8. The Barn ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

On a summer day, Robert had gone with his father to crack corn for the cows. Joe stepped up into the crib that was just inside the main door to the barn. He knelt down and took an ear of corn from the mound that slanted downward from the back of the crib to the front. Holding it just right, he banged it down on the edge of an old wooden box, and the ear snapped in two. While his father was busy breaking the ears, Robert pet Fuzz. “Lieutenant Fuzz,” Joe’s nickname for the cat that was based on the Beetle Bailey cartoon strip, was not the only cat on the place. A sleek black female cat had taken up residence. Robert called her “Blackie.” She was crouched on a hay bale at the far end of the alley between the stalls.

All of a sudden, Fuzz leapt up and grabbed both sides of Robert’s leg with his claws. Robert winced from the pain. Then Fuzz rolled and pitched, scratching Robert’s other leg. Robert wanted to run but, each time he took a step, Fuzz grabbed Robert’s leading leg, leaving long red marks. Robert began to scream. Joe came to the door of the crib to see what could be the matter. Taking in the situation in a glance, Joe lightly kicked Fuzz to one side and picked Robert up. When they were outside the barn and away from the cat, Joe walked Robert to the house.

Ida took one look and exclaimed, “What happened to him?”

While Joe told about Fuzz, Ida guided Robert toward the bathroom. She helped him take off his shoes, shirt, and shorts while she ran water in the tub. Once Robert was seated in the warm water, she poured rubbing alcohol in the bath.

“Ow! Oh, ow!” Robert yelled, thrashing around. His legs were on fire.

“Sit still!” his mother commanded.

After a time, the agony of the cuts began to subside. Ida gently bathed Robert’s legs, which were crisscrossed with bloody red lines.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Robert asked, “Why did Fuzz do that?”

Robert felt betrayed by the cat that he considered his best friend.

“Well,” Ida began, “Fuzz is in love with Blackie, and he was afraid that you would steal her from him.”

Somehow, that explanation made sense to Robert.

“You’ll have to keep your distance for a while,” Ida advised.

Whenever Robert saw Fuzz, he stayed far back. Lieutenant Fuzz never attacked again, but Robert remained wary of him. Robert never could trust Fuzz after the scratching incident.

One day, Robert was preparing to scatter ground feed in the cows’ boxes along the north side of the alleyway. As he climbed onto a hay bale to reach the central box, he thought he heard tiny sounds coming from beneath the wooden box, which rested on the edges of the manger. Hay was packed fairly solidly beneath the box, but Robert detected a small tunnel. As the cows had not yet entered the barn on that side, he jumped down, ran to the latched doorway, unhooked the door, swung it open on its hinges, and stepped up into the stalls. He hurried around the back of the barrier wall to enter the central stall. Now he could easily reach beneath the box. Sticking his hand in the tunnel, he felt soft, warm bodies hiding. Gently, he pulled one out. It was a black kitten with its eyes shut. It mewed loudly. From somewhere in the barn, Blackie answered. Robert knew enough about cats to know that Blackie would come running, so he put the kitten back. Sure enough! Blackie jumped up on the edge of the manger and let herself down to the hay before squeezing under the box.

Robert ran to the house and told his mother about the kittens. She followed Robert back to the barn to see how many there were. Ida pulled out four. There were two black kittens and two cream-colored kittens.

“Blackie will find a new place to hide them now,” Ida said to Robert.

“Why?”

“Because she doesn’t want us to know where they are until she thinks they’re able to fend for themselves.”

His mother was right. The next day, when Robert stuck his hand under the box, he felt only an empty hollow where the kittens had been.

By the time he had celebrated his fifth birthday, Robert was scurrying up the ladder to the haymow right behind his brother. There, they piled the new fifty-pound hay bales to make forts: one on the north and one on the south of the mow. The old bales, which weighed a hundred pounds each, were too heavy to move, but a different baler had made all the difference. Each fort had secret passageways, or tunnels, through which the boys could crawl, getting plenty of chaff down their necks while they were at it. Both forts had parapets high up near the ceiling. As the barn was small, the parapets were not widely separated. The ammunition that the boys “fired” at one another consisted of the occasional walnut along with corn cobs having the kernels shelled off, leaving only the pink, lightweight cob. When either brother showed his head above the parapet, the other rapidly threw cobs his way. It was great fun!

The mow had the fragrance of dried flowers and spices. In those days before homes had air conditioning, the mow was hot in the summer, but the boys took no notice of the heat. For hours each day, they designed and built their forts.

Down below, barn swallows sailed in and out of the open doors on the southeast and northeast corners of the barn to gain access to their nests in the stalls. The males had touches of bright orange above and below their bills. There markings made it appear as though they were wearing a pale orange cowboy handkerchief tied around their necks. Their undersides were almost white. The females were similar, but the orange was not as brilliant. Both had backs and tails that seemed black in the shadows of the barn but shimmered blue in the sunlight. The tails were gracefully long and opened like scissors. The birds’ nests adhered to the sides of the ceiling beams. They appeared to be made with tiny mud bricks. Along a few of the beams were rows of nests. Every summer, Robert could hardly wait to see the open beaks of the baby birds awaiting food from their parents, aunts, and uncles. The adult swallows circled low above the meadows to the east and south as they caught insects on the wing. They glided effortlessly, now and then pumping their wings a few times so as to dart after bugs.

One of Robert’s favorite activities was to help his father to bring in the cows whenever the Holsteins remained in the meadow at milking time. Often, they came to the barn of their own volition, but, when they did not, Joe and the boys took the path the cows had made: a dusty line curving through the timothy and clover. Cabbage, alfalfa, and sulphur butterflies flitted and bobbed—especially near any puddles left from a recent shower. Monarch butterflies and black swallowtails sailed on updrafts. The pasture smelled like rich chamomile tea. Often, the dozen or so Holsteins were to be found standing in the shade of an old elm tree. The cows would be chewing their cud as they turned their deep blue eyes toward Joe and the boys. Now and then, their tails swung to discourage flies.

At Joe’s urging, the cows launched forward like swaying ships. Black-and-white spotted flanks and rumps tilted to one side then the other. The cows were so tame that they required almost no persuasion to come to the barn to be milked at feeding time.

While farm life could certainly be hectic—with work that never ceased—it also danced to slower rhythms such as the strolling of cows on summer paths.

  

Illustrations I Loved in My Earliest Years 2

A book that my mother often read to me was The Story About Ping, written by Marjorie Flack and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. I understand that Flack’s work, published in 1933, is among the top hundred children’s books of all time. As a very small child, I was unsure what to think of the story. At the end, the duckling Ping is spanked. Even though the last duck in the line of ducks was spanked as a matter of course, I was convinced that spanking was reserved for children that had misbehaved. Ping must have done something wrong! … but what? As he knew he would be last in line and he did not want to be spanked, he hid. Was his choice so bad as to deserve a spanking? I never thought so.

Illustration by Kurt Wiese in Marjorie Flack’s The Story About Ping (1933)

What I did admire, though, were Wiese’s illustrations. I loved the easy flow of the black brush outlining Ping. Even though the strokes are simple and minimal, the duck is as lifelike as those my parents raised on the farm.

Crayon tones of blue and yellow dominate the book. Whenever I recall the work, I think of yellow and blue. Orange and green are also used sparingly to excellent effect. I always referred to the work as “Ping the Duck,” and, in the back of my mind, I think that that is the title, even though it is not.

A few years ago, I decided to make my own paper to wrap a gift, and I tried to duplicate Wiese’s Ping in various poses. I am no stranger to painting with black ink, but, despite my facility, I felt increasingly challenged to express Ping as brilliantly as Wiese did.

During my childhood, my job was to feed the ducks. A short distance from the gate dividing the back yard of the house from the chicken yard stood a black tub. Every day, I emptied a bucket of water in the tub. Next, I poured ground feed from a sack into the center of the water. I thrust my arms into the cold water and began squeezing and stirring the dampening feed so as to create a smooth mixture. The feed felt grainy between my fingers. Brave ducks sneaked their bills into the dinner while I was still combining the ingredients. After scooping a mouthful, they bustled around, tails wagging, as if they were eager to eat without my arms in the tub. “Shoo! Shoo!” they seemed to say.

Closely acquainted with ducks from observing them daily, I recognized that Wiese shared my perceptions. He gives his ducks not only their natural forms but also their comical personalities. I may not have loved the spanking that Ping received. I, too, hated spankings. … but I loved Ping, even as I loved my parents’ ducks.      

Illustrations I Loved in My Earliest Years 1

My mother was enamored with books by Wanda Gág (1893–1946), whose Millions of Cats is still in print. When first published in 1928, it won the Newbery Honor Award. Another of her books also received the Newbery, and two others won the Caldecott Honor Award. In New Ulm, Minnesota, Gág’s childhood home is a museum celebrating her life and work. I guess my mother had good taste in authors of children’s books!

Illustration in Wanda Gág’s Millions of Cats

I found Millions of Cats enchanting! Every time my mother read the book aloud to me, I was entranced. My imagination ballooned with vistas of cats. Gág’s art opened my eyes to such surprising possibilities.

On my desk is a snapshot of my mother feeding her cats just outside the door to the porch on our house east of Pine Village, Indiana. With her trademark smile, my mother stands holding an enameled bowl from which she is about to pour something (chicken skin?) onto a plate for the outdoor cats to consume. At my mother’s feet are eight cats looking up at her expectantly. Every tail is pointed straight up. In any given year, my mother fed scraps to perhaps double that number of cats. When I was a child, Gág’s account of herds of cats stretching to the horizon struck me as plausible. After all, did not my mother’s cats multiply with astonishing rapidity?

I never considered that I, too, would be caught feeding cats, cats, and more cats, but, after I moved to a somewhat rural area in Ohio, I began serving chicken and dry food to feral cats. In a peak year a few years back, I was providing dinner for fifteen cats. So I suppose the line between fiction and reality has long been blurred for me.

Gág’s art is so odd as to be captivating. Her trees are heavy lumps yet strangely graceful blobs like cauliflower. Her clouds are handfuls of dough. Cats surround huts as organic looking as igloos. In Millions of Cats, her pointy-nosed “very old man” is elfin. His hat is like a bowl. Gág’s landscapes are never rectangular; rather, they flow like lava diagonally across pages. In short, Gág’s illustrations defy academic analysis. They prompt expressions such as “What a hoot!”

I will admit I am as enthralled today as I was when I first listened to my mother’s voice give expression to Gág’s bizarre story about a flood of felines. The ending of the tale reminds me of my earliest memory, dating to when I had not quite seen two years of life. It was summer, and my mother was working in her large garden where we lived on the edge of town. She had smashed down weeds in a space serving as a crib for me. I could not penetrate the thick profusion of unsmashed weeds about me. Suddenly, a white kitten parted the stems and stepped into my enclosure! I screamed with joy. My mother came running. She scooped me under one arm and the kitten under the other arm and took us both to the breezeway of our house where she fed the kitten a saucer of fresh milk from our dairy. “What shall we name it?” my mother asked. I tried to say “Fuzzy,” and my mother heard “Fuzz,” which became the cat’s name then and there. My father often used the nickname “Lieutenant Fuzz” from the Beetle Bailey cartoon strip. Fuzz lived for many years and “was the most beautiful cat in the whole world.”