An Old Man Called Pederson

He grew up sitting on the tops of fences. On his feet, tattered boots two sizes too big. On his head, his grandpa’s white leather hat with an eagle feather in the band. The old man leaned against the fence beside them while they watched the boy’s father and uncles rope calves and give them their shots. The boy wanted to be like the old man beside him. He told him so. The old man’s smile was crooked and the lines on his face were deep. He knew he would. He grabbed the boy from his seat and together they walked back to the house. He knew the boy would be like him, but he wanted him to be better than him. And he told him so, but the boy didn’t know what that meant.

The old man was called Pederson, a Norwegian name. His father was called Peder. This man was Peter. Peter Pederson. He’d been born here, but his soul was in his father’s homeland. Behind him and his grandson, the Teton’s touched the sky. Perfect mountains, he’d always thought. He thought they reached heaven when he was a boy. Now at his age, he believed it again.

His wife had died before the boy was born. He remembered feeling as though a small piece of him had been torn from his heart. The old man didn’t realize he loved her that much, he wasn’t really a romantic. He supposed he missed her presence, and often wondered where she went. She didn’t care for the mountains as he did. When he gave up wondering, he decided she returned to the fields in which she was born.

He had two daughters that he claimed as his own, but it was common knowledge that those girls were not his or his wife. But where they came from and who their real parents were was something only known to him and his late wife.

His oldest daughter married young, and she married a cowboy. He used to leave bouquets of wildflowers on her windowsill. It was much to the chagrin of the old man when she agreed to marry the cowboy. He was a good man, the cowboy, but the old man didn’t like his brothers. Those men were greedy, felt they deserved more than their share, and behaved hatefully to those with less than them, but he said nothing when they took jobs at the ranch nearby. He was too old to work anymore.

It was a month after her wedding that the old man’s wife died. It was another month after that when she revealed she was expecting. Expecting the little boy walking beside the old man.

He was a jovial little boy, laughing first at the old man and his hat when he was a few weeks old, and then laughing often. The cowboy and his brothers worked often, leaving the boy, the old man, and the old man’s daughters in the house.

The old man could never sit still for too long, and so when the boy was old enough, he’d set him on his shoulders and off they went on many adventures. From short trips up the side of the mountain, to visits to the stream with sticks, string, and worms. The old man had a fluffy white dog called Peony, and she went with them.

A new family moved into the house next door to theirs - a Mexican family. The boy’s uncles were angry. On a fishing trip, the boy and the old man came across the family by the river. A young woman and two little children, littler than the boy even. The boy turned to his grandpa, with concern on his face. He had spent too much time with his hateful uncle Larry. Larry didn’t believe they belonged in that country because they weren’t born there. The boy told this to his grandfather.

The old man sighed; he hated Larry. Larry himself was only the second generation in his family born in this country. The old man was only the first. He told the boy this. He told the boy that people belonged wherever they thought they ought to. He took his boy’s hand and introduced himself to the woman and her children. Her name was Marta. She said the mountains made her nervous. She’d never seen so much snow and they were covered with it. The old man told her not to worry, he would care for them when winter set in. She nodded thankfully and talked to the man and that boy until the sun dipped behind the peaks above them.

That winter it got cold. The snow built up outside people’s houses, and the trucks were all stalled in the driveways. The kind little boy needed to be reassured that the cows would be okay. His father and uncles did not, but the old man Pederson did.

Late that night, the old man slung his rifle over his shoulder and left the front door open. The little boy tried to follow. The old man gently pushed him back into the house; he could not go with the old man Pederson.

He came back with a fat deer and some rabbits. The boy wanted to see, and he clambered around the old man’s legs.

Pederson shook his head. The boy was a little young yet. The old man left again a few hours later, with slabs of steak wrapped in plastic.

It was for the neighbors, but he never explained that to anyone.

When Peter Pederson died, he told his boy to look up at the mountains because they touched heaven. The boy could find him in the mountains. The boy didn’t understand, but he tried to. He used to sneak up towards the mountains sometimes and climb as far as he could.

He would be a cowboy someday, he’d be a cowboy like his grandpa.

He stopped going up the mountain when he was thirteen. His uncle Larry saw him leave the field. Larry grew angry and hateful. The boy would not leave unless he was told he could. The boy was dragged back down the mountain. He couldn’t explain what he’d done. His uncle wasn’t the old man’s child. His uncle had thought the old man a fool. And this boy, the uncle thought, would not be a fool like that.

The boy grew up tall and blond. He looked like his grandfather, everyone said. Matching crooked smiles, and all. He learned to rope like his father and uncles, but he was gentle with the calves like the old man was. He worked the ranch with those angry men, made little money, and had little fun.

When he was sixteen, he found a fluffy white puppy in the bushes by their fields. Larry told the boy to abandon it, it would die. The boy cried by himself over the puppy. He would not let it die. Not if he could help it.

Nor did he. That puppy grew up big and beautiful. He called her Sunny. And she followed him everywhere. Up and down the mountains on cattle runs. To school and back every day. She didn’t care for anyone else. When he wasn’t home, neither was she. She always waited outside the fields where the cows were in the forest for the boy to finish his work.

His uncles hated her, but neither the boy nor Sunny cared. Sunny was his joy and the messenger of his prayers.

He left school early one day, and when he got home, Sunny was bounding down the side of the mountain. Nobody stopped her. She must be going to heaven because I cannot, he thought to himself; she must see grandpa and tell him about me. From then on, he'd whisper a message to his grandpa in Sunny's ear. She didn't know what he said, but she knew it was important.

Whether his prayer made it up the mountain or not, the boy pretended it did. He pretended the old man Pederson heard them.