by Lexie Ray
Wash, rinse, repeat.
A heifer lowed, and the sound had an edge to it. I had been at this long enough to know when something was going wrong.
Peyton was already there.
“What are you doing back?” I asked, checking the time just to make sure I hadn’t lost whole hours. “You’re not supposed to be here for a long time yet.”
She didn’t so much as glance at me. “Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to sleep. Knew I was needed here.”
“Peyton, we have shifts for a reason.”
“Uh-huh.” She felt along the heifer’s side, wincing in sympathy as it mooed. “When’s your shift up? I bet you haven’t left yet.”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t see a difference.” Peyton palpated the side of the heifer again. “Breach, I think.”
“Dammit,” I breathed. “Should we call the vet?”
“Maybe.” She was completely absorbed in the heifer. “I’ve handled one before, but it wasn’t pretty. Vet might be able to ease things a bit.”
“I’ll make the call, just in case.”
I stepped out and away from the action to get my breath, to look for a moment at the stars and be thankful that this was the first problem we’d had with calving. There were always problems. There wasn’t a season that passed without at least one difficult birth. I always wished, though, that there would be one time — just one, for novelty’s sake — that went off without a hitch.
“Vet!” a man’s voice barked, making me jump so bad I almost dropped the phone.
“This is Chance Corbin,” I said. “I need —”
“You need, he needs, everybody needs,” the vet said. “No can do, Corbin. Booked solid tonight.”
“Booked solid?” I repeated, dumbfounded. “You’re the vet. You can’t be booked solid.”
“Let me guess. You’re calving tonight.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Right. And you need me to stop by real quick for something — a breach?”
“That’s — yes. A breach. How did you know?”
“Because every goddamn heifer in this county is breaching tonight is how I know,” the man spat. “I still have five different ranches to get to before I put yours down on the list, and every time I get to a ranch, another animal breaches. I’m sorry, Corbin. You guys are one of the good ones. But I’m probably not going to make it out there tonight.”
“Like at all?” I asked, still in disbelief. How could there be so many problems stacked on this one night? Was there something in the air? In the water?
“What I’m saying, son, is that I’ll put your ranch down on my list. It’s just that there are heifers ahead of yours that’ll probably die before I even get to them.”
The man wasn’t a superhero. He could only get to the animals he could get to. Breaches were time-consuming things. Everyone knew that. It just soured my stomach that we were probably going to lose animals tonight.
“I hear what you’re saying,” I said tiredly, feeling the strain of the work for the first time tonight. “Thanks anyway.”
“Good luck to you, Chance.”
“And to you.”
I ended the call and looked back up at the stars, feeling defeated. The vet was always a last-ditch effort, mainly because he was so damn expensive. But the man was trained and talented, and he got results. Saving the heifer and her calf would’ve been well worth paying his fee.
“What’s wrong?”
I inhaled sharply, startled, as Zoe approached me, picking her way through the long grass.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I lied.
“Something’s wrong,” she countered. “You look like someone just kicked you in your balls.”
I snorted. “Believe me, I’d be acting a lot different if that really happened.”
“So tell me. I can handle it. Are you going to ask me to cook up one of those little newborn calves for breakfast? Baby steak and eggs?”
This time, I laughed at her. “Baby steak? Really?”
“I’d tell you to go fuck yourself,” she said sweetly, smiling. “Who were you on the phone with?”
“The vet,” I sighed, seeing no reason not to tell her other than the fact that I didn’t want to upset her. “We’ve got a breached birth on our hands right now.”
“Really?” Zoe cocked her head. “I don’t know much about it, only that babies come feet first.”
“Same concept, harder in cattle,” I said grimly. “Peyton’s in there now, but the vet’s not going to make it in time. Lots of difficult births in the area, looks like.”
“Damn.” She took a closer look at me. “You’ve been working this whole time, haven’t you?”
I shrugged. “What are you even doing out here? I thought you were putting Toby to bed.”
“Toby’s been asleep for hours,” she said. “I cooked up a little something for the guys down in the barracks, then did some chores we’d been neglecting. Everyone gets swept up into the spirit of things when there’s calving going on, don’t they?”
“Pretty magical time, as long as everything’s going smoothly,” I said. “Stressful, otherwise.”
“I get that.” Zoe looked past me and to the barn, where Peyton and another ranch hand were moving the heifer in question. “Can I go and see it?”
“I don’t know if you want to,” I said.
“Why wouldn’t I want to?”
“You might get attached. Breaches without a professional on board can get kind of ugly.”
“I’m not as naive as that,” she scoffed. “I know that nature’s not pretty all the time. And hell — I pushed Toby out of my body, didn’t I? I can handle this.”
It was always so disconcerting to remember that Zoe was a mother, even as it was the essence of her being. Everything she did, she did for Toby. Moving here and working here, everything.
“Come on, then,” I said, relenting. “You can see the heifer if you really want to.”
We walked into the barn just as the ranch hand finished spreading some straw over the ground. He and Peyton had made a corral of sort away from the horses so any noises wouldn’t startle them too terribly by being up close.
“Vet’s not coming, is he?” she asked — more statement than question.
“Busy night for him,” I confirmed.
“Not much I can work with, yet,” she said. “I’m going to go do some other things in the meantime. come get me when it gets to be closer.”
“Will do.”
Peyton strode away toward other heifers as Zoe petted this one’s nose, murmuring little nothing things in an attempt to soothe it.
“You’re going to be a mama tonight, one way or another,” she cooed. “I’m a mama, too. That shit hurts, yes it does, but then it’s over and you have a little baby.”
I didn’t know whether to be touched or amused by the little pep talk. The heifer didn’t seem to care either way. It shifted its stance, seeing how far it could go in its makeshift corral before nosing a bit at the bucket of water I gave it.
“You want too see if she might eat a little grain out of your hand?” I asked Zoe, jerking my thumb at a bag across the barn floor.
“Hell, they wouldn’t let me eat at all when I was in labor,” she mused, going for it. “Lucky thing.”
“Cows are a little different from humans, if you haven’t noticed,” I teased lightly. “Distract her for me, would you?”
While the heifer was focused on the grain that Zoe offered her, I felt around her abdomen as gently as I could. Dammit. Peyton had been right, even if I hadn’t wanted her to be. It was a breach, and a nasty one. The calf seemed to be twisted around inside her, not even the shape it was supposed to be. I steeled myself for the worst-case scenario — that we’d lose both heifer and calf tonight — and hoped that it wouldn’t draw itself out too terribly long.
I looked at Zoe, who was petting the animal and letting it lick her hand long after there wasn’t a single grain left in it.
I wished I were as confident as Zoe was. I just didn’t think all of this was going to end well. I’d seen the breaches that had gone wrong, felt the helplessness at not being able to do anything to ease any of the animals’ suffering.
“What are you looking at?” Zoe asked as I knelt in the hay. I hadn’t even realized I’d been staring at her.
“You don’t have to stay here with everything,” I said, squinting up at Zoe. “There’s no telling how long this will last. And I don’t know if it’s going to have a happy ending.”
“It’s all right,” she said, sinking down into a squat beside me. “If I get sleepy, I’ll just have a nap in the hay. But no ear tagging mistakes, please.”
“I assure you that I am nowhere near as exhausted right now as my parents were that spring.”
I eyed the cow’s belly, wondering just what kind of help it would tolerate. The creature was restless and in some degree of pain, ready for the entire ordeal to be over. I was, too. I might not have been tired to the point of mistakenly ear tagging our housekeeper, but I wouldn’t have said no to a shower and a clean bed. In this business, a person just became grimy. There were times, especially when the hours were long, when I sometimes felt afraid that I’d never be clean again. That I’d stand under all of the shower heads of the world, the water cranked up as far as it would go, lathered in soap, and I’d still find dirt beneath my fingernails, in the shells of my ears, my bellybutton.
“What can we do for the cow?” Zoe asked.
“Nothing much we can do but wait for something to happen,” I said. “Keep it calm and as comfortable as we can. Act when it’s time.”
“How do you keep a cow calm?”
“They can be just like big dogs,” I said. “You pet them, talk sweet to them, tell them they’re good and doing a good job, too.”
Zoe looked stricken. “Jesus Christ.”
“What? What did I saw?”
“If they’re just like big dogs to you, then how in the actual hell can you cull them and sell them and eat them just like that?”
“It’s different,” I said. “If you live her on the ranch long enough, you’ll get to understanding it.”
“I don’t understand the eagerness to eat something you basically just called a pet.”
I smiled at her. “Don’t tell me you’re about to go all vegetarian on me. We all like our steaks and bacon and fried chicken here in the Corbin family.”
“It’s just hard to reconcile, I suppose.” Zoe patted the heifer. “It’s just … so alive here. And then we eat it.”
“It’s a good lesson to learn,” I said. “I think too many people have an unhealthy disconnect between what they know to be animals and what ends up on their plates.”
“So morbid,” she said, shuddering.
The heifer lowed again — longer and more drawn out this time, making the horses snort and stamp in their stalls — and Zoe rushed to try and comfort the animal.
“What can we do?” she asked, beginning to panic. “I don’t know what to do, Chance.”
“We just have to let nature take its course,” I said. “There’s not a lot that we can do. Not without the vet.”
Zoe stopped a moment, mulling that information over. It looked like this was the first time it had crossed her mind that this birth might not be successful. “But can’t we ease the suffering somehow?”
I shook my head. “We can only just wait.”
We sat there in silence for a while, just being there with the heifer. I wouldn’t have done this if Zoe wasn’t out here. There was just too much to do otherwise, and I couldn’t afford the luxury of devoting all of my attention to one animal. There were other things I could be doing, other tasks I should be overseeing, but I couldn’t leave Zoe with an animal that was in pain, that had a real chance of dying.
“You were talking about your parents earlier,” she said, lifting her eyes to meet mine. “How they died in an accident.”
“That’s right.” I swallowed, uneasy. Where was this headed?
“I guess you just took me by surprise,” she admitted. “I’m sorry that I didn’t have anything more comforting to tell you. That I reacted the way I did.”
“I don’t know why I brought it up,” I said, running my hands through my hair, my insides squirming with awkwardness. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything.”
“You didn’t, and you don’t,” she assured me. “I wanted to say that I was sorry that happened. It’s tough to lose your parents. I lost my mother young, too.”
That was news to me. “I’m so sorry.”
“I guess that’s why I fell in with my asshole ex,” she said. “I didn’t know any better, and I didn’t have anyone to warn me against it.”
“Parents do a lot more than we give them credit for, I think,” I said. “I kind of had to be my brothers’ parents, when we were younger.”
“That fell on you?”
I nodded. “We didn’t have any other relatives, and the state was going to split the family up. I couldn’t let that happen, not when the accident had already fractured us so terribly. I was eighteen, and Tucker was seventeen, so I petitioned to get custody of the rest of my brothers. I didn’t think it would work, but it did, and here we all are.”
Zoe opened her mouth to comment on that, but the heifer mooed in what we both recognized was pain.
“Peyton!” I bellowed.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Both of our heads swiveled around as Peyton showed up, touching along the flanks of the creature. She knelt down behind it, next to me, and I didn’t have a chance to advise Zoe against looking as Peyton plunged her entire arm up the business end of the heifer, who lowed at the intrusion.
“Not so much as a friendly warning,” Zoe observed uneasily. “You’re as cold as ice, Peyton.”
But Peyton didn’t answer her, her face turned inward, frowning as she felt around. “This is a tough one.”
“Do you think the calf’s normal?” I asked. “I palpated earlier, and it felt twisted.”
“Just flexible, I think,” she said, grunting a little with effort at the ministrations she was executing inside of the heifer. “Flexible and restless.”
“Why do we need the vet if Peyton’s here?” Zoe asked. “She seems to have everything well in hand — if you’ll excuse the pun.”
“I will not,” Peyton retorted lightly. “And I’m not as good as the vet when it comes to cattle. I’m a horse woman.”
Zoe glanced at me, finally fully understanding the situation. “You mean that without the vet, this could all go in the shitter pretty quickly tonight.”
“Maybe even with the vet,” I said. “I don’t know. You rarely do. All you can do is stay positive, and do whatever it is you can do.”
“And not give up without a fight,” Peyton said, grunting again. “Even if this is going to be hard.”
“Just do what you can, Peyton,” I said. “Not expecting any miracles, here.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” she said, her dark eyes flashing at me. She struggled for a few more long moments before digging her heels in and leaning backward …
… and out came a newborn calf, the mother bucking in her eagerness to get away from Peyton’s invasion. We all dodged out of the way of the hooves and then stared, panting, at the new life, wet and motionless in the straw around it.
“Is it … did it …” Zoe was trying to ask the hard questions and couldn’t even get the right syllables to line up correctly for herself.
“Wait for it,” Peyton coaxed.
I didn’t know if she was being cocky or just overly hopeful. Of course, I was always hopeful that everything would go well every calving season. The truth of the matter — the reality of life — was that it didn’t go well all the
time. Shit happened. Shit always happened, and it didn’t stop with cattle, with the herd. A person had to learn to expect breached births and car wrecks and people slung together to try to make sense of life. Nothing was ever really fair. Nobody should ever have to shoulder the entire weight of life, and yet here we were, wishing a wet lump of hair and flesh and bone would gain its feet. I couldn’t even tell what the sex was, and didn’t care to tell. If something wasn’t going to work out, we needed to all learn to take a few steps back and protect ourselves from the disappointment. Disappointment was the most crushing emotion of all. You expected something and your expectations doomed you to fail. You not only failed, you failed hard, crushed, filled with defeat and the idea that even with your best hopes and efforts, it didn’t work out for you.
Zoe whooped with joy as the calf suddenly gained its feet, then threw her arms around my neck and kissed me, grime and all. Both of us stiffened when we realized what we’d done — and in front of an audience, no less — but if Peyton had noticed us, she didn’t give an indication of doing so. She was pretty focused on mother and calf in this moment, checking that it had all the essential body parts to being a productive member of the herd and society and all that.
“Everything’s going to be okay?” Zoe asked breathlessly.
“Looks that way,” Peyton confirmed. “Got lucky, this one.”
“Lucky enough to have you to usher it out and into the world,” I said. “Don’t sell yourself short, Peyton. I think the vet has competition.”
She ducked her head. “I don’t think he’ll like that very much.”
“Won’t like that? Hell, I’m betting he’d pay you top dollar to try and take some of the pressure off of him during calving seasons. The man’s being run ragged.”
Peyton slipped away to attend to other matters. I thought I should’ve called after her, told her to go home and get some rest, that this still wasn’t over, but I thought better of it. She knew when she was too tired to do anything anymore.
“You look dead on your feet,” Zoe observed after we were alone again in the barn. “Can’t you feel it when you’re that tired?”
