“I’ll have his teacher e-mail you, and tell Eli that we’re all thinking of him.”
“I will,” he said and hung up just as he heard a rumble outside. He glanced out the window and saw Ed Zukov’s truck as it rolled down the twin ruts of the long drive.
Sarge, who had been sleeping seconds earlier, lifted his scruffy head and gave a low bark.
“Shh!” Trace headed for the back door.
Ed and his wife, Tilly, were the neighbors a quarter of a mile down the road and had been friends of his father. Trace had known the couple, now in their seventies, all his life. He walked through the kitchen and back porch with Sarge at his heels.
The wind was picking up, causing the old windmill’s blades to creak as they turned and the naked branches of the trees in the orchard to rattle. Snow was falling steadily now, big white flakes swirling and beginning to cover the ground, as the old truck slowed to a stop near the pump house.
Spry as a thirty-year-old, Tilly hopped down from the cab of the ancient truck the minute her husband cut the engine. “We heard about Eli,” she said, a baseball cap covering her head as she marched around the front of the old Dodge. She was carrying a hamper, which wasn’t unusual. In the face of any crisis, Tilly Zukov turned to her pantry and stove.
“He’ll be fine.” Since Tilly was a world-class worrier, he decided not to mention the ear infections. “How’d you know?”
“I have a niece who works in the kitchen at Evergreen.”
“Small town.” Ed, a solid man with a wide girth and arms as big as sapling trunks, slammed the door of his truck behind him and followed his wife up the two stairs of the screened-in back porch. “Jesus, it’s cold!”
“Ed! Do not take our Lord’s name in vain,” Tilly reprimanded as they stopped just inside the kitchen door. In her plaid jacket and faded jeans, she was tiny, half her husband’s size, but she obviously ruled the roost. Her hair was steel gray and tightly permed, and rimless glasses were perched on the bridge of her tiny nose. From behind the lenses, dark eyes snapped with intelligence. To Trace, she said, “I brought over some stew and fresh baked corn bread, and some ranger cookies, ’cuz they’re Eli’s favorite.”
“She also brought a pie,” Ed added. He took off his trucker cap, showing off a bald spot in his snow-white hair, then unzipped his down jacket, beneath which were bib overalls and a flannel shirt.
“I had to!” Tilly insisted. “I wanted to try out this new recipe I found in the Better Homes and Gardens, last year’s holiday edition. It’s pumpkin custard with sour cream.”
Trace eyed the pie. “Sounds great. But, really, it wasn’t necessary.”
“Course it wasn’t.” Tilly was already stuffing the pie into his bare refrigerator. “But I wanted to give it a whirl before I served it on Thanksgiving. Ed’s sister, Cara, she’s pretty picky, so you and Eli are my guinea pigs.”
“Nothin’ wrong with the old recipe,” Ed grumbled.
“The one on the pumpkin can?” she demanded. “We’ve had that every year for the past forty-five years! Time to try something new.”
“It’s a tradition.” Ed was unmoved.
Tilly rolled her eyes. “Oh, show some originality, would ya, Ed?”
“Cara likes it,” Ed pointed out.
“What does she know?”
“You’re the one trying to impress her.”
“And I don’t know why,” Tilly admitted. “Ever taste her banana cream? Soggy crust. Overripe bananas. Horrible! Just… horrible!”
“Then quit tryin’ to impress her, and make the damned recipe that comes with the fillin’.” Her husband sighed broadly, his teeth stained slightly yellow from years of chewing tobacco. “I always say, if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it.”
“You always say a lot of things, and I don’t listen to too many of ’em! Now, let’s quit bickering and I’ll heat up the stew.”
“She’s a bossy one, ain’t she?” Ed said to Trace.
“And you love it!” Despite the bite to her words, she sent him a fond glance, the kind they’d shared since high school, some fifty-odd years earlier.
“Seems to have worked out between you two,” Trace observed.
“That’s because he usually does what I ask.”
She began fiddling with the stove as her husband said, “I thought I’d help you with the livestock. Tilly, here, was frettin’ and fussin’ over at the house, worried you wouldn’t be able to get the chores done with Eli laid up.”
Tilly’s features pulled into a knot as she turned to Trace. “It’s just that I didn’t see how you’d leave the boy and take care of the cattle all at the same time.”
“Dad?” Eli called from the living room.
“Right there, bud!” Trace slipped through the swinging door and found his son in his stocking feet, looking groggy. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Who’s here?”
“The Zukovs. Come on into the kitchen.”
“Is that my boy?” Tilly called loudly, and for the first time all day, Eli smiled.
He was already tossing the blankets aside when Trace said, “I think she brought you something.”
“I heard that, and I sure did!” Tilly raised her voice and added, “Eli, you come on in here and sit up to the table. We’ll have ourselves some cookies and milk and a quick game of checkers. That is, if you don’t mind being beat.”
“I’m pretty good!” Eli was already through the swinging door and finding the box of checkers on the shelf in the dining cove.
“We’ll see how good you are…. Oooh weee, take a look at that cast, would ya, Ed?” Tilly had placed a plate of cookies on the table and had poured Eli a glass of milk as she spied the boy’s arm. “Blue as a summer sky!”
“That it is,” her husband agreed.
Beaming, Eli scrambled onto his chair and began pulling the checkerboard out of its battered, taped-together box.
Ed, who had snatched a cookie, was at the back door. “Let’s go deal with the cattle.”
Trace snagged his jean jacket from a hook near the back door, then stepped into his boots and followed Ed along a cement path that petered into a trampled dirt trail on the other side of the gate that separated the yard from the barnyard.
Snow was still falling steadily, covering the ground in a fine layer that allowed patches of grass to poke through. Most of the cattle were already inside the barn, and when Trace pushed open the wide doors, rolling them aside, the smells of hay, dust, and dung reached his nostrils.
He climbed to the hayloft, his boots ringing on the metal rungs as the cattle mooed and shuffled. Once in the loft, he pushed bales through the opening in the old floorboards. They landed with soft thuds, and Ed took over, slicing through the string and breaking the bales before strewing them in the manger where part of the herd of Hereford and Angus mingled.
Once the bales were scattered inside the barn, they carried several outside the doors to a covered area, where the roof was supported by poles, and mangers and a water trough filled the inner area.
Cattle shifted and lowed, their black and red hides wet where snow had melted upon them, their breaths fogging in the cold air.
After the herd was cared for, Trace and Ed walked to the stable, and the whole process started over again, though Trace owned only four horses, so the job was quicker. They added grain to the mangers, and Trace rubbed the palomino’s muzzle and scratched the ears of the dun, who tossed his head, his dark eyes gleaming with fire.
By the time they returned to the kitchen, the scents of garlic and rosemary filled the room. Tilly’s stew was simmering on the stove, and it looked like Eli was beating his mentor at their game of checkers.
“You’re sure you didn’t cheat?” Tilly teased him.