The Jesus Cow (11 page)

“Well, whatever,” said Mindy, “long's you don't dump it on my boots.”

They both chuckled, and Harley realized with a happy shock that they already had shared history. Conversation came easily then.

“So,” said Harley. “You're living in a granary.”

“Yep,” said Mindy. “It's comin' along. I'm gonna convert one of the oats bins into a metalworking studio. Get back to making and selling.”

“Selling art? In Swivel?” asked Harley. “Unless it'll double as a beer bottle opener . . .”

“I still have a lot of contacts in the art gallery world,” she said. “And I helped the sculptwelder set up his online store, so . . .”

Harley flinched more at the term
art gallery
than he did at another mention of the boyfriend, but he covered with a question. “What do you make?”

“Smaller pieces, mainly. Statuettes. Wind spinners. Decorative wall hangings.”

“Maybe I'll have to get something for the bachelor pad,” said Harley.

“I accept credit cards or hay bales,” said Mindy.

They laughed, and then Harley told her about his history with this coffee shop, how he first came here with the skunk-haired girl, and how she had introduced him to the world of poetry and how he still came down now and then for a reading.

“I'd heard someone joking about you going to art shows,” said Mindy. Before he could demur, she said, “I found that attractive.”

“Well . . . ,” said Harley, thinking in particular of
The Meadowlark Weeps
, “I don't really always get it. The art.”

“And you're good enough to say so,” said Mindy.

“And I get teased, sure, but no one is
mean
to me. They pretty much leave me be. Helps, I suppose, that I'm on the fire department. That'll buy a guy some slack.”

“Well, it sure did with me!” said Mindy, smiling wickedly.

Harley blushed again. “But it's prolly no coincidence that my best friend is Billy, the odd duck from out of town.”

“Could be a metaphor for your whole situation,” said Mindy.

“And that could be a metaphor for overthinking things,” said Harley, relieved when she smiled at his first tentative attempt at a joke.

“So you and the sculptwelder,” said Harley. “Three years?”

“Yeah,” said Mindy. Harley thought her eyes glistened.

“That's a while.”

“It was good,” said Mindy, quietly. “First time we ever met, I just knew. Just by the scent of him.”

Harley nearly snorkled his coffee. “The
scent
of him?”

“All men have a scent, silly,” said Mindy, recovering her humor. “I used to sniff his shirts.”

Well, that's kinda weird
, thought Harley, although he did recall reading something along those lines in
Cosmopolitan
magazine the last time he was at the dentist's office, the only place you ever saw magazines anymore. The article had been about pheremone dating. You slept in your T-shirt then put it in a Ziploc bag so prospective daters could sniff it.

“I can be a little too frank,” said Mindy, chuckling at the look in Harley's eyes.

“Yah, well . . .”

“He was good to me,” said Mindy. “I was having some troubles then. He helped me through. I figured we'd be together forever.”

“And?”

“And one day I was helping him move some scrap iron, and we bent down to pick up an old car door in the weeds, and I smelled his sweat, and it smelled sour. And that was it. I knew it was over.”

“Because his
smell
changed?”

“Or his chemistry. Or mine. Who knows? More research is needed.”

That last seemed an attempt at a joke, but her heart wasn't in it.

Harley focused on his coffee.

“It was okay. I like being alone.”

THE CHATTER REVIVED
as they drove home, the conversation flowing the way it does when a first date goes well. There was also the warmth of the heater and the glow of the dash and the ease of the road. When Harley pulled into the driveway of Mindy's place, he executed a Y-turn to position the passenger door near the granary. As his headlights swept the yard, they illuminated a Kokopelli made of sickle-mower bars and parts of an antique dump rake.

“Whoa,” said Harley. “You weld that?”

“The sculptwelder,” she said.

“Ah,” said Harley, for lack of anything better to say.

“Don't gotta love the artist to love the art,” said Mindy, and Harley figured that was fair. Now the headlights shone on the tarped bundle he'd noticed the day he drove past after spilling the coffee on her boots.

“Another sculpture?”

“Nope,” said Mindy. “Motorcyle.”

“I
thought
so,” said Harley.

“Sixty-seven Norton.”

Harley whistled. “That his too?”

“All mine, boy.”

“Really!”

Now the truck was idling before the granary door, and Harley—even after all these years—wondered what to do, but Mindy took care of it in the instant, opening the door and jumping out of the cab.

Holding the door open, illuminated by the overhead light, she smiled at Harley and said, “That was fun! Let's do it again.”

Then she slammed the door and disappeared into the granary.

It didn't even occur to Harley to be disappointed that the evening was over. Instead, as he drove home, Mindy's words spun around and around in his brain:
Let's do it again
.

Yeah
, thought Harley.
Yeah
.

H
arley rose early for his shift at the filter factory. During his first break he found a voice message waiting on his cell phone. It was Mindy.

“Let's keep it simple. Date number two—we
are
dating, right?—I'll come by your place. I'll bring supper. Lentil soup and bread. Homemade. Tonight okay?”

Harley called back and got Mindy's voice mail. “Yah,” he said, deploying the universal Scandihoovian preface, “I'm working a twelve today—a twelve-hour shift. So I won't be back until late. But yah. Supper. That'd be nice.”

And then he gave her a time, purposely an hour later than he planned to be home so as to allow himself time to spruce up the house and—just for safety's sake—to dose the Jesus calf with shoe polish.

Man
, he thought,
I gotta come up with something better than shoe polish
.

WHILE SCRUBBING THE
calf with Kiwi black, Harley wondered about that lentil soup. He may have been considered Swivel's cosmopolitan fellow, and he didn't mind a little dilled Brie when he didn't have to peel it off some art gallery floor, but at base his appetites were still those of a farm boy, and there was the concern that lentil soup might run a bit light, verging as it did toward the hippie vegan side of things.

He needn't have worried. When Mindy climbed out of her truck, she handed him a Crock-Pot, and when he popped the lid he found the lentils keeping company with hearty chunks of pork sausage and diced red tomatoes, and the aroma had him instantly hungry. Mindy was also carrying a fresh-baked linen-wrapped loaf of thick-crusted bread. It was still warm at the center when Harley sliced it, and Mindy didn't skimp when she slathered on the butter. It was nearly ten p.m. when they finished eating, and Harley had yet to feed the beefers, a violation of a rule his father taught him, which was that you didn't sit down to eat until your animals had been fed.

“I can make coffee, if you wanna drink it this late,” said Harley, “but first I have to do the chores.”

“I'll do these dishes and then give you a hand,” said Mindy, already running water into the sink.

“Oh, no need,” said Harley breezily as he pulled on his coat and scooted outside. He was secretly relieved that she would be delayed by the dishes. Fresh shoe polish or not, he had no desire to tempt fate, and was hoping to keep her out of the barn. But by the time he threw down the hay and fed Tina Turner, Mindy was already in the corral, bundled up and chucking bales into the bunk feeder. Harley cut the twine and together they kicked hay the length of the feeder. They stood beside each other for a moment then, watching
the beefers eat, the breath of both cattle and humans huffing out in white puffs.

The temperature had dropped to single digits, and when Harley checked the waterer he found it frozen over. “Musta thrown the breaker,” he said, and turned for the barn, where the electrical box was. Mindy followed him. There was no turning back now, and as he stepped inside the door and hit the light switch, he thanked his lucky stars he had swabbed that calf.

“That lightbulb is still burned out,” said Mindy, when only two of three lightbulbs lit.

“Yep,” said Harley.

“I oughta fix that for ya,” said Mindy.

“Oh, I'll get to it,” said Harley, from over by the electrical box. Indeed, the breaker was tripped, and he reset it.

“I can at least make myself useful,” said Mindy, opening the gate and depositing a straw bale beneath the bulb.

“Oh, no, I'll—” Harley was trying to sound nonchalant, but Mindy had already stepped up on the bale, and before he could say anything more she reached up to the bulb and gave it a twist.

“Well, it's
loose
,” she said. She twisted in the opposite direction and the pen flooded with light. Harley shot a frantic look at the Jesus calf, and was relieved to see the shoe-polished side was turned to the wall. Tina Turner had her face buried in the hay rack. Harley grabbed a pitchfork and began shaking fresh straw around the pen, trying as before to keep himself between Mindy and the calf.

Mindy stepped toward him. “Lightbulbs hardly ever loosen themselves. If I didn't know better, I'd think maybe somebody did that on purpose.”

Harley shaded deep red.

“Y'know, to
set the mood
.”

Harley went redder.

“Aw,” said Mindy. “Lookit you.”

Then she grabbed him, and pulled him downward into the fresh straw.

FOR ALL THE
potential scenarios Harley had allowed himself regarding Mindy, making out in a cow pen hadn't been on the list. To the uninitiated it might sound romantic—first cousin to a roll in the hay—but in truth it was a good way to get jabbed in the butt with a ragweed stem, chaff down your underpants, and a stray oat in your sock—to say nothing of triggering latent allergies, or rolling in fresh bovine by-product.

For a while it was your basic high school make-out session (
Nothing very adult about this
, Harley thought at one point, and happily so), no bodice ripping or full-commitment groping, although Harley felt things could rapidly veer in that direction. Mindy was definitely setting the pace. There was an
eagerness
to her, thought Harley. He rolled to his back and she straddled him, and her head was lit from behind by the lightbulb she'd just revived, and he was pondering this nimbus when a fleck of oat husk fell from her hair and into his left eye.

Right then Mindy froze.

“Jesus Christ!
” she said.

After all those years of being raised never to take the lord's name in vain, Harley still recoiled on behalf of his mother whenever he heard the name invoked out of context, and right now was no different. Then there was a moment, as he stared up at her with
his left eye squeezed shut and streaming tears, that he thought her oath was born of passion. And then he realized she was looking straight past him to the corner where Tina Turner and her calf had retreated in the face of this human wrassling. He cranked his head back to follow her line of sight.

Jesus.

A bit dusky and matted, but Jesus nonetheless.

Tina Turner had pulled her face from the hay rack and stood placidly chewing a mouthful of hay. Her nose was covered in dark smudges. As Harley leaned in for a closer look, Tina Turner swallowed, then burped. Her lips parted slightly, and Harley was alarmed to see that her tongue too was dark black. Harley looked back at the Jesus calf and the wet, smudged face of Christ.

Tina had licked away most of the shoe polish. No wonder it had faded so quickly the last time!

One eye still squeezed shut, Harley looked up at Mindy. Slowly she dropped her gaze back to him.

“I . . . is that . . . do you . . .”

Mindy was wide-eyed, and even in his panic Harley realized this was the first time he had ever seen her operating with anything other than aplomb.

“I guess I should explain.”

“Yes,” said Mindy, dismounting. “Perhaps.”

THEY SAT LEANING
against the pen, shoulder to shoulder and facing the calf. Harley started at the beginning, at Christmas Eve, through his discussions with Billy, and how he nearly panicked that first day, when Mindy asked about the polish tin in his back pocket.

“Well, you little sneak,” said Mindy. “And that loose lightbulb . . .”

“The shoe polish doesn't really work that good,” said Harley. “As you can see. I was worried if it was too bright in here . . .”

“But it's amazing,” said Mindy, pointing at the calf. “Why'd you hide it from me?”

“I'm hiding it from everybody. Nobody knows but me and Billy.”

“Well, it's safe with me, baby,” said Mindy, pulling Harley toward her. “It's exciting, to have a secret with you.”

Whad'ya gonna do?
thought Harley, and rolled back into the straw.

“Tomorrow morning when we wake up, I'll take you to Boomler and we'll buy a decent black hair rinse,” said Mindy, smiling down at him. “Something that will last, and can't be licked off.”

All Harley heard was
Tomorrow morning when we wake up.

Shortly afterward they moved to the house.

As they slept it snowed.

They woke to a commotion.

H
arley!”

It was Billy, and he was inside the house, hollering up the stairs. Harley looked at the clock: 10:00 a.m. He was late for work.

“Harley!”

Mindy was awake now too, clutching the sheets to her chest and looking at Harley quizzically.

“Yah! Billy!” said Harley. “Just a second!”

“You got a problem, bud! I know you got company, but you got a problem! Look out your window!”

Hopping into his pants, Harley pushed the curtains aside and looked out. The end of his driveway was clustered with cars and people. More people were arriving, some jogging on foot, others in vehicles. Most of the people and vehicles he recognized, but there were a few coming in from the overpass he'd not seen before.

“What is it, Billy?”

“It's that damned Jesus calf!”

“Whaaat?”

“Calf's outta the bag!”

“Ho-lee
crud
!” said Harley, trying to stick his head through the armhole of his T-shirt. Now Billy was at the bedroom door. He nodded at Mindy. “Pleased to meet you.”

“And you,” said Mindy. “Nice Crocs.”

“How?” said Harley to Billy, hopping on one foot and pulling a sock on the other.

“Barn door's wide open. Calf's out by the mailbox.”

“Shit!”

Mindy smiled. “That's the most heartfelt thing I've heard you say since we met.”

IT WAS DIXIE
the mail carrier who had happened upon the calf. She was pulling away from Harley's mailbox when the animal came trotting at her through the fresh snow, tossing its head and skidding on its hooves as it tried to celebrate its freedom. Dixie backed her Jeep across the end of the drive, intending to keep the calf between the snowbanks until she could see if Harley was home or find someone to help her chase it back into the barn. Spooked by the vehicle, the calf tried to turn and run but instead came sliding right toward Dixie's door, finally falling in a heap below her window. Dixie slid her door back and looked straight down into the face of Jesus Christ.

“Lord!” she exclaimed, shooting one hand up into the air, closing her eyes and opening them again to be sure. There was no doubt. Jesus looked a touch smudgy, but it was him all right. Dixie
grabbed her phone, hands shaking, and took a photo. And then another.

And then she called Reverend Gary of the Church of the Roaring Lamb. “Bring your Bible,” she said, even as she was uploading the first photo to her Twitter account. “And your camera!”

“What is it?” asked the Reverend Gary.

“A sign!” said Dixie. “A sign from God.”

“I'm on my way,” said Reverend Gary.

Right about that time Dixie's photo posted.

Hashtag, #JESUSCOW.

The next photo went to her Facebook page.

Then she e-mailed the Clearwater television station.

Harley ran downstairs and out the door.
Shit!
he kept thinking.
Shit, shit, ka-shittity, SHIT!
He hated it when he swore like this, even to himself, because he felt it dishonored his parents, but sometimes it slipped out, you were around it so much. And this! He had the feeling this was going to lead to some bad
sh
—some bad trouble indeed.

Running to the end of the sidewalk, he cornered too quickly and his feet shot out from beneath him. He skidded across the unplowed driveway, past Mindy's pickup, and right up to the open barn door. Inside he could see the gate to Tina Turner's pen—also ajar.

So hot to get to the house last night we didn't close up
anything
, he thought as he sprang to his feet. Reaching inside the door he grabbed a loop of baling twine off a nail, slammed the door so Tina couldn't get out, then ran out to the mailbox and side-shouldered his way through the crowd to the calf. Reverend Gary was on one knee, resting a big floppy Bible on the calf's head and praying like
sixty. His other hand was raised to the heavens, clutching a bejeweled iron cross be-twined with dangerous-looking silver filigree. The cross appeared to be the length of a hockey stick. Dixie was snapping pictures and posting them as fast as she could tap and swipe.

Harley kneed Reverend Gary aside, looped the baling twine around the calf's neck, and began tugging it toward the barn.

“My son!” said Reverend Gary, tucking his Bible beneath one arm and laying a hand on Harley's shoulder.

Harley whirled on Reverend Gary, surprised at the rage he felt. “Not your damned son, and not your damned calf! Get out of my face, and get offa my property! And, Dixie—I thought you were better than this. You're a
public servant
!”

Several people in the crowd crossed themselves. Harley saw more gawkers incoming.

“Harley, you have been visited with a great blessing!” said Reverend Gary as he and the growing crowd followed Harley up the driveway. “Hide it not beneath a bushel.”

Apparently that one's gonna get used a lot
, thought Harley. Then Billy appeared, bearing a pitchfork. Like Moses through the Red Sea, he parted the crowd and led Harley and the calf back to the barn. Once inside, Billy shut the door then turned to stand between it and Reverend Gary and all assembled.

HARLEY RELEASED THE
Jesus calf and it went directly to its mother. Tina nuzzled it worriedly, and then the calf began nursing. It was quiet then, just the sound of the calf suckling, and in that split second Harley had the thought
Well, this is it
, and with it the chilling realization that he was on the lip of a wave about to curl
up and over him and sweep him into circumstances beyond all control.

Someone tapped on a window. As with many of the barns in the area the windows were made of glass bricks rather than panes, so the figure was distorted and diffracted. Now another figure appeared at another window. Someone tried the sliding door he used to bring the manure spreader in and out, and as it rattled, Harley was thankful it was hooked from the inside.

“We want to see the Jesus cow!” It was a voice he didn't recognize.

“Harley!” That was Reverend Gary. “The Lord has chosen to speak through you—let him speak!”

More pixilated figures were peering in through the kaleidoscope windows. He heard the low rumble of Billy's voice. Harley thought surely the sort interested in seeing Jesus on a calf wouldn't turn violent, but they were certainly insistent, and very possibly obsessed, and their numbers were mounting. Plus, who knew who might filter in with them? Harley fished his phone from his pocket and dialed.

“Constable Benson,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

The nature of my emergency is, I've got Jesus on the side of a cow
, thought Harley, but he figured that might raise more questions than it answered, so instead he said, “Trespassers.”

“Trespassers?”

“I'll explain when you get down here,” said Harley. “And, Constable?”

“Yes?”

“Bring your bullhorn.” Harley knew that would speed things up. Constable Benson loved his bullhorn.

TRUSTING THAT BILLY
was holding back the crowd, Harley opened the door a crack. Immediately it filled with faces.

“The Jesus cow! We want to see the Jesus cow!”

A hand reached through the crack in the doorway. Someone butted the door and Harley stumbled backward. Several figures pushed through. Billy grabbed two of them by the scruff of the neck and tossed them bodily back out, but there were too many people, and now they were crowding in. Harley backed up against the gate of the pen and grabbed a pitchfork for himself. Tina Turner was pressed back into a far corner, the Jesus calf pressed against the wall behind her. Reverend Gary charged forward, the Bible clutched to his chest and his cross raised to the rafters. Tucking the Bible under his arm again, he offered Harley his hand. “We come in peace, Harley. We come in love. We come to witness.”

“You come too far,” said Harley. It was really getting crowded now. Harley looked for Billy, but he had disappeared. Harley climbed up on the gate and brandished the pitchfork.
This went from
shit
to
Holy Shit
pretty fast
, he thought.

Now Reverend Gary raised his Bible high. “Harley, the Lord is speaking here today—”

“So far, Reverend, you're the only one I've heard speaking, and I don't care for your tone. Every one of you is trespassing right now. You're on private property. I don't want trouble. I've never wanted trouble. But I've called the constable. It's time to go.”

“Yes,” said a voice from the doorway, where suddenly the people were scurrying sideways.
Mindy!
thought Harley, and sure enough it was.
How'd she—
thought Harley, and then she broke through and he understood. She was holding a stainless steel revolver so big it needed wheels.

“Folks, I'm basically a hippie chick in work boots,” said Mindy. “Not into violence, not into harshing your vibe, not into running your show. But I am into politeness. And this man”—here she grinned sweetly at Harley—“this man has very politely asked you to leave.”

She raised the pistol. “This is a Ruger Redhawk .44 Mag with a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. Shoots six 240-grain slugs. Slow, yes, but faster than you. As a single lady living alone, I find it a great comfort—although for clearing a room full of you, I'd prefer something more shotgunny.”

“Like this?”

Billy had reappeared in the doorway. He was toting a pump shotgun and his chest was crisscrossed with loaded bandoliers. There was a sudden scurry, and the room cleared, Reverend Gary leading the way. Mindy put a hand on his shoulder. “Hold it there, Reverend.” Reverend Gary froze.

“Quite a cross you got there.”

“It was a gift from my parishioners,” said Reverend Gary. “I am told they purchased it online.”

“Well I know a thing or two about metalwork, and that's an above-average beauty,” said Mindy. Then she pointed to a small hook soldered to the back of the cross. “But you're supposed to hang it on a wall, not wave it around like some nutball archangel.”

Reverend Gary just blinked.

“Keep it up and you're gonna put somebody's eye out with that thing.”

Reverend Gary bolted for the door. Mindy let him go, then winked at Harley. “That's one of ours.”

“Ours?”

“Me and the sculptwelder. Decorative crosses were our steadiest
sellers. Based on e-mails, I'd say about ten percent are purchased in irony, the rest in faith. The ex used to say cute frogs and crosses are the metal sculptor's equivalent of a painter's seagulls and lighthouses.”

Harley turned toward Billy. “Um . . .
bandoliers?
”

“Bit much, prolly,” said Billy, grinning like a kid. “Still, it seemed better to come big than show up short.” He dipped his beard toward the bandoliers. “Picked these up in an army surplus store a while back, but have never had occasion. I believe they deliver a certain visual impact.”

A red dot wavered across the floor. Harley shook his head and looked at Billy again. “A
laser
sight?”

Billy shrugged.

“On a shotgun?” said Harley. “Really?”

“They all found reverse, didn't they?”

Now Harley turned to Mindy.

“And you?”

Mindy smiled demurely. “It happened to be in my purse.”

Harley shook his head. “You don't even carry a purse.”

“Okay, a biometric case, beneath my truck seat.”

“Good lord. Can you stay with Tina and the calf?”

“Of course,” said Mindy.

“Billy, you guard the door.”

“An honor and a privilege,” said Billy, backing up against the gate and holding the shotgun across his chest.

“Okay there, Rambo,” said Harley, rolling his eyes.

Then he left the barn to hunt the constable and face the growing crowd.

Holy cripes
, thought Harley, when he saw how the crowd had
grown.
I am not cut out for this
. He had figured the calf might be trouble, but no way did he think things would spin out of hand this quickly. Once again, he cursed himself for his dithering, for not disposing of that calf—one way or another—the moment he saw it in the straw.

“Harley.” It was Reverend Gary. He seemed to have appointed himself the unofficial leader of the pilgrims now congregated about him, each of them looking at Harley expectantly.

“Harley. Are you a Christian, Harley?”

“Folks,” said Harley, “I'm a quiet guy, trying to live quietly. I need you to
leave
quietly.”

“But the calf . . . we saw the face. A sign of this import . . .” Reverend Gary was clutching both the Bible and the spangled steel cross against his chest.

That's a big honkin' cross
, thought Harley. Out loud, he said, “Pretty sure it's just a calf with a birthmark.”

“Would you hide this calf beneath a bushel?”

Okay, that's thrice
, thought Harley, but he was spared answering by the sound of Constable Benson's siren, which he left blaring even as he turned down the driveway and nosed his squad car through the pedestrians clogging the drive. When he reached the barn, he swung a U-turn, and mercifully killed the siren. Stepping out of the car he went around to the trunk and removed a giant bullhorn. Raising it to his lips he pressed the trigger and it immediately squealed into a feedback loop with his radio. All around, people fell back and clapped their hands to their ears. The constable squelched his radio, repositioned the bullhorn, and tried again.

“SWIVEL CONSTABULARY, TEST, ONE-TWO-THREE, TEST.”

Satisfied, the constable approached Harley, who explained the situation.

“So you want I should disperse them?” asked the constable, finger twitching on the bullhorn trigger.

“Yep,” said Harley.