Creative Dialogue

Mom and Dad never fight. Not once in front of their children do they raise their voices at each other. Even when they're chasing pigs, Dad never has a cross word for Mom. The rest of us are fair game, but Mom carries an invisible shield of protection.

Mom tells me, “Well, your dad’s folks, Grandma and Grandpa Baumgart, used to have some awful fights. They would yell and swear at each other in German all the time, right in front of the kids. When we got married, your dad made me promise that we would never fight like that in front of you kids.”

Mom and Dad keep their promise, at least as far as we kids know. But there are signs.

Apparently, the no-fighting rule does not include snarky comments, the silent treatment, or sarcastic jokes at the other person’s expense.

Dad is starting the Cockshutt again, parked in front of the barn door. As usual, he has the battery charger on boost and stands beside the tractor. The proper procedure is to disconnect the charger and climb onto the seat. Then, with the clutch pushed in, one foot on the brake, and the gearshift in neutral, he should lean down and turn the ignition key.

But Dad never follows the proper procedure.

Why waste time climbing into the seat to make sure the tractor is in neutral? Then, reaching down and turning the key? What if it doesn’t start? Then he has to climb down, reconnect the battery charger, and start all over again. That could take all day and half the night.

Much easier to stand beside the tractor and reach up to turn the key.

Dad reaches up and turns the key.

Success.

The tractor roars to life. It would have been yet another verification that the easiest way is the best way. Except this time, the tractor is in gear. Reverse gear, to be specific.

Unbeknownst to Dad, at that exact moment, Mom is carrying two five-gallon pails of feed for the calves and walking toward the other side of the barn door.

The tractor lurches backward toward the barn.

As Mom reaches for the door, a full-sized farm tractor crashes through it and heads straight for her. She throws both pails of feed and dives out of the way.  Hung up on the doorframe, the tractor stalls.

Dad stands staring at the wrecked doorway, amazed that this has somehow happened. Who could have predicted something like this would occur?

Mom climbs out of the gutter where she has thrown herself. She collects her pails of feed and stomps off to feed the calves. When she tells me the story later, she is still furious.

“The stupid son of a bitch could have killed me! How many times do I gotta tell him to get on the damn tractor when he starts it? Lazy son of a bitch. That tractor came right at me. Now I gotta fix the barn door!”

Dad gives me his version later, safely out of Mom’s hearing.

“I was starting the tractor. Damn battery’s going bad, so I had to boost the son of a bitch. I turned the switch to see if it was taking any charge at all, and the damn thing was in gear. Could have killed me if I’d been behind it. That tractor would’ve run right over me. Now your Ma’s all pissed off because she’s gotta fix the barn door!”

I know Dad is doomed. He completely misses the point, and Mom won't accept anything less than a groveling apology. Dad feels he has nothing to apologize for, after all, accidents happen.  That’s why they are called accidents and not “on purposes”.  After all, who can predict a freak occurrence like the tractor almost running over Mom?  Or Mom coming through the barn door at that exact moment?

I’m not worried about their marriage, though. Dad has spent my entire life telling me, “We talked about getting a divorce, but neither of us wanted to have to take you.” I’m still around, doing my job, holding their marriage together.

A week later, I stop by for supper and notice Dad is unusually quiet. After we eat, he pushes back his plate and looks at me.

“Pooch, I think I need you to rub some of that menthol on my back. It’s hurting pretty bad.”

“What’d you do to it?”

“I was helping your Ma get some bales, and I fell off the haystack flat on my back.”

Coincidence? I’m suspicious. The timing doesn’t look good. It is way too soon after the supposed tractor “accident”.

“Mom? What happened to Dad?”

“Oh, he thought he was gonna help. He just gets in the way anyway. Damn fool stepped over the edge and fell. Landed on some bales on the ground. He’s fine. Been whining all day. Ain’t nothing wrong with him. He wasn’t even standing all the way up the stack, only about halfway.”

First, Dad drives a tractor through a door Mom is about to walk through. Then, a week later, he falls off a haystack? Dad never gets on the haystack.

The haystack is Mom’s domain. Mom plans it, builds it, and guards it like a military installation. She won’t even stack hay on one started by Donna and me, refusing to be associated with “that disaster.”

So why was Dad up there?

“Okay,” I tell them sternly, “this shit has to stop. Dad quit trying to run Mom over with the tractor. And Mom, stop pushing Dad off haystacks. Do I need to remind you that whichever one survives gets custody of me?”

“Never thought of that,” Dad replies.

“I didn’t push the old fart off the haystack. He fell all by himself. He’s clumsy, and he can’t see a thing.”

“Okay, Mom. Stick to your story. But I don’t want this going any further.”

Dad starts laughing.

“Christ, the neighbors probably think we’re over here trying to kill each other! And damned near did it, too!”

Mom is ice when she is angry. Dad is fire.

Mom usually stays silent for hours, sometimes days. But she has her moments of knee-jerk reactions.  Dad cools off in minutes and immediately starts joking and teasing. It never occurs to him that Mom takes much longer to thaw than he does to cool down.

One day, Dad brings home a cute little Black Angus bull calf. The cute little bugger stands on the back seat of the car, reaching up and licking Dad’s ears. Unfortunately for him, Mom is standing in the yard when Dad pulls in.

Dad gets out and opens the back door to wrestle what looks to be a two-day-old calf from the seat. The calf enjoys the game, leaning backward every time Dad pulls forward.

“Reuben!”

Mom’s shout echoes across the farmyard.

I freeze. Beside me, our cattle dog Rex freezes. The entire farm freezes.

That one-word shout means trouble is coming, and I can only hope it’s Dad’s problem.

Rex appears to agree, his tail hanging down and his head bent low.

Dad looks over his shoulder while hanging onto the calf’s ears. The calf, folded nearly in half, has stopped moving in this game of tug-o’-war.  Even at two days old, he seems to sense danger.

I stand perfectly still in the open yard. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. Maybe if I close my eyes, Mom won’t notice me. Once she finishes with Dad, she might decide to turn on me. I have seen her take out all three of us kids and Dad in a single sweep of anger.

Dad is frozen, too. He has absolutely no idea what he has done.

“Is that a Black Angus bull calf?” Mom asks.

Dad is holding both ears of what is obviously a Black Angus bull calf. There is no point denying it.

“Cute little feller, ain’t he? Got him for free, too. Cow didn’t want him, and they didn’t want to mess with a bottle calf.”

I hear the tone in Dad’s voice. It’s the sweet voice. The “honey, can you make me a lemon-pie?” voice. The same voice he uses when trying to thaw out one of Mom’s silent treatments.

I cringe. It never works, but it’s the only strategy he has. Poor Dad. Mom is the only woman he has ever loved. He really could have used some practice before he married her.

“You know damn well there ain’t a fence built on this place that’ll hold a Black Angus! He’s gonna be nothing but trouble, and I’m gonna be fixing the goddamn fence all the time.”

Mom plants her hands on her hips. Not a good sign.

Mom does have a point. She is the primary member of the fence repair crew, with me serving as her assistant. Dad prefers discovering new fencing opportunities. Repair work has no appeal for him.

What I don’t understand is how Mom already knows this calf’s future. As far as I know, we’ve never had a Black Angus before. Then I hear it.

“You remember that little son of a bitch you got when Donna was a baby? That little bastard went through every fence on the place. I ain’t going through that shit again.”

Mom says it as though it happened last week. I do the math. Donna is nearly thirty.

Mom is still angry about a calf from thirty years ago. A chill runs down my spine.

Dad finally wrestles the calf to the ground and pushes him toward the barn. Mom walks back to the house in disgust. Rex and I, released from our paralysis, return to the important business of avoiding work.

The calf thrives in the baby-calf pen. Fat and shiny from milk replacer, he quickly starts eating feed and nibbling hay. He isn’t as tall as the Holsteins, but he gains weight faster and bounces around with twice the energy.

One morning, Mom comes into the house after chores.

“That damn Tom Dooley is gonna get on my last damn nerve. I told your father not to keep that thing.”

“Tom Dooley?”

“Yeah, Tom Dooley. You know— ‘Hang down your head, Tom Dooley. Poor boy, you’re bound to die.’”

“That’s kind of mean. He’s just a baby. He’s not even a steer yet. Let him have a life before you turn him into hamburger.”

“Oh, he ain’t gonna live long enough to be a steer. I’m gonna wring his goddamn neck the next time I catch him climbing the fence. The minute he sees me, he starts bellering. Then, if I don’t feed him first, he starts crawling up the fence. Like a spider, that little shit can climb!”

Mom doesn’t talk much about Tom Dooley after that. But I catch her humming around Dad. Sometimes she even sings. I know the song. It’s catchy.

I join in for the final line. “Poor boy, you’re bound to die.”

One beautiful summer morning, I am having coffee, dreading a day in the hayfield, and praying for rain. Milking is finished. The milking compressor has fallen silent. I have only a few precious minutes before twelve hours of hot, miserable labor will begin.

Dad comes into the house looking pale. Silently, he pours himself a full cup of coffee and sits down at the table. Looking up, startled to see me, he starts talking.

“Pooch, your Ma just about killed me. She threw that hammer so hard I could hear it whistle past my ear. Flew right out the barn door and landed in the manure pile. We’ll never find that hammer again.”

That is a lot to process before breakfast. Dad is upset because... He lost a hammer?

Mom threw a hammer at him? Was she actually trying to kill him?

Before I can ask, Mom storms into the house. The fury radiating from her tiny frame is almost visible. Unlike Dad, she is not lost in thought. Mom kicks her barn boots off on the porch.

Standing in the doorway in her stocking feet, she unloads on both of us.

“Now I don’t have a good hammer anymore. I’ll never find it buried in all that shit. I lost a perfectly good hammer because of you. Hope you’re happy!”

The story still doesn’t make sense. Apparently, there is a hammer, some throwing, and somehow it is all Dad’s fault.

“What happened?” I ask.

Dad studies the floor. Mom takes center stage. Is that a smirk I see on my father’s face?

“That damn Tom Dooley was crawling through the calf fence again. I’ve got that fence built nearly up to the ceiling, and he still squeezes through. I told your father this would happen. There ain’t a fence that’ll hold a damn Black Angus. I shoved him back in and was nailing another board on there like it’s San Quentin. Your father’s standing by the back door, and he says, ‘Maybe if you did it right the first time, you wouldn’t have to fix it all the time.’”

She pauses.

“I got so pissed off; I threw my good hammer at him. Missed, and now it’s buried in shit forever.”

Mom and Dad never fight in front of the kids. But there are clues.