Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America
It was not the best kind of a day for the stove to go out. The wind was backing south, southwest to west and by the afternoon, when McHugh first noticed the floor a bit cold and his wife said something about it, too, the wind was coming 25 to 30, the gusts rattling the windows of the old frame house even though it was off the ridge and settled comfortably in the bottom of the broad valley along Knapps Creek.
He switched on the blower, something that he had recovered from an air-handling unit and mounted right up under the floor grate in the kitchen. He had piped the return line of the hot water system so that it would flow through the fin tubing of the unit. Then, upstairs, when they needed a little more heat, he’d flick on the switch and presto! heat flowing up through the grate in the floor and into the kitchen.
“Jason, you know that’s cold air, don’t you?”
Marion was standing in slippers, her housecoat over her sweater and slacks, just starting with dinner in the far corner of the kitchen. She had this uncanny feel for things, he thought as he squatted down by the grate. How could she know about the cold from that far away where she stood under all those layers?
But she did.
He walked down the stairs into the basement with that feeling of an uncertain future. Then he flipped on the light and the future moved a step closer when his eyes found the pool of rust-colored water on the cement floor. He got his flashlight off the shelf and confirmed his suspicions. The boiler had rusted through.
There was no backup. They had had impeller problems once, but nothing more. They did their traveling in the late spring to early fall and never had gotten around to installing a gas-fired boiler for occasional, emergency use. So—standing with his flashlight and picking out the edges of where the pipe had rusted through— McHugh got this sudden vision of forced air heat. Oh, it dries you out some, that he knew. But it also was something you could count on. You’d know if the firebox was startin’ to go. He probed around in there, widening the gaping wound of the boiler, finding more than one heating coil gone and the others soft. All the kings horses and all the kings men.
Now what? Take a six hundred pound boiler up the stairs and out to truck and to Readstown for welding? Today? The wind rattled the panes of the door at the top of the basement stairs and he knew that Marion had better gather up her things and call over to the Olsens. They would be staying at least one night.
She called. He could hear her cheery tones above his head as he worked below, draining down the pipes into a couple of buckets that he alternated, dumping the contents at the floor drain. Half an hour and it was done. He brought the car down. She brought her favorite plants down into the basement where they might take a freeze. Put a light sheet over them in the corner by the canned goods of the summer, perhaps for inspiration. Grabbed their clothes and put anything else that might freeze into the refrigerator. He even thought to pour a bit of antifreeze down the drains in the sinks and into the toilet.
Then they were off.
Harold Olsen was a wood burner himself. Burned it. Cut his own. Even sold some. He showed off his wood furnace to McHugh, got it up at Black River Falls.
“They’ve got a large selection up there. And they deliver.”
Thinking of his six hundred pound corpse of a boiler in the basement, McHugh could quickly see the logic of that feature.
“And you say you just stoke it two times a day?”
“That’s about it.” He opened the door of the furnace and McHugh’s eyes feasted at the sight of the deep red coals that Olsen had in there.
“We loaded it about two hours ago.” He held the door ajar a moment longer and the oak embers did the talking, radiating out some of the heat, throbbing slightly in the presence of more oxygen.
“I load it in the morning before heading out to feed the hogs. Kyle gets up and checks on its before school and might put in a log or two. Then about one or two in the afternoon, Karen comes down here and feeds it some more.”
The blower kicked on and they could both hear the air traveling up the duct-work to the main floor. McHugh reached up to touch the duct just above the plenum.
“Easy now.” It was hot to the touch.
“Nice heat.”
“It works pretty good for us.”
But where to get the twelve hundred dollars? McHugh wrestled with that one during the night. And in the morning, looking over the Advertiser from The Grove, he quite naturally found himself in the Wood Related column. That’s where he saw an ad or two for the Kickapoo. The price was right. Three to four-fifty. Not counting the sheet metal for the duct work of course. But a lot more reasonable than twelve hundred plus. There was one for sale down at Blue River, and another with a number that would put it out to the northwest near Liberty Pole.
He chose Blue River.
The next day there they were, the three of them, completely filling up the bench seat of Estelle Eriksson’s pickup, working their way through the backroads where the towns of Clayton and Scott crowd up against Richland County. The Eriksson place was but just three places up from his along that washboard stretch of gravel where the township road parallels the creek.
Frank and Alma Eriksson had a good creek bottom farm. And ‘Stelle, their only child, seemed to come out of the womb with horses on her mind. Drew pictures of horses. Exclaimed after them with her sharp piercing infant’s voice. The first word she made they say was horse. The pattern never varied and now here she was in her mid-thirties, living at home, the cows mostly sold except for some feeder stock and the heifers Frank took in. Box stalls in the barn and the loafing area converted into a nice ring. Boarding and training. And a little sign by the barn which read Horses we take. But no horsin’ around! and down by the space she had rigged for an office—near where her dad had always had the barn phone wall-mounted on one of those white-washed pillars of rough-sawn, green oak—she had one of those cartoon posters with the man almost falling out of his chair laughing Ha ha ha! You mean you really thought we took checks? Ha ha ha!
But that was all the edge she had. He had come out there the following morning, watching her with that lean will-o-’wisp form of hers that had bands of steel inside longeing horses, looking over the carefully-kept feet of the Paint and Arab fillies she was breaking in. Had hardly got started mentioning the reason for his sudden early-morning arrival, his breath trailing clouds out into the sharp air, when she was all but signed up. Mentioned she’d be happy to drive down if he could get, maybe, Roland or somebody else from around the valley.
And that was it.
Now the three of them worked their way on down—township and county roads carrying them into Port Andrews and over the river into town. The wood furnace was in a dry basement with a straight run up two timbers the owner had thoughtfully placed by the cellar door, and the four of them had it out in daylight in short order. Roland had a lot of muscle hiding under that broad-beam body of his.
“Well, I reckon that we’re not much but spit if four good strong backs can’t get this up and in that pickup.”
Roland, it appeared, would be their cheerleader. They were standing around the sides of the furnace, looking down at the sheet metal shroud of the top of the thing resting on the ice and snow and two two-by-fours by the tailgate. And then it was in the truck, and everybody was breathing hard—feeling the cold, rough edges of the metal through their work gloves as they slid it home.
Kind of like a rifle bolt was what Jason thought. Or an oar in a river skiff, shoved under a thwart.
“We’re just getting warmed up!” Roland said as they settled back into the truck. The truck was settled some, too. You could hear the engine on the way back, when they climbed some of those hills, Roland listening to the livestock reports from both Ithaca and Boscobel, the stiff springs making the shocks work on the washboard stretches. Stelle said it felt like she was towing horses in her sixteen foot stock rig. McHugh looked across the top of Roland’s bib overalls as she discussed her last trip—delivering two traffic-
broke drafters out to Waverly for their fall sale—her auburn hair occasionally just visible when Roland shifted his position, but mostly just her knuckles and firm, thin wrist on the gear shift.
Back they went.
At McHugh’s it was a bit different. They considered both the back door and the storm cellar door, which McHugh used to get in his wood, measuring things up good. It was no contest: the storm cellar route would not take the height of the Kickapoo.
“Looks like it just growed on the way back when we changed county lines,” Roland said as he and McHugh watched Stelle back the truck right up to the backsteps. The first try she spun out in the ice. Pulled forward, shifted, and the next try came back real strong, stopping just before the first cement step.
“Can see you’ve been doin’ this some,” Roland offered as she uncoiled out of the truck.
“Well, that’s for sure. Horses need haulin’ you know. You get kind of broken in.”
“Well I knew haulin’ but I didn’t figure so much the backin’ part.”
Stelle reached up and threw back both sides of her hair over her shoulders and behind her cap.
“Guess you haven’t seen the north side of our barn much have you, Roland?”
“North side?” Roland was squatting down, eyeballing the distance from the truck bed to the last step before the threshold.
“Nope.”
“Well it’s another world there that will teach you about backing. Late fall its mud. Crusts up and breaks through. And now its the drifts. You go to school out there.”
He slid a loose two-by-four just past the level of his glasses and the bill of his cap, measuring.
“Final examinations. Farm skills one-o-one.” Her even voice rode out on the crisp air of mid-morning. McHugh tied off the door. He disappeared into the black hole of the basement entrance and came back with two more two-bys, this time twelve footers of two-by-six. They slid them under the furnace.
“You know, I had this feelin’ there was something more,” Roland said as he and McHugh each grabbed a side and started pulling. Stelle had sprung quick as a cat up on the truck and was jammed between the stove and the cab, pushing.
Nothing.
“Kind of settled some,” Roland said as they repositioned.
“Ready?” McHugh said.
“This dance is mine,” Roland had his head down and shoulders forward. “Anytime the music starts.”
There was a scraping sound this time, and a kind of shriek of metal just as the furnace slowed to a stop. The two-bys were standing straight out, the furnace resting on top of them.
“Now what?” Roland said, looking at those two straight boards. He blew on his sleeve.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve got this sudden vision.”
“What’s that Roland…” Stelle was not beyond humoring him.
“Oh, I’m kind a seein’ this wood stove getting out on those two pieces of wood like they was planks. And then when it gets out there, it just cuts loose. The planks become rails. And this runaway freight takes us all down into the black hole of that basement.”
“Oh that’s a nice one,” from the back of the truck. “Any solutions?”
“Well I got this come-along,” McHugh offered. And with that they went on an inspection tour of the barn. Well—he headed out towards the barn, but got four or five steps away and then stopped dead, lost in thought, before angling over towards the machine shed.
“I’m starting to feel my feet again. You got any tractor chain, McHugh?”
“No. Stenner borrowed it for some log skidding.”
Half the metal shed was open-faced. There was this dull growl of unoiled tracks as McHugh made a narrow opening into the inner sanctum. He disappeared and switched on a light as they squeezed through. Then there were these sounds of McHugh sifting through what appeared as a random pile of stuff as their eyes adjusted to the light.
Halters was what Stelle saw. Roland the jump cables and tongs. These were set aside on the work bench where there were batteries and a pile of burlap feed sacks. McHugh mumbled something as he reached down, feeling into the depths of the pile, kind of a compost of things was what Stelle thought and—because she read Melville in high school and was patient with it—ambergis.
“What do you think, Jason?” she said, the cloud of her speech drifting towards his arm, his blank face facing hers as he tried to read the braille of the tangled heap and then brightening as he slowly stood, the pile adjusting, an old electric fencer sliding off with a feeding pan and a coil of e-wire.
“Got it.” He began pulling a metal carcass out of the pile.
“Been fishing long?” Roland wanted to know. McHugh held up the catch.
“You know we ought to take that on down to Starks in ’du Chien and get it weighed and measured. Pretty big, McHugh, for this late in the season.”
He smiled.
“Just hope it works,” was all he would say, holding the thing by the snap hook as though it were a fin and the cable what remained of the spine, the fish mostly eaten, the rusty frame and gears of the main part a head and entrails. At least that’s what it seemed to her.
“Got any oil, Jason” was what she said, but it was the fish that was on her mind. A dull, quivering fish raised up stiff through the hole in the ice.
“Here.” She took it in the open palms of her hands, holding it in the brown cotton of her jersey gloves as he turned to the bench, looking for oil or liquid wrench or something. Found a spray can of silicon spray. Next a can of starter fluid. And then, at last, the old copper-colored oil can with its long spout which he tipped up, pressing with his thumb, all of them standing in the light from the one bulb in the silence, listening to the pop and release of his working the oil out of the spout while she held the gears exposed to a slow flow of yellow liquid turning the rust a dark brown.
“Must be thirty weight,” Roland observed, looking at the stubborn liquid, “thick as sorghum” while it settled carefully, prodded by the spout as McHugh pushed it along.
“Good enough” she said, handing it back, their gloved hands touching. The metal thing was a treasure, a gift brought up from the heap of the pile, a fish lifted up into the naked revelation of cold, searching air, but he carried it off now like a no-account catfish, the handle bumping in the snow as they traveled back. The sun was gone when they came out of the shed and it made all of the hills, where the snow had filtered through the trees, dark around them as they walked in the white landscape of the fields and yard in snow.
“Could snow again” was Roland’s comment. The flat, white light seemed to absorb his words, and there was nothing said, it made so much sense. Their boots worked through the snow.
“You got ductwork down there, Jason?” she asked.
“Not yet.” He strode across the yard with the careless ruins of his catch.
“And what’ll you do if it turns sharp again in the next few days?”
“Well, I’ve got some good oak and red elm dry and cured. I’m hoping that with the door open and that fan pushing air up through the grate and maybe with an extra fan and the portable oil space heater that Harold gave us we can get things warm enough to manage while I put in the ducts.”
“I don’t know, Jason.” was all she would say.
Roland put it right.
“Good luck.”
It turned out Stelle had a chain all along. She knew, of course, but surprised them when they first got back, swinging down the seat bench and fishing out the chain.
“Well, Merry Christmas! A stout-looking chain, McHugh. And she had it here all along.”
“Merry Christmas Roland,” she said, “three weeks late.”
After that things went pretty fast. She pulled forward just a bit, so that the ends of the board would just reach across the threshold. They hooked the chain on to a good, cast iron section of the bottom of the furnace and down past the two boards so that it could dangle near the trailer hitch. Then they
hooked the come-along to the truck and back to the chain. The Kickapoo furnace slid down nicely across the threshold and rested there while they repositioned the boards, using the come-along to break the skid down the steeper part of the narrow stairs inside the house. She stood by the come-along—working the old, bent handle as it clicked away, McHugh and Roland guiding the furnace along until it reached the cement floor, past where she could see, and they told her to ease off.
“Slick as a hog on ice,” Roland said, passing her the chain, half-way up the stairs, as he turned to go back down to Jason.
“Now what, McHugh?”
“Well, Roland”—Jason was looking the stove all over, making sure—“now we haul the little beauty over next the chimney and put in a stove pipe.”
By the time she was back from her errand, they had half-skidded and half-walked the little beauty over to where it could be beneath the floor grate above and close enough to the chimney. They wrested the pipe off the boiler and pivoted it at both elbows so it could settle over the opening of the furnace.
“Well, nothing to it.” Roland and the other two looked at their efforts. The blower was still up in the truck, McHugh remembered. He would have to get it before they all left.
“And now you’re all set, friend.”
“Yeah, Jason, what do you think?” She was thinking of holding the catfish up in the soft light, the oil working its way down into the entrails while he poked it along with the oil can, her eyes looking at his blunt, naked thumb, working the bottom of the inverted can, pushing it out.
But now Jason’s hands were resting on the top of the furnace. To her it was like a horses’ withers, the way he touched it. Did he know how to touch a horse, to touch living flesh instead of metal?
She could not know then that his mind also had reached out to wrap itself around the thin wrists of her hands and her auburn hair. Now, however, he was somewhere else. Lost in the midst of the cool, placid depths of this place that so desperately needed to be home.
“Well thank you both” was what he said. Said that simply out in the cold of the place while they nodded.
“Sure.” she said.
There was a scraping of feet. Roland pulled off his glove and repositioned his cap. And then all three of them turned their backs on the Kickapoo wood furnace—most of the work of one, good day—and headed up.