At the top of the hill, I looked back as I heard a car coming into our drive. It was the ambulance. I stopped, turned, and watched. Uncle Roy and Vince came out of the house and walked to the barn with the two men from the ambulance. They carried a stretcher. No one hurried. It was about ten minutes before they came out of the barn again. Vince came first with Dad’s cap in his hand. Then came the two ambulance men carrying the stretcher. A white cloth covered Dad’s body. I could see his gum rubber boots sticking out but his head was covered. Uncle Roy came last, closed and latched the barn door. When the ambulance disappeared over the hill, I turned away and carried on through the pasture to the gravel pit. I sat in the gravel near the edge of the pit. I had to take off my glasses, clean them, and rub tears from my eyes. I could not think. Reruns from the day and times spent with Dad bombarded me.
“What happened? Where’s Dad?” Mary Ellen had asked when I got back from the barn. I’m her big brother and all I could do was stutter that Vince was with Dad now and stare at her buster brown saddle shoes. I wondered, had anyone told Mary Ellen what had happened yet? Had mother? I think and hoped she understood but was she told? It pained me that I could not bring out the words. The relatives came, made coffee, consoled mother, phoned our older siblings while Mary Ellen sat by herself playing with her barbie on the sofa. I showed Bob my ten-speed.
“Go easy on the clutch now Mike, easy now,” Dad had coaxed. Though weeks ago, his voice rang clearly now in my head and again I was in the truck as it lurched forward and stalled. The warmth of Dad’s hand on mine as he gently helped me learn how to shift burned in my memory.
And so too did the thought that he’d been lying dead in cow shit while we had piled into the car and gone to church this morning.
I wiped my glasses again on my shirttail and then sifted gravel through my fingers as I stared across the empty gravel pit. It was quiet. It was peaceful. I was shivering. The spring melt was still seeping through the ground, and the gravel was damp and cold. I rubbed my forehead on Tammy’s back. I rubbed it hard and squeezed her. She squirmed around and licked my face, and I let her. My clothes were all covered with Tammy’s blond and red hair. The sun was setting when we scrambled out of the gravel pit and started back to the house. Tammy wanted her supper.
