The Jesus Cow

by Michael Perry

  Dusk was fading to dark now. Harley could hear the squinch of tires as a steady stream of cars left the lot. Sloan had said it was very important to be businesslike with the hours. Furthermore, the husbandry consultants had warned that the calf mustn’t be overstimulated. The parking lots were illuminated by halogen lights attached to portable trailers, their generators maintaining a steady mufflered hum. In the dimmer spots between the pools of white light, parking attendants waved the cars along their way, the cone-tipped flashlights cutting orange arcs above the ground. Two large black SUVs pulled up to the barn and Harley knew these would be the VIPs, allowed in (at a prohibitive rate, and after the rabble had departed) and given a chance to feed and straw the calf, lay their hands upon him, and pose for photographs.

  The exterior of the barn was fully lit, bathed in gel lights and upwardly aimed floods and twinkling with strings of white icicle lights. Hidden blowers puffed a gentle dusting of fake snow that dropped past the lighted eaves in a way that couldn’t help but impart comfort. And centering it all, an electrified cross atop the silo glowing sacred white. Harley had fought the placement of the cross, but he had to admit Sloan and his Hollywood people had done an astounding job. The barn looked like it was plucked from a Thomas Kinkade refrigerator magnet.

  Mindy moved in close.

  “I’m so proud of you, baby.”

  “But I didn’t really do anything. That calf fell in my lap. Utter chance. And when I tried to do it on my own, I screwed it up.”

  “Honey, sometimes you just need to go with happiness and opportunity.”

  “Yah,” said Harley. “Yah, I overthink everything.”

  “Don’t overthink this,” said Mindy softly, the glow of the scene lights soft on her cheeks. “Or this.” She pulled him near and kissed him.

  Down below Harley heard a different rumble. It was Meg Jankowski, returning home from the food pantry in her junk truck. She drove slowly, starting and stopping between droves of departing pilgrims, and waiting to be waved through by the security employee doing traffic out by the mailbox. When she finally cleared the last stragglers and accelerated, Harley wondered what in all her faith she made of this garish carnival.

  CHAPTER 27

  In mid-March, JCOW Enterprises shut down for three days. The entire grounds were cleared, cleaned, and sealed off. The only visible activity was that of the security teams and JCOW Enterprises employees. A special retinue from International Talent Management flew in for the week.

  On the morning of the third day, a caravan of white vehicles arrived and drove up Harley’s driveway. They were met by the security team, and ushered quickly into the viewing vestibule. For anyone watching from the road, there would have been little to see. But within the vestibule was a team of men—some in vestments, some not—representing the Vatican.

  Sloan had asked Harley to take Billy out of town for this one, so they were fueling the Silverado across the street at the Kwik Pump before a trip to the Clearwater warehouse club, where Billy bought kitty litter by the pallet. Just as Harley was topping off his tank, Meg pulled into the other side of the island and jumped down from her junk truck to fill up.

  “Well, hello, Harley,” she said. Her smile and gentle familiarity caught him off guard. Like she knew more about him than he suspected.

  “Hello, Meg.”

  “How are you holding up these days?”

  “Well, fine, I guess.” He nodded toward his farm, which from this distance appeared to be a vacant theme park. An image of the calf (with the Jesus face pixilated) scrolled continuously around the water tower LED screen, followed by a text crawl that read . . . SEE THE JESUS COW . . . JESUSCOW.COM . . . SEE THE JESUS COW . . . Today, a secondary message flashed between the ellipses: . . . REOPENING TOMORROW, 9AM!!! . . .

  “Quiet today,” said Meg, nodding toward the empty grounds.

  “Yah,” said Harley. “They’re doing a bunch of re—” He stopped midword. He had been going to give her some line about revamping, but there was something about Meg’s eyes, open and honest in her placid face, that wouldn’t allow it.

  “Well, it’s some of your people,” said Harley.

  “My people.”

  “A bishop or some such,” said Harley. “They’re looking into conferring some sort of official status on the . . . the . . .”

  “The situation?”

  “Sure,” said Harley with relief.

  “I’m not so sure about all that.”

  “But . . . you . . .”

  “I go to church every day?”

  “Yah.”

  “I wear the robe and help Father Chuck do all the mystery services?”

  “Yah. And yet . . .”

  “Harley, the church is a frame. It’s how I look at things. You know, sometimes we get too caught up in trying to figure out what people believe and forget to look at why they believe.”

  Harley didn’t have anything to say to that.

  “Lighting those candles, going to that church—that’s nothing but the outside of what’s going on inside,” said Meg, racking the diesel nozzle and jogging into the Kwik Pump to pay up. “Good to see you,” she said over her shoulder.

  Harley climbed back into the truck and looked at Billy.

  “You hear all that?”

  “Yep.”

  “How do you get that?”

  “I suppose you’d just ask her out,” said Billy.

  “No! Not the woman! The goodness! The peace! That pure-heartedness.”

  “Well, first of all, I reckon she’d tell you it’s a tad more complicated than that,” said Billy. “And I’ll tell you that faith and faithfulness are not the same.”

  Harley shook his head, as if to clear it.

  Billy continued. “It comes back to the people, doesn’t it? Emerson said people are better than their theology. Sometimes he’s right. How you treat your neighbors. That’s what counts. Meg is good people. End of story.”

  Harley felt a pang at that, especially in light of what he’d heard about the trouble at the food pantry, and how he was the cause of it. He hadn’t moved his truck yet, and Meg was already jogging back to hers. Harley rolled his window down.

  “Meg.”

  “Yes?”

  “Um . . . I heard things were tough down at the food pantry.”

  “Well, things are never easy down at the food pantry.”

  “But all the people . . . a lot more of them, I’ve heard.”

  “There has been a steep increase, yes.”

  “And mostly because of . . .” He trailed off, and yanked his head in the direction of the scene across the road.

  “It has played a part.”

  “Well, I’m going to talk to Sloan. He’s the guy in charge. I’ll make sure he sends some money.”

  “That would be nice, Harley.” There was something gentle in the way she used his name.

  “But, Harley?”

  “Yah?”

  “What we really need, what we’re really short on, is help. It’s not easy to get enough food and finances, but it’s even harder to get enough help. Especially now that we’ve had to open for an hour daily to help out folks in transit. Mostly it’s just Carolyn and me. What we really need is someone else to take a turn. Someone to pitch in, help pick up the food, sort it, hand it out. To run down and swab out the mop room when the sewer blows, which it does about once a week.”

  For the first time in a long time, Harley brightened. “Well, yeah! I could do that! And, Billy? You wanna pitch in?”

  “Gladly,” said Billy.

  “And Mindy too,” said Harley. “She’d love to help out.”

  “Wonderful,” said Meg. “Next Tuesday we’re sorting donations. We’ll give you the introductory tour, if you can make it.”

  “You bet,” said Harley.

  “See you then,” said Meg. “And, Harley?

  “Thank you.”

  THAT NIGHT HARLEY called Mindy and told her about the food pantry situation.

 
“You be willing to do that?”

  “Sure!” said Mindy. “I’d like to talk to Meg about buying some scrap metal anyway. Studio’s to the point where I can start cranking out some crosses. Maybe set up a tent over there with the others, if that’s okay.”

  “Well, sure,” said Harley. “I’ll talk to Sloan. See if I can get you a prime spot.”

  Harley hung up and went out to do the chores. He kept thinking about Meg, and the peace he felt when he was around her. He thought about the little girl with the bald head, and wondered where she was. How she was. If she was. He thought about how it was that one summer day when he was running around this very yard with nothing to do but play, those children in Central America were suffering and dying. When the chores were finished he let himself in the pen and sat with the Jesus calf for a long, long time. He found himself wishing for a shortcut. Something to explain all the good and evil in the world, and maybe even more to the point, all the fog and silliness in between.

  In the truck after they left the gas station, he and Billy had talked more about Meg, and Klute, and how people figured into the grand equation of life.

  “Well, variably,” said Billy. “But I guess that’s obvious.”

  “And God?” asked Harley.

  “Well, if there is one, he’s not so much in the equation as above it.”

  Harley looked at the calf, staring at the face of Christ until his eyes ached. What I’d give, he thought, for a sign. Just a simple dang sign. Something a wishy-washy knucklehead like me could understand.

  The calf shifted.

  Raised its tail.

  And into the straw dropped a pat of poop.

  CHAPTER 28

  JCOW Enterprises continued to thrive. “The numbers”—as Sloan called them—were down from the initial crush, but remained strong. Several tour buses still arrived and departed daily, and the parking lot was never less than half full. Merchandise sales were strong, with online orders alone generating thousands of dollars per day.

  There had been a tricky stretch during a warm spell when the ground thawed and the hay field parking lot became impassable, but Sloan’s crew set up an additional shuttle bus arrangement in which the Clearwater Walmart traded parking lot space for an in-store appearance by the Jesus Cow (as even Harley himself had now come to think of it). The in-store went so well that a new International Talent Management team was formed to expand bookings, including one for the Mall of America for which the retainer amounted to a high six figures.

  Harley never stopped marveling at the thoroughness with which Sloan and International Talent Management chased down every possible profit opportunity. One of the most recent additions was an artist with a long blond ponytail who set up an easel at the exit of the viewing vestibule and for fifty bucks a pop painted visitors’ faces over those of the shepherds in a luminous creche scene featuring the Jesus Cow. He had a marvelous ability to capture likenesses with a few quick swipes of the brush. In addition to the hard copy, the digitized version could be applied to towels, throw rugs, sweatshirts, wall clocks, or pretty much any other flat surface you wished.

  Harley was introduced to the artist by Mindy, who had been given the adjacent booth and was selling crosses as fast as she could cut them out and weld them up.

  “Harley, this is Yonni,” said Mindy. “Yonni, this is Harley, my boyfriend.”

  Still not tired of hearing that, thought Harley, then extending his hand to Yonni, he said, “I’ve always been amazed by caricaturists.”

  “I prefer portraitist,” said Yonni.

  “Yes,” said Mindy. “There’s a difference.”

  Harley felt dumb about that, but even more he felt a tweak of something close to jealousy in the way Mindy had so rapidly jumped to the portraitist’s defense.

  “Hey!” said Mindy. “Let’s have him do one of us!”

  Harley shook his head and started to pull back, but Mindy grabbed his hand and insisted.

  “Come on! It’ll be fun!”

  Harley sighed and moved in beside her against the backdrop. Yonni went to work and in short order handed over the finished work.

  Harley looked at himself. He looked glum. Like he’d been parked there short on sleep.

  Mindy looked radiant.

  Radiant? Flat-out hot.

  SWIVEL ITSELF MAINTAINED its ambivalence regarding the ongoing attraction. There was no question that the calf had created a financial windfall. Despite Paul Forster’s misgivings about outsourced diesel sales, the Kwik Pump had put on extra staff and added three registers. There were long lines at the Sunrise Café morning and noon, the local churches were experiencing swollen attendance (and their collection plates accordingly), and the Buck Rub Bar was getting in on the action by selling the J-Cow, which was basically a White Russian with a cinnamon cross sprinkled on the top, and served with a beef stick.

  Even neighboring communities were feeling the windfall. The motel in Boomler was filled to capacity and the resorts out on Chain Lake the same. There was also a boomlet in the local cash-under-the-table economy, with Swivel residents renting out their bedrooms, setting up food and souvenir stands along the curb, and renting their yards for parking.

  There were downsides, of course. Two more constables had been hired and were often put on overtime—although it could be argued that the income they generated by writing parking tickets and clocking outsiders doing twenty-seven in a twenty-five zone helped offset the overhead. There were complaints about the wraparound sign on the water tower, so JCOW Enterprises had agreed to tone down the lumens after midnight. The street maintenance budget was going for broke, and although JCOW Enterprises continued to maintain its own portable bathroom facilities, the general increase in visitors to the village had continued to exacerbate the ongoing sewer problems.

  “Yep,” said Billy when Harley was worrying aloud one day, “but if you’re gonna get swarmed by strangers, religious pilgrims are a good option. You’ll have some issues related to sheer numbers and fervor, but by and large what you have here is a demographic that doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t wreck things, and cleans up after themselves.”

  On the other hand, they also attracted a certain countervalent crowd. Animal rights activists picketed the property line daily, carrying signs and posters decrying the penning of the steer as if he were in a zoo. Religious groups in modest dress picketed right beside them, carrying signs and posters decrying the commercialization and profaning of Christ and his image. And now and then a vanload of atheists showed up. Their signs were generally neatly printed and witty, if a bit cutting, and they tended to wear Carl Sagan T-shirts.

  And then there were the taunters. People who showed up only for the fun of making fun. One group of university kids showed up dressed in sandals, robes, and fake beards, leading two people in a four-legged cow suit. On the flanks of the fake cow they had spraypainted RELIGION IS BULL. As the paying pilgrims filed by, the fake Jesuses taunted them.

  Billy got into his bandoliers and ran them off.

  “But, Billy, you’re not even on the team,” said Harley.

  “Not on anybody’s team. But I don’t like cheapness. Tinniness. I don’t care for the sport of needling the squares. The squares are usually holding the world together for the rest of us. Those knuckleheads are like kids throwing snowballs at cops. They know that with the exception of a few outliers, they can go all neener-neener without fear of reprisal.

  “Nothing brave in that.”

  Later that week when he and Mindy met Carolyn and Meg to help in the food pantry, Harley brought a check from JCOW Enterprises. Meg tried to refuse it, but Harley insisted, joking, “It’s not as big as the one Klute wrote, but there will be more.”

  Carolyn and Meg looked at each other.

  “If you won’t tell ’im, I will,” said Carolyn.

  “The one Klute wrote,” said Meg, “bounced.”

  CHAPTER 29

  On a warm morning in May, Harley and Mindy were in the killer Kokopelli bed. Birdsong and
sunshine were passing through the screen. They had been fooling around some but Harley was in one of his retroactive funks, and couldn’t summon the reaction required.

  From the moment Mindy had corrected him in front of the caricatur—portraitist, Harley had felt an unease in his gut that wouldn’t quite go away. Even if he and Mindy had a good and happy day, there would come a moment when some trigger would send him back to that moment, and it precipitated a sense of dread.

  Harley recognized the behavior. It tracked clear back to his virginal beginnings, back to the skunk-haired girl, who had not been virginal. After he had slept with her, Harley had found himself obsessing over the men who had been there first. He was haunted by the idea of his handprints overlaying the handprints laid there before him. He would continue with this obsession even as he himself became laid over with handprints. In other words, it was a frank double standard.

  He knew this, and it did not help.

  In that small instant when Mindy spoke up for the portraitist, Harley felt a shift, as if for that one moment the painter had levered himself between them, and Mindy had in fact acquiesced. He felt the silly twinge in his gut and he knew he was about to disappear into a self-loathing funk, where he not only imagined Mindy with the painter, but with the sculptwelder and with every other man preceding.

  He was berating himself about this with Billy one day—Billy, the one person he could trust with this sort of talk, even more than he could trust Mindy (and maybe, he thought, that was part of the problem), and, having had one more beer than usual and trying to be profound, he said, “Billy, what is the statute of limitations on another man’s touch?”