MIDWAY THROUGH THE WEEK, Cooper announces that he’ll be inseminating heifers after breakfast and gives the men the option of joining him in lieu of helping his farmhands plant the spring wheat crop. When there are no takers, Martha senses opportunity and volunteers. It sounds more fun than watching the campers drive bulldozers, and she’s eager for time alone with Cooper.
The day is sunny but not warm, and Martha wraps her cardigan tightly around herself, hooking an arm through Cooper’s as they walk to the barn.
He steers her across the pasture, avoiding the driveway in case the foreclosure notice he took down that first night has been replaced already. His mind is busy with worry about the farm: Should he sell one hundred acres to that developer who’s been making offers for the last year? Should he auction off part of the herd? Either solution would make his father turn in his grave. How could he have let things get this bad? He manages to make small talk with Martha, relaying cow facts that he could recite in his sleep, but his mind is elsewhere. “It’s all about timing,” he says when she asks about insemination. “Estrus only lasts about eight hours, so when you see the signs, you have to move quickly.”
“And what are the signs?” she asks suggestively, delighted to steer the conversation toward mating.
“The cows start mounting each other,” Cooper says, oblivious to Martha’s flirting, and continues his clinical explanation of bovine reproduction. When they enter the Cow Palace, he takes her straight to the liquid-nitrogen tank where he stores his supply of bull semen. He opens the tank, reaches through the curlicues of smoke, and plucks out a slim straw of ejaculate, which he places in a mug filled with lukewarm water. When it reaches the correct temperature, he snips off one end and threads the straw inside a stainless steel insemination gun. Then he guides Martha to where the cows are waiting, their heads locked between bars to keep them from moving. There, he pulls on a long plastic glove, dabs some mineral oil onto the fingertips, and pushes the cow’s tail aside.
Martha races up to the cow’s head before Cooper inserts his hand. “If it’s all the same to you,” she whispers to the cow, number forty-two according to its ear tag, “I’d like to call you Bessie.” She strokes Bessie’s black-and-white head and admires her long eyelashes. “You sure are one beautiful cow,” Martha says, “and I think he really likes you. Yep, he’s definitely going to call.”
“What are you telling number forty-two?” Cooper asks, now holding the cow’s uterus through the walls of her rectum, threading the insemination gun into her vagina, where he releases the sperm.
“Just some pillow talk,” Martha answers, noticing that Bessie seems rather indifferent to what’s going on. “A girl needs to be reassured of her man’s affection every once in a while,” she says, pleased by her own directness.
“Done,” says Cooper, withdrawing his arm. “Well, number forty-two should feel reassured that two thousand pounds of bull isn’t pounding on her. Isn’t that right, cow?”
Martha sighs, embarrassed that Cooper didn’t even pick up on what she said.
Patting the cow’s rump, Cooper says a gentle, “Get pregnant, cow.”
For a moment, Martha melts at how sweet his voice sounds. “Who’s the daddy, anyway?” she asks.
After peeling off the used glove and tossing it into the garbage, Cooper hands Martha the March issue of Holstein Director, which has been folded into his back pocket.
Martha’s eyes widen. The magazine, subtitled Select Sires, is full of personal ads, not for loveless singles but for bulls whose appeal is based on their ability to produce superior milking cows. Enticing photographs of their offspring fill the pages, along with detailed descriptions of udders, teats, and rumps. “I just can’t believe this,” she says, opening up to a Playboy-style centerfold of Sunshine, daughter of Otto the bull. The photo of Sunshine is taken in three-quarter profile from the rear, highlighting her ample bag and lean body. “I wonder what her hobbies are!” Martha says, imagining: Expert at fly-swatting with tail, can moo “Old Man River,” makes heart-shaped cow paddies.
“Hey, I use Otto quite a bit,” Cooper says, sounding slightly defensive.
Why aren’t you looking at me the way you did in New York? Martha wants to scream, but continues to discuss the magazine. “Well then, you know all about his excellent genetics: ‘square-placed udders and superior overall dairyness.’ ”
“Indeed I do,” Cooper says. “He’s father to seventy-five percent of the Tuckington cows and affordable to boot.”
It takes Martha a moment to process this information, which means that Otto has impregnated mothers and daughters, sisters, aunts, and cousins. Yuck.
Cooper registers Martha’s expression of disgust. “Look on the bright side,” he tells her, “this is the very concept you wish to impart to the campers: Make yourselves indispensable to women or risk becoming obsolete.” He walks her back toward the nitrogen tank. “Can you think of a more humbling place to be a man than on a dairy farm?” he asks. “One bull is all any farmer has ever needed to meet the reproductive requirements of his entire herd.” He grabs another straw of Otto’s semen and holds it up to make his point. “And now, even that bull isn’t strictly necessary.”
Martha touches Cooper’s arm, trying to think of a way to bring the conversation around to what’s going on between them. What comes out of her mouth is: “I’m not sure your mother likes me very much.”
Cooper shakes his head dismissively and says, “That’s just Mom.” As he waits for a second batch of semen to warm to room temperature, his mind drifts back once again to the foreclosure notice and he starts to frown.
Just ask him what’s going on, Martha thinks, trying to read meaning into his furrowed brow. She hears herself say, “She keeps mentioning a friend of yours named Jolene.”
But Cooper is a million miles away, negotiating with bankers, pleading for more time, signing over deeds to the auctioneer. When he looks back at Martha a moment later, he realizes he hasn’t heard a word she’s said. He stares at her, feeling idiotic. She’s beautiful with the morning light streaming onto her hair and he can’t imagine how he’s been able to think of anything else. In the time it takes him to decide to tell her that, she’s turned to leave the barn.
CHAPTER 10
“I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish: God almighty made ’em to match the men.”
George Eliot
IT’S AFTER DINNER and the campers are watching An Officer and a Gentleman, one of dozens of videos that Martha brought with her to the farm, the objective being to expose the men to as wide an array of positive masculine styles as possible. The films feature stars like Sam Shepard, Humphrey Bogart, and Sean Connery in roles where their masculinity is somehow put to the test. In some the hero gets the girl, in others he doesn’t, but always he is courageous and gallant under fire, at his core a gentleman.
The campers are strewn about the living room like rag dolls: splayed out on the floor, flopped over chairs, stretched across sofas. Exhausted from another day of hard work and full of Beatrice’s fried-chicken supper, the men are content to absorb lessons on manliness by osmosis, half asleep as they watch the movie.
At a pivotal moment in the film—right after Zack Mayo’s best friend commits suicide and transforms Zack from a self-absorbed hotshot into a team player and leader—Martha taps Lucy’s shoulder and points to the door. She needs to talk.
Lucy hopes that whatever is bothering Martha can wait until after Richard Gere carries Debra Winger out of the factory, but her friend looks insistent. Lucy disentangles herself from Adam. “I have to go,” she whispers into his ear. “Could you lead the postfilm discussion on Zack Mayo’s transformation?”
Adam responds in a look: Not a chance.
Lucy and Martha leave the living room mostly unnoticed and slip out the back door, where they make their way to the far end of the yard and sit, leaning against the broad trunk of a majestic silver maple tree. The night sky is clear and jam-packed with stars, and a nearly full
moon hovers low above the hills.
“God, isn’t spring amazing? May is such a sexy month,” Lucy says over a commotion of peepers in a nearby pond. “Just listen to all that courtship.” She wishes Adam were outside, too.
“Yes,” Martha says sourly, “romance is in the air.”
“Did you know that peepers can repeat their calls over four thousand times a night?” It’s courtship facts like these, which Lucy knows by the hundreds, that can make her dismayed by Adam’s lack of romantic effort. When was the last time he sang to her?
Martha groans. “Exactly what is it about their clamor that attracts females? I can barely sleep through all the racket.”
Lucy smiles at her friend’s bah-humbug attitude. “Well, at the very least, you have to admit that it’s kind of amazing how our brains deal with unfamiliar sounds. Just think about it: You can sleep through ambulances screaming down Ninth Avenue at four A.M., but a little frog singing a love song keeps you up.”
Martha rolls her eyes. “Forgive me if I’m not in the mood to marvel at the wonders of nature tonight.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucy says. “What’s going on?”
Martha doesn’t quite know where to begin. “I’m just not cut out for farm living. The hours are nuts and I’m sick of cooking and cleaning and being on the sidelines. Look at me, I’ve been here, what, four days? And I’m a total wreck. I’m not sleeping well. I’ve got enough cuts and bruises to land a part as a battered woman. And I’m this close,” she says, pinching her thumb and forefinger together, “to setting up an emergency phoner with my shrink to discuss that bitch Beatrice. Exactly what have I done to deserve her treatment?”
“Nothing.” Lucy puts an arm around her friend. “She’s just being possessive of her only son. Now that her husband’s gone, Cooper’s all she has left. Who can blame her?”
I can, thinks Martha, who has always found Lucy’s ability to empathize with the wrong party annoying. She pulls blades of grass out of the ground one at a time. “Things aren’t going well with Cooper,” she says softly. “They just aren’t going, period.”
“Have you tried talking to him?”
“I tried to when we were inseminating cows, but everything came out wrong. Instead of asking what was up between us, I criticized his mother and grilled him about Jolene.”
“I’m sure it didn’t go as badly as you think,” Lucy says, shifting to lie on her back and look up at the sky, where she finds the Big Dipper tipped at a precarious angle, looking as if it might slosh its contents all over the galaxy. “Give him the benefit of the doubt. I think Cooper has something on his mind and you just need to be patient.” Lucy knows patience has never been Martha’s strong suit.
A moment passes and they hear the screen door creak open and snap shut. Cooper and Adam are standing on the back porch, gazing out over the lawn.
“We’re down here,” Lucy calls, waving.
Adam seems tall standing next to Cooper, which pleases Lucy, who’s noticed that her boyfriend has been looking especially handsome, and attributes it to all the outdoor work. His normally stooped shoulders are square and high, and his pasty winter complexion has taken on a light bronze sheen. “You have to admit, it’s kind of ironic that we’re the ones having a hard time adjusting to life at Man Camp.” She laughs. “The men seem to be thriving while we’re locked in the kitchen.”
“Yeah. It’s fucking hilarious,” Martha says.
“Come on. A little poetic justice is only fair.”
“I guess I don’t care about fair.”
Cooper and Adam amble across the lawn, stopping in front of them.
“Would you look at all those stars,” Adam says, letting out a low whistle.
“Not a sight you get to see much of in the big city, huh, Martha?” says Cooper, looking up at the sky.
Martha thinks about the sights she hasn’t gotten to see much of in the country: watercress, newspapers with international coverage, naked men.
“To me,” he goes on dreamily, “stars are just about proof positive of God’s existence.”
“How’s that?” Lucy asks.
“You know, they’re simply totally unnecessary miracles spattered across the sky to remind us that He’s here to help if we get lost,” Cooper answers, studying the three-starred dagger that hangs from Orion’s belt.
A crescendo of croaking fills the silence that follows.
“Back in the big city, we call that a ‘conversation stopper,’ ” Adam says.
Cooper laughs, and then Lucy does, too, relieved that Adam’s joke has gone over well, pleased that the two of them are getting along.
“Well, I just came out to say good night,” Cooper says. “I’m dog tired from the day’s work.” He taps the toe of his boot against Martha’s shoe. “Thanks for the help with the cows this morning.”
“No problem. Good night,” Martha says, guessing it must be all of nine-thirty. She watches Cooper’s back get small as he walks toward the house. “Sweet dreams,” she adds quietly as the screen door springs closed behind him. She waits a few minutes before getting up and brushing the twigs and grass off the back of her pants. “I need to go check on my charges,” she says, taking a step toward the house. Then she hesitates. “Adam, do you think the men are having a good time?”
“Amazingly enough, I really do. They’re working their asses off, but they’re loving it, and I actually think they’re learning things, too,” he says, speaking from the perspective of the teacher he thinks he is. “Well, perhaps not Bryce. That guy’s too far gone, but three out of four isn’t bad.”
Or five out of six, thinks Martha, including Jesse and Adam in her private tally.
“There’s something about this place that gets you out of your head,” Adam continues. “Could just be the hard work and fresh air, but even I’m experiencing it. For the first time in forever, I haven’t been obsessing about my dissertation and yet somehow, subconsciously, I guess, I’m working through things.” He looks down at Lucy. “I’ve figured out the ending.”
“Are you serious?” Lucy says, propping herself up on her elbows.
Adam drops to his knees, explaining that he’s decided to use farming as the third business model for his dissertation, which perfectly illustrates his theory on procrastination.
Upon hearing phrases like behavioral predictiveness, procedural rationality, and economic anomalies, Martha says a sarcastic, “Fascinating,” and bids them a final good night.
Lucy takes Adam’s hand and pulls him the rest of the way to the ground. “I can’t believe you’re unstuck.”
“Well, believe it. The end’s in sight.” He rolls onto his back and pulls her on top of him. “And you know who I have to thank for that? You, for being so patient with me this last year. You, for dragging me along as an adjunct professor on this crazy vacation. You, for just being you.” He kisses her. “You know what the only problem with this place is? We don’t get enough time together.”
“I’m happy you like it here,” Lucy says, relishing the effects Adam’s words have on her guilty conscience. “I had my doubts, you know.” She props herself up on his chest and looks into his dark eyes. “And don’t you just adore Cooper now that you’ve gotten to know him better?”
“He’s a good guy.”
Lucy hears a but in Adam’s voice and asks him what it is.
He hesitates. “But . . . doesn’t any part of the scientist in you get wigged out by all his God stuff?”
The truth is Cooper’s outspoken religiousness has always wigged Lucy out, even as a college student, and yet now she feels the need to defend her old friend. “Jesus, Adam, it’s religion, not witchcraft.”
Adam’s look says, What’s the difference?
“Don’t be so narrow-minded. Historically, lots of great scientists were religious. Like Darwin,” Lucy says, wishing she could come up with someone more contemporary.
“Okay, let’s drop it,” Adam says, feeling Lucy’s mood shift away from romance. “Let’s
take a walk,” he proposes, pulling her to her feet. Taking her hand in his, he guides her out the gate and along the fence, past pasture after pasture, some full of cows, the moon rising and brightening their way.
When they come to a bend where the road dips, Lucy sees a small cluster of crocuses and snatches one. “There’s something about being around natural beauty that changes my outlook on life,” she says, handing him the flower.
“A biologist I know once told me that a flower is a plant’s way of making love.”
“I can’t believe you remember that.” Lucy circles her arms around his neck.
“I remember everything you tell me,” Adam says, gently backing her up against a nearby birch tree where he starts to kiss her.
Lucy returns the kiss and closes her eyes. She places her palms on the tree’s papery bark and reads hope into a row of raised bumps that feel like braille letters.
Adam’s fingers start to work the buttons of her blouse and Lucy’s knees soften. He pulls her shirt open and runs his hands along the intersection of her belly and belt, feeling the muscles contract beneath his touch. Then he steps back to take off his own shirt when an eerie who-ah-whoo causes Lucy’s eyes to snap open.
“What was that?”
Adam pulls her close to him. “Don’t worry, Luce,” he says, resting his chin on her head. “It’s just a great horned owl.” The men had heard the same call a few mornings ago and Cooper told them that these owls are all over the Manasseh Valley.
Lucy relaxes into Adam’s arms and he spreads his shirt on the ground, lowering her on top of it and lying beside her on the grass.
INSIDE THE HOUSE, Martha checks on the campers. Jesse, Simon, and Walter have already gone to bed, leaving only Kurt and Bryce to discuss the movie.
“So, what did you think?” she asks.
Kurt gives her a thumbs-down. “Too schmaltzy,” he says. “Though Louis Gossett Junior kicked ass as the gunnery sergeant.”
Man Camp Page 14