by Julia Kent
“Of course it moved, Hastings. It’s a live calf. We want it to move.”
“Okay, okay. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine,” I repeat, moving closer. I close my eyes. I open them. I reach for the hooves. “Got her,” I say. “Is it a her, or a him? What sex is the calf?”
“We won’t know until it comes out.”
“You didn’t do an ultrasound?”
He gives me another look that says, Shut up.
I press my lips together. I squeeze the hooves and tug gently. Cowtherine bellows as Eric presses on the side of her body, doing something I can’t see. At this point, all I can do is close my eyes again and tug gently.
He mutters a curse. “Stop!” he shouts.
I let go and step back.
“Might be a cord problem.” He takes one of his gloves off and starts to unbutton his shirt.
“What’re you doing?”
“I need my bare arm.”
“For what?”
“I gotta go in.”
“Go in where?”
He points to Cowtherine’s pretty place.
“You’re going in? Head first?”
“Yes, Hastings, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m going in head first. Do you suggest breast stroke?”
“Excuse me?”
“Of course I'm not going in head first. Just one arm.”
“You’re talking about reaching into a cow’s vagina to pull the baby out.”
“That’s what we do when it’s stuck.” He takes a step toward the cow and then pauses, looking back at me. His eyes narrow. He looks at his arm, then at mine, back at his arm and then at mine again.
“Take your shirt off.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can see you have an undershirt on. Take off the long-sleeved shirt.”
“Why?” I realize what he’s implying. “I am not sticking my arm in a vagina.”
“Why not?”
“Because I haven’t done that since college.”
The words come out of my mouth as Eric turns to the barn door, cocks his head in confusion, and says over my shoulder, “Hello? Can I help you with something?” Eric’s eyes are wide with astonishment, his head pulling back in complete surprise.
I turn around to follow his gaze and find Ian McCrory standing there.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I scream.
Ian eyes the back of a cow and looks at my now-bare arm. “I could ask the same question.”
“I’m helping an old friend with a problem.”
“What’s your problem?” he asks Eric, who clearly recognizes Ian and is wondering what on Earth one of the richest men in the world is doing in his barn.
“We need someone who knows how to stick their arm in a vagina.”
Eric might be impressed, but he's not going to change for anyone.
Ian looks at his fingers. He holds up two, then three, then four, kind of frowns, tucks his hand into a pointed fist.
“Oh, stop!” I snap at him. “A cow’s vagina.”
Just then, Cowtherine’s back legs buckle and she almost falls to the ground, but rights herself, knees weak. Eric is ignoring us, texting madly, as Ian walks over and starts rolling up his shirtsleeves.
“What’re you doing?”
“Helping.”
Halfway through one sleeve, he pauses, looks around, and starts unbuttoning his shirt instead.
“What are you doing?” I ask again, back to a shriek.
He ignores me, stripping out of his shirt, down to bare chest.
Eric looks up, jaw tightening slightly, eyes all over Ian.
Apparently, Eric and I are both appreciating Ian McCrory’s personal training sessions.
“Let’s do this,” Ian says to Eric.
Eric offers his hand. “Let’s shake before you put it in. I’m Eric.”
“Ian.”
“I know who you are.”
“Good. Now we're even. Let’s go.”
On the rare occasions that I allowed myself the lascivious fantasy of seeing a shirtless Ian McCrory, I never imagined that it would be in a barn with a steaming pile of cow manure next to us, as Ian, Eric, and I figure out which of our arms to use to enter the vaginal canal of a birthing cow.
Maybe this is a fetish on YouPorn? I'll ask Perky next time I see her. If anyone will know, it's her.
Eric looks at Ian. “You’ve done this before?”
“On my grandfather’s farm.”
“Dairy farm?”
“Yep.”
“Vermont or New Hampshire?”
“Wisconsin.” Ian says the word with the flat accent of a cheesehead. “You a Packers fan?”
“No comment.” Ian knows damn well we’re in Patriots country. “But I don’t care at this point. You could be a Jets fan for all I care, if you can get this calf out of there, safe and alive.”
“I think we need a smaller arm,” Ian says to Eric, looking at both of theirs. They turn to me in unison.
“You two are crazy,” I inform them. “I can’t stick my arm in there.”
“Why not?”
“Because… because…”
Cowtherine lets out a loud sigh, her eyes closing.
Eric’s phone buzzes. He looks at it. “The vet is fifteen minutes away.”
“See? We’re fine,” I tell him.
“We don’t have fifteen minutes. She—” he points at Cowtherine “—doesn’t have fifteen minutes. Neither does the calf.”
“Let’s get her done,” Ian says, moving closer to me, standing tall, his hands on my shoulders. Deep brown eyes, edged with gold, meet mine. “You can do this, Hastings. You have to do this.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“You want to do this. You want to do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
When he looks at me like that, I want to do all kinds of things.
“What do I do?” I ask Eric, who waves for me to come over and bend down.
“Simple. You stick your hand in.” Eric pulls the thick leather glove off my hand and replaces it with a pair of latex gloves that go up to the shoulder.
“How far in?”
“As far as you need to go.” He sizes up my arm, muttering something about “four feet.”
“What exactly am I doing?”
“Something’s in there stopping the calf from coming out. You may be able to get a couple of inches in and it’ll loosen the poor thing. You may need to go deeper and unloop a cord error.”
“A cord error?”
“Umbilical cord around the neck, or around another body part.”
“You mean, like a baby?”
“This is a baby. It’s a cow baby,” Eric says.
I snap the glove in place. I stick my fingers on the edge of Cowtherine’s labia. I close my eyes. I move forward.
This feels like my first pap smear, first time having sex, and unclogging a toilet, all rolled into one.
In my mind's eye, I imagine the contour of a small cow's body. Knee. Hip. Inch by inch, I move up, fully aware that at any moment, Cowtherine can take me out by kicking or sitting on me, Ian and Eric's presence a relief as they hold her steady.
The calf moves, rotating away from me as I reach a lump I guess might be its hindquarters.
“What am I doing, Eric? I think I feel something. Like a snake along its thigh.”
“Cord problem,” Eric says tersely.
“It's pulsating.”
“Can you wrap your fingers around it? Don't squeeze!” he shouts.
“I can try, but–”
Suddenly, my arm is forced out, hard, shoulder joint compacted like a van slammed into me.
“He's moving! You've got him! Step back, Hastings–NOW!”
Eric's words aren't necessary, because the force of the calf's expulsion doesn't give me a chance to think. The pain in my arm, plus physics, make me pull back, a thick squinch sound making it clear I jarred something loose.
“MOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Cowther
ine chimes in, grunting as the baby comes out in a gush of red, pink, and yellow slime that smells like all my prison nightmares. Eric guides the calf as Cowtherine's hind legs bend slightly to give her baby a softer landing.
Or maybe she's just done.
“You did it!” Ian shouts as I jump up in the air, giddy with excitement. The calf stands on wobbly legs, covered in slick goo, shaking as poor Cowtherine moves to a prone position. Eric grabs the baby’s head and uses his fingers to…
“Ewwww!” What’re you doing?” I call out, covering my nose. The smell is atrocious.
“The vet’ll handle Cowtherine. I gotta check on this calf and clear her nose and mouth of the mucus, but then mostly we need to not touch it,” Eric instructs.
“Why not?” I ask.
Ian’s arm is around my shoulders, his sweaty, hot, gorgeous chest so close, I could lick it.
“We want the calf to attach to Mama properly. But you did it. The calf’s alive. I can’t believe the cord was wrapped like that.”
“I never even had to move the cord.”
“No, but I saw it when it came out. Unlooped it off the neck. You did well, Hastings.”
I slap my disgusting, slick, gloved hand flat against Ian’s chest. I rub it in circles.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“I'm a human towel now?”
“You're good for wetness.” I halt as I realize what the words sounded like.
Ian grins at me. I swear, if Eric weren’t here, he’d kiss me. Smiling like a fool, I look up at him. His smile matches mine.
“Why are you here again?”
“I got nostalgic for midwifing farm animals,” Ian says.
“That, or you’re a creepy stalker who tracked me down and won’t leave me alone.”
“I like the first one better.”
“Hey, Ian!” Eric calls out. “Can you get some water? She’ll be thirsty after birthing.”
“No problem!” Ian calls out.
Eric appears with clean, dry towels. He points to a big utility sink, over in the corner. “You can get her some water over there, then wash off,” he says to both of us, looking at his phone. “I’ll go wait for the vet. You two look like you need to talk in private.” He tips his head at Ian. “Good to meet you. Never had a billionaire on my farm before, that I know of. Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. Anytime.”
Eric laughs at him. “I don’t think I can afford your hourly rate, dude.” His chuckle recedes as Ian and I walk over to the sink and get to work. He takes care of watering Cowtherine, then returns.
We both reek.
“Is this your new job?” he asks me as I scrub the hell out of my arms. The clothes are hopeless. Mom’s stain remover is going to do double duty on this washload.
“Ha!”
“Gave up on working in finance? Because I know this doesn't pay better than my company.”
“More like finance gave up on working with me. I can’t get a job anywhere,” I tell him as I wash my arm. It throbs from the pressure of being inside Cowtherine so deeply.
Or maybe it’s just other parts of me throbbing.
“I email you, I text you, I call and leave messages. How can you say finance has given up on you?”
“I’ve applied for seventy-six different jobs. Do you know what that has done to my ego? Seventy-six rejections!”
“Your ego’s big enough to handle that and still remain intact,” he says dryly.
I throw a disgusting towel at him.
He laughs. “You forgot about job number seventy-seven.”
“That’s it. There is no job seventy-seven.”
“There’s the one I’ve been trying to offer you,” he says.
Just then, Cowtherine lets out a loud, disgusting, nasally snotty snort that is the epitome of my emotional state right now. I do a sad imitation of her.
“You’re still offering me a job?”
“Yes. You heard me at the coffee shop.”
“I thought that was a bad joke!”
“I never joke with the women I stalk.”
“You.”
“Yes.”
“You want me—” I point to myself, “—to work for you.” I tap my index finger against his chest.
“That’s generally how it works when someone offers you a job.”
“I can’t work for you!”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re rivals. We are not on the same team.”
“Not anymore.”
“That’s the other reason I can’t work for you. Because you’re a jerk.”
“I’m not a jerk.”
“Yes, you are.”
“What did I do that was jerky? I offered you a job.”
“You rubbed my face in it.”
“We’re not going through this again, Hastings.”
“Right. Because I'm not working for you.” Mallory's words come to mind, sharp and dangerous. Ian's helped me too much. The balance of power is off.
If I accept this job offer, I'm indebted to him even more.
Eric and the vet, a short, squat woman with salt and pepper hair in a messy bun, have come back in and are standing over by Cowtherine and the calf, conferring quietly.
“Look,” Ian says, turning us away from Eric, who is eyeing us while the vet gets to work, “I'd be an idiot not to want you.”
Eric starts coughing. Ian glares his way.
“You're an asset to any business.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Stone-cold sober, Hastings. When you're ready, the offer stands.”
And with that, Ian grabs his business shirt, shrugging into it, ignoring the handprint I left on his chest, his back all I see as he leaves abruptly.
“I can’t believe you turned him down,” Eric says to me as we both stare at the disappearing Ian McCrory.
“It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand, Eric.”
“You think I don’t understand complicated relationships?” He makes a derisive snort. “I may be a farmer, but I’m not stupid.”
“I never said you were stupid. I just said that what is going on between Ian and me is complicated.”
“So there is something going on between you.”
“No, not like that.” I pause, wondering how to organize my thoughts enough to explain what my life has become in the last month or so.
“I watch the news, you know.” He kicks at a thick patch of hay. “I saw you in handcuffs.”
“Everyone’s seen me in handcuffs.”
“You know what I thought? When I saw that?”
“What?”
“There’s a good woman who needs some help.”
If my old friend had gut-punched me, he couldn’t have hurt me more.
“And the whisper campaign went from there. Good old Anderhill and gossip.”
“You know it did,” he says, digging the knife in further. “Your dad told a different version of events.”
“My dad talked to you about it?”
“Not directly. Small town. Everybody talks to everybody eventually.”
“Anderhill isn’t that small.”
He cocks one eyebrow, as if to argue. “You want to hear the story or not?”
“Fine. Go ahead.”
“Your dad was mystified, trying to figure out who was bankrolling your defense.” Eric looks at the door that Ian just walked out of. “Guess we don’t have to wonder now.”
“You know who Ian is?”
“Everyone knows who Ian is, Hastings. The guy’s in the news all the time. You can’t scroll twice on Facebook or Instagram without seeing his face somewhere, or an ad for one of his companies. Is he part of the whole fraud thing?”
“No!” I protest. “Absolutely not. That’s my ex, my husband, my—I don’t know what to call Burke.” I laugh at the end, a thin thread of hysteria rising up in me.
“He had more than one wife, didn’t he?” Eric says softly.
“Has. I wasn’t t
he only one. And I wasn’t the first, so I was never really married to him. But I thought I was, so I lived with him all those years. What does that make him? The joke is that he’s my ‘was-band’.”
“It was never a joke to you, was it?” Kind eyes meet mine.
“No. It wasn’t a joke. I hate Burke… but I loved him. I loved him as much as I’ve ever loved anyone. And this is what I got.”
“Take the job,” Eric says suddenly.
“What?”
“Take the job. McCrory’s offering you something.”
“I don’t want more of his help.”
“You took his help before.”
“This is different.”
“Why? Because you have to work for it?”
“I have no problem with hard work.”
“He came all the way to Boston, somehow tracked you down to this dairy farm, just to talk to you. Meanwhile, your ‘was-band’ fled the country to hide from you and the authorities, and left you holding the bag. If there was ever a time to take help from somebody, now is it.”
“I don’t want his help.”
“The job he’s offering you is an opportunity to prove that you don’t need help.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Earn your salary. Do the work. Prove yourself. You keep applying for jobs and nobody will hire you, but Ian McCrory will. He’s giving you a shot at proving to everybody else that you’re worth hiring. And besides, you suck at birthing calves. You have no future in farming.”
“Hey! I did fine!”
“On a scale of Lori fainting at the sight of blood and a veterinarian delivering a calf, you are closer to my daughter than a trained vet.”
I kick him gently with my barn boots. He lunges away, farmer’s reflexes better than mine. He grins at me. “Tell you what. I’m offering you a job, too. Now you’ve got two job offers on the table. I’m offering you minimum wage…”
“Minimum wage!”
“…no benefits, and you will muck stalls eight hours a day.”
“That’s not a job offer. That’s a prison sentence.”
“Hey! That’s what we all started doing when we were in our teens.”
“I’m not a teenager.”
“You sure are acting like one.”
I laugh. “There’s the Eric I know from high school.”
“How about you show me the Hastings I remember from high school?”
“I’m not that different from who I was back then.”
“Yeah, you are.”