How I Spent my Summer Holiday

The next morning the rain had finally stopped falling and the sun began to dry up the puddles in yard. I found Grandma out in the garden with Isabelle, teaching her how to deadhead the flower beds.

“Grandma, I’ve got something to show you. I decided to read Black Beauty and when I opened the book, these two photos fell out. I wondered if you know why they were in there?”

Grandma walked towards me as I laid the photos on the picnic table, pulling off her garden gloves as she came. She glanced down at the photos, stiffened slightly, reached and flipped one over with her fingertip. Then she picked up the other one and caressed it for a few moments in silence. She laid it back on the table, took a deep breath and began to talk.

“When I was thirteen, just a year older than you are now, Simon, my grandmother died. I was very close to her. You see, she lived here in the house with us, all my life. She was the kind of person you could share all your feelings and dreams with, without ever having to worry about her laughing at you or telling you how wrong you were. I loved her so much. I was so upset when she died.”

She pointed to the picture, lying on the table in front of her. “This is Lassie, my Sheltie. My parents bought her for me that summer. She was only a puppy then, but she grew up to be this beautiful dog. In the beginning, I wasn’t too happy with her because I thought my parents were trying to replace my grandmother, but that wasn’t it at all. They just wanted to give me something else to love and care for. But, in time that happened. Lassie became my confident, all through my teenage years. She was like my grandmother in that I could share all my secrets with her. She never betrayed my confidence. By the time I married your grandfather she had become my best friend. I couldn’t imagine living without her. Oh, I how loved that dog!” She picked up the photo again, silently regarding it with a soft smile on her face. “You will never have anything as loyal and trustworthy as a good dog!”

“And what about the other photo? It’s a bull isn’t it?” I reached across the table to turn it over, but Grandma grabbed my wrist to stop me. She let go and I pulled my hand back without touching it.

“Yes, it’s a bull. And that is another story completely.”

She looked up at the sky for a moment. Her words came slowly. “I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you this. It will make sense of how we live, but it isn’t easy.” She began twisting her wedding ring around on her finger. “When your grandfather was growing up, all he wanted to be was a farmer, and so when he met me and saw this house and the land around it, he knew it was how to accomplish his dreams. He was so young and handsome back then, and so ambitious. I didn’t hesitate at all to say yes when he asked me to marry him. He hadn’t grown up with much, you know. His father was a good man, but only a labourer, so there wasn’t much money for any of the extras in life. And certainly not enough to buy land and everything one needs to farm. By marrying me, he not only got what he wanted, but also got right to work building this place up to be worth bragging about.

“One of the things he bought was this bull.” She covered the picture lying face down on the table with her hand. “He came from a top quality breeding line and cost us a lot of money. Grandpa’s plan was to use him to produce a line of championship cattle as well as rent him out to service our neighbour’s herds, as a way to make extra money. It was a good plan, had it worked out, but this bull had a mean streak in him that no one told us about. One day, Virgil was out in the corral and the bull turned on him. It charged and rammed him into the corral posts so hard that it cracked his ribs. He backed off to charge again, when Lassie took over. She was a Sheltie, you know. They have been bred especially for herding animals: cattle, sheep, goats, whatever. And believe me, she was good at it. Always herding anything that moved. She charged into that corral, right into that bull’s face, grabbed his nose with her teeth and hung on, giving Grandpa the time he needed to scramble over the fence. However, the bull managed to shake her free. He trampled her to death with his sharp hooves.“

Grandma squeezed her eyes shut tightly as if trying to block out the picture she had described. We waited in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Isabelle reached out and touched Grandma’s hand. “I am so sorry Grandma.”

“It’s okay child. It was a long time ago.” She took another deep breath before she continued.

“Grandpa went wild. He rushed into the house, in spite of his cracked ribs, and grabbed the rifle. He loaded it on the run back to the corral and shot the bull. Over and over and over. I can still hear the crack of each shot. Bang, Bang. Bang. Bang. I thought it would never stop. Finally the clip was empty of bullets and silenced reigned. I collapsed on the ground weeping. Grandpa tried to pick me up, but he couldn’t. It was then we realized how badly he was hurt. I took him to emergency.” She grew quiet again, lost in the horror of that day.

“The next day he dug a grave for Lassie, by hand, in spite of the pain he was in. We buried her under that apple tree, over there. It watches over her in much the same way she watched over me all those years. Then he got on the tractor and dug a huge hole in the corral and buried the bull. That was the end of his dream of farming. He sold the cows, rented out all of the farmland to the neighbours and had the Hadley boys, from across the county, come and remove all the corrals and fences. The next spring he planted the poplar trees to create the wall, so we didn’t have to look at the barn again. That was it. His dream was over. He got a job in town and never spoke of it again. I don’t think he even went back in the barn until you found the skeleton.

“So that means he had nothing to do with it being there.”

“Yes, that’s what he has been telling us all along.”

“But you said……” I paused, not knowing if I should repeat what she had said or not.

“I know what I said. It’s a bad habit I picked up from my mother. Saying things without thinking. Things that often hurt people. I know it’s not very nice and I try to control it, but sometimes they just slip out.”

She picked up the pictures and handed them back to me. “Now, in answer to your question. I have no idea why they were in Black Beauty, but I think you may as well put them back there for now. Use them as a bookmark. Who knows who will find them in the future? Perhaps you will be able to share this story with them, then.”

To be continued