“Why, it’s twenty-four above,” August observed; he’d tacked a thermometer to the corral. He slid the barn door open. “Good morning, Laurie. Morning, old Brit.”

Laurie and Brit, his paint mare and gelding, answered him out of the dark, stomping and chuffing. Though professing not to be the rider of the family—it’s true Birdie looked more at home horseback—August loved Laurie and Brit. I have a photo of him standing between the two of them, a hand under each of their chins, little cap tilting aboard his big bald scalp. It’s a good picture. Brit appears a little uninvolved, but Laurie has a look in her eye.

August bridled the horses, working in the off light from the bulb outside, whacked out the blankets and smoothed them over their backs, and hoisted up the saddles. A horse is a dusty operation and I sneezed five or six times, but my wind seemed okay, and soon August had everything cinched and squared and Laurie was reaching her nose around to poke August in the face—horse language for gladness, he told me, because she couldn’t wait to get out and stretch in the warm fog.

We led the horses out. August had Brit and was already setting foot in the stirrup. “Mount from the left,” he instructed, doing so himself. Laurie was younger and trickier than Brit, a fact that rattled me; standing under the yard light, the largeness of these animals had become plain. I had hold of Laurie’s bridle and she was stepping sideways, dragging me around.

“Will she run?” Though I tried to ask this as if a running horse were my preference, August saw it for the chickeny question it was.

“Let’s just walk ’em down the pasture. She’ll behave. Up and grab the horn, now, there you go.”

We set off through the fog side by side. By now a deep blue had worked into the east and we rode down past the brooder house, the granary, the two fat corncribs, all these rising from blue fog at the last moment. Laurie champed and shook her head. She wanted to run, she was shivering with it, and abruptly I understood that I was scared of horses. My hands cramped on the reins. How had I not comprehended this before? Why, I could barely see the ground! Suppose Laurie stepped in a hole, she might roll over right on top of me! I’d read where cavalry soldiers had been killed, not by arrows or bullets but by their own faithful mounts who tripped at a bad time. Think about being crushed by a horse! And what if you lost your hold in a gallop, only to snag a foot in a stirrup? I’d seen that happen to fellows—sure, it was in the movies, but there was nothing fake about the dust they raised, flopping all over the place full speed ahead.

August said, “A little restless, is she?”

“Yes sir, I think so.”

“Just say, ‘Easy. Easy, Laurie.’ She likes your voice, I can tell.”

“Okay.” But a horse knows scared when it hears it. My tenuous reassurances sounded anything but easy; I had to heave against those reins just to stay to a walk.

We were in the back pasture, which sloped down through spotty timber and became hummocky and ended on the bank of the George River, which we crunched down onto and headed upstream. Though nothing but ice it was good footing, for the river had frozen hard in the fall, then honeycombed and refrozen to a cindery crust. You could no more slip on this stuff than on sandpaper, and it made a satisfactory sound underhoof too. Since it was clear Laurie desired to gallop, August coerced Brit into the lead—you could tell old Brit rued leaving the barn, 24 degrees though it was. No doubt that cold fog was working on him, as it was on me. Fog inquires first at wrists and ankles. I began to wonder, as the light rose, just where we were headed, and how long till we turned back, but August ambled on while the banks of the George grew up knobby and weedy out of the fog. Though it seemed a long ride I don’t suppose we’d been gone half an hour when Brit turned and shouldered up a cut bank to the left, where the clay had slid down and made a gradient off the river. We came out onto a field which, from its tufted appearance, must’ve lain fallow some years. August stopped and I let Laurie step up beside him.

“Sun’ll be coming up,” he said.

“Yes sir. Burn off this fog.”

“Yes, it’s lifting already.” And it was—across the field I could see dark buildings, an unlit house, a small barn.

Laurie seemed to have settled, to my relief. She stood there by Brit, the two of them nodding and blowing and picking up their feet and setting them down.

“Would you guess your dad is on the mend?” August asked, which made me look at him straight on.

“Oh, he’s fine—he’s well,” I replied.

“I never saw him so skinny before.”

I nodded. August’s concern bothered me. Why, Dad hadn’t coughed in a week. Yes, he was skinny, but he’d never been thick like August. Anyone could see Dad was all right.

“Did he go to a doctor?”

“Dr. Nokes is a friend of ours, a real good doctor. He’s the one who delivered me,” I added, which credentialed Nokes as far as I was concerned.

August sat aboard Brit, considering this. “Yup,” he said, “yup.” He turned and looked at the place before us, a place that declined as the sun came up. Now we could see a boarded window, now a front step atilt, now a talus pile at the base of the chimney. But smoke did rise from its sooty mouth, and in that swayback barn a cow was asking for breakfast, and as we watched a tremendous turkey came prancing around the house, a big black tom with something on his mind.

“Do you know where we are, Rube?”

I’d been wondering that. I didn’t know but felt like I should.

“Your dad grew up there.” He pointed at the upstairs window, a tall narrow one with glass in it. “His room was in that attic. I used to ride over and spend a few days when the folks could spare me.”

I sat quiet while we watched the place. I was ashamed not to have recognized it—I’d never seen its backside before, only its face as we drove past on the county road.

August said, “It sure looked better when your family had it. Your grandpa was quite a gardener. That shelterbelt? He had sweet plums all along the south edge. Also raspberries—your dad and I would cut out the old canes and pile them up; they made a good fire.”

The shelterbelt looked awfully sorry at present—of course, it was January. Just a strip of messy woods. But I could imagine a rich well-kept raspberry patch down there, and my grandpa, whom I remember only from photographs, stooped in his overalls doing the keeping.

The tom turkey was trotting through the yard with his head up and swiveling—looking for something to eat or scare.

“Interesting old man,” August said, “your grandpa. Kept three or four beehives back of the plums. Arthritis in his hands, every week or so in the summer he’d go down to the hives and stir the bees up a little and poke his hands out. Take four or five stings. The poison loosened up his fingers.”

“He’d get himself stung on purpose?”

“Ask your dad about it.”

I’ll admit, my knowledge of my grandparents is scattershot. Grandma was in her forties when she had Dad; Grandpa was in his fifties—late fifties. Which, since Dad married at twenty-five, made them old before my birth. A few details: Grandma was a praying woman who addressed the Lord in King James English. Grandpa preferred not to wear his teeth before photographers; they made him look horsey. It’s fair to say that without them he looked surprised and dismayed, but this was probably closer to the truth.

August said, “You getting cold?”

“No, I’m all right, it’s warming up.”

“Look at that tom, what’s he up to?” The turkey was stalking, circling the house. He’d come around from the front, careful as a heron, neck horizontal to keep the profile down; then he’d turn the corner and accelerate along the back of the house. Turn another corner, we’d lose him again for a minute.

Under my knees Laurie stamped and blew. I looked eastward and saw the rim of the sun. A good thing about North Dakota, it has buckets of horizon; the sun comes up and you know it is there. Also it was making heat—the sun was. I could feel it in my clothes, like March. Suddenly soaked with confidence I asked, “Mr. Shultz, how long do you think it’ll take us to find Davy?”

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.

August reached down to pat Brit, who’d got so still he might’ve been standing dead. You had to admire the strength of that horse, August was no lightweight. “I’m sure you’ll find him.”

“But how long?”

“I don’t know—say, look there.”

The back door of the place had opened and a little boy stood in it, bundled in coats.

“That would be Gerald,” August informed me. “He’s five or six.”

Gerald was holding something—a big saucepan. He stood in the door, a hand on the knob, head stuck out looking around. I’ve seen similar poise in rabbits.

August said, “There’s a batch of kitties out in that barn—early for them, isn’t it? See, he’s got some oatmeal in that pan.”

Still Gerald didn’t come out, though he did crane around like everything.

The tom turkey now reappeared on tiptoe upside the house. There was a low window on that side and I swear to you the turkey ducked his head passing it. I heard a quiet wheeze and it was August, chuckling.

At this time Gerald’s radar relaxed. Maybe his folks got after him for holding the door open so long, or maybe he just believed the coast was clear, for out he stepped and shut the door. Of course the turkey zipped round the corner like a guided missile, gurgling with wrath and triumph; Gerald dropped the pan and lunged for safety, squeaking through the door only because the tom was diverted by the oatmeal.

Breathless I looked over at August, who was laughing with his whole body, then back at the house. The turkey danced three or four little victory circles before the door and settled in to peck at the cereal. You could watch Westerns your whole life and not see a more satisfying ambush. Then the door opened again and out slipped a little black-and-white collie. Given its size I still would’ve bet on the turk, but no doubt the two of them had some history, for the bird twisted itself to run and actually tripped two or three times getting away, which had to feel disgraceful, as the fall always does which cometh after pride. The collie didn’t even give chase. It stood by the door, looking at August and me. Gritty little fellow—he did step up and have at the oatmeal but kept looking at us the while.

“Probably we ought to ride,” August said. “He’ll be after us next. Dog’s name is Rip,” he added, as though I might get a charge out of that.

We let the horses trot the distance home—say, a trot is a jostly ride. You’ve seen an angry person beat his fist on a table? Imagine doing that with your tailbone for twenty minutes or so. Later Swede told me about leaning your weight up onto the stirrups and so easing the abuse on the other, but I didn’t know to do that, and to be honest I don’t think August was doing it either. He wasn’t a smooth rider but seemed to tilt and jounce as much as me. Anyhow I didn’t really mind getting knocked around some. Swede would be simmering over my sneaking off to ride. The least I could do was come back with a sore tailbone.

We got that breakfast, by the way, the one I’d been so anxious for—the toast and the hardboiled eggs and the jam. During it August winked across at me at least three times and Swede would hardly look at me; for his part, Dad took prodigious enjoyment from the fact we’d gone riding while the house was asleep, calling me Natty Bumppo as Davy had liked to do, grinning at August, even elbowing Swede out of her nettly gloom. Normally all this to-do would’ve thrilled me, un-Bumppolike as I was, but I got distracted watching Dad. August had this much right: Dad was skinny. Remember how shocked I was, seeing him barechested after his siege in bed? He’d lost all superfluous flesh, and I saw now it had stayed lost. Skinny didn’t say it. His very bones seemed loose-joined. And instead of being concerned about this, I’d simply gone and adjusted to it. Once he popped out of bed I just figured he was his old self, and if he looked a little more gristly than before, why, wasn’t gristle what a man wanted anyway?

“We rode over to the farm,” I said, noting that August hadn’t offered this information.

“Yes,” Dad said, “I expected you would. Did you take the river?”

“Yes sir. We walked over and trotted back.”

“How’d the shelterbelt look?”

I had to be honest. “Kind of scraggly.”

Dad nodded. “The barn?”

“It’s leaning pretty good—there are cows in it, though. At least one cow. And some new kitties, I guess.”

“Uh-huh. House?”

“I saw where your room was.” I was going to say something about the boarded window, and the weathery paint, and how the chimney was coming apart, but Dad looked so skinny and thoughtful I decided not to.

He didn’t ask anything else, either.

“Say, Rube,” August said, after a moment, “tell about the turkey.”