Free In Open Spaces by Russell Rowland Page B

carried the sack out of the barn, then flopped it into the wagon bed. Back inside the barn, I dug George’s baseball from inside my coat, pulled my right glove from my hand with my teeth, and flung a pitch toward the stick figure I had whitewashed on the inside wall for winter practice.
    As much as I was convinced that I would never consider doing what George had planned, I had been thinking a lot since Katie’s death about the train ticket buried in the corner of the barn. And of what Art had said about life out here beating hell out of you. I had noticed more than ever how right he was. I practiced my pitching whenever I had a spare moment. I started a scrapbook, collecting box scores from major-league games. I had one section devoted to the Cardinals. And I began sending away for whatever I could get my hands on about the cities in America that had baseball teams. I had a box filled with pamphlets about New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia. And I read throughthem time and again, trying to imagine what it must be like walking among thousands of people.
    The ball bounded back to me. I tucked it back in my pocket, put my glove back on, and retrieved a second sack of corn, flopping it next to the first.
    Dad hitched the team to the wagon. Bob loaded the pitchforks and a couple of axes.
    “Where were Mom and Muriel going?” Bob asked.
    I was worried that Dad would be brooding about Mom’s decision, so I shot Bob a warning look, shaking my head. But Dad answered him, although his mood was far from happy. “Your mother’s gone to Alzada to help with the election. And Muriel is at Glassers’ for the day.” His tone was dismissive, and Bob looked at me with wide eyes, wondering what he’d done. I shook my head again, trying to convey with a look that I would explain later.
    Bob and Dad climbed into the wagon, where our dog Nate was waiting. I mounted Ahab. Dad clucked his tongue, and Pint and Ed started their trot toward the haystacks, as they had every morning since the first winter snowfall.
    It had been a dry year, the first in ten, leaving us with less than our usual amount of hay. It also followed the worst winter we’d had since 1896, with temperatures consistently lingering around twenty degrees below zero. The snow came in great flurries, throwing itself against the east side of everything that had sides, piling in hard drifts as high as horses. We lost almost fifty head of cattle, and we were among the more fortunate. Many families left once the thaw came. The new homesteaders had their first introduction to what Montana winters could be like, and the loneliness got to many of them.
    Riding along behind the wagon, I had so little feeling in my limbs that as I maneuvered Ahab’s reins, it felt as if I was watching someone else’s hands. Streams trickled from the corners of my eyes. I had to wipe my nose every few minutes to keep the moisture from freezing on my upper lip.
    At the stack, Dad and Bob wordlessly pitched clumps of hay into the back of the wagon. The stack was crowned with a thick blanket of snow, and as they tore chunks from the stack’s belly, tunneling into the core, the top hung down, and sheets of snow slid to the ground. I grabbed a pitchfork.
    “Dad?” Bob paused and looked up at him from beneath the brim of his hat.
    “What?” Dad answered brusquely.
    “When’s Jack coming home?”
    I groaned at the mention of this topic, as I suspected this was the last thing in the world Dad wanted to talk about that morning.
    “I don’t know, Bob. Let’s just get this job done, what do you say?”
    A year and a half had passed since the funeral. And in some ways, it seemed like only a matter of days. The silence in the fields became more profound every time we were out there. And any effort anyone made to break up this silence only reminded us of who used to provide that distraction. So we remained silent, bending our backs to our work, keeping our heads low, eyes averted.
    Katie was