Robbie used to have to go to all Junior’s games, but last year he started playing guitar for the Salvation Through the Blood of Jesus Full Bible Church’s youth programs. The teen group met on Thursday nights, when a lot of Junior’s games were scheduled.
Nanny snarled about his lack of family commitment, but Robbie took her hands and said in a wistful voice, “Nanny, I have to put my commitment to Jesus first, because didn’t He tell us that ‘he who loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me’?”
Nanny had scowled at him and snapped something about Satan and Scripture, but Robbie only smiled a kind, patient smile, one that he had practiced in front of the mirror for a long time: you cannot be punished if you are soulful and solemn. “Pastor Nabo says our metal band is an important Christian service, because we get kids to come to Jesus through music.”
Nanny thought music was a waste of time. If she’d been the last person on the tractor, you could count on the radio being tuned to Rush Limbaugh and William Bennett. If Robbie was the last one using it, he left it tuned at top volume to a heavy-metal station. The sound always jolted Nanny when she turned on the engine—a small pleasure, the price of which was a lecture on Mick Jagger and the dangers of hell waiting for people who jumped and danced on stage and were sodomites when they left it. No matter what Pastor Nabo said, Nanny wouldn’t believe that rock or metal weren’t the devil’s playthings.
Nanny essentially worshipped Junior’s football playing. Come to think of it, she was an idolater, with a golden football instead of a golden calf on her altar. She still talked about Dad’s stats from when he’d been in high school thirty years ago, and for the last four years all she’d talked about had been Junior’s, how he’d made more tackles than Dad in a game against Shawnee Mission or fewer in the homecoming game against Wyandotte. Robbie tried to imagine what she would do if he said, “Nanny, you and Dad have turned Junior and his football team into a statue of Baal.”
“I’m not brave enough for that, Jesus,” he whispered against the cow’s side. Anyway, maybe Jesus didn’t want him thinking up ways to torment Myra. “Why should I do your work for you,” Robbie said out loud. “She’ll die one of these days, and you can torment her yourself.”
Dale, working across the pit from him, looked over. “You say something, Robbie?”
Robbie blushed, hoping the machines were too loud for Dale to have made out his words. “Just practicing my lyrics.”
And then he did start practicing the new song he’d written last night for him and Chris Greynard to sing at youth group next week:
Who moves the mountain?
King Jesus!
Who moves our hearts?
King Jesus!
Hearts and mountains
Big and small,
They’re nothing to the King,
He can move them all!
In His Spirit
We can move them, too
Hearts, minds, mountains,
We move them all
With the power of your love
Your precious, precious love,
King Jesus!
He started to sing more loudly, then remembered where he was: in the milking shed. Not that the cows, or even Dale, would tell on him, but Nanny sometimes came out unexpectedly in the middle of milking to inspect him.
She never worked with the cows, not because she was eighty-seven and couldn’t handle the workload, but because the herd had been her daughter-in-law’s idea. The Schapens used to raise cows back in the early 1900s. They even had their own dairy, Open Prairie, back then, but during the Dust Bowl Robbie’s great-grandfather had to butcher or sell the herd—they couldn’t cultivate their own grazing land during that long drought, and they couldn’t afford to buy fodder for the herd.
Nanny blamed the Grelliers. Back in the Depression, they raised beef cattle, which they grazed on their acres down by the Wakarusa River. Nanny thought the Grelliers should have sacrificed half their herd and shared their grazing land and fodder with Arnie’s grandfather. Just imagine if the Grelliers had suggested the same thing to them! Nanny thought Susan was a Communist who was bound for hell just for running that co-op market. If she’d said kill half your cows for us, Nanny probably would have burned down the Grellier house.
According to Junior, his and Robbie’s mom thought she could start Open Prairie up again when the organic craze first got going twenty years ago. She’d bought a mixed herd of Guernseys, Jerseys, and Brown Swiss, starting with fifteen cows. She looked after them herself, before and after her day job at the bank. On her own, while Dad and Nanny scoffed, Mom had dug and lined the lagoon. And she had gone around the county to all the independent grocers, finding buyers for her milk.
His mother’s job at the bank in Lawrence had been essential for the family to make ends meet. Like most small-farm families, someone had to work outside the farm if they were going to keep the land—that’s why Dad had become a sheriff’s deputy after Mom left. When she started the herd, though, she had had high hopes for her cows. She’d thought they might let her quit the bank job and stay home with Robbie instead of leaving him in Nanny’s care.
When he was little, Robbie loved going out in the early morning with his mother to do the milking or make rounds with her to the local grocery stores. He could hardly believe it now, leaning against Gilly’s side, trying to keep his eyes open. He’d stayed up too late last night, working on the new song, which he had to do almost silently so as not to bring his father or grandmother in on him. He and Junior took turns doing the early shift with Dale. He didn’t know what would happen when Junior left next fall—Robbie would probably have to get up every morning to do the milking.
Mom and Robbie had named the cows. That was their secret together, Robbie’s and hers, because Dad and Nanny thought naming cows was a sissy thing. He hadn’t been supposed to let Dad know the cows all had names, although now that he was older he realized it wasn’t that big a secret: Mom used to write the names on the backs of their ear tags. Each tag showed the breed, the date of birth, the registration number, and, on the back, the name she and Robbie had given it. They tried always to give new calves names that started with the same letter as the mother.
It was how he learned his alphabet, Mom squatting to look at him, her face smiling. “Okay, Robbie, Sunflower starts with S. Now we need another S-word for her baby daughter.”
“Superman,” he shrieked, jumping up and down.
“It’s an S-word, all right, but is it a good name for a girl?”
And then he thought of Sugarplum, because it had been near Christmas, and she’d read him about visions of sugarplums, not that he knew what a sugarplum was.
Nanny had this bitchy attitude toward the cows because when Mom took off Dad planned to sell the herd. He’d turned against the cows, probably because Mom loved them, and he caused mastitis in a lot of the herd by his rough handling of the milking machine—information Robbie got from outsiders, at 4-H or the farmers’ market.
“You’re the one who made us keep those cows, Robbie,” he could hear his grandmother saying. “You’re the one who can name them.”
It didn’t make sense, but there never had been anyone Robbie could discuss it with to try to make sense of it. Nanny made it sound dire, as if naming the cows was like mucking out the milking shed, so that the pleasure he’d had with his mother in thinking up names had disappeared.
He reckoned in six years he had named over a hundred cows. He was running out of ideas and was starting to reuse names from cows who had died, starting to hate the whole routine. Only the unspoken knowledge that his grandmother would feel triumphant if he stopped naming the animals kept him going to lists of wildflowers and colors, even turning to foreign languages, to come up with new ideas.
He slapped the last of his cows on the side and urged her out the shed door. Dale had finished already and was bringing in the water hoses to swab out the pit below the milking stands. Robbie disconnected his milk lines and took them
out to the washroom with his milking jars and teat cups.
It was still dark, but it was almost always dark for the morning milking. They started at five, finished around six-thirty, and this time of year the eastern sky was barely turning gray even when they finished.
He hurried to the washroom and dumped the equipment into the sink at the corner. Dale would disinfect it and set it out ready for the evening milking.
The light was on in the kitchen. Nanny would have breakfast ready. He mustn’t dawdle, but he still took a chance and ran over to the new enclosure, where Soapweed’s new calf stood in a lonely state. She was bawling, longing for company, for her mother, for food. She was only four weeks old.
Robbie hated that part of dairy farming. It was cruel to take babies from their mothers. The other calves didn’t fare much better than Soapweed’s calf, being pinned next to little sheds outside the main barn. Working cows couldn’t be sharing their milk with their own offspring. It all had to go to the farm. At least the other new calves were outdoors. They all could see the sun and each other.
Soapweed had cried for forty-eight hours straight when Serise was taken from her. And poor Serise, she was in this god-awful—sorry, Jesus, but it is—pen, no sunlight for her, no friends. Robbie undid the lock and went in to pet her.
“King Jesus, He moves the mountains,” he crooned, rubbing her nubby red head.
The cow nuzzled him and tried to suck his fingers. He smelled of milk. He had it on his clothes. She wanted to nurse so badly it hurt him.
“Your bucket of ultrapure is coming soon, girl, don’t you worry. And when you’re rich and famous, don’t forget who looked after you, either, you hear?”
“Hey, Robbie!”
Robbie jumped, but it was just Dale, who added, “You know Arnie don’t like you in here. And I seed your Nanny looking out the kitchen window for you. Maybe you’d better go on inside.”
Ten
THE RED HEIFER
“WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?” Myra asked. “I saw Dale cleaning out the jars before you showed your head.”
“Yes, Nanny,” Robbie said. It was easier to agree with her than to offer excuses.
“Those Jews are coming from Kansas City this afternoon to look at the calf,” Arnie announced. “Make sure you’re not playing that music of yours while they’re here. We need them to give us a favorable answer, and that guitar churning up the air isn’t going to put them in a good frame of mind any more than it does me. And don’t wipe your mouth on the back of your hand. What do you think that piece of paper is next to you? A copy of the Ten Commandments?”
Junior snickered. Robbie gulped down his eggs and raced upstairs to shower. He couldn’t stand to go to school with milk on him. It had happened earlier this year, when he started in ninth grade, in town, and the memory of the girls mooing in the hall as he passed still made his ears burn. Lara Grellier had been in the group. He suspected it was she who told the others. They were city girls, who wouldn’t know how fresh milk smelled, just that Robbie smelled funny.
He stood under the shower until the hot water ran out, then rubbed a clear space on the mirror to inspect his upper lip. Junior had only started shaving last year, when he turned seventeen, but Robbie was hoping that dark-haired musicians grew mustaches faster than blond football players.
“I won’t wait all day for you, Romeo!” Junior bellowed, rattling the bathroom doorknob.
Robbie sprayed himself with the bottle of aftershave he’d started keeping in his backpack after Junior filled a previous one with ammonia. He pulled on his black BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE T-shirt. They were his favorite Christian metal group, the one he modeled his own sound on. He’d stenciled JESUS ROCKS on the back. Nanny hated the message, hated the shirt, and she’d ruined his first one in the laundry by deliberately pouring bleach on it. It was another thing he kept in his school backpack, folded flat inside his social studies notebook.
Robbie ran back down the stairs, his backpack draped over his shoulder. More than once, Junior had gone to school without him and he’d had to hitch a ride. Robbie had been lucky one time back in September, getting to the crossroads just as Chip and Lara Grellier were pulling out of their yard. Chip was going to drive on around him, but Robbie jumped in front of the car, waving his arms frantically, and explained that Junior had left him behind.
He’d scrunched into the back of Chip’s Nissan, his knees around his ears, his nose almost resting in Lara Grellier’s soft brown curls. Her hair smelled like fresh grass, and he could see the line where her tan ended beneath her tank top. He felt himself contract with longing. Was this love? And could he be in love with Lara Grellier, who had broken his front tooth in a fight when they were in sixth grade, whose family always went out of their way to hurt the Schapens? Besides which, she went to a church where they believed in evolution instead of the Bible, so according to Myra, Arnie, and Pastor Nabo she was bound for hell. Maybe it was his—Robbie’s—job to save her.
When they got to school and she jumped out, he’d been imagining her breasts under his hands as his passion guided her to Jesus. Her mocking “End of the trail, milkboy” made him blush, as if she had seen his thoughts.
The next several times that Junior left without him, Robbie had sprinted to the crossroads, hoping to get there ahead of the Grelliers, but each time they had already left for town and he’d been forced to walk the long mile to the main road before getting a lift.
After that he’d tried harder to be ready ahead of Junior, since Myra thought it was good discipline for Robbie when Junior left without him. “This is what it will feel like when Jesus comes again in glory, to be left behind with the sinners. So you learn to be ready, ready for school, ready for the Lord.”
When it was his turn for early-morning milking, he imagined his workload next fall if Junior went on to college. The one good thing was, he’d get to take the pickup to school himself, no more of this hassling by Nanny and his brother. Chip would be gone, too, probably, taking his little sports car off to college, so maybe Lara would ride with him, Robbie Schapen.
“Lulu” was what her family always called her. Back when they were in grade school at Kaw Valley Eagle, he used to tease her: Lulu makes doo-doo, Lulu the boo-boo. Now he blushed with shame. No wonder she called him milkboy.
“Lulu,” he murmured into the foggy mirror.
Junior rattled the knob again. “Last call.”
Today, as he bolted out the door, Nanny shouted, “You change that shirt when you get home from school, young man. I want those Jews to see you looking like a Christian, in a real shirt. You hear me?”
“But this is a Christian band, Nanny,” Robbie called, jumping into the truck, which Junior was starting to put in gear.
“Says you.”
Junior sprayed gravel as he spun out of the yard.
“Says me, says Pastor Nabo, and says anyone who isn’t too ignorant to listen to music.”
“Yeah, when the roll is called up yonder Nanny will be miles ahead of Becoming the Anti-Christ in the line. So listen to her, knucklehead.”
“Archetype, not anti-Christ, you ignorant ape. Anyway, why is Nanny so bent out of shape about some Jews coming to the farm?” Robbie complained. “Lawrence is full of Jews. We know lots of them from school and the market. Why do we have to put on good clothes and let a bunch of strange men fool around with Soapweed’s calf?”
“If you’d get your head out of your ass and listen to something besides your own useless guitar, you’d know that this could be the end of the world starting right here on our farm. We could be so rich we’d never have to milk another cow again.”
“If the world comes to an end, we won’t have to, anyway, we won’t need money. Besides, we’re not supposed to lay up treasure on earth.”
“I’d love to have me a little car like Frenchie Grellier drives,” Junior grumbled. “It’d be great to rub those golden Grellier noses in our shit for a change.”
The remark reminded Robbie again of sitting s
quashed behind Lara, the smell of her hair, the softness of her skin at the nape of her neck. If Junior had a little sports car, he and Eddie Burton would ride around in it, terrorizing the county. Not that they didn’t already, on Junior’s bike.
“Chip bought the car with the money he made working last year’s harvest. Do you know that Mr. Grellier pays him for his time in the field at harvest? Can you imagine Dad paying us to do the milking?”
“If Soapweed’s calf is this special heifer the Jews need, we’ll be able to hire two men to do the milking for us,” Junior gloated.
All that day at school, Robbie thought of Soapweed’s calf, alone in her special pen behind the barns, crying for company. Then he thought of buying his own sports car, of Lara Grellier sitting next to him. They’d be parked out back of Clinton Lake, with the top down. He’d be playing a song to her, a love song. Her lips parted, eyes glowing at him, her blouse unbuttoned so he could see her breasts. He drew a picture of them in his Spanish notebook, small, firm, the nipples little raspberries.
When the bell rang, he saw her in the hall, laughing with Melanie Derwint and Kimberly Ropes. The trio passed him as if he weren’t there, so they didn’t notice the blush that turned his dark skin to mahogany.
When he and Junior got home a little after three, Pastor Nabo was already there, pacing restlessly around the front room, the room they opened up only when company came. Myra had lit the oil heater, so that the room was warm but smelled greasy.
Bleeding Kansas Page 8