CHAPTER 8
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Wyatt hit the light switch inside the man-door with his left hand. The right one had the chains in it. They had been lying in the bed of the truck since dark.
The bulbs came on down the alley in order. At the far end the heat lamp was already burning, a red circle over pen four. Half past one in the morning, and no wind at all. The hose at the wash sink had gone stiff as pipe where it lay on the concrete.
Seven pens quiet. One of them not.
The heifer was down on her side in the straw with her tail cocked over and her flank pumping. One foot showed. Above it a nose showed, gray, the lip swollen out fat and shiny. Nothing else. By the state of the straw around her she had been at it far too long.
He had sent Sadie and Caleb home at midnight. The heifer had been walking the fence then with her ears loose and nothing started. He had told Sadie this one had all night in her. He was wrong, and the heifer had been paying for it since.
He hung his coat on the gate and rolled his sleeve past the elbow. Iodine and warm straw, and under those the flat smell of an animal that had worked too long at something.
The man-door scraped.
“I heard the truck,” Clara said.
She had a coat on over what she slept in and her boots were unlaced to the ankle. Her hair was coming out of the knot on one side, the pencil still through it.
“Go back to bed.”
“Okay.”
She said okay. Then she came down the alley and stopped at the gate of pen four with her hands in her pockets. She looked at what was showing for a good while. She did not go anywhere.
“That’s a foot,” she said.
“That’s a foot.”
“There ought to be two of them.”
“There ought to be.” He set the chains on the rail and read the straw for how long she had been down.
“How long has that been?”
He carried the warm water in with the soap and the iodine and set them inside the gate. The straw came through his jeans wet and cold before he had settled.
“Since before I got out here,” he said. “She was walking at midnight. I told Sadie to go home.”
“Then Sadie went home. That’s what people do when you tell them.”
“I’m aware.” He turned the soap over in his hand twice.
“I’m not saying it to sting you. I’m saying it so you don’t spend the next hour saying it to yourself with your arm in a cow.”
“I have to go in and find out what she’s got,” he said. “You don’t need to watch that part.”
“I’ve watched a lot of things I didn’t need to watch.”
“Such as.”
“My mother, at the end. All of it.” She moved straight on past it. “I’m not going to faint in your straw.”
“I didn’t say you would.”
“You said it with your shoulders. You’ve done that since you were nine and I have never needed the words for it.”
“Then come around the gate where you can see, and give me a quiet minute.”
“I can do a minute.” She came around and stood where the lamp put her shadow on the heifer’s ribs.
He soaped his arm to the shoulder in the bucket. The water had been hot in the house and was not hot now. The lube out of his pocket was the only warm thing in the barn that was not alive.
The heifer humped once and quit. He waited out the push and went in behind the foot.
Warm. That was the first thing worth having, and he took it and went on past it, walking his hand up the leg to the shoulder.
“Is he alive,” Clara said.
“He’s warm.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” She folded her arms and put her chin on them.
“It’s what I know.”
She said nothing else for a minute and he used it. Head coming right, nose on top of the one foot, and the other side of the neck running down into nothing.
He followed the shoulder under and around. The knee was folded hard against the brisket with the whole leg doubled behind it.
“Front leg’s back at the elbow,” he said. “I have to push him in before I can bring it up.”
“Push him in. Toward her.”
“There’s no room to straighten that leg where he’s sitting now. He goes back up inside her far enough that I can swing it out. Then it comes around and forward and out ahead of him.” He talked and worked at once, and the talking was for her and the working was for the heifer.
“While she’s pushing.”
“She’ll push against me and I’ll lose what I gained and get it again. That’s the whole job.”
The heifer heaved. His arm went dead to the elbow with the pressure of it. He held what he had until she quit and then took two more inches.
“The toe’s the trouble,” he said. “It’s sharp as a chisel and it’s aimed at her the whole trip around. I keep it cupped in my palm or she tears, and then I’ve got a live calf and a heifer bleeding out by daylight.”
“Should I be calling somebody?”
“Bram’s out past Ennis at a caesarean that started at ten o’clock. Bozeman’s forty minutes and he isn’t in Bozeman either.” The heifer bore down on his arm. He rode it out and lost three inches he had already paid for.
“So it’s us.”
“It’s us.”
“All right.” She pushed her cuff off her wrist and looked at the heifer’s eye instead of at him. “What does it cost you if she doesn’t get up.”
“Her and the calf both, if it goes long.”
“That isn’t what I asked either.”
He did not answer until he had another inch. She waited him out, which she had always done and had gotten better at.
“Two hundred and forty pairs to calve,” he said. “Eight per cent dead is what the ground under me will hold. Past that the note doesn’t renew the first of June and I’m selling cows to a man in Idaho at his price.”
“And where are you tonight.”
“Nearer to it than I want to be, and that’s the last question I’m answering with my arm where it is.”
She did not make a speech about it. She shrugged her coat off and hung it on the gate over his. She pushed her sleeves up over two white freckled forearms in the cold.
“Tell me what to do with my hands,” she said.
“Chains. One loop above the fetlock and one below it. Tight.”
“Above and below. Why two of them?”
“One loop by itself pulls the joint apart. Two of them spread the load. You want that leg still on the calf when he’s out here in the straw.” He tipped his chin at the rail. It was all the free motion he had left.
“Show me on your own arm.”
He showed her with his free hand, above the wrist and below it. She made the shape in the air twice and went and took the chains off the rail.
She came through the gate and knelt in the wet straw beside him without any ceremony about it. The cold on her face was the only thing on it he could read.
He got the hoof cupped in his palm and walked it up. It took a long time and the last of it took longer. Then the second foot came out beside the first and lay steaming in the straw, and his shoulder was in past where he wanted it.
“Now,” he said. “I can’t let go of this. You do it.”
“Tell me when I’m wrong.”
“You won’t be.”
She did it. Above the fetlock and below it, the near foot and then the far one. She pulled each loop down snug with the flat of her thumb and did not stop halfway to ask whether it hurt anybody.
“Handles,” he said. “There’s one on each chain. Take the far one.”
Clara set her boots in the straw and took it. Her knuckles came up white and freckled around the wood.
“When she pushes, you pull,” he said. “When she quits, you quit. Nothing in between.”
“How hard?”
“Harder than you think is polite.” He got his own handle wrapped once around his fist and braced.
“Wyatt.”
“Harder than that.” Under the lamp the heifer’s flank started up again, slow.
“Which direction?”
“Down. Toward her hocks. Not straight out at me, or he hangs on her pelvis and we sit here till Sunday.”
The heifer gathered and pushed and they pulled with her, down and out at the angle of the hocks. The nose came past the lip. The head came halfway and stopped, and the push ran out from under them.
“Don’t quit on him,” he said.
“I’m not quitting. Talk to me. All I can see from here is your shoulder.”
“Head’s in the door. He’s still got both feet out ahead of him.”
“Is that good.”
“It isn’t bad.” He got his fingers in alongside the head and made room where there was not any.
“Then tell me the next thing before it happens, not while it’s happening.”
“Next push brings his head through. It looks bad when it comes. Don’t let go of that chain because of his face.”
“Okay.” She took another wrap of chain around her hand and set her heels.
They knelt there breathing while the heifer got her wind. She kept the slack off the straw and did not look up at him for permission to be there.
The next push brought the head through, swollen and blue-lipped, the eyes half shut. He did not look at it longer than he had to. He turned the calf a quarter to bring the hips through, and told her so while he did it, and she moved with him.
The third push took him. He came in a rush, flat and blue and steaming, out into the straw. He lay there like something poured out of a bucket.
“He’s not breathing.”
“Get his head down. Under the jaw. Lift.”
The fluid ran out of the calf’s mouth and nose and made a dark spot in the bedding. Wyatt got two fingers in and cleared what was left. Then he pulled a stalk out of the straw and put it up the near nostril, deep, and worked it.
Nothing.
“Again?”
“Again.” He threw it away and took another and went further.
He counted it out. Counting was the last thing his hands could do and be sure of.
The calf jerked. He snorted, and coughed, and coughed again, and shook his wet head hard enough to slap his own ear.
Clara made a sound that was half a laugh and never finished being one.
“Not flat,” Wyatt said. “Get him up on his brisket. Legs folded under him. He can’t fill the bottom of his lungs lying over on his side like that.”
“Like this?”
“Farther under. There.” He pushed the near knee up beneath the brisket with the flat of his hand.
They rolled him and set him up, and his head swung out and came around. The ribs went up and down and kept going up and down. The blue came out of his gums in front of them and left them pink.
“Sack,” Wyatt said. “On the rail behind you. Rub him over the ribs, both sides, hard as you can stand to. You’re trying to make him mad about it.”
“He is mad about it.”