Moo

by Smiley, Jane

  When he was finished with his visit, he went for a little walk in the garden beside that brick building with no windows and admired its succession of plantings. It was a garden he knew well by now, and approved of, and he admired what a good (and sweet-tasting) crop of peaches and apricots they managed to get every year even this far north, and he had taken the liberty of planting some of the peach pits and apricot kernels he had gathered, but they weren’t near bearing yet, so he didn’t know how they would do on his place.

  The rest of the time he refined his invention, and his barn was often lit, late into the night, with the blue of his blowtorch, and often rang with the music of hammering. Being a generous man, he also found time to do repairs on his neighbors’ equipment—he didn’t mind going over to their places, and he always waved away payment with the remark “A piece of pie’d kind of hit the spot, though,” and then he would go in the house and get the latest gossip from the wife and take a look at the kids and see how things were going, and then he’d give each of the kids a dime, and he could well afford it because of the way his invention was going to revolutionize American agriculture and make him a rich man.

  Nils Harstad had a full file of Loren Stroop’s letters, all written, or rather printed, in pencil, and containing lines like “I have to be careful because of those working against me,” “Please please please do not communicate anything you hear from or about me to anyone in the AG BUSINESS,” and “I first saw your name in a magazine when I was confined in the hospital.” This last, Nils interpreted to be a mental hospital, but had in fact been the county hospital, where Loren was having his gall bladder out on the government’s nickel. In Nils’ view, Loren’s schedule of visits was both further evidence of mental instability (didn’t people ritualize their lives more and more as they got crazier?) and a signal convenience—he always took his lunch hour from one to two p.m., so that should the shotguns and automatic weapons come out, he, Nils, would be nowhere within the line of fire. He had, of course, invited his secretary to do the same, but actually having seen Loren, she did not estimate the danger very highly. And anyway, if no one was in the office at one, he would just find another time to come. That seemed clear. Nevertheless, she did attempt to be as polite as possible, and she always offered him a cup of coffee when he sat down. In the view of both campus security and the police, he had yet to do anything of interest. His letters were crazy, but never threatening. Nils’ secretary felt herself to be living on the edge of danger, and, considering how dull life in this town was, she didn’t really mind it.

  It happened that by some magical synchronicity of spirit, both Nils and his secretary arrived at an inner conviction that they had had it with Loren Stroop on the same day. After a year and a half of receiving his letters and entertaining his visits, after apparently coming to terms with the strangeness and the inconvenience and the fear of it, they both could stand it no longer. Former worries of precipitating some crisis by acting fell away all at once, and they agreed it could go on no longer. This simple agreement had the effect of turning wish into resolution, resolution into plan. Nils did not know what the secretary was thinking, but he himself felt that he had to take this bold action for the sake of his six unborn children, as Marly Hellmich had agreed to marry him.

  And so, when Loren got to the office that day, the secretary courteously took his coat and hung it up, though she seemed to lose her balance, because she fell against him (saying, “They always wax this floor so!”). Then he sat down while she went into his dean’s office (where, unbeknownst to Loren, she reported that she had called security and they were standing by, and that she had felt nothing in his pockets when she fell against him) and then she came out and said, “The dean will see you now,” and in he went, slick as a whistle. His dean looked at him pretty sharp, taking his measure, no doubt, the way a man should, and he looked back at his dean pretty sharp, but then they sat down and visited together, easy as you please.

  Nils said, “I know you’ve been trying to get in to see me for some time, Mr. Stroop, and I apolo—”

  “No need of that, Nils”—you could call your own dean what you pleased, Loren thought—“I know you are a busy busy man, and I’m a patient man, so no harm done.”

  “Good. How may I help you?”

  “Well, I can’t really say.”

  “Pardon me. I thought you had some particular business—”

  “Oh, I do. But I can’t really talk about it, you see. It’s a secret.”

  “Well, then—”

  “There are two dangers, Nils, and I’ll be frank about them because it’s my opinion that you deserve that, and if any of this gets out, anyway, I’ll know how it got out—through you, you see.”

  “Well, let me assure you, Mr. Stroop—”

  “Okay, I’ll let you, because eventually, this has got to get out, and it’s got to start somewhere, and a secret is no good to anybody, especially if it’s this kind of secret.”

  “Perhaps if you would—”

  “Now, the two dangers are these, number one, that they might steal what I’ve got and keep it quiet, or use it on their own, and get the money, though I’d give that up if I thought that was the price of this getting out, because, you know, I’m an old man, and I don’t care all that much about money. You see that, don’t you?”

  “Well, of course—”

  “The bigger danger, as I see it, is them just quashing this whole thing. Now I take precautions.” He unbuttoned two buttons of his shirt, and Nils’ heart began to slam against his ribs. He pulled aside the plaid fabric and revealed something shiny and dark gray. “You may not be in a position where you have to be familiar with these things, but this is a bulletproof vest, and if you ever want one, I know just the brand to get, I’ve read all the stuff about them.” He smiled warmly. Nils took a deep breath. “I wasn’t born yesterday, and I ain’t no Commie, but I know how THEY think and that’s their right as Americans to think that way, but I think another way, so I protect myself.”

  “Do I take it that you have produced some invention, Mr. Stroop?” Nils grinned and leaned back in his chair. Never had he known before with such perfect clarity what it meant to be reborn. A farmer with an invention! If there were three hundred thousand farmers, then there were two hundred thousand with inventions out in the barn. He grinned.

  “I certainly have,” said Loren Stroop. “You heard of McCormick? or of John Deere? or of Garst? I’m too old for modesty. The men sitting in these chairs in fifty years’ll know the name of Stroop just that way, unless they stop me. I’m a patriot and a good neighbor, but I know those things don’t come into play when you threaten their investments.”

  “Do you have the plans with you?”

  “I never carry the plans with me. Too risky. We’d have to set up a meeting. Not here. Not at my place.”

  “We can do that. Where would you like to set it up?”

  “Then you want to help me?”

  “Helping you is my job, Mr. Stroop.”

  “Yes, I know that, Nils. That’s why I call you ‘Nils,’ because I know all about the Morrill Act and what your job is.”

  “Then let’s set up a meeting.”

  “Well, when you come right down to it, I ain’t ready for that just yet. I work slowly, and I got to make sure of every step. But I’ll be back in touch.”

  “Good. Good. I’m glad of that.” In the last fifteen minutes, Nils Harstad had regained, in every particular and every thread, the self-confident and doubt-free life he strove for. Why not extend a hand to this old guy, the last of a breed, the heart of the heartland? The essence of charity, he often thought, was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted. What Stroop wanted—an eye and a sympathetic ear—was well within Nils’ power. As they parted at the door of Nils’ office, he shook Stroop’s hand with real friendship.

  And Loren Stroop felt that, felt the sincerity of the man. Now this, he thought as he stood outside watching the park
ing van ticket his car, was a red-letter day.

  19

  The Worst Horse in the World

  “… THE EGGS incubate from two to six days, hatch on contact with moisture, then burrow into the tongue or the fleshy parts of the jaw. It is here that they molt to the second stage, are swallowed, and pass into the stomach. Please see the pictures and the chart on pages 634 and 635 in the text. Almost all horses seem to have bots.”

  Bob looked down at the chest and forelegs of the horse he was holding, but he didn’t see any telltale eggs. He did, however, step back half a step. His horse didn’t notice. She was standing with her head down, her ears flopped, and her lower lip hanging.

  “Very important: strongyles. You only need to know about the main types, called ‘the large strongyles.’ These are bloodsucking intestinal parasites, and have been found in the intestines of the earliest known horses. The larval worms migrate through the organs and tissues of the horse, causing thrombi and emboli, that is, blood clots, that block the vessels. Many experts think that strongyles have parasitized the horse for so long that the horse has evolved elaborate sets of branching connections in the arteries of the intestine. Think of the strongyles as causing internal wounds in the tissues of the horse. Prevention is by far the best course of action.”

  Bob’s horse was now clearly asleep, her eyes closed and one back hoof cocked casually, resting on the toe. As a specimen of horse flesh, she wasn’t nearly as nice as the gelding on his other side. She had pan-shaped feet, short legs, a big hay belly, a swayed back, prominent bony withers, a thin mane that revealed a ewe neck, long ears, and a bony, nondescript head, neither boldly Roman-nosed nor pleasingly dished. Just a head with a dangling lower lip.

  Miss Pfisterer cast her gaze around the group. She was very serious, and never made jokes in class. Bob thought that might be because she was so little—no bigger than a twelve-year-old, really. Whatever the reason, the effect was to make his horse class seem like life and death every meeting. “Pay attention, because I’m about to say something important. The prescribed worming regimen for horses is every two months, that’s six times per year. As a result of this regimen, a number of strongyle species in particular are resistant to seven of the chemicals that have been introduced to control them, and five species of small strongyles are cross-resistant to five of the chemicals. In all cases, introduction of chemical controls breeds resistance in the target population of parasites. Relief through use of control chemicals is always temporary.”

  Some girl across the circle, holding a pretty Appaloosa, asked the required question, as she always did, with a self-satisfied smile. “What would you do, Miss Pfisterer?”

  “Certain management practices, of specific control of specific infestations, of alternating horse grazing with cattle or sheep grazing, and of preventing infestation of foals, show some promise. A return to management practices of earlier days, such as tie stalls and absolutely no pasture, has been suggested. After all, the population of horses used to be much higher, so they must have had some means of at least inadvertent control.”

  The girl actually said, “Thank you,” in a sort of preening way.

  The horse to Bob’s right lifted his head and pricked his ears forward. He was a bay, and looked very quarter horse-y, with a short, arched, well-shaped neck and that appearance of being shorter in the front legs than in the back. An idle interest in horses was something Bob shared with his father—not all that common in a farmer, and not pursued ever, except for the two ponies they’d pastured when Bob and his brothers were kids.

  Now Miss Pfisterer had brought out some equipment, a plastic tube, a large syringe, and a small syringe. She said, “There are three methods of worming—through injection, tubing, and paste syringe. In a few weeks, we will go into the lab and try and decide which of these methods has been the most effective, through studying the feces of each of the three groups of horses.”

  They stood patiently, twenty-one horses and twenty-one students, while she moved between them, sometimes showing how to inject a shot, sometimes showing how to insert the long nose of the paste wormer through the toothless bars onto the back of the horse’s tongue. When she came to Bob, she took the coils of plastic tubing off her shoulder, and said, “This looks bad, but Brandy, here, doesn’t mind. Put your left hand under her chin and lift her head up with the lead rope.” Brandy opened her eyes and stood up, but made no protest. “The esophagus is on the left side. You want to look for it, feel for it, and know that you aren’t going down the windpipe. Now you look down her mouth and feel where the tube is going.” Bob did so, while Miss Pfisterer ran the siphoning end into a bucket. Extraordinary lengths of plastic tubing seemed to disappear down Brandy’s gullet. She stepped to one side and rolled her eyes, but made no other protest. Behind him, Bob heard someone go, “Yecch.” Miss Pfisterer actually smiled. A few moments later, the horse had been dosed, and Miss Pfisterer was easing the tubing out of her mouth, rolling it up again. She patted Brandy, who seemed to go back to sleep almost at once, on the neck. To Bob, she said, “You know why this is the most valuable horse in the barn?”

  Bob shook his head.

  “Well, look at her. She’s one of a kind. She defines the bottom. Every element of conformation that you wouldn’t want in a horse, she possesses. Once a student has looked her over, has really concentrated on her, really seen her, he knows what he doesn’t want to find in any horse he might ever buy in the future. It took us a long time and a lot of luck to find her, and we keep her very healthy. With all these breeders’ associations and these breed standards for every little variety of equine, we might never be able to replace her. She’s the worst horse in the world. She’s my favorite, too.” Miss Pfisterer now kissed Brandy on the nose and palmed a piece of carrot between her whiskered lips. Had she not been Miss Pfisterer, Bob might have thought she was joking. She turned on her booted heel and stepped over to the bay quarter horse, who curvetted and danced, trying to watch her as she prepared to give him a shot. She showed the girl holding him how to cup her hand over his eye, restricting his rear vision, then expertly injected him. When she smacked him with the flat of her hand and said, “Hey! King! Stop that!” it was without affection.

  Joy Pfisterer was nothing if not methodical. She had begun the worming procedures with thirty minutes left in the period, and wound them up in time for the students to lead their animals into the stable and close them in their stalls. Once her father’s pride (ready at any time to ride her pony standing up, ready to somersault forward or backward at any gait, ready to try any fence if someone assured her the horse could do it, ready to try any horse if someone assured her no one had been able to ride it), she was now her mother’s surrogate (sober, thoughtful, mindful of consequences, her sense of responsibility mushrooming ceaselessly). She was perfect in her job, since the university horse herd was a black hole of duties—feeding schedules, shoeing, worming, and inoculation schedules, exercise, turn out, grooming schedules. She inspected them for evidence of accidents, ill-fitting tack, skin problems, foot and leg problems. She knew the fields where they grazed blade of grass by blade of grass (there was always the danger of poisonous plants or parasites), rabbit burrow by rabbit burrow (broken legs).

  Some sort of aversion therapy, probably education, had made galloping, jumping, cross-country eventing, the very activities she had abandoned herself to with such exhilaration at fifteen, psychologically painful to her at thirty. After all, a trail-ridden horse who had the benefit of steady slow exercise could live and work past the age of thirty. Many jumpers were used up at fourteen, legs shot, joints swollen up. How could you act in the face of that knowledge?

  But then, how could you act, period? A mushrooming sense of responsibility, she had begun to think, soon overcame every pleasure, every way that humans had devised to lose themselves for a little while. Joy knew she had become the kind of person that people appreciate from a distance, but are uncomfortable in the presence of. All except Dean, who loved her any
way and was too self-centered to really pay attention to her mood. Living with him, which she had until recently resisted, was not that different from living by herself.

  She held her tongue when Dean crowed to her about his bovine false pregnancy project. The fact that she was known for speaking up meant that when she didn’t, he assumed that everything was fine with her. It was certainly fine with everyone else. It seemed like everyone could see the virtues of artificially induced false pregnancy in cows, if the false pregnancy could result in unending lactation. The fact was, pregnancy added up to calves, and calves added up to danger and inconvenience for the cow and therefore for the farmer. And supplying the farmer with perfect heifer calves that he might otherwise raise on his own added up to profits for the company, too. A dairy farmer, in close cooperation with his supplier, of course, could maintain top production year-around, could even keep his best cows producing well past the current four-year average. Joy could appreciate that, couldn’t she? Joy certainly could.

  There was a lot of money talk. You’d know how much a cow who never calved was worth, right to the dollar, because you’d know ahead of time how many pounds of milk such a cow was going to produce over her lifetime. A little company now dabbling in semen and embryos could get predictably bigger selling whole herds of predictable cows. Mysteries of the business would disappear along with the mysteries of reproduction. Businesses liked that. Unknowns would fly out the window as economies of scale came in the door. Right now, as an accompaniment to talking about future money, everyone was talking about present money—namely, what Dean could expect to get for his research. Every night, when they sat over supper chatting about their day, Dean rolled out heavy-sounding sums of money—a half million, three-quarters, a million, two million. This was not money, of course, that accrued directly to their household budget, but it accrued to his reputation, his stature in the university, his raise for next year, his experience of himself. Later, if (when) there were patents, well, that would translate directly. It was a rosy prospect.