Twenty Three Marks on the Barn Wall

“Dad’s new bull,” Kyler said. “He was supposed to throw small calves.”

“Was he?”

“The two today weren’t small.”

That would turn out to be the story of the whole two weeks. The papers on that bull said one thing and the calves said another. Lane told me later he had seen the numbers and trusted them. Most of us would have.

Lane had an old silver camper parked by the machine shed, a little 16 footer he took to the lake two summers ago and never since. Kyler and I hooked it to the ranch pickup and pulled it right up beside the calving lot fence.

I parked my semi behind it. If I was going to live in that lot for two weeks, I wanted my bed close enough to hear a heifer bawl.

“You’ve got school,” I said to Kyler.

“I talked to the principal. He grew up calving. He said they’ll send my work home for two weeks if I keep up.”

“Then you’ll keep up.”

“I’ll keep up.”

We split the checks. Every two hours, around the clock, somebody walked the lot. I took more than my share. Kyler argued about that, and I let him argue.

The first one we pulled together came that same afternoon.

She was a nice red heifer, big framed, the kind Lane was proud of. She had been working for an hour and a half, and Kyler had watched her the way his dad taught him: give her time, but not too much time.

“One foot,” he said. “I only see one foot.”

We brought her up the alley into the headcatch. I washed up in the bucket and went in to feel.

A front foot, and a nose, and the other leg folded back at the shoulder. A big bull calf. Alive. I could feel him move against my hand.

“Your turn,” I said.

Kyler’s face went white. “I can’t.”

“You already did one yesterday.”

“That one was coming right.”

“So is this one. He just needs his other foot. Wash up.”

He washed up. I stood behind him at the back of the heifer and talked him through it, and when his hands started to shake I put mine over his.

“Push the calf back a little, between her pushes. Not hard. Now follow that leg down. Cup the foot in your hand so it doesn’t tear her. Bring it up.”

It took him three tries. On the third one the foot came, and he made a sound I will remember the rest of my life. Half a laugh. Half something else.

“Now the chains,” I said. “Loop it twice. Once above the ankle, once below. That way you’re not pulling on one bone.”

He looped them right. I had known he would. Lane taught him well. “Pull when she pushes. Rest when she rests. And pull down, toward her hocks, once his head comes.”

He pulled. I pulled with him on the other chain. The heifer bawled and pushed, and the calf came all in one long slide, wet and black and mad about the whole thing.

Kyler cleared his nose with two fingers. The calf did not breathe right away, and I saw the fear come up in the boy’s face.

“Straw,” I said. “Tickle his nose.”