The Call

by Yannick Murphy

  ACTION: Drove to farm past huge old maples that lined the road. Met farmer and his son out behind the barn, where the cow was lying on a mixture of frozen mud and ice. In the barn, on some hay, was her newborn mooing for her, and the farmer’s wife was trying to feed the calf colostrum from a bottle. Clipped to the side of the stall was a heat lamp, shining down on the calf. Outside, though, the mother would not get up. I had brought my bottle of calcium with me and stuck a needle in the vein in her neck to inject her with some. This might take a few minutes, I said to the farmer and his son. But the farmer could not hear me, and he yelled, What’s that? and held the top of his ear, red from the cold, and pushed it out toward me so that I would know he could not hear so well. I leaned up close to him. I could see where the yarn from his sweater collar was coming undone and hung in a loop of scalloped waves. It will take a while for the calcium to take effect. She may not get up for a while, I said, loudly. The farmer nodded. In the meantime, I asked the farmer’s son if there was a flat board around. I wanted to drag the cow onto it so that when she did try to stand up, she wouldn’t slip on the ice. He brought me a sheet of composite board, and then the three of us, the farmer and his son and I, all tried to push the cow onto the board. She was a heavy cow, and I was pushing from her rear, which was all bloody from birthing her calf and expelling her placenta, so that if I pushed too hard, my hands would slip. I had to find the right strength to push her with, not too hard so that my hands would slip off her hind, and not too easy so that she wouldn’t budge. The farmer, though old, was strong and his son even stronger, so the three of us were able to get her onto the board. Once she was on it, she seemed appreciative to be off the cold frozen mud, and she lifted her head and looked around, taking in the sight of me and the farmer and his son, but her interest didn’t last long, and maybe the dry surface beneath her was too much of a comfort, because she suddenly lay down and sprawled across it and closed her eyes. Doesn’t look like she wants to get up now at all, said the farmer, loudly. His wife, who was still in the stall in the barn with the newborn calf, thought he was talking to her, and I could hear her yell from the stall, What’s that, Michael? But the farmer didn’t answer her.

  It was true, the cow didn’t look like she wanted to get up. She looked like she wanted to take a long nap instead. Come on, old girl, I said, and I pulled on her rope halter, but she just opened her eyes and looked at me. I hope she won’t be a downer, the farmer said. She’s my best milker, he said.

  Let’s give her a few more minutes, I said. There was not much to do but look at the cow and then look out across the farmer’s snow-covered hills. On the closest hill there was a sugar shack.

  How many trees do you tap? I asked.

  Oh, about fifteen hundred, the farmer said.

  That must keep you busy in the spring, I said.

  The farmer nodded. We sell the syrup here. Between that and the cows, we stay alive.

  Then the farmer’s wife came out of the barn. She held the empty bottle of colostrum. She didn’t wear any gloves, and I could see how red her fingers were from the cold.

  How’s it doing? the farmer said.

  Okay, for now. It needs its mother, though, she said.

  The farmer nodded. We’re working on that, he said.

  I hope she ain’t a downer, the farmer’s wife said. She’s our best milker, she said.

  The doc already heard all that, the son said, shaking his head and then spitting on the icy mud. I didn’t want to hear the family squabble. I interrupted with a little conversation.

  You have a nice place here. Nicer than I’ve seen in a while. I recently heard of a guy named Greg Springer. I heard he keeps his cows in his basement. Can you believe that? I said.

  The farmer nodded.

  You know Greg Springer? I said. The farmer spat. I looked at the wife and she turned away. I looked at the son and he spat then, too, right on top of where his father had spat. It was enough of a clue for me. I would head to Greg Springer’s. I would see if he was the man who shot my son.

  I’ll get her up, I said. I went to my truck. From the back I pulled out my bullwhip. I had ordered it from Australia. It was made of braided kangaroo hide. I knew how to crack the whip so that it sounded like a gunshot. When the farmer saw me walk back to the cow with the bullwhip, he didn’t say anything. He just put his hand on his chin and felt some gray stubble that was growing there. The farmer’s wife stuck the empty bottle of colostrum in her back pocket, and then she folded her arms in front of herself and watched.

  RESULT: I pulled the whip back and laid it right next to the cow, so that the tassel end struck by her ear. When the whip made the crack, the cow jumped to her feet. The minute she was up, I pulled her off the composite board. I didn’t want her getting comfortable again on it. Put the board away, I said to the son, and he did, quickly. I wished that my whip could wake Sam up the same way and I pictured myself cracking it in his yellow pastel hospital room beside his ear on the stiff white pillowcase and him rising from his bed and holding out his arms to me.

  When she was up the farmer said to her, Come on and take care of your youngun’, and then he walked in front of her and she followed him into the barn. The calf was mooing for her and she mooed back and when she was close enough, the calf came up under her and started nursing. She turned to it and started licking it, turning the hairs on its backside into a wet swirl.

  The farmer’s wife called to me from the porch of their house. “Come inside so I can write you a check,” she said.

  We stood in the kitchen. The only stove in there was a wood cookstove. The floors were beautiful old wide planks that had begun to slant with age and time and made me feel as if I could lose my balance any second and fall over. This is a nice house, I said. The farmer’s wife nodded. It’s been in the family for four generations. My son was born in the room above our heads, and Michael was born there, too, and his father before him and his father before that.

  I looked up at the ceiling. It was tin. The pressed shapes in it had a leaf pattern.

  When I walked back to my truck to head home, there was a large jug of maple syrup on the driver’s seat.

  THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: Is it true what they now say about the Big Bang, that they believe the universe really isn’t expanding, but that it’s all really heading for one place? What is that place?

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: The place is a magnet. The place is warm. Mom’s spacecraft can take us to the place. When everything gets to the place, it will collide again. The Big Bang will have a sequel.

  WHAT I TELL THE CHILDREN: Did you know that gravity is not a constant? Did you know that gravity bends light?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: What is this mess? This room is not the laundry room. This room is the living room. Whose coat is this? Whose hat? Whose dirty socks?

  WHAT MIA SAYS: Don’t worry, Mommy, everything you’re seeing is in the past, because light takes time to travel.

  WHAT THE FLIES SAY AT NIGHT: Thank you for this warmth. We are happy here in your home. We like sharing it with you. We will try not to buzz in your face. We will keep our distance. When, in death, we do fall from your beams above your heads and onto your beds while you’re sleeping, please forgive us. Forgive us for sometimes clinging to the television screen. We like the extra warmth. It soothes us.

  WHAT I CHECKED FOR OUT THE WINDOW: The spacecraft, but it wasn’t there, just a clear night with so many stars they seemed to make the sky white. I left the house then. I didn’t even need to turn my lights on, the sky was so bright. Where are you going? asked Jen. I’ll be back, I said. It’s just a horse, I said. It wasn’t a horse. I drove to the hospital. The night nurse was reading Ulysses. It’s like I’m in this guy’s head, but the problem is I don’t always want to be there, she said when I asked her how the book was. I brought Sam the maple syrup. I opened the bottle and took a sip out of it as if it were a whiskey jug, and it was cold from having been in my truck and I thought how I could almost drink the who
le thing like it was water. I threw back the cover and checked his foot. It was still and seemed to glow in the light that the hospital used at night. Then I read a book I had brought. It was about B-24 bombers during World War II. My father was a pilot on a bomber then. I read Sam the part about how in training men had to fly in formation and another pilot had to come at them head-on and be able to lift up just in time to miss flying into the formation, but in training there were many accidents and one man missed, crashing his plane as well as four others and all the men on board died. I told Sam I had figured out what had happened. That the pilot going three hundred miles an hour did not take into consideration that the formation was also flying at him at three hundred miles an hour. When he did pull up, it was already too late. There was no way to judge, I said, and then I cried, thinking of those men, thinking of Sam, the tears falling into the binding of the open pages of the book, magnifying letters.

  CALL: A Morgan foundering. I had to go, even though I wanted to check out Greg Springer and drive to his place.

  ACTION: Drove to farm, was greeted by a woman with a British accent named Lillian and her King Charles dog and her springer spaniel dog. Lillian was bundled in two sweaters and a scarf and a hat and a down coat. She had just been in the ICU with a lung infection. She was not about to land in there again. Good heavens no, she said. Lillian showed me to the barn. In a stall was the Morgan lying down, his front legs tucked under him. The first thing I noticed about him was that he had a very thick neck. The horse was fat. When I lifted up his blanket, I checked his hind end and there were thick pads of fat there, too. Have you been feeding him extra grain? I asked Lillian. Lillian coughed. Well, yes, with this cold weather, I thought he’d need it.

  I explained to Lillian how in the winter, when a fat horse isn’t being exercised much, it doesn’t need much grain. Too much grain and it builds up too much glucose. In turn this can cause an overgrowth of bacteria that can cause laminitis in its hooves and make it painful for a horse to stand. Cut back the grain, almost to nothing, I told her. Oh dear, Lillian said. He’s been getting two big scoops of it a day, on top of his flakes of hay. He won’t like being cut back. I nodded. I knew how hard it was to cut back on an animal’s feed. I always fed the dogs too much myself. Yes, but he’ll only get worse if you don’t, I said. In the meantime, Lillian said, what about drugs? Can’t you give me something for his pain? I want lots of drugs. When I was in the ICU, I told them I’m as old as the hinges of hell and I feel like shit and I want all the drugs you can throw at me, and so they did. I love drugs, Lillian said. I walked out to the back of my truck. I handed Lillian some Banamine pills and bute paste. Lovely, she said, taking them in her leather-gloved hands. We were standing on a nice spot of her property. A number of snow-covered hills could be seen from where we were. The sun was shining, and the snow looked like ice, slick and glistening. The King Charles dog was looking up at us while Lillian and I talked. He had soft brown eyes, and his little tail wagged gracefully, as if the words we said were words directed toward him. I bent down and petted him, and he smelled my pants at the knee, and smiled up at me. Then the springer spaniel took off, jumping over the snow-covered stone wall, and Lillian called to him, telling him to come back. I don’t need him running out into the road and getting run over, though at least you’d be here to patch him together again. What’s he after anyway? Lately he’s been going batty at night. He runs back and forth in the field and barks at the sky for hours. Do you think he sees things we can’t? Lillian asked. I told Lillian I didn’t know. What about drugs? Do you have something I can give him that will make him stop? she asked. Try exercising him more in the day. He’ll be too tired at night, I said. No drugs? Lillian said sadly. No drugs, I said. Besides, he might really be seeing something in the sky. You don’t want him doped up. He could save your life, I said. I didn’t want to tell her about the spacecraft I’d seen in the sky at our house. I didn’t want her to think her veterinarian was as batty as her springer spaniel.

  WHAT I SAID: He might be a tracker. He might be able to solve a crime, he might be useful around here, don’t you think? I said. Lillian looked right at me. Maybe so, she said, but I don’t think it takes any genius to figure out who’s committing all the crimes around here. It doesn’t? I said. No, look at that John Bennett’s driveway and you can tell he’s up to no good. He’s got six Saabs sitting there. I heard his bear dog ripped the throat of the sheepdog next door. He hunts bear? I said. Bear, coon, coyote, buck, duck, hell, anything that moves, she said. Grouse? I said. Oh yeah, he’s a louse all right, she said. What about Greg Springer? I said. Greg Springer? He’s a kind soul. Everyone makes fun of him keeping his cows in his basement, but I’ve gone down there in that very basement. That’s the nicest cleanest driest basement in the whole town. He’s got those cows right up cozy against the water heater. Those are the happiest cows around, Lillian said. No, that Greg Springer gets hell because of how he looks and how he dresses, but people shouldn’t be shoving their noses into other people’s business. It’s that John Bennett they should be pointing fingers at.

  WHAT I DO INSTEAD OF DRIVING STRAIGHT HOME: Stop at John Bennett’s. Lillian’s right. He’s got six Saabs sitting in his driveway, but none of them has tires. There’s no smoke coming from the chimney and no one has shoveled the walk since the last snow. I start thinking John Bennett must have skipped town.

  WHAT’S NOT IN THE SKY WHEN I DRIVE HOME: The spacecraft.

  WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAY TO ME WHEN I GET HOME: Pop, a deer was killed in Brownsville. It was hit by a car while trying to cross the road. The police came and shot it because its leg was broken. Will they eat the deer?

  WHAT I SAY: Yes, I hope so.

  WHAT THE WIFE COOKS FOR DINNER: Beef soup made with okra and corn, and biscuits. The children poked their fingers into the middle of the biscuits, and then poured honey into the holes they had made.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Easy on the honey, we need it for other things.

  WHAT WE SAY: Like what?

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I don’t know, just other things. And another thing, stop leaving your shoes in the living room, stop leaving the bathrooms for me to clean, stop leaving the dishes for me to do, and stop leaving the dinners for me to cook.

  WHAT I SAY TO THE WIFE: Leave the room. We don’t want to hear it.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I don’t know. I stopped listening to her. I watched the children filling their biscuit pools with the golden honey.

  WHAT WE HAVE TO WATCH OUT FOR NOW: Peanut butter jars and mayonnaise jars where the bottoms are concave, saving the manufacturer money so he doesn’t have to use as much food to fill up the jar, but can charge the same price as the old jars where the bottoms were flatter.

  WHAT MY CHILDREN DO: Run to the pantry and pull out jars we have recently bought. Look how they’re cheating us, the children say, holding up the bottoms of the jars to me. How can they cheat us like this? the children say. The children shake their heads. We are all sad, for a moment, about the injustices in our world.

  WHAT MY DOCTOR DOES: Catches me at home. I pick up the phone, thinking it’s a call from a client. Before I know it’s him, I think it’s my father on the phone, just from the sound of his voice. I think my father is calling me, and I’m happy to talk to him, and I forget the impossibility of the situation, the fact being my father is dead, has been dead for a number of years. Died of lung cancer in a senior home called Sunrise, but I was always forgetting the name and calling it Sunset. The doctor has a gentle reminder for me. That is what he calls it, a gentle reminder. I’m past due for coming in to have my levels checked. He is looking forward to seeing me. He hopes that my family and I are well. Well? I want to say. I think of Sam, his eyes unopened in the yellow pastel room. I think of my wife, slipping into bed next to Sam, who still sleeps with a wizened chicken heart by his ear. I think what I hate to think about, that Sam may never wake up. I think about Sarah and Mia, interrupting their dinner to run to the pantry to find plastic jars and hold up the
ir bottoms so I can see how we’re being robbed on a daily basis. Yes, we’re all fine, I say. I tell him I’ll be holding off on being retested. I tell him I don’t see the point in doing it again so soon. It’s sometimes good to know these things, he says. I tell him I know what he’s trying to say, but sometimes, I tell him, it’s also good not to know these things. He tells me it’s my choice. Why is he telling me that when I already know it’s my choice? Thank you, I say. You’re welcome, he says, and I know by the tone of his voice that I’ve disappointed him.

  CALL: No call. I drive to John Bennett’s house. I sit parked, looking at it, waiting for signs of life, maybe his dog bouncing and barking, trying to look out a ground-floor window at who has parked on the side of the road, but there is no dog, and still no smoke coming from the chimney top.

  ACTION: I drive to town hall. The clerk is named Jean and she’s sitting at her rolltop desk wearing sheep fleece slippers. Do you know John Bennett? I ask.

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: I know everyone. I’m the town clerk, remember?

  WHAT I SAY: What’s he like?

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: He pays his taxes. He buys dump stickers. He put an addition on his house in ’89. His dog’s name is Howie, a sweet collie mix that has seizures. He takes two pills a day for the seizures, but sometimes they still don’t work.

  WHAT I SAY: How do you know?

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: I take care of Howie all winter while John’s in Florida.

  WHAT I SAY: All winter?

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: He’s a snowbird. He leaves before Halloween frost.

  WHAT I SAY: That’s before hunting season.

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: Yes, before hunting season. He doesn’t buy a hunting license. The only license he buys is a dog license. You’re barking up the wrong tree with John Bennett.

  WHAT I SAY: Who do you suggest I search out?

  WHAT JEAN SAYS: I don’t suggest that kind of stuff. I can tell you what your taxes will be next year, though. I can tell you what the taxes were on the place in the 1800s. I can tell you if you add a twenty-by-five porch to your place what the taxes will be. But I can’t tell you what I don’t know.