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which he would have to stay behind.
    We put on our boots and headed out the back door, each carrying one pail of hot, soapy water that steamed all the way down to the barn in a cold morning air that both assaulted and embraced us.
    There were floodlights illuminating the barnyard, so we could see how hard it was snowing. Already, there were two or three inches on the ground.
    After pulling off my warm mittens, I lifted the latch fromthe hook and slid open the south barn door. As I let in the first six cows, Grandma poured their feed into the troughs. There might not have been much variety in their diet, but still each cow eagerly made her way to the breakfast table. To get to the trough, each cow pushed her head straight through the milking stanchions, which I closed behind them so that they were securely in place.
    We were lucky, or so my grandfather reminded me. As far as modern inventions went, a close third behind the wheel and indoor plumbing was the Babson Bros. automatic milking machine.
    The milk from our cows went first into a large stainless-steel container that was attached to the machine. To the uninitiated, it looked like a giant steel urinal attached to a motor.
    As I strapped the Babson Brothers’ finest invention to each cow, my grandmother scrubbed away, preparing for milking. My father or grandfather could complete this series of tasks with effortless motions, but with freezing fingers, and less experience, I moved clumsily. It was 6:30 before Grandma and I could close the barn door and call the job finished.
    By 7:15, on that Friday morning of our first snow day, I was cleaned up and standing out by the road, waiting for the bus. Far to the west, I could hear the distant roar of the maintainer vanquishing our first snowfall by pushing it to the shoulders that flanked the roads. If it had only snowed a little bit more I might have been able to avoid school. Winter was only just beginning to stretch her legs.

Chapter 9
    “WAKE UP , McCray!”
    Mary Ann Stevens pushed me from across the aisle of the bus. She wore her hair in ponytails and though she was a year older was not too snooty about associating with a seventh-grader like me. I liked talking to her on the bus and she seemed to fill in where my sisters left off. She shook me again. “We’re almost there.”
    I opened my eyes in disbelief. “Already?”
    The bus had followed the highway and arrived at the Crossing Trails Central School, which housed grades one through twelve. The school was but several years old. Before the county schools consolidated in the late 1950s, I could remember my older sisters riding their ponies to a one-room schoolhouse that was only two miles from McCray’s Hill.
    The road to the school was clear that morning since the maintainer had blazed through the snow just an hour earlier. I had rested my head against the cold glass window and slept the entire way. My first snow day had worn me out.
    As I stumbled out of the bus, Mary Ann continued to teaseme. “Sleepyhead, I was talking to you for fifteen minutes before I realized you were asleep.”
    “Did you say anything interesting—for a change?”
    “You’ll never know.”
    I teased her back. “Next time I have a hard time falling asleep, I know who to call.”
    I had assumed that my teacher, Mrs. Weeks, liked me. That morning I realized I was mistaken. I barely had my coat off when she excitedly made her morning announcements.
    “Class, the lead part in our annual holiday all-school play goes to …”
    She paused dramatically as all the girls commenced oohing and aahing, as if one were about to be crowned Princess of the Kansas Territory.
    “George McCray,” she said proudly. “You will play the part of our narrator, Santa Claus! Isn’t that exciting?”
    This was awful. I smiled politely and tried not to groan. Last week she had mentioned the play, and I figured I would get stuck doing something, like building the sets. But this? Memorizing lines would take