Little Joe

by Sandra Neil Wallace

  “Your bull calf.”

  Pa hadn’t said anything about Little Joe getting castrated. “He’s staying a bull, far as I know.” But Eli couldn’t be sure. Whenever the milkers had bull calves, they always got sold. Pa just kept the heifers.

  Keller shook his head. “They always tell you they won’t snip ’em. Then when you’re not looking—like if you’re asleep or you’re off visiting Grandpa’s—even a friend—they bring in the vet and get it done.”

  Eli tried not to think about it. He looked at the market swine book next to the fridge. Most of the cover had been torn off or eaten.

  “It’s just easier to make ’em steers,” Keller said. “If all bulls stayed bulls, there’d be more cows than people and folks sure would get sick and tired of eating steaks.”

  Didn’t Grandpa say Little Joe looked good enough to stay a bull calf? Eli thought. That any bull sired by Apple Wood would take top dollar at the County Fair?

  “When do you start training your hogs?” Eli wanted off the subject of bulls.

  “You mean showing them the cane?” Keller laughed and put down the piglet. “Giving them a real bath instead of letting them roll around in wallow water?” Keller crouched over an old sink. “The hardest part’s getting them used to a hog snare so’s you can shave their bellies with the electric razor,” he said. “That’s what this swill’s for.” He took the lid off a great big kettle and grinned.

  Eli wrinkled up his nose. It smelled awful. Like a mishmash of everything you weren’t meant to eat—leftovers gone bad, eggshells, banana peels, fish bones, too.

  “Guess I’ll start training right after squirrel season, I suppose.” Keller took the kettle of swill into the hog pen and righted the feed tubs with his Wolverines. “Or between coyote and bee season.”

  “Bee season?” Eli shook his head. He knew better than to believe Keller outright. “Never heard of one.” Eli’d read in the Game Commission manual Pa kept by the phone that you could kill woodchucks and weasels anytime except Sundays and crows most weekends. But bees?

  “That’s when the bees get all fat and start buzzin’ around the manure heap.” Keller squatted beside the wire fence of the hog pen.

  “Then what do you do?” A bunch of pigs started biting each other’s shoulders to get to the swill.

  “I catch ’em with my bare hands.” Keller reached into the sky and snatched a fistful of air. Watermelon jumped a few inches to try and take a look, then bit a few tails and got up to the swill.

  “Doesn’t that sting?” Eli’d stepped on a fallen hornets’ nest once, chasing Tater through the grass in his bare feet. He didn’t think anything could hurt so much for so long.

  “Not to me,” Keller said. “I’m immuned.”

  “But why’d you catch a bee for anyway?” Eli knew about honey, but that’s what bees made, not what they were made of.

  “I eat ’em. Tastes just like candy, you know. With a little fuzz on top. No different than biting into a honeycomb, only crunchier with more stuff squirting out.” Keller put his mouth around the pigs’ automatic waterer and took a swig. “Can’t always eat pizza.” He wiped his wet face with a sleeve.

  “That’s disgusting.” Eli laughed. “Worse than swallowing swill or eating bees.”

  “Not when you’re a thirsty hunter.” Keller sighed. “I just might go bear hunting for the next few days. Climb a tree and wait till I see one.”

  “It’s not the time for hunting bears. They’re still denned up.” Eli looked at Keller. “Besides, Pa says you got to be twelve to shoot anything legal.”

  “Who says I’m not twelve?” Keller patted the top of Eli’s head like he was Tater. “Besides, I didn’t say nothing about shooting. It’s bow and arrow season.”

  Eli had a bow and arrow set, too—a junior one—but he couldn’t go telling Keller that. He figured Keller had a real one for sure—adult-sized and powerful enough to kill a bear when it wasn’t bear season.

  “The males come out if there’s a break in the cold.” Keller picked a fingernail clean with the tip of his jackknife. “If not, there’s always squirrels, possums and turkeys.”

  “You can kill them with a bow and arrow, too?”

  “You can kill a turkey with a rock, if you need to. But I prefer bear meat. Tastes just like chicken, you know.”

  Eli didn’t think so. He’d tried some when Pa bagged one a few years ago. It was sweet and greasy like ketchup you forgot to shake. But he didn’t want to tell that to Keller either.

  Keller nudged a panting pig with the tip of his boot.

  “What’ll happen to your hogs when you’re away?”

  “They could lose a little weight. Specially Black Raspberry.”

  The Sour Patch pig looked over at Keller and burped up some pepperoni pizza.

  “Won’t your ma and pa feed them?” Eli hadn’t seen them around much.

  Keller took a clump of gravel and threw it at the horse barn. The panting pig just stood there hyperventilating, watching the stones hit the barn door.

  “What’s wrong with this one?” Eli asked.

  “Candy bloat. Haven’t been selling as much as I’d like and the expiration date passed on some. Can’t sell old candy, so I gave it to the hogs instead. He’ll burp it out.” Keller scratched the pig’s prickly ears, then took a bucket and filled it with water.

  “It’s contagious, you know—scours.” Keller brought the water bucket to the panting pig. “Don’t get too close to that calf of yours or you’ll get the runs, too.”

  Chapter Four

  Don’t Let Go!

  “Nobody’s gonna be changing Little Joe,” Grandpa said.

  Eli poked his head under the bull calf to make sure. He smiled. Keller’d been wrong.

  “He’s the spittin’ image of his sire, Apple Wood.” Grandpa patted the top of Little Joe’s shoulder. “And his grandsire, too. Sweet Cider made it all the way to the State Fair.”

  Eli liked finding Grandpa in the barn whenever he came home from school, even though he wasn’t sure Pa did. But Pa never told stories like Grandpa. Or treated the barn like family. Eli knew how Grandpa’s own pa had built the barn by hand, hauling bluestone for the foundation behind a stubborn ox with horns as wide as a tractor. How the smell of the plank walls was like family and how you never washed your chore coat so the animals would smell that you were family, too.

  Spider hopped into the hay manger. She dug deep and found Little Joe a mouse. It tried to wriggle free, but Spider kept it under her paw, waiting for Little Joe to notice. Little Joe sniffed at the mouse, then Spider chased it up the stanchion wall.

  “Calmest thousand-pound bull you’d ever seen, Sweet Cider was,” Grandpa said. “And so meaty and thick in the brisket, see.” Grandpa poked at the dimpled spot below Little Joe’s chest. The sudden move made the bull calf take a step back. “But when Sweet Cider walked into that show ring—seemed like he was floating, he was so light on his feet. Know how I know?” Grandpa took off his glasses and wiped them across his green Dickies coat. “’Cause I was there. Watchin’ your pa all in his whites, fussin’ with his milking cap in the dairy barn, waiting for his class. Got me so nervous I headed to the show ring and watched the beef show. I’d seen plenty of bulls at dairy shows—dairy bulls are downright nasty, I tell you. They could kill a man. But these beef bulls … calm as kittens.”

  Eli stretched down to stroke Spider and tried to imagine Pa in a milking cap, vanilla white and starchy. He wondered which cow Pa’d taken to the State Fair. “What number was that, Grandpa?” he asked. “The milker Pa took to the State Fair?”

  Grandpa snorted at the cold wind. “It was Old Gertie’s ma—Hattie.” He picked off a piece of hay from the manger. “Just because you part with an animal or it might end up on your dinner plate don’t mean you can’t be nice to it … give ’em a name.” Grandpa tossed the hay bit into the bedding. “That’s where me and your pa disagree.”

  Little Joe sniffed Eli’s hands for any treats, then butt
ed Fancy’s udder to get the milk to flow.

  “Yes sir, nature sure is something.” Grandpa bent down and eyed Little Joe. The calf’s curly black lashes were shut tight while he suckled. “It knows Little Joe’s drinking milk, not nibblin’ on grass. And it sends that milk straight to the fourth stomach—no detours—so he gets the goods straightaway.”

  Eli knew cows had four stomachs, but he wasn’t exactly sure why.

  “Know how it knows?” Grandpa smiled. “’Cause Little Joe’s sucking, not tearing up mouthfuls of grass. That’s why if a calf don’t nurse, you got to feed it through a baby bottle. Lapping up milk from a bucket won’t get it to grow. Remember Old Gert and her last heifers? They were twins, and we fed Annabelle with a rubber lamb nipple, she was such a tiny thing.”

  Eli wondered where Annabelle was now.

  Little Joe poked his head up, then licked his wet lips, making a smacking sound.

  “Fancy’s milk is all he needs right now. Once Little Joe starts grazing, nature’ll see to it he chews the cud for hours, burping it up from the other stomachs till it’s tender enough to be food.”

  Little Joe had nursed out. He gave Spider a sniff, then let her lick his milky muzzle.

  The sun strengthened, and Eli could see the air move around Little Joe’s moist whiskers. Dusty bits of grain floated past them and would soon settle over anything that didn’t move, coating the barn with a powdery film.

  “Nature sure made Little Joe a fine bull calf,” Grandpa said. He pulled out a copy of the Angus Journal he’d rolled up in his back pocket. “Turn to page ten,” he told Eli.

  There was Apple Wood, standing in a field somewhere looking meaty and thick in the brisket, too. The advertisement said he had plenty of dimension and was more than just a numbers bull. That “his progeny exhibit flawless phenotype with show-winning appeal.”

  All Eli knew was that Apple Wood had a shiny gold ring through his nose and the calluses on his dewclaws were big as crab apples. Apple Wood’s eyes were real tiny, too. Eli figured the bull could barely see through all that flesh and didn’t know he had a nose ring, anyhow. The back of his black neck puffed out so thick, it was as if Tater, or a farm dog just like him, had climbed up and wrapped around Apple Wood’s shoulders.

  “Folks around here know all about his offspring.” Grandpa swept his hand alongside Little Joe’s back. “How most of them have just the right amount of marbling on their tops—and around the rib.”

  Little Joe yawned as Grandpa’s fingers felt his rib cage. “We’ll have buyers looking before Little Joe gets to the fair, I suspect.”

  Grandpa took the magazine and placed the picture of Apple Wood against Little Joe’s girth. “Don’t he look like him already, some?”

  Little Joe licked the picture, then tried to grab the glossy ends with his tongue.

  But Eli was focused on the folds in Little Joe’s neck. Apple Wood didn’t have folds; he had muscle. Little Joe didn’t have any muscles to speak of and was no wider than Eli, except in the shoulders. His ears still looked silly, too, not cocked forward like Apple Wood’s, but fuzzy as Hannah’s slippers. And his switch wasn’t even a real-looking switch yet. It hadn’t reached anywhere near his hock.

  “I mean, there’s great possibility in that brisket, son, once you see past all that wrinkly flesh,” Grandpa said.

  Little Joe wandered over to the automatic waterer. A gush of water squirted into his eyes, so he pulled back his head, then stomped and mooed.

  “See the skin?” Grandpa bent down and took hold of a fleshy fold. “He’ll grow into it. That’s why there’s so much of it.”

  Little Joe flicked his ears and showed Grandpa the whites of his eyes. Then he shook his head and sneezed until Grandpa let go. “Course, growing gets pretty uncomfortable. And it itches. That’s why he sneezes and scratches an awful lot.”

  Eli watched Little Joe take a pee and remembered how itchy his own ankles got last year, when he’d grown at least two inches.

  “He’s going through a red stage now, with his coat,” Grandpa said. “Every Angus—at least the good ones—always go through one. But he’s already square and walks easy. Look how long he is, too, how level his topline is. Just like Apple Wood.”

  Eli squinted and thought he could see how Little Joe might become just like Apple Wood. That Little Joe wouldn’t always reach up to Eli’s chest or follow him around the barn, his tiny hooves almost tickling whenever they stepped on Eli’s muck boots, feeling more like plastic shoes. But then he stopped squinting and saw how squooshed Little Joe’s muzzle still was. Eli felt the bull calf’s hips and thought they were too bony to add volume to anything.

  “Now don’t look at his hips,” Grandpa said. “Sure they’re bony, but watch how wide he stands. He’ll grow into them real soon.”

  Eli rubbed Little Joe’s brisket while Grandpa put the Angus Journal back in his pocket.

  “That’s the sweet spot, Eli. Keep rubbin’ on that and he’ll forgive you for everything. Let you do most anything, too. Like getting him halter-broke.”

  Eli’s heart pumped through his chore coat. “You mean right now?”

  Grandpa nodded.

  “But it’s already getting dark.” Eli looked down at the pen floor. He noticed their shadows moving against the sawdust and straw, the shifting light in the barn. He was pretty sure it must be close to five.

  “Now’s the best time to start, Eli. When he’s kinda drowsy and full of milk and happy.” Grandpa came out of the tack room with a rope halter to fit over Little Joe’s muzzle, leaving enough length for Eli to use to lead.

  Curious, Little Joe lowered his head, then came closer.

  “Let ’im sniff it real good,” Grandpa said.

  Little Joe looked up at Eli and down to the halter.

  “You should know right off the bat he’s gonna fight it,” Grandpa admitted. “It’s just normal. Even though you’ve been befriending him. Now reach over and hand me that bucket of corn.”

  Eli wondered how he’d get the halter on Little Joe if there was a bucket of corn around.

  “Put the halter in the bucket and when he reaches in to munch, slip it over his head.” Grandpa’s voice had turned faint and raspy.

  Little Joe darted behind Fancy.

  “Go ahead. Take him a little treat,” Grandpa urged.

  “You mean trick him,” Eli said.

  “Not exactly. You been with him every day, see. He trusts you. His first smell was you. You’re the boss cow. Now go on. And don’t make like you’re doing something mean. He’ll keep eating for a second or two, then start fightin’ it. I’ll grab the bucket once you got the halter on him.”

  Eli and Grandpa stood next to Fancy. She glanced at Eli and took a few steps back, rustling the straw bed as Little Joe hid deeper in the corner.

  “Show him a handful of kernels,” Grandpa whispered.

  Slowly, Little Joe stepped out from the corner of the pen and over to Eli. He sniffed at the yellow niblets in Eli’s palm and lowered his head into the bucket.

  “That’s it. Keep feeding him, lowering your hand until his face is deep inside. Now halter him.”

  As soon as Eli got the halter past Little Joe’s eyes, the bull calf bucked back and thrashed his head from side to side. He swept the halter against his knees, trying to scrape it away, but Eli had already secured it.

  “It’s okay, boy,” Eli murmured, holding the end of the halter snug. “I promise it won’t hurt. Not if you don’t keep rubbing.”

  Grandpa took the corn bucket and placed it under Fancy to keep her occupied. “Go on, Eli,” Grandpa said. “Get up to him and scratch the back of his ears. Whatever you need to do to calm him.”

  Eli began to hum as he followed Little Joe around the pen. But Little Joe wouldn’t let himself be soothed in any way and kept stutter-stepping about Fancy.

  “Let him walk around with it for a little bit,” Grandpa said. “See that it don’t hurt.”

  Eli let go of the rope end and exam
ined his palms. They’d gone all blotchy and swollen at the center, where the rope slivers had cut their way in.

  Realizing he no longer had to fight, Little Joe lay down by Fancy and started chewing on the rope end.

  “That halter’s not a toy, Eli,” Grandpa said. “Time to tie him up.”

  Grandpa helped Eli tie Little Joe’s rope to the rail underneath the pen window. The bull calf bawled, getting Fancy to come over. “Keep quieting him,” Grandpa prodded, rubbing Fancy’s forehead.

  “It’s okay, boy.” Eli spoke softly in Little Joe’s ear. “How am I gonna take you to the fair if I can’t even tie you to a post?”

  Little Joe sniffed at the windowsill, then fought the rope. Over and over, Eli stroked the bull calf’s chin. Finally, Little Joe gave it a rest.

  “That’s enough for today,” Grandpa decided. “You don’t want to sour him. And Fancy’s been more than patient. Now take the halter off, give him some corn and keep rubbin’ that brisket.”

  “Can we try again tomorrow, Grandpa?”

  Grandpa squeezed Eli’s shoulder. “Your pa will help you tomorrow. It’s time for me to go home. Now get washed up for supper.”

  Eli waited until he couldn’t see the taillights on Grandpa’s Ford pickup anymore. Then he eyed Little Joe. He didn’t want Pa helping him tomorrow, thinking he couldn’t gentle his own bull calf. He had to show Little Joe who’s boss. Or else Pa would. Eli’d lead him out to the silo and tie him up there for a few minutes, just to be sure. And he wouldn’t let go. That’s what Pa was always worried about.

  Eli took the halter from his back pocket. He slid it up on Little Joe’s head so quickly Little Joe didn’t see it coming. But when Eli led him out of the pen, the bull calf froze and started bawling.

  “It’s for the best, boy,” Eli told him. “I need to make sure you know who’s boss.”

  Eli kept tugging until he could hear Little Joe’s hooves tapping on the barn’s cement floor. The silo’s only a few more steps, Eli thought. I can see it through the barn window.

  Little Joe kept bawling and balking, pulling, then stopping, pulling, then stopping against the rope until frothy rings bubbled out of his mouth when they reached the silo.