The Jesus Cow

by Michael Perry

  He knew one thing: he was ready for something other than what this dirty world had to offer.

  Maybe it was time to believe again.

  “I believe,” slurred Harley aloud, “I am fifty yards shy of meeting Jesus.”

  He did not hurry. He walked stolidly, with study and purpose, as a man does when forced to think of balance and foot placement. But as the light grew, his gut grew more and more weightless, and as he stumped toward the luminous horizon he imagined what it would be to top that hill and see the light bust wide open to reveal the real-dang Jesus—not some pariedolic fake—Jesus in a nimbus, a broad, encompassing halo of light, a portable aurora borealis with maybe a smattering of sparks, Jesus there beneath it with his arms spread wide as a lake, returned to lift all the good-hearted and weary from their struggle, to levitate Harley out of a world of dead cows and twisted metal and ash and scorched dreams and charred hearts, and Harley had this image full and thrumming in his head, and then the light exploded into view and rather than the Second Coming the mystery broke as a single headlight popped over the horizon, followed by the sound of a motor, and it was Mindy on her Norton.

  And Harley thought, Well, that will do.

  He staggered leftward toward the centerline to wave her down, but she had gone deep into her tuck, the way she always said she loved to come off McCracken Hill, and so focused was she that she did not see him, but in the fading light Harley saw another body behind her, a man spooned tight to the curve of her back and gripping her with all his might, and as the two of them zoomed past, Harley recognized Yonni’s ponytail blown straight back in the wind. They locked eyes in the gloaming and in that split second he took a sliver of comfort from the fact that the cartoonist looked terrified.

  And then he felt his heart evaporate like cotton candy in a blast furnace, and he spun on his heel, and went stumbling back down the hill.

  HE STOPPED AT the truck for another dose of beer. To the north, Mindy’s taillight was a patch of red fuzz in the fog, dwindling and dwindling until the glow was gone and with it the last echoes of the engine and then all Harley could hear was the sound of mosquitos and his own heart thumping and the gurgle of the beers as he drained them one after the other.

  HE STEPPED INTO the ditch and fell immediately face-first into the swamp water. It was lukewarm and amniotic slick. There was the sensation of larvae. Had it been colder, perhaps it would have shocked him back to sense, but it was medium soup, viscous with frog eggs. He staggered to his feet and spit. The water drained from his head down, sluicing and spattering around his shins. The air smelled of salt and rot. He loosed a reverberant belch.

  It was tough going but he operated with the plodding determination common to drunks and, for that matter, pilgrims. When his feet stuck in the muck, he pulled himself forward by gripping the saw grass hummocks, and soon his hands were a razored, bloody mess and his thighs burned. It was dark now, his only guidance the bulk of dark shapes and darker shapes and the reflection of starlight here and there in the water. Mosquitos came at him from all angles. At one point he stumbled into a channel where the footing was solid beneath the mud and he made good progress but soon the watercourse became choked with cattails and he plunged into them, the velvet-brown tops batting him lightly about the head, the spear-point leaves jabbing him painfully even as their whisking gave him a temporary reprieve from the mosquitos.

  He broke through into a placid pond where the stars were so accurately reflected between strips of dissipating fog he became disoriented regarding the position of the heavens for a moment before he stumbled forward waist deep into the water and set the stars to rippling, as if the cosmos were cast in gelatin. As he crossed the open water, the mosquitos returned in a fuzzy swarm, whirring and jabbing, and he inhaled a few. Kneeling, he scooped muck from the pond bottom and smeared it through his hair and on his face and neck and arms. It helped. The mosquitos still buzzed but did not land. The far side of the pond was bordered by a floating bog. When he reached it he threw himself forward and into a half-twist Fosbury flop, landing on his back and using his elbows to crab himself out of the water and onto the bog, which undulated gently beneath him in ever-receding echoes of his movement. He began settling almost immediately, the water rising around his body as it pressed into the bog. Above him the fog had cleared and he saw all the constellations.

  He remembered his Bible, then, in the pickup with the empty bottles.

  Crap, he thought. I was gonna read that.

  HE FIGURED THEY’D never find him, which was fine. For the first time since he didn’t know how long, he was at peace. Now and then one of the mosquito horde would find its way past the mud pack and he would feel the itchy pinch of the proboscis penetrating his skin, but he was beyond swatting now. He felt peace was within reach. As another mosquito bored in somewhere above his ankle, he wondered idly how much blood a single mosquito might extract, and by virtue of extrapolation, how many mosquitos it would require to bleed him dry. The things we don’t know, he thought. For a passing moment, he felt fuzzy amusement at the idea of the mosquitos catching a buzz off the beer in his veins. Then he caught sight of the moon, which drew him to focus simply on the apparently infinite universe framed in a saw grass fringe, a perspective that led him to think of Billy and what he’d said about being beneath it all or above it all, and then he recalled the image—it played like a brief video clip—of Mindy flopping on her back in the barn to admire the frosty nails the first time she visited, and how keen his hope and hunger had been in that moment, and how it could all have come to this. From crystalline hope to mucky failure. So many failures, he thought. So many opportunities to be bold, and it was possible tonight’s excursion would be the bravest thing he’d ever done—and even that driven by the twin catalysts of beer and heartbreak.

  The mosquitos kept working at his above-water bits and he found himself caring less and less. Soon, enough water had seeped into the depression formed by his head that it ran in and blocked his ears. A gurgle, and the sound of the mosquitos muffled into nothingness, although they spun above him now in a cloud sufficient to dim the stars. So odd, he thought, as the last three beers he chugged began to take real hold, what things come to. How a guy might live like I did and then wind up like this.

  The water was tickling his nostrils now.

  He’d miss the burn barrel sessions. The stirring of the flames, the dance of the orange sparks rising. He’d miss Billy and Billy’s declaratives. The Waylon Jennings wisdom.

  He wondered what lay ahead. What he would find. There was peace in that too. After a life split between utter belief and just wondering—and even more time spent just living and not thinking about it at all—he’d find out soon what the deal was. Or find out nothing. This too, he decided, was acceptable.

  He had lost track of time. He couldn’t figure out how long he’d been there. The mosquitos coated him like writhing gray velvet and he noticed he could no longer feel their sting, not even when they bit his lips, and he blinked them from his eyes and tried to determine if the stars had changed position since he took to this mushy mattress, just how far the earth had rotated since then, and gazing up as he felt the water rising and closing in around more of his body, it slowly dawned on him that it wasn’t about the earth spinning but the universe spinning, and if you let yourself go, if you surrendered focus, opened your soul to the void, you could begin to sense the spin, the vortex, the whole thing funneling, whirlpooling, the stars slipping and twisting and skidding and blurring, the moon a fatter stripe of white, the whole cosmic works corkscrewing through time, drawing to a center and picking up speed, and it occurred to Harley that this was the proverbial bright light and there was Billy pausing to grin with a beer at his lips, and Dad kneeling with his Sunday-go-to-meeting shoe polish rag, and now Ma and a fresh-frosted birthday cake held toward him in red-checked oven gloves and now throughout it all rising and stitching through the stars like a green, glowing asp an infinite ivy tattoo, and the ivy turning red and knott
ing itself into a barbed-wire burr, and then came a whooshing in his ears, and yet the greater the velocity, the more kinetic the feeling, the more peace, the more stillness, the soft surrender, and right near the end he was pretty sure he was given the answer: it came in the form of a question and it issued from a calf curled upon straw of gold and beside it a beautiful bald-headed child; he reached out his hand and he felt the warmth just beyond his fingertips, then everything went dark and was quite simply nothing at all.

  CHAPTER 33

  Later, Billy told him how it had all played out.

  Intent in her tuck, Mindy hadn’t noticed the lovelorn drunkard Harley gazing wobbily from the mist upon the opposite shoulder, but Yonni had, and when they passed the abandoned truck he put two and two together and when they dismounted outside the granary, he convinced Mindy to call Billy.

  Billy arrived to find the truck but no Harley. Then he saw the Bible case and bottles. When he did a U-turn to head back for town, his headlights illuminated the crushed weeds where Harley had done his initial face-plant in the ditch. Billy, fearing Harley had wandered off drunk into the swamp—which indeed he had—summoned the fire department.

  It was Boober Johnson—using the thermal imager to scan the swamp for stray muskrats while everyone milled around the abandoned truck—who spotted Harley’s body glowing phosphorescent white on the screen like a passed-out ghost. The chief said it was “ironical” that were it not for Harley buying the thermal imager in the first place, they might never have found him. The chief was also pleased that in dragging Harley from the swamp, he was able to exercise all the amphibious abilities of the Argo.

  HARLEY WAS UNRESPONSIVE but breathing when they reached him, swollen and mosquito bitten beyond recognition. He spent a week recovering in the Clearwater hospital. During this time Harley refused all visitors save Billy. He felt the swamp incident was the final act requiring a community apology, and was overcome with embarrassment when he thought of actually returning to town or setting foot in the Kwik Pump or showing his face at the fire department.

  Upon his discharge he learned Mary Magdalene Jankowski had visited the hospital chapel every day to light a candle and offer a prayer on his behalf.

  WHEN HE WAS back home, one of his first visitors was Sloan.

  “Best news first: Lloyd’s of London will pay up.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Turns out Vance Hansen failed to have the paperwork notarized. As a result, the tower was still technically village property—you’ll receive your payout.

  “Regarding Tina Turner’s ova, harvesting was—er—interrupted, but for those we did obtain, we have reached an agreement we think you will find most gratifying.” He showed Harley a number, and Harley figured gratifying would be one word, yes.

  “Regarding the remains of the calf—which amounted to some scorched leather wrapped around a fireproof ceramic tracking chip—we have reached an agreement with the Vatican we think you will find even more gratifying.” He showed Harley another number. “The remains will be preserved in the Vatican Museums. They are already winging their way to the pope.

  “The reality show ratings have skyrocketed, and the exploding water tower actually triggered a bidding war over the film and book rights. That woman storing all that oil up there was the best thing that ever happened to you. If this thing had wound down of its own accord, you’d be looking at a fraction of the profit.”

  Harley didn’t know how to feel about this.

  So he decided to feel okay about it.

  EPILOGUE

  Thanks to good fortune arising from bad, Harley was able to fund the replacement of the sewer, the repaving of Main Street, and the rebuilding of the food pantry. He completed the buyout of Klute Sorensen, hired a fleet of bulldozers, and converted half of Clover Blossom Estates to a land trust, a park, and community gardens. The other half he kept for himself, rebuilding the old fence lines so soon they were filled with mice and songbirds as before, and so that he could once again bale his own hay with his father’s baler.

  He furthermore sowed the renewed fields with a helluva bunch of clover.

  CAROLYN AND KLUTE eloped to a small town in Central America. Carolyn pretty much had to, as the EPA, ATF, and several other acronymic branches of government were very eager to speak to her about the record number of environmental infractions she’d racked up. Klute, feeling freed from the burden of his ancestors, accompanied Carolyn to a weekly pottery class and took up surfing.

  SLOAN OFFERED BILLY a job with International Talent Management, and he accepted, moving with his cats to L.A.

  Six months later Harley’s phone rang. It was Billy.

  “I’m getting married.”

  “Whoa!”

  “I’d like you to be the best man.”

  “Why, Billy—I’d be honored.”

  “Yah, me too.”

  “So who’s the lucky girl?”

  “It’s not a girl, son,” said Billy. “It’s Sloan.”

  THE BEEFERS SURVIVED the fire, and one day when Harley was unloading hay for them, he heard a sound. He turned, and there before him was a little girl with her head full of curls. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. Then he looked up the driveway and saw her mother, waving and smiling.

  “I’m all better,” said the girl.

  “Cured,” said her mother, and now Harley knew: it was the girl who had come to hug the Jesus Cow that very first day.

  “It was the Jesus Cow,” said the girl, and her mother nodded.

  “Well . . . and maybe the doctors? And the radiation? And the chemotherapy?”

  Harley said it gently.

  The girl smiled. Harley thought back to the day he drove drunk to stare in the window of the meeting house. How as a little boy he sat in that straight-backed chair, solid in his faith.

  He looked back at the little girl, but she and her mother were climbing into a car, and Reverend Gary was driving.

  I don’t have it, thought Harley, but I’m happy they do.

  YONNI DIDN’T LAST, but Mindy’s metalworking business thrived, boosted in the early days by online sales of “Jesus Cow R.I.P.” crosses and calf silhouettes fashioned from water tower remains, of which the village was pleased to be rid. In time Mindy and Harley would again cross paths at the Kwik Pump and resume neighborly discourse, but neither was in a rush. Driving past Mindy’s place in late August, Harley spied a square of freshly fenced pasture, and, grazing within, a trio of beefers.

  OF ALL THE checks Harley wrote in the wake of Swivel’s grand conflagration, none was sweeter than the one that paid off the mortgage of the Boomler Catholic Church, the cascade effect being that Bishop Burkle took his deconsecrating eye off of St. Jude’s, a move which ensured its existence in perpetuity and allowed for a ceremony to be held there one year later, in which Harley Jackson and Margaret Magdalene Jankowski were married by Father Carl. Billy Tripp and Carolyn Sawchuck served as best man and maid of honor, although Carolyn rejected the specific appellation on principle and was forced to attend the ceremony via Skype due to outstanding legal issues.

  During the dance that evening, Father Carl got a bit deeper into the champagne than the bishop might have wished, and took Harley aside to remind him that as he was unbaptized, the Catholic church classified his marriage to Meg as a “disparity of cult.” Overhearing this, Billy gave Father Carl a high five, and asked when he could join.

  Following a brief honeymoon touring the shrines and grottoes of Wisconsin (Harley splurged on a used camper for the Silverado), the newlyweds returned to Swivel and set up housekeeping at Harley’s place, with Meg’s scrap yard being converted to strictly commercial purposes.

  There were those who said Harley and Meg were silly to stay in Swivel, what with their riches, but in this they were of one mind: here they were at home, and here they would remain. Harley rejoined the fire department and doubled the size of his beef herd, but with Billy and his cats gone to California, he saw no reason to get anothe
r milk cow. He learned to run the car crusher and tow truck, but when he and Meg went out in the junk truck to winch some rusted beater from the blackberry canes, she always did the driving.

  And so it came to pass that on a Christmas Eve not so very long ago Harley Jackson found himself rumbling off to midnight mass in the passenger seat of a Ford straight truck stacked with two squashed minivans and a flattened dump rake. As Meg worked the split shifter, Harley considered her profile in the glow of the dash and felt a fullness in his heart. Then he slid low in his seat so he might press his cheek against the chill window and look up to all the stars above.

  Low overhead, he thought.

  Glory Hallelujah, low overhead.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FIRST AND FOREMOST, to my parents—anything decent is because of them; anything else is not their fault.

  Lisa for keeping me in deadlines, Jennifer for enforcing them, and a special thanks to the assistants who maintain the chain. Alissa and Blakeley for worry-free management. Dave for webwork. Matt B. for math. Scranton. Dan and Lisa and staff for artful solitude. Dean Bakopoulos for an early (and humane) insight. Dan Schaefer, professor and chair of Animal Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison, for calf facts. Neighbor Ginny for faithful fact-checking. Racy’s and Mister Happy, still grinding after all these years. Matt Marion for ongoing typing assignments. Ben in Ohio. Colorado blended and extendeds. McDowell family. Mi familia de Panamá. TFD and Emergicare for allowing me to carry one of their pagers when I’m home. Frank, Mags, the Joynt and Taylor’s kitchen table crew (and from high school, Mrs. R.).

  Vern and Kyle, because Kids These Days.