2
Dad and his mother got along like two cats with
their tails tied together. They could talk for a
week and not agree about anything, but they
were tethered by their devotion to the
mountain. My father's family had been living at
the base of Buck Peak for a century. Grandma's
daughters had married and moved away, but
my father stayed, building a shabby yellow
house, which he would never quite finish, just
up the hill from his mother's, at the base of the
mountain, and plunking a junkyard - one of
several - next to her manicured lawn.
They argued daily, about the mess from the
junkyard but more often about us kids.
Grandma thought we should be in school and
not, as she put it, "roaming the mountain like
savages." Dad said public school was a ploy by
the Government to lead children away from
God. "I may as well surrender my kids to the
devil himself," he said, "as send them down the
road to that school."
God told Dad to share the revelation with the
people who lived and farmed in the shadow of
Buck Peak. On Sundays, nearly everyone
gathered at the church, a hickory-colored
chapel just off the highway with the small,
restrained steeple common to Mormon
churches. Dad cornered fathers as they left
their pews. He started with his cousin Jim, who
listened good-naturedly while Dad waved his
Bible and explained the sinfulness of milk. Jim
grinned, then clapped Dad on the shoulder and
said no righteous God would deprive a man of
homemade strawberry ice cream on a hot
summer afternoon. Jim's wife tugged on his
arm. As he slid past us I caught a whiff of
manure. Then I remembered: the big dairy farm
a mile north of Buck Peak, that was Jim's.
After Dad took up preaching against milk,
Grandma jammed her fridge full of it. She and
Grandpa only drank skim but pretty soon it was
all there - two percent, whole, even chocolate.
She seemed to believe this was an important
line to hold.
Breakfast became a test of loyalty. Every
morning, my family sat around a large square
table and ate either seven-¬grain cereal, with
honey and molasses, or seven-grain pancakes,
also with honey and molasses. Because there
were nine of us, the pancakes were never
cooked all the way through. I didn't mind the
cereal if I could soak it in milk, letting the cream
gather up the grist and seep into the pellets, but
since the revelation we'd been having it with
water. It was like eating a bowl of mud.
It wasn't long before I began to think of all that
milk spoiling in Grandma's fridge. Then I got
into the habit of skipping breakfast each
morning and going straight to the barn. I'd slop
the pigs and fill the trough for the cows and
horses, then I'd hop over the corral fence, loop
around the barn and step through Grandma's
side door.
On one such morning, as I sat at the counter
watching Grandma pour a bowl of cornflakes,
she said, "How would you like to go to school?"
"I wouldn't like it," I said.
"How do you know," she barked. "You ain't
never tried it."
She poured the milk and handed me the bowl,
then she perched at the bar, directly across
from me, and watched as I shoveled spoonfuls
into my mouth.
"We're leaving tomorrow for Arizona," she told
me, but I already knew. She and Grandpa
always went to Arizona when the weather
began to turn. Grandpa said he was too old for
Idaho winters; the cold put an ache in his
