Man Camp

by Adrienne Brodeur

  “How I wish I hadn’t just seen him do that,” Martha whispers to Lucy, crossing her arms over her breasts.

  Not surprisingly, Kurt hooks his cows up the fastest and then makes the rounds, drill-sergeant-style, to rally the troops. He stops beside Bryce, who handles the claw with as little physical contact as possible. “It’s not a bomb,” Kurt tells him. “You’re slowing us up here, buddy. Remember, there’s no I in team!”

  “There’s a Me,” counters Bryce, who seems content just to be the best-dressed dairy farmer of the bunch, wearing brand-new Carhartt overalls and L.L. Bean boots.

  Nervous at being watched, Jesse gets his index finger stuck in one of the suction tubes of the claw, which provokes all sorts of snickers from Walter until Cooper turns off the machine to extricate Jesse’s digit.

  Simon is unusually quiet, which makes Martha wonder if he’s picked up on his unpopularity or if he (like her) just isn’t a morning person. And Adam works at a steady clip, deftly hooking up his cows, whistling softly to keep them calm and happy.

  Lucy, meanwhile, marvels at the contrast between the earthiness of the cows with their four gurgling stomachs, and the dairy’s high-tech systems designed to measure, transport, and cool. Then she thinks of the lovely end result of all this activity: milk—white, pasteurized, and government approved for mass consumption by children.

  Martha wonders aloud if the herd wouldn’t be more at home listening to country music rather than the classical stuff that is being piped in from Cooper’s office.

  “It’s all about relaxation,” Cooper tells her, pulling up a third stool. “The more soothing the sounds are, the better the milk flows. Believe it or not, a dairy farm is a pretty cushy life for a cow.”

  Martha gives him a skeptical look. Forced reproduction and breast pumping. Cushy? She doesn’t buy it. She knows from the back of the GOJAPAN takeout menu that Kobe cattle are given beer with their meals and massaged daily, which sounds more like the level of pampering she’d opt for if she were a cow.

  When the last claw releases its grip on the last cow, the deflated four-legged ladies are led out of the far end of the parlor looking much more comfortable than when they arrived. Almost immediately a new bunch files in, brown eyes rolling wildly, bags about to burst.

  Lucy studies the various levels of milk in the recording jars and asks, “Why is it that some cows produce so much more milk than others?”

  “If I had the answer to that question, I’d be a wealthy man,” Cooper says, explaining that there are lots of variables to milk production, including the age of the animal, her health, and her lactation stage.

  “I just love that this”—Lucy gestures to her surroundings— “is called a dairy parlor.”

  “It makes it sound like the kind of place where a proper young cow can sit down with a cold root beer and wait for gentlebull callers.” Martha surveys the new lot of cows that have entered, noticing their snotty noses, muddy legs, and manure-smeared rumps. “Ladies,” she calls out. “How about a little more attention to appearance and hygiene? You never know when a handsome bull might come a-callin’!”

  Enchanted by Martha’s silliness, Cooper laughs. “I’m afraid I’m the closest thing to a bull that any of these ladies get to see,” he tells her.

  “What about Pinckney?” Lucy asks. They’d driven by his pen on the way to the parlor. “I thought he was the bull for all the Tuckington cows.”

  “Actually, it’s proven more cost-effective and reliable for me to inseminate the cows,” Cooper says. “So these days, ole Pinckney only services the heifers.”

  Lucy and Martha exchange a look. Services?

  “What exactly is the difference between a heifer and a cow, anyway?” Martha asks.

  Cooper’s eyes twinkle. “A heifer can’t give milk. She’s not a cow until she’s freshened.”

  “ ‘Freshened’?”

  “Until she’s had a calf,” he explains.

  “I’m guessing a man came up with that euphemism,” Lucy says. It takes a moment for her to realize that in the bovine world, she and Martha are still just a couple of heifers.

  As if reading her mind, Martha says, “Always a heifer, never a cow.”

  EACH MORNING, the group returns to Cooper’s house by 8 A.M. to the smell of freshly baked bread, the sound of bacon sizzling, and the sweet sight of Beatrice (clad in a black-and-white cow-patterned apron) scurrying around the kitchen scrambling and flipping and frying their breakfast. Large squares of softened butter, edges rounded by the heat of the kitchen, lie on the table and next to the stove.

  On the first day, Bryce recoils when Beatrice hands him a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, home-cut slabs of bacon, fried potatoes, and buttered toast. “No offense, Beatrice,” he says, looking at the portion, “but this meal has more calories than I usually consume in a week. Don’t you have any Kashi or low-fat cottage cheese?”

  Amen to that! Martha thinks, greatly relieved that someone else mentioned it before she had to. Why hadn’t she thought to bring some nonfat yogurt?

  Despite the girls’ warnings in the car, Beatrice looks shocked: What kind of man turns down a proper breakfast? It only takes her a second, however, to decide what tack to take. She’s a Southern woman after all, and flirtation is her currency. She turns up the volume on her accent and says, “I hope you’re not suggesting that you’re going to turn down a home-cooked meal, one that I made for you with my own two hands?” She tilts her head and gives him a look that is both tragic and seductive at once. “Besides, you must know that women love men with a little heft.”

  Walter perks up at this declaration and pats his spongy belly as if he’d created it with the pleasure of women in mind.

  She said heft, not flab, thinks Lucy, reminded of a graffito scribbled on a stall door in the ladies’ room at La Luna: Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and beer gut and still think they’re beautiful.

  “The bigger you are, the safer we feel in your arms,” Beatrice continues.

  Martha looks to see if Lucy is as shocked by Beatrice’s flirting as she is, but Lucy hasn’t even noticed. She’s stuck on Beatrice’s comment about hefty men, remembering the first time she got undressed with Adam, horrified that her thighs were bigger than his. At the time, she wondered if she could ever feel secure dating a man who weighed only ten pounds more than she. Now, eyeing Adam’s slender fingers, Lucy hands him the plate with the most bacon on it. “Eat up, sweetie,” she tells him.

  “I give you my word,” Beatrice promises, tousling Bryce’s hair, “my son will burn this breakfast off of you before lunchtime.”

  “If you say so,” Bryce says, brushing his hair back into place.

  If you’re that gullible, thinks Martha, assessing the calorie, fat, and carbohydrate content of his plate, I should have just sold you a pill that’d turn you into the perfect man.

  “How do you stay so svelte eating like this all the time?” Bryce asks.

  Beatrice touches her waist, appreciative that a young man has noticed her figure. “When you live in the country, you work for your food and that’s pretty much all it takes. People aren’t meant to sit at desks all day,” she says, moving pans from the stove to the sink. “I tend to my vegetable garden and the chickens, and go dancing whenever I can.”

  Martha’s eyes narrow. She knows there’s a more plausible explanation for Beatrice’s petiteness and does a quick plate count to discover that they’re one shy. “Are you not having breakfast with us?” she asks innocently. Don’t make me find your Slim-Fast supply.

  Beatrice smiles. “Aren’t you wicked for drawing attention to my bad manners,” she says, and looks apologetically at the men. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I got so hungry making your breakfast, I couldn’t wait.”

  “You never have to wait for us,” Kurt says.

  “Certainly not,” Simon agrees. “You’re a wonderful hostess.”

  “The best,” Jesse says, perplexed
by his sister’s rudeness.

  She’s good, Martha thinks, marveling at the alacrity with which the men rush to her defense.

  Beatrice shoots Martha a haughty look and resumes her conversation with Bryce. “Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s important to know where your food comes from,” she says, with a touch of self-righteousness. “Look at your plate: The eggs are from my chickens, the pork from a farm down the road, the bread made fresh daily by our neighbors in exchange for butter we churn right here. Now, can you tell me where Kashi is from?”

  Can you tell me where Tropicana orange juice comes from? thinks Martha, holding the carton up behind Beatrice.

  Lucy frowns at her: Put that down.

  SPRING IS A BUSY SEASON on the farm and dozens of jobs, big and small, need doing every day just to keep things on track: Cows have to be milked, bred, and calved; land must be plowed, fertilized, and planted; fences require mending and equipment needs repair. Consequently, the campers’ daily schedule at Tuckington Farm is rigorous and follows a predictable routine. The morning milking starts at sunrise and is followed by breakfast and whatever daily training session is scheduled (carpentry, machinery, and agriculture are all part of Man Camp’s core curriculum). Then there’s lunch, a much needed siesta, and the afternoon milking, which marks the end of the official workday and the beginning of whatever extracurricular activity Cooper has in store. Martha and Lucy take over the training operation at suppertime with informal lessons on manners, conversation, and chivalry. And, on nights when the campers are able to keep their eyes open, they show movies featuring strong male romantic leads.

  Far and away the most grueling part of the campers’ day is the training sessions organized by Cooper. Although he hadn’t originally intended to work the men so hard, he also hadn’t realized how dire the situation at Tuckington Farm would become—the foreclosure notice was a wake-up call. He knows he must take advantage of the six able-bodied men who are at his disposal. It might be his only chance to get the farm in shape before he has to sell off any land or machinery or livestock.

  The first day’s training session is in carpentry, and Cooper gives the campers the backbreaking task of replacing a stretch of wooden fence that starts in front of the house and meanders along the drive. Originally installed by his father forty years earlier, the job is long overdue. Using a hydraulic attachment on the front of a tractor, Cooper sets the new posts a few inches in front of the old, then shows the campers how to line up the planks properly.

  “As you can see,” he says, pointing to the weathered old fence, “there’re three horizontal boards—an upper, a middle, and a lower—each of which are twenty-one feet long. The posts are set at seven-foot intervals, which means that each board crosses three posts. The trick to building a strong fence is stair-stepping the boards so that no two begin on the same post. Watch carefully!” He greases the point of a nail by running it through his hair and taps it lightly into the board to set it. Then, with two well-aimed, powerful strikes, he pounds it through to the post. “You want to hit the nail dead center.”

  Kurt flips his hammer up into the air and catches it on the way down. “Looks like a snap,” he says, grabbing a board and getting to work right away.

  Cooper smirks. Fence work is anything but a snap. He’s done it for years (and has the Popeye forearms to show for it) and still dreads it like no other farm task. The rest of the campers begin more cautiously, listening to Cooper’s pointers.

  The girls are sitting on nearby stumps, watching the action from a distance. Martha is entertained by Kurt’s competitiveness and all of Bryce’s bent nails, but Lucy worries that Adam might reinjure his back. Then Walter swaggers over, apparently preferring to talk about hard work rather than do it. He brags to the girls about his experiences on the Amish farm. “No plows or machines there. Only these,” he says, slapping his soft biceps.

  Lucy and Martha smile politely, but this only encourages Walter, who places both his hands down on top of the old fence, readying himself to leap over to their side to tell more stories.

  Lucy jumps up to try to stop him—Cooper has just warned the campers that the old fence has electric wire running along the inside of the top board—but it’s too late and midhurdle, Walter is zapped by a jolt of electricity powerful enough to keep a two-thousand-pound bull at bay. With a whimper, he crumples to the ground. Distracted by the commotion, Kurt smashes his thumb with the hammer. Two campers down.

  Martha covers her eyes. “Remind me again how fence-building is relevant to their city lives?” she asks Lucy, suddenly worried about the men’s safety.

  “Everyone is okay,” Lucy says in a calm voice as she assesses the damage. Cooper already has Walter on his feet and the two are laughing about the pain of getting shocked as if it’s as basic a rite of passage to manhood as getting punched. And Kurt is fine, too, enjoying the opportunity to curse loudly.

  Martha still can’t look.

  “Listen,” Lucy reminds her, “you wanted to get them away from their cerebral New York lives and put them in touch with their physical selves.”

  “Right, right, right,” Martha says, opening her eyes. “Building fences is manlier than counting widgets.”

  “Exactly. It looks as if they need us. How about we pitch in and help?”

  “Good idea,” Martha says, getting up.

  But Cooper vetoes their plan. “What if you’re better at it than they are?”

  The next day’s training session is on engine maintenance and repair, and is held in the machine shop, a long, low cinder-block building that smells of oil. It has a tin roof and windows that are opaque with dirt, making the inside dark and cool. Work-tables covered with greasy tools line one wall. Gears, acetylene torches, lengths of chain, and pieces of long-dead machinery lie scattered about the floor. Outside, six farm vehicles await the campers’ attention.

  Cooper walks the men through several simple maintenance routines like checking fluids (steering, transmission, and wiper), changing oil and oil filters, and flushing radiators, as well as quick fixes such as jump- and roll-starts, and what to do if a vehicle overheats. Then he sets the campers to work lubing the long-neglected vehicles parked out front.

  “How adorable,” Lucy says, sitting next to Martha on the grass. “Look at the schmutz on Adam’s forehead. And your brother’s holding a grease gun!”

  Martha doesn’t reply. She’s thinking about Cooper and how different she thought their week together would be. She’d imagined stolen kisses behind cowsheds, secret walks in the woods, and clandestine trips into town. The reality is there’s been zero romance. “Lucy, do you think there’s anything going on between Cooper and this Jolene who Beatrice keeps talking about?”

  “No way,” Lucy says. “Cooper would never have encouraged you if he had a girlfriend.”

  EACH AFTERNOON, when the day’s work is done and while the women are preparing dinner, Cooper takes the campers out for an all-male adventure, an extracurricular activity that he hopes will uncover long-buried masculine inclinations in them. The first day, he teaches them how to shoot his father’s favorite rifle, a Marlin .22, at a large sinkhole on the property. He brings plenty of ammo and shows them how to line up a target in the sight’s notch, letting them in on the secret to a steady shot: “You want to take a deep breath, let it out entirely, then gradually tighten your finger on the trigger.” He demonstrates as he says this, aiming at a milkweed pod, which he hits dead center, creating a poof of white feathers that drift away on the breeze.

  One by one the men get up to shoot, thrilled by the noise and the kick of the gun. Though they aren’t great marksmen, they are enthusiastic and this encourages Cooper to suggest they all try groundhog-hunting some evening.

  Kurt responds with a loud “Huah,” as if he’d just been ordered to storm the beaches at Normandy.

  Prompted by Kurt’s reaction, Cooper continues: “You have to stalk them, see, by imitating their whistle.” He makes a shrill wheep-wheep-wheep sound. “
Then, when one of them pops his fuzzy head up out of his hole, BLAM!” he shouts, mock-firing his rifle. “But they have really thick hides and tons of subcutaneous fat—think little bears—so you usually have to nail them again up close.”

  Jesse’s face contorts. He recently edited a book called Forest Friends, about a chipmunk and woodchuck who team up when a forest fire threatens their homes. He’s pretty sure that groundhogs are relatives.

  Cooper realizes he’s gone overboard and adds a defensive: “Their holes are a real menace to the cows.”

  Figuring that he’ll slowly warm them to the idea of killing, the next evening Cooper takes them to his father’s favorite fishing spot on the swollen Manasseh River. It’s a place so familiar to him that he knows the outline of the branches against the sky, how the light will fall, and where the shadows will land. He lines the men along the river’s edge and shows them how to cast, placing his lure near a rocky outcropping in the middle of the river. Within seconds, a trout strikes, and Cooper effortlessly pulls it to shore.

  Bryce squats down to study the fish up close. “It looks exactly like the ones at the pêcherie near my apartment,” he says, surprised.

  “Not quite yet,” Cooper remarks, flicking open his pocket-knife and inserting the tip forcefully between the pectoral fins of the still-flopping fish, “but it will in about one second.” With a swift gesture, he slices down the length of the body and guts the trout, tossing a small fistful of intestines into the river. “One down, nine to go for supper.”

  Disgusted, Jesse tries to warn the trout by splashing by the river’s edge, but it does little to save them from Cooper, who seems to hook one with almost every cast.

  Simon and Kurt are the only campers who actually catch fish, one apiece. The rest of the men, exhausted from the day’s physical labor, are content to enjoy the repetitive motion of casting and the rare opportunity to relax their eyes on a landscape devoid of steel or pavement or neon.