Maggie's Farm

by Sherry, John;

  Obeying iron-bound atavistic laws of self-preservation, a calving cow will hide her calf and then purposely try to lead you away from the place where she has hidden it. It took my brother, Fred Cline and me most of the day to find the two calves and carry them back to the calving barn. Once we had the calves, their mothers had no choice but to follow, trumpeting with mighty bellows their protest against such kidnapping. We then penned the mothers up with their calves for forty eight hours; the calves needed the colestrum for that period and the cows’ milk was, of course, unusable until the period of colestrum production had passed. After forty-eight hours, we separated the cows from their calves for good and prepared to break them to the milking equipment. I must admit that throughout the years I was a dairy farmer I never managed to become completely inurred to the process of separating cow from new-born calf. The tiny calf would stand wobbly-legged within the calving barn and bleat with longing while its forlorn mother bellowed her heartbreak and frustration in reply. If neither sight nor contact was allowed to pass between the two, most cows would resign themselves to the loss within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, but I have known many who continued their keening for a week. Usually, however, the combination of being milked twice daily plus the special feed they enjoyed at each milking made them settle down quite rapidly.

  Undoubtedly through the aegis of Fred Cline, word had spread up and down the road that day when we put our first two unbroken heifers through the milking parlor. I do not think there was any particular malice among the spectators that day; they simply knew there was a damned good show going on and they were determined to enjoy it to the full. Between myself, my brother and the cows, we certainly saw to it that they got their money’s worth. The cows balked, jumped, kicked and generally carried on to the point where I ceased to believe they could ever be broken. At one point, I remember taking a kick on my bad knee from one of those Holsteins that, had I not been standing at the outer edge of her kicking radius, would have lamed me for life. However, one way or another, we got through it.

  It always comes as something of a surprise how quickly a completely new routine can become second nature. By the middle of October, all of the new heifers had dropped their calves and we had a grand total of eleven cows on the milking line. By then, my brother had gone and I found that I could handle the cows fairly well by myself. Parenthentically, I should say at this point that my wife very wisely and deliberately steered clear of having anything to do with milking cows throughout our time on the farm. In time, she mastered the intricacies of hooking up the milking machines but that was it as far as she was concerned. By mid-October, the routine was clearly established; I would rise about five thirty in the morning, fix myself some breakfast and then walk down to the dairy barn and hook up the milking machines, prepare the feed cart and generally get the barn ready to function. Then I would walk to the top of the pastures to collect the cattle and drive them down to the holding pen in the barnyard. I was both amused and a little touched at the change which had come over my lovable little Jersey cow, Vacca, as a result of herd life. Before the addition of the new cattle, Vacca had become almost as friendly as a pet dog and had loved to stand placidly chewing her cud while I scratched her ears. But now all that had changed. Poor Vacca was literally about half the size of her monstrous new sisters but she had evidently decided to maintain her place in the pecking order through a combination of pugnacity and experience. She let me know in no uncertain terms that the days of love and ear scratching were over; clearly she felt such indignities would lower her status among the other cattle. Occasionally, when I got her by herself, a little ear scratching would take place but it was plain that she wanted it to be our secret.

  We were fortunate in having nothing more than minor and ordinary complications among the nine new calvings. One or two cows failed to “clean off” properly which means that the placenta was not thoroughly ejected, a situation which, if not properly handled can lead to infection and subsequent difficulty in breeding the cow. In correcting this situation, I made the acquaintance of Jim, a young veterinarian newly set up in practice in the neighborhood who would prove to be a good friend and a mainstay in time of trouble for the future.

  We were granted Grade A status almost immediately after our cows began coming fresh. This meant that almost from the beginning we had a small but tangible monthly income from the milk. A diary farmer in Virginia at that time was paid two prices for his milk: $5.65 a hundred pounds (fifty quarts) for an amount which was known as one’s “base” and about two thirds that amount for any excess milk produced over and above the base. The base was established on the basis of the previous year’s production. In the case of beginners like myself, an arbitrary base was assigned pending the establishment of a true base following the first full year’s production. As I recall, our net monthly check that first winter came to about $300. Far from riches, certainly, but I knew this would increase substantially with the addition of more cattle and the establishment of an annually larger base.

  Particularly fortunate that fall was our luck in the matter of the gender of the calves dropped by the new cows. More than half the calves obtained were heifers, a fact of great importance to the future growth of our herd as they would be kept, raised, eventually bred and added to the milking herd. The bull calves were kept only to an age of about two months and then sold at the local livestock market as milk-fed veal.

  Once I had returned from the pastures with the cattle and shut them up in the holding pen, I was ready to begin the milking. In the main, the cows soon settled down to the routine nicely although I do not remember a time during the years I milked cows when there were not one or two bad hats who had to be contained with anti-kicking devices to keep them from kicking the milking machine loose from their udders.

  Within a month after beginning to milk the cows mechanically, I was adept enough so that the entire process, from getting the barn set up to hosing it down when finished, did not take much more than an hour and a half. It took me perhaps another half hour to feed the calves on milk substitute which they drank from buckets equipped with nipples. They objected to these violently for the first day or so but soon became accustomed to them. The technique was to hold the calves firmly and jam the nipple into their mouths, using one hand to pump the milk substitute down their throats. They would reject it at first and, as they spewed it back, it was rather a messy business; but, invariably, the moment would come when they would accept the nipple as substitute teat and begin gulping heartily.

  Luckily enough, we had a prolonged Indian summer that fall and as our pastures were undergrazed to begin with, it was not necessary to feed the cattle heavily on hay until fall was well along. The cows spent all their time on the pastures and their twice-daily milking and the twice-daily feeding of the calves were the only categorically demanding tasks which had to be fulfilled that fall. The balance of the day was spent puttering with the many small jobs which always need to be done around a farm.

  The next stellar event on our agenda was, of course, the arrival of the new baby, due sometime in November. Dorothy was calm about the whole business and the doctor had assured us that there was no apparent reason to be worried. Still, one is never entirely at ease until the child has been officially checked in as having all ten fingers and toes and certified as hitting on all six cylinders. All of which, I proclaim with thanks to chance or Providence, eventually turned out to be so.

  In the preceding pages, I have intimated an awareness that a hairline crack had appeared in my lifelong relationship with O’Hara. Now, at the end of a fine season during which I had been able to preoccupy myself with apparent reality for the first time since the war, the crack became a discernible fissure, which would broaden in time to a gaping chasm, forever unbridgeable. The calculated and subtle cruelty of the incident which outlined the future may appear as small on this page as it still looms large within my mind; but it struck straight to the heart of my most cherished area of illusion: the essential val
ue and eventual prevailance of myself in conjunction with my friends. Therefore, I make no more of it than I must.

  It is late afternoon of a splendid day in late October, prosaically enough, my favorite season. Its exquisite beauty and pervasive melancholy are, for once, balanced by a sense of accomplishment within me which is small but very real.

  I have hooked up the machinery in the dairy barn and Dorothy, Linda and I have walked to the top of the farm to drive the cattle down for the evening milking. We do not hurry; there is no need. Indeed, there is amongst the three of us an unspoken sense of need to prolong the moment. Even the dog behaves for once with a measure of sanity; she has declared a rare and temporary truce with the cattle. The dog is eminently unsuited to farm life and constantly puzzled. Only a few days before, she accompanied me to the thickets below by the creek as I mended a piece of fence. Finished with the task, we were returning through the underbrush when a fox jumped up so closely beneath the dog’s muzzle that even the dog’s epic ineptitude as a hunter did not prevent her from grabbing the fox by the throat. As usual, the dog’s interior confusion triumphed; she had known turbaned Moor and the swish of Roman clerical gown but this was clearly beyond her ken. She turned to me for a ruling and in doing so relinquished the fox. The fox, dazed by this stroke of luck, gazed at me also. We stood thus for a moment in a comic tableau of mutual astonishment and then the fox snarled softly and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  As Dorothy, Linda and I walked to the top of the farm to collect the cows, I told Dorothy this story and she was amused. At the very top of the pastures, we sat for a while and watched the cattle graze, their shadows long in the low sun. Even in the relatively short time I had been dealing with them, their massive function had breached my admiration and worked its way into my blood. The best of them will produce 6,000 quarts of milk a year for perhaps ten years; they are tremendous sustainers of life. After a while now they moved together and started down the hill towards the barns. They moved sedately at first and then, spooked by something, they began to jump, run and frolic. The sudden shedding of their dignity was somehow comic and on this October afternoon, Dorothy and Linda and I began to laugh. Cows bring to mind a group of heavy-bosomed dowagers suddenly giving in to an overpowering desire to frolic in the buff. The fit passed as quickly as it began and we followed along behind them as they plodded down the hill.

  From the hill, we could see across the country for miles. The road leading to the farm was visible for brief stretches as it curved and wound around the hills. On this day we caught sight of the station wagon belonging to the O’Haras as it approached. It was perhaps a half-mile away and unmistakeable. Like my late-lamented cherished vehicle, it was one of the last models manufactured whose bodies were actually covered with wood panelling.

  The prospect of finding O’Hara and Kate and perhaps their children waiting at the house was a pleasant one. Busy with the climax of actually putting our farm into production, we had recently foregone nearly all social intercourse. Now, although we did not speak of it, both Dorothy and I were terribly pleased that our friends would be waiting at the bottom of the hill. It had been a good day and now it would be a perfect one. Dorothy mentioned that there was a roast in the freezer which she could cook and I was relieved to remember there was a sufficiency of booze in the house. We both felt strongly that it would be a memorably pleasant evening. Dorothy and Kate could pour drinks and begin the preparation of dinner while O’Hara (who had never seen my dairy barn in operation) could accompany me to the barn while I did the evening milking.

  Dorothy helped me drive the cows into the holding pen and I closed the gate on them before walking with her to the house to greet the O’Haras. Even though we could not actually see their car from the holding pen, it never occurred to us that they would not be at the house waiting for us. But as we rounded the barn to gain a clear view of the house, their car was nowhere in sight. Then Dorothy and I walked to the back door of the house and stood looking down at a wicker basket which had been left on the doorsill. We recognized the wicker basket as one which belonged to us and which had been left at the O’Haras’ house. Then, as we stood looking down at the basket, the meaning of the collection of objects within it slowly began to dawn upon us.

  All the detritus of our deeply interwoven interfamilial relationship had been carfully and pointedly assembled. It was all there down to the last jot and tittle: the borrowed books, the child’s toy casually left behind, the sweater borrowed to keep off a sudden, unseasonable chill, the necktie removed during a game of chess on a hot night. It was all there; nothing was missing.

  The message was clear and unmistakeable. There would, in time, be a more formal ending, a strange Walpurgisnacht during which few techniques of grotesquerie would be left unutilized to encompass all the inherent regrets and remorse which accompany a deliberately and cruelly sundered friendship. To this day I cannot say with absolute certainty why it was sundered; nor can I believe with absolute conviction that there was need for it.

  CHAPTER XI

  Our second daughter arrived safely on November 16 of that year 1956, and was duly named—if not christened—Sylvia, after our old friend Sylvia Pennebaker. Shortly after her birth, the cold weather began and the desultory rhythms of a farm in winter took charge. I rose early to milk my eleven cows and returned again to the task at half past four of the evening. In the hours between, I occupied myself with literary efforts but such beginnings as I made that winter were poorly organized and ineffectual. The clarity of vision and organizational grasp so essential to pulling off any literary project were simply not present and I believe this was due to the concentrated expenditure of precisely that sort of energy during the preceding six months. For the first time in many years, I was wholly bereft of that extraordinary fusion of imaginative clarity and formal discipline which makes the practice of any art as exquisitely rewarding and pleasurable as it is painful and frightening. Unfortunately—or, perhaps, fortunately—the temporary inability to deal with the formal aspects of writing did not abate the psychic energy which is art’s well-spring. Rarely during my life in fact have I felt that psychic energy bubbling inside me as strongly as it did that winter. My solution to its containment was the artist’s classic combination of drink and talk.

  Dorothy’s and my friendship with O’Hara and Kate being, at best, in limbo and, at worst, in ruins, we now found ourselves more or less isolated from any meaningful social contact. We had no real desire to be included in the social rituals of middle-class Wytheville and even if we had, the foolishness of my past behavior made the possibility of such inclusion problematical. My very real fondness for Lawyer Bean persisted—and from time to time we would be invited to gatherings given by him and his wife but that was about the end of it. For the rest, we were left to subsist upon our own resources.

  In Dorothy’s case, being the mother of a newborn child, these resources were considerably more operative than my own. Certainly the demands and rewards of rearing children are not sufficient to occupy a woman’s whole being throughout her life. But equally certain is the fact that a healthy woman’s preoccupation with the spiritual and sensual communion which exists between her and her newborn child is total and categoric. In a nutshell, Dorothy’s psychic energy was being happily and profitably employed during that winter of 1956–57, while mine was not. Such an imbalance is traditionally a time of danger.

  Now, in that winter of inaction of 1956–57, the seeds of a relationship were planted which would lead me in time to such grotesque heights of self-deception that all previous efforts in that direction would come to seem like nursery school exercises.

  My “pub,” Lucifer Wrenchum’s gas station, was the center from which I spun an incredible web. Earlier, I mentioned briefly but with portentuous intent, a young man whom I called Clyde. From the start, even when our acquaintanceship was limited to the exchange of casual waves as he passed in his jeep, he interested me because he appeared to be one of the loneliest human bein
gs God has ever placed upon the earth. Lonely but not at all forlorn; he emanated such a pronounced quality of tenuously contained intellectual tension, in fact, that it managed to communicate itself even through the casual waves he threw me as he passed.

  Clyde was then in his late twenties and lived with his parents in a lovely house about three miles from my farm. His father was a retired local businessman, unprepossessing in all ways. His mother was more memorable, a taciturn, rather handsome woman who usually dressed in men’s clothes and spent most of her time painting in oils in her studio beside their house. I always had the feeling when talking with her that she was a person who felt she had been short-changed by life in all its essentials but bore no seething grudge about the transaction. She was a withdrawn woman with a certain degree of distinction, and her son, Clyde, had inherited both these qualities. I do not know what the degree was of Clyde’s parents’ education; he, I know, had dropped out of one of the famous southern universities after two years. There was a pronounced degree of hopelessness in the relationship between the various members of Clyde’s immediate family; it was as if they had tacitly admitted that there was no real reason or need for communication amongst themselves, and except for the barest administrative dialogues, they had given it up.

  From the first, it was Clyde’s seemingly total lack of all means of support which fascinated me. Although he was entirely presentable and by local middle-class standards, thoroughly eligible, I never saw him with a girl. The closest thing to a friendship he enjoyed was a relationship with my neighbor, Fred Cline and his wife. Clyde ate the vast majority of his meals at the Clines’ house and the handsome, weather-beaten old hill woman seemed more of a mother to Clyde than his own. It was at the Clines’ one day that I first made Clyde’s formal acquaintance, having encountered him in the kitchen as Mrs. Cline fed him. He was mannerly, even courtly, but so reserved and watchful that I knew forging a closer acquaintanceship with him would be a difficult and drawn-out business. In certain essential ways, I have never known a man who reminded me more of an animal than Clyde; beneath his outward calm and attractive cropped-hair cleanliness, there was the pulsating fear of a beast who trusts no one.