Kent Haruf - Plainsong

I can’t say what they’ll charge, Guthrie said. You’ll have to ask them.

Raymond stepped up. What say, you boys. What’s this going to put us back today?

They turned toward this second old man, younger than the other one, his face raw looking and grizzled in the cold air and his dirty cap pulled down low above his dust-bleared eyes. How much you going to charge us to join this escapade? he said.

They didn’t know what to say. They shrugged their shoulders and looked at their father.

Well, Raymond said. I reckon we’ll have to negotiate it later. After we see how you manage.

He winked and turned away and then they understood it was all right. They walked over to the chute and stood at the makeshift table and looked at the vaccination guns and the boxes of medicine vials. They inspected it all and felt cautiously of the dehorner, its sharp cupped blood-encrusted ends, and they edged up to the smudge pot and held out their gloved hands to its gassy heat. Suddenly one of the cows bawled from inside the corral and they ducked to see through the boards to tell which one it was, and the cattle were milling around waiting for what was to come.

The men went to work. Guthrie climbed into the corral and immediately the cattle eyed him and began to shove back against the far side of the lot. He walked steadily toward them. The cattle started to herd and shift along the back fence, and he ran up swiftly, cutting off the last two animals, a black heifer and an old speckle-faced cow, and turned them back out across the trampled dirt. They tried to double back, but each time he flapped his arms and yelled at them, and finally they trotted suspiciously into the narrow alley that fed into the chute. From outside the alley, Raymond jammed a pole though the fence behind them so they couldn’t back out and then he jabbed the heifer with the electric prod and it made a sizzling sound against her flank, and she snorted and leaped into the squeeze chute. He caught her head in the head-catch and she kicked and crashed until he squeezed the sidebars against her ribs. She lifted her black rubbery muzzle and bawled in terror.

Meanwhile Harold had taken off his canvas jacket and pulled on an old orange sweatshirt that had one of its sleeves scissored off, and he had greased his bare arm with lubricant jelly. Now he stepped up behind the chute and twisted the heifer’s tail over her back. He fit his hand inside her and pawed out the loose green warm manure and shoved in deeper, feeling for a calf. His face was turned skyward against her flank, his eyes squinted shut in concentration. He could feel the round hard knot of the cervix, the larger swelling beyond. He rotated his hand over it. The bones were already forming.

Yeah. She’s got one, he hollered to Raymond.

He withdrew his arm. It was red and slick, spotted with mucus and flecks of manure and little threads of blood. He held his arm away from his body and it steamed in the cold air, and while he waited for the next one to come in he stood near the smudge pot beside the two boys to warm himself. They looked at his arm in fascination and then looked up into his old reddened face and he nodded at them, and they turned to watch the heifer in the chute.

While his brother had felt inside her for a calf Raymond had checked her eyes and mouth, and now he shot her in the hip, high up with the two vaccination guns, injecting her with Ivermec against lice and worms, and lepto against aborting. When he was done he opened the chute and she jumped out crow-hopping, kicking up loose dirt and hard clods of manure, and she came to a stop in the middle of the holding pen where she swung her head around, bawling forlornly into the wintry afternoon, and slung a long silver rope of slaver across her shoulder.

Raymond jumped the next one, the old speckle-faced cow, into the chute and caught her head and tightened the sidebars, and Harold stepped forward and lifted her tail and cleaned out the green flop and went in with his hand and arm, feeling. But there was nothing to feel; she was empty. He wiggled his fingers, feeling for what was supposed to be there, but there wasn’t anything.

She’s open, he hollered. She must not of stuck. What you want to do with her?

She always had good calves before, Raymond said.

Yeah, but she’s getting old. Look at her. Look at how gaunt she’s taken in the flank there.

She might stick the next time.

I don’t want to put any more feed in her, waiting to see if she’s going to, Harold said. Pay for that all winter. Do you?

Leave her go then, Raymond said. But she was a good mother, you have to say that for her.

He swung the gate open ahead of her and released the chute, and the old cow trotted out into the empty loading pen from which she would be trucked away, and she raised her speckled face, sniffed the air and turned completely around and stood still. She looked nervous and displaced, jittery-looking. The black heifer in the holding pen on the other side of the fence bawled at her, and the old cow trotted over to the rails where they stood, separated by the fence, breathing at one another.

From the smudge pot the two boys watched it all. They stamped their feet and flapped their arms in their winter coats, warming themselves and watching their father and the old McPheron brothers in their efforts. Overhead the sky was as blue as just-washed café crockery and the sun was shining brilliantly. But the afternoon was turning even colder. There was something building up in the west. From far off over the mountains the clouds were stacking up. The boys stayed near the smudge pot, trying to keep warm.

Later, when there were only a few of the cows and heifers left to test, their father came over to the fence near the smudge pot. He blew his nose thoroughly on a blue handkerchief and folded it and put it back in his pocket. You boys want to come in here and help me? he said.

Yes.

I could use you.

They climbed the fence and dropped down into the corral. The remaining cattle shied back, eyeing them, nervous and jittery, their heads lifted alertly like antelope or deer. The air inside the pen was thick and made the boys want to cover their noses and mouths with something.

Now. Watch me, their father said. They’re excited already. So don’t do anything unnecessary.

The boys looked at the cattle.

Stay even with me. Spread out a little. But watch they don’t kick you. That’s the way they’re going to hurt you. That tall red cow there particularly.

Which one is she? Ike said.

That old tall one, Guthrie said. Without any white on her front legs. See her? With that chewed-off tail.

What’s wrong with her?

She’s gotten spooky. You want to watch her is all.

The boys stayed even with their father. They moved fanwise across the corral. The cattle began to shift and bunch, piling back on one another; they wheeled and massed against the back fence. Behind them a board cracked. Then the cattle began to string out, sliding along the rails, and at the last moment their father rushed forward and yelled at them and lashed out with a thin braided whip and popped an old frosteared cow across the nose and she skidded in the dirt and snorted, then wheeled around. Behind her there was a young white-faced heifer that turned with her.

Guthrie and the boys headed these two across the corral. The boys kept spread out beside him, and the animals trotted ahead kicking up spurts of dirt and dust from the trampled ground, and then at the mouth of the alley the young heifer got frightened and turned back.

Head her, Guthrie shouted. Don’t let her get past. Turn her.

Bobby flapped his arms and hollered, Hey! Hey!

The heifer glared at him, her eyes white-rimmed, and then she whirled around and her tail went up and she bucked once and kicked and then rushed on into the alley, crowding past the old cow that was already there in that narrow space. Raymond jammed the pole through behind them.