"Yer see that?" Tory pointed the whip after his fleeing bull. "When the sonabidge was a calf my great gran-kids useta tie him to a wagon an' whup him inter pullin' them – with this shittin' little whup. Never forget it, did 'e?"
We gave the old farmer a lift back to his farmhouse. I told him I'd fix his fence; he said it was done past that; now that my bull had topped his it wouldn't rest till it had topped the whole herd. "Prolly won't even rest then, yer know? There's only one thing to do. And if yer don't I b'gord will."
So that night we called Sam's, and the next morning John came turning in the drive before I'd even had coffee. Riding the running board, I directed him out to where the herd was bedded in the green clover around the main irrigation pipe. Ebenezer commenced bellering a warning, as she has come to do whenever she sees the approach of the silvery little death wagon, but she was too late. John was already out, walking around toward the target I had pointed out. Because of the size, he was carrying a.30-.30 instead of his usual.22. Abdul was just blinking awake when the shot exploded in his brow. He fell over the pipe without a sound.
As the herd bucked and bawled John hooked his winch cable to Abdul's hind feet and dragged the carcass away about fifty yards. I used to insist that he drag them clear from the field out of sight, so the herd wouldn't have to watch the gory peeling and gutting of their fallen relative, but John'd shown me it wasn't necessary. They don't follow the carcass; they stay to circle the spot where the actual death occurred, keening around the taking-off place though the hoisted husk is in full view mere yards away. As time passes, this circle spreads larger. If one were to hang overhead in a balloon and take hourly photos of this outline of mourning, I believe it would describe the diffusing energy field of the dead animal.
Abdul was the biggest animal we'd ever killed, and this mourning lasted the longest. Off and on between grazing, the herd returned to the dented pipe and stood in a lowing circle that was a tight ten feet in diameter the first day, and the next day fifteen feet, and the next day twenty. For a full week they grieved. It was fitting: he'd been their old man and a great one, and it was only right that the funeral last until a great circle had been observed, only natural – with the proper period of respect fading naturally toward forgetting while Nature shuffles her deck for the next deal around.
But at this point up pops a joker.
The bathroom floor rots through. Buddy and cousin Davy drive out in the creamery van with a load of plywood and we work the night away nailing it down. When they leave in the morning Buddy is attracted by a bellering in the field. It is Ebenezer. Another duty of her office is to let us know when one of the young cows has started labor. Buddy sees the supine heifer and throws his truck into reverse and comes hollering and honking back. "Looks like there's a calf about to be borned," he yells at me. Betsy hops in with him while I open the gate. We head out to where Ebenezer is trumpeting her announcement.
"That's right where Abdul got it last week," I told Buddy. "They've been bedding down there every night."
"Listen to Ebenezer," Betsy said. "O, me, I hope she doesn't think -!"
It was too late. Ebenezer had already made the mistaken association: early morning, an approaching truck, a killing still strong in her memory… and what had begun as a call for assistance became a shriek of warning. She planted herself between us and her laboring sister and bellowed, "It's the killer wagon! Head for the woods, honey; I'll try to hold the fiends back."
We were the rest of the morning trying to find the cow in the swamp. We finally located her hiding place by her ragged breathing. She was on her side under a thicket of blackberries. From the size of the calf's front hooves sticking out, we could see it was a whopper, far too big for so young a heifer. Maybe she could have squeezed it out on her own out in the field when she was still fresh, but Ebenezer's misguided alarm had sent her running and spent her strength. Now she was going to need help.
I tried to get a loop over her head, but she was as skittish as I was unskilled. The rest of the afternoon Betsy and the kids and I chased her from one stickerpatch to the next. There was never really any room for me to get a good toss of my loop. At length, I traded my lasso for my old wrestling headgear and climbed into the low branches of a scrub oak. When Betsy and the kids drove her beneath me I leaped on her and wrestled her down bodily. I held her until Quiston got a loop around a hind leg and Betsy got another around her neck. We got a third tie around her other hind leg and lashed her to three trees. Quis sat on her head to keep her from rearing up. I wrapped the calf's protruding hooves with clothesline and started pulling. Betsy massaged her stomach, and little Caleb talked to her and stroked her neck. When a contraction would start I would brace a foot against each side of her spread flank and tug. When the clothesline broke, I doubled it – and when it broke again, I double doubled it and kept pulling.
The sun went down. Sherree brought the flashlight down from the house and some wet rags to towel some of the stuff from our faces while we labored. Blood and mud and sweat and shit. Finally, with a mighty tugging and grunting and rending of orifices, out it came: a pretty little bull, all black with one stripe of white in the corner of its mouth, as though he'd been drinking milk already and had drooled. It wasn't breathing. Betsy blew air into its lungs until they started pumping on their own.
We let the cow up but kept the tie around her neck so she wouldn't flee in exhausted craziness before she accepted the calf. Sherree brought her a bucket of water, and while the animal drank we stood back out of sight and shined the flashlight beam on the calf. Calmed by the drink, the cow stepped forward to sniff the wobbly child. I switched off the light.
The moon had come out and was dappling down through the oak leaves. She had begun licking the calf. I wanted to take the rope from around her neck so she wouldn't tangle in the brush, but she wouldn't let me near the loop knot to loosen it. I opened my buck knife and slipped up as close as I could and began sawing very gently at the rope a few feet from her back-straining head, humming as I worked. She looked back and forth from me to her calf in the moonlight. You could see the trust returning.
But apparently both jokers had been left in this deck. As the last strands parted, a car came rattling down the road and screeched to a halt by our mailbox, then backed up and swung in the drive and shut off the ignition. As the engine quit it gave a loud backfire and off the cow stampeded, right over the hapless calf.
Betsy and the kids went after the cow while I went after the car. It was unloading a rowdy crew and a barking dog. The crew was a bunch of Dairy Manufacturing majors from Oregon State who'd had a few brews after class and decided to drive down from Corvallis, check out how the famous commune was doing – and the dog was a goddamned German shepherd barking about how many chickens he could kill given the opportunity. I dispatched them quickly back northward, clattering and backfiring and cursing back at me – "Grouchy old baldheaded prick!" - then I returned to the swamp.