Fiction by Lia Smith-Redmann
In the May after his sixth birthday, Hal’s first cow was born. He learned about it the next morning at the kitchen table as he slurped milk and corn flakes over his bowl. Mom and Dad held conference in the usual spot—by the sink—while Mom ripped open the mail with long, aggrieved looks, talking something about “bills.”
“The Dawsons lost a cow last night,” Dad said, rubbing his black stubble and not looking at Mom’s freshly opened letter. He gazed in the direction of the Dawsons’ fields through the soap-splattered window above the sink. “They’ve got an orphaned calf, not a day old. Trying to find someone to take it.”
“Will another cow in the herd take it?—Hal, chew with your mouth shut.”
“Not so far,” Dad said.
Hal saw his chance and considered what it would take to convince Mom and Dad he was up to taking on this task, but he only needed to ask, and that afternoon he stood in the mucky center of the Dawsons’ farm with Dad, sinking into the soft gravel, too eager to wait. Mr. Dawson hadn’t even gotten to the part where he offered Dad a beer before Hal was counting out his Christmas money into his palm, refusing even to see the calf first. Mr. Dawson stopped Hal after eighty bucks.
“A discount for your first cow, hey?” he chuckled, knocking the brim of Hal’s billed hat.
“Well, hey, thanks Dave,” Dad said. They shook hands. Mr. Dawson extended the courtesy to Hal as well. Hal mimicked his grip, and then gripped a little harder.
After pushing the calf across the gravel lot, Dad lifted the knobbly newborn into the backseat of the truck onto makeshift hay padding. Hal jumped up next to her, assuming his responsibility as her seatbelt. She bleated in his face, mooing like Mom’s blender when it got jammed. Her long-lashed eyes strained to look around. Hal saw his reflection in them.
After situating her in her new pen that night, Hal churned the colostrum mix in a bucket. She stood triangularly on rickety legs as he bottle-fed her, suckling so strongly that she nearly pulled the half-gallon jug right out of Hal’s arms.
“Hold on tightly,” Mom said, squatting beside him and adjusting the angle of the bottle. “She’s a hungry girl.”
Hal looked at the whites of the calf’s wild, arching eyes, arrested by the intensity of her awareness of him. She tossed her hard head and he stumbled back, overcome by her strength.
“It’s important to develop a good relationship with her now,” Mom added, “before she gets to be 1,500 pounds.”
Later that night, as he attempted to go to bed, Hal stirred between the sheets, wondering if his calf cried alone in her stall. Did cows understand death?
A minute later he was in the barn again, looking for a clean spot to lie in her stall as she nudged his legs, headbutting him for milk. Finally, he laid down next to her and covered them both with the afghan off the couch.
“It’s okay, Mayzie,” he mumbled to her, pulling the blanket up to their chins. Her body quivered next to his, and her breathing slowed.
Dad found them like that in the morning. Mom took a picture and put it up on the fridge, and promptly sent Hal off to bathe.
—
“I remember my first cow,” Grandma said. Hal looked over from where he stood, pressed against the cupboard, his hand scavenging for stale cookies. Mom often bought boxes of pastries with the Wowza! sale stickers on them, but they always expired before they could be eaten. Mayzie liked eating them by the handful though, folding them into her mouth with her giant, muscular tongue.
Grandma’s wheelchair was parked at the kitchen table; it was her last day before going into the home, so she was getting a special meal. She wasn’t usually a talkative woman, not since she’d gotten the shakes. Her floral, pee-like perfume permeated everything. She sat hunched over, folded and creased in too many places, like a potato that had sat in the cupboard too long. Her words shivered as she continued, “I was eight or so. I named her Bess. She was a Holstein. Nicest little cow there ever was.”
“Yeah?” said Mom, as she rubbed brown and green and yellow spices into the fresh pink chicken meat before her. “How long did you have Bess?”
“Oh,” quivered Grandma, “five years or so.”
“Yeah? What happened to her?”
Grandma grunted. “Coyotes got her. I went out in the morning to milk the cows. I ain’t seen anything so terrible since.” Her breaths rattled. “The field was red.”
“Oh no,” said Mom, politely aghast.
Hal squinted, looking Grandma up and down. Her droopy arms looked incapable of lifting a pillow, let alone a bucket of milk. Grandma showed her trembling palms as if to suggest a shrug.
Grandma didn’t speak again after that. She died the next morning in her hospital bed where they’d left her, just as dawn reached its blue fingers through her east-facing window.
Hal sank into Mom’s warm embrace after she told him, her work-worn shirt soft against his cheek, and her hand gentle as it stroked his straw-like hair. She said something about being at peace. Some perfunctory tears wetted Hal’s cheek, but he looked past the cradle of her arms, at Dad. Dad stood at the sink, trying to pour himself another cup of coffee. Only a black dribble came out. Hal wondered if Dad was sad about his own mother dying.
Hal pushed himself away from Mom and wiped his eyes as Dad snuck out the side door off the kitchen, muttering something about feeding the cows, his face hidden behind the popped collar of his Carhartt jacket.
—
Hal sat atop Mayzie’s broad back as she grazed. It was his eighth birthday, and his friend Casey walked alongside them with a stick in his hand, swatting leaves, reiterating the hunting trip he went on with his dad a few weeks ago. He described the gun, the deer, the shot. Earlier he’d said it was a “clean shot” and that she “went down instantly,” but then he went on about how they tracked her down by her trail of blood.
“It was a massive doe. Like, this big, but bigger.” Then he described the field dressing, which he did “totally by himself.”
Hal had seen the pictures of Casey and his dad on Facebook, holding the doe’s lifeless head up from her diminished body. It was a small doe.
“Have you ever gutted a cow?” Casey asked suddenly. Whap! He whipped the stick. Mayzie startled, jostling Hal on her shoulders.
“No.”
“Huh.” Casey had just discovered the cow pies, which were apparently more fun to hit than leaves. The quiet between them stretched. This wasn’t exactly how Hal had expected this morning to go. Usually when they saw each other, Hal ended up standing on the fence at Casey’s farm, watching him lope around on his chestnut gelding, Colby, for hours. Colby made Mayzie less impressive at school. Hal would have been lying if he said he hadn’t asked Dad for a horse at least once, unsuccessfully.
He sighed.
“Want to ride Mayzie?” he asked, patting the spot behind him.
Casey looked warily at Mayzie, almost blankly, as though not seeing her at all. “Your cow’s fat.”
“She’s pregnant, dummy,” snapped Hal. “And her calf will also be part of my herd.”
Casey went back to whipping up the nearest cow pie in silence.
“So,” Hal said, “do you want to go back to your place? Take Colby out?”
Casey shook his head, his gaze decidedly lowered.
This surprised Hal. Casey had stopped meandering, and instead stood stock still, chin to chest, tracing the stick around in the ground.
“Why not?”
Casey adjusted his camo jacket. “Colby was euthanized.”
Hal blinked. He screwed his lip, debating whether Casey would think him stupid. Tentatively he asked,
“What does that mean?”
Casey shrugged. “Dunno.” He stood like that for another moment, then said, “I think it means he got killed.”
Hal’s brows furrowed. He absently scratched Mayzie behind her ear. She lifted her head as she chewed cud, pleased. When Casey didn’t elaborate, Hal asked quietly,
“What do you mean? By coyotes or something?”
Casey shook his head. “He hurt his leg last week. I was—” He broke off. Swallowed. “It’s a hard life for horses with broken legs. They…it ain’t right. The vet came out and then took Colby to the hospital and…when we got home my dad said I won’t see him again.”
Hal’s chest twisted. This seemed unjust. Wasn’t there a way to fix Colby? Surely that couldn’t be the end. One little broken leg, and the whole horse had to go?
He didn’t get to ask these questions—Casey had his back to Hal, whap, whap, whapping the ground viciously as he walked away.
—
Hal fiddled with the strap of his car seat, watching the snow drifts clinging to the fence posts streak by.
“How many coyotes are there?” he said suddenly, gazing into the dark, naked fields. Dad shifted his hands on the steering wheel. “Plenty.”
“Are there coyotes by us?”
“Oh, sure.”
Hal twisted a hangnail as Dad flicked the blinker and they drove up between the barn and the house. The pale headlights skirted over the pasture. Mom gasped and grabbed Dad’s shoulder.
“Honey, is that a baby?” she said, pointing. “Hal, I think Mayzie had her calf!”
Hal sat up straight, ripping off his hangnail. “Where?” he cried, grabbing the door handle, which Dad had child-locked. “Already!”
“Ah, shit!” Dad said.
He parked the truck and they climbed out, following the high beams into the field, where Mayzie stood protectively over a small brown lump. Dad pushed his hands into his pockets and braced against the cold, shifting anxiously.
“Calf’s not standing up,” he muttered. Mayzie’s wide ears were splayed at him. “It’s not nursing.”
Eventually, Dad crossed the ten feet between them to reach the baby. Mayzie charged, bulldozing her blunt head into his ribs—Dad went flying. Mom shuddered and gasped. Hal’s heart beat wildly, nearly choking him, but he steamrolled his expression, letting Mom grab his shoulder.
“Todd!” she called. “You okay?”
“Yup!” Dad’s voice was strained as he limped back towards them. “Goddammit.”
In the same moment, Hal walked all the way up to Mayzie’s nervous figure, received her approving lick, leaned down, and examined the baby. He straightened.
“She’s alive!”
—
With Hal’s special blessing they loaded the calf onto a sled and pulled her into the barn. Hal quickly became aware of her unusual stillness.
“Is she okay?” He touched her wet, matted fur as she convulsed on the hay. He winced, caught off-guard by the grotesqueness of her weakness.
Dad shook his head. “She’s hypothermic.”
“I’ll fill the tub,” Mom said.
She retrieved a large green bin from the corner and fed the top of the hose over the side. As it swelled with warm water, Hal and Dad submerged the shivering calf into the bin.
“Hold her head above the water,” Dad said. Hal braced her heavy head with both arms, held in place by her unseeing eyes, cloudy like aged glass.
Mom dusted off her ripped jeans and marched towards the door. “I’ll go fix some coffee.”
Dad let out a breath, nodding sagely.
“We’re gonna need it.”
—
Finally, the calf started twitching in the hay-littered pool. Mom had returned. She knelt beside Hal with a small pitcher and gently pushed her finger into the calf’s limp mouth. Her face went gray.
“Todd, she’s not suckling,” Mom announced. “Hold her head up, Hal.”
Hal did as he was told and supported the baby as Mom poured lukewarm coffee past the calf’s unwilling lips. “A little caffeine will help her get on her feet.”
Hal didn’t leave the tub once. Mayzie was brought in and tied up in the neighboring stall, where she loomed over Hal’s shoulder.
The calf spent the next four hours swaddled in blankets, her head on Hal’s lap as he blasted her with Mom’s blow dryer at the taut end of an extension cord.
“What should your name be?” he asked, shaking the dryer over her ears.
Suddenly she sat up, shedding the blankets, and feebly pushed herself to her forelimbs, and finally up to her feet. Hal tossed the blow dryer aside.
“Yes! Mom, Dad, look—”
The calf stumbled, blinked lazily, and collapsed. Dad’s expression darkened.
“She has weak calf syndrome,” Mom explained as she hugged Hal to her side and rubbed his shoulder. The joy of the moment soured in his mouth. “She doesn’t have basic instincts. It’s like her brain hasn’t told her body that she’s been born.”
She and Dad disappeared around the corner. Hal sat with the calf, scratching the tuft of brown hair between her eyes. She leaned her tired body against him.
“Everything’s okay,” he whispered. “I’m here. And look! Your mom’s right there. You’re going to love cookies—once you can eat them. Mayzie loves cookies. We’ll do a show together for 4-H when you’re big enough. You’ll be great. How does that sound?”
The air puffing from her strawberry-skin nose blew warmly on his hand. A draft of sleepiness washed over him, but Dad reappeared with a white cotton rope.
“Come on and help me with this.”
Hal’s heart climbed steadily into his throat as Dad had him wrap the rope around the calf’s chest, then twist and loop it around her torso, then lay her onto her side. Dad squatted a few feet away and pulled on his end of the rope.
“Wait!” Hal gasped. “Are you euthanizing her?”
Dad gave him a funny look. “Huh?”
Hal’s arms were uncomfortably stiff by his sides. He swayed, back and forth, then asked quietly,
“Are you hurting her?”
“No,” Dad murmured. “It’s called the Madigan squeeze. The pressure simulates the feeling of being back in the birth canal.” He gestured towards her—she’d fallen almost immediately into a trance-like sleep. “Hopefully this’ll snap her out of it.”
After an eternity, they removed the rope. Hal got up to help her, but Dad held him back. She didn’t spring up; instead she stumbled strangely, not even acknowledging her mother on the other side of the gate, as though milk was the last thing on her mind. She fell, surprised, as though the ground made its brutal way to her and not the other way around. Hal’s heart sank.
“It doesn’t always work after one time,” Dad said. “We’ll wait and try again.”
Wait they did, then they tried again. Hal took a turn at the rope, gently leaning his body weight away from her. They removed the rope. She woke again, but nothing changed. After another hour, they tried again, this time with Dad at the other end. Hal leaned against the wall, limp, as though stuffed with cotton. He saw darkness around the edges of his vision. His eyes slid shut.
Mom’s hand ruffling his hair brought him back. His eyes snapped open.
“Hal, hon?” she said. “Do you want to go to bed?”
“No.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes. The calf was still immobile. It was their third try with the rope. Mayzie stretched her nose through the bars, sniffing.
“You know, Hal,” said Dad softly, “I’ve got it from here. Go on to bed.”
—
Hal stumbles down the stairs and makes for the kitchen, past the fridge plastered with photos of him and Mayzie. As he snatches some stale cookies from the cupboard, he fleetingly notices the empty egg bowl. Has no one been to the coop yet? Even the coffee pot hasn’t moved from where it was last night.
He hobbles towards the door and wades through the boot-pile obstructing it, blinking concussive dreariness out of his eyes. Never before has Mom let him stay up so late, past midnight, into that untouchable time of morning reserved for the dead.
He pulls on his boots, wrenches open the door, and tramples towards the barn, kicking snow back onto his bare ankles.
He passes the green tub and goes to the stall in the back, where Mom’s blow dryer and the white rope are discarded on the hay. The pen is otherwise empty. Hal darts between each stall, peering through the gates.
“Hal?”
He turns towards Mom’s voice. A full pail of milk bumps against her knee as she lumbers around the corner, hunched, bedraggled, like the inside of a wet glove.
He announces, “I came to see the calf.” Mom grimaces.
“Hal, hon…”
“Is she outside?” He bolts past her, out the backside of the barn. Dad is standing there, looking towards the sunrise.
And there she is, like a crumpled flower, curled up in the wide, endless bed of white, her legs tucked beneath her. The sun rises behind her, casting her sweet face in blue shadow. Her eyes are closed. She’s unnaturally still. Hal watches her nose, her ears, her back. Was that a twitch? He glances back at Dad, squinting. He turns back. Maybe she is only sleeping.
An ache blooms deeply in Hal’s chest from a place he cannot identify. It thunders so heavily that his knees weaken. He traipses forward and drops before her. He strokes her back.
She is… He knows this. He knows this. He is shivering, though he has forgotten that he is cold, and snow is soaking into his blue tractor pajamas. She is cold. He knows this.
Maybe she is only sleeping.
He fiercely wipes his eyes. Mayzie comes up beside him, bumping his cheek with her cold nose as she sniffs the thing on the ground and gives it a trying lick. Hal threads his fingers into the calf’s fur, gripping onto her.
He’s not sure when Mayzie walks away, but he’s still kneeling there when his parents take her place. Minutes pass. He feels the disrespect of the birds singing cheerfully from the fence line. Fury climbs into his throat.
“Can we—” His voice breaks. “Goddammit.” He pushes his fingers into his eyes. “Can w–we bur–bury her?”
His mom breathes, “Honey, I think the ground is too hard for that.”
Hal pushes himself to his feet and storms to the barn, where he grabs the nearest shovel. He labors through the snow to the corner of the field, the highest part of the pasture, on a little hill, where she’ll always be touched first by the sunrise.
The first few shovelfuls are just snow—the spade wobbles with its weight as he slings it off to the side. The blade hits the frozen dirt with a ping. He thinks his mom is calling out to him, but he can’t hear her though the rushing in his ears. He digs in again, but the shovel bounces off the ground. He turns it on its side and starts hacking, as though he could split the earth and it would graciously open.
The shovel is pulled out of his hands. Hal whirls on his dad, then immediately turns away. His dad flips the shovel in his hand, glances at Hal, and walks away.
Mayzie stands between Hal and her baby, watching with concern. He has embarrassed himself in front of her. He wipes his nose and returns to her withered flower, who still hasn’t moved.
There’s clanging and clunking in the barn, and then the morning rattles as a deep engine churns and roars. Hal turns as the skid steer emerges from the barn, bumbling over the threshold, led by a giant spade attachment. His dad pilots it up the hill, lifts the mechanical arms, and slices into the ground where Hal’s sorry shovel had left a mark. A wedge of dirt comes out, then another, and another.
His dad kills the engine and the morning silence returns. Hal is queasy as his mom helps him carry the calf up the hill. She is heavy without life. They lower her into the hole and Hal climbs down, into the dank smell of earth. He arranges her head and legs just so. Finally, he put his head to hers, gives her one last squeeze, and climbs out of the grave.
His dad stands like a pillar, hands deep in his pockets and his hat pulled low.
“Are you sure she’s dead?” Hal whispers.
It’s a stupid question, but now that she’s in her final resting place, he sickens at the thought of dumping all that dirt on top of her.
His dad nods. “Yes.”
Hal can’t suppress the sniffles and the wetness of his face anymore. Every time he swipes at his eyes and nose, the truth becomes even more apparent. He turns away, wanting to disappear.
“You hold a lot of lives in your hands,” his dad says suddenly, gazing down. “As a farmer. Then you hold them again at the end of their lives. Death happens all the time. And eventually it gets easier.”
Hal’s dad isn’t usually easily read, but today his squinty eyes are bright with a plea. Hal shuffles towards him, and his dad wraps his long arms around him, hugging Hal against his cold, rough jacket. Hal’s nose presses against the canvas, inhaling that sweet smell of diesel and hay. He squeezes his eyes shut, and the onslaught is unstoppable, like a tide that does not ebb. Hal’s fists nearly freeze where they grip onto his dad’s blotched jacket.
When the tears are replaced by emptiness, his dad gets back into the skid steer and scoops the soil back into the ground. Once it is done, Hal attempts to replace chunks of frozen ground back where they belong. Even so, the disrupted earth and tire tracks are a black stain on the white fields, like a bleeding wound that Hal can see from his bedroom, from the kitchen, from the school bus.
—
Mom has led Mayzie back into the barn and arranged a stool and a bucket below Mayzie’s swollen udder. Mayzie watches Hal out of the corner of her eye as he slouches forward, reaches into his coat pocket, and pulls out a handful of crushed cookies. She can’t help but stick out her tongue, wanting them. She swallows them all.
“She has to be milked,” Mom says.
The absence in the room is glaring.
Mom stands rubbing Mayzie’s back, watching Hal with a deep furrow in her brow. Even she looks aged. Hal rubs his sticky hands together, nods, and walks around Mayzie. He squats on the stool, silent. The milk squelches into the bottom of the bucket.
—
For three days, Mayzie’s hoarse moos echo across the empty fields.
