Erin Fisher - That Tiny Life

What now? The cow is easier. “There’s a pump, no?”

“Yes.” Milo’s voice.

Clouds knead into each other over the entire sky. They’ve pulled up from the mountain and set off the trees with a uniform grey glow. It’s not possible to pinpoint the sun beyond. She rolls onto her side. Milo coils the rope. She should lecture him, say, Get your own damn cow out.

Axel loops the white’s jesses around a fence post. The falcon spreads its wings and clenches the wood. Melanie goes into the house and comes back with a pair of Milo’s boots.

“Fine.” Kendra stands and takes the boots. “All right. Go get the pump.”

Milo backs the tractor to the garage. Kendra and Milo latch the trailer and the pump. She and Melanie unroll the thick canvas hose over the pasture. The few cows in the field glance at them, then return to browsing the churn of dirt, tufted grass, and snow. Kendra signals to Axel and a rush of raw waste animates the hose. Half the morning passes before the shit level drops low enough that she can reach under the cow without getting sucked into the lagoon again. Axel shuts down the pump. Milo unlatches the trailer, loops the rope on the hitch, and drags the cow onto the ramp with the tractor. Melanie takes the creased blue tarp from the fence poles and covers the cow.

A rumble off the valley walls. The highway’s been quiet all day — all day he’s crouched next to the hooded bird and Kendra’s clothes on the fence, and his digits have iced over — so his first instinct is to think, idly, some sort of howl off the mountainside? His fingers are coated with what looks like coffee grounds, is probably poop, but there’s a chance it’s dirt because he wiped them down with grubby snow. He’s going with dirt. His toes, for sure, are white, the blood pushed out by cold and poor circulation. Can’t see them under his sneakers and socks, but can’t feel them either. First step is the waxy yellow-white, then blue, then gangrene — Explorer Green, his mom joked the first time he had to soak his feet in the tub. He should tell Kendra about his feet now that the cow’s on the ramp.

The sound builds — not a roar, at least not a live roar. A bus rounds the corner — orange, dirt sprayed up the wheel wells, the same bus that drove past earlier — coming into view from the direction of town. A school bus. Maybe his mom took pity and signed him up for school. What would she say to that — So you want school now, smart mouth? The bus turns down the driveway.

“Christ,” says Milo. “Christ.”

The bus brakes screech and kids spill off. He crosses the paddock and stands next to Kendra at the pump.

“Christ.” Milo kicks snow over the half-covered puke holes.

“Ready for that tour?” The teacher, last off the bus, rubs his hands together and stomps.

“The power.” Milo turns a half circle and runs his hands through his beard. “The power’s not working.”

“Can’t you milk by hand?” Cody asks Kendra.

She taps the pump with her boot. “If you know how.”

The kids sprawl over the drive and cluster into groups. A girl, from a clump of girls in fitted jackets, lifts the corner of the tarp and squeals and drops it.

“What’ve we got here?” The teacher squats next to the cow. His collar, un-ironed, sticks half under the ribbing of his sweater vest. His jeans rumple cigarette-style over his ankles and steel-toed boots.

“Drown. Hey.” Milo points at the bus driver, who’s lighting up beside the bus. “Hey, not here.”

The teacher twitches back the tarp. “How about an anatomy lesson?”

“No way.” Kendra swears audibly under her breath.

“What’s wrong?” Cody asks.

“What’s wrong,” she says. “What’s wrong.” She starts toward her clothes on the fence and stops. “Bring those with you when you come home.” She stomps, covered in manure, wearing her long johns and undershirt and a pair of Milo’s boots, over the field toward Axel’s. She jerks her arms as she goes, like she’s talking to herself, or berating someone, or conducting.

Axel takes Kendra’s clothes and looks at Cody over his shoulder. “Stay if you want,” he says. He unwinds his bird’s jesses and heads back home.

He should follow, but there’s kids laughing and milling around. A few of them point to the bird on Axel’s fist and he finds himself explaining. “That’s my uncle, sort of. A gyrfalcon. The rarest one.” No one listens. The teacher pulls the tarp from the cow and the cow hulks vulnerably on the bare ramp. Melanie stands next to the cow. She stands straight and her mouth is cracked open like she’s about to ask a question. He’ll ask her about it after he washes his hands.

“The rarest one,” his brother’s grandson brags behind him. A compliment that the boy is proud. Says maybe the boy will shape up. He turns, walking backwards while looking at the dairy. The cow tan beside the blue tarp. The raw waste from the sewage pumped over a good section of the field. All that shit on the snow. The boy in the kilt with his hair in his eyes, chatting to no one. The school kids around the boy ignore him. Pah. His arm sags. The white has never felt heavy before. A bird plays with gravity, mocks it. This lump of chalk — he jerks his arm upwards and the bird, hooded, dips a wing and collects its balance. No doubt now there’s a screw loose between mind and eye.

He opens the door to the bird yard and heads for the mewses. Screeches from the other gyrfalcons on their perches. There’s her stock — a white male with pale grey peppered over his back, and a female near perfect with only blue tarsus and nare, the ankle and nose. Each worth well over fifty thousand. But it’s not the money. All the birds here are related except the hawks. His charts fan from that first gyrfalcon, the bird he scooped from the nest and lost his leg for.

He opens the door to the white’s mews and sets her on her perch. Loosens the draw on the hood and slides it forward over her beak. She swivels her head round and plucks at the feathers on her shoulders. Across the drive at the hatchling barn, Kendra sits on the steps in her long johns, waiting for the power to kick on and heat water for a shower. He shuts the door to the mews. He’s losing something else, now.

He didn’t drink, but he didn’t fix the generator. Didn’t secure the gate. Allowed the cows to escape, and didn’t help haul the dead milker on the tarp. And now the class visit. He forgot.

The teacher has asked for knives — he carries Austin’s butcher set from the barn.

“Be my guest,” the teacher says. The man’s young, enthusiastic, oblivious to the pasture full of watery shit and Milo’s discomfort.

The knife case is a heavy-duty camo roll-up, and inside, the four-piece set: caping knife, curved boning knife, flexible straight boning knife, a skinning knife and sharpening steel. He nearly forgot about these knives and the farm goats Austin used to put down himself.

“Stand close in case she moves,” Austin would say, and make him shoot the animal. That’s as far as Milo went. It was Austin who’d squat — almost sit — on the back of the goat, tilt the head, and slice the throat to let it bleed. Slit the skin from throat to anus, string the animal from the “gallows tree” — a spruce at the edge of the pasture. It’s impressive that his old man managed the farm as long as he did.

Take the cow apart and she’ll be easier to dispose of. Milo — if he can’t do anything else, at least he’ll do this.

The yard is full of Kratz twins and jocks and nerds and ditzes and idiots and Mr. Friessen, who holds a pack of dusty latex gloves that pull out of a box like tissues. Kendra strides home, in her underwear, across the paddock. Milo’s half-buried puke piles scatter the driveway, and this woman — presumably a chaperone — puts her arm around Melanie’s shoulders and says, “Aw, dear, the hair will grow back.” The woman’s own hair is a wad of coarse brown curls and a good inch of grey roots. Thread-veins redden the bridge of her nose and upper cheeks. Her down vest is stained, but still she’s smudged on lipstick — a faddish coral shade she’s either way too old for or never grew out of. The woman gives Melanie a shake and a kiss to the temple and tucks a pair of gloves into her hand. The chalky powder makes her skin crawl and her lungs close up. She’d hyperventilate but her throat would rather vomit.