The holding pen was one thing, one would still be able to roll free under the lowest bar of the pen. But the crush pen was a narrow gully with high cement walls. There was one escape route, that was to the back. But how would you worm past the bull if you were in front of him and he gored you? He would fill the gully from wall to wall.
At the front end, in front of the headclamp, there was a shutter of steel that could be lifted if he should decide to rush forward.
But what if everything happened very quickly? You’d be paralysed with shock, you’d slip, the one who had to lift the shutter could lose his nerve, you’d be trampled.
Who should take the bull in there?
You hesitated.
I’ll take him, said Agaat, her mouth set in a straight line. He knows me. He’s soft in the nose. He won’t bugger around for no reason.
Ho my mother, said Saar.
You go and sit in the bakkie with Jakkie, Agaat said, and wash your hands before you touch him.
Push the other cattle away from the drinking trough, she ordered Lietja, count them, there should be seventy.
And for you she tallied on the fingers of her strong hand. One bottle of egg and brandy, one bottle of coffee, two pints of the rusk bottle’s lime-and-linseed water mixed with two tablespoons of tannic acid to the pint, decanted into two Coopers canisters.
She would lead the bull as far as the clamp, you had to secure his head. Then somebody had to open the shutter so that she could get out in front.
Agaat ordered two boys to go and fetch planks and to build a scaffolding on little drums outside the crush pen on both sides so that you could reach across to dose the bull.
What if he gores you? one whispered to her. What if he tramples you?
They retreated stepping on one another’s feet. Mush! they giggled. Arsgaat!
Dry up, said Agaat, a bag of acid drops for everybody, if you help nicely here. Stand ready, hand us what we tell you and keep your big traps shut or I’ll make dog-mince of you.
You’d never forget it, the sudden subservience of everybody, big and small. Something changed gear that afternoon on Grootmoedersdrift.
Agaat put the medicine containers precisely in sequence on the wall on either side of the headclamp. She blew into the rubber tubes to check that they were clear. She squeezed the triggers of the dosing-canisters and squirted medicine on the ground until she was satisfied that they were working correctly and without air bubbles. Her mouth was set in a line, her chin jutting far forward.
Bring a rope, you called to the boys, bring a stick.
For what? Agaat asked.
So that I can have something with which to pull you out if he runs amuck, you said, then you grab the rope or the stick.
She looked at you. Agaat Lourier can’t pull herself out of the gully with one arm, her face said.
Or I push the stick under your apron’s shoulder-straps and lever you out, you said. You couldn’t look her straight in the eye.
The gully is too deep. The stick is too short. You’re too weak. It wasn’t even necessary for her to say it.
Perhaps we should rather wait for the vet, you got out. Your voice was low.
Wait till I’m in, she said to you, climb on the wall and walk behind me. Don’t put things in his head. Think one thing and think it straight.
First try to prod him from behind, you said.
You try, Agaat said, he doesn’t want to, he’s too buggered.
You went around the back of the holding pen. You prodded the shitting bull in the flanks with a stick. He didn’t budge.
Agaat straightened her cap with both hands. There at the gate of the holding pen you saw it. The one shoulder pulled up, the pace forward, the pace back, the genuflection. Then she opened the gate and went in and closed the gate behind her. Plumb towards the dead strip between the bull’s eyes Agaat advanced, bold and high her mien.
Water came into your mouth, of iron it tasted, of blood.
She hooked her finger into the nose-ring, turned her back, took a pace forward. Through the bars of the holding pen you saw the bull bend its knee, dragging his hind leg, starting to move forward. Six, seven, eight paces and Agaat was in the crush pen with him.
You climbed onto the wall, the stick and rope in your hand. The bull lowered its head. On both sides of his muzzle gobbets of drool were hurled against the cement walls. His small sunken eyes were on the cross of Agaat’s shoulder-straps. Soon she was invisible. You could only deduce, from the steady pace at which the bull moved forward, that she was there walking ahead of him, and that she was exerting a constant force of traction on him.
The blood in your temples! The whole twenty, twenty-five, thirty yards of the crush pen! Triumph when the bull pushed his huge muzzle over the crossbar, when you pressed down the lever, and wedged in his head, and Agaat escaped through the shutter. A yelling from the littl’uns, cries of admiration as she emerged there.
She was opposite you on her scaffolding on the other side of the gully. She wiped her hands on the bib of her apron. She pushed at her cap. On her shoulders something glistened in the sun. It was wet where the big bull had drooled on her.
Agaat held out her little hand, the back, so that the bull could feel the warmth on his nose. He tried take a step back, felt his head was fast. It would be a business if he lay down in the gully. You had to work quickly. Agaat looked at you across the hump.
You wanted to praise her because she was so brave, but the expression on her face prevented you.
First the coffee, then brandy, he needs a kick-start, she said.
The main thing was that the liquid should not end up in the lungs. Agaat passed you the bottle with coffee.
Press on his cheeks, she said, you have two hands.
You pressed on the release knobs, the sensitive salivary glands. The jaws parted slightly, you pressed down the lever a notch to pick up the head another few degrees and lifted the lip and inserted the thin tube along the gum behind the back molar on the tongue.
Swallow! Gaat said.
The coffee went down without any problems. But then the egg mixture wouldn’t pour smoothly down the tube. Agaat took it mouthful by mouthful out of the bottle and blew it into him through the tube.
After that it was the raw linseed-and-lime cream. The full two prescribed pints.
Then the two of you unlocked the clamp. Enlivened by the stimulants, the bull allowed himself to be prodded out of the crush pen. You drove him slowly to the clean straw that you’d had brought in and covered him in sacks where he stood, because then he had the shivers.
When did OuKarel appear on the scene? Next thing you noticed, there he was crushing his hat, a vaaljapie breath issuing from his mouth.
You had to flash a warning look otherwise Agaat would have scolded the old man. He was just sober enough to help. You rounded up the cows three at a time and dosed them with the boys holding their heads up. The cows shat and pissed and tried to step back and coughed. Then everybody had to let go to let them finish coughing. Raw linseed oil down the wrong gullet was the greatest risk. Terrible pneumonia could be the result.
Twice you and Agaat rushed back to the house to mix more medicine.
By six o’clock you trained the bakkie’s headlights on the scene and sent home for lanterns. Agaat and yourself you fitted out with headlamps from Jak’s mountaineering equipment. Like a cyclopic eye Gaat’s headlamp shone in the dark.
One cow looked as if she was going to succumb and had to be given a stomach-pump.
Jakkie was cold and hungry and cried.
Take him, Agaat, you said, go and bathe him and give him food, he’s upset, I’ll take charge here now. Wait until he’s asleep then you come and call me.
At half past six Jak returned from tennis. Flabbergasted. In white clothes and all he plunged into the ooze of manure and mud to help. Anew you doctored the bull with coffee and brandy to stimulate his heart. At seven o’clock the vet turned up from the clubhouse, even more sozzled than Karel. Jak went and dragged Dawid and his cousin out of the huts to come and help. Agaat returned with Jakkie tied to her back in a blanket. She went and stood in front of Dawid and Kadys. Without a word she made them both drink half a bottle of sweet coffee and three gulps of laced egg-white to fix the hangover. The bakkie lights were on them. Everybody was watching. They did as they were told. The women and the boys whispered. Dawid’s face was squint. The vet stood back as if he was scared he would also be accosted.