Chapter 13
Mama cow and calf were fine.
Dillon ended up having reach inside the cow, unbend one of the calf’s front legs and turn its head so it presented front feet first with its nose on its knees. Pete sat beside him and each man grabbed a front leg and helped pull the calf with every contraction.
A Dillon’s instruction, Tessa plopped down in the dirt by the laboring cow’s head, murmuring a steady stream of soothing nonsense that the cow visibly responded to, relaxing and eventually putting her head in Tessa’s lap.
Tessa looked up at him, eyes wide, and he nodded encouragingly at her from behind the cow. She smiled briefly and went back to petting the cow’s face gently and telling her how brave she was and what a wonderful job she was doing.
Makayla stood at the fence, her eyes huge. This wasn’t the first animal birthing he would have chosen for her to see, but it was what it was.
“Here comes another contraction,” Dillon said quietly. He and the farmer dug their boots into the ground for purchase and gripped the towels wrapped around the calf’s front legs, which were exposed to about the knee. The cow’s entire body tensed and he and the farmer pulled with all their might.
The calf’s head came out. While the cow rested for a second, Pete quickly pulled the amniotic sac off the calf’s head and Dillon suctioned both nostrils.
The cow heaved again, and with his and Pete’s help, the calf’s shoulders and body emerged all at once. The men eased the calf’s hind feet from the exhausted cow.
“She did it,” Makayla cried softly.
Dillon used more towels to clean off the calf and rub its chest vigorously. The little calf shook its head and took its first breath.
“Welcome to the world, little one,” he murmured.
After Pete milked the umbilical cord to get all the blood from it into the calf, Dillon cut the cord and swabbed iodine on the stump near the calf’s tummy. He turned his attention back to the cow. She was straining again and he quickly helped her deliver the placenta.
“Do you know what this is, Makayla?” he asked over his shoulder as he checked to make sure it was intact. If it had torn and some of it had been left behind, it would cause infection and potentially kill the cow.
“It’s the thing that connects the calf to the cow’s uterus.”
“That’s right,” he replied. “Blood and nutrients pass through it to the baby.”
“That’s so cool,” she said in awe. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
Pete answered, “It’s a girl. What should I name her, Makayla?”
Dillon glanced up and saw wonder light her face.
“How about Hope?” Makayla said softly.
Pete grinned. “Did you know that’s what ranchers name calves that shouldn’t have made it?”
Makayla shook her head in the negative.
“Hope it is,” Pete declared.
Normally, Dillon would have left as soon as he determined that cow and calf had both come through the delivery healthy, but today he asked Pete under his breath, “Mind if we stick around till Hope stands and sucks?”
“Kid’s first birthing?” the farmer muttered back with a glance at Makayla, who’d come into the paddock and standing beside Tessa, petting the cow and telling her how brave she’d been.
“How’d you guess?” Dillon responded wryly.
He and the farmer exchanged grins.
Pete murmured, “Never gets old.”
Dillon grinned. “Same. Best part of my job by far.”
All four of the humans retreated outside the paddock and hung on the fence as the calf figured out how to manage four legs and discovered gravity. Makayla moaned every time the calf almost made it to its feet and then collapsed.
When it finally managed a splayed, wobbly, sawhorse pose, both Makayla and Tessa cried. Silently, he passed each of them a tissue he pulled from his bag. As they mopped at their tears, Hope took her first wobbly steps and promptly toppled over.
“Oh, no!” Makayla exclaimed under her breath. “Shouldn’t someone go in and help her?”
“Nope. She’ll figure it out. Give her another minute or two.”
Sure enough, the little calf struggled to her feet a little more easily the second time, and wobbled toward her mother, who stood patiently beside her.
“Your heifer’s gonna be a good mother,” Dillon commented to Pete. “She’s standing right where her baby needs her to be to nurse.”
Pete nodded with a smile.
The calf took another tottering step and ran face first into her mama’s side.
“Watch this, Makayla,” Dillon said quietly. “Hope will start looking for food, son. It’s an instinct all mammals have.”
On cue, the calf started nosing around her mother’s side. The cow took an obliging step forward, placing the calf next to her swollen udder. As Hope bumped her nose around, the cow reached back and gave Hope’s rump a shove with her nose.
“Why’d the mama do that?” Makayla murmured.
Dillon answered, “Her udder’s so full it’s sore. She’s in a hurry for her baby to drink and make her more comfortable.”
Indeed, as Hope found her way to a teat and took her first, tentative sucks, the cow sighed aloud in relief, making all the humans grin.
Before long, Hope had the hang of it and stood beside her mother, moving from teat to teat, slurping until she had a cute milk mustache on her pink nose. The calf plopped to the ground, her legs folded under her and tucked her nose between her knees.
“Time for us to leave them alone so they can take a well-deserved nap,” Dillon announced quietly.
Tessa and Makayla thanked the farmer profusely for letting them witness the birth, and the farmer was nearly as profuse in his thanks to Dillon for saving cow and calf. Pete pulled him aside for a short, private conversation about payment that left both men grinning and nodding.
Dillon, Tessa, and Makayla headed for the truck, exhausted but happy.
As they headed for home, Makayla asked him, “Why do farmers name their calves they almost lost Hope?”
“Because they need a reminder sometimes to always have hope.”
Thursday morning she sat on the porch drinking coffee and noted that overnight the willows along the lakeshore had turned bright chartreuse, and red-winged blackbirds had started claiming territories in the cattails at the edge of the water with arguments bordering on belligerent.
She wasn’t sure when she’d started noticing birds but it was nice.
Coffee on the porch had become her routine.
One morning she’d taken her mug outside because Hamlet was throwing a tantrum over his breakfast not including scrambled eggs, and the next morning she’d done it again because the light on the pasture had been pretty.
Now she did it every morning before she went upstairs and got ready to go to the store.
Makayla ran downstairs and banged through the screen door, her backpack on, a piece of toast clamped in her mouth.
“I drew a picture of Hope,” Makayla announced around the toast. “She’s got a rainbow over her head.”
“Everybody should have a rainbow over their head.”
“Exactly!” Makayla exclaimed. They smiled at each other in agreement.
Tessa made a mental note to write down what Makayla had said in her farm journal tonight. She’d started one after reading Fern’s and enjoying the memories it brought back.
Each night, she wrote down notable moments that day or things she’d learned about the animals or farm that she didn’t want to forget.
Last night her note had been, Darned if I’m not turning into Fern.
Caught myself writing my own note in a margin of her book on animal husbandry.
I didn’t even know what animal husbandry was two months ago.
Arlo’s truck rumbled past, heading for town. He lifted one finger off the steering wheel as he went by, which she’d learned recently was the Montana version of a wave. Brown Dog was in the passenger seat with his head out the window, ears flapping and a big smile on his face.
“Hi, Brownie!” Makayla yelled, waving both arms. Then she launched herself off the porch toward the school bus stop at the end of the drive running with the boundless energy of a happy kid.
Tessa watched her go. The preppy child Makayla had been a month ago wouldn’t recognize herself today. But then, she was pretty sure the woman she’d been a month ago wouldn’t recognize herself now, either.
She dressed for work and was headed for the door when Charlotte called.
“Don’t scream,” Charlotte said the instant Tessa picked up.
“Oh, good. That’s a comforting way to open a call.”
“They agreed to fifty miles.”
Fifty miles wasn’t a concession from the buyer. It was surrender with a bow on it. Tessa fell into a chair at the kitchen table. “Say that again.”
“We got the fifty-mile exclusivity radius. And they agreed to a sunset clause— they’re the only vendor of our gowns within fifty miles of their store for year one, then we get to put gowns in any store we want.
I got the email at six this morning. I’ve been pacing in my bathrobe for an hour trying to let you sleep before I called. ”
“Sweetie, I was done feeding the animals by six and back in the house making my own breakfast.”
Charlotte laughed, “Barnyard notwithstanding, you negotiated tough and got exactly what you wanted. I don’t know whether to give you a raise or build you a statue.”
“I already own the company, Charlotte. You can’t give me a raise.”
“Fine. I’ll build you a statue.”
Tessa laughed. “Thanks for the thought, but I’ll pass on seeing myself rendered in stone.”
She pushed back from the table and walked to the window. Outside, Loretta was blowing bubbles in the water trough. Dolly the llama looked on with the appalled superiority of a civilized creature.
“We need the final portfolio by Monday,” Charlotte said. “Can you shoot the last two gowns this weekend?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it? Just yes?”
“Yes.”
Charlotte was quiet for a beat. Then, more carefully, “You sound different.”
“I’m drinking a lot of coffee these days.”
“This isn’t about caffeine. You sound less—” Charlotte paused. “—braced.”
Less braced. It was the most accurate description of Tessa’s current state she’d heard from anyone, including herself.