Chapter Four

J.C. MCGERBER was slightly younger than God but had more money and an abundance of judgment. He farmed six hundred and forty acres and he owned around two hundred sheep and a hundred beef cattle. He had full-time hired hands all year round. His nails and clothes never got dirty and I doubted the man even sweated for himself. I imagined he regretted not having lived in the time of slavery so he could have legally owned some people. He had a slew of part-timers for haying, plowing, planting, and harvesting. I hadn’t met any of them and didn’t particularly care to meet any that day. I suspected they might be overly pious like McGerber and ready to condemn me for whatever sin they happened to notice about me.

The old man had a modest amount of new equipment. McGerber kept the buildings freshly painted, the fences mended, the grass and hedges trimmed and tidy probably because he had the money to pay someone else to do it. His place had what some called road appeal. By comparison our place screamed for attention. Unlike the holy man, Dad had to work at the lumber yard besides running the farm and we weren’t wealthy. McGerber had none of the lawn ornaments and plastic animal tableaus which littered our farmyard because of Dad’s tastes, sense of whimsy, and resolve to irritate Momma. McGerber’s place flaunted its tidiness but looked naked and cold. Of course, I was biased. I hate him.

No one greeted me when I first arrived at McGerber’s place, so I fiddled with the equipment Twitch had given me for the job. While bent over my kit digging out gloves, I didn’t hear or see McGerber until he was right behind me.

“Miss Tyler.”

Shit. I almost wet myself. All the rage and disappointment I felt when I dealt with him a few years back flooded to my mind and body. Immediately, I was transported back in time to the church office being told I’d lost the scholarship all over again. I tried my best to slow my breathing, but my face was flushed and my fists were clenched. McGerber didn’t appear flapped at seeing me. He wasn’t even sweating in the hot weather. Vampire. He looked even more self-righteous than I remembered.

When I stood up and faced him it surprised me to realize he was a fairly tall man. I’d basically only seen the back of his head at church. The day Pastor Grind called me to his office, McGerber was already seated. Back at the scholarship meeting he seemed to find great satisfaction in telling me he’d taken back the scholarship I’d won. He rescinded the scholarship because it had been reported to him, “Lorraine has unnatural desire.” It was the same scholarship he hadn’t awarded to Becky because she was pregnant our senior year. It meant nothing to him. He had taken away my hope at a future. Snatching back the scholarship seemed as easy and natural as dusting his church shoes.

Now Becky was dead, and I didn’t need his scholarship money because I did vet work for Twitch. Momma and Dad had helped me save money too and given their blessing on a student loan if necessary. Still, I resented McGerber’s part in our family’s reversal of fortunes. Becky and I’d been the top students in our senior class and at least one of us should’ve had the money. I couldn’t help thinking if Becky had won it, she might’ve gone to college and may have still been alive.

I looked at McGerber but bit my tongue. I’m here to deliver a calf and vaccinate his sheep as a favor to Twitch. It’s my job to service animals even if they were owned by people who hated me. I didn’t understand how my being queer hurt McGerber or was any of his business. I owed him the common courtesy I owed all people and nothing more, not even polite conversation. As I stood in silence, two men I’d never seen before came into the barn. The older one attempted a joke with the younger one.

“And he says, ‘well, the only thing comes out of Kansas is steers and queers. Which one are you?’” Both men laughed.

Oh great.

McGerber laughed too as he stared at me. “Lewis, Pete, leave us a moment,” he said without seeming to look at them. “I want to talk to Miss Tyler before she gets to work. We’re old friends.” He smiled, his teeth stained from coffee or cola probably. I doubted he smoked.

Hearing him say we were friends made my stomach cramp. I didn’t want to be alone with him. I tried to hide my fear and disgust by going back to my prep work. Crap. What if he attempts an exorcism? Maybe he planned to kill me outright. I acted less shaken than I felt. At the same time, I wondered what thoughts had surfaced from McGerber’s holy head. Maybe, he wanted to apologize. Wow, the heat’s getting to me.

“I thought you were going to go to vet school. Certainly, you can’t have finished it yet or did you drop out and follow the path of your uneducated parents?”

Oh, how he rankled me, but I would not use vulgarity or violence to match his already low estimation of me. “Oh, maybe you haven’t heard about it. Momma’s been attending college. She’s going to be a nurse. Furthermore, I’m going to college too. I didn’t drop out.” I didn’t bother to tell him why I stayed back a year. It was none of his business. “Twitch trained me enough to do what needs doing here.”

“Well, we’ll see,” he said. He laced his hands behind his back and walked further into the barn. “I have the largest, most healthy flock of sheep in this entire county. Do you know why, Miss Tyler?”

“Probably because Twitch has been doctoring them and advising you on how to keep them healthy and productive.” He’d never apologize. He’d only gloat. The very fact of it made me less afraid of him. He was tall from head to boot, but he was a small man.

“No, Miss Tyler. You’re wrong, yet again. I have the largest, most healthy flock because I follow God’s law and because I follow His law, He has blessed me. Deuteronomy chapter seven says if you pay attention to His laws He will keep His covenant of love with you. He will bless you. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.” He waved his arm around motioning to his large farm. “I prosper because God has blessed me. Do you understand, Miss Tyler?”

My mind raced with the things I wanted to say and could say but shouldn’t say. Those weren’t nice things and saying them would get me kicked off the place and Twitch wouldn’t get paid. I mustn’t cross a line that hurts my family. I chose my words carefully and kept a cheerful tone.

“You sure do have nice herds and flocks and I hear you have plenty of people to care for them for you. You don’t have a womb. And it is my understanding your seed didn’t produce any fruit in your wife’s womb. Maybe you meant Fruit of the Loom and God blessed your underwear.” He didn’t seem too mad. I grew a little bolder. I stepped closer to the creep. “To tell you the truth, Mister McGerber, I’m not here to talk theology with you or how rich people think their wealth is a sign of their holiness and their opportunity is a sign of their superiority over those with fewer opportunities. I’m here to deliver a stuck calf, plain and simple.”

“It is plain, but not so simple. I have a contract with the vet service and I’ll honor it, but I will not have an adulterer on my property. Transgressors must be punished and will be punished by God with the assistance of the godly. I don’t like the idea of having you and your unnatural ways on my land either. I let you serve me because you’re young and there’s still a chance you’ll recognize the error of your ways. However, make no mistake, Lorraine, I will not renew the contract next year and I will advise all the farmers in the Sheep and Cattleman Association to do the same. That, you can count on.”

“I’m guessing Twitch constructed the contract. If it had been you, you’d have had a morality clause, so you could get out of it.”

“You are correct for once, Miss Tyler.”

“Are you perfect, Mister McGerber?” I said. I don’t know what gave me the courage to ask such a question.

“Excuse me, Miss Tyler?”

“I asked if you were perfect.”

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” he said. “I take my instruction from scripture and, of course, the spiritual guidance of Pastor Grind.”

“I take it you mean you’re not perfect either. Good to know.”

He turned around and left the barn.

My knees shook. My jaw ached from clenching it. My body had kept score of years of anger, disappointment, hate, and fear. I couldn’t let go of it with a couple of deep breaths and stretches. I kicked hay bales. I screamed into my elbow. I shook out my arms and rotated my neck to let the scared energy leave me. As I stood there staring off into the neatly stacked hay and clean floors, I saw a blonde head pop up from behind a bale.

“What? Wait...who are you?” I called. I worried I’d begun seeing things that weren’t there. Then, a slip of a girl in a baggy dress came out from behind the hay.

“I’m Addie,” she said.

She came over to me and peered into my box of supplies.

“Are you visiting McGerber?” McGerber didn’t have any children of his own to my knowledge.

“No. I have to live with him. He’s fostering me. My social worker says my mom’s not fit.”

She didn’t seem too bothered by what she said. She knelt by my box of supplies and pulled out items, reading labels and shaking the bottles.

“Oh, well, I’m sorry your mom’s not fit and even sorrier you have to live with that…” I tried to think of something other than a swear. “Old fart.”

She laughed. “He’s a self-righteous asshole, but he’s okay. I know what he expects from me.” She stood up, put her hands on her hips. “Are you some sort of vet?”

“Yes, well almost,” I said. “I still have to go to vet school, but I apprentice with Twitch, the local vet, and I know how to do a lot of things.” She looked about fourteen, but she could have been older. Her dress hung loosely on her thin frame, disguising her figure. Her hair was long, clean, and tied away from her face with a ribbon which complimented her dress. She fidgeted. Before I could ask her questions about her living with McGerber, she skittered toward the door, picked up a gunny sack, stopped, and looked back at me.

“Well, almost vet, I have to go,” she said. “I’m supposed to drown a litter of barn kittens.”

“Drown kittens? Wait.” I walked closer to her, looked around for McGerber. I whispered, “He’s got you drowning kittens?”

Addie stepped closer to me. In hushed tones, she explained her predicament. “He says a whore of a barn cat had another litter and he would be damned if it would fall upon him to feed them. I suspect the cat’s unmarried, which makes it fornication. Or, maybe she’s married. That makes it adultery. Whatever sin it is, he don’t abide it. He says the world already has too many strays. He don’t abide strays, except for me, I guess. He gave me this sack.” She held up a gunny sack.

Jesus Christ on a bicycle. “Do you want to drown kittens, Addie?”

“No, would you?” She frowned and looked at her feet.

I wondered how many similar decisions she’d faced in her short life. How could she consider drowning babies?

“They’re so little and cute. It’s not their fault they were brought into this unfit world.”

“No, it’s not their fault and it isn’t the momma cat’s fault either.” I thought for a minute. I was there to deliver a stuck calf and drench some sheep, but there wasn’t anything to say I couldn’t also save some kittens and save a poor, young girl from being an instrument of death. “Do you think you can catch them all and the momma cat too?”

“Yes, she’s used to me now because I give her my leftover breakfast cereal milk and the little ones are in a nest with her.”

I walked back to my gear, dumped my equipment out on the floor, and handed the empty box to Addie.

“Sometimes, new mommas need some help to care for their babies especially when they weren’t planned and when the momma isn’t very grown herself.”

Addie took the box from me. She looked confused.

“Put the momma cat and all those kittens in this box. Cover the box with the bag he gave you. Then put the box on the floor in my pickup, it’s the old blue one out front. You’ll have to go through the driver’s door because the passenger door doesn’t open from the outside. Oh, and crack the window open, it’s so hot.”

She nodded and took the box.

“Don’t tell McGerber—just say you got rid of the kitties.”

“Are you going to drown them?”

Her question shocked me, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected her to know all the options. “No, I’m not going to kill them. I’ll take them home to our barn. I can spay the momma cat so she doesn’t have any more litters. She can focus on those kittens. They’ll be okay. Maybe you can visit them some time. And when they’re old enough to leave their momma, you can have one of them for your own.”

“Maybe she likes having kittens. Anyway, how can you take them? They’re his.”

“They aren’t important to him if he wanted you to kill them. He won’t miss them.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. He says it’s his right to do what he wants with what he owns and whatever is an abomination to God. I bet he includes strays he thinks need to be killed. Believe me he knows what he owns.”

“McGerber doesn’t own everything just because it ends up on his farm. I’m saving those kittens if you’ll help me.”

“Okay, I guess if you’re an almost vet you know what you’re doing. I’m just a girl with an unfit mother and an old fart foster dad.”

Somehow, I suspected Addie had more going for her than she let on.

Then the two farmhands returned. The older one took a last drag on a cigarette and snubbed it out on the barn floor and shoved a stick of chewing gum in his mouth. “McGerber said take you to the cow and do whatever you tell us to do. I’m Lewis Gaus and this young man is my good friend, Petey Holman—he’s harmless unless you date him.” The older one, Lewis, put the younger man, Petey, in a headlock. Petey fought out of the hold and punched Lewis in the shoulder.

“Shut up, Lewis!” Petey ran his hands through his mussed hair.

Addie smiled and waved as she left the barn.

Cautiously, I stepped forward. After that queer remark earlier, I was halfway determined not to like them, but Twitch had said they were okay. I gave them a chance. I shook hands with the two men. Lewis was tall, muscled, and hairy. His full beard and bushy mustache gave way to wavy hair falling on his collar and held back by a well-worn cowboy hat. Petey was a husky young man with silver hair that didn’t match his age or first impression. When he smiled, I could easily imagine what he looked like when he was four years old—no gray hair, but the same boyish face.

“Come join us at the shit show,” Lewis said.

I followed them to the cattle barn. If Twitch hadn’t already warned me McGerber and his men had made a grisly failed effort to deliver the calf, I would’ve puked at what I found. The cow was down on her side, breathing shallowly and in obvious distress. A bloody stump of neck protruded from her vagina. A vacant-eyed calf head lay on the floor. They had tried to pull the calf out with a chain and decapitated it. The rest of the calf was hidden, stuck inside the suffering cow.

“What a mess!” I didn’t intend to make them feel any worse, but it needed to be said. “Come on, let’s get this cow out of her misery.”

I had left the supplies for drenching the sheep back at the barn where I unloaded my box and gave it to Addie for the kittens. The rest of the equipment I had bundled in my arms and carried to the cow barn. Again, I inventoried what Twitch had sent with me for the job.

First, I needed to perk up the cow. I shot her up with a pint of 50 percent dextrose. Then I gave her a spinal epidural, so she would stop straining and be still enough for me to reach inside her, reposition the dead calf, and deliver it. I mixed up an iodine solution as a disinfectant. I’d seen Twitch reposition calves at least a half-dozen times and done it myself twice.

“Will you look at that,” I said into the supplies. “Damn if that man isn’t smart.” Twitch had sent a box of laundry soap.

“What’re you talking about?” Lewis kneeled by me.

“The soap.” I nodded at the box.

“I get it, you’re going to soap up the calf and slide it out,” Lewis said. “Lookie here, Petey.” He showed the box to Petey. “Petey’s only a pup—barely eighteen. He’s seen a lot of things on the farms we’ve worked, but I doubt he’s seen miracle bubbles.”

I unzipped my coveralls and took my arms out of the sleeves and let the top hang at my waist. I covered my hand and arm with a plastic glove that extended to the shoulder of my sleeveless T-shirt. Once I’d lowered myself on the hay behind the heifer, the headless neck of the calf was right in my face. Flies buzzed by it and landed on it, probably laying their maggot eggs. I sprinkled the laundry soap on my gloved hand.

“Here goes nothing.” I reached inside the cow. The moisture dissolved the soap into a lather I spread wherever I could reach. I smelled blood, piss, and shit, but concentrated on what I’d been taught. The book drawings of the cow insides flashed in my head as I fished around and read the situation with my hand.

“The calf’s shoulders are locked up at the cow’s pelvis.” I nodded at Petey. “Help me get another glove on and soap it up good.”

He knelt beside me and followed my every instruction.

“I’m sorry to be intruding on you this way, Miss Cow, but I promise you will feel better once I get your baby out.”

Finally, I had lubricated the area enough that I could rotate the calf and free it. I soaped it as I turned it. My gloved hands and arms were slick with soap, blood, and mucus. The rest of me was soaked with sweat like I’d run to get there, but eventually, the calf slipped out.

“Well, I’ll be damned! That’s impressive, Miss Tyler. Petey and I’ll take it from here and clean her up.”

“Good work for a queer?”

“Well, I don’t know what to say about that, Miss Tyler.” Lewis spit chewing tobacco on the floor. “I guess it was good work no matter what you are.”

“Call me Lorraine.”

“Damn fine work, Lorraine.” Petey shook my hand again.

I didn’t know if my challenge made a difference or just made Lewis hate queers more. I’d grown tired of letting all the jokes and stupid comments go by.

The men each grabbed a pair of gloves when I pointed to the box. The cow wasn’t torn up inside as best as I could tell. I left them to their work and went to the wash area in the entry of the barn, discarded my dirty gloves, and washed my hands and arms. Then I got a clean set of coveralls from my truck and put them on over my jeans and T-shirt. I heard a faint mewing from the passenger side when I opened the driver’s door and stuffed my dirty clothes in a garbage bag from the glove box. Addie had gotten the stray kittens and their momma captured and stowed them in my truck. So far, I’d saved a cow and litter of kittens. Not bad for an almost vet—a queer almost vet, I might add.

The drenching equipment was in the sheep barn where I left it. The sheep had been separated into holding pens which made it easy for me to begin drenching them without the help of Lewis and Petey. The men came along in short order and seemed downright friendly to me since they’d seen me pull that calf out. The event made me some sort of magician to them now, or at least a competent vet’s assistant.

They kept a steady line of sheep coming to me to be drenched and then penned them separate from the ones we hadn’t drenched yet. I planned to do the whole flock that day, so I didn’t have to worry about Lewis and Petey keeping the “haves” from the “have nots.”

“How long you been working for Twitchell?” Lewis asked.

“Since high school really,” I said. “I am accepted at vet school. I just got to get myself going there.”

“Well, I suppose there’s more they could teach you, but you seem to know a lot already,” Lewis said.

I didn’t yet know if I liked Lewis or not, but I could work with him.

After only about a third of the flock had been vaccinated, McGerber materialized again and interrupted.

“I hate to interrupt,” he said.

“Then don’t,” I said.

“There’s a matter of some importance that needs your attention, that is if you really are a vet.” He glared at me.

Bait! I knew it, but I took it anyway. “What’s so important you’re interrupting my work?”

“It seems I have a bull whose horns are unsafe.”

Petey groaned and Lewis spit on the floor by his boots.

“You want me to stop drenching your sheep to dehorn your bull?” Did the man thrill to pissing me off or was he trying to weasel out of his contract? I didn’t care. I hadn’t backed down to him or his hired help. I saved a cow and I’d thwarted McGerber’s attempt to kill a litter of kittens. Call me Supervet! Bring on the horny bull.

“Yes. Is that a problem, Miss Tyler? Maybe it’s beyond your abilities.”

Ooh, the man is a masochist hungry for a beating or I am. Either way, I’m not leaving.

“No. I’ll wash up and get some gear from the truck.” I’d like to have put that gunny sack over McGerber and drowned him.

“Killer is in the north barn.” McGerber walked out.

“Killer?” I squinted at Lewis and Petey. “He’s got a bull calf already named Killer?”

“Killer’s not a young calf,” Lewis said. “He’s a full-grown bull and he’s a son of a bitch! Come on, we’ll show you the devil spawn.” Lewis and Petey led me to Killer’s pen.

My heart raced, and my throat felt tight. I wished I had Twitch with me or my dad.

Cattle are usually dehorned young and if the cutting or burning is done right, the horns don’t grow back. Killer was five years old and over a ton of ornery muscle. His horns were a foot long—one had fault lines and cracks and came to a rounded nub and the other horn came to a point so Killer could have roasted wieners and marshmallows by the fire. From the looks of him he preferred a vet assistant shish kebob.

Petey got a big rope around Killer’s neck and Lewis tied it to a ring on the wall of the barn while I skinned off my coveralls.

“Are you sure you want to try this?” Lewis asked.

Hell no. “Nobody, especially not J.C. McGerber, is going to tell me what I can and cannot do.”

Lewis put a line through Killer’s nose ring, but left it loose so that he didn’t pull his nose ring out if he panicked right away. Petey secured the big neck rope and held the bull’s head steady. So far, he cooperated, and I wondered if he got his nickname unjustly or maybe McGerber had a penchant for irony.

I injected some painkiller into the nerves at the base of the horns. After a few minutes it took effect and I positioned the horn lopper—a tool like a giant bolt cutter—on the horn.

Thankfully, Petey and Lewis didn’t expect me to prove I could lop those horns off all by myself. Petey held the big rope looped around Killer’s neck and Lewis and I worked together with the lopper. We cut off the first horn. I laughed at the relief and ease of it, but Killer pulled loose from Petey and pulled the ring securing his rope right out of the wall board.

Oh shit!

Killer the unicorn bull was loose. Everybody scrambled in different directions, but Killer followed me. I ran toward the manure spreader and dashed to the other end of the barn in time to see the end door slide shut. What the heck? McGerber? Why would he close the door? Maybe killing my dreams a few years back didn’t satisfy him enough. Now he’d kill me outright.

I darted to the right around a barn post and Killer made the same turn, but not as precisely. Whether it was the painkiller or just a lack of agility, I couldn’t be certain, but Killer hit the barn post head on. Hay chaff filtered down like snow from hay mow and Killer fell unconscious to the floor. Petey raced over with the loppers. He and I cut off the other horn. I tossed the pointy horn at Lewis’s feet a minute or two later when he joined us by the sleeping beast.

“Give those horns to McGerber. Tell him he knows where he can put them.”

I put blood stopper powder on both stumps, gathered up the equipment, and got in my truck shaking so bad I wasn’t certain I could drive. McGerber stepped into the lane, waved his arms, and blocked my way as I drove away from the barn. I resisted a strong desire to park my truck on McGerber’s chest. I stopped inches from his toes, threw my dirty coveralls over the box of cats, and rolled down my window.

“What?”

“Well, Miss Tyler, have you finished drenching the sheep?”

“That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow to finish the drenching with Petey and Lewis.” I rolled up my window and hit the accelerator before he had time to impress me with his approval or disapproval.

The half-hour drive from McGerber’s farm to ours gave me time to think and fume. I trembled, but I was proud too. So proud and sure of myself that I lengthened the trip by driving by Grind’s place to check for Charity’s truck. No truck. No Charity. I doubted she was waiting at the farm for me.

I drove through Bend. Boys scrimmaged on the high school’s football field. Sanctioned, preseason practices were at least a month out, but a few guys played informally. When real practices begin, there’d be the crash of helmet to helmet and helmet to pads cracking like horned animals defending their turf. I blushed even as I noticed the closed-up concession stand. On one of the times Momma had ordered me to chaperone Becky and Kenny I’d been an accidental spectator to their lovemaking. Maybe Little Man was conceived that day. Maybe I’d seen something holy.

I continued through downtown. There were a few cars in town, none I recognized or cared enough about to find the drivers. No sign of Twitch. Hopefully he’d taken Allan home to Momma. Dad and Kenny were off work and probably at home. I headed that way myself.

When I got back home I released the contraband cats into the barn. The momma cat led her babies to hay where she would make a cozy nest for them. Allan would have a seizure when I showed them to him later. He’d call them “titties.”

I called Twitch on my cell phone and left a message on his voicemail saying I had to go back tomorrow and finish drenching the sheep because McGerber interrupted my work to dehorn Killer. I hoped it riled Twitch some and made him never ask me to go to McGerber’s place again.

I reviewed my priorities: find Momma, make sure she had Allan, and tell her what had happened at McGerber’s place. On the heels of that I planned to break the news that I intended to write to the college and enter pre-veterinary classes as soon as arrangements could be made to take care of Allan. I wouldn’t tell Momma I was panicked if I didn’t leave for vet school soon I’d lose Charity.