The Jesus Cow

by Michael Perry

  Billy grinned and shook his head. “You regard women as visions. As evanescent creatures. Despite all previous experience. Need I remind you of The Meadowlark Weeps?”

  Harley slumped in his chair, nursing his mope.

  Billy continued. “You desire these women, heart, soul, and flesh. Then when they prove to be of the flesh, you become petulant and disheartened.”

  True enough, thought Harley. He was embarrassed by his inability to avoid the wallow in another’s past, embarrassed by the need to worry it like a broken tooth, but even more he was terrified by the grip it put on his heart. The way it squeezed his guts in the worst moments. He would be tracing Mindy’s ivy tattoo, and suddenly he would envision the sculptwelder doing the same. Like a drop of dye dropped in water, the sick feeling would spread through his chest, go purling through his liver, and settle acidulously into his guts. And then always the same vision: her acquiescing, lying back, the man lowering himself, and then a dissipation into bitter darkness. He hated himself for his unreasonable weakness, but even more unreasonably he hated the past. He also despised himself for entertaining these feelings in light of his own history. It’s not like he had ever been a swinger, but over the course of time and trying there were certain accruals. And then there was the fact that he was grieving over innocence even as he traced the tattoo on a naked woman not his wife. He was, he believed, astonishingly unreasonable and selfish. This understanding failed to ameliorate his self-pity.

  “Babe, what’s wrong?” said Mindy, bringing Harley back to the present.

  He gave her the whole mopey recitation. She listened patiently, then spoke.

  “We are who we have become, baby. My history, your history, they lead to now.”

  “Yah,” said Harley, sighing. “But hell. It still hurts.”

  “C’mon, baby,” said Mindy, and pulled him to her. But Harley resisted.

  “I worry sometimes you’re hanging in there with me because I have all this money now,” he said.

  He was unprepared for the hurt that sprang to her eyes.

  It was followed quickly by anger.

  “The day you spilled coffee all over my boots and drove off in a rusty truck—you didn’t have all that money then.”

  He felt immediately small.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “I never should have said that.”

  Then, trying to rescue things with a lame joke, he said, “You know I’ve only ever loved you for your truck. I mean—a headache rack?”

  She chuckled at that. But even as she came to his arms he sensed the worry stain spreading. He felt the inevitability of yet another failure. A permeant feeling of futility.

  The trouble didn’t inhibit their appetite for each other, and later as they lay back beneath the scabrous headboard, Harley said, “Hoo. That and a truck.”

  Mindy slapped him right across the face.

  Harley’s eyes flew open in shock, but Mindy was already laughing. “Mosquito,” she said, showing him the crushed bug as evidence.

  The wet stretch had triggered a boom in the insects. In fact, Sloan had considered spraying Skeeter-Beater, but then he realized there was more money to be made in not spraying it. Instead he set up yet another booth, and at last report insect repellent concessions were booming. The man was a genius.

  “I used to walk by the swamp and let mosquitos sting me when I was a kid,” said Harley.

  “Well, that’s not too weird,” said Mindy.

  “Yah, there was something about the sting—it’s not really a sting, it’s kinda itchy sweet.”

  “Yer kinda itchy sweet,” said Mindy, kissing him on the nose.

  His heart full of hope again, Harley started rambling. “Sometimes you hung in there too long and even though a full mosquito lumbers in the air like an overloaded chopper, it got away and you felt kinda cheated, like you’d let intelligence fall into enemy hands, or enemy proboscises, because now you—your blood—was going to feed new generations of skeeters.”

  “Seems like all that blood loss is still affecting your brain,” said Mindy, her face close to his, and smiling.

  “Sometimes I’d try to see how many I could stand. Just let them land and jab me until I couldn’t take it anymore. Sometimes on humid evenings they’d be so thick that when I slapped them they’d leave a gray handprint on my jeans.”

  “Ew.”

  “Then I’d run. Sprint down the road. Try to create my own wind, lose them, listen as the whine receded. But the minute I stopped, they’d swarm in again. I’d slap and swat. My forearms would be covered with gray smears of wing dust and thin red stripes of blood.”

  “If this is pillow talk, put my head under the pillow,” said Mindy. They both laughed and Harley loved the lightness of it, the relief from the worry, the way her eyes were sparkling just the way he remembered them in the Kwik Pump that first day.

  “Tuesday,” said Harley. “Can you do the food pantry with me?”

  “Sure!” said Mindy. “Maybe afterward I’ll take you out on the Norton. There’s a hill out by the big swamp—”

  “—McCracken Hill,” said Harley.

  “Yeah, I like to crest that thing going like sixty, then tuck coming off it. I’ll put you behind me and we’ll do that. Kill some mosquitos with our teeth!”

  LATER, AS HE drove away, Mindy waving in his rearview mirror, Harley found himself wanting her more than ever. Her independence, her strength, her laugh, her four-wheel-drive demeanor. Lately they had been discussing his idea of continuing to live in their own places even if they got married. They had also talked about pitching everything and moving to Panama, where Mindy had once hitchhiked. There was something bohemian in all of this that made his heart beat with hope again. And even if they just settled into baling hay and raising beefers, that’d be fine. Suddenly happy in his lightness, he had a hankering for Kona Luna and a maple-frosted long john. He turned on the radio. Patsy Cline was singing, “Hurt me now, get it over . . .” Despite his sudden buoyance, the thought occurred to him: is there anything sadder than the way a man walks in the wake of a woman he knows he has already lost?

  ONE DAY IN late June, Sloan called Harley into a meeting to tell him the International Talent Management bean counters noted a taper in “the numbers” at JCOW Enterprises. Pilgrims and profits remained abundant, but had settled since the boom days. In response, Sloan outlined a plan to bolster areas of strength (offsite bookings, online sales), pursue new developments (several agricultural biotech firms were interested in harvesting Tina Turner’s ova, and there were also discussions with a leading cloning facility) and cut back where possible (reductions in the shuttle schedule and size of the parking lot, thus requiring less equipment and fewer cleanup and security personnel).

  Sloan also showed Harley a chart tracking an uptick in lawsuits. People tripped or fell, or got bumped in the parking area, or some other theoretically actionable thing, and a week later the certified mail arrived. Sloan assured Harley the lawyers would handle it, and that he couldn’t be touched, but Harley knew his name was on every one of those legal forms, and he was not used to sleeping on that sort of information.

  Finally, said Sloan, public sentiment in Swivel continued to deteriorate. Harley already knew that. With the receding crowds came receding profits for local entrepreneurs willing to put up with the disruption as long as they could make a little money on the side. Now that things weren’t so flush, they were becoming restless and resentful. There were also moments of heavy-handedness: Gladys Knutson had been selling crocheted Jesus Cow tea cozies and donating the proceeds to the Lutheran Ladies Haiti Fund until International Talent Management’s attorneys shut her down. Shortly afterward, her Etsy site was hacked. “Tell me that was a coincidence,” she said, after cornering Harley down at the Post Office. Finally, the condition of the village sewers worsened weekly (one particularly horrific subterranean burp necessitated the evacuation of the Buck Rub Bar on bingo night), and although the trouble had been bubbling for years, JCOW E
nterprises was universally blamed.

  Harley had done things here and there to assuage the populace, including setting up a deal in which Swivel’s school buses were used to supplement the International Talent Management shuttle fleet, with (and he admitted this was a dig at Klute) 100 percent of the proceeds going to the school. He had also written a check to the Swivel Volunteer Fire Department to cover the remainder of the thermal imager fund, and, while he was at it, he threw in enough to cover a brand-new Argo with all the trimmings. The chief—who hadn’t spoken to Harley since he submitted his letter of leave—insisted on a ceremony featuring a giant check so that he could get a photo in the Weekly Dealio.

  Harley cringed at the memory.

  AFTER THE MEETING with Sloan, Harley drove the Silverado over to gas up at the Kwik Pump and Chief Knutson flagged him down in the parking lot.

  “There’s been a little grumblin’ about the fireworks.”

  “Oh?” said Harley, confused.

  “Well, some of the fellers were sayin’ that if you could front the cash for that infrared camera and an Argo, fireworks would just be pocket change.”

  Harley felt a mix of sadness and anger. How much would be enough?

  “Due to unexpected expenses brought on by high call volume related to elevated levels of transient populations,” said the chief, nodding his head meaningfully as another shuttle bus unloaded across the road, “The village cut our fireworks budget by fifty percent. We were gonna make up the difference with a raffle, but what with all the extra calls, we just don’t know when we’d do it. Plus I believe the boys—and by boys I mean the ladies too—are kinda raffled out.”

  “Well, I suppose I could . . .” Harley trailed off. He felt like something had been pulled from beneath him. He thought how even though he had always operated on the fringes of the department it had been the one place where he felt part of the crew, the club, the bunch. But now this damned calf had managed to cut him out of even that herd.

  Harley looked at the chief. “Even if you did raise the money, wouldn’t the village be better off spending it on a new sewer system?” But even as he asked the question, Harley knew better. He knew that like dirt track stock car races and demolition derbies and heated deer stands and camouflage brassieres and for that matter faith itself, there were some things that were simply part of a place and a people and didn’t bear scrutiny.

  Harley also knew pride and history were in play. Boomler’s fireworks display had grown larger and larger over the years, until it had even begun to draw viewers from Swivel. Given the right budget, Swivel had a chance to put Boomler in its place.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Harley, knowing already he’d do it but not wanting to seem an immediate pushover.

  In the end he simply walked into Scooter Eckstrom’s fireworks tent and bought everything in sight. Scooter set up the tent every year right beside the interstate off-ramp and hung FIREWORKS, EXIT NOW banners in the trees so they could be seen from both north and southbound lanes. Scooter was not so much an entrepreneur as a serial divorcé trying to bolster his alimony reserves.

  “Call Chief Knutson, and let him know this all belongs to the fire department now,” said Harley after writing the check. Scooter was looking at him like he couldn’t believe his luck.

  “And now,” said Harley, “let’s talk about the real stuff.” Harley knew for a fact Scooter made a trip out of state each year and returned with armaments not legally available over the counter or beneath the tent. After some quiet discussion in the cab of Harley’s truck, Scooter placed a lengthy phone call, and by the following Monday a cube van rolled into Swivel. On the sides of the van it said OFFICE SUPPLIES but in the back were sufficient munitions to rattle the boots of those losers clear down in Boomler.

  And so it came to be, after a long day of bad news and bad vibes, Harley found himself afoot at two a.m., walking to the overpass. Long before the arrival of the Jesus Cow, he had liked to walk out here and watch the occasional car come and go, liked to track the running lights of some lonely trucker deadheading for home. Sometimes he stood at the rail and looked up at the stars and drew the cold air in, and wished with all his heart he could stay there staring up at infinity forever, and then in the moment he’d say the only thing he could think to say, which was a quiet and a reverent “Goddamn.”

  RECENTLY HARLEY HAD been noodling around online when he discovered an Internet video of film footage shot at the Van Hoof farm during the height of the Virgin Mary sightings. The film was soundless but shot in color. The hues were saturated and the sights were a marvel: There were the buses Sloan had described, and when the camera panned right, a train—an actual passenger train—could be seen in the background, stopped in the middle of the field through which the track cut, stopped so people could debark and walk directly to the farmhouse. Several people were seated and watching from the rail bed berm itself. Harley spotted a military jeep and some sort of van with rigging and a tower of speaker trumpets, and there were rows and rows of cars shining like beetles in the sun.

  But mostly Harley focused on the people. There were ladies in hats and demure scarves, and the men too had a general formality to them, many in fedoras and ties. In one cut, a high-school-aged boy in a satin jacket could be seen standing behind a temporary fence handing out what appeared to be tickets or maybe Bible bookmarks to passersby. There were no signs of hysterics. The crowd appeared orderly. Even without sound, Harley could tell when Mary Ann Van Hoof must have stepped out to await the latest sign from heaven because the crowd tightened, perceptibly knotting themselves around the farmhouse. Harley found his heart beating harder as he felt—even through all the removes of time and technology, and the silence of the moving pictures—the yearning of all those people. Their heartfelt desire to hear their God speak.

  What he saw in the video, of course, was what he saw every day in his own driveway. Just with different cars and clothes.

  The people who really unsettled him were the ones who looked furtively faithful. You could see in their eyes they truly came in hope. Or in quiet desperation from some life that had turned against them at every opportunity. Mary Ann Van Hoof’s visions, his Jesus Cow—if these were not their last hope they were surely rattling around in the bottom of the bucket. These people were starved for hope. And what am I feeding them? thought Harley.

  He was astounded at how quickly he had let himself follow the lead of money and revenge. How quickly he had dismissed faith or how little faith had played into this. He was beaten down at the time, but still . . .

  He thought of calling Billy and trading the overpass for the kitchen table and beer, but it was late, and besides, they’d talked around the edge of these things already.

  “What would it be like to really be God?” he’d said to Billy during their most recent staff meeting. “To wave my hand and make all of this go away?”

  Billy was silent.

  “Why must things passeth all understanding, Billy? Why not lay it all out there? Why all the mysteries and puzzlement? The outright deception?”

  “Agreed: some Cliff’s Notes woulda been nice,” said Billy.

  Harley was on a roll. “You know—give a guy a shot at working it out without the intercession of popes and bishops and churches big as football stadiums and pamphlets and people with name tags knocking on your door, men on the AM radio crackling and fading in and out in their own sort of sonic metaphor for the confusion and uncertainty and tenuousness of the whole dang deal.” He was drawing real heavily on that one creative writing course.

  “Just as with your women, you attempt to render existence in terms of perfection,” said Billy. “Life is a rough approximation of things hoped for. You need to revel in the misfires. In the scars and dings. You need to develop a taste for regret. It’s the malt vinegar of emotions—drink it straight from the bottle and it’ll eat yer guts. Add a sprinkle here and there and it puts a living edge on things.”

  TONIGHT, AS HE placed his forearms on the b
ridge rail and leaned out over the four-lane, the moon was coming up full. As another set of taillights slid away beneath him in the dark, Harley knew part of the attraction of this spot was the implication that he could always catch that southbound lane, push the foot feed to the floor, drive off into the night, and just keep driving. He glanced back over toward his farm and saw the security light glow, and above it all the scrolling pixilated steer, chasing its own message: . . . SEE THE JESUS COW . . .

  Suddenly the southbound lane seemed more attractive than ever.

  But of course he couldn’t go. “You can’t just quit, son,” said Billy, when Harley had broached the idea once before. “Look at all the people you’re employing. Look at all the mouths you’re feeding. And recharging the government coffers, for which we the taxpayers and we on some form of the dole thank you.”

  “But I—”

  “You’re also helping a lot of those people believe. It might not be for us, but for many of those people you have brought great peace. Great hope.”

  “Yah, but I—”

  “I, I, I,” said Billy, shaking his head. “Lemme put it another way: You ain’t the only one bleedin’ here.”

  “Waylon again.”

  “Nah. Ray Wylie Hubbard. My sorta prophet.”

  And then there was Mindy. They’d had a good stretch lately, but he’d still get in those funks, and no woman should have to put up with a self-pitying infant of that order. And that damned crack he made about her wanting him for his money; he worried what kind of rotten little seed that might have planted. He moved closer to the railing, leaned over just enough to catch the vertiginous zing in his gut. Then it faded, and he stared off toward the rising moon, tannin brown and looking as if it had been dunked in tea. He was recalling a line from a poem now, or it might have been some gospel blues song, he couldn’t recall the source—something from back in his college days—but in his head it was the voice of a strapping, strong woman, and the line, or the fragment of the line, went You ain’t prayed in so long.