Read Christmas with Tucker for Free Online

“snow day” they rejoice because it means school is canceled, and they can sleep in and dream of a day spent sledding or building snow forts. But back then, those two words meant something entirely different in our house. It did not necessarily mean that I had no school. What it did mean, I did not especially want to hear at 4:30 on a Friday morning.
    Tucker liked bunking with me, and I was happy to have a warm furry thing near me in the early-morning hours. He seemed ready to do his part to make sure I got up on time. Try as I might, he was hard to ignore. Once he heard my grandfather’s call, he began yawning, scratching, and stretching.
    Already my grandmother was brewing coffee, and when its aroma mixed with that of fried potatoes, eggs, and bacon, it was a strong call to draw me out of bed, though I remained huddled in a cocoon of warm covers for a few more precious minutes.
    There was an additional sound on that November morning:the powerful, deep rumble of the diesel engine on the maintainer as it first turned over. As the engine smoothed out, the muffled coughs of that old steel dragon gave way to a roar that was out of place on a cold winter morning.
    I could hear my grandfather put the throttle into idle, allowing the engine to warm up; he often let it warm up for a good half hour, especially on very cold mornings. The cab door slammed shut. Grandpa was on his way to the house to make sure I was moving around. There was no need to pull back the curtain from the window; I knew what I’d see outside—snow.
    Tucker, now wide awake, sensed that some action was afoot. He pricked his velvety red ears as if to say, “What is this ‘snow day’ stuff?”
    The back kitchen door slammed and Grandpa yelled up the stairs a second time, “Snow day!” I was more than wide awake now, knowing that I’d have to take over my father’s responsibilities and do the morning milking, so that Grandpa had adequate time to do his job, too—all before I caught the bus and put in a full day at school.
    Tucker jumped off the bed, sensing the work that needed to be done, and looked at me. I thought I heard him say, “Let’s go. Don’t you know? It’s a snow day.”
    “Not you, too! Okay, okay!” Between my grandfather’s calls and Tucker’s coaxing, I somehow moved past the adolescent brooding and resentment that had gripped me when Grandpa Bo first laid out the extra morning chores. Egged on by Tucker, I felt the tasks now more of a challenge than an unjust imposition, and I would rise to them—even if I was rising very slowly in this cold weather.
    Forcing myself out of bed, I pulled my jeans over the long underwear that kept me warm. All the while, Tucker circledaround me impatiently. I scolded him. “Look, Tucker, I don’t have fur like you. I have to wear this stuff. You’ll just have to wait.”
    Peering downstairs through the floor grate that allowed the heat from the kitchen to flow up into my bedroom, and which also was our unofficial intercom system, I yelled to my grandfather, “I’ll be there in a minute!”
    Tucker and I spilled down the stairs and into the toasty kitchen, ready to work. My grandmother hugged me as if she had missed me terribly. Her affection chased away any lingering chill in the early-morning air. She had her winter clothes on and was ready to help out with the milking.
    “Snow day,” she repeated, holding me tightly. I ate quickly. Grandma Cora’s cooking, like glowing embers in the pit of my stomach, sustained and warmed me for hours—if not a lifetime.
    There were twenty impatient cows to milk and only two hours to do it before I had to be ready for school, so Grandma and I got to work in the predawn hours. First, my grandmother filled two buckets with hot water from the kitchen sink and mixed in the special soap we used on the cows’ udders and teats to kill any bacteria that could contaminate the milk. I patted Tucker on the head and reminded him that this was the one chore for