C. Morgan - All the Living

Now, he said, and as if in answer, the cow pushed and then the hooves came like two iron pokers and Orren tore away the sac that surrounded them. He made a chuffing sound like laughing, but it was only a small gasping after victory and then the nose of the calf, raw and heavy with mucus, protruded. Aloma gaped.

Come now, he said and it came, but slowly. Come, he said and it inched a bit more until the head swelled out suddenly like a bloodied balloon from the birth canal and Aloma gripped hard the flashlight for fear she would drop it. Here it was. Now Orren grasped the wetted fetlocks, pulled one leg and then the other as he tried to walk the shoulders out and Aloma could not even blink as she watched the calf come. Orren said, Push push push, but it was not enough, the calf was too big, his new life could not break free of her grasp on him, so that Orren had to lean back, using all the force of his own body, and he pulled at the protruding calf like a starving man pulling a sack of grain until it passed finally through, sliding quickly at the last, out of the mother and into the night.

God, said Aloma, the light shaking in her hands. Orren swiped the blood and mucus from the calf’s squared mouth and nostrils and tickled up one nostril and blew in that nostril and then the other and when that did nothing, nothing at all, he slapped its broadside with the flat plate of his hand. The calf hauled air and Orren pattered his hands down the sodden hide, thumping and kneading and to get away from this unmothering, the calf moved, struggling up on its strange new legs, first placing weight on its pasterns, its nose pushing up and up as if it were pressing against a great and horrible weight, and then with another burst, it rose up on its legs, all four. It swayed forward and back, then to the side and just as Aloma reached out to keep it from tumbling over onto its flank — ignoring Orren as he shook his head to keep her — the calf jerked awkwardly to one side, caught its own weight and then, with the motions of a groggy stilted bird, righted itself. All the while, the cow lay on her side, her reedy breaths accompanied the first steps of her calf. She lifted her head to find the calf in the dark and bawled a sound that caused the hair on Aloma’s neck to stand up. The cow made a jerking attempt to rise, but did not. Then the air in her lungs whistled through her nose narrowly. Orren seemed to have forgotten her for a moment as he watched the calf, his own face gleaming with sweat, his hair damp. He had knocked his cap off long ago and it lay behind him, ground into the mud. He rocked on his haunches and watched the calf stumble and jolt forward a few paces and then, finding its newborn rhythm, it stepped away from their inner circle. Aloma still held the flashlight in her hands, the beam trained on the ground. She clicked it off and for a moment they remained in the early-morning dark together with the uneven gasping of the mother.

Orren roused himself suddenly and said, Rub the calf down with that blanket. She did as she was told, she bent down and enfolded it in her arms, felt the lath-thin ribs of the calf as she did so, half afraid of its newness. It shook, but did not resist her, it nuzzled repeatedly at her shoulder and when it found no teat, it gazed straight ahead into the cold dark with its enormous black eyes. Behind them, Orren scrambled around the bulk of the cow and knelt at her head, whispered something to her under her own breathing, something only she could hear, and then he pulled firmly at her head with both hands and when she moaned but did not rise, he passed his hands over her hind legs, prodding.

No good, said Orren.

What is it?

She can’t raise up.

What?

It got a nerve. It can paralyze them. That calf was a long time coming and it was big too. I think she’s bleeding.

Orren reached inside the cow again, feeling along the uterine walls.

What are we gonna do? Aloma said, still bent in her awkward embrace of the calf.

Oh shit, he said. She’s tore. His slippery fingers clamped together the sides of the tear, but after some minutes the blood continued to pass and would not thicken. With nothing left to do, Orren pulled his hand from the womb and stood up, breathing hard. He stared down at the blood on his hand. Aloma watched him, but said nothing.

Set for a bit, Orren said suddenly. I’m gonna heat a bottle. Keep that calf warm. Then he jogged back up toward the house, leaving Aloma with the animals. The mother breathed, the calf breathed. Aloma knelt beside the calf, using the ends of the blanket to gentle it, patting its new hide dry. She looked up at the sky, craning her neck until she had stretched herself a straight line from her clavicle to her chin. Venus was unleashed, pure white, but she could not see Orion, he was obscured by the fall of the land. When the calf bawled once, she heard the other cows answer softly from under the gallery.

When Orren returned, he brought with him a rifle and a two-quart bottle. He knelt before the calf, the rifle behind him, and fed the calf straight from the bottle, patting its nose, patting its flanks. They said nothing for a while as the calf drank and butted against Orren’s hand. Then he passed the emptied bottle to Aloma and moved to the cow, knelt for a time by her legs again. When he finally stood from his long crouch, his own legs were unsteady from being tucked under him and he caught himself against the fencing at the side of the barn to keep from stumbling.

Orren, Aloma said.

He shook his head.

Don’t, she said.

She done good. It’s a hour on. I can’t a known, he said and he turned toward the prone bulk of the cow again. I waited too long. He rubbed at his face with one dirty hand. I can’t a known if she calved ever. Cassius done it all, Cassius always known what to do. You think somebody could a told me something. Nobody ever learned me to do it alone. He looked at Aloma then with his expression unraveling for a moment before he stepped over the cow’s legs and reached for his rifle.

Go on up at the house if you want, he said. She just stared at him as he loaded the cartridge into the chamber of his rifle and threw the bolt. When he saw that she was not leaving, Orren said, Set back and cover up the ears on that calf. And your own if you’re able. He waited a second while she bent and clapped her hands over the large tufted ears of the calf and then he brought the rifle to his shoulder and shot the mother high between the ears.

The sharp crack frightened the calf and it bolted from Aloma’s hands, fell down on its forelegs shedding the comfort, and for a few seconds just stayed there, shaking, with its eyes wide. But then it found its feet again and stumbled a few steps, slowed suddenly, and seemed to calm when the sound did not repeat. The unsteady press of its small hooves on the wetted earth was the only sound as Orren lowered the rifle and bent over the cow. She breathed once and died as he bent. Then Aloma heard a rude wail behind her, a sound to shatter leaves, but when she turned her head and there was nothing there, she realized that she’d made the sound herself. She touched a hand to her mouth in surprise, but the sound kept coming so she stifled it with her palm. Her body began to cry, but without tears, hard so she could not breathe. She closed her eyes and she could not see anything, her hand pressed farther into her gaping mouth and without thinking, she began to falter, to sink to a sitting position down onto the churned dirt. But Orren crossed the distance between them. He took her arm, he said, Come on now. I ought not to a let you stay down here. She smelled his sweat and the burnt firecracker smell of the rifle.

She shook her head and he led her forward with an arm around her waist to keep her from stumbling. She seemed unable to open her eyes. Out of the field and across the newly dewed grasses that led to the house. Up the back steps and into the kitchen where he laid the rifle on the counter with a clatter and led her farther into the warm house, up the creaking wooden stairs and into the bedroom. She knew she smelled of manure and dirt, but she was too tired to think and she sat down on the bed like a loose-limbed child and let Orren take off her ruined slippers. Then he undid the button and zipper of her jeans so she could breathe and he pressed her down onto the mattress. Her dry crying subsided. He sat himself and slipped his hand under hers on the mattress and patted out a small music on her knuckles with his thumb. His hand was dry and she felt the dirt caked on his skin. He sat there with her like that for a few minutes and then he said, I’m fixing to go back down there and set with that calf a while. Take care of things. Are you gonna be alright if I leave you here? Or are you fixing to throw yourself out the window? Should I nail it shut first? He made a move as if he was going to do it and she caught him by the filthy-now waistband of his jeans and laughed and her nose ran.