Be It Ever So Humble

by Jenifer Jenkins

  “I will call you ‘John the Goat,’” I told him and snorted when I realized I was talking to an animal. With any luck, I would soon be catching birds on my arm and singing with a few rabbits and squirrels until my prince came to rescue me. Oh, how I longed to be rescued at that moment. This was worse than I’d imagined. I thought I’d be bored, but I didn’t expect to be doing manual labor. I especially didn’t expect to do manual labor that involved feces.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” I asked John the Goat. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.” He responded by chewing his hay some more.

  Since I couldn’t find the alleged trough John spoke of, I decided to throw some feed into the hay in the stalls. I figured the goats were eating the hay anyway. If a little got into their food, it wouldn’t kill them. I dragged the bag into the building. There was no chance I was going to lift it; it was too heavy. How was I going to get the food to the goats? There was no scoop in the bag. I most certainly was not going to feed them by hand. I could just imagine their slimy little tongues touching my skin. I’d be dead on the spot. Delicately I put on the rubber gloves and reached into the food bag pulling out a handful of grain. Then I threw it onto the floor of John the Goat’s stall, careful to aim it all in the same general spot. It wouldn’t have been kind of me to make the poor animal rummage through the hay to find it. I went to the other goats’ stalls and repeated the process. While unimpressed with my technique, they seemed grateful to have something to eat. They would need some time, so I decreed that I would clean their royal stalls later. They ignored me. Evidently, goats had no sense of humor. Those laughing goat videos on the Internet were a lie.

  I left the shovel and bucket outside to use when I returned. My next task was to find the cow stalls and repeat what I’d already done. I waved goodbye to the goats, “Except you, John,” and wandered out to look for the cows.

  I rounded the corner of the goat house and froze in terror. There in front of me was a gigantic beast covered in fluffy white fur. I yelped in panic, and the animal tilted its head in confusion. It opened its mouth and smiled through a pant. A memory came to me of a similar creature. It was a dog Kenny kept as a livestock guardian. I used to love playing with that big guy. His name was Billy, if I remembered correctly. I always thought it was odd when people gave their pets human names. This obviously wasn’t the same dog since Billy wouldn’t have lived that long, but he looked almost identical to the dog in my memory. Maybe this was one of Billy’s pups?

  “Good boy,” I cooed as he sat in front of me. I wasn’t sure it was a boy, but I didn’t need to find out. At the sound of my voice, he instantly flopped onto his back and bared his belly. “Oh,” I laughed. It was a girl. She rolled around as if pleading for a belly rub, and I couldn’t resist. She was surprisingly sweet for a dog the size of a pony.

  “Who’s a good girl?” I crouched down and ran my hand through her coarse fur as she pawed at me, begging for more attention. “I would love to stay here and pet you all day, but I have work to do.”

  When I stood, she sat at attention and whined. “Don’t cry. I’ll come back,” I promised. She wagged her tail and let me go. At least I had one friend on this farm.

  Walking carefully through tall, toasted grass, I ventured up the hill and wandered until I heard a loud splat. I looked down, nervous to see what I’d stepped in. I must have been getting close to the bovine section because it was a gigantic cow pie. In an instant, I was thankful to be wearing those rubber boots. There was brown mush covering the soles, and it had splashed onto the boot itself. My Chucks would’ve had to be burned if I was wearing them.

  I wish I could give an example of the sound I made. Imagine a kettle reaching full boil; that was the noise. Dogs within a ten-mile radius may have been the only beings that could hear me. I ran over to a large fallen tree branch and attempted to scrape the poop off my foot.

  After I removed what I could, I continued on my quest to find the cow stalls. Quest indeed. Perhaps I could imagine that this place was some sort of Tolkien fantasy world that had fallen on hard times, and I was on a journey to find... something. My imagination wasn’t what it used to be. I hadn’t needed it for a long time. So I was on a grand quest to find the cows then. It wasn’t exciting or magical, but this new life wasn’t supposed to be any of those things.

  I kept walking, expecting to find the cows or their home any minute, but I was walking further and further into nothing. I was getting thirsty and hangry. Hangry was the combination of hunger and anger I would get when I hadn’t eaten something in a while. Good thing John wasn’t around, or I would have had a few choice words for him. I wondered why he hadn’t given better instructions. He had to know that I was clueless when it came to farm work. Hell, I didn’t even know what kind of a farm this was—a detail I was ashamed to remember. He didn’t want me to succeed, did he? That jerk was messing with me!

  In my anger, I began stomping around in those large boots of his. I stamped and cursed and generally acted like a toddler in desperate need of her afternoon nap. Somewhere in my temperamental fit, I must have screwed up my footing because I fell. I shrieked as my body tumbled toward the ground. My chest hit first, and it knocked the wind out of me. There was a squirt, then a splash of brown sludge that oozed from the point of impact. I had just dropped chest first into a pile of crap. Cow crap, I presumed. Not that it really mattered.

  The shock paralyzed me. If I stayed utterly still, I could pretend this wasn’t happening. The smell and the moisture on my chest and arms were too real, though. I began to whimper. Not wanting to stand up right away, I just stayed there in the poo crying like a child. There was not much else to be done. I was literally and figuratively lost. I sniffled and snotted as my tantrum wound down. Getting up would be torture because I’d see it; it would be brown and smushy, and I gagged at the thought. The smell would be more potent, too, once my body wasn’t acting as a shield, and the stagnant summer air would hold the scent in my nostrils. I figured I might as well stay in that spot forever until I died. That would be my awful, ironic fate. Dying in a pile of shit.

  I heard a voice. Oh, God, no.

  “Chastity? Are you okay?” John ran over and knelt down beside me. He obviously had no qualms about being covered in cow dung.

  I whimpered and shook my head the tiniest bit.

  “Can you move?”

  This was mortifying. I let out a low grunt in response.

  “C’mon, I’ll help you up.” John crouched in front of me and reached for my hands. Reluctantly I took his in mine and allowed him to pull me to my feet. Doing this made the poop smear down my shirt and onto my jeans. Could this situation be any more sickening?

  As he lifted me up, I struggled to gain my balance. The enormous boots worked against me, and I fell into John. He caught me on his chest with a loud thud and another splat. We were both still upright, but now John was also covered in poop. When was I going to wake up from this nightmare?

  He started laughing. It was an unexpected yet welcome sound that broke some of the tension. I began laughing, too. We stood holding one another on a pile of cow waste, laughing harder and harder until we were in fits of hysterics.

  “You’re covered in crap,” I howled. “I did that.”

  He chortled back, “You need to see yourself. It is all over you.”

  “It’s in my hair,” I laughed. “I have cow poop in my hair.”

  John pulled a glob of something out of my soiled locks. Our laughter tapered off, and we stood in each other’s arms, not knowing what to do. If we weren’t absolutely filthy, it would have almost been romantic. The thought repulsed me more than the poop.

  “This is a tragesty!” I pushed myself away from him and wiped the brown from my arms onto the few spots of my jeans that remained unsoiled.

  “Tragesty?”

  Ugh. Why didn’t he know that I sometimes accidentally combined words? I didn’t want to explain myself right now. I did anyway. “I was going to say ‘tragedy’ or �
�travesty,’ and it came out all at once.”

  “Okay.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a red bandana. Of course he would carry one of those with him. Handing it to me, he looked me over and chuckled, “You’re right. Tragesty.”

  I accepted the bandana, wiping my face and arms before handing it back. He took the cloth and stuffed it into his jeans pocket without a care. I guessed he was used to being covered in all kinds of farm sludge in his line of work.

  “You’re not hurt?” he asked.

  I looked myself up and down. No blood, at least. Although, I was pretty sure I’d have a few bruises the next day. “I think the only thing truly hurt is my pride.”

  “No need for that here anyway,” he said awkwardly, and I had a feeling he really had no clue how to respond. I wondered how social he was. John didn’t seem like the type for small talk or schmoozing.

  He gestured toward the direction we came from, and we started walking.

  “Thanks for helping me up,” I said.

  He nodded, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

  The mortification of the past fifteen minutes or so began to set in, and I felt the urge to talk about something. Anything. I couldn’t handle silence when I was so humiliated. “I was trying to find the cow stalls, and I got lost.”

  “You sure did,” he responded. “You’re not even on Ken and Martha’s property anymore.”

  “I’m not?”

  John shook his head. “But the folks who own this property are real nice. They wouldn’t shoot you unless you were trying to steal from them.”

  “Oh?” I squeaked.

  He winked.

  Ah. He was joking. His delivery was always so dry.

  I pondered what he said for a moment, and something made me angry. “You mean I’m covered in another family’s cow manure?” Strangely that bothered me, as if cows on my aunt and uncle’s property had poop that was less germy.

  “Actually,” he said matter-of-factly, “you’re covered in horse manure. The Delanceys don’t have cows.”

  “Thank you for clearing that up. I feel much better knowing that I’m covered in horse manure instead of cow,” I griped. “If I walked all the way onto someone else’s property, then where are our cows?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “The cows? Well, they’re on the other side of the goats. The cow barn is just behind the goat barn. You walk all the way through the stalls to the other side, and there’s a door there.”

  “Are you saying I trudged all the way over here in your clown boots to be covered in manure when I was right next to the cows in the first place?” I could see the mischievousness in his eyes. He wanted to laugh. This made me livid. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you? You didn’t tell me where anything was or how to do anything, and you knew something like this would happen. Didn’t you? You couldn’t wait to mock me. This is your sick, demented country boy form of hazing.”

  John bit back, “I tried to go easy on you at first, remember? But you didn’t want to hear it from me. And I didn’t realize that a grown woman would need instructions on how to feed animals. I thought it’d be common sense that you look for a bag of feed, you read the instructions, and you follow them. The barns are back to back. You’d have to be blind to miss them. Both of ’em are visible from the top of the hill at your aunt and uncle’s house. It’s not that hard!”

  “I don’t belong here!” I screamed. The sound seemed to echo amongst the trees. It was deafening to me. So there it was. The truth. I knew it. He knew it. Kenny and Martha must have known it. Then why were they going to all of this trouble? I didn’t belong in this place. I didn’t belong anywhere.

  I followed John back to the house, both of us silently raging inside. He didn’t give me any more trouble about the disasters of the day, and he didn’t say anything as I finally sulked into the house. He merely stood at the foot of the front porch steps and watched me go.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I slammed the door behind me as I entered the house, having no qualms about making my fury known. Let ’em hear me all the way into town. I didn’t care. Maybe if I made enough of a fuss about it, Martha and Kenny would realize it had been a terrible idea matching me up with Awful John. Stomping loudly through the house, I just barely heard Aunt Martha call out, “Oh dear. What is that smell?”

  I stopped abruptly in my tracks. In my anger, I’d forgotten my vile state. I looked down from my shirt to my pants to my boots. The poop coating the boots had gathered leaves and dirt along the way, adding to the filth. Peering at the path behind me, I gasped. I had tracked all of that in with me. With every step, I had covered the floor in cow dung and outdoor debris.

  Aunt Martha gasped when she saw my mess. “Oh, Lord,” she exhaled. “Sissy,” she trailed off, and I could see the debate within her. She was disgusted and perturbed, to say the least, but she also seemed apprehensive to scold me. “Sissy, I don’t even know what to say. What happened?”

  My lip trembled as I struggled to keep my composure. “I fell, and it was a mess, and John is so...” I grunted. I couldn’t use the words I wanted to describe him. Not with my sweet aunt. “He’s so unpleasant and mean and childish.” I was sort of hyperventilating as I spoke. Again I felt like a kid who’d just gotten in trouble and was having a difficult time explaining herself.

  “Sissy, we knew this wasn’t going to be easy,” she spoke softly, carefully. “It’s gonna take some time for all of us to get used to—you, Kenneth, me... John, too. We just have to learn to understand one another, all right?”

  My bottom lip jutted out; it was a reflex reaction when I felt I wasn’t getting my way. “I don’t know why anyone thought this would be a good idea. I don’t belong here. I’m useless. I can’t do anything. I just want to stay in bed until it’s time to leave. Do you understand that?”

  Martha listened thoughtfully and nodded. “I do understand that, but you have to understand that we could use your help around here. Your uncle and I aren’t exactly spring chickens anymore,” she joked. “Besides, it’ll be good for you to do something to take your mind off of everything going on in your life right now, don’t you think? I mean, look at you. I bet all you’re thinking about right now is that you’re covered in poop.” She stifled a laugh.

  Well, she was right about that at least. At present, that did feel like my biggest problem. I gagged, thinking about the trail I’d left behind me. “I’m sorry I tracked it in here. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “That’s all right,” she replied. “I’ll just get you a bucket and a mop, and you can clean it right up.”

  “You want me to clean it up?” Didn’t she feel sorry for me at all? Her soft voice and sympathetic demeanor had lulled me into thinking I would be pardoned for the mess with no repercussions.

  She answered tenderly, “In this family, we clean up our own messes.” Turning away, she went into the kitchen and pulled out a trash bag, a bucket with a sponge, some rubber gloves, and a bottle of cleaner. “If you’ll take off those boots and put them into this bag, I’ll take them outside to John.”

  I nodded and cautiously removed the boots from my feet, trying not to smear anything else on the floor or my skin. Martha held the bag open, and I carefully placed the boots inside. She smiled and wiped a smudge from my cheek. Walking the bucket over to the kitchen, she called, “I’ll fill water about a quarter of the way. You just pour the cleaning solution into the bucket until it hits that halfway line.” She came back and exchanged her bucket of water for my bag of boots. Then she walked out of the room and left me to my chore.

  Her instructions were at least a bit more helpful than John’s had been earlier. I started by putting on the gloves. After that, I filled the bucket with the cleaner just to the middle line. The solution began to bubble, and I was mesmerized by the opalescence of the suds. Situating myself on the ground, I reached over and dunked my sponge, watching as some bubbles popped and new ones formed. I pulled the sponge out of the water and pl
opped it onto the ground, swirling it over the dirt and muck. I never had to do anything like this before. It felt silly to me that I didn’t even know how to scrub a floor at nineteen. If I were at home, someone else would be doing this for me. Then again, if I were at home, I wouldn’t have been covered in filth in the first place.

  I imagined myself as Cinderella, cheerily cleaning and singing while her stepmother and sisters fluttered about barking orders. How could she be so happy all the time when they were such jerks? I decided to try her method by humming as I scrubbed and dunked. This led to softly singing until I was full-out power housing. My song of choice was an oldie from some 90’s boy band that I liked. I couldn’t remember which group; I always mixed them up. It was kind of cheesy but really fun to dance to. I began dancing a little as I cleaned, and then my sponge hand came up to form a microphone.

  A voice joined me as I got to the chorus.

  “Oh!” I jumped, and the sponge fell from my hand and landed in the bucket, splashing water all over me. As if I wasn’t dirty enough. I imagined water was the least of my concerns at that point.

  Unfortunately, the other voice was not a welcome one. “What are you doing here?” I balked as I looked up to see John hovering over me. How long had he been standing there watching me sing and groove poorly? I blushed at the thought.

  He knelt down beside me, and I noticed that he was also wearing a pair of rubber gloves and holding a sponge. “It wouldn’t be right of me to make you clean up all by yourself. This is my mess, too.”

  He astonished me. I assumed he had just gone about his work after I’d stomped into the house. My emotions quarreled between being appreciative or aggravated by his presence. On the one hand, it was nice to have some help. On the other hand, I didn’t want John to think he was doing me any favors. “Oh? Now you want to help me? Now? After you let me make a fool of myself roaming around a field all day, getting covered in cow poop?”