by Laura Drake
The yard drowsed in the searing afternoon sun. Swallows darted from the hayloft of the barn, dipping and diving, chasing bugs. Bees droned in her mom’s neglected rose bushes where they grew against the house, stems akimbo.
The old bathtub that served as a watering trough was a white block against the tall grass that had flourished in its splashes, bluebonnets hiding in the shade of the lip. Char inhaled the first scents of summer in the dust stirred by the horse’s hooves as they ambled across the yard.
“Oooh, aren’t they adorable!” Bella nodded toward the pasture they used as a nursery, where young calves cavorted at their mother’s sides.
Char snorted. “This is a business, city girl. Those calves are revenue, whether they grow up buckers, brood stock, or bound for the sale barn.”
“You can’t see this, can you?” Bella spread her arms. “I get to work with Junior, sacks of manure, and a Dumpster monkey.”
Still holding both sets of reins, Char led the way down the path to the pond where bullrushes crowded the shore. A chevron of mallards cruised the mirrored surface, leaving scarcely a ripple. When she and Bella reached the shoreline, the horses nickered and lowered their heads to drink. The sun’s heat on Char’s back relaxed her sore muscles. She soaked up the serenity of the scene. She recalled the lazy days of her youth, when the vacation months stretched before her like the best kind of dream. A sigh escaped before she could stop it.
“Tell me about your life, Char, before the accident.”
Her diaphragm hitched as her breath caught. Thoughts of Benje leached the warmth from the day.
Bella held up a hand. “Only the parts you feel comfortable talking about. I don’t mean for it to hurt. I only want to know you better.”
Bella’s worried glance told Char she meant well, so she considered. Bella had bared her soul at the kitchen table. Weighing how she felt about baring her own scars, the Valium called to Char for the first time today. Want zinged beneath her skin like a poison ivy itch. She scrubbed her palms over her forearms in a fruitless attempt to soothe.
Maybe if she said it…
Bella sat patiently watching. Char focused on the peace of the placid pond and her happy memories, hoping to calm the jitters.
“A fairy tale.” She said. “That’s what it was like. Before.” She crossed her arms over the saddle horn as Pork Chop lowered her head to graze.
“Once we’d settled into marriage and moved back here, Jimmy and I about wore ourselves out trying for a baby. We planned to have a house overflowing with kids.” She chuckled, remembering. “Poor Jimmy. I’d call him when my temperature spiked, and he’d come running, wherever he was. I started to feel like one of our cows, getting serviced. The doctors said there was no reason we couldn’t conceive, but for years, we didn’t.”
She felt the corners of her mouth lift. “Until we did. After ten years, we’d given up and decided we’d have a good life, just the two of us. But having Benje was like going from watching black-and-white TV to color; you don’t realize how dull it was until after.”
She searched for a way to explain. “June Cleaver. You called me that once, and you were right. I had the house, Jimmy, and Benje. We lived in this charmed bubble. I’d found my exact perfect place in the world. It never occurred to me that, for all its beauty, a bubble is by nature a fragile thing.
“Benje’s accident, Jimmy taking up with that cupcake, and my—” She swallowed the ball in her throat so she could spit out the word, “addiction finished off the marriage, but there were problems building, even before. Somewhere along the line, Jimmy changed. Real slow, at first, so I hardly noticed.”
“What do you mean?”
Char struggled to put the feelings into words. “In the beginning, Jimmy was so grateful. For me, for the ranch, for my family. His parents died when he was young, and his grandma too, right after high school. He had nobody. And family meant everything to Jimmy.” She glanced over to Bella’s rapt attention. “After Benje was born, and Jimmy got the PBR announcing gig, it was like he got bigger, and we got smaller. We took up less and less space in his life.”
“Did you talk to him about it?”
“No. I knew something wasn’t right, but it happened so slowly, I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong. We didn’t fight. It wasn’t awful. It was like some wasting disease took over our relationship, bit by tiny bit.
“Then the accident.” Flashes of The Day, under the tree, exploded in her brain, and she jerked upright, her body rigid. Pork Chop threw her head up, uneasy. Char’s mind skittered away from the memory. Some things were unspeakable.
A cool touch on the back of her hand pulled her from the trance. She looked down to where Bella’s hand covered hers, fisted tight in the reins. Bella’s cool fingers laced with hers in wordless comfort. An itinerant breeze brushed her face as Pork Chop lowered her head again to graze.
“Jimmy made all the arrangements, after. My brain worked slow, like a computer with a virus. I’d start to speak, but I’d hear a static hiss of white noise in my head, so I’d stop to listen. I could almost decipher a voice in the babble. Next thing I know, Jimmy’s shaking me, and his panicked look scared me more than the fact that I lost several minutes.”
She waited, trying to squeeze the words past frozen vocal cords. “I didn’t want to go.” Acid splashed like a sheet of ice water in her gut. “To the funeral. It was as if the accident walled me off behind a barrier that only I could see. I didn’t know these people. Not anymore.”
And that wasn’t the worst of it. “I sat there drugged, in the packed, too-hot church, hundreds of eyes crawling on my back. Jimmy sat beside me, holding my hand, tears sheeting down his face. I sat like a small rabbit, frozen in the knowledge that I’d have to face the yawning black hole that would swallow my baby.”
Bella’s fingers spasmed in hers. But now that Char had started, she couldn’t seem to stop the truth gushing from her mouth.
“I imagined myself breaking away from Jimmy, running to the flower-draped casket, tearing it open, and rescuing my Benje. After all, isn’t it a mother’s job to protect her child?” She turned her head away. She didn’t want to know Bella’s reaction. “I had to wait. The right time would present itself. I had to be ready.
“My eyes jittered over the white roses covering the casket. The reverend’s monotone became a drone—like summer bees.”
Her lungs had labored against the cloying smell of roses and smothering heat. A single white rose blurred, then came into perfect focus. A slight tinge of tan marred the edge of one petal, a glistening drop of moisture on another. She watched, rapt, as a small bee climbed from the center, its drone combining with the others, swelling, filling her head with a manic, reverberating hum. She’d clapped her hands over her ears and watched with horror as the bee crawled to the edge of the rose. Teetering on the edge, it looked right at her with an obscene, leering grin.
“I woke up in my own bed twelve hours after the funeral.” Char dropped Bella’s hand and lifted her hair off her sticky neck, hoping for a breeze. “I’d passed out in the church.”
Two shiny tracks ran down Bella’s smudged face. “You missed the graveside service. I’m so sorry.”
Char shuddered. “I’m not.”
CHAPTER
9
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
—Winston Churchill
Char closed the mudroom door behind her. A chilly wind lifted her hair. She hesitated, hand on the knob. The setting sun spotlighted spectacular yellow-white thunderheads to the north. Purple-black ones roiled behind them, like a portent of evil. She considered exchanging her denim vest for something more substantial, but the remainder of the sky showed a vivid cerulean blue, and she didn’t smell rain in the air. Yet.
Fumbling with the zipper, she trotted to the battered white ranch truck. It would only take a few minutes to drive to the pasture and dump the evening feed. It better not take longer; she’d left a pressure cooker full of red beans h
issing on the stove. She opened the truck door and settled in, smiling, remembering Rosa and her father at the kitchen table, working a jigsaw puzzle.
These past weeks, Rosa taught him to navigate the widening gaps in his memory and calmed him through his frustration. He looked forward to the nurse’s visits and accepted her help without protest. He quoted Rosa to Char daily, and every time, it bit with a ridiculous wasp-sting of jealousy. Char couldn’t dislike the nurse. Her gentle ways eased her into the current of their lives with barely a ripple. Char could now work outside, knowing her dad was safe and happy. But it came at a price; she missed being the only woman in her daddy’s life.
“You are one pathetic creature, Charla.”
She drove to the pasture gate and opened it. Pulling in, she repeated the gate exercise in reverse, scuttling into the cab as the herd converged. The truck bumped over the uneven ground, trailing cows like the Pied Piper. A few hundred feet into the meadow, she shut off the ignition.
Putting on canvas gloves, she looked down and lifted the door handle, jumping when a wet nose appeared in the crack of the door. “No, no!” She swatted at the invader, then slammed the door shut. The startled cow gave her an indignant stare, and Char yelled through the closed window, “Humans inside. Cows outside.” The cow lowed and continued the stare-down. Char waved at the interior of the truck. “Cow-free zone!” The heifer licked the window, her huge tongue smearing drool over half of it. Char grimaced. “Oh, yuk.”
“First, I’m jealous of my father’s nurse, and now I’m arguing with a cow. I’ve got to get a life.”
The cab darkened as the cattle surrounded the truck, their huge bodies filling the windows. After thinking a moment, Char twisted in the seat to slide open the back window. Crouching, she wriggled through the narrow opening. After a dicey moment when her hips hung up, she squirmed until she fell in a contorted ball into the truck bed.
Not a graceful entrance, but only cows witnessed it. Pulling a pocket knife from her jeans, Char slit a bag of feed on the tailgate. “Such demanding broads.” She waited for the flow to stem to a trickle before upending the rest onto the ground.
Char noted a few new calves in the herd. What she didn’t see was a black-and-white spotted hide. “Dang that Tricks. If she’s out again, I swear, the minute she drops that calf—”
As she straightened, a tail of wind, harbinger of the front, hit her like a slap. She glanced up. The advancing army of black, bruised clouds obscured fully half the sky. Brushing wind-blown hair out of her eyes, she scanned the rolling pasture and caught a flash of white out of the corner of her eye. That suspicious white bulge under an oak, on the distant rise; were those black spots?
Char slit the second bag and dumped it on the ground. Eyeing the crowd surrounding the truck bed, she decided on the prudent exit, squeezing through the back window once more. It was harder this way; she ended up between the seats, parking brake poking her kidney, one leg stuck in the window. “Danged useless animals.” She squirmed, tugging at her leg. “If they’re not running away, they’re drooling on you or trying to die.
Finally settled in the driver’s seat, she fired the engine and left the herd behind. Nearing the hill, the white spot coalesced into a downed cow. Tricks, in labor. Had been for some time by the look; her flanks were slick with sweat. Char pulled up, shut down the engine, and stepped out. Tricks seemed unaware of her approach, head flat on the ground, eyes unfocused. The massive side shuddered, and the cow strained, eyes rolling. Something was wrong.
Char reached into the pocket for her phone. Nothing. She slapped her chest, looking for pockets. Hands over boobs, the truth sank in. The cell phone sat in the charger, plugged into the bathroom socket.
“Rats! Of all the gol-durned, brainless—” She shot a hopeful glance to the house, then back to the cow. By the time she drove there, phoned the vet, and he got out here, it would be too late.
Whoa up, Charla Rae. What are you considering here? You know zip about animal husbandry. Even if you were strong enough, which you aren’t.
Tricks lowed as another contraction hit, but nothing was happening at the business end.
Heart jackhammering her ribs, Char wrenched her gaze away, taking one hopeful scan of the darkened meadow for the cavalry. Only a golden laser of sun remained at the horizon, ominous smoky-black clouds loomed overhead. Another gust of wind whipped through the trees, new leaves rattling in wild protest. Tension permeated the ozone-scented air. She felt the hair on her arms rising.
The death of this calf would be devastating financially. A heavy blanket of dread bowed her shoulders. A tremor began in Tricks’s back leg. Not to mention the loss of their best bloodline cow. How much more calamity could one family stand?
She threw her head back and yelled at the scuttling clouds. “Who am I to do this? I’m a housewife!” Tricks lifted her head, and her eyes reflected the light like a cat’s. Spooked, Charla shuddered, rubbing the gooseflesh on her upper arms.
She shot one last hopeful glance to the house in the distance. The kitchen light had come on. Leaning into the truck, she pulled the headlight switch. If Rosa or her dad looked out the window, surely they’d recognize the stationary headlights as odd and come investigate. Hopefully, with a cell phone. She searched the truck for anything that could help. Grabbing a hank of rope from behind the seat, she backed out, slammed the door, then retrieved the two empty feed sacks from the truck bed.
After laying the sacks at the end of the cow, she knelt, trying to remember everything she’d ever heard about cow birthing. A calf should be born with its head nestled between the two front feet. Obviously that wasn’t the case here.
She glanced to the black clouds, almost close enough to touch. “Watch over me, Lord—I’m going in.”
After removing the canvas gloves, she skinned her right sleeve to her shoulder. Bracing her left hand on the cow’s hip, she paused, swallowing the acid at the back of her throat. No time for the luxury of getting sick.
Tricks flinched at Char’s intimate touch. “Relax, sister. At least you’re not in stirrups, freezing your tail off in a paper gown.”
Closing her eyes, Char envisioned the picture her fingers relayed. The calf’s neck was bent back, head facing its back feet. She could only feel one hoof, the other was folded back as well. “Double crap.” Withdrawing her hand, she sat back on her heels.
This is hopeless. Her heart sank. This valuable cow and calf, the brightest spot of hope for their future, were going to die. She should be in the house, cooking dinner. Where she belonged.
Lightning zipped across the black sky. A boom of thunder followed on its heels. Damp, rain-scented wind slammed into her, rocking her on her knees, blowing her hair straight back. She ought to be perfecting her pecan pie recipe for the county fair, not up to her shoulder in the back end of a cow.
“Damn you, James Benton Denny!” she yelled into the wind. “This isn’t my problem!”
Tricks groaned as another spasm ripped through her. Her hind legs shook and her hide rippled in a shiver. Good lord, is she going into shock from the long labor? I’ve got nothing to lose. I might as well try.
Lying on the feed bags, she flinched when the first fat raindrop spattered her face.
An hour later, Char lay shivering, soaked to the skin, every speck of energy gone. She knew she should be using the lull between contractions to try once more, but she had to rest. The bones in her arm ached from the crushing. The feed sacks had sunk into the mud during the wrestling match.
She had managed to slip the hank of rope over the tiny hoof and, between contractions, to pull it alongside the other. But the head was wedged tight—and she wasn’t strong enough to straighten it. The cow seemed to be weakening, and Char wasn’t even sure the calf was alive; it hadn’t shown any signs of life since she’d begun.
How long had she been at this? An hour? Two? Felt like eons. Why hadn’t anyone come looking for her? She’d never felt so sapped. So raw. So alone.
The closest
she’d felt to this was in her twenty-hour labor with Benje. Near the end, disheartened and exhausted, she’d given up. The doctor took pity, offering the oblivion of anesthesia and a cesarean section.
She’d have taken it too—but Jimmy got in her face. He cajoled, shouted, coaxed. He did everything but push that baby out by sheer force of will. Jimmy convinced her she could do it, and a half hour and five mighty heaves later, Benje was delivered into their lives: healthy, beautiful, perfect.
Jimmy’s the strong one. I like following. It’s not like I’m some diva, eating bonbons and expecting to be waited on. I work hard. In fact—
But I don’t see anyone around to lead. Do you, Charla Rae?
She groaned. Oh great, Mom, thanks. Your gentle, wise words are just what I need right now. She sat up and pulled her foot from the mud. It let go with a gross sucking sound.
At her movement, the cow lifted her head. Her brown eyes shone with acceptance—of whatever would come next. Tricks let go, and her head fell to the ground, so hard it bounced off the grass.
Something clicked in Char’s sluggish brain. Tricks may be a cow, but she was a mother. And she was giving up, just as Char had, all those years ago.
Her body jerked, anger flaring. “I am not losing another baby.” Scorching heat surged in the blood pounding in her ears. Resolve barreled down her nerve endings, melting the shivers as effectively as a flame thrower. She threw her eyes heavenward. “Do you hear me, God? You are not getting this one.”
Dragging mud-laden legs, she twisted to her knees. She slapped Tricks’s hip, and the sound snapped like a pistol shot in the night-quiet meadow. “If I can do this, then, by God, you can.” The cow barely flinched.
Char pushed her hand down the calf’s bowed neck once more, to the head. Still an inch short—even with her armpit snugged against the cow, her fingertips barely grazed the chin. Straining every muscle fiber, she pushed those fingers forward.
