What you might miss by Cara Guerrieri

FOUND IN THE OLD RANCH SHOP: A PIPE WRENCH, A FUNNY MEMORY AND A LITTLE LUMP IN THE THROAT.

By Cara Guerrieri

WHAT YOU MIGHT MISS

Last spring I searched the ranch shop for a pipe wrench, trying to puzzle out what Dad meant when he told me, “It’s in them old shelves, up high, the ones your grandpa built, just below where I used to hang the calf pullers. You can’t miss it.” Well, all the shelves looked old and homemade as if Grandpa could’ve built them, and there were no obvious calf puller brackets.

After 70 years on this Gunnison ranch, Dad knew the shop like the back of his hand, but I hadn’t been a full-time resident in the valley for decades. I went from tool bin to tool bin, looking above, below and inside, and saw no sign of a pipe wrench. I sat on a bench and looked around, remembering many days of this very type of confusion. Each morning when I was young, after Mom’s breakfasts, Dad gave five wide-eyed kids his you-can’t-miss-it instructions.

“Saddle up yer horses,” he’d say. “Cara, you can ride that sorrel mare. Head up above the house to the bull pasture. Give that brocklefaced heifer with foul foot 50 CCs of penicillin. She’s holed up in the willows by the creek. You can’t miss her.”

While we mulled over his words, he’d slide his long legs into hip-wader irrigating boots and continue, “Then I suppose you better check them older cows, too. That red shorthorn was sure a-bawlin’ yesterday. Ride up there and see if you can find her calf. He’s the one that had bad pink-eye in the spring. Last I seen the cow she was up on that hillside in the quakies. You can’t miss her.”

As he walked to get the freshly sharpened shovel leaning against the cabin, we’d trot along behind, trying to catch every word.

“While you’re up that way, check on that lone bull. He’s been run off by the others. Might as well bring him on in. He might drive better with a couple pairs. Then just leave him in the corral and turn that other young bull out, the one I bought in Delta. You can’t miss him.”

He’d head toward his John Deere tractor, still finishing his instructions. “Say, and before you unsaddle, ride up and fix the fence wires on the north end of the forty above the horse

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pasture. I lowered them last winter so the snow didn’t bust ‘em. We’ll move the yearlin’s up there sometime this week. You’ll need those yellow fence stretchers. They’re in the lower barn where Uncle Jim stored that old generator. You can’t miss ‘em.”

One of my brave older brothers would ask, “That bull, Dad, is it the one—”

The interruption was swift and final. “I can’t spend all damn day explaining. You’se will figure it out. And if you don’t, do something. Even if it’s wrong.” His tone remained matter of fact.

He’d start up the tractor, the loud diesel motor preventing any further questions. Then his crew of kids would do what he asked, more or less. Sometimes we doctored the wrong cow, brought in the wrong bull, or made fence repairs without stretchers. We understood early on that “you can’t miss it” was Dad’s way of expressing his faith in us and pushing us to “use the brains God gave you” to solve problems.

Last spring, with me middle-aged and sitting on the shop bench, Dad pushing 90, it was clear that old habits die hard. His directions were still sparse, and I hadn’t bothered to ask for clarification. After a time, I grabbed a wrench, not a pipe wrench, but maybe it would do the trick. It was something, even if it was wrong.

“Well hell,” he said, looking at the wrench I brought him. “That ain’t no pipe wrench.” Rather than send me back with more instruction, he hobbled to the shop with his walker, on painful knees that had logged too many irrigation miles. He spotted the pipe wrench right away, pointed and said, “It’s right where I told you it’d be.”

I smiled. “It sure is.” I grabbed the correct wrench.

On the way back to the house, I walked close to him, matching his labored pace. The high-altitude sun warmed my back as I took in the familiar view of newborn calves in the meadows, cottonwood trees with fresh limegreen buds, and the picture-perfect backdrop of snow-capped Carbon Mountain and the Anthracites. In a few days I was scheduled to brave COVID and fly home. I had no way of knowing how long it would be before I could safely come back.

“I’m getting slower every day, Cara,” Dad said, and I felt a lump form in my throat.

All my life he’d told me about things “you can’t miss,” but right then, looking around the ranch of my childhood, thinking about Mom and Dad, I felt wholly unprepared for all the things I would miss. b