The outbuildings still shelter chickens as the tin houses did in her mother's time (1880s to 1970s). Cartons of brown thick-shelled eggs fill the refrigerator. An authentic pantry shelves the vegetables and fruit canned every fall from her garden on the north side of the house. She, my cousin, doesn't milk a cow any longer to feed pens full of dogie lambs on her ranch below Sherwood. She stopped running sheep somewhere around or past her 90th birthday. And I don't know when she sold her milk cow.
The fireplace in the living room burns propane, a concession to the new age. The television set is the only permission for the modern world to enter her premises. Incoming telephone calls are answered at her option. People who do what they call "checking on her" have a hard time finding her home. She has an uncanny sense of identifying the calls she wants to receive.
The best way to find her around the place is to monitor her dog Ginger's behavior. Ginger is a 16-pound attack dog. She attacks armadillos and possums from dusk into darkness and attacks skunks from midnight onto daylight. All attacks are an oral expression of how fierce she is and not necessarily physical. Her specialty was treeing house cats; however, now that there is no milk to feed cats, there are no resident cats for her to chase during the day.
In fact, this story opens with Ginger meeting me at the back gate of the ranch house as she always does. But this time she was all business. In the ell formed by the junction of the pantry and bedroom wall, Ginger had an enemy cornered under two pieces of tin weighted down by a big rock and a cedar post. I met her mistress coming out the kitchen door, carrying a semiautomatic .22 caliber rifle to quell the ruckus.
Pause here, please, to evaluate the forces: I have already revealed the dog's weight at 16 pounds. Dressed in her work clothes, dry and without her bonnet, my cousin might go into the nineties, pound-wise. The old style Winchester stocked in wood and mounted with a telescopic sight weighs about eight or nine pounds. The tin sheets, weighted down with rocks and the butt of an old post, are heavy, say, 10 pounds each. The size of Ginger's quarry is inconsequential, as the space under the tin is too small for a fox or a bobcat.
The opening of the scene, however, is important as it explains how to get along with my cousin. Ginger and I are both given undisputed notice of who is the sovereign in two commands: "Monte, hold the rifle while I jerk off the post and the tin." And, "Ginger, you shut up!" In quieter tones, she tells me to let the gun off safety and to stay back as the skunk may be rabid. All the while, yanking the tin out of the way and scolding Ginger for starting the fight. By then what has turned out to be a non-rabid skunk escaped under the house. I am delighted, as few marksman shoot true enough to kill a skunk before he leaves six months' reminder of how well his musk seasons walls and wood flooring.
After the skunk disappears we go inside and Ginger stays on guard. Abrupt-like, my cousin switches from huntress to Christmas when she was a little girl over at Sherwood in the opening of the century. (In all the years I have visited her on holidays, this is the first time she has ever reminisced of Christmas.)
"Christmas didn't start early in those days. Two or three days before the 25th, the families gathered from the ranches in town. Lots of pallets were thrown on the floors for the kids. I went up to Grandmother's house to sleep with my cousins. You ever been to a community Christmas tree?"
(Short pause. I shake my head.)
She continues: "The Methodist and the Christian churches went together to put up a big tree. The men found it somewhere far off. Took them all day to locate the tree and bring it to the church in a wagon. The women made all the decorations. Red and green paper rings and strings of white popcorn draped over the branches; a homemade silver star decorated the peak of the tree. Every kid in town received a present, not much but a present. A big dance was held in the district courtroom after the tree. On Christmas morning, we all went caroling. Little tikes were carried in their mothers' arms. When we got back home, what wasn't already cooked had to be fixed for Christmas dinner. Chances were, another dance was held on Christmas night."
As I went home back through Sherwood to the ranch, the old courthouse glowed from a lighted tree in the belfry and strings of lights hanging against the cut stone walls to the ground. Two days remained until the glorious day. The tall second story courtroom windows looked bleak in the bare light of dusk. Too late and too much change in our world to hold one more Christmas ball ...
January 7, 1998