Walking That Short Distance, Childhood Enlightenment in the '50s

by David Sheppard

  *

  Michael sat in a chair at the kitchen table with his right leg folded under him, constructing a totem pole for his class on North American Indians, an orange and white striped cat named Tiger sleeping in his lap. He was alone in the house with his mother, and he like that. She switched off the static coming from the small Philco radio and leaned against the sink as she hummed "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," peeling and slicing potatoes into a large glass bowl. It was dark outside, and through the house walls, Michael heard the deep hum of the vacuum pump, the machine that sucked milk from the cow's teats, coming from the milk barn. Through the night air, the hum alternated from high to low pitch. Michael felt comforted by this pulsing heartbeat from the barn. He saw the barn's silhouette from the kitchen window, broken by cracks of light coming through the sideboards. The shapes of his older brother, Doug, and his father occasionally eclipsed the tall shafts of light.

  This was the first evening in quite a while Michael had been allowed to miss milking the cows, and he was enjoying watching his mother fix supper. They were hardly ever alone together anymore. He looked back at her thinking how pretty she must be. His attention was first called to this last week when she came to his sixth grade class play. One of his friends had suggested that he would trade his fat mother for Michael's. She was very slim and with the white ribbon in her dark hair, she was the prettiest of all the mothers. He sat in silence now, working on his totem pole and watching her move about the kitchen.

  Headlights flashed on the corral, then stopped beside the barn and went out.

  "Someone in a pickup's at the barn, Mother."

  "Yes, Michael, I know. It's the artificial inseminator."

  "What's an artifusal insssas..imin..."

  "Inseminator. He breeds cows."

  "Oh." And then a little later, "What does breeding cows mean?"

  "You'll find out about it when you get old enough," she answered.

  Michael hated answers like that but was in too good a mood to push the subject tonight.

  His mother was standing to the right of the range at the white porcelain sink which was chipped and discolored from having heavy car parts washed in gasoline there. The kitchen was small and had at one time been a laundry room, and still had the old white washing machine in the corner off to the left of the gas range. She turned to watch him strain with the pointed scissors in thick cardboard, her brow wrinkling just slightly. Then she turn back to the sink, washed the paring knife and dried her hands on a flour sack she had wrapped around her waist for an apron, this time humming "Rock of Ages."

  "Don't worry, Mom, I won't hurt myself with the scissors," he said, reading her concern. He liked to hear her hum hymns but whished she would sing out loud like she used to. Her voice is very nice, he thought, even when she's just talking, it rings like a bell.

  He decided that the long cylinder, which he made by taping three toilet paper rolls end to end, had enough room for three totem pole figures. He was thinking of what his teacher, Mrs Frank, had told them about the totem being an emblem of tribal ancestry to the Indians, and he was also aware that his family had some "Indian blood." He had heard his mother and father talk about it. The bottom figure, he had planned from the beginning to be an Indian chief. Surely his father would be a chief if they were in a tribe. The totem pole would stand on the chief's legs. The top figure would be a bull. After all, dairies had been in their family for a long time. It was the closest he could come to a buffalo, which he had seen in pictures of totem poles made by real Indians. As he worked, he had a fleeting vision of the bull and heifer in Mr Olson's field.

  For the middle figure, he was still uncertain what to make. He wondered what place women played in the lives of Indians. Mrs Frank hadn't said much about Indian women. He watched his mother's slim fingers place two large oval shaped steaks, one at a time, onto a plate. She folded one of them over the butcher's knife, pulling it through the steak as blood dripped between her fingers. Michael saw the little red puddle and noticed how comfortable she seemed with blood. She wrapped the remaining half-steak and returned the package to the refrigerator, her dress brushing the edge of the table as she went. He liked the way she always stood straight and the way her long brown hair fell about her shoulders.

  "Mom, why do you think there are no girl faces on totem poles?" He was trying to get the totem pole to stand, but with the heavy bull's nose, it wanted to fall forward.

  "You would have to ask an Indian that. Don't you think?"

  "I thought you and Daddy are part Indian."

  "That's just you're father, and he's only a smidgen. But you can ask him if you want."

  "Mom, you know he doesn't know anything about Indians."

  "Then ask yourself. If he's part Indian, so are you."

  "Really?"

  "Sure, can't you just feel all those Indian brains having a war dance inside your head?"

  Michael smiled. "Sure, Mom, well maybe not a war dance, but how come I'm part Indian just because Daddy is?"

  "That's just the way God makes us. You are half your daddy and half me." Michael laughed at her explanation. "Don't you believe me, Michael?" His mother was serious.

  "This sounds like another one of those stork stories, Mother. I'm not half boy and half girl. I'm just a plain boy." His voice had a touch of disgust.

  "Of course, you're not half girl. I just mean that you are half like your father's family and half like mine. And that means that since your father is part Indian, so are you. Trust me. That's the way God does things."

  "I'm tired of talking about it anyway." All this talk of God is really boring, he thought. She has to put God in everything. She always gets so serious when she talks about God. But he was pleased to know that he was part Indian. He thought if he could look inside his own head, some part of his brain would be red, the part that was Indian.

  "Then go see if your father's about ready to come in now. I just saw the pickup pull out."

  He put Tiger on the floor and then made a slit at the bottom of the tube with the knife to separate the legs, then inserted a scrap of cardboard that stuck out, propping the totem pole so that it would stand.

  "Michael, are you going to mind me?"

  "Yes, Mother."

  He pulled twice at the jammed front door, then let the screen bang to, and ran the short distance into the darkness, the hum of the vacuum pump growing louder.

  When he came back, he found his mother moving all his construction material off the table onto the top of her sewing machine cabinet. But she was standing motionless, his totem pole in her hands and a puzzled look on her face.

  "Michael, did you put a peepee on this thing?" Her voice had lost the pleasant ring and just seemed to hang on "thing."

  He took the totem pole from her, feeling his face flush.

  "It just kept falling over, Mother." His voice was strained now. "I put a piece on the bottom to make it stand." He slumped to the chair, drooping his head and raising his shoulders like a turtle pulling its head inside its shell.

  "You're sure that's all it is?"

  "Motherrr." If she had looked closely, she would have noticed tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

  "Okay. Still, I think I would change it. Your teacher might not like the way it looks. People who make things like that are nasty. You shouldn't think about peepees. People that play with their peepee aren't nice people either. Jesus doesn't like them."

  "You already told me that, Mother, many times." He had his head down and his words were barely audible.

  "Well, there's just no telling what kids at school will get you to thinking about."

  He wanted her to just shut up about it. Why did she have to make him feel so bad before she would quit?

  "When is your father going to be ready for supper?"

  "Oh, he just said, 'In a half hour.' Doug's scraping manure and Daddy's washing the milking machines." He sniffed and wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve.

  "Why don't you get the rest
of your stuff off the table and set the dishes? I have to fry the round steak now." She went back to singing "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," this time very softly.

  After he set the table, he said nothing, but watched the lights from the barn and felt the cold creeping through cracks in the window facing. He sat circling the silvered edge of a plate with his finger. He didn't care about the totem pole anymore. He just wanted to forget it. He watched his mother spoon lard into the skillet and flour the steaks. He wished she would shut up singing.

  The steaks had been popping and sizzling for some time when he heard the hum of the vacuum pump stop then his father and Doug stomped their feet on the front porch and the screen door creak open.

  "...and tomorrow morning after we finish milking, I want you and Michael to throw 'em some oat hay out in the feeding pen," his father said, his voice gradually getting louder. "I don't think they're getting enough from the pasture now, with their milk dropping off like that." His voice was booming by the time they reached the kitchen. Michael saw how close his father's head came to the low kitchen ceiling. The room seemed crowded now and barely big enough for him. Seeing Michael with his head down, his father turned to his mother and asked, "What's wrong with him?"

  Why doesn't he ask me? Michael wondered.

  "Oh, we just had an argument over that thing he's making," she answered. "We have it all straightened out now though."

  It's a project, not a thing, Michael thought, but he said nothing as he looked up at her feeling hurt and mad at the same time.

  "Don't look at me like that, young man, or I'll give you something for it," she responded.

  Michael wanted to leave the table, to go into the bedroom and lay on the bed that he and Doug shared, but he knew if he left the table, he would be in for it. He felt trapped.

  "Doesn't look like it's over to me," replied his father. "Michael, you get that hurt look off of your face, or I'll give you something to act hurt about."

  "Now stay out of this, Douglas, I can handle him," his mother said. "He minds better than Doug did at this age." Michael could tell that his mother was protecting him, but also that she didn't want to discuss the issue of the totem pole with his father.

  "Well, how did it go with Ben?" she asked, finally smiling at his father as she forked the last round steak from the hot grease.

  How can they brush this off so easily? Michael wondered. I must mean nothing to them.

  "It went great. Didn't it Doug?" his father answered. But Doug didn't respond. "Ben's the best man with a cow I've ever seen. Their milk's falling off some though. Tonight we only got a little milk in the third can. Must be the season. Man, this kitchen cooking sure smells better than that barnyard cowshit, doesn't it Doug?"

  But it was their mother that answered. "Douglas, don't you say things like that about my cooking. That's not much of a compliment."

  His father pulled off his coat and went to the sink, rolling his khaki shirtsleeves and washing his hands with a gray bar of Lava soap. Then he bent lower and soaped his face. As his mother and father stood side by side, Michael noticed how he towered over her, how powerful he looked, and Michael hoped that he would be that big someday.

  "Maybe next time the inseminator comes, Mike 'll help us," his father said, drying his hands as his face still dripped. He winked at Doug who just sat at the table with his coat still on, his head down. He was looking at Michael out the corner of his eye, a strange grin forming in one corner of his mouth.

  "I don't think so, Douglas. I don't think he's old enough, yet," his mother said rather pleadingly.

  "Come on, Mary. You'd keep him in diapers until he's twenty years old if I let you have your way. Let him grow up for Christ's sake. Goodness knows he see's enough of it around him every day anyway."

  "He wouldn't notice it if you didn't always pointing it out to him."

  Michael couldn't understand what harm it would cause for him to know anything. He couldn't understand why they just couldn't tell the truth about everything. Michael felt like he was a lot of trouble. All they ever did was argue over him.

  All during supper, Michael wanted to ask his father about totem poles, but somehow he just couldn't seem to get the question out.