I never envision seizing the day aboard a filthy death machine. Still, the challenge spurs me on, and I take the helmet, carefully pulling it on, the pad of the strap fitting on my chin, no adjustment needed. I don’t even consider the second vehicle, climbing on the back, no need to touch him if I lean away and grip the rear set of rails. I feel secure as we reverse out of the garage, my feet knocking against his calves—then he bumps the ATV into drive and presses the throttle, the leap of it causing me to rock forward. I give up on the rails and grab at his shirt, moving up on the seat until I hug him. “Sorry,” I call over the roar of the engine.
“Hold on tight,” he hollers back. “And hit my shoulder if you need me to stop.” He pulls past the home and I turn my head to see a huge backyard surrounded by a chain-link fence, a big yellow dog inside it, his tail wagging, body bounding forward, alongside us. Mark lifts his hand in greeting, increasing our speed and I smile as the dog sprints faster, his tongue lolling from his mouth. I swear he’s smiling at me, even as he skids to a stop, reaching the end of his yard, his tail constantly moving. “That’s Midas,” he yells. Then we go on, and I burrow my face in his back, my arms reaching around and gripping his stomach.
It’s a different world out here. The air smells like sunflowers and dirt, and bees hum past as my hair whips in the wind, pieces coming free from my ponytail. It’s a world that is free of Bethany memories, and I feel a small ease of the constant grip on my heart. We turn off the beaten path and climb through a ditch, my fear mounting as I grip him tightly, the tires digging into the hill and holding, our journey moving into thick woods, the crackle of dead leaves sounding as we rumble through the trees, falling leaves drifting through the crisp fall air.
There is a moment where I feel outside myself, where I examine the soft flannel of his shirt in my fists, the smile on my face, the quiet enjoyment in my chest. Is this happiness? I haven’t felt it in so long I almost don’t recognize it.
A path appears and Mark takes it, going a short way, then turning at a break in the fence, the vehicle rocking over a row of pipes, and Mark points down at them. “Cattle gate,” he calls out, and I nod, as if he can see me, as if I understand. When I look out, I see them. Cows, their bodies dotting over the field, a chorus of brown and red, their huge heads lifting, jaws in motion as they watch us move. I’ve never thought I’d be scared of a cow, but in this open field, our path taking us within charging distance… I hold my breath, my hands tightening on Mark, and am suddenly grateful for the four-wheeler’s impressive speed. “Will they attack?” I ask, and he turns his head.
“No. But don’t mess with the bull.” He points, and I follow his finger, seeing the huge animal under the shade of a tree, watching us, his horns scary, even across the hundred-acre field.
“Wasn’t part of my plan,” I call out. He guns the engine and we head for a low barn, another four-wheeler parked out front. We come to a stop next to it and he kills the engine, waiting for me to climb off before he follows. I step to the side and watch as he strides to the barn, sliding open the big doors, wheels squeaking as they part, and he moves sideways through the opening. I hesitate for a moment, then follow.
The barn has a wide center aisle that’s open on the far end. The ceiling is high enough to accommodate the giant tractors parked to our right, the left side a row of open stalls. I glance in the empty stalls as we pass. My toes feel gritty in my flats and a pebble of some sort has worked its way under the leather, each step digging the annoying stone further along my sole. A man leans against a stall at the end, and he straightens as we approach. There is the masculine grip of a handshake, then they turn to me. “This is Helena, a friend of mine from Connecticut.”
“I’m Royce.” The man nods, and I push my hands into the front pocket of my jeans, before he has a chance to extend a hand.
I nod. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Ever seen a cow give birth?” he asks, and I eye the dingy baseball cap on his head, the brim nearly black from dirt. Behind him, Mark opens the gate and steps into straw, his voice low as he says something.
“No.” I step forward and grip the top of the stall wall, rising to my tiptoes and looking over. A cow is there, her belly huge, her red fur close enough for me to reach out and touch. She is standing, and I move back a bit as her body turns, her head coming around to Mark, who runs a hand down the side of her face. On the flight here, he told me about cows—how they have contractions before birth, just like a human does. They can deliver standing up, or lying down. He told me that the front hooves come out first, then the head. I move closer, shooing away a fly, my eyes drawn to a pile of manure against the back wall of the stall. When I had Bethany, the room smelled of bleach and sterility. Simon wore booties over his shoes, a gown, and a hairnet. He had a mask over his face, and the doctor’s hand, when it touched my inner thigh, wore a latex glove.
No one here has gloves on. There isn’t a medical kit in sight, nor a disinfecting station—not even a clean rag. The idea that—any moment—a baby cow could be produced… my head swims with the terrible possibilities. I feel unprepared, uneducated. At least with Bethany, I knew. I knew that five out of every ten-thousand births required cardiac surgery on the mother. I knew that complications during post-delivery stays had increased by 114% in the last decade. I knew what to eat, and drink, and how to exercise just enough, but not too much. I had known everything. And now, looking at the gigantic animal before me, I know nothing, have researched nothing, and I hate the feeling of stupidity, of not knowing the situation I have put myself into. The cow’s front knees buckle and I grip the dirty plank, watching her pitch to the ground.
MARK
Mater sinks to the dirt, a heavy wheeze coming out of her, and Mark steps back, giving her room, his eyes picking up on all of the details. Her wide eyes, the white of them showing. Her nostrils flaring, the twitch of her legs as she lowers her head to the ground, her hooves swinging in the air for a moment. He remembers when she was born. She’d laid, just like this, covered in blood and mucus, for so long that he thought her dead. Ellen had cried, one hand whipping over her mouth, her long legs shifting back and forth as if she was both anxious and afraid to step forward. He had gathered her to his chest, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, and they had prayed together, asking that the calf would make it. When Mater had twitched, her head lifting, Ellen had cheered, her shoulder rocking against him, her smile big enough to light the whole barn.
“What’s wrong?” Helena’s words are tense and tight, her face lined in worry.
“Nothing.” He relaxes against the wooden railing. “She’s just trying to get comfortable. Her contractions are getting stronger. It won’t be long now.”
“Are you worried?” She hangs on the question, her eyes darting from him to Mater, as if her sanity depends on his response.
“I didn’t fly here for nothing.” He shifts, finding better footing in the dirt. “But it’ll be okay. No matter what. Mater’s had a good life.”
“I need a statistical probability.” Her nails are unpainted, and he watches them dig into the wood, the grip turning her knuckles white. “What chance is there for complications?”
Behind him, Royce chuckles, and the sun casts his shadow as he steps out of the stall and gives them some privacy.
“What difference does it make?” he asks Helena, meeting her dark solemn eyes.
“I’d like to know. I don’t want to be here if—” she gestures to Mater, who picks a terrible time to groan in discomfort.
“It’s okay,” he smiles. “She can’t understand you. If she dies?” he supplies helpfully. “Or if the calf does?”
“Yes.”
He rubs a hand over his chin, feeling the growth of stubble, a week’s worth of missed shaves. “Fifteen percent.” He uses his thumb to scratch the side of his check. “Fifteen percent chance of complications.”
“You flew us here on a
fifteen percent chance?” She is irritated and suspicious, stepping away from the railing and crossing her arms in front of her chest. “There’s an eighty-five percent chance that she’s going to birth this baby cow just fine and we came all the way here for nothing?”
He raises an eyebrow at her, trying to understand the source of her agitation. “So… you want there to be a complication?”
“I want the truth.” She points an index finger toward Mater, who—as if on cue—bellows, her head swinging against the ground, her discomfort obvious. “Fifteen percent?!” She spits out the number as if it is ludicrous.
“It’s my wife’s cow.” He steps closer to Helena and lowers his voice. “Ellen used to ride on her back. She fed her tomatoes every harvest. I’d be here if there were a one-percent chance of anything going wrong.”
There is a long moment where Helena doesn’t respond, her eyes studying his as if reading the truth in them. Finally, she nods. “Okay. I just .... me coming here isn’t something I necessarily feel comfortable with. It was a big deal to me.” She finishes the statement with a wary look, as if he has lied or misled her in some way. And he wonders, in the moment before she steps back to the railing, her forearms flattening on the wood, her chin resting against the top of her hands, what happened in her life to make her so suspicious. Maybe she was just born that way. Maggie was that sort of child, one who peppered him with questions, never satisfied with his first response. Helena, even now, with her weight relaxed against the railing, has coiled muscles, an alert air. If he startles her, if he screams BOO, she will take off running. She’ll sprint through that barn and never look back.
I stretch out my legs and examine the toe of my flats, their paisley surface stained around the edges from dirt. I’ll have to throw them away. These jeans too. I shift in the dirt, finding a new spot to sit in, and look toward Mark. Between us, Mater shifts for the gazillionth time. She’s a very loud birther. Lots of wheezes and sighs, plenty of loud collapses onto the ground, then laborious struggles to her feet. The first four or five times, I was worried, my hands clenching into fists, body stiffening, as if I could will her into comfort. After a while, I followed Mark’s lead and relaxed. Mater, which is the dumbest name I’ve ever heard of for a cow, seems to be taking her time. At the moment, she is standing, her head down, her eyes closed.
“What if we miss it? When her water breaks?”
“You’re not gonna miss it.” His elbows rest on his knees, his butt on an upside-down bucket that’s already cracked along one edge. I watched when he sat on it, the plastic bowing a little under his weight, but the crack didn’t grow.
The silence returns, and it’s comfortable now, just the two of us here, Royce leaving fifteen minutes ago. Mater wheezes, and the sound joins the hum of crickets, the falling night interspersed with streaks of fireflies.
“You have a lot more fireflies here,” I say, watching one fade into the shadows. “We don’t have as many up north.”
“We got a lot of flying critters,” he drawls. “Stick around for summer and I’ll introduce you to a million and a half mosquitoes.”
“No thanks.” I won’t be alive in summer. I won’t ever feel the warmth of sunshine on my shoulder, or hear the sound of the ocean, feel the scratch of sand against my soles.
“Maggie always loved fireflies.” His head turns to the open door, and he waits, a chorus of them appearing, as if on stage.
“So did Bethany.” I smile sadly, remembering summer nights on our front porch, her feet darting across the front lawn, hands outstretched, swinging a jar through the air in an attempt to catch one as her prize.
“I got one.” She beamed at us, her tongue pushing the gap between her top and bottom teeth. “He was too slow, and I got him.” She held out the glass and I carefully took it, Simon and I moving apart, her tiny rump settling down on the step between us. “What should we name him?”
“Hmmm.” I wrinkled up my face, and soberly considered the small fly, which settled on the bottom of the glass. “What about Doug?” It’s a terrible name, intentionally picked. Bethany took the naming of items very seriously, and awarded extra attention to anything that ended in “y”.
“Doooouuuuug?” She stretched out the name like it was ridiculous, her eyebrows pinching together in the creation of an alarmed look. “That’s a terrible name!”
“Okay,” I allowed. “Then you pick one.”
“What about Lighty?” Simon interjected, and I tightened my hands on the glass, fighting the urge to reach over and smack him.
“Lighty!” Bethany cheered, and pulled the mason jar from my hands, raising it high in the air. “Great name, Daddy!”
It wasn’t a great name. It’s a terrible name, as bad as Doug, only not in an intentional, funny way. It was the most unimaginative name, supplied at a time when I was trying to grow Bethany’s creativity, and give her her own, original voice. ‘Lighty’ didn’t accomplish anything toward that goal. ‘Lighty’ was the personification of bland, average, uninspired normality.
I tried to smile, my lips pressed together in an attempt to fight a grimace from forming. “Do you know why the fireflies light up, Bethany?”
“Yep!” Her response had such confidence that I stalled, my eyes darting to Simon before returning to her. She didn’t know, not unless Simon told her.
“Tell me.” The request came out all wrong, hard and accusatory, as if Bethany was a defendant on the stand, and not a four-year-old with a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid on her elbow.
“It’s their mini flashlights,” she said solemnly. “It’s how they see in the dark.”
There is imagination, and then there was stupidity. I was a strong believer in the first, and a staunch disapprover of the second. It’s a point of contention between Simon and I, and I could see the stiffening of his spine as I shook my head. “No, Bethany.”
“Yes,” she insisted, stamping one of her shoes on the step. “Daddy said!”
“Bugs can see in the dark. They don’t need flashlights.”
“Then why do they have them?” she asked plaintively, as if I was old and stupid and she was humoring me. I hated that tone of her voice, the over-enunciated speech of an insolent child.
“It’s how they communicate. Mostly, it’s how they attract mates.” I pulled her onto my lap and lowered my voice, using the hushed whisper that she liked. “The males fly around, flashing their light and showing off. The females settle on branches or grasses and watch the males perform. If they see a male that they like, they’ll flash their light.” I pointed to the tree at the end of the drive, its branches silhouetted against the street light. “Watch the branches of that tree. See if you see any of the females flash their lights.”
She didn’t look. Instead, she examined her jar, her eye close to the glass. “So… Lighty is a boy?” She said the word as if it was offensive. “I wanted a girl firefly.”
“What’s wrong with boy fireflies?” Simon interrupted, scooting into the place that Bethany left, his leg brushing against mine in the most annoying way.
I tightened my grip on Bethany, and leaned forward, hugging her with my arms. “And did you know that some species of fireflies are cannibals?”
“What does that mean?” She turned, and the soft skin of her cheek brushed my neck.
“It means that they eat—”
“Ice cream!” Simon interrupted, in the jolly voice of a town idiot, his body springing off the porch step and landing gracefully on one of the stepping stones.
“Fireflies eat ice cream?” Bethany asked with suspicion.
“I’m not sure,” he said grandly, as if being ignorant was fun and exciting, and fury exploded in me at the same time that Bethany pulled out of my arms. “But I do! And I think I’ll get some right now!” He reached out and snagged her, the mason jar swinging through the air as he picked her up and spun, giving the poor firefly a carniv
al ride from hell.
I closed my eyes, my skin prickling from the cool night air, and counted to five, each number releasing the tension from a different part of my core. He will ruin her. He will fill her head with fluffy and false information. He will rot her teeth on junk food and ruin her grammar. I opened my eyes and, from across the dark lawn, a firefly glowed at me from the thick of the tree.
I closed my eyes and counted again.
“Did you know that some species of fireflies are cannibals?” I speak quickly, before Mark changes the subject, before this final opportunity to share this information—probably the last of my life—passes by. “They are very sneaky about it. They replicate the female mating flashes of a different species of firefly and—when the males come closer to investigate, they swoop in for the kill.”
“Very interesting.” Mark drawls.
I hesitate, watching him, unsure if he is being sarcastic. He seems fairly genuine, and I soldier on. “Also, some species are aquatic—they have little gills, just like a fish. But most are like these.” I wave my hand toward the streaks of light. “And when fireflies are attacked, they shed little drops of blood that are really bitter and poisonous to some animals.” I relax my shoulders against the back of the post. “It’s their defense mechanism. Because of it, most animals or opposing insects, learn to stay away from them. They have very few natural predators,” I finish.
“You know a lot about fireflies,” Mark says, the words carefully delivered, in the same way someone might politely broach a terrible subject, like bad breath or a rip in someone’s pants.
“I read.” I say flatly. “You should try it sometime.” That summer, I had read an entire book about night insects, for the sole purpose of educating Bethany about the caterpillars we might encounter, or the fruit flies that always ended up inside, no matter how often I emptied the garbage disposal, or examined our fruit. I had had the perfect educational opportunity that night on the porch. Simon had ruined it, as he so often did, waving his arms about and distracting her with words like ice cream. I don’t know how any kids in his class ever learned anything, as fanatical as he seemed to be about education disruption. Then again, he was probably just that way with us.
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