Circle of Three (26 page)

Again, Jess was the one who lifted him up and carefully put him in the backseat of the station wagon. I waited to say good-bye, but when Jess straightened up, he said, “He’d like to talk to you, Carrie.” I went closer. The old man smiled up at me, patting the seat on his other side. I walked around the car and got in the backseat beside him.

“First,” he said, and paused for breath. The skin around his nose and mouth was a pearly blue-white, nearly transparent. “Good job. I’m so happy.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

“You have no faith?”

Landy must have told him. It was true, but I answered, “No religion,” to save his feelings.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Why did I make the animals?”

“Not for money.”

“No. Well—that helped. I’m not sure why I did it. But I wanted to, from the beginning, as soon as Jess told me. It never seemed crazy to me.”

He nodded—as if he knew that about me already. “Know what it means?”

“The ark? I think I do.”

“Tell me.”

I’d rather he’d have told me. “Rebirth,” I plunged in. “Starting over from scratch. Being saved—being chosen.” I wasn’t going to get into the matter of the destruction of the earth for its sin and corruption; that was his department. “I think it’s a symbol of rejuvenation. A new beginning, everything pure and clean.”

“New life.”

“Yes.”

He sighed shallowly and relaxed against the seat, hands going limp at his sides. “That’s what I thought.”

I blinked at him, realizing it hadn’t been a test, but a question. And my fumbling answer had reassured him. “How many more?” he asked.

“How many more do I have to do? About six. We’ll make it,” I said confidently.

“One thing. The cow.”

“The cow? It’s wrong?” My pretty Holstein?

“If you have time. For me.”

“What? Anything.”

“I’ve always…liked a Guernsey. But only if there’s time.”

“You mean—in addition?” He nodded. “I can do it. Okay, a Guernsey, yes, absolutely. Spotted brown, smaller than a Holstein. I like them, too.”

“Pretty faces, I always thought. Had one. When I was a boy.” I thought of Mr. Green’s donkey. Larry.

“I’ll start it right away,” I said.

He gave a tickled laugh and twinkled his eyes, charming me. “No. Save it for last.”

“Okay. But I’ll have time, I promise. I’ll make time.”

He lifted his frail arms and put them around my neck.

I was so surprised, it was a second or two before I could hug him back. He smelled clean and powdery, like an infant, but under the scratchy sweater his body felt as brittle as an armful of sticks. Every time I thought we would let go, we didn’t. I kissed his cheek, trying not to cry, and he kissed mine. We drew away. His grip on my hands was amazingly strong. I said, “See you on the seventeenth,” and he smiled.

I waited for him to say
God bless you
, I wanted him to say it. Landy opened the driver’s door and started to climb in—no more privacy.
I
was the one who whispered “God bless you” in a panic—and I’d never said it before in my life, not to anyone who hadn’t just sneezed. The look on his face was surprised, amused, and triumphant.
Gotcha
, it said, but with love.

Jess couldn’t stop for lunch. “You go ahead, Carrie, make something for yourself, but I have to get to work.”

“I’ll make your lunch,” I offered, “and bring it to you. Where will you be?”

“In the small barn. Doing nasty things. If you could just leave me a sandwich on the counter, that would be great.”

Nasty things? Like what, castrating a bull? One could only speculate. I made him two sandwiches, one turkey and one cheese, and put them in a paper bag with an apple, a banana, and four cookies. I found a Thermos in the cupboard and filled it with ice water. It was radically uncool to bring your lunch to school, according to Ruth, so I hadn’t gone through this packing ritual since Chicago. I noticed I hadn’t missed it.

Nasty things, indeed. At first I wasn’t even sure what Jess was doing. In the smallest barn, he and Mr. Green had a cow, probably a heifer because she was small, in a sort of double yoke, front and back, and they were—I really couldn’t tell. Something to do with reproduction or elimination, or quite possibly both.

“Here’s your sandwich,” I said, putting the bag on the straw-strewn floor. Two cats zipped over to investigate; I picked it up and set it on top of a post. “Mr. Green, I didn’t bring you anything.”

“Already ate,” he said, closing the top of a smoking metal tank at his feet. “Thanks anyway. Liquid nitrogen,” he explained—I must’ve looked curious. “Keeps your bull sperm frozen.”

“Oh, I see. So you’re doing, um, you’re impregnating her?”

“Yup.”

“Ah. And yet…” I could’ve sworn Jess had one of his long-gloved arms up the poor cow’s
rear end
.

Mr. Green caught his eye and winked, then handed him a long, thin tube with a rubber bulb on the end. “Ready,” Mr. Green said, and took hold of the cow’s tail so it had to quit swatting Jess in the chest with it. Quickly but carefully, Jess inserted the tube into what I assumed was the cow’s vagina, while he did something with his impaled hand; his shoulder moved subtly and his face took on an even more concentrated look. Slowly he squeezed the rubber bulb. Then everything came out, tube, arm, and cow from her bonds. Jess led her into a stall and she went docilely enough, but I couldn’t help thinking her heifer face looked indignant.

“I just have one question,” I said faintly. “What is the point, um…why do you have to use
two
hands?”

Mr. Green, who seemed to be enjoying himself, said, “You got to go in the other way first to get aholt of her cervix. Got to grab it just right through the rectal wall and tip it. Jess here is a expert.”

“Is he.” How interesting. “So now…is she pregnant?”

“We won’t know for a few weeks,” Jess said, frowning as he wrote something on a clipboard.

“This is her first time,” Mr. Green offered, “so she might not settle.”

“Did she ever meet the father of her child?” I asked.

“Nope. S’pose to be a sweet little Angus. You want to breed a new girl to a little guy her first time out, so her calf’ll be small. We’ll just see now, Sophie, won’t we? We’ll just see what happens.” Mr. Green reached over the rail and slapped Sophie affectionately on the behind. “Who’s next?”

“Two-forty-one,” Jess said. “Carlene.”

“Carlene!” He went off to get her. I’d never seen Mr. Green so animated before. Either he really liked artificially inseminating cows or he was having some fun at my expense.

“You look a little green,” Jess noted while he thawed a tube of something, presumably bull semen, in a pail of ice water.

“Me? Oh no, I’m fine.”

“Going to stick around a while, then?”

“Well, I probably should get to work. Eldon says he wants a Guernsey.”

“I heard.” We smiled at each other.

“Did he like the ark, Jess?”

“He did. Very, very much.”

“He loved the animals, too.”

“I know.”

Mr. Green came back with Carlene, who was huge, definitely not a new girl. I made a short speech about how much work I had to do in the other barn, and escaped.

But I couldn’t concentrate. I leafed through my cow calendars and cow books, looking for just the right Guernsey, then remembered what Eldon had said about waiting till the end. Good idea: I might’ve had enough of cows for one day. But I couldn’t keep my mind on my wild boar cutout, either. I felt restless and keyed up. I caught myself pacing. I wanted to be sad about Eldon and happy about the ark project
with
someone, and there wasn’t anyone. Plus I wasn’t dressed right, I felt awkward and hampered in the straight skirt I’d worn for the Pletchers’ visit. And it was
beautiful
outside, the most perfect spring afternoon. What I really wanted was to be with Jess, and he had his arm up a cow’s butt.

Hopeless. Finally I gave up and went outside. If I couldn’t work, I should just go home. I could clean the house, which was an absolute wreck; I could make Ruth a real meal for a change, not a slapped-together casserole or last-minute microwaved leftovers. I could go visit my mother. I’d been avoiding her, because she didn’t like me much these days. She was mad at me for something I hadn’t even done yet.

Yet?

I went for a walk. One of Jess’s dogs followed me, Tracer, the smart one. We took the dirt lane that zigzagged uphill for half a mile and deadended in a high, empty meadow. Wild apple trees bloomed in a tangle along the edge; I found one with a smooth trunk and a rockless, rootless base and sat down under it. Below me, a deep-cut creek, blue-brown with the sky’s reflection, meandered between Jess’s farm and Landy’s, forming the boundary in some places. A tributary of the Leap, it came close to drying up in the hot summer, but today it almost overflowed its steep-sided banks. Cows, nearly indistinguishable from boulders at this distance, sprawled under a cover of early willows arched over the creek like chartreuse awnings. Birds chirped, bees buzzed, grasshoppers hopped. Tracer ran off and left me for a more interesting adventure in the meadow. Was I prejudiced or was Jess’s farm prettier than Landy’s? Landy’s stony fields didn’t slope as gracefully. His cows didn’t look as contented. Even the color of Jess’s fields was sweeter, a mellower yellow-green: gold ochre and chrome oxide. Jess had the Italy of farms, I decided. Landy had the Ukraine.

Everything was Jess today, I couldn’t get him off my mind. Burgeoning, bursting, swelling, stirring spring didn’t help, either. Ruth had taught me a meditation of Krystal’s involving the repetition of the phrase “Who am I?” on slow,
calming exhales. You were supposed to answer,
I’m a woman,
or
I’m a mother
, then contemplate those responses in a deeply relaxed, nonjudgmental way. When I’d tried it, I’d gotten stuck on
I’m tired,
and
I’m late
.
I’m wasting valuable time here
. Still, it might be worth a second try, to calm my mind. Get Jess out of it. I slumped lower on my tree trunk, closed my eyes, clasping my hands lightly over my diaphragm. Breathe in, breathe out.
Who am I? Who the hell am I?

I fell asleep.

Only for a few minutes, but long enough to wake up cranky from a confusing dream about thrashing palm fronds in a rain forest or a jungle. I stood up and brushed the dirt and grass off my skirt, rolled the crick out of my neck. Might as well go home.

I went in Jess’s house first for a glass of water. In the kitchen, fresh coffee perked in the machine on the counter. I walked out to the hall and listened, and presently I heard Jess’s voice coming from his office. I poured myself half a cup of coffee and drank it while I waited for him, staring out the kitchen window. He needed to pay attention to his flower garden if he wanted his perennials to grow higher than his weeds this year. Me, too; my garden at home looked like the seediest corner of a vacant lot. But at least we would get an ark launched, and that’s what counted.

Tired of waiting, I poured another cup of coffee and carried it down the hall to his study. He was sitting on the edge of his desk, talking on the phone to someone about fertilizer—I assumed; I heard “nitrogen content” and “percent potassium.” He smiled at me when I handed him his coffee. I stood in front of him. We looked into each other’s eyes while he said, “Yes, but I need it now, I can’t wait till the end of next week. Well, that would be great. If you can—right. I’d appreciate it.” He still had on his barn clothes, but his face and hair were damp, shirtsleeves rolled over his elbows, as if he’d just had a wash. I smelled soap, hay, cow, coffee.
What would he do, I wondered, if I put my hand on his jaw, or touched his neck? Pulled on his ear?

I kept my hands to myself. But when I sat down on the arm of the easy chair in front of the desk, I crossed my bare legs slowly to see if he’d look at them. He did.

After he hung up, he sipped coffee for a while without talking. I couldn’t decide if it was a comfortable silence or not. “What’s up?” he said eventually. “I thought you were working.”

“Couldn’t seem to make any headway. Restless, I don’t know why. What are you doing?”

“Phone calls. Business.”

“You have a strange job,” I said.

“Do I?”

“Maybe not. Part of it’s earthy, part of it’s not.”

“Most of it is.”

“I’m sad, Jess,” I said. “I didn’t know I’d like Eldon so much.”

“I know.”

“He’s so frail. What if he can’t make it to the seventeenth? Poor Landy.”

He bowed his head and nodded, rubbing the heel of his hand down the long muscle in his thigh. “They’ll sail the ark anyway, Landy says. No matter what happens.”

“I’m glad.” But what if Eldon thought his salvation depended on sailing it while he was alive? What if he was convinced that, by not fulfilling his promise to God on time, he’d doomed himself? “Good people are too hard on themselves,” I said.

Jess smiled. “Sometimes. Landy says his father’s got a lot to repent.”

I resisted that. I didn’t want to imagine Eldon as a great sinner, a man who could do damage to his family out of selfishness or thoughtlessness, or worse. Not that sweet old man.

Jess looked at the clock on his desk.

“How’s Sophie?” I asked, to keep him.

“Resting comfortably.”

“Do you ever breed them the natural way?”

“Sometimes. Landy’s got a bull stud who’s sire to about forty of my herd, one way or another.”

“He told me he can’t stand to ship his cattle.”
Ship
; that was a euphemism for sending them to market—which was a euphemism for butchering. “I remember how you used to hate it, too. Do you still?”

“Yes.”

“But you do it.”

“Sure. Well. Mostly. If you don’t count Martha.”

“Martha?”

“She’s twenty-six.”

“No!”

“She quit giving milk about thirteen years ago, but I couldn’t ship her. Would’ve been like killing my elderly aunt.”

“So you put her out to pasture. Did I ever meet Martha?”

“I don’t remember. She wasn’t famous then, she was just a cow.”