The horses got multiple baths that summer, because Elizabeth rode them in a lot of horse shows. The horses stood still when she washed them. She hosed them down and then scrubbed and then hosed them again. That was the procedure. Elizabeth did the work—the horses were hers—but it was fun to watch. Or help a little. During the baths, the horses’ bottom lips would go loose and floppy and they would get a dopey look in their eyes, which meant they really enjoyed getting washed. You could smell it in the air whenever one of the horses was getting a bath. It wasn’t a bad smell. Also, there was a certain sound the water made when it was sprayed onto a horse. It almost sounded as if the horses were hollow. Or mostly hollow.
The horse trailer matched the pickup. It was a smart outfit. It was a nice trailer, but it didn’t have any human living quarters in it. Our neighbors who moved away two years ago had a trailer that was half for horses, half for people, but ours just had space for two horses and some equipment. Still, you and Susan figured that the little compartment up front where you could store the tack would make a decent little sleeping compartment for a person. It could really make a pretty darn decent little cubbyhole for a sleeping bag, that’s for sure. Especially for a kid-sized person. We sat in there. We would close the door, but not latch it, and sit in the dark. It was cozy, we thought, and would be a pretty good place to sleep. That’s what we thought.
See Farther
I stood in the kitchen doorway, blinking. I was at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and Grandma was at the little kitchen table, writing. She didn’t see me. Finally I entered and said good morning. She said good morning and got up and pulled out a chair for me, and I saw there was already a cereal bowl there, plus a spoon and the sugar bowl. At home, I wasn’t allowed to have sugar on my cereal, only honey.
“You must have been one sleepyhead to sleep so long,” Grandma said. She set the milk in front of me. She poured my cereal. She didn’t pour quite as much as I wanted.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“It’ll be ten thirty here in a bit.” She poured the milk.
Ten thirty. I’d never slept that late in the history of me. At home, Mom would wake me up by singing a song called “Everybody Up.” It was a song of her own invention.
Maybe it was the way Grandma had put me to sleep that was to blame. The routine was the same as ever. She read an animal story from a farm magazine and tickled my hair. But those stories were for little kids. A dependable raccoon and a troublesome duck. A lesson learned. Then she tucked me in so comprehensively that breathing was an exercise in tightness.
I hadn’t thought that being ten years old would be like this.
I put more sugar on the cereal. “Why didn’t Mom and Dad wake me up to say goodbye?” I asked.
“Oh, they wanted to get off early. They needed to pick up that beef before it got too hot outside.”
Grandma was writing as she talked. She was writing in a little black notebook. A diary? Her hair was almost a perfect globe.
I thought about the beef. We had picked up a whole butchered cow last summer, too—one of Grandpa’s cows—from the meat locker in Windsor. Mom had layered blankets and the sleeping bag in the back of the station wagon, then they stacked all the white paper packets of frozen meat in there and covered them with more blankets. It was a two-hour drive home, and every once in a while, Susan and I had put our hands back under the blankets to feel the cold.
When my cereal was gone, I pursued the layer of sugar at the bottom of the bowl. The wooden screen door banged on the back porch, and then the kitchen door opened and there stood Grandpa in his overalls—tall, sweating, holding his cowboy hat at his hip.
“Well . . . ,” he said, looking at me. Then he breathed out through his nose.
I wished I hadn’t slept so late.
“Well, looka who’s up,” he said.
“Me,” I said. I rubbed my eye. It itched.
“Up and about,” he said.
In the short time between breakfast and lunch—or dinner, as Grandma and Grandpa called it—I walked around the outside of the farmhouse. I investigated all three porches, each of which slanted or tilted in its own unique way. I knelt and looked under the side porch, and there, back in the darkness, I saw the curled, panting tongues of Ringo and Pal—the dogs. The front porch was loud because the air conditioner was set in the window blowing hot air onto the bushes. I walked out into the front yard and the sound of the air conditioner got quieter. There was one tree in the whole yard. I could see the garden across the driveway. Grandma was right: it was hot today. The grass was cut short, and it was largely dead, a casualty of the sun. There were two tractor-tire flower beds on the lawn, painted white. There was also the old swing set, which was smaller than I remembered. If you clutched one of its poles, it left white powder on your palm.
I sat on the back stoop, and Ringo and Pal emerged from their subporch den and lay in the strip of shade against the shed. They were filthy, and they looked at me not with Teddy’s what-are-we-going-to- do-now? look, but with a sort of what-are-you-going-to-do-now? look.
There, through the gate, was the barn. Leaning.
It was too hot.
I went inside and Grandma gave me a popsicle and I went back outside and ate it on the back steps. This was where we always ate her homemade popsicles, and today it went particularly well because the heat was melting the popsicle quickly, which was how I liked it. I liked the popsicle to get soft so I could suck the juices out of it. But when the popsicle was gone I realized that what I’d just eaten was simply frozen orange juice. Not that I hadn’t known it before, but today it sort of popped out at me. Frozen orange juice.
I went back inside. Grandma was making a cake. I stood near her.
“This is the first time I’ve visited you and Grandpa by myself, I think,” I said.
“I think that’s right,” she said.
She talked a little about Elizabeth’s birthday party on Friday—which was the occasion for the cake—then we started speculating how Susan and Elizabeth were enjoying their basketball camp in Warrensburg. She thought they were probably having a fine time of fellowship and sport. I added that Elizabeth would likely be the best player there.
When the cake went into the oven, Grandma asked me if maybe I wanted to paint and I said sure and she brought out the old box of watercolors that I remembered since forever and she put a margarine tub of water out for me and I wet the brush and then swirled it around on the orange lozenge of watercolor, raising a froth, and then Grandma reappeared with a brown paper bag and some scissors and I remembered that that’s what one painted on here: cut-up brown paper bags.
On a brown bag, orange watercolor looked brown. Red looked brown, blue looked brown, green looked brown, and yellow—yellow just disappeared.
At sunset, I went with Grandma to water the flowers in the front yard. She gave me my own watering can with a spout shaped like a flower. As we watered I observed that the flowers looked thirsty and she said she was sure of it. We returned the watering cans to the back porch and then went to look at the garden. After that we carried two lawn chairs to the front yard and sat and