Man Camp (14 page)

Far and away the most grueling part of the campers’ day is the training sessions organized by Cooper. Although he hadn’t originally intended to work the men so hard, he also hadn’t realized how dire the situation at Tuckington Farm would become—the foreclosure notice was a wake-up call. He knows he must take advantage of the six able-bodied men who are at his disposal. It might be his only chance to get the farm in shape before he has to sell off any land or machinery or livestock.

The first day’s training session is in carpentry, and Cooper gives the campers the backbreaking task of replacing a stretch of wooden fence that starts in front of the house and meanders along the drive. Originally installed by his father forty years earlier, the job is long overdue. Using a hydraulic attachment on the front of a tractor, Cooper sets the new posts a few inches in front of the old, then shows the campers how to line up the planks properly.

“As you can see,” he says, pointing to the weathered old fence, “there’re three horizontal boards—an upper, a middle, and a lower—each of which are twenty-one feet long. The posts are set at seven-foot intervals, which means that each board crosses three posts. The trick to building a strong fence is stair-stepping the boards so that no two begin on the same post. Watch carefully!” He greases the point of a nail by running it through his hair and taps it lightly into the board to set it. Then, with two well-aimed, powerful strikes, he pounds it through to the post. “You want to hit the nail dead center.”

Kurt flips his hammer up into the air and catches it on the way down. “Looks like a snap,” he says, grabbing a board and getting to work right away.

Cooper smirks. Fence work is anything but a snap. He’s done it for years (and has the Popeye forearms to show for it) and still dreads it like no other farm task. The rest of the campers begin more cautiously, listening to Cooper’s pointers.

The girls are sitting on nearby stumps, watching the action from a distance. Martha is entertained by Kurt’s competitiveness and all of Bryce’s bent nails, but Lucy worries that Adam might reinjure his back. Then Walter swaggers over, apparently preferring to talk about hard work rather than do it. He brags to the girls about his experiences on the Amish farm. “No plows or machines there. Only these,” he says, slapping his soft biceps.

Lucy and Martha smile politely, but this only encourages Walter, who places both his hands down on top of the old fence, readying himself to leap over to their side to tell more stories.

Lucy jumps up to try to stop him—Cooper has just warned the campers that the old fence has electric wire running along the inside of the top board—but it’s too late and midhurdle, Walter is zapped by a jolt of electricity powerful enough to keep a two-thousand-pound bull at bay. With a whimper, he crumples to the ground. Distracted by the commotion, Kurt smashes his thumb with the hammer. Two campers down.

Martha covers her eyes. “Remind me again how fence-building is relevant to their city lives?” she asks Lucy, suddenly worried about the men’s safety.

“Everyone is okay,” Lucy says in a calm voice as she assesses the damage. Cooper already has Walter on his feet and the two are laughing about the pain of getting shocked as if it’s as basic a rite of passage to manhood as getting punched. And Kurt is fine, too, enjoying the opportunity to curse loudly.

Martha still can’t look.

“Listen,” Lucy reminds her, “you wanted to get them away from their cerebral New York lives and put them in touch with their physical selves.”

“Right, right, right,” Martha says, opening her eyes. “Building fences is manlier than counting widgets.”

“Exactly. It looks as if they need us. How about we pitch in and help?”

“Good idea,” Martha says, getting up.

But Cooper vetoes their plan. “What if you’re better at it than they are?”

The next day’s training session is on engine maintenance and repair, and is held in the machine shop, a long, low cinder-block building that smells of oil. It has a tin roof and windows that are opaque with dirt, making the inside dark and cool. Work-tables covered with greasy tools line one wall. Gears, acetylene torches, lengths of chain, and pieces of long-dead machinery lie scattered about the floor. Outside, six farm vehicles await the campers’ attention.

Cooper walks the men through several simple maintenance routines like checking fluids (steering, transmission, and wiper), changing oil and oil filters, and flushing radiators, as well as quick fixes such as jump- and roll-starts, and what to do if a vehicle overheats. Then he sets the campers to work lubing the long-neglected vehicles parked out front.

“How adorable,” Lucy says, sitting next to Martha on the grass. “Look at the schmutz on Adam’s forehead. And your brother’s holding a grease gun!”

Martha doesn’t reply. She’s thinking about Cooper and how different she thought their week together would be. She’d imagined stolen kisses behind cowsheds, secret walks in the woods, and clandestine trips into town. The reality is there’s been zero romance. “Lucy, do you think there’s anything going on between Cooper and this Jolene who Beatrice keeps talking about?”

“No way,” Lucy says. “Cooper would never have encouraged you if he had a girlfriend.”

EACH AFTERNOON, when the day’s work is done and while the women are preparing dinner, Cooper takes the campers out for an all-male adventure, an extracurricular activity that he hopes will uncover long-buried masculine inclinations in them. The first day, he teaches them how to shoot his father’s favorite rifle, a Marlin .22, at a large sinkhole on the property. He brings plenty of ammo and shows them how to line up a target in the sight’s notch, letting them in on the secret to a steady shot: “You want to take a deep breath, let it out entirely, then gradually tighten your finger on the trigger.” He demonstrates as he says this, aiming at a milkweed pod, which he hits dead center, creating a poof of white feathers that drift away on the breeze.

One by one the men get up to shoot, thrilled by the noise and the kick of the gun. Though they aren’t great marksmen, they are enthusiastic and this encourages Cooper to suggest they all try groundhog-hunting some evening.

Kurt responds with a loud “Huah,” as if he’d just been ordered to storm the beaches at Normandy.

Prompted by Kurt’s reaction, Cooper continues: “You have to stalk them, see, by imitating their whistle.” He makes a shrill
wheep-wheep-wheep
sound. “Then, when one of them pops his fuzzy head up out of his hole, BLAM!” he shouts, mock-firing his rifle. “But they have really thick hides and tons of subcutaneous fat—think little bears—so you usually have to nail them again up close.”

Jesse’s face contorts. He recently edited a book called
Forest
Friends,
about a chipmunk and woodchuck who team up when a forest fire threatens their homes. He’s pretty sure that groundhogs are relatives.

Cooper realizes he’s gone overboard and adds a defensive: “Their holes are a real menace to the cows.”

Figuring that he’ll slowly warm them to the idea of killing, the next evening Cooper takes them to his father’s favorite fishing spot on the swollen Manasseh River. It’s a place so familiar to him that he knows the outline of the branches against the sky, how the light will fall, and where the shadows will land. He lines the men along the river’s edge and shows them how to cast, placing his lure near a rocky outcropping in the middle of the river. Within seconds, a trout strikes, and Cooper effortlessly pulls it to shore.

Bryce squats down to study the fish up close. “It looks exactly like the ones at the
pêcherie
near my apartment,” he says, surprised.

“Not quite yet,” Cooper remarks, flicking open his pocket-knife and inserting the tip forcefully between the pectoral fins of the still-flopping fish, “but it will in about one second.” With a swift gesture, he slices down the length of the body and guts the trout, tossing a small fistful of intestines into the river. “One down, nine to go for supper.”

Disgusted, Jesse tries to warn the trout by splashing by the river’s edge, but it does little to save them from Cooper, who seems to hook one with almost every cast.

Simon and Kurt are the only campers who actually catch fish, one apiece. The rest of the men, exhausted from the day’s physical labor, are content to enjoy the repetitive motion of casting and the rare opportunity to relax their eyes on a landscape devoid of steel or pavement or neon.

MIDWAY THROUGH THE WEEK, Cooper announces that he’ll be inseminating heifers after breakfast and gives the men the option of joining him in lieu of helping his farmhands plant the spring wheat crop. When there are no takers, Martha senses opportunity and volunteers. It sounds more fun than watching the campers drive bulldozers, and she’s eager for time alone with Cooper.

The day is sunny but not warm, and Martha wraps her cardigan tightly around herself, hooking an arm through Cooper’s as they walk to the barn.

He steers her across the pasture, avoiding the driveway in case the foreclosure notice he took down that first night has been replaced already. His mind is busy with worry about the farm: Should he sell one hundred acres to that developer who’s been making offers for the last year? Should he auction off part of the herd? Either solution would make his father turn in his grave. How could he have let things get this bad? He manages to make small talk with Martha, relaying cow facts that he could recite in his sleep, but his mind is elsewhere. “It’s all about timing,” he says when she asks about insemination. “Estrus only lasts about eight hours, so when you see the signs, you have to move quickly.”

“And what are the signs?” she asks suggestively, delighted to steer the conversation toward mating.

“The cows start mounting each other,” Cooper says, oblivious to Martha’s flirting, and continues his clinical explanation of bovine reproduction. When they enter the Cow Palace, he takes her straight to the liquid-nitrogen tank where he stores his supply of bull semen. He opens the tank, reaches through the curlicues of smoke, and plucks out a slim straw of ejaculate, which he places in a mug filled with lukewarm water. When it reaches the correct temperature, he snips off one end and threads the straw inside a stainless steel insemination gun. Then he guides Martha to where the cows are waiting, their heads locked between bars to keep them from moving. There, he pulls on a long plastic glove, dabs some mineral oil onto the fingertips, and pushes the cow’s tail aside.

Martha races up to the cow’s head before Cooper inserts his hand. “If it’s all the same to you,” she whispers to the cow, number forty-two according to its ear tag, “I’d like to call you Bessie.” She strokes Bessie’s black-and-white head and admires her long eyelashes. “You sure are one beautiful cow,” Martha says, “and I think he
really
likes you. Yep, he’s definitely going to call.”

“What are you telling number forty-two?” Cooper asks, now holding the cow’s uterus through the walls of her rectum, threading the insemination gun into her vagina, where he releases the sperm.

“Just some pillow talk,” Martha answers, noticing that Bessie seems rather indifferent to what’s going on. “A girl needs to be reassured of her man’s affection every once in a while,” she says, pleased by her own directness.

“Done,” says Cooper, withdrawing his arm. “Well, number forty-two should feel reassured that two thousand pounds of bull isn’t pounding on her. Isn’t that right, cow?”

Martha sighs, embarrassed that Cooper didn’t even pick up on what she said.

Patting the cow’s rump, Cooper says a gentle, “Get pregnant, cow.”

For a moment, Martha melts at how sweet his voice sounds. “Who’s the daddy, anyway?” she asks.

After peeling off the used glove and tossing it into the garbage, Cooper hands Martha the March issue of
Holstein Director,
which has been folded into his back pocket.

Martha’s eyes widen. The magazine, subtitled
Select Sires,
is full of personal ads, not for loveless singles but for bulls whose appeal is based on their ability to produce superior milking cows. Enticing photographs of their offspring fill the pages, along with detailed descriptions of udders, teats, and rumps. “I just can’t believe this,” she says, opening up to a
Playboy
-style centerfold of Sunshine, daughter of Otto the bull. The photo of Sunshine is taken in three-quarter profile from the rear, highlighting her ample bag and lean body. “I wonder what her hobbies are!” Martha says, imagining:
Expert at fly-swatting with tail, can moo
“Old Man River,” makes heart-shaped cow paddies.

“Hey, I use Otto quite a bit,” Cooper says, sounding slightly defensive.

Why aren’t you looking at me the way you did in New York?
Martha wants to scream, but continues to discuss the magazine. “Well then, you know all about his excellent genetics: ‘square-placed udders and superior overall dairyness.’ ”

“Indeed I do,” Cooper says. “He’s father to seventy-five percent of the Tuckington cows and affordable to boot.”

It takes Martha a moment to process this information, which means that Otto has impregnated mothers and daughters, sisters, aunts, and cousins.
Yuck.

Cooper registers Martha’s expression of disgust. “Look on the bright side,” he tells her, “this is the very concept you wish to impart to the campers: Make yourselves indispensable to women or risk becoming obsolete.” He walks her back toward the nitrogen tank. “Can you think of a more humbling place to be a man than on a dairy farm?” he asks. “One bull is all any farmer has ever needed to meet the reproductive requirements of his entire herd.” He grabs another straw of Otto’s semen and holds it up to make his point. “And now, even that bull isn’t strictly necessary.”

Martha touches Cooper’s arm, trying to think of a way to bring the conversation around to what’s going on between them. What comes out of her mouth is: “I’m not sure your mother likes me very much.”