About Gus. And about my childhood.
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The man and his wife sat at a wooden table in their kitchen, looking out toward the road, past the white face cows and lean brown horses. Their 1000 acre farm was just off highway 4, near Salem Heights and Laporte.
Ocassionally, tractor trailers thundered by, rattling the mailbox at the end of the gravel driveway. Under the mailbox was a white plastic newspaper holder, printed with the words, "Herald Argus."
The white farm house was streaked with Indiana soil, eroded by Indiana wind. A white oak tree planted near the house generations ago sheltered it from the sun, spreading its limbs across the yard and up over the roof, fanning lobed leaves and creating dappled shadows on the small patch of grass just outside the window.
"Gus," the farmer's wife asked, "you expecting someone?" She pointed down the drive as a station wagon slowly pulled in.
"Nope. Probably just turning around."
They didn't. Their Plymouth kept coming up the driveway and stopped near the house, under the tree. As the two inside watched, the visitors began unloading from the car. They excitedly hurried toward the cows, who gazed at them curiously from behind the barbed wire.
Gus pushed his chair back and made his way out the metal screen door of the kitchen, which squeaked and slammed shut behind him. He squinted out into the sunshine, his face taunt and bronzed, lined from country sun and winter winds. He saw a young man headed toward the door, wearing a white short sleeve shirt and knit pants. His hair was cropped short and he had a pipe in his hand. It was my father.
"Hi there," Gus said. "Can I help you?"
"Yes," said the man, introducing himself. "You see, we're out here for the weekend at our cottage. But my wife wanted the kids to see a real farm. Well, we were driving by yours and thought maybe we'd ask if we could see it." My father must have been confident Gus couldn't say no.
"I'm Gus," said the farmer, looking at the gathering of children near the heifers. "I guess it would be okay if they looked around some, but they need to be careful near them cows."
When we met Gus, he was as pure and undistilled as any farmer ever was. His dusty jeans were the real thing, unlike the dark blue ones my mother bought for us at Sears. His shirt was denim. And his cap was John Deere, back when John Deere wasn't cool.
That was the first of many trips to Gus's farm.
Back then, Gus was larger than life. His world, up close, was much bigger than what we had imagined. Frightening at first but, when we got used to it, exciting. And everywhere on his farm, the air smelled of manure, made in the pens and moved out to the fields.
It was work on Gus's farm that was often threatened as the fate to be earned for various misdeeds. "You'll spend the summer working on Gus's farm, is that what you want?" If it was that bad, we'd wonder, why did we always stop there on vacation?
We must have outgrown the farm experience, because ours visits stopped at some point. For years, on any country road, we would look for the familiar farm and argue over real versus imagined sightings. All it took was a white frame house and an oak tree, and it was Gus's place.
Perhaps fate steered our station wagon into that driveway on highway 4. But my parents pulled into it, drawn by the future. It's as if they knew Gus would be there - and that he would become part of our family's story, whether he was ready or not.
Those trips gave us the chance to get right up to the fence, close enough to the horses and cows to smell their breath and look into their eyes. To be unafraid and amazed.
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I wish I could take Rhys to meet Gus - the real MacDonald.
