Chapter 19 Carson
NINETEEN
CARSON
My stomach is full as I lean back in the kitchen chair, the legs groaning with my weight. Outside, the snow is coming down even harder, and it’s starting to drift.
“We’re gonna need to head outside and check on those cows,” Jesse says as he checks his phone. “The temperature has dropped, and it’s in the heaviest part of the storm.”
Now that I’ve eaten, I don’t really want to do it, and after what Lennon and I shared in the office, I’d like to go upstairs with her and not come out for the rest of the night.
However, this is why we’re all here. This is why we decided to all stay together.
“Let’s get out there then.” I stretch my arms high.
“Maybe we’ll be able to come back in for a while. ”
“Keep dreaming, little brother,” Devlin laughs as he gets up and goes around the table toward the mudroom.
“Hopefully, I’ll be back in tonight,” I whisper to Lennon as the rest of the guys get up and start walking around.
She grins shyly. “Hopefully so.”
It takes us a while to layer up and get ready to go out into the elements. Once we’re ready, we trudge out as a group, because it’s safer that way.
The cold hits me like a wall the second we step off the back porch.
It’s the kind of cold that bites at any exposed skin and steals the breath right out of your lungs.
I pull my scarf up over my nose and follow Jesse, who’s leading us toward the barn with his head down against the wind.
The snow is coming sideways now, and every step feels like a fight.
“Stay together,” Jesse calls out over his shoulder, his voice barely carrying above the howl of it.
None of us argues. Truett falls into step beside me, his shoulders hunched up around his ears, and Devlin is right behind us.
The barn lights are on, and that orange glow through the blowing snow is about the most welcome sight I’ve ever seen.
It feels like it takes twice as long as it should to cover the distance between the house and the barn, the drifts already building up against the fence line.
When Jesse hauls the barn door open, and we all pile inside, the relative warmth feels like fucking summer compared to what it feels like outside. It smells like a barn, obviously, but it’s out of the wind, and right now that’s all that matters.
“Check the back stalls first,” Jesse says, already moving.
I pull my scarf down and follow him, my eyes adjusting to the light. We’re barely ten steps in when Truett lets out a low whistle from somewhere behind me.
“Jesse.” His voice has that tone to it. The one that means we’ve got a situation.
Jesse stops. I stop. We all do.
There are three cows in the back stalls, and one look tells me everything I need to know. They’re restless, moving in tight circles, and the signs are unmistakable. I’ve been around cattle my whole life. I know what a cow in labor looks like.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Devlin mutters.
“All three of them?” I look at Jesse.
He’s already pulling his outer layer off and rolling his sleeves up, a look on his face that says this is going to be a long night. “Looks like it. Truett, grab the supply kit from the tack room. Carson, get some fresh straw down. Dev, fill those water buckets.”
Nobody questions the orders. That’s the thing about working alongside your brothers for your whole life. When it counts, the arguing stops. You work together like a well-oiled machine.
I grab a pitchfork and get to work spreading fresh straw in the stall while Jesse moves in slow and easy, talking low to the first cow to keep her calm.
She’s the furthest along, already down on her side, heaving.
Truett comes back with the kit and sets it just outside the stall gate where Jesse can reach it.
The next few hours are some of the longest of my life.
The first calf comes within the hour, after some coaxing and more than a little effort from Jesse and Truett working together.
It’s a healthy one, big and dark, and it shakes its head almost the second it’s clear.
There’s a relief in my chest that I don’t think ever goes away, no matter how many times you’ve seen it.
Something about watching a new life come into the world in the middle of a blizzard, while the wind screams outside and the barn makes noise as it absorbs the force, makes everything feel like it’s more of a miracle than usual.
“There you go,” Jesse breathes, sitting back on his heels. He looks worn out already, but he’s smiling. “One down.”
The second cow is harder. She’s younger, and she’s scared, and it takes all four of us taking turns talking her through it, keeping her calm, keeping ourselves calm.
Devlin, for all his giving me grief at the dinner table, turns out to be the one she responds to best. He crouches down near her head and just talks.
The words he says are low and steady, the way our dad used to talk to them when we were kids.
I watch him for a second and feel something tighten in my throat that I don’t have time to think too hard about.
This makes me miss my dad more than anything else.
Her calf comes just past midnight. Smaller than the first, but strong. It’s on its feet faster than I expect, and that’s always a good sign.
“Look at her go.” I smile as I watch the calf walk with shaky legs.
It’s a pride I feel, almost like it’s my own child. Which is stupid, considering this is an animal and not a child of my own.
By the time we’re working through the third, I’ve lost track of time entirely.
My back is killing me, my knees are sore from crouching on the stall floor, and there’s a particular kind of tired that’s settled into my bones that isn’t just the amount of time we’ve spent out here.
It’s the beginning of worrying about them too.
“You doing all right?” Devlin appears beside me, handing me a bottle of water he must have grabbed from the tack room.
“Yeah.” I take it and drink half of it before coming up for air. “Just tired.”
He nods. He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t have to say anything else. He just stands there beside me in the way that older brothers do when they don’t have words but silently offer support. I appreciate it more than I’ll probably ever tell him.
The third calf takes the longest. Jesse and Truett work together and don’t ask for help, so Devlin and I stay close and stay ready. When it finally comes, somewhere in the small hours of the morning, the whole barn seems to let out a breath along with the rest of us.
Three calves, all of them breathing, all of them moving, all of them exactly where they’re supposed to be. We haven’t lost anyone, and that means more than I can say.
Jesse stands up slowly, pressing a hand to the small of his back with a grunt that sounds about ten years older than him. “Get them checked over and make sure everybody’s nursing, then we’ll do a full walkthrough of the rest of the herd. If anything looks suspicious, we’ll get Nora at her ASAP.”
“And then?” Truett asks.
“And then we go back inside, and we get some damn sleep.”
I huff out a laugh at that, the tension in my entire body finally starting to dissipate.
We spend another half hour doing a check of every animal in the barn.
The rest of the herd has weathered the worst of it well enough.
A few look uncomfortable with the cold and like they’re going to go into labor soon, but that’s not happening right now.
Jesse makes notes on his phone as we go, and Truett checks the water lines to make sure nothing has frozen up.
By the time we’re satisfied, it’s somewhere close to four in the morning. I can feel it in every part of me.
We layer back up near the barn door, pulling on everything we stripped off in the warmth of the last several hours.
My fingers are clumsy with exhaustion, and it takes me longer than it should to get my coat zipped up.
Outside, the wind has quieted some. It’s not gone, but it’s less vicious than it was.
The snow is still falling, soft and steady now instead of sideways, and the world beyond the barn door is buried and silent and completely white. Almost like a snow globe.
“Roads are gonna be something else tomorrow,” Truett says, mostly to himself, as he looks out at it.
“Roads aren’t our problem right now and won’t be for a couple of days,” Jesse says. “Come on.”
We file out in the same formation we came in, close enough that we don’t lose each other in the dark. The house lights are still on, a warm yellow glow at the kitchen window, and I fix my eyes on it and keep moving.
By the time we get back to the mudroom and start peeling off layers, I can barely feel my feet. Everything gets hung up and stripped off in a kind of collective silence. Nobody has much left to say. We’re all running on empty.
I hang my coat on the hook and catch Devlin’s eye across the small space. He gives me a nod, and I nod back. I’m too goddamn tired to do anything else.
The kitchen is quiet when we come through. The house is still, and somewhere upstairs, Lennon is probably sleeping.
I think about that as I wash my hands at the kitchen sink, the hot water feeling good against my cold skin. I think about her, and the office, and the way she looked at me when I’d whispered that I hoped to make it back in tonight.
It’s too late now—or too early, depending on how you look at it. The last thing I want to do is wake her.
But as I dry my hands and look out the kitchen window at the snow still coming down over the ranch, at the barn lights burning steady in the dark, I shake my head at what we’ve been doing the last few hours.
Three calves. In a blizzard. And a group of friends and brothers who showed up with their best.
There are worse ways to spend a night.