The Jesus Cow (15 page)

“But school is in session . . .”

“We'll be using the buses from nine a.m. to two p.m. for starters, until I can figure out a backup system and procure additional vehicles.”

“But I'm not sure the board will approve—”

“Who pledged the entire cost of the new scoreboard down at the football field?”

“You did, Klute,” said Vance, reaching for the phone. “This community owes you so much . . .”

There was the tricky bit about the fact that while Klute had
pledged
the scoreboard money, he hadn't actually yet
paid
the money, but Klute was already slamming out the door and Vance could see no reason to detain him on this point.

A
ll the paperwork left Harley unsettled. He called Mindy, and she said to come on out. When he opened the door to the granary, she was wearing a tool belt and was covered in sheet rock dust. She handed him a Foamy Viking and led him by the hand to her bed.

Mindy's bed frightened Harley. Or more specifically, the headboard frightened him. Mindy's sculptwelder boyfriend had made it for her. It was constructed of sheet metal welded inside a channel iron frame. Using a plasma cutter, the sculptwelder had scored designs and figures into the sheet metal, including dancing mountain goats and an army of flute-playing Kokopellis. Harley had spent only one night in the bed, but apart from the idea that it conjured up Mindy's ex, he feared that during some particularly acrobatic escapade he might find himself gored by Kokopelli's steel flute, or intimately strung atop the horn of a dancing goat.

In short, it was the equivalent of making love adjacent to a giant cheese grater.

Harley sat on the edge of the bed and took a swig of his beer. Mindy rubbed his shoulders. Harley sighed.

“That damn calf . . .”

“Damn calf? That damn calf is going to make you a lot of damn money.”

“I dunno. It better, I guess. You can't get more all in than I'm all in.”

“You rather it had never happened?”

“Kinda moot, I guess. It's just . . . with its . . . its
connotations
. I mean, if the thing had six legs, or two heads, well, y'know, maybe the local TV station would be interested for sixty seconds, and some folks would drop in now and then, but this thing, this thing is about religion, and I just feel like somewhere along the line . . .”

He stopped then, and shook his head.

“I mean, alls I wanted was a damn beefer.”

“And a lady friend,” said Mindy.

“Well, yah,” said Harley, allowing himself a small smile.

“Maybe I could pray on it,” said Harley, in a halfhearted attempt at sarcasm he didn't really feel. “Like I learned growing up.”

“And how would that go?”

“Our Father, we pray that—”

“We?” interrupted Mindy.

“Well, it was sort of a royal we, I guess,” said Harley. “I never really thought about it. It was just the way we did it.”

“That's
kinda
faith,” said Mindy.

“There was comfort in it, though,” said Harley. “Even saying it again now. Even as far as I've strayed.” He spun his dwindling
beer. “The thing was, we didn't believe in praying for specifics. No asking for help with the rent or your bad leg. Just guidance and humility and . . . well,
concepts
, I guess. I remember in a coffee shop in Clearwater once I eavesdropped on a Bible study group and heard a woman ask the Lord to get her out of a lease, and I just . . .” Harley shook his head.

“Well, I guess you could say our trials ride a sliding scale,” said Mindy. “I read a quote once, I think by a yogi:
In certain circumstances the raindrop is a flood
.”

“Yeah, it just seems . . .”

“Like it doesn't really measure up? The bad lease as compared to any given genocide?”

“Yah, I guess that's part of it. Plus the informality. Like you'd use your audience with the Almighty to ask for the spiritual equivalent of Cracker Jacks.”

“What drove you away?”

“I drifted more than drove.”

“Mm.”

“And not my folks, that's for sure,” said Harley. “I should be half as good as them.”

“But you don't believe.”

“I don't think so.”

“So? How'd it happen? How'd you go from believer to Doubting Thomas?”

Harley looked at the beer in his hand like he had just discovered it, and took a deep swig. “In college, I had to write a paper. Your basic geography report. I was in the library reading up on Central America. I stumbled over this article that described—and this wasn't ancient history, this happened when I was a kid—entire
families being tortured. To death. Including children, with parents forced to watch. After that, the ol' ‘sometimes bad things happen to good people' thing never quite cut it for me.”

Mindy was silent.

“I was already slipping,” said Harley. “But that pushed me over. I couldn't see how you could have it both ways: either God's all-powerful but chose to let those babies suffer, or he
isn't
all-powerful and couldn't stop it.”

Harley paused, and shrugged. “It's not a very original path to doubt. First time I discussed it with Billy, he said, ‘Welcome to the Epicurean paradox, son, a couple thousand years after the fact. Also, you might want to read up on theodicy.'”

“The Odyssey?”

“Ha! No,
theodicy
: t-h-e-o-d-i-c-y. It's a theological deal. Supposed to explain how a good God can allow evil.”

“How about your parents? How did they explain it?”

“I don't know,” said Harley. “I never asked.”

They sat together quietly then, until Mindy spoke.

“How did you wrap up?”

“Wrap what?”

“Your prayers.”

“‘In Jesus' name, amen.'”

“That's a sweet little poem, that's what that is.”

It is a comforting rhythm
, thought Harley as he finished the beer and turned to Mindy. She leaned into his T-shirt, put her nose at the level of his clavicle, and drew in deep. “Mmmmm, I love your smell,” she said.

He went cold. He remembered her telling him about the sculptwelder's smell. “Mmmm,” she said again, nuzzling deeper.

He held her, wanted to be happy, or even just fool around enough to undo the whole theodicy bummer, but she could sense his unease. “What?” She was looking up, both hands flat on his chest. “What is it?”

“You liked the smell of the sculptwelder,” he said. “And then one day . . .”

“Oh, baby . . . ,” she said, moving her hands around his back. She linked her fingers and squeezed. “Oh, baby . . . ,” she said, as if he were a child afraid of the dark. She moved in, and he fell back on the bed, one eye on all the Kokopellis dancing dangerously above.

BACK IN SWIVEL
, Klute Sorensen was driving through Clover Blossom Estates, counting empty houses. This was the housing sector portion of his plan. It was his intent to rent the empty houses to Jesus Cow tourists by the day.

Damn, if I had that hotel up
, he thought, looking toward Meg's place. He imagined what it would be like to see the parking lot filled with cars, every room full. The cash register singing.

Ahead of Klute, a car slowed, causing him to jam on the brakes. Rather than pay for parking in the village, tourists were parking on the streets of the development, then hiking across the overpass. Klute speed-dialed Vance Hansen.

“Yes, Klute?”

“How we coming on the transportation sector action plan?”

“The which?”

“Have you rented any damn school buses yet!”

“Well, I haven't heard back from—”

“Never mind! I want Constable Benson down here now!”

“Well, I'll just check—”

“I got people parked all over Clover Blossom Estates. I want 'em outta there!”

“Well, those are village streets, so legally they can—”

“Does the village not shut down parking for the Jamboree Days parade?”

“Yes, but—”

“So do it here!
Now!
”

“Well, I'll just get the constable—”

“I'm
fast-tracking
this!”

“I see.”

“Not everyone can
do
what I do.”

“That is so true,” said Vance.

BY THAT EVENING
Klute's plan to rent Swivel's school buses still hadn't received approval from the school board, but he did manage to rent three from the private company that leased them to the Boomler school district. He also stopped by Signs-2-Go and had several all-weather banners printed up: some advertising the Clover Blossom homes for short-term rental by the room, others that read
SHUTTLE PICKUP
. And as long as he was there and had his American Express warmed up, he had the folks at Signs-2-Go crank out two dozen placards that said
NO PARKING ON STREET BY ORDER OF VILLAGE CONSTABLE
, since the actual constable still hadn't done the job.

One day later, he cleared the snow from two empty lots and began offering off-street parking by the hour. Two days later, his three school bus shuttles were running. Three days later, he rented his first room.

On the fourth day, a trio of state inspectors showed up and shut down the whole works.

AS FOR JCOW
Enterprises, Sloan and his crew kept things humming right along. A patch of land between the old water tower and Harley's barn was subdivided into a bazaar where vendors in heated tents sold all manner of religious tchotchkes, from chalices to calf-shaped cheese curds served with bacon halos.

The barn had been transformed into something off a postcard. Sloan had brought in a set designer whose team had applied fresh paint—no easy trick in the cold—and trimmed the eaves in pine boughs, hung wreaths on the windows, and bathed the entire structure in hidden lighting.

A reality television show was in the works, and a documentary film crew had been retained and was shooting several times a week. Harley had refused to sit for interviews of any sort. Sloan said this was fine, that his reclusiveness simply added one more layer of mystery to the entire production. Harley suspected there was a lot of footage of him walking away with his cap pulled down.

After the farm was visited by several national television newsmagazine programs, attendance numbers boomed and resulted in some bottlenecks, but within a week or so the whole works settled into a steady, manageable state. Crowds of people were still pouring into town, but some of the congestion had been alleviated by a fleet of officially sanctioned JesusCow tour buses that ran on a regular round-trip schedule from Boomler, where Sloan's people had worked out a package deal with the two chain motels, a development that left Klute Sorensen fuming.

When Harley brought this up with Sloan, Sloan smiled.

“As it turns out, there are some very strict state statutes governing the operation of hotels and shuttles. Through a state senator friend we were able to notify the proper enforcement branches.
They in turn were able to intervene and protect the public. In short, Klute was visited by a batch of bureaucrats with badges.”

“But what about our shuttles?” asked Harley.

“Out of gratitude for our notifying him of Klute's illicit operation, the senator was able to expedite our paperwork,” said Sloan. “We're good to go.”

Harley knew he shouldn't gloat. There was enough residual teaching from his parents and the leftover tenets of his own faith that he knew it didn't do to wish someone ill, no matter how ill that person might treat you. But simply knowing there was a chance that a bully might shortly be relegated to a mighty small corner of the playground left Harley pleased indeed, and rather than the queasy worry he so often felt in the face of opportunity, Harley allowed himself a brief burst of happiness. It was freeing to charge ahead (although, he had to admit, by proxy) without mincing about, and it was thrilling for once to turn the weapons of Klute on Klute himself.

A
s the days passed, Harley tried to continue on as things always were—doing his barn chores, feeding his beefers, and pulling his shifts at the filter factory—but there was no question that events caused his life to become more circumscribed. He found the routine of his factory shifts a great relief, and he was grateful for the chance to be just another person working the line, but feelings in the break room were divided, with half the crew admiring him for continuing to be one of them despite what everyone assumed to be his new fortune, and the other half, who resented the fact that someone socking away that kind of money would keep a job that would do someone else in tougher straits some good. When Sloan told him JCOW Enterprises could put him on a salary three times what he was drawing at the factory, Harley turned in his notice.

He also kept trying to make calls with the fire department. But
even down at the fire hall things were getting tense. Due to the abrupt termination of the calf-viewing fund-raiser, the thermal imager fund was still less than a third of the way to the top of the plywood thermometer. Additionally, with all the transient gawkers coming to town, the department was experiencing a huge increase in calls—be they for fender benders or fainting pilgrims—and the annual operating budget was beyond blown, to say nothing of all the sleep and family time that was being missed. Harley hung in there, but every time he answered a call related to JCOW Enterprises, he felt the grumpiness of the rest of the crew as they missed yet another hour of work in order to tend to some true believer with heart palpitations, or some unlucky visitor who twisted an ankle stepping off an officially sanctioned JesusCow tour bus, or that nun who got the vapors when the Jesus calf appeared to wink at her.

Harley requested a leave of absence. The chief approved it without comment.

THE TUESDAY AFTER
taking his leave, Harley attended the Swivel Village Board meeting. In fact, he had been summoned. Although many people in the village were benefiting from the windfall created by Harley's calf, many more were not, and were in fact being inconvenienced by all the traffic and tumult. There had also been concerns raised by Vance Hansen (whom Harley knew was goaded by Klute) that JCOW Enterprises was running afoul of many ordinances and permitting processes, as were many of the citizens running side businesses spawned by the influx of all the far-flung sightseers.

Sloan tried to talk Harley out of attending. “That's what these
folks are for,” he said, nodding toward a brace of attorneys at the command center conference table. But Harley wanted to do this on his own. These were, after all, his neighbors. He felt a sense of duty, but he also felt embarrassed at the idea of siccing West Coast lawyers on his neighbors.

Five minutes into the meeting, Harley wished he had sicced the lawyers. One by one, his fellow citizens approached the podium and let him have it. Gladys Hough said people were parking in the alley and tromping through her yard. “Someone stole my gazing ball,” she said, and then, fixing Harley with a disappointed glare, added, “Furthermore, I used to babysit you.” “All this extra traffic is tearin' up the roads,” said Vern Trilling. “And we taxpayers are gonna get stuck with the bill for all the extra asphalt patch come spring.” Jilly Francis complained about the light pollution from a giant wraparound LED screen that had been mounted on the catwalk railing of the old water tower and was visible from the interstate. (Carolyn had refused to allow the crew access until she was assured in writing by Sloan that the signworks would be bolted to the railing and not the tank itself—she cited several obscure statutes related to historic preservation but was in fact terrified that some poor sap might drill a hole in the tank and her secret would come squirting out). Paul Forster, owner of the Kwik Pump, wondered why the official Jesus Cow tour buses were buying their fuel in Boomler, rather than “availing themselves” of “locally sourced” diesel.

Throughout this litany of grievances, Klute Sorensen sat in the front row, nodding with outsize concern, as if each complaint were an arrow through his own heart. When the last citizen had spoken, Klute rose and faced the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is no secret that I am not from this town.” Klute paused a moment, for effect. “But it is also no secret that I have come to
love
this town.”

An appreciative murmur ran through the room.

“I
love
this town,” repeated Klute, “and so it
wounds
me to see it mistreated. Taken for granted. Everyone in this room knows the great lengths to which I have gone to resurrect Swivel from tough times not of its own making. Clover Blossom Estates is a labor of
love
. Love between a man who may not be
from
this town, but has been
welcomed
by this town and the visionary people in it.”

But mostly love between you and yourself
, thought Harley.

“The Clover Blossom Estates project has been struggling—that is no secret. Despite careful planning, despite attractive terms, despite the community's goodwill and support, it has struggled, and I think we know why: it is because despite the forward-looking leadership and citizenry of this community, there are some—or at least
one—
who has stubbornly refused to move forward, and instead has clung, clawing, to the past.

“I suppose it could be my fault,” continued Klute, after heaving a martyr's sigh. “I suppose there are developers out there who could convince people to buy new homes within sniffing distance of a cattle feedlot”—here Klute looked directly at Harley—“but apparently I am not that man.

“It takes a special kind of man to overcome those odds,” said Klute, now regarding Harley openly. “But it takes another kind of special man to stand in the way of progress—after all, what sort of citizen holds his village, adjacent as it is to an undeveloped four-lane interchange, back year after year by insisting that one of its most desirable, potentially tax-generating parcels be kept instead
under eight head of beef—a tax dodge!—and a decrepit water tower?”

“No one is a greater champion of private property rights than Klute Sorensen,” continued Klute, “and although I have found Harley Jackson's obstinance frustrating and even financially injurious, I could at least understand it in those terms. It was his father's land, after all, and he wished to preserve that legacy—or what was left of it. But now”—here Klute gestured out the village hall window toward Harley's farm—“now we see that when there is big money to be made, he is prepared to grab all he can, never mind what injury might be done to those around him.”

“But, Klute,” said Harley, surprised he could speak, “success—doesn't it float all boats?” He waved a hand at the assembled crowd. “Isn't that how you sold Clover Blossom Estates to this bunch?”

Harley had to give him this: Klute didn't falter. Rather, he drew himself up with an air of wounded patience and said, “In all things there is nuance, Harley. And in this case, there is the nuance of being a
good neighbor
. Of not just stomping around and raking it in. Of not only taking, but
giving back
. If Clover Blossom Estates was thriving, the tax base would be thriving right along with it, and we'd have the money to rebuild the sewer systems, which—as many of you know only too well—are in a sad state of disrepair. You, on the other hand—you, and your cash-pocketing out-of-state business partners—take profits and pay minimal village and property taxes—I assume you're still taking advantage of the tax break afforded by your beef cows?—while your customers come here by the bus and carload, putting untold wear and tear on our infrastructure, including and especially the sewer system.
You are involved in what we in business circles refer to as an
extractive
industry.”

Again, Klute shook his head sorrowfully.

“Why, only last week I spoke with Meg Jankowski. You all know Meg. If there is a more selfless citizen in Swivel, I'd like to meet him—or her. Yes, I spoke with Meg, and although she is a person of great positivity, I sensed an air of worry about her. When I inquired, she said the food pantry was being overrun and was in danger of running out of food.

“It seems that many of the people who come here to see Harley's calf—and pay Harley good money to see that calf—have hardly any money to begin with. They are in need, and they are in hope, so they scrape together what little they have to make the trip, spend the rest on admission and souvenirs, and then wind up at the food pantry seeking sustenance.”

I'm about to regurgitate my sustenance
, thought Harley.

“And so it turns out that while the Jesus Cow circus is
making
money for some, it is
taking
from most. And so, in conclusion—” Here Klute paused for dramatic effect, and turned toward Vance Hansen.

“Vance, would you be good enough?”

Vance ducked back into his office, and returned with what appeared to be a large piece of cardboard.

“I invited Meg to be here for this, but unfortunately she had to leave at the last minute to tow a tour bus that was blocking access to the food pantry parking lot,” said Klute, shaking his head morosely. An angry murmur ran through the crowd, which turned to admiration and applause as Klute Sorensen held above his head a giant cardboard check in the amount of $5,000.00, signed and payable to the Swivel Food Pantry.

AFTER THE SCENE
at the village hall, Harley went home and stewed. Sometimes he got so angry at himself. So angry at his politeness, at his circumspectness, at his nibbling around the edges when in fact he harbored a secret admiration for men who cussed and raged and cut right to the heart of the matter. Who called a spade a spade and even better yet called a blowhard a blowhard and a jerk a jerk.

There was this part of him that wanted to be the good boy. Really did. And the good boy
was
good. He tried not to swear, he tried to be polite, and yet perversely found himself wishing to be a person who was profane and scathing precisely because he rarely allowed himself to be either. There was nothing more refreshing than watching a guy like Billy sort someone out right on the spot. Or Sloan, going full speed ahead with never a
hint
of dither. For that matter, there was even something bracing in watching someone as shameless as Klute Sorensen barging along.

He longed to be one of those guys who could just say,
Ahh fuckit
. That's how they always said it, the last two words as one,
Ahh fuckit,
and delivered it with a wave of the hand, but then he recalled that most of the times he'd heard someone say
Ahh fuckit
they had a bottle in one hand and a fistful of trouble in the other, so in the end he wasn't certain of the long-term effectiveness of the strategy.

He wished he could harden his heart. All of it, beyond the scarred edges.

Just once he wanted to go all Bad Johnny Cash. Kick out the footlights. Just let 'er rip. Flip the bird and fly the coop.

Instead he called Mindy. She said she was busy hanging drywall, but could come and see him later.

Then he called Billy.

“Staff meeting,” he said, and that was all that needed to be said.

“IT'S LUDICROUS THAT
all this disruption should be caused by a birth defect on a cow,” said Harley as they uncapped their Foamy Vikings.

“Ludicrous is part of the deal,” said Billy, after a swallow of beer.

“Yah, I guess,” said Harley, watching yet another busload of tourists debark from a long bus and begin the trek through the barn, which had now been fitted with a climate-controlled flow-through viewing vestibule. “I just wish it was . . . I don't know . . .
quieter. Classier
.”

“Mm-hmm,” said Billy.

“I mean, there are a lot of nutty people coming through here.”

“Well, sure,” said Billy, “but you understand: by and large these are not His top-line representatives.”

“I keep thinking of Meg,” said Harley. “Going to St. Jude's every day to pray and light those candles. And then back to work. And stocking that pantry. Quietly going about her life. Of all the people in town you'd think would visit that steer, you'd figure it might be her.”

“Mm-hmm,” said Billy again while scratching his beard, a sure sign that he was giving Harley some rope, letting him work this line of thought on his own. For all his talking, Billy knew when not to talk.

“Even me,” Harley said. “You'd think with my background—shoot, I was raised on the Bible, I know it chapter and verse and can still name a fair number of the bit players—you'd think the face on that steer would make me wonder some, but I don't see it as anything more than a furry coincidence.”

“And right you are,” said Billy, waving his rapidly emptying beer in the direction of the crowds filing through the barn. “What you have there is people assigning meaning to coincidence. Forcing theology into place between nature and chance. There is a mighty space between the known and the unknown, and a lot of folks use theology to spackle the gap.”

“Did you just say ‘spackle the gap'?”

“Pareidolia, then.”

“Para-wha?”

“Pareidolia. A psychological phenomonen. Where your brain fills in the gaps left by your eyes. It's why you can see a man on the moon, or a rabbit in the clouds. It's why people see Jesus in their fish sticks, or their scorched tortilla, or the rear end of a dachshund. We convince ourselves to see what we cannot see. It's scientific fact. And when faith is in play, the inclination kicks into overdrive.”

Harley looked at the people again. “Somehow I don't think you'd be able to sell para—pari—well,
that
to them.”

“Well,
you're
selling it to them.”

Harley fell silent. He had looked into his bank account recently and nearly peed his pants. The number was beyond anything he could imagine.