Rivendell
John Says
Julia ShipleyI set two alarm clocks for 4am and wake up every hour anyway. I dress in less than ten minutes and leave town marveling at the lights on: are they really up, too? The woman at the Dunkin Donuts hands me a large black coffee and change and says "have a good night." This is the same hour as last call in the bars in NYC. I turn left onto Trombly Hill Road, which turns suddenly to dirt, and pass dark houses and vast fields until I turn up the barn driveway and see the portholes of the huge barn lit.
John says, "go get the calf and throw it in the van."
I imagine a delicate, fawn-like calf nestled in the grass. No. It's up and running, a black bull calf. I try to gather him in my arms and lift but he collapses. So I push him piece by piece: head, neck, leg, other leg, back legs, and one final push inside the van and slam the door. As I steer us through the pasture, headlights on, he bawls to his mother whose enormous face fills the driver-side window, heightening the strangeness of taxiing a calf in a field in a van while all my friends are in REM sleep. Amanda's so close I could kiss her black cheek. She's galloping eight miles an hour. Maybe I should put up the window. Two other cows swerve and lurch in front of the van. John calls it a rodeo.
I leave the calf in the van and use a piece of plastic tubing to switch the bucking Holsteins into
the barn, and then chain them in their places. John's halfway through the milking. I dip teats and
hoe crap and feed hay until we're through chores. "Did you get that calf?" He asks as he fits the last milk machine in the sink and gets ready to start the wash cycle. We walk out to the van and
I open the door and show him the animal whose gender means it will never make milk, the animal who will be loaded onto a truck probably tomorrow or Monday. John says, "We'll, he's nice sized calf."
This morning I try to notice the things I've become accustomed to: the hay's whisper and rasp
on the concrete as I break open a bale and distribute the flakes. The moo that starts out mellow but crescendos with baritone urgency.
There are dialects of moos: absolute displeasure and petulance such as when the herd is going out
to fresh pasture and one in heat gets left behind. Some moos trumpet. The grating bleat of calves
who plead for milk.
I push the sawdust cart down the center aisle and thrust the shovel in and fling shavings under cows. At the end of the barn there is a calf so still it must be dead. I look for one second, two seconds, three seconds, but nothing of it has twitched. It's dead. I ask John what to do. He says, "Don't feed it."
Between morning and evening chores a tractor trailer from Canada arrives and we begin to unload 2000 bales of hay. The chain on the hay elevator keeps bucking its track. We stop and use wrenches and pry bars to fix it, half hanging out of the hay mow. I crank my side then pass the wrench to John and he cranks his, so it's tightened evenly. We begin again. Sometimes a different hold-up. Electricity stops running to the drive motor. Or too many bales on the elevator. Everybody waits.
I thought John stomped on my coffee cup on purpose. I thought last night he said "I wish you'd quit." Today he said, "After Christmas you're gonna help me with naming the heifers."
I looked up at the hay mow where I grabbed all those bales coming in. I realized that I was getting caught in my equipment. When I understand this, things start running again.
How cows lay down: they lower themselves so carefully that they lean forward into their folded knees; and then they sink slowly from the back until that moment they can't support their own weight, and drop in a heap.
I don't always love it: a waterbowl overflows and floods the stall and aisle; one cow won't take her place and gets herself wedged in with two others; or the whole herd busts through the dence; or just one clobbers the garden or she has her calf in the ravine and how do you get her out now?
Or the rubber collar around the cap of the bulk tank falls in milk. And these are just nuisances. But the hoe gets caught in the gutter cleaner and jams it, that's expensive. Also expensive: the clamp wasn't fastened and milk fills the floor. The agitator paddles on the tank seize and the milk won't cool…
and then I push open the barn door to go get two bales for the horses and the air is soft. Light is just beginning to cut openthe box of surrounding darkness. Or the goose feather moon is rising or falling into the black trees at the edge of the pasture and my breath condenses, freezing, matching the vapor of the milky way hovering above the manure piles.
We're leaving the barn. I'm so tired I can hardly stand. John says "If you leave one light on they're less likely to step on a teat."
Nearly 75 animals inside. 75 bodies all 101 degrees F. 75 heartbeats. Then I realize: most are pregnant again. Now how many heartbeats? More than I can fathom.