The Jesus Cow (7 page)

Shaking it off, he looked over to the passenger side of the truck and imagined Mindy riding over there come spring, the window open, her one hand raised to keep the hair from her eyes, her turning to him and smiling, him smiling back. He rehearsed how he might look at her, easy like, toward the space just inside the empty passenger-side window, about where her face would be were she
actually present. He worked up a little one-sided grin and bobbed his head back a tad, like they were sharing some old familiar joke.

Oh, the whole thing was silly, he thought, as he rolled past the Big Swamp and up McCracken Hill. Less than an hour since he'd met her, and already he was feeling proprietary—and he hadn't done anything more than pour coffee on her boots and mumble some.

“Besides, son,” he said, addressing himself bachelor style, “you have other issues to address.”

Specifically: that calf.

Billy's suggestion was preposterous, of course. You couldn't make a million off a birth-marked steer. A few grand maybe. Charge five bucks admission, do the T-shirts, sure, but
millions
? And what if it did take off?
I could use the money
, thought Harley,
but not the trouble
. Even if he took it to the sale barn and tried to sell it for straight-up market rate, there'd be unwanted attention. The thing was, he kept coming back to the image of his mother, quiet and solid in her faith. His father too, working hard and honestly, asking no quarter from anyone even when it meant selling off the land he loved. It had been a long time since Harley believed what his parents believed, but he had watched them live, and he could feel them watching him now. Better he keep that calf under wraps, see if it outgrew the Jesus face, then raise it for a beefer, just like any other.

What he needed to do now, he thought, as he pulled into his driveway, was figure a way to ask Mindy Johnson out on a date.

O
n the first Saturday of the new year, Harley attended the monthly fire meeting. Rail shipments of crude oil through Swivel had recently increased, and after a story in the national news about a small town nearly wiped out when several oil cars blew up, Chief Knutson moved the meeting to the weekend in order to accommodate the schedule of an instructor from the regional technical college who was an expert on tank explosions.

Harley served on the fire department because his father told him a man should do something of service to his fellow citizens in which he can take pride. His father was very careful to distinguish this form of pride from false pride and pridefulness, which he viewed as pernicious to the soul. But to take pride in serving others was acceptable.

Harley did as his father instructed. He helped pressure-test hose on weeknights. He always hung around until the last bit of gear was stowed after a big fire. He could be counted on to come down on
one of his days off to check the oil in the pumper or do inventory. He figured it was the least he could do what with him not having kids and a family.

He fought fires, too, and helped out on ambulance calls. He was hardly a hero, but he did have the underrated but essential ability to keep calm. That, and he was good at pitching in and taking direction. He had no desire to lead the charge, but he was always a good foot soldier.

BEFORE TRAINING BEGAN
, everyone convened for the meeting. Sitting in his usual back-row spot, Harley listened to the discussion of last month's rescue runs, including a case review of the chimney fire out on Kaplinski Road. It was agreed that things might have gone better if the department owned a thermal imager, a device that allows firefighters to detect heat inside walls. Sadly, thermal imagers are very expensive, and despite two raffles and a charcoal chicken dinner the money just wasn't there yet, so the Swivel department had to work old-school, feeling for heat with the back of their hands, and when in doubt, ripping through the plaster and into the walls themselves, a process that sometimes led to difficulties on the public relations front. Chief Knutson also pointed out that the thermal imagers were a critical tool in locating fallen or trapped firefighters, as they could also see through smoke. Boober Johnson piped up and added that because of the warmth of the human body, thermal imagers could also be used to spot lost or fugitive individuals in the wild. Boober was in charge of the Swivel Volunteer Fire Department Search and Rescue Division, which currently consisted of little more than a bag of whistles and a flashlight.

Mostly, however, proceedings were dominated by the Jamboree
Days planning committee. Jamboree Days didn't happen until Fourth of July weekend, but preemptive planning was critical. For instance, Porta-Potties had to be reserved before the Boomler Fire Department snatched them all up for their Buttermilk Bash, and softball tournament entry forms had to be mailed to all taverns within a forty-mile radius. There was also the usual extended debate on beer selection and pricing, as well as the establishment of a subcommittee dedicated to erecting a new bratwurst stand.

And of course, number one on the agenda, fireworks. Nothing dominated discussion like fireworks. Harley never understood the obsession. Pretty, sure, and who doesn't like some boom-boom, but ultimately it seemed like putting a match to money. But there was pride in play. Like the tough trucks contest held between monster truck races at the Clearwater Fairgrounds, where you knew a guy couldn't afford his truck in the first place and yet everyone cheered wildly as he wrecked it.

When Chief Knutson announced that due to budget constraints this year's fireworks display might have to be trimmed back, there were groans of dismay and an immediate hubbub of fund-raising suggestions including donkey basketball, a meat raffle, and a firefighter belly-dancing contest, for which many members of Swivel Volunteer Fire Department were well equipped.

“You already win,” said Boober, poking Chief Knutson in the belly, at which point the chief adjourned the meeting and sent everyone off to the main bay, where the tank explosion expert began by showing a PowerPoint presentation that included several GIFs of backyard propane tanks and rail cars exploding in slow motion, to which the Swivel Volunteer Fire Department responded with high fives and approving whoops.

How much of the other information was taken to heart remained in some doubt, although everyone's ears perked up when the instructor hit the section on boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions, strictly defined as an explosion caused by the rupture of a vessel containing a pressurized liquid above its boiling point and known in the firefighting trade by the acronym BLEVE. As many of the slides illustrated, a BLEVE is an astounding thing, hell in a black-capped mushroom cloud, but mostly everyone was giggling at the fact that the acronym was pronounced BLEVVY, which sounded rather silly. “Lookout, she's gonna BLEVVY!” hollered Froggy Simpson, pointing at Chief Knutson's belly, which indeed bore more than passing resemblance to a propane tank.

“That'd be yer HEAVY BLEVVY!” said a guffawing Carlene Hestekin.

After the PowerPoint presentation was complete, the chief ordered everyone to suit up in full gear and put the lesson into practice. It was nearing zero degrees outside, so the troops were loathe to leave the heated hall, but then the instructor announced he had a simulated rail tanker mounted on a trailer that was hooked up to a fog machine and shot fire, and soon everyone was outside battling the mock disaster. Despite the cold, the crews worked up a sweat with all the turnout gear and the hose dragging and knee crawling, and Harley had stepped back to the edge of Elm Street and was taking a pull at a Gatorade when a big red F-250 pulled up beside him. The window rolled down and Mindy stuck her head out.

“Well, lookit
you
, hotshot!”

Harley flushed red as the fire trucks.

“How'd you—”

“Yer name's on the tail of your jacket,” said Mindy.

“Ah,” said Harley.

“In four-inch-tall all-capital reflective letters,” said Mindy, laughing now.

Harley felt silly, but he also felt good. Standing there in his firefighter's gear, his breathing apparatus slung off one shoulder, his helmet tipped back and the visor up, a shine of work sweat—rather than coffee-slop flop sweat—on his brow, steam rising from his temples, he figured if he was ever gonna cut a halfway masculine figure, this would be it. So much better than stumbling drippily around the gas station clutching bad snacks.

“Yah, we're—”

“I didn't know you were a
fire
fighter!” She was grinning mischievously. “The bold and the brave!”

“Wellll . . . ,” said Harley, running his eyes around the rest of the crew by way of moderation. Stig Halvorsen was giggling while closing the valve on Buck Johnson's air hose, the Hestekin twins were arguing about how to best gut a buck, and Susie Herrick was giving Boober Johnson a noogie rub. Harley himself knew his main departmental asset lay in the fact that his twelve-hour shift rotation meant he was often home during the day, when the ranks were thin. But Harley loved serving with this bunch: when the real smoke rolled they were a surprisingly serious-minded crew; in between things ran at about a seventh-grade level.

“You got beefers,” Mindy stated.

“Yeeahh . . . ?”

“I want beefers,” said Mindy. “Wondered if I could come over and look at your setup.”

His
setup
! Harley felt a zing that had nothing to do with talking agriculture.

“Well . . . I . . . ah . . . yah! Yah!” In his eager panic to complete a sentence, he went full-on Norwegian.

“A'right dere den,” said Mindy, and Harley couldn't quite tell if that was for real or if she was giving him the needle. “I gotta run to Boomler for wire staples and conduit—the wiring in that old granary is shot! Meet you at your place on my way back?”

“Yah! Oh! Wait! No! I think I . . . ,” said Harley, skidding into babble. He could feel his ears glowing. The training session had come to a halt and the entire department was staring at the two of them. Mindy smiled at him encouragingly, like one might smile at a puppy too spooked to leave the carpet and cross the linoleum.

“Yah!” yelped Harley, his voice cracking on the upswing.

“See y'then, then,” said Mindy, and tromped the F-250, flinging a light spatter of fishtail slush over the mock-disaster scene.

Harley was pretty sure he heard Susie Herrick snort.

“Grab a hose and get in there, son,” said Chief Knutson, rescuing him with a command. With great relief Harley lowered his visor and charged the pretend railroad car, grateful to plunge anonymously back into the action.

But even as he belly-crawled through the fake fog, the aquanaut sound of his breath hissing within the air mask, there was a part of him gone giddy at the idea that within the hour, Mindy Johnson would come down his driveway. Again he found himself grateful that she had been able to see him standing all manly in his firefighting gear, an image to countervail the one of him dribbling coffee on her boots.

This could be good
, he thought. The giddiness in his liver was joined by eagerness. Anticipation.

Then he remembered that calf.

T
he moment he finished extinguishing the fake BLEVE, Harley mimed looking at his cell phone, then approached the chief and handed over his accountability tag. “Uhm, I gotta go—my neighbor Billy says one of my beefers is out.”

“Ten-four, copy that,” said the chief.

The Silverado didn't start right away, but after Harley gave it a whack on the solenoid with a ball-peen hammer it spun to life on the next try. As he drove the few blocks home, Harley found himself leaning forward in the cab, as if his posture could will the truck forward. He was tense with the idea that somehow Mindy would get to his place first, go nosing around, and discover that calf with Jesus on it. And then at the railroad tracks he had to wait for a train. It was a long one, made up mostly of tankers like the one he had just been training on.

What will I do?
Harley thought as the rail cars trundled past.
Mindy had asked to see his “setup,” which implied she didn't want to only look at the cows, or discuss hay prices, she actually wanted to review the whole operation—which would include the barn.

Where that calf was standing, even now.

What happens when she sees that calf?
Harley looked nervously down the row of oncoming rail cars, debating whether it would be quicker to run up to North Star Road and cut around the tail of the train.

What if I don't show it to her? What if I keep her out of the barn?

“Well, you can't count on that,” said Harley, out loud now. He couldn't show her “the setup” and yet somehow mysteriously keep her out of the one building central to “the setup.” The electric fencer unit was in there, and the feed room, and even the manure spreader, which lately he'd taken to bringing in through the side door so it was snow free and close at hand when it was time to clean Tina Turner's pen. Even if he only showed her the haymow, he'd still have to take her through the front door and right past that cow pen in order to get to the ladder.

Harley thought he could see the tail end of the train approaching. It was harder to tell now that cabooses were a thing of the past.
So many damn things just disappear
, he thought. Rather than go for the North Star Road end-around, he figured he'd wait it out.

Harley knew: there was no keeping Mindy out of the barn. She wasn't the kind of person to let that go without a
why not?

“So what to do, Sparky?” Harley asked himself. There was one possibility he hadn't considered: hiding the calf. But where? The feed room was already on the tour, and he couldn't risk moving the calf outside the barn, lest someone happen in on him in the
process. Besides, Tina Turner would put up a fuss, and moo like mad. It also occurred to him that upon meeting Mindy in the Kwik Pump he had told her he'd been up with a calving cow, and you know she'd put two and two together and ask about the calf.

Harley shook his head. The problems just multiplied.

And then the last rail car rolled past, Main Street opened up with a view clear up to the overpass, and it was as if the answer opened up with it.

“She can see the calf . . . she just doesn't have to see
Jesus
.”

He smiled and punched the gas.

THE REVELATION RELIEVED
the pressure some, but he was still doing the math on how long it would take Mindy to run her Boomler errand and return. His nervousness spiked when he found his driveway blocked by Dixie the mail carrier. Dixie was a cheerful character who delivered the U.S. mail in a vintage U.S. Postal Service Jeep that allowed her to drive from the right-hand side. A faithful member of Reverend Gary's Church of the Roaring Lamb, she had stenciled an ichthy across the tailgate of the Jeep. Harley learned the word
ichthys
from Billy, who said every time he saw one he got hungry for tartar sauce. Spotting Harley as she pulled away from his mailbox, Dixie stuck her hand out the window and gave him a happy wave.

Harley accelerated right past the mailbox, leaving whatever Dixie had delivered in there. Never seemed to be good news lately anyway, and besides, when he shot a last look up toward the overpass, he saw Mindy's truck approaching the stop sign on the end of the off-ramp.

“Oh man. You gotta hustle.”

THE TIN OF
Kiwi black shoe polish was in the drawer, still nested in the buffing rag where his father last left it. Harley popped the lid, fearing he'd find it cracked and dry, but saw instead the convex matte disk he remembered. The greasy petrol scent rose to his nose and immediately he became five years old, his shirt tucked into his belted corduroys, his miniature clip-on tie askew, his clunky black Sunday shoes shining beneath the shoe rag in the bathroom light, and his Bible downstairs in its leather carrying case and waiting. His father was a quiet man, and not overly affectionate, but there was a gentleness to the way he buffed out Harley's miniature wingtips before they set off for Sunday morning meeting. Later, while sitting through testimony time with his chin in his hands, Harley studied the reflection of his face in the gleaming tips of his shoes and wondered how Jesus could see everybody all of the time.

Memories such as this always brought on a feeling of displacement, an utter inability to understand how he had gotten from there to here, a common enough emotion that nonetheless reliably delivered a low-voltage jolt. There was also the mystery of his parents, how they could be so true and loving and yet upon reflection remain such strangers.
You are derailing into discount-level self-analysis and that woman is gonna be here any second
, thought Harley. He shook his head, recapped the polish, and ran for the barn.

The red F-250 arrived at the end of the driveway just as he grabbed the barn door handle. He waved and ducked inside the barn and pulled the door closed behind him. For a moment he could see nothing. He flicked on the light switch and fumbled with the cap of the polish, his fingers suddenly twitchy. He could
see the calf backed up against its mother now, nervous at Harley's hasty entry. Tina Turner laid back her ears.

Grabbing a handful of feed as a peace offering, Harley held it toward Tina. After her rough tongue sandpapered his palm clean he dug a glob of polish from the tin and reached for the fuzzy face of Christ.

He had failed to anticipate how opposed the young calf—which he suddenly realized he had not named, having instead come to think of it as the Jesus calf—might be to having its hair colored. Tina Turner turned defensive and rousted Harley with her snout, rooting at his tailbone with enough force to send him stumbling forward. Placing the calf in a soft headlock he dipped into the polish again and took a swipe at the Christ-likeness. Then he found himself suddenly freezing at the idea that he was quite literally attempting to wipe out the Son of God. It wasn't the sort of thing you did lightly, no matter how long it'd been since you cracked your Bible. But then he heard the sound of the F-250 outside the barn door and redoubled his swabbing.

In the end it was a pretty poor job. The polish tended to clump, and it was nearly impossible to work in down to the hide. His hands were black and there were smudges all over his pants. Tina Turner was becoming actively aggressive. The calf was unsteady.

Harley backed off for a look. He had hoped for better. It appeared the calf had been rubbed against the underside of an oil pan. Still, Christ's face was no longer recognizable, even at a squint. He capped the shoe polish and dropped it in his back pants pocket.

Hearing the truck door slam, he turned for the door, then stopped. Reaching overhead and using one glove like a hotpad, he unscrewed the lightbulb above the pen until it went dark, stopping
before it came out of the socket. There were still two other lightbulbs lit—one down by the silo room and one near the doorway—but by extinguishing the one directly overhead, Harley had created enough dimness and shadow within the pen that when he stepped outside the pen the smudge began to look like an actual black patch. Harley figured he had bought himself some visual wiggle room.

“I'll just have to keep her moving,” said Harley.

“And maybe not so much talking out loud to yourself when company's here.”

He stepped out of the barn door.

“BEEN WRENCHIN'?” SAID
Mindy. Harley was confused, and then she pointed at his pants and hands, both smeared with black.

“Oh—yah!” said Harley, deciding in the instant to lie. “Yah, manure spreader chain was froze up.” He hoped this sounded self-reliant. He also quickly pulled his gloves from his jacket pockets and tugged them on.

“So let's see these beefers of yours,” said Mindy. Harley was still adjusting to her straightforward nature. But he was also invigorated by the idea of a woman who might carry herself at this level of independence in all respects.

“Guess we might as well start out here,” said Harley, leading her down the path to the feed bunk.

“You chew?” she said from behind.

Harley rotated his head and looked at her confusedly. He couldn't tell if she was asking or offering. The idea of a woman chewing tobacco wasn't out of the question; when Harley was in high school Swivel hosted a Swedish foreign exchange student who
would take a delicate pinch of Skoal in her upper lip. This, combined with the fact that she was a classically blond and blue-eyed Scandinavian wonder who spoke broken English with a lisp rendered her so Nordically exotic the local boys nearly choked on their Copenhagen. Their after-school dreams were feverish with Scandinavian nymphets wafting through wintergreen-scented mists. Harley himself recalled a certain weakness behind the kneecaps over the whole deal.

“Nah,” said Harley to Mindy. Unsure of the scale against which he was being measured—or if he was being measured at all—he hoped this wouldn't count against him. “Why you asking?”

“You got a can in your pants,” said Mindy, pointing at his back pocket.

The shoe polish! With a start Harley realized it was still in his back pocket and approximated the same outline as a tin of dip. He also realized she had implicitly revealed she was studying his butt.

“Oh, ha,” he laughed nervously, “No, no . . . no, that's just shoe polish.”

“Oookay,” said Mindy, and then nothing more, all her amusement implied.

“Yah, I, I was . . . ,” Harley floundered.

“Y'don't seem like a real shoe polisher,” said Mindy, the grin right there in her voice, something Harley began to feel was there quite a bit.

“Yah, my dad . . . he . . . I was cleanin' out a drawer . . .”

“So these are the beefers,” said Mindy, pointing at the cows and changing the subject in the most obvious way.

“Yahp,” said Harley, limp in his relief.

Mindy immediately peppered him with questions. Where did
he get them? What did he feed them? How long did it take to bring them to market? Which breed did he prefer? Why didn't they have horns? Harley answered as best he could.

“I just kinda raise 'em on the side,” he said. “It's not really that complicated. Y'know, get 'em their food and water, check 'em now and then.”

“Now and then?”

“Well, every day,” said Harley. “You really do need to get out among 'em.” He hesitated, not wanting to sound too precious, but then he said, “My dad. He called it being a good husbandman. I'd say he was right. You want to know the animals. The way they act day to day. So you can tell early on when something's not right.”

“So you're a firefighter
and
a husbandman!” said Mindy.

“Amateur at both,” said Harley, kicking the dirt.

“Husbandman
—that's kind of a male-centric double whammy, wouldn't you say? If I get beefers, can I be a
wifewoman
?”

“Well, it's just a word,” said Harley, pulling back within himself nervously and thinking for a moment of a woman he'd dated in college, a motorcycle-boots-wearing feminist with a skunk streak bleached into her hair who jerked the intellectual slack out of him when he used the word
gals.

Mindy gave him a push on the shoulder. “Oh, don't worry there, big shot.”

Harley felt the familiar seep of nape sweat.

HE SHOWED HER
the whole deal: the pasture layout, the watering system and the heater that kept the water unfrozen over winter, the portable corrals, and the loading chute he used when he took an animal to the sale barn. She kept firing questions about fencing and
grazing and grain supplements and galvanized water tanks versus rubberized, and solar-powered fence chargers, and all in all it was clear she'd done her research.

After he showed her the small shed where he stored his father's old Farmall tractor and John Deere baler, he figured maybe he'd get by without showing her the barn, but then she asked about the fencer unit and where he kept the hay, so it became inevitable.

Keep'er movin'
, he thought, as he opened the door. In the transition to the interior of the barn they could see only darkness. Harley flicked the wall switch and all but the light over the pen came on.

“Oh!” said Mindy, as her eyes adjusted and she saw the cow and calf.

“Milk cow,” said Harley by way of explanation. He was deeply relieved to see the calf lying with his holy side nestled against his mother.

“You mind?” said Mindy, putting her hand on the stall gate.

“I . . . yah, no, fine,” said Harley, his heart thudding.

“Look at
yewww
,” said Mindy, kneeling down to scratch the calf between his ears. It was the most girlish thing Harley had heard her utter thus far.

“You live here all your life?” Mindy was looking up from where she was cuddling the calf in the shadows.

“Pretty much,” said Harley, sidling into the pen and subtly trying to put himself in a blocking position in case the calf got to its feet. “Went to the college in Clearwater for a while. Didn't finish.”