Читать книгу Saltus - Tara Gereaux - Страница 7

The cattle are all that’s noticeable on the landscape. The darkness is still so rich it mutes everything else around them and they stand in stark contrast. Scattered on the other side of the fence, some of them lie on the ground, others stand in small groups, clusters here and there. Massive and imposing. Even the calves at just over three months old already weigh two hundred pounds. The sheer size of them makes Al feel compact, contained. Like he takes up no more space than he’s supposed to.

Earlier, before the hint of dawn and hours before he was scheduled to arrive, Al left his motel room in Beauville and drove out here to Sherman’s farm. Took the grid roads that line the property until he found the herd.

He climbs out of his truck and stands near the fence. The animals turn their heads and sniff. Their tails twitch perceptibly. The calves are the first to lose interest in him, but the cows continue to eye him, alert, as all mothers would be when strangers are near their young. Al stands tall but relaxed and doesn’t make eye contact, letting them be in control. He stays a long time. Long enough for them to get a sense of him, learn his smell and decide he’s not a threat. When calm finally returns to the herd and the cows are comfortable with him, Al returns to his truck and heads up to Sherman’s house to wait for the workday to start.

The sun now up and the day warming quickly, Al watches the youngest hired hand, the one who’s here specifically to learn from him. The kid was cocksure and smug before, swaggered around the pen in boots far too flashy. But now he’s fallen silent and obedient as he waits for instruction.

Al kneels on the ground beside the calf, recumbent on its side. Its back end is held by Sherman, and its head by another hired hand. Al feels the heat from the calf through his knees, which rest along the animal’s lower vertebrae. He pats the calf’s front leg, massaging it, then bends it gently at the joint and tucks it against the calf’s body.

“Here,” he says to the kid, “hold it like this.”

The kid crouches down and does what he’s told.

“That’ll prevent him from escaping. Not too tight,” Al tells him. “You want to hold him, not hurt him.”

The calf’s breath is short and shallow. Al runs his hands down the calf’s side, a few smooth strokes. Its back leg kicks twice and then stops. Intention is everything, but that’s not something Al can teach easily. So much can’t be explained.

Al washes his hands in the nearby bucket of chlorhexidine, then reaches into the bottom of the bucket for the knife, the one his father gave him when he was a kid himself. The only one he’s ever used. He steadies himself on his knees, still touching the calf. It’s important to maintain physical contact. That’s more important than anything he might say. He leans over slightly and takes the scrotum in his left hand and, ensuring the testicles are up high and not in the lower part of the sac, slices straight across the bottom. Once the scrotum opens, he gently squeezes out a testicle and pulls on the membrane to reveal the spermatic cord. With the knife at a slight angle, he scrapes the cord as if shaving it until it breaks. A clean cut would only cause the animal to bleed out. He completes the procedure on the other testicle with only a small, quiet bleat from the calf. In less than two minutes he’s done.

Al leans back and the men let go of the calf. It shoots up onto its legs and skitters off to the edges of the pen.

“Barely even fought,” Sherman says as he gets on his feet too, wiping his brow.

A woman on the other side of the pen opens a gate and the calf canters out in search of its mother.

“No stitches?” the kid asks.

“A dry, clean field is all they need now. Wound will heal on its own.”

Al stands and stretches his legs, readying himself for the next calf.

“You available again in a few weeks’ time?” the other hired hand asks. Al was introduced to him earlier but doesn’t remember his name.

“You got cattle?”

“A friend of mine two hours from here has a herd about half this size.”

“How old?”

“A month older than these, maybe two.”

“Weaned?”

“Not sure.”

“I don’t do weaned calves.”

“Why’s that?”

Sherman answers for him, “Greater weight loss and chance of infection if they’ve been weaned.”

The woman at the gate leans against the fence, arms folded across the top bar, one foot resting on the lower. Her coppery hair a scratchy cloud around her head. No cowboy hat or baseball cap, and wearing a pair of high-tops. An odd sight for work like this. She nods at Al like they know each other but he’s never seen her before. Sherman’s wife, maybe? He nods back, then dips his hands and the knife back in the bucket to disinfect for the next.

They break just before eleven and gather in the shade of the barn. Sherman hands out pre-wrapped homemade sandwiches. On a fold-out table there’s a box of fruit and a cooler filled with pop cans and juice boxes. The men help themselves. There’s small talk in between mouthfuls of food, but the barn falls silent when the copper-haired woman walks in. She grabs a sandwich and a cream soda, then heads back outside and sits in the sun by herself.

No one says anything until the kid pipes up. “Isn’t that the mother of that fucked-up boy?”

Sherman smacks him on the arm.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” A piece of roast beef falls from the kid’s bun and he catches it, shoves it in his mouth. “What’s she doing here?” he asks while chewing it.

“Returning a favour,” Sherman says. “Her brother-in-law owns a cartage company in Brandon and shipped some equipment for me for cheap.” More silence. Then someone brings up the weather and the conversation doesn’t stop. Al listens, nods his head a few times, tsk-tsks when it’s required.

At the end of the day, on his way to the house to use the john, he crosses paths with the woman on her way to her car.

“That was not at all what I expected,” she says, stopping in front of him. “Didn’t know what to expect, honestly. I’m a townie. Rarely been on a farm, much less worked on one. But that,” she says, pointing to the pen, “how’d you learn to do that?”

“Grew up watching my father do it.” It’s both true and not true. It’s true he watched his father do it, but what he learned was not to do it the way his father did. He was rough and forceful. The calves would buck and scream, and Al would race to the house to hide. But as he grew older and understood that the procedure was necessary for the safety of the cattle themselves, he was determined to find a method that was less traumatic. He studied others, and developed his own technique over time, mastering a style that was swift and smooth.

“Is this all you do, hire yourself out? Or do you have your own farm?”

“Retired now. Just help others out here and there.”

She watches him, as if sizing him up.

“You came all the way from where in Saskatchewan?” she asks.

“Saltus.”

“Down in the valley there?”

Al nods. Something about her seems jittery. Thoughts whir in her eyes, but then she just ups and walks away. As he heads to his own truck, she drives by him in a rust bucket about fifteen years old and slows, rolls down her window.

“Nice to meet you, Al,” she says and sticks her arm out toward him so he’s forced to step forward. “Name’s Nadine.” She waves as she moves off and he tips his hat. She’s not hitting on him—he’ll be seventy in less than a year, and she’s got to be thirty-some years his junior—but there is something there. Something he can’t pick up on. But then he’s only ever been good with animals.