Snow Blind-J Collins 4 (11 page)

covered in cow shit, with my hand spreading open a cow’s birth canal. I lifted the flaps of skin, pretending it was nothing more than her gums. “What now?”

He said, “Hold tight. Rest when she rests. Pull up when she strains. Here we go.” His arm slipped out.

Dad muttered under his breath. Once his hands were out of the warm, wet birth canal, and he touched the icy cold chain on the ground to start pulling, his hands froze to the metal and ripped the skin clean away. He didn’t let it deter him. He was a tough old bastard, I’d give him that much.

My arms shook from the effort of holding open the vulva. Sweat poured down my temples but I was still cold.

“Don’t let go.”

“I’m not.”

“Come on.” He was pulling straight back, crank-ing the winch, taking up the slack. “You’re about done, little gal. Work with it, not against it.”

Dad wasn’t talking to me, but the heifer.

“Almost there.” He grunted. “There’s the head.”

He switched angles to a downward arc when the shoulders and the rib cage emerged.

The calf slid out in a liquid ooze that stunk to high heaven. I held my breath and let go of the folds.

Dad immediately tickled inside the sodden calf ’s nose with a piece of straw to help it get its first breath. It worked. I’d breathe, too, if someone was jamming something up my nostril.

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The momma made no move to get up and lick her baby clean.

“This ain’t good. Come on, girl, get up.”

Finally after a few minutes, he picked up the calf and placed it on an old blanket to drag it up to the momma’s head. The heifer let out a soft moo and the thick tongue lapped at the yuck coating the shivering baby. Then stopped.

We watched. Waiting for something. Anything.

The heifer strained and twitched hard and paid no attention whatsoever to her calf.

My breath was coming in short pants and a gust of frigid wind reminded me where I was. This was another danger to ranchers: exertion resulting in a false sense of warmth and constant exposure to cold made them com-placent, resulting in frostbitten fingers, toes, ears, noses, and sometimes death. Spent, I crawled forward.

The move startled the heifer and she kicked me in the stomach, knocking me back. The blow nicked the bottom of my ribs, sending a white-hot stab of agony through me. “Fuck!”

“Watch your mouth,” Dad warned.

The cow violently convulsed again. Her head smacked into the stall wall, her big tongue lolled to the side, and she went still.

We both watched the form for signs of life.

When nothing happened, Dad yelled, “Dammit!”

I turned to look at him. His face held that angry look of temper that’d warned me to run. Even if I’d 105

wanted to run I had nowhere to go.

He scooped up the calf and took it to the dead cow’s teat, while the calf-less heifer on the other side of the partition bawled.

Dad rummaged around in the bag, cursing, and disappeared outside.

With nothing else to do, I followed him.

More snow whapped me in the face and I hunkered deeper into my pilfered winter wear.

Dad dropped to his knees beside the dead calf and rolled it over so the belly faced up. He inserted a long, curved knife below the neck and sliced the skin straight down the center. He sawed the hide from the fat, cutting the skin away. Then he flipped the carcass over and tugged, peeling the hide from the body like the skin from a grape. Even part of the head ripped off, and he snapped the spine clean.

I clenched my teeth to keep the bile down. I knew Dad hunted and dressed the game. I knew he butch-ered his own cattle. But the harsh fact remained: he’d skinned the animal in under three minutes. At least he hadn’t gutted it. No blood and entrails discolored the snow as he dragged the carcass to the back of his truck to dispose of it elsewhere to keep predators away from the herd.

When he turned around, covered in blood, mucus, and an oily substance that glistened like Crisco, holding a chunk of leather in its purest form, and a bloody knife, I retched.

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Dad didn’t care. He snapped, “Get yourself together, girlie; we ain’t done,” as he passed by me.

And I was too damn cold and numb to do anything but obey.

Inside the shelter he draped the calfskin over the newborn live calf and took the bleating, shivering little thing to the calfless mother. She sniffed it. Repeatedly. Her mournful sound changed, and the calf dove beneath her belly and began to suckle. But she wasn’t convinced. She pushed it away and sniffed it again.

“Will she just accept that calf as her own?”

“Chances are still better’n fifty-fifty she’ll reject it.

Nothing we can do. Nature will win out every time.”

Did that hold true for all animals? Even humans?

True natures can never be masked?

I shivered. It’d be dark soon. I couldn’t stop him from staying out here all night, but that didn’t mean I had to bunk with him.

Almost the second I plotted my escape, the other heifer became restless and stood. She didn’t care about the dead heifer beside her. Even to my fairly untrained eye, with a fluid bag dangling between her legs, she looked ready to pop.

Dad crouched down to check her. Then he glanced up at me. “Same drill as before. You ready?”

“I guess.”

The process wasn’t much smoother. The heifer wouldn’t lie down. We put her head in a “catch” and I found myself on the business end of a hoof more than 107

once before we hobbled her. The birth was stinkier and messier, too. The amnio sac was filled with liquid and calf shit and burst open when the hooves emerged.

Dad was covered in way more gunk than I was and he didn’t seem to notice. Might make me a wuss but I couldn’t wait to crawl into a hot shower.

Chink clunk
. Dad haphazardly tossed the birth-ing instruments in the bag. He must’ve sensed my intention to speak because he cut me off before I even opened my mouth.

“How much gas you got in that rig?”

“About a half tank. Why?”

“It’s gonna be slow goin’ getting back to the house.”

“I’m following you?”

“Unless you wanna ride with me.” At my look of horror he gave me a mean smile. “Didn’t think so.

Let’s go ’fore it gets worse.”

“You’re just leaving them?”

“Ain’t nuthin’ more I can do here. They’ve got food and shelter.”

The cold stole my breath the moment I was completely exposed to the elements. In the last two hours, while I’d been a heifer midwife, the snow began to accumulate on the ground. Where before it’d only been up to my ankles, now I trudged through shin-deep powdery fluff. The wind had died down, but that was a catch-22; rather than blowing the snow to Wyoming, it piled it up.

Dad yelled, “Keep your headlights on. Stay close. If 108

you need to stop or if you get stuck, lay on your horn.”

The drive back was worse than the drive in. In some places the snow was two or three feet deep. Darkness fell. My world boiled down to the red taillights ahead of me and the constant slap of the wipers.

Every once in a while, big chunks of snow would fly from the hood and splat on the windshield, blinding me. I panicked every time, worried when the wipers cleared the snow I’d see nothing in front of me but inky blackness.

Dad cut a hard right and his bright headlights swept the side of the barn. Finally. It’d taken us an hour to travel a mile. But my relief was short-lived when I saw the size of the snowdrifts blocking access to the driveway and the county road beyond it.

There was no way I was going home tonight.

I’d convinced myself things couldn’t get worse. As usual, famous last words. Once we’d trudged into the house, we discovered the electricity was off. Then neither the generator nor the backup would kick on.

Vaguely I remembered hearing someone say my dad didn’t keep his equipment in top-notch condition, but I didn’t ask questions. At least we still had the woodstove in the living room as a source of heat.

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Dad tracked down a couple of flashlights and I lit the way as he shoveled a path to the woodpile. We hauled the split logs and stacked them on the porch. I tripped with an armload full of firewood, and a chunk of wood sliced me under the chin, slammed into my rib cage, and bounced off my shin.

My toes and face were cold, yet everywhere else I sweated like a pig. After I filled the wood box, I returned to my truck. Keeping the window cracked, I lit a cigarette and flipped open my cell phone to call Martinez. Completely dead. Not good. No one besides Trish and Brittney knew where I was.

I’d worry about dealing with Martinez later, since I had a more pressing problem to deal with right now: being stuck alone with my father.

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Dad stoked the fire. Following his lead, I’d taken off the coveralls and the rest of my borrowed outerwear in the small entryway. Sweat plastered my clothes to my body and I wanted a shower something fierce. But no electricity meant no hot water. Yippee.

A cold sponge bath.

My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten all damn day. I suspected Dad hadn’t either. I was too tired to pull any of that feminist a-man’s-capable-of-making-his-own-meal crap. He’d started the fire; I could rustle up dinner.

I rummaged in Trish’s kitchen, finding roast beef, ham, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, spicy German mus-tard, everything to make hearty sandwiches. I added a slice of homemade apple pie, and a side of canned peaches. By the time I brought Dad a plate, he’d fallen 111

asleep by the fire. No reason to wake him. Wasn’t like the food would get cold.

Plus, I’d rather listen to him snore than listen to him talk.

After I ate, I set my head on the table and closed my eyes.

I dreamed. Wind howled and snow gusted through the cracks in the settler’s cabin, an abandoned shack where I’d seen horrific things. A location my mind returned to again and again whenever I was stressed out. Snowdrifts covered the windows. My gaze tracked the ghostly snow snakes slithering across the dirty plank floor. They dissipated upon reaching the discarded bodies.

I couldn’t escape the vision of those bodies, even in my sleep.

Bodies once full of life, once smooth flesh plumped with blood, were deflated like forgotten balloons. Dried husks of skin and brittle bones, a human powder that would blow out through the cracks of the shack like earth’s dust had blown in.

A baby cried. The wind shifted tones, masking the mournful wail. But I knew that sound. Was that my baby? I saw the manger in the corner and ran. Before I reached the brown box where a bloody chained hoof waved at me, the roof split open. Mountains of snow crashed through the gaping hole, sleet stung my face, flash-freezing my eyeballs. I tried to scream, but the snow funneled into my open mouth like a white 112

tornado. Spinning, filling me with coldness, first my toes, then my legs, packing my womb with ice, distending my gut, coating my throat with frost until I couldn’t breathe.

The
clank screech
of the woodstove’s iron door jolted me awake.

Whoo-ee. Talk about a nightmare. Not the bloody carnage and Old West shoot-out variety I’d recently had, but bad enough.

Thud thud
sounded as Dad tossed two split logs into the black-bellied stove and slammed the door.

Both sandwiches I’d made him were gone. He’d shoved the empty dishes to the center of the table. I imagined he’d expect I’d clear them. I imagined I would do it despite not wanting to.

I wondered how long I’d been asleep and I scooted my chair closer to the fire. Molten red embers glowed through the ventilation holes at the base of the stove.

Hot air streamed out as the dry wood crackled and popped. There was something soothing about staring at a contained fire. In recent months I’d spent many hours gazing into the big fireplace in Martinez’s living room.

Dad didn’t make small talk. He’d propped his feet on the brick ledge and leaned back in his chair, Wyoming Cowboys ball cap pulled low on his wrinkled forehead. Couldn’t tell if his eyes were open.

I craved a cigarette. Standing in the subzero wind to sate my nic fit would cause him to make a snide 113

comment, and the silence between us was at least tol-erable. I shifted in my chair. The aches and pains from the hellish afternoon were making themselves known, and I was uncomfortable in my own skin.

“See you’re still as fidgety as you were when you was a kid.”

When our life was somewhat normal—before my half brother Ben showed up and my mom was another drunk-driving statistic—he used to call me flibber-gib-bet, in a teasing, affectionate tone I hadn’t heard since.

“Brittney’s just like you. Girl can’t sit still to save her life.”

I smiled, thinking of the freckle-faced waif. “I noticed.”

“I’m surprised you’re takin’ an interest in her.

’Course I’m pretty sure I know why you ain’t interested in DJ.”

Don’t ask, Julie. Keep your fucking mouth shut.

His feet hit the floor and I flinched. He stood to throw in another piece of firewood. Finished stirring the fire, he sat down with a sigh. “You ain’t gonna answer that, are ya?”