by Ron Rash
“Okay,” Jacob said. He reached out his hands and placed them under her armpits. She was so light it was like lifting a rag doll. The child stood before him now, and for the first time he saw that her right hand held something. He picked up the lantern and saw it was an egg and that it was unbroken. Jacob nodded at the egg.
“You don’t ever take them home, do you,” he said. “You eat them here, right?”
The child nodded.
“Go ahead and eat it then,” Jacob said, “but you can’t come back anymore. If you do, your daddy will know about it. You understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered, the first word she’d spoken.
“Eat it, then.”
The girl raised the egg to her lips. A thin line of blood trickled down her chin as she opened her mouth. The shell crackled as her teeth bit down.
“Go home now,” he said when she’d swallowed the last bit of shell. “And don’t come back. I’m going to put another hook in them eggs and this time there won’t be no line on it. You’ll swallow that hook and it’ll tear your guts up.”
Jacob watched her walk up the skid trail until the dark enveloped her, then sat on the stump that served as a chopping block. He blew out the lantern and waited, though for what he could not say. After a while the moon and stars faded. In the east, darkness lightened to the color of indigo glass. The first outlines of the corn stalks and their leaves were visible now, reaching up from the ground like shabbily dressed arms.
Jacob picked up the lantern and turpentine and went back to the house. Edna was getting dressed as he came into the bedroom. Her back was to him.
“It was a snake,” he said.
Edna paused in her dressing and turned. Her hair was down and her face not yet hardened to face the day’s demands and he glimpsed the younger, softer woman she’d been twenty years ago when they’d married.
“You kill it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I hope you didn’t just throw it out by the henhouse. I don’t want to smell that thing rotting when I’m gathering eggs.”
“I threw it across the road.”
He got in the bed. Edna’s form and warmth lingered on the feather mattress.
“I’ll get up in a few minutes,” he told her.
Jacob closed his eyes but did not sleep. Instead, he imagined towns where hungry men hung on boxcars looking for work that couldn’t be found, shacks where families lived who didn’t even have one swaybacked milk cow. He imagined cities where blood stained the sidewalks beneath buildings tall as ridges. He tried to imagine a place worse than where he was.
THREE A.M. and the STARS WERE OUT
Carson had gone to bed early, so when the cell phone rang he thought it might be his son or daughter calling to check on him, but as he turned to the night table the clock’s green glow read 2:18, too late for a chat, or any kind of good news. He lifted the phone and heard Darnell Coe’s voice. I got trouble with a calf that ain’t of a mind to get born, Darnell told him.
Carson sat up on the mattress, settled his bare feet on the floor. Moments passed before he realized he was waiting for another body to do the same thing, leave the bed and fix him a thermos of coffee. Almost four months and it still happened, not just when he awoke but other times too. He’d read something and lower the newspaper, about to speak to an empty chair, or at the grocery store, reach into a shirt pocket for a neatly printed list that wasn’t there.
He dressed and went out to the truck. All that would be needed lay in the pickup’s lockbox or, just as likely, on Darnell’s gun rack. At the edge of town, he stopped at Dobbins’ Handy-Mart, the only store open. Music harsh as the fluorescent lights came from a counter radio. Carson filled the largest Styrofoam cup with coffee and paid Lloyd Dobbin’s grandson. The road to Flag Pond was twenty miles of switchbacks and curves that ended just short of the Tennessee line. A voice on the radio said no rain until midday, so at least he’d not be contending with a slick road.
Carson had closed his office two years ago, referred his clients to Bobby Starnes, a new doc just out of vet school. Bobby had grown up in Madison County, and that helped a lot, but the older farmers, some Carson had known since childhood, kept calling him. Because they know you won’t expect them to pay up front, or at all, Doris had claimed, which was true in some cases, but for others, like Darnell Coe, it wasn’t. We’ve been hitched to the same wagon this long, we’ll pull it the rest of the way together, Darnell had said, reminding Carson that in the 1950s and half a world away they’d made a vow to do so.
As the town’s last streetlight slid off the rearview mirror, Carson turned the radio off. It was something he often did on late-night calls, making driving the good part, because what usually awaited him in a barn or pasture would not be good, a cow dying of milk fever or a horse with a gangrenous leg—things easily cured if a man hadn’t wagered a vet fee against a roll of barbed wire or a salt lick. There had been times when Carson had told men to their faces they were stupid to wait so long. But even a smart farmer did stupid things when he’d been poor too long. He’d figure after a drought had withered his cornstalks, or maybe a hailstorm had beaten the life out of his tobacco allotment, that he was owed a bit of good luck, so he’d skimp on a calcium shot or pour turpentine on an infected limb. Waiting it out until he’d waited too late, then calling Carson when a rifle was the only remedy.
So driving had to be the good part, and it was. Carson had always been comfortable with solitude. As a boy, he’d loved to roam the woods, loved how quiet the woods could be. If deep enough in them, he wouldn’t even hear the wind. But the best was afternoons in the barn. He’d climb up in the loft and lean back against a hay bale, then watch the sunlight begin to lean through the loft window, brightening the spilled straw. When the light was at its apex, the loft shimmered as though coated with a golden foil. Dust motes speckled the air like midges. The only sound would be underneath, a calf restless in a stall, a horse eating from a feed bag. Carson had always felt an aloneness in those moments, but never in a sad way.
Through the years, the same feeling had come back to him on late nights as he drove out of town. Doris would be back in bed and the children asleep as he left the house. Night would gather around him, the only light his truck’s twin beams probing the road ahead. He would pass darkened farmhouses and barns as he made his way toward the glow of lamp or porch light. On the way back was the better time, though. He’d savor the solitude, knowing that later when he opened the children’s doors, he could watch them a few moments as they slept, then lie down himself as Doris turned or shifted so that some part of their bodies touched.
The road forked and Carson went right, passing a long-abandoned gas station. The cell phone lay on the passenger seat. Sometimes a farmer called and told Carson he might as well turn around, but this far from town the phone didn’t work. The road snaked upward, nothing on the sides now but drop-offs and trees, an occasional white cross and a vase of wilted flowers. Teenage boys for the most part, Carson knew, too young to think it could happen to them. It was that way in war as well, until you watched enough boys your own age being zipped up in body bags.
Carson had been drafted by the army three months after Darnell joined the marines. They had not seen each other until the Seventh Infantry supported the First Marine at Chosin Reservoir, crossing paths in a Red Cross soup line. It was late afternoon and the temperature already below zero. The Chinese, some men claimed a million of them, were pouring in over the Korean border, and no amount of casualties looked to stop them. Let’s make a vow to God and them Chinese too that if they let us get back to North Carolina alive we’ll stay put and grow old together, Darnell had said. He’d held out his hand and Carson had taken it.
The road curved a final time, and the battered mailbox labeled COE appeared. Carson turned off the blacktop and bumped up the drive, wheels crunching over the chert rock. The porch light was on, from the barn mouth a lantern’s lesser glow. Carson parked next to the unlatched pasture g
ate, got the medicine bag and canvas tool kit from the truck box. He shouldered the gate open and pushed it back. This far from town the stars were brighter, the sky wider, deeper. As on other such nights, Carson paused to take it in. A small consolation.
The lantern hung just inside the barn mouth, offering a thin apron of light to help Carson make his way. He took slow careful steps so as not to trip on old milking traces. Inside, it took a few moments to adjust to the barn’s starless dark. Near the back stall, the cow lay on the straw floor. Darnell kneeled beside her, one hand stroking her flank. A stainless-steel bucket was close by, already filled with water, beside it rags and a frayed bedsheet. Darnell’s shotgun, not his rifle, leaned across a stall door.
“How long?” Carson asked.
“Three hours.”
Carson set the bags down and checked the cow’s gums, then placed the stethoscope’s silver bell against the flank before pulling on a shoulder glove.
“I think it’s breeched,” Darnell said.
Carson lubed the glove and slid his hand and forearm inside, felt a bent leg, then a shoulder, another leg, and, finally, the head. He slipped a finger inside the mouth and felt a suckle. Life stubbornly held on. Maybe he wouldn’t have to pull the calf out one piece at a time. At least a chance.
“Not a full breech then,” Darnell said when Carson pulled off the glove.
“Afraid it isn’t.”
Carson spread the tarp on the barn floor, set out what he’d need while Darnell retrieved the lantern and set it beside Carson. Inside the lantern’s low light, the world shrank to a circle of straw, within it two old men, a cow, and, though curtained, a calf. Carson did a quick swab and pushed in the needle, waited for the lidocaine to ease the contractions. Darnell still stroked the cow’s flank. As a young vet, Carson had quickly learned there were some men and women, good people otherwise, who’d let a lame calf linger days, not bothering to end its misery. They’d do the same with a sheep with blackleg. Never Darnell though. Because he’d witnessed enough suffering in Korea not to wish it on man or animal was what some folks would think, but Carson knew it to be as much Darnell’s innate decency.
“Why the shotgun?” Carson asked.
“Coyotes. I’ve not heard any of late, but this is the sort of thing to draw them.” Darnell nodded at the calf jack. “Figure you’ll have to use it?”
“I’m going to try not to.”
The cow’s abdomen relaxed and the round eyes calmed. Somewhere in the loft a swallow stirred. Then the barn was silent and the lantern’s light seemed to soften. The calf waited in its deeper darkness for Carson to birth it whole and alive or dead and in pieces. Carson’s hands suddenly felt heavy, shackled. He looked down at them, the liver spots and stark blue veins, knuckles puffy with arthritis. He remembered another misaligned calf, not nearly as bad as this one. He was just months into his practice and had torn the cow’s uterine wall, killing both cow and calf. Doris had been pregnant with their first child, and when she’d asked Carson if the calf and cow were okay, Carson had lied.
Darnell touched his shoulder.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
Carson lubed his hand, no glove now, and slid it inside, pushed the calf as far back as he could, making space. Sweat trickled down his forehead, his eyes closed now to better imagine the calf’s body. He found the snout, tugged it forward a bit, then back, and then to one side, and then another. Carson’s heart banged his panting chest like a quickening hammer. The muscles in his neck and shoulder burned. He stopped for a minute, his arm still inside as he caught his breath.
“What do you think?” Darnell asked.
“Maybe,” Carson answered.
Half an hour passed before he got the head aligned. Darnell gave him a wet hand cloth and Carson wiped the sweat off his face and neck. He rested a while longer before nodding at the tarp.
“Okay, let’s get that leg.”
Darnell hooked the OB chain to the handle and gave the other end to Carson, who looped the chain around a front leg. Darnell gripped the handle, and dug his boot heels into the barn floor.
“Okay,” Carson said, his hand on the calf’s leg.
The chain slowly tightened. Carson bent the foreleg to ensure the hoof didn’t rake the uterine wall. Darnell did the hard work now, grunting as his muscles strained. They spoke little, Carson nodding left or right when needed. Minutes passed as the leg gave and caught. Like cracking a safe, that’s how Carson thought of it, finding the combination that made the last tumbler fall into place. It felt like that, the womb swinging open and the calf withdrawn. There were times he could almost hear the click.
“Home free,” Darnell gasped when the leg finally aligned.
Come morning, liniment would grease their lower backs and shoulders. They would move gingerly, new twinges and aches added to others gained over eight decades.
“Lord help us if our kids knew what we were up to tonight,” Darnell said as he rubbed a shoulder. “They’d likely fix you and me up with those electronic ankle bracelets, keep us under house arrest.”
“Which would show they’ve got more sense than we have,” Carson replied.
The second leg took less than a minute and the calf slipped into a wider world. Carson cleared mucus from the snout, placed a finger inside the mouth and felt a tug.
“Much as we’ve done this, you’d think it might get a tad bit easier,” Darnell said, “but that’s not the way of it.”
“No,” Carson said. “Most things just get harder.”
The last thing was calcium and antibiotic shots, but Carson doubted his hand capable of holding the needle steady. It could wait a few minutes. The men sat on the barn floor, weary arms crossed on raised knees as they waited for the calf to gain its legs. Carson leaned his head on his forearms and closed his eyes. He listened as the calf’s hooves scattered straw, the body lifting and falling back until it figured out the physics. Once it did, Carson raised his head and watched the calf’s knees wobble but hold. The cow was soon up too. The calf nuzzled and found a teat, began to suckle.
“There’s a wonder to it yet,” Darnell said, and Carson didn’t disagree.
They watched a few more moments, not speaking. The lantern’s wick burned low now. Carson resettled his hands, let his fingertips shift straw and touch the firmer earth as he leaned back. Only when the flame was a sinking flicker inside the glass did Darnell raise himself to one knee.
“Now let’s see if we can get up too,” he said.
Darnell grunted and stood, knees popping as he did so. He reached a hand under Carson’s upper arm and helped him up, Carson’s hinges grinding as well. Darnell lifted the lantern, turned the brass screw until light filled the globe again. He set the lantern down and walked over to the barn mouth, only his silhouette visible until a match rasped and illuminated his face a moment.
“So you’re smoking again,” Carson said.
“Nobody around to argue against it,” Darnell answered.
“Funny how you miss even the nagging.”
“That’s true,” Carson said, and stepped over to the barn mouth and leaned against the opposite beam.
The stars sprawled yet overhead, though now Venus had tucked itself in among them. Though no more than a dozen feet apart, the men were mere shadows to each other. Carson watched the orange cigarette tip rise and hold a moment, then descend. A shifting came from the barn’s depths, then a lapping sound as the cow’s tongue washed the calf.
“Doris was a fine woman,” Darnell said.
“Yes,” Carson said, “she was.”
“Four months now, ain’t it?”
“Almost.”
“It does ease up some, eventually,” Darnell said.
He stubbed out his cigarette. Something between a sigh and a snicker crossed the dark between them.
“What’s tickling your funny bone?” Carson asked.
“Just curious if the widows are showing up with their casseroles yet.”
“No,” Carson said. “I mean none since the funeral.”
“Well, it won’t be long and once it commences you’ll think you’re in the Pillsbury Bake-Off.”
“I’m not looking for another wife,” Carson said.
“I wasn’t either but they came after me anyway. We’re a rare commodity, partner. The one time I went down to that senior center, it was me and Ansel Turner and thirty blue-haired women. One of them decided we should have a dance. Soon as the music came on I got out of there and ain’t been back, but poor old Ansel was in his wheelchair so couldn’t get away. He was remarried in six months. They finally gave up on me but you’re fresh game.”
Darnell paused.
“I ain’t making light of your loss.”
“I know that,” Carson said. “I’ve had plenty enough grieving words and hangdog faces. The sad part I don’t need any help with.”
He was rested enough now to give the shots, but waited. Except for speaking to his son and daughter on the phone, Carson hadn’t much wanted to talk with people of late. But tonight, here in the dark with Darnell, there was a pleasure in it.
“The stars don’t show out in town like they do here,” Carson said.
“I’m not down there often of a night to know,” Darnell answered, “but it’s nice to look up and see something that never changes. When I was in Korea, I’d find the Big Dipper and the Huntress and the Archer. They hung in the sky different but I could make them out, same as if I was in North Carolina. There was a comfort in doing that, especially when the fighting got thick.”
“I did that a couple of times too,” Carson said.
Darnell lit another cigarette and stepped outside of the barn, listening until he was satisfied.
“They ain’t yapping about it,” Darnell said, “but they could still be out there.”
Carson half stifled a yawn.
“I can put us on a pot of coffee.”
“No,” Carson answered. “I’ll be on my way as soon as I give the shots.”
“Back in Korea, we’d not have figured it to turn out this way, would we?” Darnell said. “I mean, we’ve gotten a lot more than we ever thought.”