Robert Charles Wilson - SPIN

But Pastor Dan didn't know or didn't care. Condon was all that was left of the Dispensationalist wing of Jordan Tabernacle, a church unto himself, reduced to two parishioners, Sorley and Simon, and I could only imagine how muscular his faith must have been to sustain him all the way to the end of the world. He said in the same tone of suppressed hysteria, "The calf, the calf is red—Aaron, look at the calf."

Aaron Sorley, who was posted on the door with his rifle, came over to peer into the pen. The calf was indeed red. Doused in blood. Also limp.

Sorley said, "Is it breathing?"

"Will be," Condon said. He was abstracted, seemed to be savoring it, this moment on which he genuinely believed the world was about to pivot into eternity. "Get the chains around the pasterns, quickly now."

Sorley gave me a look that was also a warning—don't say a fucking word—and we did as we were instructed, worked until we were bloody up to our elbows. The act of birthing an oversized calf is both brutal and ludicrous, a grotesque marriage of biology and crude force. It takes at least two reasonably strong men to assist at an outsized calving. The obstetric chains were for pulling. The pulls had to be timed to the cow's contractions; otherwise the animal could be eviscerated.

But this heifer was weak unto death, and her calf—its head lolled lifelessly—was now obviously a stillbirth.

I looked at Sorley, Sorley looked at me. Neither of us spoke. Condon said, "The first thing is to get her out. Then we'll revive her."

There was a movement of cooler air from the barn door. That was Simon, back with a bottle of spring water, staring at us and then at the half-delivered stillbirth, his face gone startlingly pale.

"Got your drink," he managed.

The heifer finished another weak, unproductive contraction. I dropped the chain. Condon said, "You take that drink, son. Then we'll carry on."

"I have to clean up. At least wash my hands."

"Clean hot water in buckets by the hay bales. But be quick about it." His eyes were closed, shut tight on whatever battle his common sense was conducting with his faith.

I rinsed and disinfected my hands. Sorley .watched closely. His own hands were on the obstetrical chain, but his rifle was propped against a rail of the stall within easy reach.

When Simon handed me the bottle I leaned into his shoulder and said, "I can't help Diane unless I get her out of here. Do you understand? And I can't do that without your help. We need a reliable vehicle with a full tank of gas, and we need Diane inside it, preferably before Condon figures out the calf is dead."

Simon gasped, "It's truly dead?"—too loud, but neither Sorley nor Condon appeared to hear.

"The calf isn't breathing," I said. "The heifer's barely alive."

"But is the calf red? Red all over? No white or black patches? Purely red?"

"Even if it's a fucking fire engine, Simon, it won't do Diane any good."

He looked at me as if I'd announced his puppy had been run over. I wondered when he had traded his brimming self-confidence for this blank bewilderment, whether it had happened suddenly or whether the joy had drained out of him a grain at a time, sand through an hourglass.

"Talk to her," I said, "if you need to. Ask her whether she's willing to go."

If she was still alert enough to answer him. If she remembered that I'd spoken to her.

He said, "I love her more than life itself."

Condon called out, "We need you here!"

I drained half the bottle while Simon gazed at me, tears welling in his eyes. The water was clean and pure and delicious.

Then I was back with Sorley on the obstetric chains, pulling in concert with the pregnant heifer's dying spasms.

* * * * *

We finally extracted the calf around midnight, and it lay on the straw in a tangle of itself, forelegs tucked under its limp body, its bloodshot eyes lifeless.

Condon stood over the small body a little while. Then he said to me, "Is there anything you can do for it?"

"I can't raise it from the dead, if that's what you mean."

Sorley gave me a warning look, as if to say: Don't torture him; this is hard enough.

I edged to the door of the barn. Simon had disappeared an hour earlier, while we were still struggling with a flood of hemorrhagic blood that had drenched the already sodden straw, our clothing, our arms and hands. Through the open wedge of the door I could see movement around the car—my car—and a blink of checkered cloth that might have been Simon's shirt.

He was doing something out there. I hoped I knew what.

Sorley looked from the dead calf to Pastor Dan Condon and back again, stroking his beard, oblivious of the blood he was braiding into it. "Maybe if we burned it," he said.

Condon gave him a withering, hopeless stare.

"But maybe," Sorley said.

Then Simon threw open the barn doors and let in a gust of cool air. We turned to look. The moon over his shoulder was gibbous and alien.

"She's in the car," he said. "Ready to go." Speaking to me but staring hard at Sorley and Condon, almost daring them to respond.

Pastor Dan just shrugged, as if these worldly matters were no longer pertinent.

I looked at Brother Aaron. Brother Aaron leaned toward the rifle.

"I can't stop you," I said. "But I'm walking out the door."

He halted in midreach and frowned. He looked as if he were trying to puzzle out the sequence of events that had brought him to this moment, each one leading inexorably to the next, logical as stepping stones, and yet, and yet…

His hand dropped to his side. He turned to Pastor Dan.

"I think if we burned it anyway, that would be all right."

I walked to the barn door and joined Simon, not looking back. Sorley could have changed his mind, grabbed his rifle and taken aim. I was no longer entirely capable of caring.

"Maybe burn it before morning," I heard him say. "Before the sun comes up again."

* * * * *

"You drive," Simon said when we reached the car. "There's gas in the tank and extra gas in jericans in the trunk. And a little food and more bottled water. You drive and I'll sit in back and keep her steady."

I started the car and drove slowly uphill, past the split-rail fence and the moonlit ocotillo toward the highway.

SPIN

A few miles up the road and a safe distance from the Condon farm I pulled over and told Simon to get out.

"What," he said, "here?"

"I need to examine Diane. I need you to get the flashlight out of the trunk and hold it for me. Okay?"

He nodded, wide-eyed.

Diane hadn't said a word since we'd left the ranch. She had simply lain across the backseat with her head in Simon's lap, drawing breath. Her breathing had been the loudest sound in the car.

While Simon stood by, flashlight in hand, I stripped off my blood-soaked clothing and washed myself as thoroughly as I could—a bottle of mineral water with a little gasoline to strip away the filth, a second bottle to rinse. Then I put on clean Levi's and a sweatshirt from my luggage and a pair of latex gloves from the medical kit. I drank a third bottle of water straight down. Then I had Simon angle the light on Diane while I looked at her.

She was more or less conscious but too groggy to put together a fully coherent sentence. She was thinner than I had ever seen her, almost anorexically thin, and dangerously feverish. Her BP and pulse were elevated, and when I listened to her chest her lungs sounded like a child sucking a milk shake through a narrow straw.

I managed to get her to swallow a little water and an aspirin on top of it. Then I ripped the seal on a sterile hypodermic.

"What's that?" Simon asked.

"General-purpose antibiotic." I swabbed her arm and with some difficulty located a vein. "You'll need one, too." And me. The heifer's blood had undoubtedly been loaded with live CVWS bacteria.