The Jesus Cow

For the quiet ones.

After the fall

There is love after all

—
RAY WYLIE HUBBARD

O
n Christmas Eve itself, the bachelor Harley Jackson stepped into his barn and beheld there illuminated in the straw a smallish newborn bull calf upon whose flank was borne the very image of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

“Well,” said Harley, “that's trouble.”

T
here is no better vantage point from which to survey the village of Swivel, Wisconsin, than from the tip-top of its historic water tower. Carolyn Sawchuck has made the climb every Christmas Eve for five years running. Right about the time Harley Jackson was discovering his surprising calf, Carolyn was reclining against the vent cap that crowned the tower. Reaching into her backpack, she withdrew a slender thermos and poured herself a steaming capful of EarthHug tea. Then she settled in for a look around.

The water tower—a classic witch-hatted four-legger—stands on an elevated patch of land tucked within the armpit angle formed by the interstate off-ramp and County Road M. The rare visitor who chooses to exit the freeway and follow the gentle decline of County Road M into the dwindled heart of Swivel itself will be greeted by an outdated and optimistic green-and-white population
sign declaring 562 citizens, when in fact a real estate death spiral and lack of local industry has drained the census well below that. There was a time when the state two-lane ran smack through town and on holiday weekends the burg could muster up a bustle, but when the bulldozers pushed the new four-lane through they bypassed Swivel and left it to wither.

And yet, life persists. Across the road, the halogen-lit Kwik Pump is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Even now, near midnight on Christmas Eve, its logo glows against the sky on a long-stemmed sign visible from the interstate, advertising the only local attraction capable of convincing tourists to switch off the cruise control and visit—and even then only for as long as it takes to top off the tank. Over the years the Kwik Pump had displaced all four of Swivel's gas stations, two of its three cafés, and the last lingering grocery. There had been a lot of grumbling, but these days the grumblers filled their tanks and stood in line with everyone else for lottery tickets, loss-leader milk, and heat-lamped breakfast burritos.

Just past the Kwik Pump was a small trailer court, then St. Jude's Catholic Church. Then came the railroad tracks, after which County Road M widened out into Main Street, which wore on its flanks the older, larger houses; the Solid Savings Bank; the Sunrise Café; the old Farmers Store (long since closed and converted to apartments); a former Laundromat now serving as Reverend Gary's Church of the Roaring Lamb; and, at the intersection of Center Street and Main, the Buck Rub Bar. The elementary and high schools stood in a field at the far dead end of Main (County Road M hung a left and continued into the country), and the northernmost and southernmost borders of Swivel were marked by the respective steeple-mounted and fluorescent-lit crosses of the Lutheran and Methodist churches.

The first time Carolyn Sawchuck climbed the water tower she hadn't been sightseeing—she'd been trying to solve a problem. To that end, her backpack contained bolt cutters, a headlamp, a can of WD-40, Vise-Grips, miscellaneous wire and pliers, a mini-crowbar, and a fat coil of oil-resistant hose. The weight was considerable, and halfway up the ladder she had to stop and catch her breath. Three-quarters of the way up, her quadriceps felt as if they'd been marinating in napalm. At the catwalk, she dared to look down and her breath departed with such force she feared she would be found frozen to the railing come dawn. But the problem had to be addressed. So she had pulled out the bolt cutters, snipped the padlock on the climbing guard, gone headfirst into the safety cage, and, rung by knuckle-whitening rung, climbed to the very summit.

Carolyn chose to make her initial climb on Christmas Eve for one primary reason: to avoid detection. Daylight hours were a nonstarter, obviously. An outsider might have chosen the dead-of-night wee hours, but Carolyn knew Constable Benson whiled away the night shift making slow passes through town with regular loops back to the Kwik Pump for coffee refills and chitchat with whoever was running the register. While he was no crack invigilator, there was still a chance he might sweep the old water tower with his spotlight out of habit (more than one drunken Buck Rub patron had tried to scale the tower after closing time, and spray-paint-toting high schoolers also, although this was most likely to occur during homecoming week) and catch Carolyn halfway up or down. In this regard, Christmas Eve just prior to midnight offered several advantages. Nearly everyone in town was either asleep, groggily eggnogged, or rushing to make midnight mass. And rather than
making small talk at the Kwik Pump or cruising quiet streets, Constable Benson would be at the corner of Elm and Main with his vintage radar gun, picking off speeding Catholics.

She'd been terribly worried about getting caught that first time. Fearing a winking headlamp would betray her, she worked by feel, spritzing WD-40 over the rusted hinges of the vent cap before prying it open with the crowbar. Then she clipped the lamp to the rim of the vent opening so it illuminated the tank interior but was not visible from below. Next she pulled out the hose, one end of which was clamped to a short length of PVC pipe plumbed in the shape of a “T.” The other end was duct-taped to a corn-cob size bolt of steel rebar, which she fed into the overflow tube that ran down the center column to ground level. The weight of the rebar drew the hose downward and kept it from kinking; when it hit bottom, Carolyn dropped the rest of the hose and the PVC “T” inside the tank. Then she extinguished the headlamp, replaced the cap, and—with great relief—turned to descend.

What she saw below surprised her.

Carolyn Sawchuck was not from this town. Never would be, by the standards of some locals. She had arrived out of the blue, and if not against her wishes then arguably against all she had hoped for. Certainly the trajectory of her first forty years—overachieving student, social activist, published author, and ensconced academic—had given no indication that she might land atop some podunk water tower. Her integration with Swivel's populace hadn't gone smoothly and remained incomplete. But on that first Christmas Eve, as she prepared to climb down, she had been caught off guard by what she saw spread before her: a modest grid of low-key streetlights casting a vaporous glow across the settlement as a
whole—everything softened by drapings of snow, the stained-glass windows of St. Jude's illuminated from within, a twinkling sprinkle of Christmas lights salted throughout. There was something in the perspective that softened her view of Swivel. Carolyn Sawchuck was not pliable in any sense. But she sensed the value of this calibration.

And so it became tradition that her annual surreptitious Christmas Eve climb culminated with a cup of tea at midnight as Carolyn looked over the town that somehow, despite its bad luck, looked beautiful, and despite her best intentions, she had come to think of as home.

Sipping her tea, Carolyn considered the structure beneath her. It hadn't held water for years now, having been decommissioned in favor of a modern spheroidal model. By rotating ever so carefully upon her perch, Carolyn could see the new tower, well lit and shiny on the opposite side of the interstate where it stood on higher ground amidst a haphazard scatter of houses known as Clover Blossom Estates. At its very top a blue Christmas star glowed and an American flag waved. Unlike the old tower, which was silver and bore the name of Swivel in simple black block letters, the new tower was painted in the school colors of green and gold with blaze orange accents.

Carolyn shook her head. She far preferred the original tower. It had once been her dream to restore it, but these days it stood unadorned and unlit, and it was showing worrying wear. Her gloves had snagged on more than one rusty rung on the way up tonight, and she noted that when she lifted the vent cap, the hinges were stiffer than ever.

The first year Carolyn looked inside the tank, it was dead empty.
The second year, a small black puddle was visible within the bowl-shaped base. Now, five years later, the tower was far from full, but when she shone her carefully shielded headlamp inside she saw the black puddle had grown, rising to touch the sides of the tank.

That black puddle was Carolyn Sawchuck's greatest secret.

THE TEA WAS
cooling quickly in the cold air. As water towers go, the old Swivel tower wasn't all that tall. Forty feet from base to vent. Because it stood at an elevation, there had been no need to place it atop longer legs, for which Carolyn was thankful. There were limits to her bravery. Still, there was no doubt the climb was much easier now than it was the first time. For one thing, on these annual maintenance trips her pack was a lot lighter—no coiled hose, no rebar, no plumbing supplies. And Carolyn Sawchuck herself was thirty pounds lighter than she was five years ago. You don't lose thirty pounds by climbing a water tower once a year. Carolyn Sawchuck had shed most of that weight by putting thousands of miles on her bicycle.

Thousands of miles,
she thought, looking over the little town spread before her.

Going nowhere.

But she couldn't summon the old bitterness.

CAROLYN CONCLUDED HER
survey of Swivel by studying Harley Jackson's barn. The lights were on, which gave her pause. She knew Harley worked twelve-hour shifts and often did his chores at a late hour, but this was later than usual, and she had also seen a yellow rectangle of light bloom and eclipse as someone—by the size of him, it appeared to be Harley's friend Billy Tripp—passed through
the doorway. It was odd that the two men might be meeting in the barn at this hour. She was ready to climb down, but didn't want to get caught halfway if the pair reemerged and spotted her—a fair possibility, as Harley's barn was less than one hundred yards away.

In fact, the land beneath the old water tower was owned by Harley. His house and barn stood on a 15-acre remnant of his father's original 160-acre farm, which predated the interstate, predated the housing boom and bust, and predated the hectic present in every sense. Over time the farm was annexed into the village, sliced in two by the four-lane, shaved off lot by lot to meet property taxes and satisfy the bank and—just before Harley's father died—all but the residual patch sold off in one big chunk to Klute Sorensen, the developer of Clover Blossom Estates, who then—in exchange for a fat sheaf of tax breaks—donated land for the new water tower.

I'll wait a bit
, thought Carolyn, studying the illuminated barn windows. She tipped back the last of the tea, which was threatening to freeze up, and recapped her thermos. It had begun to snow. She could hear the choir at St. Jude's.

Carolyn checked her watch: 12:05.

It was Christmas in Swivel.