My Gentle Barn (17 page)

When the food was all laid out, we thanked everyone for coming and announced that the buffet was open. People lined up at the long tables with their plates. It looked like just about everyone had arrived; there were at least as many guests as the previous year. But as the line of
guests moved along the buffet, more people kept arriving through the gate. And the line at the buffet kept getting longer.

I made my way through the crowd to Jay. “How many people do you think are here?”

Jay was scanning the crowd, his eyes wide—a crack in his self-confidence. “A lot,” he said.

“Do we have enough food?”

“I don’t think so,” he whispered, as though trying to keep a secret. He looked around, searching. “Help me round up some volunteers. We’ll go buy more food.”

Scott decided to go along, but I could see he wasn’t happy. “There must be five hundred people here,” he said to me before they went out the gate. Scott did not like big crowds, especially when they were crammed into our own backyard.

The first wave of diners had settled in at the tables. All the chairs seemed to be taken, but many more people were still in line for food. I ran into the house with a couple of volunteers and we grabbed every available chair or stool we could find, including the two tiny chairs from Jesse’s play table.

The guys got back with the groceries and hurried into the kitchen to start cooking up more food. A few minutes later, I peeked in to see how it was coming. There was a flurry of knives and spatulas and big stirring spoons; I decided I was more comfortable outside with the guests, who knew nothing of the chaos in the kitchen.

Soon more dishes of steaming food appeared on the buffet table, and they kept coming in waves, barely keeping up with the influx of people in the line. This went on for quite some time, until finally everyone seemed to have gotten their dinner.

I had barely caught my breath when it was time for me to address our guests. Standing in front of a crowd with a microphone was not my favorite place to be. It didn’t matter that I’d taken acting classes. I’d been nervous about this moment ever since I’d planned out what I
wanted to say. I’d practiced over and over in front of the mirror, trying to organize my speech in an order that made sense.

“Hi,” I said into the mike, and I couldn’t tell if my voice was loud enough. “Thank you so much for coming,” I said a bit louder. “I’m Ellie, and I started the Gentle Barn.”

Everyone clapped and smiled. They didn’t seem to mind that they were scrunched in around tables meant for half as many people. Seeing all of the warm, kind faces, I relaxed a little. I told the story of how the Gentle Barn had started with one little goat named Mary. Then I introduced everyone to our two honored guests, who were wandering freely around the tables—the turkeys we’d rescued this year and last. I told each turkey’s story and I also talked about the kids who came to work with our animals and the miracles I witnessed daily in the barnyard. I finished by saying, “It’s because of the generosity of all of you that we can do this work.”

Relieved that my speech was over, I introduced our singer. We’d found an eleven-year-old boy who sang like Louis Armstrong. The crowd was as blown away as we had been and gave him a standing ovation. Then the acrobats came on. They wore colorful bodysuits and face paint and made a human pyramid by standing on one another’s shoulders. Then one man held a pole and others climbed up it and sprang off into the air, doing flips and pirouettes. They tossed and caught one another and twisted their bodies into impossible shapes. The crowd was thrilled.

All through the performances, I kept circulating, making sure everything was going well. At one point I spotted Scott sitting near the back door to the house. His jaw was clenched and he practically winced every time a guest went into the house to use the bathroom. I also noticed that Jay kept running back and forth from the kitchen to the table where his wife and daughters sat. I found out later that his wife was cold sitting outside and not happy that he wasn’t sitting with her throughout the whole event.

As the entertainment came to a close we laid out the desserts on the buffet table. As people again lined up, I saw Scott storm out of the house. It was a silent storm, but I could read his body language perfectly; he was pissed. He fumed his way across the yard and through the tables to the utility shed and then fumed his way back across the yard and back through the tables, a plunger in his fist. Before he entered the house, he glared at me for a hard, cold three seconds.

I looked from the back door, where Scott had disappeared with the plunger, to Jay. Jay had seen the whole thing, and the two of us burst into laughter. Perhaps it was just a needed release, but, boy, did it feel good at that moment to have a partner in crime—someone who was as excited as I was that five hundred people had shown up to support us. A clogged-up toilet seemed a small price to pay.

In the end, we didn’t raise much money; we had spent too much on entertainment and the extra food and not charged enough at the door. It would be a few years before the art of the fund-raiser would be mastered at the Gentle Barn. We did, however, raise awareness about the organization, and about farm animals and how badly they’re treated more often than not. We also added a couple hundred names to our e-mail list. Although it had been a wonderful experience overall, I was relieved that we were not putting on an event for the winter holidays. I planned to lie low and just hang out with Jesse and the animals.

For Christmas Eve, I usually went with Scott and Jesse to my in-laws’ home. But the atmosphere in our house was especially tense ever since Thanksgiving and the stopped-up-toilet incident. I was happy to have Scott take Jesse to his parents’; I was going to spend the evening in my favorite place—surrounded by the residents of the barnyard.

That evening a volunteer helped me give the animals extra servings of fresh fruits and veggies as a Christmas present—grapes and greens spread around the yard for everyone, carrots for the horses, and
potatoes, beets, and other veggies for the pigs. After the volunteer left, I sat in the fading light, hugging my knees to my chest to keep warm, and watched the animals gobble up their fresh treats. A chicken darted between two goats to nab a grape, then ran off as the other hens chased after her. The pigs ate with their usual noisy exuberance—all together, except for Susie Q, who shared her dinner with Buddha.

Susie Q, a big brown farm pig, and the newest large animal in our barnyard, had arrived terribly depressed a few months back. She had been in line to be slaughtered at a sausage plant and had made a daring escape by crashing through the fence. She’d been found running down the street in a neighborhood near the slaughterhouse, and when the slaughterhouse had denied ownership, she’d been sent to the pound. When she’d arrived in our barnyard, she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t drink, and wouldn’t get up. She just lay by the fence, the farthest point possible from any of the other animals. Occasionally another pig or a goat would come by and sniff at her, but mostly the other animals ignored her, as though in her despondency the pig had made herself invisible.

Buddha was the only animal who did not ignore her. Instead, she made it her mission to make Susie Q more comfortable. For six days Buddha kept vigil with the new pig, lying by her side at the far end of the barnyard, and slowly Susie Q began to emerge from her despair. Buddha had performed the final stage of Susie Q’s rescue. She had given our new pig reason to live.

As I watched the two best friends share their meal on this Christmas Eve, I noticed that Buddha had stopped eating and was making a strange movement, with her head thrusting forward. I’d never seen her do this before.

“Buddha?” I said, and I jumped up and went over to her. Her sides were heaving, and she began making a horrible sound, like a hairball being coughed up. “Buddha, what’s wrong?” I stroked her convulsing sides, as though by touching her I would understand what was happening. Then I looked down and there in Susie Q’s bowl, the few remaining vegetables were fully intact, not chopped up at all.

“Oh no,” I said. “OK, Buddha, I have to try to see what’s stuck.” I pried open her mouth to look inside but couldn’t see a thing, and I kept losing my grip on her jaws because her body kept heaving. “Oh, sweetheart,” I said as I pushed up my sleeve, “I’m going to have to reach inside your mouth.” But I couldn’t get my hand past the back of her tongue. Then I felt along the outside of her neck and in the front, at the base of her throat, was a huge bulge the size of a softball, only oblong. Buddha must have swallowed a whole potato.

I ran inside to call the vet, knowing it was going to be near impossible to reach him on Christmas Eve. There was a message with a phone number for an emergency facility. I called that number, and the woman who answered said they weren’t making house calls that evening; I’d have to bring my animal in. I pictured Buddha with her heaving cough and knew there was no way I was going to get her into a trailer on my own. Then I remembered a vet who’d come out once when my usual vet had been out of town. I searched through my purse and finally found the card.

“I’m sorry to bother you on Christmas Eve,” I said into the phone, “but I think my cow is dying.” I couldn’t believe the vet herself had answered the call.

“OK,” she said, “hold tight. I’m at a party, but I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

Dr. Fox arrived forty-five minutes later wearing a gorgeous evening gown and a red Santa Claus hat. She had her husband and both her parents in tow, all dressed to the nines.

“I’m so sorry for interrupting your Christmas Eve,” I said as I hurried with the vet and her entourage out to the barnyard.

“No worries,” she said. “Let’s just see if we can help your cow.”

I led Buddha into the barn and turned on the light. As Dr. Fox palpated my cow’s neck, she asked if I had any idea what she might have swallowed.

“A potato, I think.” And I explained that a volunteer had neglected to cut up the vegetables.

“Vegetables?” the vet said, and when her hand passed over the bulge in Buddha’s throat she said, “Oh boy.”

This didn’t sound encouraging.

“OK,” said Dr. Fox. “Let’s see if we can’t get that potato out,” and the next thing I knew the vet was pulling down the straps of her fancy evening gown in my barn. She eased the dress off her shoulders and left it hanging down around her waist. She now stood there in her heels, her bra, and a Santa Claus hat and instructed her tuxedo-clad husband to stand behind Buddha so the cow couldn’t back away.

Dr. Fox slid her hand into Buddha’s mouth and reached in all the way up to her elbow, then up to her upper arm, then up to her shoulder. Buddha coughed and heaved even harder, trying to expel not only the potato but now also the vet’s arm. Dr. Fox looked up to the rafters as she worked, as though trying to picture the inside of my cow in her mind’s eye. Then she shook her head lightly and said, “Hmm.” She bent her knees and shifted the angle of her arm a bit. I could see the strain on her face as she reached and struggled to grab the tuber. But again she shook her head.

“It’s just out of reach,” Dr. Fox said. She withdrew her arm and it glistened with saliva and digestive juices. “I can touch it with my fingertips but I can’t get hold of it.”

“Oh my God,” I said quietly, and my knees started to tremble. I felt absolutely helpless.

Buddha’s stomach had by now blown up like a balloon, making her look pregnant. The vet explained that because burping was a natural part of ruminant digestion, the stomach bloated if the burping got obstructed. “If they bloat too badly, it can be fatal,” she said matter-of-factly.

My own stomach clenched, and I could hardly breathe.

“We have to do an emergency surgery,” the vet said.

“Of course,” I said. “Whatever it takes.”

Dr. Fox asked her husband to go get her surgical kit from the
car, then she asked me to bring out some lights, extension cords, and blankets.

As the vet and her family turned my barn into an operating room, Dr. Fox listed all the things that could go wrong with the surgery. She was going to cut my cow’s neck, so there was the risk of cutting a major artery and she might bleed to death. There was also a risk that Buddha might not wake from the anesthesia. If she made it through the surgery, an infection could set in, warranting a secondary surgery. If Dr. Fox was trying to scare me, it was working. I was flooded with fear, and also regret. Why hadn’t I supervised the volunteers more closely? Why hadn’t I spent more time with Buddha that day? If I had known it might be her last day on Earth, I would have stayed by her side every second of that day and looked in her eyes and hand-fed her her dinner. I stroked Buddha’s face. “We’re going to get you through this, sweetheart. You’re going to be all right.” And I hoped to God it was the truth.

Dr. Fox injected Buddha with a sedative, and moments later my cow was slumping to the ground as I cradled her head. When the anesthesia took full effect, Buddha finally stopped coughing and heaving. The vet asked me to have a seat and had her parents hold Buddha’s head while her husband held a floodlight, and then Dr. Fox did a full-fledged surgery right there on my barn floor, wearing a Santa Claus hat and not much else.