Barracuda Summer

The calf only weighed a thousand pounds. It was all muscle, though. That’s what they said in town the next day. Black Angus. Hard to see at night.

My mother picked out the pattern and the material. An 80 piece Vogue camel hair full-length coat. The picture on the front of the pattern was classic—a thin-wasted brunette bobbed 60’s woman smiling. The heap of material took up a lot of space on the kitchen counter. It was soft with a light buttery golden-brown color.

In all of my 10 years in 4-H I had not been encouraged to sew. I never thought about it much, other than appreciating the fact that it hadn’t come up for discussion. Susanne had been the fashionista, designing and making clothes for her dolls and then everyone else in the family as long as I could remember. My big sister won purple ribbons at the State Fair year after year. To me, it paled in comparison to my entomology collection filled with black and green beetles, creepy spiders, and butterflies and moths—wings beautifully spread with silver pins stuck through crispy bodies. My “bugs”, as she called them, and my “carrots”, as she referred to all my award-winning vegetables were nothing compared to the fine sewing she did.

When I saw the pattern and material sitting on the counter it caught my eye briefly because of the yummy color on the bolt. I continued on my way through the kitchen without a second thought when my mother, who was standing at the stove called me back. “Do you like the material?” she inquired. “Would you wear a coat like that?”

Then she told me about her arrangement. She had hired Vivian Venneberg to work with me to sew the coat. I had heard of Mrs. Venneberg but had never seen or met her. All I knew was that she was known as the best seamstress in Pottawatomie County and that she lived way out in the sticks.

I felt as if the air had been sucked out of me. For the first time in 17 years I didn’t know what to say. And certainly since I had become a mouthy, surely teenager who didn’t get along with her mother it was unheard of for me to stay silent. I didn’t want to believe what she was saying. I couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of the task and felt completely overwhelmed by it. I couldn’t believe that my entire summer was about to be spent with some old lady out in the sticks. I hated my mother for setting up these impossible situations for me with the expectation of perfection and the fantasy that I would feel “good about myself” for having completed something that someone else had done for me. The thought of it made me miserable and I sulked off to my room to ruminate about my predicament.

Out in the sticks took on an entirely new meaning the first time we went out to the Venneberg farm. It took us a good 40 minutes until we turned off the asphalt highway onto a gravel road that had tall grass and sunflowers growing down the middle. After a while the gravel road turned into a rutted, one-car dirt path that ended in an 800 foot driveway. The outer buildings had suffered years of neglect and many of them were falling down. The house was a typical old wood-frame 2-story farmhouse that needed paint so badly it was impossible to tell if it had ever been painted. I slumped down in my seat and folded the foil of a piece of Juicy Fruit gum as small as I could make it. I was furious.

Vivian didn’t look like any farmwoman I had ever seen. She was skinny and the wrinkles in her face looked like you could fall in and never find your way out. Her dark almond complexion was different from all the people I’d known in my life. It wasn’t until years later it occurred to me she was Native American. To me, at that moment she was the enemy. Someone who was going to try to share what she loved with a tomboy who had no need to learn sewing. I decided right then and there that I would explore my limits of being mean. I would pretend to be nice but in reality I would pour my wrath into every word, every look, every smile.

My father drove the new car unexpectantly in the driveway one evening after work. At first, I didn’t know who it was. I had no idea the car was ours. A 1967 Plymouth Barracuda coupe---red with black vinyl interior. The large moon roof spanned the entire back of the car and gave way to thoughts of stargazing while drinking beer with friends. Never had my parents bought a car this sporty, this wild. Then the reality set in. This was the car I would be driving every day to go to sew with Mrs. Venneberg. Alone. Within seconds all my hatred melted away and I took the car for a spin. It was divine.

Everyday I would try to shorten the amount of time it took to get to her house. I had it down to 30 minutes. I would pass cars with ease and the confidence of a mature driver. I had been driving since I was 14, after all.

Cutting out 80 pieces of fabric took days. She would pin the pattern pieces on the material, all too aware of my indifference to learning to sew. I would cut around the little pieces with pinking shears. I covered up my anxiety about not knowing what I was doing by pretending to be bored out of my mind. It never occurred to me that she had feelings, too, until years later when I realized it must have been awful for her to have to spend her summer with a bratty, obnoxious teenager. She would carefully pin the pieces together and I would sew whatever she told me. We would stop in the late afternoon. Then it was just me and the Barracuda and the open road.

The coat took shape and I have to admit it was a thing of beauty. I took no credit for it, fully recognizing that fact that I still had no idea how to sew anything. She thought we would be done on Friday night. We worked hard all that day and by our usual stopping time still had a few more final touches left. We stopped and I played with some kittens while she made her husband and son and me some dinner. Fried chicken. Cole slaw. Sweet pickles she had put up the summer before, the size of fingers. Potato salad--the kind with the mustard. After eating and cleaning up we got back to work on the coat. We finally finished it just after it had gotten really dark. I draped the coat carefully over the passenger’s seat and drove slowly down the driveway without a second thought to the fact that I would never see or hear about her again. I took in everything my bright lights illuminated all the way to the highway. I wasn’t as comfortable cruising along at my usual daytime pace at first, but once I opened the windows and cranked up the radio the Barracuda hummed and seemed to take flight.

I could see a car way up ahead. The rolling hills made the lights disappear and then appear again. As I came up behind the car I could tell they had been drinking. Drunk. Their driving speed varied from fast to very slow. They were weaving all over the road. Each time we would climb a hill their car would slow down to a snail’s pace. I knew there was a long flat piece of highway coming up so I backed off and followed them, keeping my distance. When I saw the road open up I gunned the accelerator with all the power the Barracuda had to pass the other car. Just as I was even with it the headlights highlighted the black cow up ahead standing sideways in my lane. In that split second its enormous brown eyes locked with mine. There was nowhere to go. I hit that steer full force at 80 miles an hour. It slid up onto the hood and ended up precariously riding against the windshield. The impact of its weight turned the car sideways and we careened down the ditch at a fast speed perpendicular to the road. Inside the car each moment stretched out timelessly, saturated with fear. I was disoriented having lost my point of reference to the car, to the road, to my body, to space. But mostly, I had lost the point of reference to my life. I wasn’t able to see that the car I’d tried to pass had continued on its way because of all the shit that covered the windows. I slid seamlessly from Riley County into Pottawatomie on the only stretch of highway in the state of Kansas that had no signs or posts for that quarter of a mile. After what seemed to be an eternity the car came to a complete stop, upright. In the total darkness I could not breathe. Could not move. I was too frightened.

Suddenly a man was opening the car door. I recognized him as the brother of the man who rented the house across the street from my parents. He shone a flashlight in my face and made sure I was okay. Then he disappeared quickly and it wasn’t until I heard the show and the loud silence that followed that I knew the calf was dead. He proudly placed his gun in the back window of his pickup truck and we the rode into town without talking.

It wasn’t surprising that my parents didn’t believe me when I told them what had happened. The man, whose name I never knew, assured them I was telling the truth. I stood there in the living room, as I had all my life, this time in shock—the same but different now, clinging desperately to that camel hair coat.