Frost Notes

Anthology

Rodney Hill

The stone boat, a conveyance pulled by horse teams to clear fields and build stone walls, interested Frost and the woodcut artist, J.J. Lankes, with whom Frost often collaborated.  In 1923, Lankes gave Frost a fabulous series of woodcuts around "A Star In A Stone-Boat" and "The Star-Splitter." Now, here is a fresh take on the stone boat from aspiring Michigan poet Rodney Hill. 

The Stone Boat

At 18 hands, Bo and Red were big, even for Belgians.

They worked an Amish farm, which meant they worked, really worked, every day.

And on Sunday, they pulled the wagon to church, and back.

Bo and Red were broad in the back and tall in the haunch.

They were strong enough to pull iron hooks out of a barn wall.

And they ate spare.

They weren’t the team he’d grown up with.

The ones that taught him how to work, how to laugh,

That team had been sold years ago, to pay the mortgage, and of course, doctorbills.

It was the bills that had killed them,

That took their house, school,

And left them with nothing but Dad’s share of acreage.

So Bo and Red were his team today.

And they didn’t like the job this morning,

anymore than he did.

There had been so many plans for this day.

He was going to go riding with his buddies in the old Chrysler,

Out to the fairgrounds to see the new tractors and the girls.

But there was hay.

And he’d been late coming home when he said he’d be early.

So that meant that it was all for him, and Bo and Red, and nobody else.

The sun was hot, and the hay was heavy,

like it always was on first cutting

And, there had been good rain all April, which meant there was a lot of hay.

He was careful to lay the bales right.

Not like his first time when the old men laughed

as his columns of straw pealed over like rose petals.

The more he pulled, the higher the stack, and the higher it got, the more he had to pull.

But every bale brought him closer to a bucket shower

and the new shirt hidden under his mattress.

An hour to sunset, he unrolled the canvass that would tie it all down

And get him to town in time for the rodeo.

But then there was a jerk.

He fell face down on the stack as the two started fighting.

In harness, Red lunged at Bo,

and Bo reared back.

The two big horses pulled and pushed at each other

As though each was the cause of the other one’s misery.

And with every jolt, another bail tumbled off the wagon.

The young man lay spreadeagle, trying to hold together as much as he could.

yelling every cuss he could think of,

and a few he’d never said before.

But the horses wouldn’t settle, they just got worse.

One bucked, and the other one bolted.

And, together, they nearly tore that harness apart.

Half the stack was on the ground by the time he got between them.

Only after yanking their bits bloody,

and calling them everythingunderthesun, did they finally stop.

He’d had it.

The heat, the dust, the load, and the frustration,

were more than he could take.

He unhitched the wagon, to save what was left

And rode the whiffletree back to the yard,

and the stone boat.

The stone boat was a sled made of thick planks

That was used for flattening ruts and gopher trails in wet fields.

He chained the team to the front of the boat and threw in all the extra stone he could lift.

He stood in the boat and raised the bullhide.

Not the switch that he’d been using, the Sunday switch with the little tassel on the tip,

The bullhide was for nextyearstaxes when the wagon was in the ditch, in a driving rain.

The bullhide made a loud crack on the brown rumps that twitched like sickness.

That sent them off fast at first, but the yard was still grass.

The field was dirt and he smiled when their muscles hit the dry stony soil.

The ground was flat but they weren’t after gophers anyway.

So, round and round he drove them,

yanking a trail of yellow smoke out of the ground as they went.

If they slowed down, he’d crack ‘em again.

They shrieked and heaved against the traces,

but they dug in and pulled harder.

When he felt them finally tire he ran them up the big hill, up the steepest grade to the top.

Up, and up. Until the traces cut their flanks like meat.

Up, and up until the stones rolled loose.

He leaned into them with every stroke

Roaring like the beast he thought he could become.

And when they got to the top, none of them had anything left.

Sweat poured into his eyes as he glared at the lathered rumps.

Dust swirled like mosquitoes and stuck like a blanket to his skin.

He clutched the bullhide fiercely but his arms wouldn’t move anymore.

Why was he the one who had to do this?

Why was it his job to work this farm? It was Dad’s land, but it was his uncles’ farm.

Why was he the son who had to work because his father couldn’t?

Why did Dad have to stay in the big hospital with the wire screens?

Why did Ma make seat covers in the Ford plant,

instead of livernonions like she used to?

And those horses! Those stupid, stinking beasts!

That wouldn’t settle down, and wouldn’t do their job,

And didn’t know his father when he could still stand without help.

By the time he got the wagon home, he had found more peace than he’d ever known,

Brushing down Bo and Red,

to the sound of the fair across the river.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Note: 

I have been granted many of the stories that are part of the mythos that came to me with my wife’s family. This story and its prologue A Hard Life describe incidents from the early childhood and later youth of Roy L. Miller, my father-in-law. As a young man, Roy was often forced to set aside his growing up and take on roles that his father no longer could.

Roy always told the earlier story with a special fondness though it was barely a memory to him. He was by all accounts only two or three years old when his uncle found him in the barn early one morning, his arms wrapped around the legs of the big plow team. He couldn’t possibly have had much conscious recall of the event.

But to me, the wonder in his voice and the look in his eyes were pure joy and amazement. The barn story was always finished with the proud smirk that he only displayed when he was talking about his grandchildren or his pets. The stone boat evoked the opposite feelings of course but, as I like to recall, he never told that story without quickly following it with the other.

I believe that these horses represented a tangible sense of nobility for him. He told many other stories but these two always spoke strongest of his love for, and frustration with, his early and difficult life growing up on a farm near Fairview , Michigan during the Great Depression. —Rod Hill

Rodney Hill makes his living as a technical illustrator, doing scientific text books, patent drawings and other industrial work in the Ann Arbor Michigan area. Recently he has begun to write poetry and historical fiction as well. Of this poem, he writes: "The stone boat is more than just a narrative for me as it depicts an actual event in the life of a dear friend."  At the request of Frost Notes he has provided an illustration of the stone boat to accompany his poem.

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 Poem and illustration copyright©2005 by Rodney Hill