“You gals are going to love the old green barn. It’s a very special place,” Beatrice tells them. “You’ll understand when you see it.”
“Why isn’t it used anymore?” Martha asks.
“We still use it,” Beatrice says. “We pen the calves there and store hay in the winter. Nothing on this farm ever goes to waste. It’s just not the main barn anymore.”
“Why are the calves separated from the rest of the herd?” Martha asks.
“Because we’re a dairy,” Beatrice says slowly, regarding Martha with bland bovine patience. “Would you have us feed our profits to the calves?”
Martha’s cheeks flush, but she still doesn’t get it.
“What exactly do you think calves eat?” Beatrice asks.
Lucy pantomimes milking and, humiliated, Martha finally understands.
They pass deceased tractors and broken-down mowers with blades that look old enough to be museum artifacts, and Martha fantasizes that someday Beatrice, too, will be a rusted relic of Tuckington’s past.
They’re almost to the top of the hill when Beatrice mentions that Jolene will be joining them. “She’ll be such a help. She’s a real whiz at parties.”
Martha searches her pockets for her cigarettes, which she finds in her jacket.
“To me, Jolene epitomizes what a woman should be,” Beatrice says. “She’s brilliant and talented, and yet still has enough charm to make any man feel smarter and taller and better-looking than he actually is.”
“That’s quite a skill,” remarks Martha, imagining a sea of Lilliputian men around her ankles. “What does Jolene do for a living?” Martha imagines she’s a cupcake froster.
“She’s a livestock veterinarian.”
When they get to the top of the hill, they see the old timber-frame barn nestled into the slope below them. It’s so perfectly dilapidated and picturesque that it seems more like a romantic notion of a barn than an actual place where cows live. The barn is rustic and simple, with a slightly bowed roof and huge wagon doors opened wide and welcoming. They enter and walk down a central aisle on either side of which are stalls where calves are kept; above them is the huge hayloft where the party will take place. Their arrival disturbs swifts and starlings, which swoop out through the enormous side windows from where the hay is pitched to wagons below. From inside, the barn looks like a great upturned boat, with rafters from front to back and thirty-foot-high ceilings. It smells like the very passage of time.
“Could there be a more perfect place for a party?” Martha asks.
For once, Beatrice agrees with her.
The afternoon is mild and a sweet-smelling breeze rustles hay on the floor. “How about we have the band at the far end, and the bar and food right here by the stairs,” Martha suggests, gesturing with her arms. She closes her eyes and pictures how the barn will look from the outside when it’s full of people dancing, and how the light and noise will contrast with the dark and quiet of the rest of the farm.
“I’m afraid that would never do,” a voice from behind them says.
Lucy and Martha turn around. The voice belongs to a ripe young woman with an abundance of wavy chestnut brown hair and adorable dimples. She’s sitting on a square bale of hay to one side of the stairs, and Lucy and Martha realize they must have walked right past her.
“Jolene, honey,” Beatrice says, walking toward her with outstretched arms. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Just a few minutes,” Jolene says, springing up to greet Beatrice, after which she saunters toward Lucy and Martha. “I hope you don’t mind my adding my two cents. I just think it would be a mistake to create a logjam at the entrance. You’d be smarter to put the food closer to the band, to keep things circulating.” She shakes Lucy’s hand first, then turns to Martha. “So you’re Martha.”
Her voice is like a lullaby, musical and calming at once. Jolene is extremely pretty, with the type of smooth skin, blue eyes, and shiny hair that can only be described as wholesome. “The problem with putting it where you suggest is that it will cut into the dance floor,” Martha says. She points to a spot halfway in between. “What about there?”
“Um. Not a good idea,” Jolene says.
“Definitely not,” Beatrice agrees.
Jolene shows Martha two massive cutouts in the floor. “No reason a city girl would know about them,” she says. “They’re for lowering hay.” Her laugh tinkles. “They certainly make for a hazardous dance floor!”
Martha sees their point.
“Thank God you’re here, honey,” Beatrice says to Jolene. “We’d have men falling through the cracks without you!”
Martha joins Lucy, who’s standing off at a distance, staring out one of the side windows.
Beatrice and Jolene don’t seem to notice their absence and continue to make decisions as if they share one big party-planning brain: “Tables here?” “Absolutely.” “Flowers at the top of the stairs?” “Perfect.”
“Don’t we get any say in this party?” Martha asks.
“Not by spacing out over here,” Lucy says. “Get back in there and stand up to them.”
Martha takes a deep breath. Be assertive. You’re Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, she tells herself, but with underwear. She knows it’s the wrong casting decision and lights up a cigarette for courage. With her first inhale, she feels some relief; with her second, the tension is blowing right out of her body. It’s just a party, she reminds herself. Then she hears a shriek.
“Are you completely out of your mind?” Beatrice screams. “Who smokes in a barn? You want to burn this place to the ground?”
Martha looks stricken. Her eyes start to water and as she races downstairs and out of the barn, she overhears Beatrice cackle and say something about needing to start a Woman Camp.
Lucy chases after Martha, catching up just outside the barn. “What a complete bitch,” she says, though even she can’t believe that Martha lit up in the barn. They sit down on the hillside. “You okay?”
Martha shakes her head no. “You know the worst thing about the South? Southern women.”
As if on cue, Jolene and Beatrice exit the barn.
“Now, Martha, I’m sorry if I startled you,” Beatrice says. “It just took me by surprise that anyone could do anything so . . . so . . .”
Martha rises and toes her cigarette out in the dirt in front of her. “May I have a word with you in private?” She leads Beatrice around to the other side of the barn. “I’d like to know why you veto every idea I come up with.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Beatrice says.
“I don’t think I am. What is it you don’t like about me?”
“Dear, I don’t know you well enough to not like you. Now, I’m sorry if you don’t like that I’m particular about not burning down barns, but that’s just the way I am.”
Martha shuts her eyes. The conversation is going nowhere.
“And frankly,” Beatrice adds, lifting her chin defiantly, “I’m not used to being addressed this way and I don’t like it.” She turns abruptly and walks away from Martha, back around the barn. She starts up the hill and toward the road that leads to the farmhouse.
“Stay,” Martha whispers to Tor and Tap in an attempt to enlist them on her side, but they dash after their mistress.
“What on earth did you say to Beatrice?” Jolene asks Martha.
“Sadly, not half of what I wanted to.”
“She’s seventy years old!” Jolene says, talking to Martha as if she were a child. “There’s no need to be disrespectful.” She jogs ahead to catch up to Beatrice.
“Please tell me that woman isn’t staying for dinner,” Martha says to Lucy. “The idea of watching her flirt with Cooper . . .”
“Don’t worry about Jolene,” Lucy says, as they begin reluctantly following them back to the house, a few paces behind. “She’s no threat. Cooper likes you.”
“No threat,” Martha says, watching Jolene’s perfectly shaped bottom sway above her long, coltish legs.
“No threat. No threat.”
When the four women are almost to the driveway, Cooper’s truck comes barreling around the bend in the opposite direction. Adam’s beside Cooper in the passenger’s seat and the rest of the campers follow in the second truck.
“I wonder why they’re back so early,” Martha says.
Cooper slows down to say a quick hello, smiling politely at Jolene but saving his conversation for Martha. “I hope you understand if we’re a little late for supper,” he says. “The boys and I have a few things to take care of.”
When Adam waves to Lucy, Jolene assumes she’s the object of his greeting and gives him an enthusiastic wave back.
Lucy feels the hairs on her arm lift. “Did you see that?” she whispers to Martha.
“She’s no threat,” Martha says, imitating Lucy. “No threat!” COOPER’S OFFICE IS CRAMPED and filthy, with yellowed milking charts tacked to the walls and a decade’s worth of National Dairyman clippings scattered on the shelves. The men awkwardly arrange themselves on the banged-up furniture: a steel desk, a dented file cabinet, and three stools. Cooper, Adam, and Kurt stand, leaning against the walls.
“Where do we begin?” asks Cooper, suddenly overwhelmed.
“Why don’t you start by telling us where you think things went wrong,” suggests Jesse.
With that, Cooper begins to unload. He tells them that since he took over the farm at the time of his father’s death, profits have slowly and steadily fallen. He doesn’t understand why; he’s doing everything exactly the same as his father did: same number of cows, same acreage used for crops, same blend of feed, same trucking company, same processing plant, same type of cows, same breeding schedule, same everything.
“That might be your problem right there,” Adam says. “It sounds like you’re farming imitatively rather than creatively.”
“It’s the only way I know,” Cooper says.
“It’s not always a bad thing,” says Kurt, “but chances are, you’re missing some opportunities.”
From there, with Cooper’s okay, the men agree to launch into an intensive fact-finding mission and question every standard operating procedure in effect at Tuckington Farm. They work all evening and through much of the night, and do the same the next day. Cooper has his regular farmhands resume their duties so that the campers can spend their time studying milking charts, checking out competing processing plants and dairy co-ops, going online to research feed.
The men calculate the advantage of different land uses, consider cash crops, explore other breeds, and examine each phase of production. They find that over the past five years, Tuckington Farm’s milk production has dropped from an average of sixty-four pounds of milk per cow per day to sixty, with Simon reporting that the region’s average is sixty-eight. They learn that milk prices are highest in the fall and winter, coinciding with school lunches, indicating that Cooper should reverse his breeding schedule. Simon is especially pleased to have discovered the U.S. Geological Survey site, which color-codes land-use maps from satellites, providing detailed information on the chemical composition of soil to help determine where to plant which crops. They locate a dairy co-op that pays significantly more for raw milk than the dairy processor that Cooper’s family has worked with for generations.
“There’s one more thing I’d like you to consider,” Kurt says. “Agricultural software.”
“Sounds expensive,” Cooper says.
“It’ll be worth it,” explains Kurt, who called his company earlier and put a team of employees on the project. “The latest dairy software programs can streamline your operations in ways you can’t imagine. Picture each cow at Tuckington Farm having a transponder that keeps tabs on how much food she eats, how much milk she produces, the butterfat content of the milk, and so on. It’ll enable you to track breeding history, semen inventory, the whole shebang.”
Cooper still looks overwhelmed, but grateful.
“And if it’s all the same to you,” Kurt says, “I’d like to stick around for a couple of weeks and help you set up the system.” Before Cooper has a chance to object, Kurt says, “I’ve already cleared my work schedule and it would be my pleasure.”
CHAPTER 12
“Men marry women hoping they won’t change. Women marry men hoping they will.”
Anonymous
IT IS PAST MIDNIGHT when Martha sneaks down to the liquor cabinet, pours herself a rocks glass full of whiskey, and tiptoes back upstairs to her room. She brushes her hair and belts back enough of the drink to feel fortified, then opens the bedroom door and eases down the hallway, sliding along in stocking feet, a full moon illuminating her way. She passes the campers’ bedrooms, the loveseat where she and Cooper kissed, the hall bathroom with its dripping faucet, and stops in front of her destination: Cooper’s bedroom.
There she hesitates and has to remind herself that she’s going home in two days and needs to know where things stand. She empties the glass of whiskey, leaving the tumbler on the windowsill, and, without giving herself time to reconsider, grabs hold of the doorknob and slips silently into Cooper’s dark room, pulling the door shut behind her.
For several seconds, Martha stands perfectly still, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then, with one hand on the wall and the other waving back and forth in front of her to fend off furniture, she feels her way toward Cooper’s bed, progressing only a short distance when the top of her head bangs into something large and hard, jutting out above her. Startled, her first thought (albeit irrational) is that Beatrice has set a trap for her. She reaches up and runs her fingers through what feels like the coarse, dry hair of a man’s beard.
In her pocket she finds a book of matches and strikes one to discover that what she’s bumped into is the hardened muzzle of some oversize member of the deer family: a moose? an elk? She’s not sure which. Out of her peripheral vision, she sees that the entire wall is covered in hunting trophies—heads, antlers, an occasional whole animal—all casting gothic shadows of fairy-tale monsters, their lifeless glass eyes fixed on her.
It’s not until the match goes out on its fall to the floor that Martha realizes she has dropped it. Suddenly, she can’t reach Cooper fast enough and shuffles quickly toward him until her shins meet the side of his bed. There, her hands find space for her body to fit around his, and she climbs in, snuggling against his broad back. A subtle shift in his breathing indicates he’s awake.
“Just in case you’re used to buxom dairymaids climbing into bed with you,” she whispers, “it’s Martha.”
Cooper exhales relief and laughs. “I thought I was in the middle of some fantastic dream and all I could think was, ‘Don’t wake up!’ ” He turns over to face her. “Hello, Martha.”
“What’s with the Museum of Natural History overhead?”
“Got you into my bed lickety-split, didn’t it?”
“Hmm.”
Cooper wraps his arms around her. “I’m happy you’re here. I’ve been hoping something like this would happen.”
“Why haven’t you done anything about it, then?”
“That’s a good question,” he says, caught off guard. “I guess I was taught that a proper Southern gentleman shouldn’t crawl into his guest’s bed.”
“I suppose I have your mother to thank for that,” Martha says. Fucking Beatrice. “You know, this Southern-gentleman thing is starting to get on my nerves.”
“A gentleman is really just a patient wolf.”
“It happens to be a full moon tonight, wolfie.”
Cooper howls softly.
“I imagine your mother wouldn’t think much of a woman sneaking in here,” Martha says. She listens for the sound of slippered feet in the hallway.
“Can’t argue with you there,” Cooper says. “Being direct is not part of her repertoire. To her, the art of being feminine is knowing how to make a man think that doing things her way was his idea.”
Martha is impressed that Cooper understands this about his mother.
“T
here’s a lot of craftiness with Southern women,” he continues. “It’s why I happen to be head over heels for a Yankee myself.”
Martha smiles in the darkness.
“Remember what I told you at the Guggenheim? That I love how you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”
“No,” Martha lies.
“It’s true. You are fearless!”
They kiss.
“Cooper?”
“Yes?”
Martha rolls onto her back. “If you had any idea how much whiskey it took to get me in here, you’d know I’m not fearless.” Her eyes have finally adjusted to the darkness and she stares at a barely visible constellation of glow-in-the-dark planet stickers that must have been affixed to his ceiling when he was a child. She tries to summon up the little speech she prepared earlier in the day. “I think the only way to be fearless in love is to have total trust. I’ve spent the whole week making excuses for your behavior, but now I just want to know: Have you changed your mind about me?”
“Oh, Martha, it’s not that,” Cooper says, pulling her closer still. He kisses the side of her forehead. “You are fearless and I’m a complete idiot.”
They lie silently in the darkness for a long while; Martha focuses on the jutting chin of a black bear above her and Cooper struggles to find the right words.
“I’m not the kind of man who asks for help or talks things out,” he finally says. “I wasn’t brought up that way and it doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“Well, sneaking into your room in the middle of the night wasn’t exactly natural for me, either,” Martha says. “Now it’s your turn to go out on a limb.” She waits a beat. “I’ll get you some whiskey if you want.”
Cooper takes a deep breath. “I guess what you need to know is that I haven’t been totally up front with you.”
Martha stiffens, bracing herself for mention of Jolene.
Man Camp Page 17