Twenty Three Marks on the Barn Wall

There was a heifer inside. A black baldy, a nice one. She was standing, but barely, with her back humped and her tail out, straining. One small front foot was showing. Only one.

“How long?” I asked.

“Since about ten,” Boyd said. “I went in at noon and couldn’t find the other leg. My shoulder won’t go in far enough anymore.”

“Where’s your hired man?”

“Quit in February. Went to work on the railroad in Alliance.”

“And the vet?”

“Out on a call by Merriman. Hour and a half, at least.”

He said it all to me. He did not look at Kyler. Then he looked past me, at the barn.

The big door was open, and the afternoon sun was falling right across the inside wall. You could see every one of those white marks plain from where he stood. Twenty-three of them, in rows of five with the line through them, the way you keep score at a ball game.

Boyd looked at that wall for a long time.

I saw him count. I saw him understand what they were. And I saw the color come up in his neck, slow, from his collar to his ears.

Kyler had been rubbing down a calf when the trailer pulled in. He set down the towel and wiped his hands on his jeans and walked to the trailer gate.

Boyd opened his mouth to say something. Kyler did not wait for it. “Bring her in,” he said. “Back the trailer up to the alley. I’ll get the chains.”

Boyd stood there like he did not hear right.

“Uncle Boyd,” Kyler said, plain and polite, the way his mother raised him. “She’s been working since ten. Back it up.”

Boyd backed it up.

We ran her down the alley into the headcatch. Orvil was there that afternoon and he held her tail without being told. Virgil got off the gate and came and stood by the alley, close.

Kyler washed up. He went in and felt for a long minute, his cheek almost on her hip, his eyes looking at nothing.

“Head’s here,” he said. “One foot’s here. Other leg’s back at the shoulder. Same as the first one we did.”

“Same as the first one,” I said. “You know what to do.”

He did. He pushed the calf back between her pushes, gentle. He followed the leg down. He cupped the foot. It took him two tries this time, not three.

When the second foot came, he did not make a sound. He just looked over his shoulder at me, and I nodded.

He looped the chains twice, once above, once below. He pulled when she pushed and rested when she rested, and when the head came he pulled down, toward her hocks.

Boyd stood at the back of the alley with his hat in his hands.

The calf came in one slide. A black baldy heifer calf, white face, big. Kyler cleared her nose and she did not breathe, and he took a piece of straw and tickled her nostril, and she sneezed and shook her head and breathed.

Virgil said, “Good.” That was all he said.