Sound Of Gravel, The by Ruth Wariner Read Free Book Online Page A

wires to ferry the current to his shop, where it powered his tools and the irrigation pumps on our farm. He promised that it wouldn’t be long until he would wire our house and Alejandra’s. He had also installed a toilet inside our house. The bathroom was the first door on the left in the hallway, a narrow, gray room that smelled like wet cement. The toilet itself was not new, naturally. The seat was scratched, the tank was missing its flushing handle, and a five-gallon bucket filled with water sat nearby. This, we were instructed, was how we could flush the toilet until Lane could locate a functional handle.
    At nine years old, Matt could milk a cow himself. He had been assigned a relatively benign brown ruminant. One evening at dusk, I decided to go with him to the corral behind Lane’s shop, which was about fifty yards from the back of our house, right next to the corral. I wanted to see milking firsthand. “Why are you followin’ me?” my brother said, annoyed by my presence, squinting over his shoulder with mock-menace. “Go back inside and help Mom.”
    “I don’t want to. I want to help you milk the cow.”
    He ignored me, looking straight ahead, and began to walk faster.
    I picked up the pace and could soon hear Lane’s cows mooing and the buzz of the flies that swarmed around the five filthy animals and feasted on the manure-covered ground beneath them.
    As I approached, I inspected the cows’ movements with caution, my shoulders tense. Directly in front of the corral lay a large, open well, which also made me nervous. I had always been afraid of it; the black surface of the water was far below ground level. I could never watch when the boys would run straight for it, scissoring their legs wide as they leaped from one crooked edge to the other. Loose dirt would fall into the hole, and it always took a few seconds to hear the hollow sound of a splash.
    Resigning himself to my presence, Matt warned me to stay away from the cows’ swinging tails. I watched as he tied his cow’s two back legs together with thin baling wire so that she wouldn’t run away while he milked her. He sat down on top of an overturned bucket and made a big show of his competence, reaching confidently toward the cow’s swollen, pink udder. Then he stopped and looked up at me, his chin pointed out, and his eyes peering from underneath his cap.
    “Ruthie, don’t ever stand behind the cow,” he said with a sternness beyond his years. “If it gets scared, it’ll kick ya in the teeth and knock ya flat on your butt. Its legs are skinny but they’re real strong, and its hooves are solid bone—”
    “I know, Matt.” I sighed. I concocted an offended face and refused to look at him, sighing again as I waited for the sound of milk to hit the bottom of the empty bucket. Instead, I felt a stream of warm liquid spray my forehead and drip down my sunburned nose and cheeks. I whirled around and slapped Matt, who couldn’t stop laughing, which incensed me further. My face was hot; sticky milk had seeped under my eyelids. I yelled as loud as I could for him to quit it.
    “Oh, stop being such a big baby.” He laughed as he returned his attention to the milking bucket.
    Eventually, the sting left my eyes and I sat and stewed in silence. Every once in a while I would glance at Matt out of the corner of my eye as he squeezed milk into the bucket. Soon it was three-quarters full and covered with frothy bubbles.
    The bright blue skies outside the corral had grown darker, and the clouds above looked as foamy as the milk. The sun had at last set behind yellow bales of dry hay that created a cool, triangular shadow over the cows. Matt outstretched his right arm to balance the weight of the bucket in his left hand as he walked slowly back to the house, taking care that the milk didn’t slosh on his jeans. This made it easy for me to keep up.
    Lane’s truck was parked in front of his shop. My stepfather had left the door to the shop wide-open and