Chapter 4. TOUR OF DUTY
Diva and Andy came running, followed shortly by Mom and Rhino. Such a beautiful morning, they’d gone for a walk up the road.
Rhino didn’t even like to walk.
“Seems you’ve already got yourself a reputation in these parts,” was what Rhino greeted Barker Ajax with.
“Good morning,” was all Barker said by way of response.
“Oh, Rhino,” Mother cautioned.
“What do you mean?,” I asked.
Rhino laughed, a rare smile changing his face. “Passing the nearest neighbors, couldn’t help overhearing a couple of fellas, real excited about this crazy man with a huge killer dog down the road, run’em off when all they was trying to do was The Lord’s work.”
“Zachariah had the situation well in hand,” Barker replied.
“You shoulda seen it,” I exclaimed. “The Black Gang had them surrounded all by himself.”
“Those boys won’t be bothering us again, that’s for sure,” Rhino chuckled.
“Breakfast will be ready in two minutes,” Mom announced.
By the time I had my hands washed, the two men were already hunkered down over plates piled high with whole wheat pancakes.
“I was worried you were going to miss out,” Barker said between forkfulls dripping with berry syrup.
Obviously, I’d have to be on my toes to get my share if this strange man was staying around. I sure hoped he would. I had never seen anyone like him. Courteous and polite, kind, almost gentle, but somehow… dangerous. Savage. Untamed. Yet I knew I had nothing to be afraid of; I had never felt safer.
“Come on, Barker,” said Rhino, when the pancakes had disappeared and the coffee pot was dry. “Let’s take a tour of the place.”
Life seemed to move at a different pace on Donkey Thyme Farm. Seemed like we weren’t away from the big city so much as behind it, and in no particular hurry to catch up.
Mother had her own theories. She started seeds, for example, not by the calendar, but according to the phases of the moon. Which, of course, irritated Rhino to no end. Rhino operated on mood and whim, while Mom naturally felt guided by the planets and the stars.
She told me once, “time is not linear in a front to back sense. Rather time is a depth measured from top to bottom. Today is not ahead of yesterday, but below tomorrow. The now is just a pebble dropped into the fathoms of the infinite forever. Life is the ripples which wreak havoc in everwidening circles. We don’t get older, we get deeper.”
Something like that.
“Explains this sinking feeling I have,” Rhino had said, before storming out the door.
While she was spiritual, he was mechanical, handy with his hands, so the farm prospered from their complementary skills. The feminine and the masculine working side by side. Soft and hard. Brains and brawn. Torn between the two directions, I somehow managed to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of each, and how the two combined to make a whole greater than some of its parts.
Some days I didn’t.
Barker Ajax could see all of this, I think. He didn’t seem to miss much.
“You’ve done yourself proud,” he said as we strolled around our property.
“There’s more to do,” Rhino answered. “Much more.”
The two men lingered to look across the pond at the donkeys dozing. Me, I studied the calves as they grazed. So quiet you could hear them chew. At least until Mongo went off to chase goats like the sheepdog he was.
The Holsteins were an unusually decorative trio, sharply contrasting against the rich green grass. “Blacky” was a white-spotted, primarily black animal and “Whitey” was black-spotted, mostly white. Then there’s “Half & Half,” who was, well, fifty-fifty. Every year we’d get some new creature or three, just for the experience.
I thought of The Moos Brothers as my own herd. I’d feed and water them every day, make sure they got their vitamins. When the calves had first arrived, they were spindly, fragile things who’d run the opposite direction at the mere sight of me. Soon they’d begun to tolerate my existence as provider and caretaker, but the timid triumvirate remained skittish.
The plan – which I never did like – was to fatten up the young cattle and sell them at summer’s end at the local stock auction which is where Rhino had bought them. My animal friends were his farm deferments. Every day the three little bulls grew bigger, visibly so, like a school science fair project gone out of control. “Just doing their job,” according to Rhino.
As we walked, Rhino spoke of the work to be done, all the two-man projects he’d put off, the upkeep he’d let slide, the wood to be cut and stacked for the winter, the repairs to be made. Stuff like that. Barker Ajax didn’t say much, being careful to give his complete attention to Rhino’s narration.
Until we got back behind the house along the edge of the woods.
“What’s the story here?,” Barker asked, looking at a vast array of rocks, a immense pile of boulders obviously transported from some other location and dumped like geological garbage. This was the single eye sore on the place and it irked Rhino into periodic fits of depression. There was no credible explanation for the rocks’ presence and there was no ignoring it. Worst of all, there was no easy solution.
Rhino had looked for one, believe me. Mom had suggested a stone wall and he had tried and he had failed.
Rhino didn’t like to fail. He particularly didn’t enjoy being reminded of his failures, and the rocks never let him forget. You could see where he’d made his attempt, a futile file of stones fallen in disarray. Apparently, the rocks had minds of their own and, as powerful as he was, Rhino couldn’t defeat them.
“My worst nightmare,” Rhino said over his shoulder, trying to make light of the problem as he led Barker away.