Other animals cross too, of course: deer, moose, rabbits, coyotes. They all make my heart pound with fear that I will hit one by not paying enough attention while I'm driving. That if I hit one I will injure it severely but not fatally - and how do you leave an animal to lie, suffering until it dies, on the side of the road? But how do you kill it, which could be the most merciful thing? I call it my Deer Fear. I have many scenarios. There's the vehicle damage costs too. A little while ago I hit a deer, who bounced right up and kept on going; the vehicle was not so forgiving. The new grill guard and light added up to several thousand dollars, dollars set aside for something else in this tight economy ... You wish you had someone to ask, someone to advise you as to the best thing to do.
And then, out of nowhere, someone shows up. One of those people you've made contact with through a phone call. Someone who always has time and patience and good counsel and the reassurance that all will be well. That we've all experienced a deer hit at one time or another. That the sick baby calf back in your barn you've been agonizing over has a good chance of making it. That if you need a cup of coffee, you're welcome to pop over at any time. That they are never too busy and no question is dumb. All will be well - just give it time. And you get home to find a voicemail message from the other Jim: his branding is coming up. Oh, and be sure to bring Karyn. In three years, I've come to realize that no one is truly self-sufficient. Cows on the road remind me of our frailty, of our need for one another.
Occasionally the cow call is the only outside contact of the day. It serves as a thread in the ribbon, a tangible signal that on this road punctuated with perpetual potholes and unresolved uncertainty, I am truly not alone.
The last rays of sunset were fading, A bronc stood with head hanging low "Oh Dad, is this going to be a sad cowboy song? Please Dad, don't sing a sad song today ..." The cowboy in vain tried to mount him The last mile atryin' to go The first time I saw my Dad ride a horse was when he came back to "The Farm", as we all referred to it - although we had never been there, never even seen pictures - for the first time in ten years. He left his home in January 1959, thinking he would be gone for three or four years. Now he was back. It was the fall of 1968. He walked outside the house to the corral. The next thing we knew, there was a horse charging full-tilt toward him, whinnying as she reached the touch of the hands she had missed for all those years. "Hello, Girl," he murmured. Dad's Dad, our Bapa, as we all referred to him - although we had never met him, never even seen pictures - had kept her for his boy. The boy he had missed for all those years.
"Carry me home, I'm all alone out on the prairie Take me back to the roundup corral. Carry me home, I'm all alone out on the prairie Oh don't let me down, old pal."
Dad and Bapa saddled her and then Dad swung himself up and settled in.
They had worked up a little routine of tricks that they used to do together, man and horse, every day before he left. After ten years, neither of them missed a beat.
He was home.
With his last hope he clung to the stirrup
Then he motioned to his faithful pal
I never really appreciated what my Dad gave up to go to India, never understood how deep the connection between the man and his roots, until in February 2014 I married The Good Rancher and moved out to an area near where Dad was raised.
Hours later they stopped at the ranch house
Just west of the roundup corral
One of the times we went for a drive, he asked me to tell him where The Farm was. I couldn't get hold of Dad so I tried his brother Clark. Clark, ever the joker, gave us long convoluted directions.
When we eventually arrived, The Good Rancher burst out laughing.
"This is only 12 miles from my place! Your Dad had to go all the way around the world to India in order for his daughter to get back to Endiang!"
"Carry me home, I'm all alone out on the prairie Take me back to the roundup corral. Carry me home, I'm all alone out on the prairie Oh don't let me down, old pal."
It occurs to me that there are three "prairie" concepts.
The first one, which I learnt about as a child - which is also the one I understood from working with a legal publisher for the twenty years prior to moving out to Endiang - is the prairie provinces. Miss Agnes Dueck, an Albertan teaching at our British elementary school in India, told me that I came from "The Prairie Provinces."
I had thought I came from Bombay.
I didn't know what prairie provinces meant.
And apparently I was from there.
Canadian legal publishing chops up Canada tidily into different segments. British Columbia and The Prairie Provinces often have their courts' decisions published together. There was an Encyclopedia of Law in two editions, Ontario, and BC and The Prairie Provinces. Go figure.
The second prairie concept is what I would hear at Nilgiris Tea House a lot. "We're going to drive through the prairies for our vacation." It was usually through the prairies. Not many people had them as their destination. Ontario has the beautiful colours in the autumn, the Hockey Hall of Fame, Niagara Falls, people's families. BC has the mountains and Victoria. Quebec has history and melodrama. The Territories have sorrow and raw determination. The East has lilting accents introducing friendly people, ruggedly beautiful terrain and Anne of Green Gables. I myself had driven through the prairies, one long kilometer crawling lethargically after another under my car. Everything looked the same. You had to slow down in Saskatchewan. That night as he lay in the bunkhouse we all thought him plumb out his head The third prairie concept is simply the prairie. This is where Dad was bred and born. This is where he had lived, and what he had left when he went to India.
This is where I now live.
This is the prairie I'm learning about, a tumbling kaleidoscope of beauty and pain, of exuberance and grim resignation, where the weather is a serious topic of conversation to be discussed in depth with those close to you. Where feelings aren't discussed much at all. Feelings aren't going to get a calf pulled, orphan babies fed, bales rolled out each day, cattle rounded up and herded to sweeter pastures.
Feelings don't band and brand and Ivermec. They don't sort the drys from the breds. They don't load the trucks and head to auction.
If everyone was fuelled by their feelings alone, they would go stark raving crazy with the weight of it all. The heaviness. Nothing would get done with feelings at the helm.
Then he smiled as he motioned us closer
These are the words that he said: But nothing feels as good as a day where the babies born are up and their mothers love them, where the cattle drive from one area to another is accomplished with all the herd leaving and arriving quietly and the riders starting and finishing together. When no animal needs to be treated for sickness, and there are no phone calls about cows on the road. Where drivers sketch a brief salute as they pass each other on the dusty pitted tracks. Where there's hot coffee and a meal waiting, no matter what time of night the day's chores are done.
All of this and more is why Dad sang his plaintive cowboy songs. And from the time I was a tiny child, I was the one who begged him not to sing them. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with an ache I couldn't explain. My throat would tighten and I wanted to go hide from the missing I heard in his voice. This is where I now live. Now I know why he would sing me this song. "Carry me home, I'm all alone out on the prairie Take me back to the roundup corral. Carry me home, I'm all alone out on the prairie Oh don't let me down, old pal." "Dad? He dies, doesn't he? Does he die, Dad? Oh, Daddy ......"
