Oregon Literary Review

She’s blonde and blue-eyed and has a small nose, like my mother. In most other ways though, my sister and I look the same; high cheekbones and angles of jaw and chin, straight bodies and thin wrists. But Leanne has a pale white scar, whiter than her skin, a thick ropy scar, down the middle of her chest. It starts a few inches above the place between her breasts, and runs down to just a few inches above her navel.

Leanne got that scar in the best of ways and the story of that scar is always told with these exclamations: A horse kick! Near death! Life saving Surgery! Dr. Albert Starr!

Before Leanne’s scar, the story of my near electrocution was the headline event in our family. Even though it happened when I was two and I didn’t remember a bit of it, I got my father to tell it over and over. How we were at the beach, where we always went for vacation after harvest. How I had wet feet when I put my hands on an electrified post. How I was stuck there, silent and shaking. How Dad risked his own life to save mine and we were both stuck there for a moment, alive with the energy of that post.

But that summer in 1967, when I turned nine, words like open-heart surgery, sternum, leaking valve, and keloid scar took first place in the story of our family. It was the first time there was a real lasting injury to one of us. It was the first time we had a hospital bed in our living room. It was the first time I knew for sure my mom didn’t have enough to go around. Not enough time, not enough energy.

Summer kicks in after the Fourth of July in the high desert country of North Central Oregon. Rolling hills turn yellow and dirt dries and pales in the sun. Sagebrush softens with dust from passing machinery and grazing animals. In mid-July, if it’s hot and dry enough, the wheat finishes its turn to gold.

We had work to do that Sunday in July. Dad was getting ready to harvest the fields by the house. Barbed-wire gates would be open and he didn’t want the cows going into the crops or onto the roads, so we were moving them to a little piece of land across the highway. Sunday was a good day because there’d be almost no cars on the road. The turn-off to our farm was only a mile out of Condon. I hoped there would be cars going by on the highway so the people in those cars could see us, like a cowboy family, on our horses.

Horses were a fine thing for all of us kids, but I liked to think they were finest for me. I started collecting glass and plastic horses when I was four and that collection grew to over seventy horses.

My name, Jacklyn Jean, is an echo of my parents’ names, Jack and Jeanie, and something I’ve always been pretty proud of. But when I was six I decided I’d rather be a horse. I was sure that if I traded names with our horse Chester, our round-bellied chestnut gelding, I would be him. I announced this, repeatedly, to my family. But they kept forgetting. One evening after dinner, I was standing next to the refrigerator while Mom cleaned up the last of the leftovers. I was Chester asleep, one foot cocked up, eyes at a slit.

“Jackie.” Mom pressed her hip against my shoulder. Move.” In one hand, she balanced a bottle of milk and leftover roast wrapped in Handi-Wrap. The other hand was on the handle of the refrigerator door.

I tipped sideways. My cocked foot landed hard on the floor. It sounded like hooves on pavement. “I’m not Jackie! I’m Chester!” I snorted air out my nose.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Okay, but just stand out of the way.” Her head was in the refrigerator when she added, “Chester.” It was possible she was in there smiling.

My sister Leanne came up behind me. One finger from each hand dug into my ribs, “Yeah. Chester.” She laughed with her head tilted back.

That night in bed I dropped off to sleep knowing I was cheating. Horses slept standing up, ate hay, and carried kids on their backs. They pooped on the ground. The next morning I was back to my two-legged self and my echo name.

Mom’s Brownie camera marked all the years from before I was born until I was eleven when Mom got a Polaroid camera for Christmas and put the Brownie away forever. After the Polaroid, we got pictures fast but our faces were faded and our noses and cheeks were flat and pale. Before that though, the Brownie camera tracked those early years in a clear and true way, plus each picture had a white ruffled border with the date in small black type. The first one I was ever featured in has the date, August, 1958, on the border. It was the day Mom brought me home from the clinic in Condon where I was born. Both my brothers and my sister Leanne are in that picture with Mom and me. We were stair-step children, coming one after the other, just the way Mom wanted. Pat was four when I was born, Brad three and Leanne almost two. There were always at least two of us in any picture from those days.

On the day we herded the cattle, Mom and my baby sister Cris got on our horse Freckles, and posed for the camera. Freckles ears perked forward. Mom has on pedal pushers and a flowery sixties top. Her hair is short, her lipstick dark, and her legs long and slim. She smiles and squints at the sun as it reaches toward noon. Mom was the prettiest of all my friends’ moms and, even though she wasn’t a horsewoman, she looked like she belonged there on Freckles.

Cris was at the front of the saddle, held in the cup of Mom’s body. She was big-eyed and wispy-haired and coming up on her first birthday, which would fall in August, the day before my ninth. Losing my place as the baby of the family and sharing my birthday, after Mom spent my last one in the hospital having Cris, caused some sullenness in me.

We were in the living room the night Mom and Dad told us we were pregnant with a new baby. Pat and Brad and Leanne grinned and clapped hands. Mom would say that she saw me not clapping. That she knew right then how jealous I would be. And it was true. I knew what a baby meant. It meant I wouldn’t be the youngest. It maybe meant I wouldn’t even be the youngest girl. It meant I might not be Dad’s only brown-eyed girl or his only left-handed girl. Sure enough, when Cris came along, I lost that baby spot, the youngest girl spot, and the brown-eyed girl spot. But I couldn’t help myself from loving her. Cris was like my own baby and, even though I sometimes tripped her when she was learning to walk and even though I made her cry by getting her to bite a peppercorn and even though Mom put Tabasco sauce on my tongue after I got Cris to eat that peppercorn, I ended up being pretty glad for Cris being born. Still, I did tend toward measuring what I was getting against what everyone else was getting. By the time my ninth birthday was coming along, it seemed like Cris was getting a lot of attention. I wasn’t so sure Mom would be able to have a birthday for me like the usual kind of birthdays Mom gave us kids.

One of the pictures from the day we herded the cattle, shows Leanne and I posing on Lucky Bob. Our legs barely reach the middle of his stomach. We had skinny boy-bodies and Twiggy haircuts, Leanne’s blond and mine brown. She was almost two years older than me but we were close to the same size. We turned for the camera and tilted our heads together.

Mom turned Freckles over to Brad and got in the pickup with Cris. They went down the gravel road to the second cattle guard in the lowest part of the canyon where Mom opened the gate and waited for us to come with the cows.

The rest of us rode, me on Lucky Bob, Brad on Freckles, Dad and Pat on borrowed horses. My brother Pat was going on thirteen and already had a girlfriend. She brought her

two year old mare so she could ride with us, ride next to Pat. Leanne was on the little red pony that Dad got for us kids and Granddad said was a ridiculous thing for a farm.

I could tell you about that ride along the floor of the canyon that ran next to the highway, about the creek with tadpoles and salamander, about the spring-fed trough where the carnival goldfish grew to pale yellow and the size of trout, about the cattle and the heat and the dust and the horses. But all that grew small over time. It’s the pictures of that day that keep it with us, and the stories we tell. And the few inches of scar that sometime show on Leanne’s chest, though she’s always favored a higher-necked sort of shirt, the kind that keeps your eye from being drawn down.

My part of the story is this. The last I saw of Leanne, before her kick, was her and that pony trotting along fast and Leanne getting bounced right off its rear. Leanne landed on her feet, almost running. She laughed and kept running to catch the pony, veering around the herd to where the pony was headed, to the gravel road, the pick-up, the cattleguard.

Mom’s scream came over the bawl of cows and the sound of all of us moving. It was a short scream that carried over the canyon, the heads of the cattle and Lucky Bob’s arched ears. It might’ve been my father’s name in that scream; “Jack” may have been what called through the canyon that day.

By the time I got close, Leanne was on the ground, a little puff of dust from where she fell disappearing in the air. Dad was running to her and she tried to sit up. Leanne sighed and whispered, “Dad.” This too disappeared in the air and she fell back and closed her eyes.

Dad scooped her up and ran to the pick-up, where Mom was already at the wheel. Dad got in, holding Leanne. He draped her legs over Cris, tiny in the seat between them. Then Mom drove.

Dad would tell you he heard Leanne call to him. Later he would say it could’ve been her last word, if she hadn’t lived. And for a long time, they thought she wouldn’t. Then he would say how he held her into town, up to Dr. Swann’s house. The doctor took one quick look at her and called for the ambulance. Dad would say how he had to let Leanne go when they put her in the ambulance. He had to take care of business, to get Cris to Nana and Granddad’s house, borrow their car, and then try to catch up with the ambulance. He would say how he didn’t want to let her go but he had to take care of these things. He would say there was no blood on the outside of her and she was so white she looked like there was no blood inside of her either. He would say all this without his voice breaking. Not yet.

Mom would say she kneeled by Leanne all the way in the ambulance. She would say that Leanne never opened her eyes. Never made a noise.

The rest of us kids waited there in the canyon, the sun full out, our skin carrying a fine coat of dust. The horses switched flies with their tails and nudged the ground for grass. The cows went wherever they wanted, onto the highway, back up the canyon, into the creek.

“What happened?” I asked.

Pat said, “She got caught between Terry’s mare and that pony. They kicked at each other.”

Twenty years later, Pat would tell the rest of the story; how he knew it was his fault, for shooing the pony away from the cattle guard and into Leanne. And Dad would say, “No. That mare was in heat. The pony just wanted to get to it. Leanne got caught in the middle.”

After awhile, the siren of the ambulance came to us. That meant it would take Leanne to The Dalles, over an hour away. Everything was quiet, except for that siren.

Pat got us to take care of the cows. We moved them across the heat-softened asphalt into their new pasture. They were cranky and stubborn and didn’t want to move on. It was hot and dusty and usually what Leanne and I would do after a ride was to run in the sprinklers. My toes curled to the feel of wet grass. But it probably wouldn’t be a day to run in the sprinklers.

Just as we were finishing up, Granddad’s yellow pickup came down the highway. Nana was with him and Cris between them, her little mouth pressed in, her eyes big, not making a sound. Nana and Granddad got us headed back up to the house, their orders and calm seeming almost normal. I didn’t yet know all the possible ways a person could die. I only knew that Leanne was hurt. But my grandparents’ silence made all of us quiet.

We put the horses away and came into the house. Nana had already called Terry’s parents and they came and got her and took Terry’s mare. After he finished the dinner Nana made for us, Granddad took a shotgun and went out the back door and down to the barn. There was one shot and the pony was gone.

What we knew happened next was mostly told by Dad, him being the story telling kind. But the ride in the ambulance, that part comes from Mom. They never even took Leanne out of the ambulance in The Dalles. It was easy to tell there was something wrong in her heart. They sent her on to Portland, another two hours away. Mom knelt by her side, whispering for someone to save her girl and probably that someone was God, her being the believing kind.

Dad followed the ambulance to the city. He sat with Mom while the doctors decided how long they could wait to cut Leanne open. They needed to sanitize everything. Her horse-smelling body could carry too many germs to her heart, the place that had taken the blow of hooves.

The nurses told my parents to sleep and sent them off to the separate dorm rooms that housed the nursing students. “It was the old St. Vincent’s hospital. A big old brick building.” Dad always told the next part exactly the same. “We held hands in the elevator, it was slow and we didn’t talk. Then your mother had to get off and go to her room and I went on up to my floor. That was the worst thing, us having to be apart.” This is the place where my father’s voice breaks. “I wouldn’t do that again.”

Leanne’s kick was the big talk in Condon. This kind of trouble was like a potion for making the town generous. Everyone knew what happened, everyone came to help. Us kids left at home could’ve stayed with any of the families in the town or on the farms and ranches that surrounded it. Food flowed out to the farm where my Nana was trying to keep things normal. Offers of money and help with the harvest.

Sometimes when I tell the story, I say how a few days after Leanne got hurt, Nana thought it would be a nice thing for me to go to the swimming pool in town. Usually in the summers, Leanne and I went to the pool every afternoon and this was the first time I’d gone without her. A girl from the grade between Leanne and I stopped me on my way in. She was a big girl with starchy blond hair and pale skin that got splotched in the sun. Her mother was a busy woman in the town. “Is it true your sister was dead for awhile?” she asked. This was the first I’d heard that Leanne was in that much trouble and that word ‘dead’ sitting right alongside ‘sister’ was something that pushed back any words I might’ve had. I went into the pool that day, but I stayed close to the edge so I could grab on if I felt weak.

It was no simple thing, saving Leanne. Dr. Albert Starr did one of his first open-heart surgeries on her. With the sound of his name, I pictured this: a tall man with dark hair and nimble fingers holding my sister’s heart in his hand, sewing the small tear that the hooves made.

Leanne and Mom were gone for two weeks. Leanne really did look like Twiggy when she got home. There are pictures of her, alone, standing by the front door. She’s a little hunched over and you can’t see the scar, which was a big red cut trailing down her chest, still stitched and scabby with old blood. My aunt said the scar would rule out a modeling career.

Mom told about how it was in the hospital. How the mailman came in every day with a big bag of cards and gifts, just for Leanne, from the people in Condon. The mailman would shake his head and say that Leanne got more mail than the rest of the hospital put together. Mom would smile at this next part and reach out and touch the top of Leanne’s head. “He said Leanne must be a pretty special girl.”

When Leanne came home she brought all those cards with her. Plus stuffed animals and color books and dolls with extra outfits. When I tell that story about all the things Leanne got, if Mom is around she says, “But you got things too. Remember the coat Mrs. Eaton knitted for your Barbie?” Leanne and I each got one of those Barbie coats. Her’s blue and mine green, each with white angora fur on the collars.

When Mom tells her part of the story later, she says how she had way too many people needing her the rest of that summer. She says that when Leanne was in the hospital, it was just her and Leanne, so it was easier. But when they came home, we all needed her. There was Leanne, of course. And Cris. Cris clung to Mom. Nana told Mom that when Mom was gone, Cris stood by the window looking for her. Every car that came up triggered her to cry, “Mama?” Dad was mad with Granddad for shooting the pony and Mom tried to smooth that thing out too.

Another thing Mom would say is that she was changed by what happened. That before Leanne got hurt she was worried about things, things that could get broken or dirty, things that needed to be done or organized, how her kids were dressed, how their hair was fixed or whether they sat quietly when they were in public. She said that after Leanne got hurt and she was in that ambulance praying, she told God she wouldn’t let those things be important again.

Our house got messy after that, but Mom was a more relaxed woman. And it lasted. When I was in eighth grade I was the queen of May Day and Mom didn’t get too upset when I didn’t wash my hair on the day of the May Day parade. I’d washed it the day before and figured that was plenty of washing for the week. In the Polaroid picture, there’s an oily split in my bangs and maybe that takes some of the attention away from the crown.

Over the rest of the summer, after Leanne and Mom came home from the hospital, Pat got busy with other things. He was at that age where friends are more important than family. Mom and Dad were probably glad not to worry so much about him. Leanne rested a lot in the hospital bed and Cris stuck close to Mom.

Brad and I got to be pretty good buddies during all that. We tried to be good and hoped we’d be noticed for our efforts. That’s when Mom started to call Brad and I the ‘Workers’ and Pat and Leanne the ‘Shirkers.’

In August, after the harvest, we went to the beach with another family who had as many kids as Mom and Dad. One afternoon the adults were having cocktails at the side of the hotel pool. All us kids were in the pool, plus some other kids we didn’t know. Mom and Dad spent a lot of time watching Leanne, to see that her heart kept going, but they took their eyes away for a minute. Us kids were splashing and playing and Leanne kind of got carried along with all us kids into the deep end of the pool.

Leanne never says much about when she got kicked. She doesn’t wear low cut tops to show off her scar. I always say, “Man, I’d be showing that thing off. It’s better than having big breasts.” But Leanne says she doesn’t like the attention and anyway, she says, she doesn’t remember most of what happened. But she remembers that day in the pool. She would tell you how she felt herself sinking down, heard the yells and splashes of all the kids, none of them paying attention to her. It was the only time during all of it that she thought she might die.

It was Dad who finally looked up. He jumped in with his shirt and shorts and shoes and sunglasses on, with his wallet in his pocket. He pulled Leanne out of the water, both of their faces pale from the scare of it. She coughed and said his name. “Dad.”

Later in August, after we got home from the beach, Mom had separate birthday parties for Cris and me. One on one day, one on the next. Cris’s party was a small one. Just us kids and a simple cake. Mom figured Cris would be happy with something simple, because she was just turning one and things were easier for a girl that age.

On my day, Mom surprised me with a Cinderella cake. The coach was the cake, all gold and flowery, and there was a tiny Cinderella doll sitting on top. Mom invited all my good friends and there were plenty of presents. In the pictures I have a grin so big I can hardly blow out the candles.