Scott walked slowly across the barnyard on Thursday afternoon after school. Mr. Hartfield was waiting in the barn, waiting to build the plywood drag with him. Man-toman stuff, Mr. Hartfield called it when they had a talk yesterday.
Mr. Hartfield was always wanting to talk to him, but Scott just didn’t know how. With Dad, you just went up and started talking; only with Mr. Hartfield it was different. And he already had his own boys, so why would he be interested in talking to a kid that wasn’t his own?
Maybe he wanted to show Mom what a terrific guy he was, Scott thought. Yeah, he was probably trying to make points with her. They were so lovey-dovey, he probably would do that.
Scott stepped inside the barn door, and Rusty loped toward him. “Hey, boy, look at you.” He knelt down to hug him, felt his coat grown thicker, the body underneath less bony and more rounded.
Mr. Hartfield stepped out of the tack room. “You’re doing a good job with him, Scott.” He wiped his greasy fingers on a stained rag.
“Everybody did it, not just me.” Scott couldn’t explain it, especially to himself, that he didn’t even want to take a compliment from Mr. Hartfield. Taking anything from him seemed disloyal.
“You’re right. Everybody helped.” Mr. Hartfield kept wiping his hands, but they weren’t getting any cleaner. Finally he said, “Are you ready to built that plywood contraption? I’ve got a piece of wood all laid out in here.”
“Yeah, I brought my plan.” Reluctantly Scott took the paper from his jeans pocket.
“Well, then.” Mr. Hartfield hesitated.
Scott looked up at him, wondering. He was usually so sure of himself, knew just what to do every second.
“I don’t quite know how to say this.” Mr. Hartfield paused again.
Then Scott had it. “That’s okay, Mr. Hartfield. I expect to pay you for the wood and anything else I use.”
“No, no, Scott, you don’t have to do that. It’s just … it’s just … I wish you’d call me David. I know you can’t call me Dad yet, but at least call me David. Will you do that, Scott?”
Scott opened his mouth, but nothing would come out. How can I promise to do that? It would make him closer, more like a dad, and he isn’t. Not mine, anyway. It might seem like I’d forgotten my own. “I … I …” Scott fought the cotton in his mouth. It choked off the words he wanted to say.
“It’s probably too soon,” Mr. Hartfield was saying. “But I want you to know it would make me feel good if you tried.” He turned and went into the tack room. “Come on, Scott, let’s build that drag.”
Before Scott could follow, Brad came in.
“You got a letter,” Brad said, giving him an envelope. His dark eyes looked longingly at it.
Scott stared at the envelope with the unfamiliar handwriting. Grandma’s writing looked like snail trails and Jamie wasn’t a person to write much. He ripped the envelope open.
“Scott, are you coming?” Mr. Hartfield’s voice came from the tack room. Then he appeared in the doorway. “Oh, hi, Brad. Did you come to help?”
“No, I got homework to do.” He started to leave.
“We could use you,” Mr. Hartfield was saying. “Did you hear from California, Scott?”
“No, Amos Underwood wrote to me. He’s that guy we met up at Havre.”
“I remember him. Nice fella.”
“He sent a schedule of races that are going to be held in Montana this winter. How far is Billings from here? The state club is going to have a big meet there just before Christmas.”
“Billings is about …”
“It’s two hundred and forty-three miles,” Brad said.
Mr. Hartfield stared at him. “Where did you pick that up? School, maybe?”
“Yeah.” Brad glanced at Scott, then looked away. But Scott got the message because he remembered. Brad was waiting for a letter from Billings. His mom. And now Brad was asking him to be quiet and not give it away. But why didn’t Mr. Hartfield know about these plans of Brad’s? That was a strange one.
“Come on, Scott,” Mr. Hartfield said. “If we hurry and build that drag, you can try it out before dark.”
“Guess I’ll help, too,” Brad said.
“Thought you had homework.” His dad looked puzzled.
“It’ll wait. What does this thing look like?” Brad walked ahead of Scott into the tack room.
“Show him your plan, Scott,” Mr. Hartfield said. “I’ll get the saw.”
Scott spread out his paper on the workbench, and Brad stood beside him to look at it.
“Thanks,” Brad whispered under his breath.
“It’s okay,” Scott said, wanting to ask, but not daring to.
It didn’t take them long to build the drag, especially with Brad working on it. He had a knack for using tools that Scott envied.
“That’s neat,” Scott said later, when they’d finished. “Maybe you’d help me with my sled, too.”
“I could probably do that,” Brad said. He looked around and saw that his dad had gone outside. “If I’m here,” he added.
“Right,” Scott nodded. “If you’re here.”
Scott walked outside to the barnyard and began to attach the brake to the drag, but he couldn’t get it to catch just right.
Brad wandered over to watch. “What’s the problem?” He stuffed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.
“Don’t know.” Scott stood up and looked around, wondering if he could bring himself to ask Mr. Hartfield for help. “But I’d better get it fixed before I hook Kaylah to it.”
“I don’t know why you’re so particular. Your dog probably wouldn’t even feel it if that drag hit him.”
“It could hurt him plenty and spook him besides.” Scott felt his hands curl into fists as he stared at Brad. “If you think it’s nothing, let’s hook up Bruno. Let’s see how he likes getting socked with it.”
“No,” Brad yelled. “All you want to do it get your hands on my dog so you can have a team. That’s all you think about.”
“Me?” Scott yelled back. “I wouldn’t have your dumb dog on any team of mine. It’s your dad who keeps shoving him at me. Tell him to lay off.”
“You tell him. If you don’t, he’ll take over.”
“So I noticed.” Scott felt like taking a punch at someone and it might as well be Brad. Why did he suddenly get so steamed up anyway? He was being halfway decent until he blew up.
Then Scott remembered how Brad had looked at the letter from Amos.
“Maybe you’ll hear from her tomorrow,” he said quietly, almost in a whisper.
Brad turned quickly to look at Scott and finally let out a long, stored-up breath. “Yeah, maybe.” He walked over to the drag. “You want some help?”
“I could use it.” Scott watched while Brad worked with the brake. He’s got brains in his fingers, Scott thought. He knows just what to do. Like Jamie. He knew what to do, too.
Fifteen minutes later Brad stood up and jammed his hands back into his pockets. “Your dog won’t get hit in the behind now.”
“Thanks, Brad,” Scott said.
“No sweat,” he answered and walked away.
Every now and then he acts like a human being, Scott thought. Sometimes I could almost like him. But only sometimes.
Mom announced at the supper table that night that all the boys in the family had to get haircuts tomorrow. No amount of arguing changed her mind and Scott was still fuming as he walked downtown to Box Elder with Brad and Howdy the next afternoon after school.
It wouldn’t take them long to get to the barber’s, Scott thought as they walked to the business district. What there was of it huddled all around the square.
The Feed and Seed squatted on one corner across from the post office. J. C. Penney’s, where they had to meet Mom later, occupied another corner. A grocery store and café leaned against each other a few doors down, and a hardware store after that. Not much else except the barber shop.
Scott scuffed his feet in the fallen leaves on the sidewalk. There was no decent place for kids to hang out if they got the chance, no place to eat decent food like pizza or tacos. Shoot, they’d probably never heard of tacos up here.
“This is a real drag,” Brad said, smoothing back his dark, scruffy hair. “I don’t need a haircut.”
“Me, either.” Scott looked at Brad and grinned at his use of the word. They had that in common at least. Two kinds of drag.
“Dad said we had to do what she told us.” Howdy spoke up on the other side of Scott. “Your mom’s a good cooker, but sometimes she gets weird ideas.”
“I know.” Scott agreed. Like moving to Montana.
“My mom said it didn’t matter about unimportant stuff like haircuts and I could do what I wanted about it.” Brad crossed the street ahead of them.
“She sounds pretty neat,” Scott answered. “I’ll bet you didn’t have to take showers every day when she was here.”
“Every day?” Howdy practically yelled it and several old men, sitting on a bench in front of the feed store, turned to stare at them. “You mean that’s next?”
Scott nodded. “Afraid so. She just wants to get to know you better before she lays that one on you.”
“I wish I knew where Mom was,” Howdy said. “I’d move there.”
“Don’t you …,” Scott began. Then he stopped. Howdy didn’t know where she was either. Double weird, he thought, walking into the barber shop behind Brad and Howdy.
Scott stalled around and was the last one into the barber chair. He hated feeling trapped by the big apron draped all over him and being on total display in the picture window facing the square.
“So how do you like Montana?” the barber asked as he began to snip away at Scott’s hair.
“It’s okay.” Why couldn’t he hurry? Scott wondered. Cut the conversation and concentrate on the hair.
“What grade are you in?” the barber went on.
“Sixth.” Oh, no, who was that girl coming down the street? Oh, jeez, there were a couple of other girls with her. If they saw him …
Scott turned quickly, but it was too late. Michelle had seen him. Now she stopped in front of the window and waved. The other girls were waving, too. All three were standing there like nerds, waving.
Brad and Howdy began to snicker behind him. “Look at your groupies, Scott,” Brad said in an itsy-bitsy voice. “Wave to your fans, man.”
“Knock it off,” Scott said, wishing he could punch him. It was bad enough to endure Michelle, but Brad didn’t have to make it worse.
“Be still my heart,” Brad said, doing a fainting act. Howdy walked over to the window and began to make faces until the girls backed away. After one last wave at Scott, they headed for J. C. Penney’s.
“Wait till I tell the guys,” Brad said, picking up a copy of Sports Illustrated.
“If you tell, I tell,” Scott said, flaming.
“Tell what?” Howdy asked, turning around quickly.
“Nothing.” Brad’s voice held a warning. “He’s just kidding, aren’t you, Scott?”
Suddenly it was so quiet in the barber shop that the scissors sounded like a giant cricket. Snip, snip, snip, pause. Snip, snip, snip, pause.
On the way home Mom bubbled over with talk. “So I took the new pictures of Rusty into the newspaper office,” she said. “And guess what?”
“What?” Caroline asked. “Do they know whose dog he is?”
“No,” Mom answered. Scott saw her eyes in the rearview mirror. They were sparkly, full of fun. “They asked me if I wanted to take pictures for them on a regular basis, cover special events around town, that sort of thing.”
“When do they ever have special events around here?” Scott asked. “When the bell rings in the church steeple?”
“Scott, don’t talk like that,” Mom answered. “I was thinking about the sled-dog races and I told Mr. Baker about them. He’s the editor and he seemed very interested. Maybe I’ll take a picture of you and the dogs for the paper.”
“Spare me,” Scott said.
“You should have been at the barber shop today,” Howdy broke in. “You could have taken a picture of Scott and all his girlfriends.”
“Come on, Howdy,” Scott said. “Cut it out.”
Caroline turned around from the front seat, her round face split in half by a grin. “Have you really got a girlfriend?”
“Maybe you and Brad have got secrets, but not me,” Howdy went on. “I can talk about anything I want to.”
Scott caught Mom staring at him in the rear-view mirror as they sped along the highway. He knew what she was doing; she was asking what secrets he had, especially with Brad. They hadn’t exactly gotten off to a buddy-buddy start. But he wouldn’t tell. No way did he want to get into that stuff about Brad’s mom.
Twenty minutes later Mom turned into the long driveway to the ranch and eased up by the mailbox.
“I’ll do it,” Brad said, hopping out of the car. He opened the red mailbox shaped like a miniature barn. Across the top David Hartfield’s name was spelled out in wrought-iron letters. David Hartfield. No mention that any McClures lived here.
Brad looked through the envelopes in his hand before he returned to the car. “It’s all for you and Dad,” he said, handing the envelopes to Mom.
Now she glanced through them. “Oh, look, here’s one from Truckee,” she said.
“Is it from Grandma?” Caroline asked, looking over Mom’s shoulder.
“No, it’s from the Wagners.” Mom ripped open the envelope. “Maybe they’ve had their baby.” She began to read, then said, “Guess what?”
Brad groaned and Scott didn’t blame him. More of Mom’s guessing games. “They had triplets, right?” Scott asked.
“No, Mr. Wagner is coming to see us,” Mom said, continuing to read. “He’ll be here sometime over the weekend.”
Scott sat back on the car seat and smiled. Mr. Wagner, Dad’s old friend. His old sled-dog-racing buddy. It would be great to see him, talk about dogs and racing and snow. It would be just like it used to be, just …
No it wouldn’t. It would never be the way it used to be. Couldn’t he ever get that through his head?