1. Ellie #2
The chicken’s been in the buttermilk since this morning. I’ve got a bottle of the good wine. Tonight is the occasion. Tonight we’re going to be a married couple who eats dinner together, the way we used to before the ranch ate him alive.
Finally, after three weeks of cold food and empty chairs and eating alone at a table meant for two, we’re going to have a real dinner. Just me and my husband, candlelight and conversation and maybe, if I’m lucky, that look he gets when he wants to take me apart piece by piece.
At four-fifteen, my phone lights up on my desk.
Calving gone wrong at the far shed. Don’t wait up. Sorry, baby.
Fourth Friday in a row.
I stare at the text. I read it three times, in case the words rearrange themselves if I look hard enough. I think about him at the fence this morning with his hand on my neck and his mouth on mine, asking me to dinner and meaning it, saying he’d be there and meaning that too.
I think about the chicken that’s been soaking since dawn. The candles on the counter. The red dress hanging in my closet, unworn for three weeks running.
Fourth Friday in a row.
I know he means it. I know he’s sorry. I know he’d rather be sitting across from me at our table than elbow-deep in a cow at the far shed.
I also know that sorry doesn’t change anything, and I’m tired of eating alone, and I refuse to let another dinner go to waste while I sit in an empty kitchen waiting for a man who isn’t coming.
I close my eyes and breathe and make a decision.
I pack up my desk and drive the thirty minutes out to the ranch and go straight to the kitchen.
The chicken that’s been soaking since this morning goes into a basket, along with the potatoes and the green beans and the wine and two forks and a blanket from the closet.
If he can’t come to the dinner, I’ll bring the dinner to him.
The drive to the far shed takes another thirty minutes across our own land, past fences I helped mend and pastures I’ve learned to love and cattle that watch my car pass with dull incurious eyes.
The light is going long and gold by the time I get there, and I can hear the cattle lowing before I cut the engine.
The shed is lit up from inside, a yellow glow against the gathering dark. I grab the basket and walk toward it, my heels sinking into the dirt because I’m still in my work clothes and I didn’t think to change.
I can tell before I get to the door that it’s wrong. There’s shouting, men’s voices raised in alarm, and the sound of an animal in distress, high and panicked and terrible. I drop the basket and run the last twenty feet, and I push through the door just in time to see the cow go down.
She’s huge, brown and white and wild-eyed with pain, and she’s thrashing on the ground with her legs kicking at nothing.
Jacob is beside her with his arms bloody to the elbows and his face set in hard lines, and two of his men are trying to hold the cow still while she screams, and there’s so much blood, more blood than I’ve ever seen, pooling on the concrete floor and spreading toward my feet.
“Hold her!” Jacob shouts, and it isn’t the voice he uses on the horses, and it isn’t the one he uses on me. This voice is command and desperation and barely controlled panic. “Hold her still, the calf is stuck!”
I press myself against the wall and I don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t do anything but watch as my husband fights to save two lives at once.
The cow kicks out and catches one of the men in the thigh, and he goes down hard with a shout of pain. The other man loses his grip and suddenly Jacob is alone with a thousand pounds of terrified animal, his hands working desperately, his whole body braced against her thrashing.
“Ellie!” He’s seen me, somehow, even in the chaos. “Get back! Get out of here!”
I don’t get back. I move forward, around the blood, around the kicking legs, until I’m beside the man on the ground.
“Are you okay?” I ask him, but I’m not really looking at him, I’m looking at Jacob, at the strain in his shoulders and the sweat running down his face and the way his jaw is clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping.
“Leg’s not broken,” the man gasps. “Help him. He needs someone on her head.”
I don’t think. I just move.
I’m in my work clothes, my nice blouse and my pencil skirt, and I’m on my knees in the blood and the muck before I can talk myself out of it.
I grab the cow’s halter and I put my weight on her head, all hundred and twenty pounds of me against her massive skull, and I talk to her the way I’ve heard Jacob talk to the horses.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, and my voice is shaking but I don’t stop. “It’s okay, sweetheart, he’s going to help you, just hold still, just breathe, it’s okay.”
“Ellie, get the fuck away from her!” Jacob’s voice is a roar, furious and terrified. “She’ll crush you!”
“Then work faster!”
She’s still thrashing but she’s weaker now, and I can feel the fight going out of her, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
“I’ve got her head,” I tell him. “Go.”
“Don’t you dare let go,” he says through gritted teeth.
I don’t let go. I hold on and I talk to the cow and I try not to think about the blood soaking through my skirt, the smell of it, the heat of this animal’s body against mine as she struggles to give birth.
Jacob makes a sound, a grunt of effort with a prayer under it, and then he’s pulling, pulling, his whole body straining backward, and there’s a rush of fluid and blood and then there’s a calf.
A calf. Wet and dark and not moving.
“No,” Jacob says, and he’s on his knees beside it, his hands on its chest, pressing down in a rhythm I recognize. “No, no, come on, come on.”
The cow’s head goes heavy against my hands. I look down and her eye is half-closed, her breathing shallow, and I don’t know if she’s dying or just exhausted.
“Jacob.”
“Not now.” He’s still working on the calf, still pressing, still refusing to give up. “Come on, breathe.”
The calf jerks.
It twitches once, twice, and then it’s coughing, choking up fluid, its legs starting to kick weakly against the ground. Jacob sits back on his heels with blood all over him and his chest heaving and his face wrecked with relief.
“There you go,” he says, and his voice is soft now, that gentle voice I love. “There you go, baby. That’s it. Breathe.”
The cow lifts her head from my hands. She looks at her calf, makes a low sound in her throat, and starts to struggle to her feet. I help her, pushing against her shoulder, and she heaves herself up and stands there swaying for a moment before she moves toward her baby.
I sit back on the bloody floor in my ruined clothes and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, and then Jacob is in front of me.
He grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet, not gently, his fingers digging in. His face is dark with fury and his eyes are blazing and he’s angrier than I’ve ever seen him.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was helping.”
“You could have been killed!” He’s not yelling, but his voice is low and dangerous in a way that’s almost worse. “That cow weighs a thousand pounds. One kick to your head and you’d be dead on this floor. Do you understand that?”
“I understood that you needed help and nobody else was.”
“I don’t care!” He’s shaking now, his whole body vibrating, and I can’t tell if it’s rage or terror. “I don’t care if the whole herd dies, I don’t care if this place burns to the ground, you do not put yourself in danger like that. Not ever. Not for anything.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Jacob.”
“The hell I don’t.” He’s in my space now, his body crowding mine, his hand still tight on my arm. “You’re my wife. Mine. And I will not stand here and watch you get hurt because you’re too stubborn to stay out of the way.”
“Too stubborn?” I jerk my arm free and shove at his chest, and he doesn’t move an inch, which just makes me angrier. “I saved that cow’s life. I saved that calf’s life. While your men were on the ground and you were working alone, I was the one who held her still. So don’t you dare.”
“I don’t care about the cow!” His voice cracks on the word, raw and ragged.
“I don’t care about the calf or the men or any of it.
I care about you. And when I looked up and saw you on the ground with that animal thrashing around.
” He stops, swallows hard, and his voice drops and breaks.
“I thought I was going to watch you die.”
The anger drains out of me.
He’s not just furious. He’s scared. He’s terrified, and he doesn’t know how to say it except by yelling, because that’s who he is, that’s how he’s built, and I should know that by now.
“I’m okay,” I say, softer now. “Jacob. Look at me. I’m okay.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“It’s not mine.”
“It could have been.” His hands come up to my face, his fingers rough and still shaking. “It could have been yours, and I would have had to-” He can’t finish the sentence. He just stands there with his hands on my face and his eyes wet and his whole body trembling.
“Hey.” I put my hands over his, holding them against my cheeks. “I’m right here. I’m fine. You didn’t lose me.”
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Ellie.”
“If you’re in trouble, I’m going to help. That’s not negotiable.” I hold his gaze. “But I’m sorry I scared you. That wasn’t what I meant to do.”
He pulls me against him so hard it knocks the breath out of me. His arms wrap around me and he buries his face in my hair and holds on hard enough to hurt. I can feel his heart pounding against my chest, fast and hard, and I wrap my arms around his waist and hold on right back.
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he says against my hair, his voice muffled.
“No. You shouldn’t have.”
“I was scared.”
“I know.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No. It’s not.” I pull back to look at him. “But I understand why you did it. And I forgive you. Because you were scared for me, not at me. There’s a difference.”