“He had a Hank, and a Johnny, and a Loretta. He’d sing to them in the mornings while he forked hay. Terrible voice. Couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. They didn’t care.”
She smiled down at her hands. “I still sing to them some mornings. I’m worse than he was.”
Patsy turned her head and blew warm air down the back of my neck, as if she’d heard her name and wanted to be sure I knew it.
We led them out of the barn one at a time, and Della told me how to back them up to the bobsled where it sat under the lean-to.
The sled was older than both of us put together, two sets of short oak runners under a plank deck with sideboards, and a tongue out front with a neckyoke at the end.
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Arne had kept the runners shod with steel, and the steel was still bright.
“Neckyoke on, then hook your tugs to the doubletree,” Della called from the doorway, leaning on her cane.
“Outside tugs first. Then your lines. Cross check them, Kristin. Run them through your hands and make sure left goes to left.”
I ran them through my hands three times. Left went to left.
“Now,” she said, “listen to me. They’re going to want to go fast, because they’re glad to be out. Don’t let them. A walk is all you want. A walk will get you anywhere if you keep it up. If they go in deep, let them lunge, they’ll lunge out. Don’t saw on their mouths. Talk to them. They like to be talked to.”
“How long to the highway, do you think?”
She looked off toward our place and then south, where the lane went, and I watched her do the arithmetic the way old farmers do, without numbers.
“From your yard? Two hours, if nothing goes wrong. Maybe a little less. It’s drifted worst in the low spot and right by Orvin’s shop. The rest will be crust, mostly.”
“I’ll call you from the highway.”
“You won’t have to,” Della said. “I’ll be there. My grandson’s home from college. He’ll drive me in the pickup, the county blade went by on 200 at seven this morning. He can bring them home.”
She waved her cane at me. “Go on. You’re burning daylight.”
I stepped up onto the front of the sled, and I took a line in each hand the way my grandpa taught me, with the line coming up between my fingers and my thumbs on top.
Then I said, “Merle, Patsy, walk up,” in the deepest voice I had, and they leaned into their collars, and the sled lurched once and slid.
I don’t know how to explain what that felt like, after the morning I’d had. It was like being lifted. Two tons of horse took up the slack all at once, and the runners hissed under me, and we went out of Della’s yard and down onto the section line with the snow flying off the horses’ hooves in clods.
They went through drifts that came up to their chests. They’d stop, and gather, and lunge, and I’d brace my knees against the front board and let them, the way Della said.
Then we’d be up on top of the crust again, sliding along, the horses blowing. Steam came off their noses in long white clouds and hung in the air behind us.