Do something!<\/em><\/p>\nI rub the base of her spine to calm her down. \u201cI\u2019m here,\u201d I say. \u201cEverything will be all right. Don\u2019t worry.\u201d<\/p>\n
And I tell her how great she is. Best cow in the barn. When she freshens she\u2019ll do a hundred pounds a day, and I will make sure she gets everything she needs. I have been to Fleet & Farm and bought Kow Kare, full of Vitamins A, D and E. There is liquid calcium standing by in case she goes down with milk fever. For respiratory problems, or if her calf gets scours, I have antibiotics. All the contingencies are covered, I tell myself. Nothing can happen that I can\u2019t handle. The pain in my head increases, so I go to the milkhouse, to the medicine cabinet, and grab the bottle of Bufferin and take three with milk from the bulktank. And I think: What if it stays so cold the tractor won\u2019t start again today? What if the electricity goes off once more? It was off ten hours yesterday. What if?<\/p>\n
After I feed the cows, I put more straw under Minna in case she wants to lie down. Again she dances the two-step. When the contractions subside she goes back to inhaling hay as fast as she can. It is one of the things I have noticed over the years\u2014the way cows will eat ravenously when they are distressed. Fear is gluttonous. Minna turns her head and looks at me, her nostrils flaring. A sheaf of hay in her jaw, working like a mower\u2019s cut-bar side to side. Her rough tongue shattering leaves. Her eyes are huge and rolling, showing startled whites.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy coo, my honey,\u201d I sing, rubbing her backbone, rubbing her flanks.<\/p>\n
I leave Minna and turn on the air-compressor, bring out the De Laval milk machines. It is six in the morning. I worry that my headaches and exhaustion may be symptoms of something serious. Or am I just too old to be doing this? Who starts dairy farming at forty? What fool would do that? I have no insurance and there is no money for doctors. I rub a frosted window with my sleeve and see a diffused light over the southeast horizon, the fields stretching to the forty acres of woods that I own. The trees are naked against the morning sky. Branches reaching like frozen beggars. All over Wisconsin cows and farmers are waiting anxiously for this Arctic bubble to pass. Moving the milkers, I slip the inflations on the teats of the next cow and feel an electric tingle in my hands. My palms are peeling. Dead dots of skin beg to be bitten. I nibble my palms, bite my fingernails. The lungs of the milkers breathe and the exhaust fans whir.<\/p>\n
The barn smells of hay, warm cow, methane. Again I look out the window at the fields faintly blue in the swelling light and I wonder what if some limb cracks and brings the lines down? What if the rafters give way and the snow comes in and drowns the hay in the loft? What if I run out of propane? What if the cold lasts another week? Or two? People die this way and no one knows it until the mailman sees their mail piling up. But the snow on the roads can\u2019t last forever. Surely the plows will be out today or tomorrow. The roads will be opened in two or three days at the most. Won\u2019t they? I\u2019ve got cans of soup in the pantry. I\u2019ve got cereal. Lord knows I\u2019ve got milk. Shifting a milk machine to Curious, I recall when she was off her feed last year and her production fell to hardly more than a quart a day. There was no apparent reason for her condition, and my mind turned over images like Taro cards for cows: mastitis thick with garget, full of white cells and fever, hard quarter feverish. Metal disease? A tiny wire gouging her stomach? Which one? First? Second? All four, maybe? Or maybe hoof rot, woody tongue, Johne\u2019s disease, a torsion? It was one of the few times I have had to call the vet in. He came out and diagnosed a displaced abomasum. Together the vet and I rolled her, trying to release the gas and get things back in place. But it didn\u2019t work, and finally there was nothing to do but cut her open. \u201cCut her or ship her,\u201d is what he said. It was going to cost too much, but I gave him permission and watched him operate, watched him give Curious just enough anesthetic to numb her nerves but keep her standing in her stall. His scalpel cut a great gash in her hide, scarlet meat and dull white fat. The wound almost bloodless. \u201cShall I cut you a steak?\u201d he asked, grinning. The incision was shaped like a giant vagina through which a micro-fog was exhaling. The fog reeking of wet organs hungry for life. The vet released the gas from her floating stomach and tied it down. Stitches hung like spider legs from the bottom of her belly. More stitches climbed up her side. Dopey-eyed and listlessly chewing cud, she was unaware of what the vet had done. And now, a year later, she has had a calf and milks well enough to earn her keep. There is nothing but the faintest scar to remind me of how she cheated death. That\u2019s the thing I know about cows now. Given half a chance they will pull through. They are so tough so resilient, my bovinities. It was Wes Johnson who told me that I loved my cows too much. He said I shouldn\u2019t give them names, only numbers. \u201cYou gotta grow calluses on your heart if you\u2019re going to last,\u201d he said. That was the day the cow named Jewel was down with sciatic nerve damage after giving birth. I had driven the tractor over to the Johnson farm to borrow a bottle of calcium because I thought Jewel had milk fever. Wes came back with me and we dripped the calcium into Jewel\u2019s carotid artery. Then tried to get her up. She couldn\u2019t get up no matter how we pushed and prodded. Her right hind-leg pawed helplessly, like a dog wanting to shake hands, and I told Wes it was her sciatic nerve. He agreed. We put the iron O rings around her hips and hooked the rings to a chainfall hanging from a beam in the ceiling. I cranked Jewel to her feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe stands or she\u2019s dead,\u201d Wes told me. \u201cThat\u2019s the rule for dairymen.\u201d<\/p>\n
She stood with the help of the cowlift. But she was very unsteady. She stared at me with expectation and wonder, but I could do nothing except rub the base of her spine and tell her everything would be okay. Her rear end listed starboard, her sciatic leg continually jabbing the air. I massaged the thigh and hip, digging for their chemic cores, hoping to make the blood flow warm with healing power. But it did no good.<\/p>\n
\u201cNaw, I\u2019ve seen this too many times,\u201d Wes said. \u201cShe\u2019ll cost money and have to be slaughtered anyway. When you get this sort of thing, it\u2019s best to shoot her. What we need to do is get her to the door, get her outside, where we can shoot her and hook her to the tractor and haul her out of the barnyard. Might as well get it over with. Times like this a farmer\u2019s got to show no mercy, Duff.\u201d<\/p>\n
I said we should give her more of a chance. Give her a week. But he said it was hopeless. She wouldn\u2019t be paying her way. He knew that I was barely breaking even. Feeding a cow that couldn\u2019t produce was self-defeating. He had cranked her down by then and released her from the stanchion and together we pushed and pulled and tried to scoot her towards the door, but she was too heavy. Then Wes used an electric prod, shocking her. She flopped forward on her side, like a seal. The prod zapping her hips and spine, blue flames leaping from her hide. Desperately she tried to rise, her legs flapping, bouncing her thousand pounds along the concrete floor. I could see she wasn\u2019t going to make it. I called a halt. I told Wes no more shocks. Let\u2019s shoot her where she lies and we can snake a rope around and pull her out. I went in the house and got my rifle. When I got back I knelt beside her. Resting her anvil head against my thigh, she relaxed as I stroked her. Her eyes closing. And, angry with myself, I covered my face and wept. And Wes said, \u201cWhat did I tell you? You gotta grow calluses if you\u2019re going to last.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not shooting her,\u201d I told him. \u201cLet\u2019s get her back in her stall.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus, Duff, you really don\u2019t belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was new to farming then and didn\u2019t know how resilient cows could be. But I was convinced I shouldn\u2019t listen to Wes too quick with the trigger. I can shoot or ship a cow if forced to, but from Jewel on, I have always given the sick ones every chance. And most of the time they\u2019ve come back. Jewel healed. One evening a month after her leg failed her, I went to make my last rounds before going to bed, and there she was standing on her own, the right hip scarred by the cowlift, but strong enough to support her. I started laughing. I shouted her name and pounded her rump. She looked at me as if I were crazy. She got strong again. She stood in line in her stanchion to get milked. Cows do that\u2014they surprise you. For a while anyway. For a while, just like old and ailing humans, the inevitable might be postponed. If cared for properly, most dairy cows will average five to six years or more of production before going to Packerland.<\/p>\n
Curious flicks her tail over my arm. \u201cYou gals are lucky to have me,\u201d I say. \u201cI\u2019m a sucker, that\u2019s what I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curious shakes her head. \u2014No you\u2019re not, she says. You need us! And, of course, she is absolutely right.<\/p>\n
When the milking is over, I turn my attention back to Minna. Her water has broken and the birthing sack, a gray-pink membrane, is tapping at her heels. She has quit trying to get the baby out. Her muzzle is buried inthe hay trough.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis ain\u2019t good,\u201d I tell her. My head starts throbbing again. The nerves along my spine twitter as they always do when I think that something might be too much to handle. Standing behind Minna, I tell myself that this is it. I can\u2019t take anymore. Life is too hard. I\u2019m so goddamn old and tired. Running a dairy farm is a constant war. Well, maybe not. There are good timestoo, but this is one of the bad times. \u201cThis is one of those moments of truth,\u201d I say aloud, \u201cAnd I need help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pacing the aisle, I keep thinking of Cristobell in the cold woods and working like a man possessed to pull her calf out. That baby was backwards. And after two or three hours I managed to get its hind legs up and into the steaming air. The rest was fairly simple. So I need to put my hand in Minna and find out if history is repeating itself. Stripping off chore jacket, shirt, undershirt, I go to the sink in the milkhouse, scrub my right arm with soap and hot water. I go back to Minna, leaving my hand slippery with suds.<\/p>\n
My hand slips down a tunnel warm and easy and comes quickly to a formless mass of hair, muscle and bone. As I move my fingers around, I make out the boundary of a shoulder. Twisted backwards behind it is the calf\u2019s neck and head. The baby is bent like a horseshoe. It\u2019s about as bad as it can be. I have never had to deal with anything so complicated. I could get the vet to come out when the road is cleared, but that would probably be too late. And where would I get the money to pay him, anyway? For six months I\u2019ve been in the hole and living on bank loans. I need Minna\u2019s milk. I need Friendly and Big Mama and Beth to freshen too. They are all due. Minna stares at me, her eyes bulging with questions. \u201cI know, I know,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u2014Get it out of me!<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s jammed, Minna. I might have to cut it up and take it out in pieces. I\u2019ve never done that before. I don\u2019t really know how to. I might cut you up inside. This is awful. Maybe I better just call the vet and pray he can make it in time.\u201d<\/p>\n
I look around as if someone is there to tell me what to do. I could call Wes. No, not him. He\u2019d end up killing Minna for sure. There\u2019s Tom T or Ed Liska, but I am scared of what any of them might do. Farmers can\u2019t afford to mess around with stricken cows. There is nothing for it but to force the issue. If I don\u2019t, Minna will die and so will her baby. At least if she dies it won\u2019t be because I didn\u2019t try everything I could to save her. Slipping inside her again, I force my fingers between the wedged neck and the womb wall. I try to push the baby forward, but nothing moves. I want to get my fingers in the nostrils and use them to pull the head around. But I can\u2019t. Then Minna starts another contraction. She tightens her stomach and bears down. It feels like I\u2019m in a vise, someone turning the handle harder, crushing my hand. The blood feels ready to burst through the tips of my fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re making things worse!\u201d I yell. I struggle, cuss, groan until my strength and tolerance for pain wears out. I give up. I pull out. I turn in a circle, whipping my pulsating hand. There is blood in the sack flowing from Minna. Blood covers my hand and arm. Maybe I\u2019ve ruptured something inside her? I shake that thought from my mind and focus on how to get the calf unwound. And that\u2019s when I see the herding stick. It\u2019s the one I use to herd the cows, to tap them along when they\u2019re out in the pasture. It\u2019s in the corner next to the door. I pick it up and snap it over my knee. At both ends of a six-inch piece I tie baling twine. Then I force the stick, like a horse\u2019s bit, into Minna\u2019s mouth. I pull the twine over her head and use the other part of the stick, like the handle of an auger, twisting the twine behind her ears. Using more twine, I tie the stick to her neck. It\u2019s an old trick that Liska told me about. The pressure pulling on the cow\u2019s mouth will often lessen the force she uses bearing down. Minna doesn\u2019t like it at all. She shakes her head, her ears sounding like wooden clappers.<\/p>\n
Again my hand goes inside and feels the baby. I am able to push it forward slightly. I can almost get my hand around and slide it along the curve of the neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s working,\u201d I tell her. \u201cI can feel its ear! I got its ear in my hand!\u201d<\/p>\n
But the shaking of Minna\u2019s head causes the stick to work loose and the bit to fall out. The next thing I know she is crushing my fingers again. I retreat once more and yell at her, telling her to be still. Doesn\u2019t she know I\u2019m trying to help her? \u201cStupid cow! Quit shaking!\u201d She hangs her head. She snuffs hay.<\/p>\n
Walking to the far end of the barn, I look out the window at the fields of snow. Such a long winter. So much intense cold. \u201cDeal with it. Deal with it.\u201d That\u2019s what my grandfather, a farmer all his life, would tell me if he were alive. As if sensing the turmoil within the barn, a coyote howls. I\u2019ve heard that sound for months, the howl coming from somewhere around the southern curve, where the land plunges into the woods. I think of the coyote that followed the haybine last summer catching mice. And I wonder if the howl is hers. Sun spills over the windowsill and brightens the glass. I hear Minna shift again.<\/p>\n
\u2014Come here! she commands.<\/p>\n
I go back to the wooden bit, slip it in her mouth and tie it so tightly to her neck I\u2019m afraid I might choke her. Grabbing a two-foot piece of baling twine, I cinch one end around my hand and once more enter Minna. With the twine looped between two probing fingers, I place the heel of my hand against the calf\u2019s shoulder and push it as hard as I can. It shifts forward and gives me some wiggle room. Minna is busy fighting the bit in her mouth.<\/p>\n
Wedging my fingers between the canal and the calf\u2019s neck I slip them down a narrow passage. And then I feel the ear again. Then an eye. The nose, the nostrils. I slip the noose around the nose and tighten it.<\/p>\n
\u201cGot it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I push the calf forward, while my outside hand pulls the baling twine. Push and pull, push and pull, and slowly the head eases around. And finally faces the way out. Going back in with the twine and slipping the noose around the hooves I push and pull some more and ease the legs upward. I can see the hooves now, two yellow-white wedges. I pull them into the light. \u201cLet go now,\u201d I say, untying the wooden bit. \u201cI want you to bear down now. Bear down hard, Minna!\u201d<\/p>\n
As I pull on the little hooves, Minna does what I tell her and the calf slides through and into my arms, soaking me with warm birthing fluid. The calf is dead. Opening the legs I see I have a male. Now it\u2019s coyote food. Laying the dead calf in the aisle, I tell myself that at least Minna is still alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe calving is done,\u201d I tell her. \u201cIt\u2019s over, Minna.\u201d<\/p>\n
But even as I stand there panting and wishing I could take a bath and go to bed, I see a bubble pushing out of Minna\u2019s vagina. The bubble is purple. It gets bigger and bigger. Inside it I see a pair of hooves. \u201cI got another, I got twins,\u201d I say. \u201cNo wonder it was so jammed up in there! Minna, what\u2019re you doing, girl? Supercow or what?\u201d<\/p>\n
Breaking the sack, I grab the hooves and soon another baby is soaking in my arms. This one is a heifer. She\u2019s alive. There\u2019s a starburst on her forehead and her belly is white. The rest of her is black. \u201cGet a load of you!\u201d I say, rubbing the heifer with straw. I carry her around to the manger and set her in front of Minna, who gives the baby a good tongue-lashing, stimulating her blood. The other cows strain in their stanchions, nostrils flaring, smelling the calf and wanting to lick her.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got thirty-seven aunts,\u201d I say, feeling hopeful, even a little optimistic. In a while the baby is up, staggering cow-to-cow, getting sniffed, snorted at, and properly licked. She blinks at a brand new world.<\/p>\n
- Where am I?<\/p>\n
\u2022<\/p>\n
When their winter confinement is over, the herd is let out of the barn. Some of the younger ones go nuts and run like overgrown children back and forth over the pasture. They bawl. They butt each other. They kick up their heels. A few of them, as if by magic turned into bulls, mount their sisters. The older cows keep their dignity, moving away and browsing new tufts of grass. Along the pasture\u2019s southern peninsula, the trees are thickening with leaves. In the afternoon the herd gathers in the shade of those leaves to sleep, chew cud, stare lazily into space. The dawdling wind is soothing. We\u2019ll live forever like this, won\u2019t we? the cows always ask me.<\/p>\n
My little farm still has its crisis every other day or so\u2014one thing or another breaking down, this or that cow getting sick, a calf with pneumonia, bills coming in that I can\u2019t pay. But it isn\u2019t anything that breaks me yet. At this point in time I am unaware how right Wes Johnson is. I don\u2019t belong in farming. By May of next year, 1984, the farm will go under and everything will be auctioned off\u2014the cows, machinery, furniture\u2014and in the freedom of defeat I will leave Wisconsin for what will happen over the next few years.<\/p>\n
Things will fall apart. The center will not hold. And eventually, I will travel many roads, a world of wandering\u2014state-to-state, city-to-city, job after job\u2014until one day I will find myself in southern California teaching again, and working on my novel. I\u2019ll be hating the dead, dry hills, the heat, the traffic. I\u2019ll be hating the fact that I\u2019m getting too old to be a novelist or get a full-time position, with tenure track, medical and retirement benefits.<\/p>\n
My lost farm will give a hard birth to The Book of Mamie<\/em>, which I will send out dozens of times to dozens of agents and publishers and be dismissed with form letter rejections for over two years. But then in my 46th year I will get a phone call from Toby Olson and Andrea Barrett telling me that I have won the AWP Best Novel Award. The University of Iowa will publish it. Soon I\u2019ll have an agent, an editor, and a publishing house for my second novel. Mamie <\/em>is a book that wouldn\u2019t have happened if I hadn\u2019t been a dairy farmer and written about cows and the good and the bad of loving them and the land I once owned. So, maybe it was worth it? Or maybe not.<\/p>\nHow do you measure these things? Six novels later, I continue to write and it\u2019s as hard as ever to get published, which is why I\u2019m still teaching on a part-time basis. Writers, don\u2019t quit your day job. Had I been successful and stayed on the farm it would be twenty-two years now. And I\u2019ve often wondered what if\u2014what if my blood pressure, the migraines, the ulcers and the ceaseless work had <\/em>killed me? And I was nurturing the grass covering a plot in a Wisconsin cemetery? What might then have been said about my time as a dairyman? Impossible question. But it\u2019s not impossible to know what I would want engraved on my headstone. Carved in granite below my name and dates, in simple scroll, I would like my epitaph to say: HERE LIES DUFF BRENNA. HE HAD A WAY WITH COWS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tiny drifts of snow piling up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1989"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2161,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions\/2161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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