Harry looked at his hands. The cold felt good to them, made them alive. He moved his fingers, felt the strength in them. His hands always had embarrassed him. Farmer's hands. They were too thick, the nails too tough, to be mistaken for a piano player's, or a banker's.

Long ago he had learned to hide his hands in his field jacket pockets or wear gloves or just keep them out of sight. It had begun in Junior High School when the worst, most degrading thing you could be called in the rural towns was "Farmer." It had replaced "moron" and "idiot" and "fool."

Now his future was certainly in these farmer's hands. He hoped they were as good as the old man's hands. With his own hands Harry's grandfather had built and nurtured an entire homestead after he had turned sixty.

Harry thought of Dad's sticky hand on the cold Beretta. He shivered and reached down to pat Reject and wondered if the dog remembered, too. Reject licked Harry's fingers, his tongue hot against the chilled skin.

Harry opened the pickup door for the dog, then followed him in. He started the engine and sat for a few minutes, watched the dawn lighten the snowy wheat fields on the heights far across the river. Below, it was dark where the walls of the great coulee broke in four-hundred-foot cliffs down to the still-shadowed Columbia.

He pulled onto the thick ice of the road and was pleased. Loaded as it was, the old International crept down the treacherous grade without a slip. Harry was glad he had switched the good winter tires from the Chevy the bank had sold at the auction. They owed him that much at least.

The San Poil River, too, was dark when he got to the bottom, but it was warmer here on the canyon floor, the highway nearly clear of snow. As he turned north, upriver, a large bird, a raven or owl or an eagle flapped quickly out of his headlight beams.

He drove more slowly, tried to make a plan, but everything tumbled into his mind at once. Judith and the kids. The old mare to move. He would need feed for her, and shelter. And shelter for himself, the pickup was a little cramped for a home. And he couldn't afford to eat in restaurants for long on the fifteen hundred dollars he had left.

Besides, he had ground to work. Soil and water and time seemed suddenly like blessings, although he had long taken them for granted. He had no machinery now, of course, and no tractor. That was all gone in the auction.

He did have the old mare, but some might say she never would pull again. He had heard of horses that had worked even older and she was the old man's mare, no one knew more about them or raised finer.

He remembered hayfields along the river when he and Judith were last there. He needed to meet the neighbors. "The whole world depends on neighbors," he heard the old man say in his mind. There had been a time, after the old man died, when Harry had been afraid that voice would go away. Now he was sure it never would leave him.

Daylight touched the tops of the tallest Ponderosa Pines and Black Cottonwoods and glowed from the fogbanks caught in the river bends. Already it felt a little like home. He thought of Judith's ancestors, his children's ancestors, who had walked and ridden and canoed this Valley of the Cliffs for many thousands of years. He always would be a newcomer.

The valley widened and yard lights shown from scattered farms. Eyes sparkled and he slowed. A doe bounded away, faded into the grayness. Harry could think only of Judith's eyes.

He missed her and Rebecca and Little Joe more than he had admitted. As with a mortal wound,his mind had not accepted pain it could not bear. Now, here in their valley, eased by the hope of seeing them soon, he felt the loss, found himself crying. He looked in the rearview mirror and brushed away the tears, felt Reject lick the salt from his fingers.

The further up the valley he drove, the deeper the snow. He was more than two miles past the Cache Creek turnoff when he realized he had gone too far. He turned back but could not find a break in the banks thrown up by the snowplows. The road to the little bridge was just a faint depression alongside a field. It would not be passable until after breakup unless he could get it plowed. He remembered a store a few miles up the river.

The store still was dark and the sign said "Closed." He thought of driving all the way to Republic but decided it made more sense to wait. He saw a pay telephone and looked at his watch. 7:27. Judith might not be gone. He searched his pockets for change but came up with less than a dollar.

The operator would not let him bill the call to his parents' number because no one was there to confirm the charge. Finally he gave her Uncle Paul's number and after a brief silence she told him the charge was approved. The line rang several times then he heard Rebecca's voice but he could not make her understand who he was. Judith came on.

"Who is this?"

"Harry," he said and felt the constriction of his voice.

"Oh, Harry. What do you want?"

"Just to talk for a minute."

"We're almost late. I have to go."

"But last night you said..."

"This is morning. I have a job interview and kids to get to daycare."

He said nothing.

"Call me this evening," she said finally. "We'll be here by six-thirty."

He started to say something, stopped and hung up the receiver.

He sat in the pickup again and watched the snow fall through the bright circle cast by a single streetlight. He felt himself fall with the snow and half-expected to be buried by the storm. He shook himself awake and wished for coffee. Still no sign of life in the store.

He decided to call Uncle Paul. He hated to go back there where they all knew him and would ask about Mom and Dad and the auction and the funeral. But if anyone would help him it was Uncle Paul. He was the closest thing to the old man left alive.

As he walked back to the telephone, a log truck roared in from the north, it's trailer loaded piggyback. The truck stopped and the driver got out, left the engine racing, blowing out thick, half-burned diesel that swirled the snowflakes.

Copyright © 2003 by Larry L. Bailey