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Show Crestfallen One of the stories (my father tel/s about his childhood begins with anumber of glass syringes, the kind used in the late 40s to inoculate livestock on a farm. He and his older brother, Bill, had been left in charge of vaccinating the pigs by their father, a man they knew best from the back, one who often turned, as he did that day, and left them in the dark coolness of the barn with a task, a directive, a job to be done. In this case: corral the small brood of pigs and inject a vaccine into their rumps. My father and his brother had not been alone in the barn fifteen minutes before they had filled the tubes with water and converted the expensive syringes into squirt guns. I imagine the two of them as they scramble the hay stacks and scale the loft ladder all the while pumping the tiny plungers and releasing long, cool streams of irrigation water. The planked floor soon turns to muck as the water mixes with the remnants of manure and mice. Every now and then one of them is hit by a jet of water and takes a fantastic tumble behind the hay rake or into a nearby and empty stall. They re-enact scenes from the Western they saw the week before in town, taking turns to play the bad guy or the Indian, unaware of the passage of time, instead wishing for a black hat, a stretch of burlap, or a length of twine. My father, the younger but the more cunning, lures Bill into the sunshine only to attack him from behind the water tank. Not to be outdone, Bill takes his revenge the next time my father stops to refill. Well away from the house where their mother prepares an early supper of boiled chicken and gravy, their antics in the barn go unchecked, until the first syringe breaks. 11 |
