Cannibals in Love (27 page)

“Maybe you looked at her funny,” I said, yielding nothing.

“Yeah, right.” She smiled. “Whatever happened to her anyway?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a strange prick of melancholy. “I don't know. The last I heard she'd gotten engaged to some guy with money. A doctor or an architect or something.”

Danielle yawned, losing interest. “Uh-huh.” It didn't mean anything to her and I was grateful for that. She mentioned her own boyfriend again, in a passing way, which was kind of cute. Something about his job.

“Oh. Super,” I said flatly, just to make her smirk.

*   *   *

Back on the bus, we showed our transfers and found our seats, and I caught myself thinking about Danielle as an idea again. What would it be like to date a girl like this? She was too nice; too neat; too mature for me. Where would the tension come from? What would we fight about? There was probably not one single picture of Danielle on the Internet with her middle finger up, I thought.

She was talking about her day off again, too, which was an attempt to fish out what it was that
I
was doing wandering out in front of Powell's on a Thursday afternoon. And finally she just asked me.

“What are you up to these days, anyway? Like for work.” I could tell that these kinds of questions were important to a person like Danielle. So I screwed up my face as serious as I could make it.

“I'm a dogcatcher,” I said.

“Mm.” She smiled painfully. “The world always needs good dogcatchers.”

“Amen,” I said, nodding.

I could go on like this all day, making jokes, talking about nothing. But suddenly I didn't want to do that with Danielle. I didn't want to be defensive and sarcastic. I didn't want to bore and annoy her. I just wanted to keep hanging out, running errands with this girl who felt like a stranger to me, and not, all at once.

“Actually, I just finished writing a short story this morning,” I said.

“Really?” she said, brighter. “What is it called?”

“‘A Cattle, a Crack-Up.'”

This was true. I had rewritten my four-hundred-page novel as a thirteen-page short story. It was an act of total and utter fucking madness, which I was still riding high off of.

“I could read you some of it, if you want.”

“Right now?” she asked, looking stricken. “You mean you have it with you?”

“I'm supposed to mail it out to somebody, maybe.” It was Bettina Kleins, but Danielle never asked this, so I didn't tell her.

“Well,” she said, a little coy, “I'm sort of a tough grader.”

“Ha!” I said, appreciating this last attempt to discourage me. “Good, give it to me, then. I like a hard F,” I said with all sorts of disgusting innuendo.

Danielle shook her head. “Oh, man. Just read it. Go ahead.”

I pulled the story out of my bag, laughing. And then, of course, I froze. “Should I set it up, or just start reading?”

“I dunno. What's it called again?” she asked, looking at the title. “‘
A Cattle, a Crack-Up'
? What does that mean?”

I smiled back, not sure what to say. “I'm just gonna read it…” I said, flipping to the first page.

“
August Caffrey banged the latch off the pen and led his forty black 'n' white Holsteins grazing out into the field in a slow, somnambulant stream. He hustled the last of the milking herd out and made his way back up to the farmhouse.

“Overhead the clouds were raked out across the sky. At the western border of the pasture was a stand of rock elms where the scavengers waited for the herd. Pieces of trees could be seen breaking off in the wind and flying away as State Birds. The wooden fence that ran rectangular around the field seemed unfit to keep anything, but it was good enough for cows. The grass grew a fast vibrating green in the early summer that the cows beat back with hoof and mouth. And everywhere you stood you saw the kingly American Elm that lorded over the open pasture. The American Elm was the skyline here.

“Gail had August's lunch waiting for him on the table, and she stopped with the dishes to sit down beside him…”
I stopped reading.

“Maybe I should explain it to you.”

“No, it's good. Keep going.”

I nodded reluctantly and picked it back up, feeling strange.

“
August never said much. If his appetite was good he ate quickly, as a rule. He picked up his ice water and swallowed it in gulps. Setting the glass down, he turned to his wife. ‘Where's the milk, Gail?'

“‘Well,' she began, as though she were expecting this. ‘I just figured maybe you were still havin' problems with your stomach.'

“‘Problems with my stomach? Since when did I say I was havin' problems with my stomach? All's I ever said was that the milk tasted off to me. Haven't I lived here my whole life? Don't I know how cow's milk is supposed to taste?'

“‘Of course, August. I'm not sayin' that.'

“‘Don't look for fights with me, Gail. I work too hard…'

“Gail stood up and brought back a cold bottle of milk, which she poured out into a glass.

“‘You take away the boy's milk now, too?'

“‘Course not, August, you know Kurt loves milk. We all do. I was only thinkin'…' but her voice trailed away as she turned back toward the fridge.

“August Caffrey put his head back down and brooded over his plate. It had been two long weeks since his stomach started rejecting the milk. It was the smell or the color or something else. He tried not to taste anything at all, but the milk coated the inside of his mouth and throat, as milk does. August pulled at it slowly and then threw back half the glass. He returned it to the table and put his hands down on his thighs, sitting stock-still, as his body worked at something unseen. August grimaced then and belched quietly into a closed fist.

“Gail watched him painfully, wishing he wouldn't do this to himself. She knew he would finish the glass and go back out to work in the hot sun to be physically sick behind one of the outbuildings…”
I stopped again.

“Okay, so I'm just gonna tell you about it.”

Danielle laughed at me. “If you want to. I mean, it's fine, I like it. I like the writing.”

“I'm still working on it,” I said, feeling frustrated by my unwillingness to keep reading. I was thinking about too many unrelated things. Everything I had taken out. All these invisible holes I had left there on the page.

“This is a story about cows?” Danielle asked with a bemused look.

“Sort of, yeah. I mean, it's really about the farmer.”

“August.”

“Right. August. This is his family's dairy farm, where he was born. Fine, fine.” I gestured with my hand. “Except that now his cows are triggering some kind of nervous collapse in him.”

“They what?”

“Well, see, it's actually a kind of allegory about the Invasion of Iraq.”

Danielle laughed when I didn't. “Seriously?”

“Dead seriously.”

“Okay. Tell it to me, then.”

“All right, let me think…” I hemmed. “No, just let me read about the farm first.” I flipped ahead two pages and kept reading.

“A dairy farm is run on a religion of routine. Deviation is damnation, and every day begins at four a.m. when Buck Karen—the only employee of the Amelia Dairy—begins milking the herd. At five, August joins him in the milking parlor to help move the cows. He feeds the young calves and dry cows from the round bales of hay. Manure is scraped, and the parlor floors are hosed. By ten o'clock August's neighbor Elvin Hale arrives to fill the Amelia's silos with feed, always removing the glove from his right hand before waving across to the two dairymen. At eleven a.m., Buck feeds forage to the milking herd, and pulls away in a cloud of dust in his rust-colored pickup. August puts the herd out to pasture, and the afternoon is spent repairing fences and maintaining equipment. Buck is back by three to start the—”

“How do you know all of this?” Danielle stopped me, grinning widely.

“I dunno. A guy just picks things up.”

“You liar,” she said, giving me a teasing shove.

“Okay, I did a little research.”

“How much?”

“Off and on, I'd say, four years.”

“
Four years!
” Danielle said. “You've been learning about dairy cows for four years? To write a
short story
?”

“Off and on,” I said, trying to sound defensive. But I was smiling with her, too. “I was in a weird place then, okay? It seemed important.”

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me about the cows, then.”

“See, that's the thing. There had to be the cows because all I had when I started was the ending.”

“You started the story so that you could write the ending about the cows?”

“Right.”

“So read me the ending.”

“No. I can't read you the ending. The ending is terrible. It makes no sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because the ending is the part of the story that's
true
. That part all really happened. I read about it in the newspaper. It was horrible and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
That's
what started this whole thing.”

“The cows.”

“Right.”

Danielle was intrigued. “So tell me what happens!”

“Ahhh, all right…” I agreed. “See, the milk starts to make August Caffrey extremely ill—”

“Lactose intolerance?”

“No, no. Worse. Way worse. Some sort of nervous condition that I invented for him. It's all very psychosomatic and paranoid, but also totally debilitating. It's all very real for August, and it's all inside his head, too, which is why he can't stop it. And it keeps getting worse. So August starts to blame the cows. He develops these crippling sensitivities to light and temperature and smell, and he has to stay in his bed with the curtains closed tight…”

“This all really happened?” she asked eagerly.

“No, no, none of this happened,” I said. “I made all of this up. This is just the story. Only the part with the cows at the end really happened.”

“Okay.”

“Right … so there's this storm—a big old midwestern tempest, right? And Gail, the wife, and Buck, the other dairyman, have been trying everything they can to hold it together—to keep the herd milked; to save the farm—while August has been shut up in his bed having these terrible fever dreams about his dead father, and about his son…”

“Kurt.”

“Right. His
corn-fed, hay-haired boy
Kurt,” I offered wryly. “And, anyway, this storm comes, and there's no one there to bring the cows back in. So they're all just freaking out, stranded in the pasture. And the only thing they know to do is to crowd themselves under this giant elm tree for protection…”

“The American Elm.”

“Right, the
American Elm
, exactly. Except I keep changing the way that I'm describing this giant family tree, throughout the story: the Grandfather Elm; the Ghost Elm; the Fortune Elm; the Sorrow Elm…” I stopped, unsure. “Because the elm tree has become like a character in the story.”

“Yeah, I get it,” she said, as though this were obvious.

“Right, right.” I smiled, feeling both annoyed and impressed by her attentiveness. “Because
really
the American Elm
is
the farm, you know? It's been there longer than the farm. Longer than the town or the state or even the country.” I stopped and suddenly picked up the story again, reading from the ending.

“
Out in the field the cows felt the weather in their arthritic joints and dropped to their knees, long before the storm was present in the sky. Through a hot sleep, August heard Gail's wind chimes calling in the clouds like church bells. The sky went ink-black and started to drip. When it all finally cracked open it was enough to stir August bolt upright in his casket-bed. He could hear the pellet-rain pinging off the windows in staccato. And he could hear the banshee lowing of his cattle, willing their heavy bodies upright with no small difficulty.

“August swung his feet out onto the floor, in a cold sweat, unsure whether it was night or day in his blacked-out bedroom. He knew he had to bring them in, though he could hardly make his body begin. It raced with everything that he must do. He fought through the fug of bed rest, knowing exactly where they were now, pushing together in a craven huddle under the massive Deliverance Elm. Shoulder to flank, with mooing impatience. They forced themselves in with the butts of their heads.

“August limped through the downstairs with his hands trailing along the walls. Even the muted stormlight was painful in his eyes now. At the precipice of the house, the family dog howled at the storm without mercy, but was struck dumb at the sight of its master in shambles. It backed up meekly, with its tail between its legs, giving August a wide berth to pass. But the farmer stopped cold, frozen by the gray apparition of his wife running toward him from the field.

“‘August! For God's sake, get back into the house. You're not well. You'll catch your death out here!'

August said nothing, fastening to his zombie-resolve.

“‘Please! It's hopeless; the cows can't be moved! Just leave 'em,' Gail pleaded. ‘Come with me. I'm going to call Buck.' She reached for his hand, but he took it away.

“‘No … I have to bring them in,' August insisted in a hoarse voice.

“Gail's face went white with panic, and she hurried into the house.

“In his heavy jacket and boots, August walked out into the teeth of the storm. The sky filled with lead as the thunderstorm invoked its Midwestern Gods. August rushed forward, lunging for a pitchfork on the ground—a sick, comic prop planted by the Devil himself. Up the hill, he carried it out in front of him, in two hands, like a rifle. A sickly sweet taste gathered in his mouth that he could not spit away. The speed of the storm and the strain on his empty body made his head throb. He trudged on, leading forward with the crown of his skull. And then there was just a single crack!