Authors: Lois Greiman

Finding Home (11 page)

BOOK: Finding Home

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“What's going on?” Emily's voice was strained but quiet.

Casie remained silent. In a moment she had found the second front hoof, but where was the head? Feeling around like a blind man in open sea, she felt the curve of the neck. “I think it's bent back.” She said the words to herself.

“What?”

“Its nose isn't positioned properly.” She'd raised her voice a little, but the additional volume didn't bother the heifer. She was completely absorbed in the pain.

“Can you fix it?”

Casie had no way of knowing the answer to that question, but there wasn't much she could do other than try. At that moment, the contractions came again, pressing her arm against the pelvic bone with powerful urgency. Pain squeezed through her. She opened her mouth in agony and twisted slightly but in a few moments it passed. She and the cow lay panting. But the clock was ticking. Stretching out on her belly, Casie pushed on the baby's neck, trying to force the calf back enough to position it properly.

That was the beginning of an exhausting dance of pushing and waiting, of gasping through the pain of a contraction, then edging the little animal back a bit farther until finally . . .
finally
the nose was pointing toward the exit.

Casie raised her gaze to Em's. “I think I've got it.”

“Really?”

“Come here.”

“There?” Her tone was fraught with angst.

“Hurry up.”

She scurried forward, looking like she'd rather be in hell.

“Put the light down and grab the legs.” God bless America, there were two visible feet now, two little rubbery hooves. Casie kept her hand inside the birth canal, carefully held the head in position, and took a deep breath. The air smelled of muck and blood. But she barely noticed. “Okay, pull.”

Emily squatted behind the cow, wrapped her hands around the baby's slimy pasterns, and tugged tentatively.

Nothing happened. The cow was exhausted, Casie was exhausted, and Emily was scared out of her wits.

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” Casie rasped, fatigue pushing her beyond timid and into irritable. “Are you the tougher-than-hell assistant wrangler of the Lazy Windmill or some sissy-ass barista?”

“The uhh . . .” Emily shifted terrified eyes toward her mentor. “The first one?”

“Then sit your butt down and pull,” Casie ordered.

Emily scowled, but in a second she plopped down on her hind end, pushed her army boots up against the cow's haunches with a grimace, and pulled with all her might.

The calf emerged slowly at first. Tongue, nostrils, eyes. The shoulders were the hardest part. And then with a slippery whoosh, it slid onto the straw behind its mother. The cow lay perfectly still but for the heaving of her sweat-soaked flanks.

“Is it okay?” Emily was crouched beside the calf. “Is it alive?”

Casie poked a piece of straw into its nostril, hoping it would sneeze, take a breath, live, but it remained immobile while the heifer, relieved to be free of her burden, finally heaved herself onto her chest and looked behind. She pricked her ears forward and rumbled a maternal welcome when she saw her baby. The deep-throated greeting transcended species. The emotion behind it was as clear as sunrise, filled with longing and hope and the first fragile tendrils of tentative, budding love.

Emily pulled her gaze from the cow's gleaming eyes back to the calf. “Is it breathing?”

“Help me lift it,” Casie ordered.

Together they hauled the newborn up by its slippery hind legs and dangled it upside down, hoping to clear its airways, but the little thing hung lank and heavy. The mother heaved herself to her feet, dragging placenta as she wheeled around to face them. But there was no movement from the baby. The heifer rumbled another hopeful greeting, but the calf remained unmoving.

“Come on. Come on!” Casie pleaded. Her arms were beginning to tremble, but it was no use. “I'm sorry,” she whispered and began to lower the calf to the straw, but Emily shook her head and yanked it back into the air.

“No! Wait. Maybe it just needs a little more time.”

“It's dead, Em,” Casie said. Tragedy stalked her, hissing that it was her fault. She'd failed again. Failed to be there when she should have been. Failed to read the signs. Tears burned the back of her eyes. “Probably has been for a while.”

“You don't know that!” Emily's raspy declaration brought Casie back to the present.

“Let's put it down,” she said.

“No. Iâ”

“Put it down,” Casie ordered, and as she glanced over the lifeless corpse, saw her own grief reflected in the girl's eyes.

Together they laid the body on the soiled straw. It looked small and bony and lifeless, nothing like the rambunctious calves that galloped wild circles around their doting mothers.

Casie stared at the lifeless form . . . just one more manifestation of her ineptitude. But the mother, made hopeful by the cessation of pain and the tantalizing scent of her newborn, hurried forward to lick it. Low, loving noises rumbled from her throat as she stroked its scrawny neck with her sandpaper tongue. When no response was forthcoming, she lifted her head slightly and issued another heartfelt greeting, but the hope was already beginning to fade from her eyes.

Emily watched. Her lips twitched with emotional agony. Tears slid unchecked down her sunken cheeks. The cow glanced at them, shifted nervously sideways, then lowered her head to her infant again.

“I'm sorry,” Casie said. She wasn't really sure whom she spoke to, the cow or Emily, but it didn't matter. They were both in mourning.

C
HAPTER
11

T
hey left the barn side by side, but Casie had rarely felt more alone, more doubtful of her course. The past week had been almost hopeful. Chores were easier, life cheerier when there was someone to share it with, but she was being ridiculous. Emily didn't belong on a broken-down cattle ranch like the Lazy. She couldn't stay there. How pathetic was she to think that a teenage girl should be expected to shoulder the kind of burdens thatâ

“Damn!”

Casie jerked her head up. Colt Dickenson was striding toward them. It wasn't until that moment that she noticed the sun had risen. It glowed on his face like Easter Sunday, making her mood seem even darker by comparison.

“You two look like hell,” he said, skimming her crusty clothes with a sparkling eye. “Who died?”

They stared at him in unison. There was a heartbeat of silence and then Emily made an indescribable mew of sorrow and hurried off toward the house.

They watched her go for several seconds before Casie shifted her gaze back to him.

“Crap!” he said.

That pretty much summed it up. “Yeah,” she agreed.

“What happened?”

Casie had never been good at dealing with sorrow. Stoicism was what was expected out here, what she'd always tried to deliver. She raised her chin a little, striving for that indomitable frontier attitude. “Pregnant heifer.”

Colt exhaled heavily and shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. The fingers of his right hand still looked swollen below his cast. “Lose the calf?”

She nodded.

“Ah hell. I'm sorry.”

She managed a shrug, turned away, and forced herself to wrestle her way up the hill, hoping he would get back in his truck and drive away.

He didn't.

“Two-year-old?” he asked.

“I don't know.” She felt guilty somehow. Guilty about the life that had been lost. Guilty that there had been a life at all. “She was in with the yearlings.” She'd reached the porch and was mounting the first step.

“Clay was always so careful about that sort of thing.”

She shrugged. Maybe now would be a good time to mention the extent of her father's decline before his death. Or maybe it would just be an attempt to absolve herself of any possible guilt. “She must have been an early baby. Bulls probably got out once too often.”

He shuffled his scruffy boots and caught her gaze as she turned at the door. “You want me to take care of the body?”

So much,
she thought. More than she could say, but passing the job on to him felt like a cop-out. “No,” she said. “Thank you.” A noise was issuing from inside the house. She couldn't identify it exactly. A raspy, mewling sound. “I can do it.”

He nodded and glanced toward the cattle yards. She couldn't read his expression, and when she realized she was trying, she turned away in self-disgust. It didn't matter what he thought. How he felt.

“Well, I should get going,” she said.

“How 'bout the horses?” he asked. “How are they coming along?”

“They're fine.”

“Yeah?” His grin was tentative, laced with pity. “Been launched by any of them lately?”

“Listen,” she said. Anger and regret were welling up in equal measures, dragging her mood into the sewer. “I'd like to stand here in the cold and let you laugh at my expense butâ”

“You could invite me in,” he said. “Then I could laugh at you without getting frostbite. You do have heat, don't you?”

“Good-bye, Dickey,” she said and left him standing at the bottom step.

Inside the kitchen, Emily was stirring the contents of a pot set atop the left front burner. It was one of the two that remained in working condition. Steam drifted upward, hazy and aromatic from the battered pan.

“Why don't you go back to bed?” Casie said. “Get some sleep.”

“You have to eat.”

“I can have cereal.” Or nothing, she thought.

“You need something warm.” Em kept her face turned toward the stove. “Mom always says breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” Having delivered that little piece of maternal wisdom, she wiped the back of her wrist beneath her nose.

Casie winced. She wasn't comfortable with tears. Hers or anyone else's. “Listen, Emily, about your mother . . .” Even she wasn't sure where she was going with this. “Have youâ”

“Sit down,” Emily said. “I'll get you a bowl.”

She sat for lack of anything better to do, then wished that she'd remained standing. Fatigue had turned to a fidgety ache inside her. “I was just going to say that we'll finally be getting the phone back in today.” She had called Bradley from the feed store in town and told him she would be incommunicado for a while. Even she hadn't known that
a while
would be measured in weeks. “I think you should call your mom. I'm sure she misses you like crazy.”

Emily shrugged as she spooned oatmeal into a bowl. Steam wafted up in comforting waves. “She's really busy with her new job.” Her dreadlocks hid most of her face as she turned toward the table. “Do you want milk?”

“No, this is great.” And she was pretty sure they were out of milk . . . at least out of the kind that wasn't curdled or intended for ovine ingestion. She'd meant to go grocery shopping, but then . . . well . . .
everything
happened.

“Brown sugar?”

“Sure.”

Emily rummaged through the cupboards for a while, then turned with a bottle of honey in her hand.

“I guess we're out of sugar. You'll have to use this. But it's better for you anyway. It has natural antioxidants. Did you know that? You can't feed it to newborns, though.” She was back at the stove again, dishing the rest of the oatmeal into a second bowl, running water into the pan. Somehow she had found time to change clothes before beginning breakfast. “It can cause botulism.”

Casie was watching her face in profile. She'd only seen Em's eyes for a moment but they already looked red and swollen. If there had been any question that the girl wasn't made for this type of life, those doubts were now quashed.

“You don't have to stay here, you know,” Casie said.

The girl glanced up, eyes haunted. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Casie said. “Of course not. You've been working really hard. Too hard, maybe. You haven't even gotten a chance to talk to your mother since you've been here. She's probably worried sick about you.” She cleared her throat and marveled at how difficult it was to release the rest of her words. “I think you should go live with her.”

Emily stood absolutely still, hands dripping over the soaking pan. “You think it's my fault that he died.”

It took Casie a second to make sense of what she was saying. “What? No! Are you kidding?” She rose rapidly to her feet. The legs of the chair grated noisily against the cracked linoleum. “That's the thing, Em, ranch life . . .” She shook her head. “It's hard. I mean . . . animals die all the time.”

“I know that.” Her lips were pursed again, dead set against the world.

Casie scowled. She was almost tempted to stroke the girl's hair. Weird. It was probably just the sight of the newborn calf that brought these latent maternal instincts to the fore. “Did you and your mom have a fight or something? Is that why you didn't go with her to Wisconsin?”

“Listen . . .” Emily faced her square on. Her eyes were still bright with tears, but her chin was steady. “I'm not a baby, Casie. I can handle this. I mean, it was just a calf, right?”

“Yes, but you don'tâ”

A knock sounded at the door. They stared at each other. Emily took a deep breath. “You eat,” she said. “I'll get that.”

“Don'tâ” Casie began, knowing whom to expect, but the girl was already headed toward the porch.

In a moment the door creaked open.

“Mr. Dickenson . . .” Emily's voice sounded very cool, extremely mature. “Come in.”

The door groaned shut. Casie ground her teeth. The wolf was inside.

“Listen, Mr. Dickenson . . .” The nomenclature was weird. As if Dickey was someone to be respected. As if he wasn't the kind of boy who stole your English assignment and read it out loud on the bus. As if he didn't drive girls to distraction with his flirty eyes, then ask the one with the biggest boobs to the prom. “I'd like to apologize for the scene I made earlier.”

“What?” he asked.

What?
Casie thought.

“I just . . . I was just being silly. I mean . . .” She paused. “Casie told you about the calf, right?”

“Yeah.” Casie could imagine him shuffling his feet, looking all likable and cowboyish. “I'm sorry about that.”

“It's no big deal. I mean. It's just an animal, right? Animals die all theâ”

“No.”

Emily paused. “What?”

“It's not just an animal.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's a part of the earth, Em. A part of
you
. My culture says that we're all part of the whole. Each being, every plant and animal is important. Every new life is a blessing.”

There were a few beats of silence. “Do you believe that?”

“Well, that calf was certainly important to its mother, the mother was important to this ranch. . . .” He left it hanging with an implied shrug. “It's all part of the circle of life.”

The circle of life?
Give him a lion mask and pretty soon he'd be crooning a ballad, Casie thought, and surreptitiously swiped her knuckles beneath her nose.

“She looked so sad.” Emily's voice sounded broken.

“She'll be okay,” Colt murmured. “She's tougher than she seems. Once when she was a little girl, five or so, she climbed on one of Clay's mean old ewes just to prove how tough she was. We'd seen the mutton busters at the rodeo in town, and I guess she thought it would be a good idea to try ridingâ”

“I meant the cow,” Emily interrupted.

“Oh.”

“She looked so happy for a moment. So hopeful.” She cleared her throat. “Mothers, you know, they're supposed toâ” The girl's words staggered to a halt. There was a strangled, sobbing noise.

“Hey, honey, it's all right. Hey . . .” Colt said.

Casie closed her eyes, but there was no help for it. She couldn't let the girl handle this sadness alone. Rising to her feet, she stepped into the tiny foyer and stopped short.

Emily stood stretched up on her tiptoes, arms wrapped around Colt's neck.

He was patting her back.

“It'll be okay. Cows . . . they mourn for a few days, then . . .”

Even from where she stood, Casie could hear Em's snuffling breaths.

“Then they go back to the herd like nothing ever happened.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” He glanced up, caught sight of Casie, and gave her a sheepish grin. “They have feelings, you know, just like us, but they can move on more easily than we can.”

“I don't know.” She shook her head, probably smearing tears across his canvas jacket. “I don't think she's that kind of mother.”

“Well, don't worry about it too much, Em. Sometimes they'll share another cow's calf.”

“Like a foster mom?”

He glanced toward Casie. Sheepishness had turned to true embarrassment. His face was red. “Sure. Yeah, kind of like that. Try not to take it too hard. The cow'll get over it pretty quick.”

Emily eased back a little. “I suppose there are some good foster moms, huh?”

“Sure,” he said. Putting his hands on her arms, he looked into her eyes. “Hey, it's barely past six o'clock. What time does General Carmichael get you up anyway?”

“I had the predawn check.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I should have gone out earlier.”

“I'm sure it's not your fault.” He shifted his gaze to Casie again. “Right, Case?”

She would have liked to have said that Dickenson had no idea what he was talking about, but one glance at Emily's tearstained face put things back into perspective.

“Of course it's not.”

“Really?” Emily asked, but her gaze had turned back to their uninvited guest.

“The calf was probably already dead days ago. The best thing for the cow was to just get rid of it.”

BOOK: Finding Home

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