair, sipping a beer.

“Tim! Good news, I landed a great job in a big dairy plant not too far from Chicago,” Dad said.

Tim felt tears coming to his eyes. He knew this meant his life was about to get turned upside down—again. “But I just made friends here!”

“Well, you can make some new friends there, too,” Dad said. “And we'll be able to do a lot more things as a family since I won't be on the road, driving a truck, all the time.”

Tim stomped his foot on the ground hard. “I don't want to live in a city!”

Tim's mom came home and walked out the back door with Matt in her arms. Tim started running to her and nearly ran into her.

“What's going on out here?” she asked.

Tim stopped, clenched his fists and yelled, “I'm not leaving!” He then ran inside and upstairs to his room, slamming the door shut. A few minutes later, Dana quietly walked in, holding two ice-cream bars.

“Mom told me to bring this up to you,” she said as she held one out.

“She can't buy me off with ice cream this time,” Tim said.

“Take it anyway. I'm not eating both of them.”

Tim took the ice-cream bar from her and reluctantly bit off a tiny piece. Dana sat down on the bed next to him. They each nibbled on their treats quietly for a while then Dana frowned and glanced at Tim. “What's your problem with moving into the city?” she asked. “There will be lots more to do.”

“They hate farm kids,” Tim said.

“They don't hate me,” Dana said.

Tim stuck his nose up at her. “Because you don't act like a farm kid.”

“Exactly. Nobody there will know you lived on a farm if you don't tell them,” Dana said.

Tim took another tiny bite of his ice cream. “I don't know how to do anything the city kids like to do.”

“You can learn, like I did,” Dana said. She then decided to change the subject. “Mom said you and I are going to stay with Grandma for a couple of months while she finds a new house for us.”

“I don't want to leave!” Tim said. “You can go to that stupid new city when Mom finds a house and I'll stay here with Grandma and Grandpa—forever!”

Dana stood up and gave Tim a smug look. “Fine, if you want to keep on being skunk perfume, go ahead. But don't tell anybody you're my brother,” she said, leaving the room.

* * *

A week later, Mr. and Mrs. Slinger left to look for a new home in the city. They took Matt with them, leaving Tim and Dana with their grandparents.

Tim spent every weekend over the next two months on the East Dairy Farm with Niki and Frank. Frank taught him how to drive one of the tractors and run the milking equipment. The three of them explored the abandoned farm buildings on the far side of the East Dairy property—the area reminded the kids of their own family farms. And Tim helped Frank with all his chores. Those were two of the best months of Tim's life, which made the thought of leaving that much harder.

“We're taking you to your new house Saturday morning,” Grandma said when Tim and Dana walked in after school one Monday afternoon. Dana dropped her books on the floor and threw up her hands. “Finally!”

Tim stood quietly for a moment, trying to keep from crying. “What do we need to pack?” he asked.

“Just your school clothes,” Grandma said.

“What about my hunting clothes?” Tim asked.

“Leave them here. The only time you'll need them is when you come to visit us,” Grandma said.

Tim went through the rest of the week in a daze. He didn't have to do schoolwork anymore since he wouldn't finish the semester before leaving school. He didn't have time to visit Frank on the farm after school because he was busy getting ready for the trip. And Niki found someone else to entertain her at school, which made Tim very sad.

It was almost a relief to see Saturday morning arrive. The four of them—Dana, Grandma, Grandpa and Tim—climbed into the old station wagon. As Grandpa backed out of the driveway to take them to the new house their parents had bought, Dana asked him, “How long does it take to get there?”

“Just a few hours,” Grandpa said. “It's close to Lake Michigan. You can go fishing with your dad on the big lake.”

The road heading out of town took them right past East Dairy Farm #6. Tim spotted Frank riding across a field on a tractor and Niki working in the garden. He so wished he was out there with them, doing chores, working on the farm and having the life he wanted to live.

As they headed out of town, Tim looked out the back window. He had the strangest feeling the car was standing still while the farm was drifting away, like a ship passing over the horizon on the ocean. Tim's mind replaced the distant images of Frank and Niki with images of himself and Dana. He could feel his childhood being left behind as they drove farther and farther from his old life.

Now Tim understood what his mother had told him—that farm life was not a part of his future anymore. What she had not told him, though, was that he would never be able to escape his past. Tim would keep a part of the farm deep inside him for many, many years to come.

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Chapter 23

“Where are we going?” 10-year-old Billy Slinger asked his father.

“Someplace important,” Tim Slinger said.

Billy looked out the window as their Lincoln luxury car thumped along a narrow gravel road. On each side of the road were fields filled with rows of tiny green plants. He wondered what could be so important out here—in the middle of nowhere—as they quickly passed by a windowless, paintless, abandoned farmhouse.

A few miles later, Tim slowed down and turned into an old, dirt driveway that was overgrown with tall grass. Billy saw the skeleton of a two-story farmhouse, with weeds growing through the boards of its large front porch.
Is this what Dad brought me to see?
Billy thought to himself.

Tim drove past the farmhouse to a huge, sagging, weather-beaten barn. He stopped the car next to the barn's large, broken sliding door.

“What're we doing here?” Billy asked.

“This is where I lived when I was your age,” Tim said.

Billy opened his door, got out and met his father next to the barn door. “How could you live in a place like this?” he asked.

“It wasn't like this when I lived here,” Tim said. “It was full of life. It had a purpose.”

“Was it painted?” Billy asked.

“No, that much is still the same,” Tim answered, happy over the thought that something hadn't changed on his family's old farm. “Come on—let's go inside.”

Tim reached for the rusted handle.

“You sure it's safe?” Billy asked.

“It was never safe,” Tim said. “But we'll be fine.”

He leaned against the door to force it open against the squeaking, rusted hinges. Billy hesitated for a moment then followed his father through the old door.

It was quiet, dim and dusty inside. Golden beams of light came through holes from missing boards in the sides of the barn, and also across the empty caverns of the hayloft. Some startled pigeons exploded from the rafters, shattering the silence with their wildly beating wings and escaping through the frame of a missing loft window.

“This way,” Tim said. He walked toward some concrete steps that went up into a room to their left. “This is where we stored the milk until the truck came and picked it up. There was a 1,000-gallon stainless-steel cooler sitting right here.”

“Was that a lot of milk?” Billy asked.

“Not enough for us to live on,” Tim said, explaining that the milk sold didn't cover all of the family's expenses.

Billy looked around at the decaying surroundings, spotting some rusted pipes on one wall and some bare electrical wires running down another wall to a plug dangling just off the floor.

“Did the milk come in through the pipes?” Billy asked.

“No, it went out to the truck through the pipes,” Tim said. “We carried it by hand from the milking parlor to the tank. Come on, I'll show you.”

Billy followed his father out of the storage room, across the center section of the barn and down a set of stone steps into a much larger room.

“When I was four, I rode my tricycle down these steps and broke my nose,” Tim said.

Billy stooped down to study the steps closely.