"Taking care of the animals" consisted of carrying five gallon buckets of water from the house to the barn, repeatedly until everyone had fresh water. I prepared formula for calves, Dad's special recipe pig food (I'm not sure if it's the pig's food or the pig's shit that's referred to as slop- both share the same consistency), boiled water for rice and fried ground beef for another special recipe for dog food, shucked corn for the cows, filled grain in the various feed troughs. I cleaned away old hay and replaced it with fresh. Weekly I shoveled out the chicken coup and pig pen. I raked out the horse, cow, goat and sheep pens. I gathered or hunted for eggs, depending on if the chickens or ducks were inside or out. Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring I heard, "Did you take care of the animals yet?"
I know our animals were meant to be an escape for him. Vietnam had left my dad with scars on the outside and open wounds on the inside that only he could see, usually. He loved them, every fish in our tropical fish tank, every dog that he trained, every pig that was eventually slaughtered. They were a distraction, an occupation, a passion. When he was too sick to do it himself, I knew what to do.
I hated it most days. Occasionally I found relief in the escape of it all. The silence of the barn mixed with clucks and purrs of the rooster and hens, the blats of the goats and sheep, snorts and squeals of the pigs, the thumps of horse hooves against the stalls, barn swallows wisped by my head, cows mooed and dogs barked. There was a chorus of animals wanting attention or trying to discourage it.
There wasn't only animals. We had tractors and trucks and jeeps and mowers and tillers, minibikes and dirt bikes, motorcycles and snowmobiles, family cars and classic cars, campers and trailers. There were as many motors and wheels as animals at times. He built and re-built, sold, traded, bought or borrowed.
The winter months seemed the hardest for him, or maybe they were the hardest for me. It wasn't only the weather that kept the motorcycles, classic project cars and inventions parked in the garage. There was constant pain in his hands, shrapnel riddled in places he didn't even realize, throughout his entire body. He was restless. He didn't sleep when he had nightmares and he wasn't still when the pain came. He fabricated motor cycle trailers from parts around the farm. I remember being called out to the garage one day to help him. It didn't matter if I had plans, he needed my help- that would be my plan.
He was working on the wiring of the motorcycle trailer he had nearly finished. He showed me what he had completed and what was left to finish. I was so entirely pissed off when he told me he needed me to be a back rest for him as he laid on his side to finish installing the lights. I had to sit on the cold concrete floor with my back to his and give him the back support because he was in too much pain to maintain the strength on his own. And as we sat on that cold floor, he talked. He told me stories about when he was a kid, pranks he and my uncle played when they worked at Nathan's, falling in love with my mother, what he hoped for my brother's future and mine. There might not have even been as much said, as what was not. He hated that he needed my help, but was relieved to have it.
I think my dad thought I was far more capable of things than I truly was. One time he got our old Ford tractor stuck in the mud. He backed his Jeep CJ-7 up to the front end of the tractor and wrapped the tow chain around the hitch of the Jeep and an area right below the radiator on the tractor. He told me I needed to sit on the tractor and gently balance the clutch and the gas as he pulled with the Jeep. He may have said to be careful once the tractor was released from the mud, but it seemed irrelevant at the time. My mind was fixed on the balance of the clutch and the gas pedal, the "sweet spot" I had so dutifully been trying to master on our little Dodge Omni as I pulled away from a stop light or sign without convulsively jerking down the road. He did his job in the Jeep and pulled the tractor free and I did my job providing just enough gas when he accelerated and released with the clutch when I sensed he was doing the same.
What we didn't cover as entirely as we should have, I didn't point this out at the time, was effectively applying the brake as the momentum and force of the Jeep pulled the tractor from the mud. Something he might have considered was how the hitch on the back of the Jeep was in such proximity to the radiator on the old Ford tractor.
There was this exhilarating moment when the tractor became unstuck, and I know he felt it too, because I'm sure I heard him shout something in elation. I also remember him shouting something as the Jeep jolted forward and the sound of steal and aluminum came crashing together as the ball of the hitch melded with the grate of the radiator. There was this silence for a moment too. Time seemed to pause as soon as the tractor slammed to a stop.
The silence you hear when your ears fill with water flooded the air for those few seconds it took for him to jump out of the Jeep and arrive at the scene of the new problem. He didn't say anything to me. He didn't have to. I climbed off of the tractor. I was ready to tell him it really wasn't my fault. Seriously, who in their right mind would trust a 16 year old girl, on a tractor, with a clutch, stuck in the mud, chained to a Jeep? Hello?! I didn't though. I couldn't. I was so disappointed in myself. I stepped aside as he assessed the situation and walked away. He didn't say a word to me. I sent myself to my room.
My father was involved with the Vietnam Vet's Motorcycle Club. I don't remember if he shaved his head bald and left his beard long before or after he bought his prized Harley Davidson Heritage Edition Softail Classic. He thought he looked so bad ass. He borrowed the magnetic stud I had pretended to have pierced my nose with the week before (and practically got grounded for) to trick my mother into thinking he had also pierced his ear. She was about as upset as he was the week before with me.
The motorcycle was always parked in the far right corner of the garage, away from where the car would have pulled in, away from the tools hanging from the wall, away from anything that could possible cause harm to his beautiful bike.
To this day I couldn't tell you why I was near it. But I was, and I shouldn't have been. Somehow I bumped into the motorcycle. The word bump is even too hard for how lightly I tapped it. I may have tapped it in that sensitive spot near the kick stand. I don't know, this is a detail that didn't seem important at the time because as the red and cream colored Harley Davidson tipped over, I saw all of the people paying their last respects at the funeral home to my me as they comforted my family. I saw my burial site and the sentimental inscription on my headstone.
When you try and catch your father's falling motorcycle as it tips to the opposite side from where you stand, a couple of things happen. You realize there's no effing way you are going to catch this motorcycle. You decide that you should probably get hurt as it falls, even try and figure out if you can launch yourself over the seat and get at least your foot lodged underneath.
You immediately start to think of how you are going to tell your father what you have just done. Do you run in and say you just found the motorcycle on it's side in the garage? Blame it on the barn cats that you saw run away from the scene when you went in to the garage? Stab yourself in the leg and drip blood through the kitchen and living room, pass out in front of your parents and mumble as you wake from unconsciousness that the motorcycle fell on you when you were getting ready to polish the chrome as a surprise to the best father in the world? Remind your dad about the trailer that you helped him build and all of the animals you have helped take care of before he has a chance to get "too" upset?
I couldn't lift the motorcycle from it's side off the garage floor. I walked to the house and told my dad that the bike fell. I walked outside behind him to the garage and watched him lift it off the floor. I watched him run his hand along the paint and look closely for chips or scratches and I held my breath. I don't remember requiring oxygen anymore I held my breath for so long. He might have asked me how it happened. He might have yelled at me or walked away without saying a word. I have no memory of what happened after the first breath I inhaled once I realized the world had not come to an immediate dramatic end.
And these are just a few of the events that shaped me.
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