Dedication
In memory of my father—
born in a sod house on the prairie he loved
—P.M.
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1: The Talk of Birds
Chapter 2: The Walk
Chapter 3: Lucy
Chapter 4: A Piece of Sod
Chapter 5: Kindred Souls
Chapter 6: Birth and Death
Chapter 7: Chickie
Chapter 8: Billy’s Rule
Chapter 9: The Pact
Chapter 10: Angel Dog
Chapter 11: Poetry
Chapter 12: The Secret
Chapter 13: A Good Sign
Chapter 14: Rusty Cage
Chapter 15: Old Home, New Home
Chapter 16: The Gift
Chapter 17: Leaving
Excerpt from The Truth of Me
Back Ads
About the Author
Other Books by Patricia MacLachlan
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
The Talk of Birds
My grandfather, Billy, hears the talk of birds. He leans out the open bedroom window with his head tilted to listen in the warm prairie morning.
He tells me the hummingbirds outside speak to him in short, brisk sentences when they fly quickly up and down and around the hanging feeders of sugar water.
“Red-tailed hawk, too,” announces Billy at the open window of his room. Billy lives with us on the farm that used to be his.
I hear a high whistle outside.
“You can’t see that hawk,” I say.
Billy smiles. This is our daily joke.
“He’s talking to me. Don’t need to see him,” says Billy.
“What’s he saying?”
“‘Good day, old man,’ he says. ‘Still alive, I see.’”
Billy is eighty-eight years old, and I don’t worry about him dying. He will live forever. I know that.
“That redtail isn’t eighty-eight years old,” I tell him. “You can’t have been talking to him all these years.”
“Nope. Talked to his father and mother before him, and all his ancestors way back to the first bird of time,” says Billy.
I look at Billy’s large gnarled hands and his wrinkled face and his bush of white hair. I believe him when he says he talked to the first bird of time.
He lives in a sunny room that looks up to the slough that is empty in the summer and filled with water and ducks in the fall. It is a small piece of his old life, like the big prairie that spreads out around is a big piece of his old life.
The day is sunny, and Papa is cutting hay in the far field. His tractor goes around and around, birds flying behind him as he sends up insects and seeds. After the hay dries, my older brother, Jesse, and my sister, Lida, will gather it into windrows for baling. Sometimes I see Lida working by the barn, her corn-colored hair catching the light as she moves.
“Funny sound, that tractor,” says Billy. “We used to plow with horses.”
“Named …,” I prompt him.
“Wendell and Jack and Juno and …” Billy stops.
“Jake!” I say, laughing, because that is my name.
“Ah yes, Jake,” says Billy, pretending he has forgotten.
Mama comes into the room with folded laundry.
“Want a cup of tea, Billy?” she asks, opening and closing drawers.
Everyone has always called Grandfather Billy, even Mama. Lida and Jesse, too. Jesse calls him Billy the Kid when Billy isn’t listening. Except for my grandmother. When Grandmother Lou was alive, she called him Lamb Chop.
“Tea! You know how I feel about tea, Lottie. I smell that coffee in the kitchen,” says Billy.
Mama smiles at me.
“How many cups of coffee have you had this morning?”
“Seventeen,” says Billy quickly.
Mama laughs.
“You know that’s not true. I guess one more cup won’t hurt you.” Mama goes to the kitchen for a cup of coffee for Billy.
“What are you doing home instead of at school?” asks Billy.
“It’s summer, Billy.”
“Oh … so it is. We used to get off school to work in the fields.”
“Well, now I get off school in the summer to spend time with you.”
Billy turns to look at me, his eyes sharp blue. He smiles. “Yes, there’s that,” he says softly, putting his hard old hand over mine. “There’s that.”
We are quiet. I love the feel of his hand.
Outside, the hummingbirds flash silently in the sunlight.
2
The Walk
After I do my chores, Billy and I take our daily walk around the farm. Every day I’m not in school we take the same walk. It isn’t boring. It is peaceful and what Billy calls “predictable.”
“I like predictable,” says Billy. “I like spring rain. I like summer heat. I like thunderstorms with lightning all around. I like the wind and snow of winter.”
“That’s because you don’t have to walk to school in wind and snow,” I tell him.
“Aha! See?” says Billy. “You’re predictable, too!”
We visit the cows, and Billy speaks to them in a sweet voice.
“Girls? How goes the day, girls? Rosie, you’re looking pretty big, and Betsy and Lizzie? And you, Chico?” he says to our bull. “Enough green grass?”
We visit the horses, and Billy feeds them carrots and rubs their necks and they lean on him.
And then we go where we always end our walk. We go to the place where Billy was born on this farm. Up the rise and higher up the hill to the edge of the slough is the granary. Nearby is a spring.
We stop in front of the Russian olive bushes: five of them, clumped and thick and silvery. Taller than Billy.
When Billy pushes the branches of one bush aside, there it is. A small wall of prairie grass and mud three feet high. And Billy says what he always says, has always said for all the years I’ve known him.
“I loved that sod house.”
He says it softly. I could say it with him, I have heard it so often.
I smile. Billy smiles, too.
Sometimes our talk changes a little. Like today.
“It must have been cold in winter,” I say.
“Oh no, there was a woodstove there,” says Billy quickly. “And a beautiful red rug on the dirt floor. And”—he peers at me and sits on a big rock—“you know about the windows.”
“Yes. When you were a little boy, you put cans and packages on the windowsills and pretended it was the store.”
“I did.”
It is very quiet then. A wind comes up and rustles the leaves of the Russian olive bushes.
And then Billy says what he always says at the end of the conversation.
“I miss that sod house,” he says very softly.
The wind blows his white hair. And he sits until finally I hand him his cane.
He looks surprised. He smiles at me and gets up.
“I miss that sod house,” he says again.
And we walk down the hill, away from the slough, past the granary, past the barn, until we are home again.
3
Lucy
It is the evening, dusk really—just before the hummingbirds have their last drinks of sugar water—when something unpredictable happens. The dog appears.
Billy sees the dog first.
“Well, look here,” he says.
“Where?”
“By the barn. Give me my cane, Jake.”
I look out quickly and see a black-and-white dog, smallish, sitting close to the barn, looking at Billy’s window.
Together we walk through the kitchen.
“Wh
at’s up?” Mama says.
“Can’t tell yet,” says Billy. “But we’ll let you know.”
Mama smiles. Mama always smiles at Billy.
We go out on the porch. The dog is still there, sitting calmly. We walk down the steps and across the yard. We can hear the tractor making a last round. Soon Papa will head to the barn.
The dog stands up when we get closer.
“Well, you came,” says Billy, as if he’s been expecting the dog.
I walk closer and the dog backs up a bit.
“Stand back, Jake,” says Billy.
Billy hands me his cane and walks toward the dog. The dog sits and waits for him.
“The dog doesn’t like me,” I say.
“Just likes me better,” says Billy. “That’s all.”
“Well, hello, girl.” He speaks so softly, I can hardly hear him.
The dog noses his outstretched hand. Then she moves over and leans against Billy.
Behind us the door opens, and Mama walks out to the porch. She wipes her hands on a towel.
The dog looks at her and stays with Billy.
“Billy. What is that?” she says.
Billy laughs.
“I think she’s a dog, Lottie,” he says.
“You know what I mean,” Mama says. “What’s he doing here?”
“She,” corrects Billy. “This is Lucy. My dog,” he calls.
“I just named her,” he whispers to me as he reaches for the cane.
“Wait,” says Mama. “Are you going to bring her in the house?”
“I am,” says Billy, walking more quickly now because of his cane.
He stops and looks very hard at Mama.
“I am,” he repeats. “This is my house, too,” he says in a soft voice. He doesn’t say it in a mean way. But it is clear and strong.
Mama lifts her shoulders in a sigh.
“Okay. But she’d better not pee in the house.”
Billy and Lucy walk past me toward the house. Billy beckons for me to follow.
“We’ll both pee outside if you want, Lottie,” Billy says.
Mama begins to laugh. Billy laughs, too. And as we walk to the house and up the steps, Lucy gives me a sideways look as if to say, My house, too, don’t you know.
Lucy sits by Billy’s chair when we eat dinner. She doesn’t beg for food. She doesn’t whine. She just sits as if it is her place and always has been.
“I think she’s beautiful,” says Lida. “What kind is she?”
“I’ll look it up in the encyclopedia,” says Billy.
Jesse laughs.
“That book is so old that there are probably new breeds by now!”
Billy puts down his fork and stares at Jesse.
“That book is as old as I am,” he says in a low voice.
My brother gets quiet.
“I didn’t mean anything bad,” he says.
“That’s good,” says Billy with a smile.
“You know, we’d better check to see if anyone has lost a dog,” says Mama.
“I’ve never seen that dog anywhere around the fields or in town, Charlotte,” says Papa. He’s the only one who calls Mama by her full name: Charlotte.
Papa takes a piece of chicken from his plate and offers it to Lucy. Very gently, she takes the bite of chicken and eats it.
“Nope. She’s not from around here. She is my dog. She came to me,” says Billy.
Jesse looks at Billy as if he’s crazy.
Jesse should know better.
Lucy came to Billy.
She’s his dog.
Billy is eighty-eight years old.
And Billy is going to live forever.
4
A Piece of Sod
It’s another sunny morning. Billy is drinking his second cup of coffee in the kitchen. Lucy eats leftover eggs in a blue bowl.
“She has some Border collie,” says Jesse, looking up at Billy. He shows Billy the picture in the book. “Probably a mix.”
Billy nods as if he knows this. Lucy looks at Jesse as if she knows this, too.
“I think you’re right, Jesse,” Billy says, getting up and lifting his cane off the back of his chair. Lucy looks up from her bowl.
“Finish eating, Lucy,” says Billy, waiting.
Lucy licks the bowl and then stands next to Billy.
Papa smiles and gets up, too.
“A new chum, Billy,” he says.
“We’re walking,” Billy announces.
Lucy and Billy walk to the door. Billy waves his hand to us without turning around. I feel a sudden pang of something different. Billy’s going off without me. He and I always walk the farm together.
Billy turns.
“Coming, Jake?”
I jump up from the table. Lida gets up to go, too.
“Lida, your turn to wash dishes and clean up,” says Mama.
“Because I’m a girl, right?” complains Lida.
Mama laughs.
“Because you’re a family member,” she says.
“I washed yesterday,” says Billy. “And I’m no girl.”
“Plate in the sink, please,” says Mama to me.
I quickly pick up my plate and Billy’s cup and put them in the sink.
“And we’re off!” says Billy.
“Lucy can wash tomorrow,” says Mama.
I watch Lucy look back. Can a dog smile? I think Lucy smiles.
We walk through the yard to the cows. Lucy walks and runs, nose to the ground, circling around us but always staying close to Billy.
“This is Lucy, girls,” says Billy. “That’s Chico,” Billy says to Lucy.
Chico and the cows back up and roll their eyes at Lucy.
Lucy makes a snuffing sound.
“She’s clearing her nose to smell them,” says Billy. “Animals do that.”
The horses ignore Lucy, pushing on Billy’s pockets for carrots.
We walk up the hill until we come to the Russian olive bushes. Billy is tired. He sits on the big rock and hands me his cane.
“Where I was born,” he says to Lucy.
She tilts her head at him. Then she walks around the bushes, sniffing. She disappears into the bushes, and I can hear her rummaging around.
“What’s she up to?” asks Billy with a smile.
I lean the cane on the rock by Billy and crawl into the bushes. Lucy is digging. She turns to lick my face, making me laugh. She paws something loose. I pick it up.
I duck back out from the bushes.
“It’s this.” I hold up a cut brick of sod and grass.
Billy looks at it for a minute before he reaches and takes it. He looks out over the slough and the huge prairie. The sky is very blue, and only two big clouds hang there.
“My sod house. A piece of it.” His voice is low.
“No one took care of it after we finally had enough money to build the wood house.”
He turns and points his cane at our farmhouse.
There is a silence then. Billy looks down at the brick in his hand. I know Billy is remembering something from long ago.
“My mama sang lullabies to me in the sod house,” he says. “She sat in that old rocking chair in my room and sang lullabies.”
And he sings:
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,
Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird.
If that mockingbird won’t sing,
Mama’s going to buy you a diamond ring.
Billy’s voice is soft and steady. And nice. But I don’t want him to sing anymore. I don’t want him to remember things that make him sad anymore.
I take the brick and turn it over in my hand.
“How hard is it to cut a brick of sod?” I ask, surprising myself.
Billy stops looking out at the prairie and looks at me.
He smiles brightly.
“You could do it,” says Billy. “You could!”
“What?”
“You could,” Billy says again.
He turns a
nd begins to walk back down the hill. He is walking fast.
I run to catch up with him.
“And I am going to teach you how to build a sod house,” he says, not looking at me. “I’ll tell you everything. And then …” He pauses. “And then you can build me a sod house. A little one.”
I stop, but Billy and Lucy keep walking.
“But what if I don’t want to build a sod house?” I call after him.
“You will,” Billy calls back to me.
“Why?”
“Because we’re kindred souls, you and I,” calls Billy.
He begins to sing his lullaby again. Now it is peppy and fast, not slow and soft, like the way he sang it before.
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word
Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird.
Not me, I think. I don’t want to build a sod house. Why would I ever, ever want to build a sod house? Why did I even ask him how hard it was to build?
Billy walks, his white hair bright in the sun.
And what’s a “kindred soul”?
5
Kindred Souls
I’m in Jesse’s room. It is book lined and dark, the only light the flickering light of Jesse’s computer screen. I’m always surprised at the books. Jesse loves books. He has all the books he read when he was little. He uses his money from summer work and farm chores to buy books.
Jesse turns around to stare at me.
“He wants what?”
I nod my head.
“What I told you. A sod house. A little one,” I add.
Jesse laughs.
“You’re just a kid! You’re only ten! What’s that old coot thinking?”
“Look it up, Jesse,” I say. “Please.”
“He’s old and nuts. You’re young and nuts,” says Jesse.
“He says we’re kindred souls,” I tell him.
“Ha!”
I sit down on Jesse’s bed. I look around the room at all the books.
“You read all these,” I say, waving my hand. “I know you understand.”
Jesse stares at me for a long time. Then he smiles slightly. He gets up and goes to the bookshelves and takes down a book.
“Here. Look it up.”
The book is old and worn. How to Build a Sod House is the title.
“Read that,” he says. “It used to belong to Billy.”