6. Chapter 6
Raiford
The storm comes in on a Wednesday night.
I know it’s coming before the weather service calls it.
I can feel it in the air, the way the pressure drops and the wind changes direction and the cattle bunch together in the southeast corners of the pastures.
My father taught me to read weather by watching animals.
“The cows know before the radar does,” he said.
He was right about most things and he was right about that.
The radio crackles. Beckett.
“Boss. The Henderson heifer in the north valley. She’s in distress.”
My stomach drops. I know which one he means. First-calf, young, we’ve been watching her for a week. She’s in the north valley because that’s where the first group went in last week. Elise’s section. Elise’s cattle.
“Where exactly?”
“Northwest corner. Near the tree line. Mark spotted her on his last check. She’s down and she’s not getting up. He thinks the calf is breech.”
A breech calf in a thunderstorm with a first-time mother.
This is the kind of situation that separates ranchers from people who own land.
This is the kind of situation my father handled a hundred times with steady hands and a calm voice and the knowledge that the animal’s life depends on the next thirty minutes.
“I’m heading out,” I say.
“Boss, the creek is rising. The north road might flood.”
“I’ll take the ridge route.”
I’m pulling on my boots when my phone buzzes. Elise.
Elise: I heard Beckett on the radio. I’m already at the northwest corner. I can see her. She’s down. I’m going in.
She’s already there. She’s already there because she lives on the section and she monitors the radio and she heard the call and she didn’t wait. She didn’t call me. She didn’t ask for permission or backup or instructions. She went.
I drive. The ridge route is longer but higher, above the flood line.
The rain is heavy and constant, the kind that turns the windshield into a waterfall and makes the headlights useless past twenty feet.
Lightning splits the sky every few minutes and the thunder follows close, which means the storm is right on top of us.
I park at the northwest gate. I grab the calving kit from the truck bed.
Chains, handles, lubricant, towels. I’ve done this before.
I’ve pulled breech calves in the dark, in the rain, in the mud.
I’ve done it with my father beside me and I’ve done it alone and doing it alone is harder because there are moments when you need four hands and you only have two.
I hear her before I see her.
“Easy, mama. Easy. I know. I know.”
Her voice. In the rain, in the dark, her voice is calm and low and steady.
The voice she uses with horses. The voice that settled Birdie in three seconds.
She’s using it on a thousand-pound heifer in active labor and the heifer is responding.
The animal’s breathing is harsh but she’s not thrashing.
She’s lying on her side in the mud and the rain and Elise is on her knees beside her with her hands on the animal’s flank, talking.
The lightning flashes and I see her. She’s soaked. Her hair is plastered to her face, her braid destroyed by the rain. She’s in jeans and a T-shirt (no jacket, she didn’t stop for a jacket) and she’s on her knees in six inches of mud and her hands are already inside the cow.
She looks up. She sees me. No surprise. No relief. Just acknowledgment. A professional who expected backup and is ready to use it.
“Breech,” she says. “I’ve got one hock. The other leg’s tucked forward.”
I drop beside her. My knees in the mud. The rain on my back. The heifer groans and Elise talks to her, constant and calm, the words don’t matter, the voice matters, and the voice is doing its job.
She finds the second hock. Manipulates it forward. The calf is big for a first birth and the heifer is tight and the angle is wrong and we need to rotate.
“Okay, mama,” she says. “One. Two. Three.”
Her movements are precise and confident and she’s reading the calf’s position by feel the way she reads land by sight.
The calf shifts. The legs come forward. The heifer bears down.
“She’s pushing,” Elise says. “Get the chains.”
I loop the chains around the front of the calf’s hocks.
She keeps her hands in position, guiding, making sure the calf doesn’t rotate back.
The rain is running down my arms and the mud is everywhere and the lightning is constant and I am on my knees in a field at 10 PM in a storm with a woman who is elbow-deep in a cow and she is the most extraordinary person I have ever met.
“Pull,” she says. “With her contractions. Don’t force it.”
I pull. Steady, timed with the heifer’s pushing. The calf comes. Slowly, then all at once. A rush of fluid and limbs and then a wet, dark shape on the ground, and Elise’s hands are on it immediately, clearing the nose, clearing the mouth, rubbing the chest.
The calf coughs. Shakes its head. Breathes.
“There you go,” Elise says. Quiet. Her hands on the calf’s ribs, feeling the heartbeat, feeling the lungs expand. “There you go, baby. You’re okay.”
The heifer lifts her head. Turns to look at her calf. The maternal instinct fires. She starts licking. The calf shakes again, harder, and tries to fold its legs underneath itself.
Alive. Mother and calf, alive, in a storm, in the mud, because a woman who monitors the radio went out alone in the dark and got her hands inside an animal and held on until help arrived.
I sit back on my heels. The rain is still coming. The mud is in my jeans, my boots, my hair. My arms are shaking from the effort. Elise is still on her knees, her hands still on the calf, watching it breathe.
She looks at me, streaked with rain and mud, blood on her forearms, her soaked T-shirt plastered to her skin.
I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.
There isn’t anything polished about her right now. Nothing hidden. She’s exactly what she is: a damn good rancher who just saved a calf in a thunderstorm.
“Good calf,” she says as she removes her gloves. She smiles. Tired and triumphant and aimed at me.
“Good rancher,” I say.
We stay until the calf stands. Until it finds the udder.
Until the heifer is up and nursing and the worst is past. We pack the kit.
We walk to my truck through the rain, side by side, and I open the passenger door for her because her truck is on the other side of the section and she’s not driving through a flooded creek in the dark.
She gets in. She’s shaking. Not from cold. From adrenaline. The come-down. The moment after the crisis when your body remembers it was afraid and decides to tell you about it now that the danger has passed.
I get in the driver’s side. I start the engine. The heat kicks on. We sit in the truck in the rain with the engine running and the windshield a wall of water and her breathing is ragged and mine is ragged and we’re both covered in mud and blood and we just saved a life together.
“You were already there,” I say.
“I live there. It’s my section.”
“You went out alone in a storm.”
“The heifer was in distress. Waiting wasn’t an option.”
“You could have waited for me.”
“I could have. The calf would have been dead by the time you arrived.”
She’s right, and I hate how close I came to being too late. This woman went into a storm alone because the calf couldn’t wait.
“Elise.”
“Yeah.”
“I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve been coming to the north valley every day. Not to check the progress. The progress is fine. You’re the best range manager I’ve ever had and the progress has been fine since day three.”
“I know.”
“I come because of you.”
She looks at me. The cab is dark except for the dashboard light and her eyes are bright and her face is streaked and her T-shirt is plastered to her chest and I can see the shape of her underneath the wet fabric and I’m not looking away because I’m done looking away.
“I come because you’re there. Because you found a spring by reading the grass and you set fence posts for February and you think about the cattle before the convenience and you just saved a breech calf in a thunderstorm alone.
I come because every morning at 5:50 I drive past the north gate and your truck is there and seeing you is the best part of my day. ”
“Raiford.”
“I know the timing is complicated. You work for me. You live on my property.” I look at her.
“But you haven’t been beneath me one damn day since you got here.
You’re my equal. You were my equal before I was smart enough to see it.
I’m not your boss. I’m a man who can’t stop coming to the north valley because a woman with blue eyes and mud on her jeans is the only thing on this ranch I can’t manage. ”
She reaches across the console. Her hand on my jaw. Her fingers are cold and I don’t care. She turns my face toward her and she looks at me in the dashboard light with the rain on the roof and the storm outside and the calf alive in the field behind us.
“I’ve been waiting for you to say that,” she says. “Since the driveway. Since you said ma’am. Since you looked at me on the ridge and dropped your guard for one second and I saw what was underneath.”
“What did you see?”
“A man who’s been alone too long. A man who carries everything himself because he thinks that’s what strength looks like. A man who checked my cabin with a flashlight at 9 PM and put coffee pods on the counter because he wanted me to feel welcome and couldn’t say it out loud.”
I reach behind her neck and pull her to me.
The porch kiss was slow. Careful. This one isn’t.
Her tongue meets mine, her hand fists in my shirt, and when I pull her across the console, she comes willingly. Her knees straddle my legs and the truck cab is small and she’s wet and muddy and her chest is pressed against mine through soaked fabric and I can feel her heartbeat against my ribs.
“Not here,” she says. Against my mouth. “Take me to the cabin.”