/ Fiction /
Turning a light on by the bedside, Etta found her housecoat and shoved one arm through, then the other—momentarily trapped in folds of cotton before the garment was around her properly. Her drowsy fingers fumbled the button through the hole. Though it was warming up this time of year, she felt a chill through the thin layers of housecoat and nightgown. She shivered just as she heard the cry again. This time, with her ears more awake, she realized the sound was coming from the barnyard.
She did not run through the farmhouse—all the lights were still off and though she surely could have walked through the halls with no problems, like she had done countless times before, something was different tonight. The screen door was open and a flickering pinprick of kerosene lamplight could be made out from the open barn door.
But as the screen clattered shut behind her, Etta’s breath caught in her chest. For the hour being as late as it was, the barnyard was so startlingly lit. Growing up in the city, she was used to a few stars prickling the night sky. She could name a few constellations, Orion, Cassandra in her chair. But when she moved into the farmhouse with JP, the first nights of their honeymoon were spent under the stars on a blanket JP had brought out for the two of them. He knew the name of every constellation. He’d had a book on the night sky as a child and when they started dating, he had shared it with Etta. They had spent the first two weeks of married life—between the moments when they were stuck on each other like glue—sprawled under the night skies, reviewing the pages and learning the names and stories of every constellation they could spot. Though for the first few nights, it was overwhelming—the sheer vastness. Lying on her back on the blanket in the grass, Etta had felt she was looking down rather than up, teetering on the very precipice of gravity. Like she would come unstuck from the blanket at any second and fall head over ankles in the bluey blackness to join the Ursa Major in the void.
But in recent years, Etta had grown accustomed to the space above her, took it for granted, and with the sunrise to sunset routine of keeping a farm running smoothly, she had stopped looking at stars. Not intentionally, as she still felt the same sense of childlike wonder when she took the time to look up at night, but because of routine and mental exhaustion of the day-in-day-outs. But tonight, looking up from the barnyard, Etta felt the same weightlessness she had experienced her first night on the farm. Looking up into the vast, celestial tidepool of unknowable above her head. If she let her mind go, she could believe that rather than looking up, she was looking down into the depths of some profundity, and if she weren’t careful, the laws of gravity might no longer apply and she’d fall into infinity.
A yell from the barn snapped Etta’s focus back down to the terrestrial as Ely hurried to retrieve another lantern from the shelf where JP stored them. Etta watched the silhouette of his small, bed-rumpled figure hurry across the backlit barn door frame as she crossed the barnyard from the farmhouse. Etta could just make out the soft sounds of a cow mooing just within the barn. It was coming from the side where the calving usually happens, but Etta wasn’t aware of any cows expected to calf this late in the year. All of the cows that they had known were with calf had already birthed healthy calves this year. So what could be going on? And this late?
As Etta stepped into the barn, she looked into the enclosure and saw that a heifer, a cow who had not previously calved, was lying in the straw within the pen, panting heavily. It was a heifer that had herself been born a little over one year ago. She was a beautiful animal. Chocolate plush fur that deepened to midnight on the top of her body, thick lash-rimmed deep black eyes, and a pink, almost lilac velvet nose. As a heifer, she remained as docile as she had been at birth. They’d called her Bittie. Etta had not known she had been bred this year, though it was how it was done—to breed a heifer as they matured a little over a year old.
Bittie looked up from her spot in the straw, looking over one shoulder at the sound of Etta’s bare footstep on the concrete floor within the barn. JP was kneeling by the heifer’s side, feeling her side for any abnormalities, determining the position of the calf. Ely brought the lantern closer. Bittie was silent save the sound of intermittent huffs from her nose. JP looked up when he noticed Etta’s arrival.
“I didn’t want to wake you. I’d only just realized she’d be calving last evening. She wasn’t showing the normal signs all spring until just yesterday: I caught her in the pasture making noise and holding her tail up. I brought her in here after that, thinking she’d calve in the morning,” JP said.
“But why didn’t you feed her at night?” Etta asked, recalling her first spring on the farm when JP explained that feeding cows at dusk ensures they calve during the day when the farmer can be at hand for the delivery. She had thought it was nothing but superstitious nonsense at the time, but after years of witnessing the daytime births of hundreds of calves, she conceded there must be something to it. Etta can recall only two other nighttime calvings, and one had been a stillbirth, the other had been born breech, the latter successfully with JP’s aid.
“I did. I don’t know what’s going on but something is wrong,” JP took a white cotton handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. Etta noticed a grey hair at his temple.
“Is it breech?” Etta couldn’t bring herself to ask if it was stillborn.
“I don’t think so. I can feel it’s hooves up here,” he patted Bittie’s belly, earning a sidelong look from the heifer.
“So...then—”
“I feel movement too. He’s kicking around in there. Ely, bring that lantern here.” Ely stepped forward. The fourteen-year-old farmhand was groggy from being roused at this hour. This was the first complicated calving he had helped with, and he stepped from foot to foot, glancing around as if the walls of the barn promised hints for what to do next.
“Sorry, Mr. P. I—” Ely said and stopped when JP took hold of the lantern, standing and hooking it on a nearby beam. JP patted him on the arm.
“Ely, it’s early and for all I know, we’ll have our hands full with this one in the morning. I may need you to be with it tomorrow. Why don’t you head back to bed for a bit more shut-eye. Etta will come fetch you if things change and I need you.” JP glanced at his wife. She read the question in his face. She answered aloud.
“I’ll stay out here and help. Ely, I’ll wake you as soon as I have news on Bittie and her calf here.” Etta understood that the calving was likely to be eventful. She had understood that JP didn’t want the boy to see it, not yet, anyway. Ely glanced around the barn, connecting eyes with JP and then Etta one more time before reluctantly nodding and turning out of the barn, back toward the farmhouse.
“I’m not really sure what you’ll be able to do for me. But I’ve been out here an hour and she’s stopped pushing,” JP said.
“What does that mean?” Etta hadn’t been around a calving in years. She loved them at first, the tenuous rush and immediacy of the labor at hand, the fragile, goo-covered calf that within minutes was licked clean by the mother and standing up on its own. Etta had loved witnessing the rapid development of something so wobbly and vulnerable on the ground, becoming something sturdy—standing on four newborn legs within the span of minutes. Calves entered the world with some kind of innate life-seeking intuition. Sure, they needed their mother for milk, for sustenance, but they came out of the womb ready to be cows. They did not have to learn to stand, to walk, to seek milk, to moo.
Etta had stopped enjoying calvings about the third year into marriage, when it was looking less and less likely that she would become with child herself. She avoided them entirely after the first miscarriage.
“It means that I’ve got to help her out. I need to feel around some and take a gander at what we’re working with.” JP said.
“And what should I do?” Etta had not moved from the doorway.
“Hold the light for me, if you would, Et.”
Etta took the nearest lantern and opened the gate into the pen. She stepped inside. She neared the other end of Bittie, where JP had blocked her view and she saw that the tip of the calf’s nose was out. With the light more focused, JP was able to assess the situation.
“I think.. But I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before. I’ve.. read about it. And seen some photographs but... I never—” JP spit up the words as if his mouth was acting on its own, his mind unconnected, trying to calibrate itself to what was happening.
“What? What…is it?” Etta felt the hair on her arms stand on end. She had not
seen JP this visibly upset by a calving before—even during the breech calving.
“I think. Something is wrong with the calf…” He saw her face and rushed to add, “It’s living! But… Something is wrong with the position. She can’t push.”
“Alright? So do you need to help her? What should I do?”
“You, do? Oh! You’re great right there, Et. Don’t come closer. Hold that lantern steady.” JP began to work with the heifer. Etta looked up. JP grunted a few times, and Bittie huffed rhythmically.
“I.. It’s done. He’s born.” JP said.
“Is it…” Etta began, but her voice trailed off as she tore her eyes from the empty barn swallow nest she had been focusing on. Bittie gently mooed, and Etta heard her struggle to stand. Etta looked down. The calf was indeed born. It had two heads.
* * *
Etta and JP stayed with the calf as the sun came up. He stood up on his shaky legs as any other calf would have done, but as he wobbled up to Bittie, she would not stand for him to be fed from her.
“This happens sometimes even with…healthy calves.” JP said as they leaned their arms on the posts of the pen, watching the calf and Bittie. “Sometimes with heifers, it being their first, they aren’t sure what to do. I can usually persuade a cow to accept her calf, but with this one… I don’t know. It seems cruel to both of them.”
“I don’t know. I think he should be allowed that comfort.” Etta said. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the middle eye, which the two heads shared.
“He’s… Not liable to live for long, Et. From what I’d read a while back, when these things…happen, the calves don’t live for long. I remember thinking that was a mercy—that God was calling it home.”
Etta thought on this. It was a line of thinking she’d followed a million times; if there is any intention in creation, any architect or divine being, how can a new life be created like…this? She didn’t think she could ever decide how she thought about it. Especially recently, with everything… she’d positively thought herself dizzy and numb over it.The older she got, the more she thought and the less she knew. Etta glanced at JP’s face, studying the slight stubble that had grown since yesterday. It was a face she knew better than her own, even. But recently she was more aware that she could never know exactly what went on behind those familiar eyes. She herself had felt like they were one and the same, united flesh in marriage, but now… She was painfully aware that there were things she could never know.
“I don’t know about that. Look, he’s hungry, JP. We can’t just sit here and watch this.” Etta said, leaving the post and approaching the calf. One mouth found the edge of the sleeve of her housecoat, pulling it into her mouth. She nudged the soft lips away, just for the other side to try to get at her sleeve again. “JP, I can’t sit here and watch this.”
“I hear you, sweetheart. It won’t be long no matter what we do. Why don’t you go inside and go back to bed? I reckon you could get a little bit more shut eye. The sun won’t be truly up for a while yet. And don’t you have to meet with Father in the morning?” He walked through the straw-lined pen to squat by his wife. He scratched the calf on its neck, then put his arm around Etta.
“Shit. I forgot about that meeting. God, I am not looking forward to that. But I can’t sleep now. I mean, I don’t want to. Can’t we give him something? Is there any milk left?” Etta asked, standing suddenly, her eyes wild, fighting off the tears that had welled as she looked into the deep black eyes of the calf. It let out a soft moo.
“Well, yes, but really, Etta, listen. There’s no way he’ll live past sunrise. Look at him, hon. I don’t mean to be a jerk, but that’s just the way it is. He’s way beyond our help. Even if ole Bittie didn’t reject ‘im. Some things just can’t be helped.” JP stood and brushed a hair that had broken free of the pincurls framing Etta’s forehead.
“I don’t accept that.” Etta breathed out. The tears were falling softly.
“You what?” JP searched her face.
“I don’t accept that. I know that he won’t live, but I can’t sit and watch and do nothing.” She wiped at her eyes.
“Etta, use your head. Go inside and get some rest.”
“Please, JP. Don’t we have plenty of milk?”
“I really think—” JP began, but stopped himself, wiped at his brow and sighed. He looked at his wife. “Okay. I’ll go fix a bottle.” Etta said nothing. She knelt back down by the calf as JP walked off to prepare the formula.
The tears fell freely now without the condescending pity of JP to hold herself in check. She rocked with them, stoking the neck of the two-headed calf. Her throat tightened. Her belly was a knot she would surely never untangle. She was momentarily beyond conscious thought. She let the sobs shake her for a while and gradually returned to herself. The calf seemed unperturbed by her behavior, but, Etta thought as she watched its faces through her own tear-streaked eyes, how would it have any idea that this behavior was abnormal, or, for that matter, related to him?
Here was an animal, just five minutes into this world, what could it know? The touch of her hand on its head. The instinctual suckling motion with every object the lips came in contact with. Etta wiped her eyes, her breathing leveling out again, and thought about the first five minutes with her baby after he had been born. She had been so tired and utterly convinced that holding him would be her last act on earth. Etta had been certain she was dying. It was a difficult birth, and she remembered that as she lay in the bed, her last thought before drifting into unconsciousness was At least I got to hold him before I go.
She glanced at Bittie, and wondered if she rejected the calf because of his deformity, or because it was her first calf and she didn’t know what to do. JP had said that heifers can sometimes take some convincing to feed their calves, being inexperienced. But Etta wondered.
She found an old feed sack in the corner and began to wipe the worst of the birth fluids off the calf. He was laying in the hay and Etta made quick work of cleaning him. She traced the cloth down each leg to the hoof, holding the fragile bundles of muscle, bone, and fur as if the calf would start and run away if he knew what she was doing. With the bulk of mess off his fur, she rose to her feet and searched for a gentler cloth to clean around his faces.
She didn’t search for long. JP returned with the bottle, and Etta firmly returned to the present. Her eyes were puffy and red, she was sure, but she no longer hitched her breath on an inhale. Her throat was raw and she had a headache, but she trusted herself to speak.
“I...Thank you.” Etta took the overlarge bottle JP offered. She noticed that he had also brought with him a bucket of warm soapy water and an old dish rag. JP began to wipe the pitiful creature’s faces himself while Etta struggled to decide which of the mouths to feed. She avoided looking at her husband, convinced that she could feel his exhaustion and pity wafting her direction. But as she deliberated on her own task at hand, Etta caught a glimpse of his stubbled face—intent on cleaning the animal with such tenderness that suffused every stroke of his hand with the soapy cloth. A level of care and gentling that matched her own. Her heart bloomed in her chest. She held the bottle to the calf. It found the nipple with one mouth and suckled greedily, formula dripping down one chin.
* * *
The calf, initially so sure on its legs, was beginning to unsteady as the sun started its ascent in earnest. Etta and JP took turns bottle feeding when it gently mooed, sitting together side by side in the calving pen. The door to the barnyard was open and the horizon to the east had begun to purple then pink.
“How does something like this happen?” Etta asked her husband. He had one arm around her waist, the other was on the rear of the calf. Both its chins rested in Etta’s lap as she sat crosslegged in the hay.
“I don’t reckon I have an answer to that.” JP said.
“I don’t mean, what I mean to say is… What could be the natural reason something like this could happen? Is it Bittie’s fault?” Etta glanced at Bittie, sleeping in the corner of the pen.
“I don’t know, Et. I could look it up in one of those animal husbandry books, but I doubt anyone could tell a person with any certainty the why or how it happened. From what I gather it could have been one thing, or a hundred things that lined up just-so.” JP said.
“I mean to say, could it have happened to any other cow? Was it something she was fed, or something that happened while she was pregnant?”
“For all I know, it could be any of that. It could be due to Cyrus, though none of the others had any issues.” Cyrus was the bull that was bred with Bittie the previous year.
“Was there any sign something wasn’t right?”
“Well, hon, I didn’t even know she was due to calf, did I?” JP was a man of action. He was very tired and growing short on patience with his wife’s line of questioning. He took the irregular calving personally.
“I didn’t mean—I just… I’ve never seen such a thing before.”
“Me neither.” Despite the tender light, day seemed so far off.
“How much…how long do you think he’ll live?” Etta avoided JP’s eyes.
“Not long now. Look, his eyes are open but they’re fluttering. And he can’t get up on his legs.” The calf was lifting its chins toward the bottle, which still had a little formula inside. It struggled on its knees to stand, then fell back into Etta’s lap. “Really, hon. You have got to be exhausted. It won’t be long and you really don’t need to be here. Go inside, sweetheart.”
“I won’t be able to fall asleep. I may as well be out here.” Etta said. She scanned the sleeping anomaly in her lap. Like his mother, his fur was dark. But the color was somehow even richer than Bittie’s. The scruff on both heads was dark, almost blue in the flickering kerosene light. Etta traced the brow bone on first one fuzzy forehead, then the other. Three beautiful black eyes looked up at her, blinking long lashes.
“Do you think he knows he’s not long for it?” Etta nearly whispered, afraid to break eye contact with the fragile creature.
“Who can say? Can a calf know anything?”
“You’d be able to answer that better than me.” Etta looked at JP.
“I… want to think they do.” JP started and stopped. Etta was surprised by his answer. He was usually so quiet when she started in on conversations like this. She looked up from the calf and waited. “It’s just…they stand and drink and are born with some secret knowledge of how to be a cow. It’s not at all like—well, like…well. He was so small and fragile.”
“I know.” Etta stiffened.
“I just remember when he was born, after years of calvings, I expected our baby to…be more. He was so small.” JP’s words slowed as he spoke.
“He was small.” Etta froze, bottle in hand.
“But calves...they come out…ready. Or at least, mostly ready. They stand and drink and within a couple days they look like cows, just… smaller.” JP ruffled the fur on the back of the calf’s neck.
“Yes.” Etta said. She had just been thinking the same.
“So I guess all I’m getting at is this; I think calves are born knowing what it takes to live. Maybe not like you and I know things, not…not on the front of their minds. Not.. What’s the word I’m looking for?” JP asked.
“Consciously? Overtly?”
“Sure. Either one. But as for, if he knows…somehow? I really don’t have the foggiest.” JP said.
“He seems to be drinking because he likes the taste, not because he’s got any real hunger.” Etta was still holding the bottle for the calf.
“Maybe he does know something then.”
“Someone told me even the most loyal family dogs go off on their own when its their time to go. Their owners will find them days later.” Etta said.
“True enough. But a bitch will do the same thing when she’s ready to have her litter. I knew a coonhound breeder, old Jeff Guinn, dead now, but you knew him, didn’t you? Anyway, he always locked his pregnant hounds in the back room of his house. Drove his wife nuts, but it was the only way he could keep ‘em close at hand when they were ready.”
“Do the cows wander off when its time to calf?” Etta asked.
“Sometimes they do.” JP said. “Depends. They seem less stressed if they do wander off. Apart from the others.”
“JP, I..” Etta began, but she didn’t know what she had intended to say. She broke off and looked out the open barn door. The sun had crested the hills. She drew a breath in.
“I’ve never much made the connection before, but it seems like even the most social animals want to be alone in both the start of life and...the end of it. There must be some instinctual need for solitude in birth and dying.” JP said.
“I don’t know about that.” Etta said. But JP had found a ball of yarn in his usually sorted thoughts and was determined to untangle it.
“I mean, I’ve seen countless calvings and litters of hogs born. I’ve seen sick critters slink off to the furthest reaches of pens and pastures. There’s gotta be something in that.”
“I know I wanted to be alone in labor. I’m glad men aren’t in the room when it happens. I was near suffocated with the attentions of my mother and sister. It would have been unbearable to bring…our son into the world with anyone else witnessing. I wanted his first breath all to myself.” Etta spoke slowly, not looking at JP. She knew that he had wanted desperately to be in the birthing room.
They sat for a while longer, not speaking, as the sun climbed higher and higher over the hills. The calf had laid down and no longer attempted to rise. The bottle was not yet empty, but it seemed the calf was not interested in drinking any more.
“When I was sixteen, my grandmother passed.” Etta began, quickly checking JP’s face. His eyes were dry. He looked very tired. “I know I told you we were very close, but did I tell you I was in the room when she died?”
“No. I didn’t know that.” JP ran his thumb over Etta’s knuckles.
“I think she waited to go until I was there with her. My father was there. When she got sick…it was so quick, how fast she deteriorated. My father tried to make like everything was just as it had been, that she was healthy and hale, but I watched her. Over that whole month she became a hollowed out husk of herself. She was sick and miserable and ready to go. I saw it.”
“And you were with her at the end?” JP asked.
“I—I was. I knew it would be the last of it. She had this labor to her breaths. My father was running around giving her this medicine and that water to drink, trying to get her to eat, to get her strength up.” Etta laughed a bitter laugh. “Meanwhile I just sat by her chair and held her wrinkly hand. We had nearly identical hands, did I ever tell you that?” Etta dropped JP’s hand and held hers out before their faces. “Hers were wrinkly and spotted and so near skeletal at the end, but they shared the same proportions. It was the only physical feature I inherited from her. I don’t think we looked much alike. My father was her spitting image though.”
“I’ve seen the photograph your father kept at his desk. I always thought it was funny how little you looked like your dad’s side.” JP said.
“My grandpa though, he passed not six months after her—a broken heart and you can’t tell me otherwise—I look like him a bit. I’ve got his chin.”
“I’ve always loved your butt-chin,” JP said, and pinched her chin between his fingers.
“My inheritance.” Etta took a breath and wiped her eyes. “But that evening, I was holding her hand, fragile as a baby bird, more fragile, even—she was in so much pain—in mine, while my father ran around, fussing over this and that. She coughed and looked at me, she always had the bluest eyes I’ve seen, but she was too weary for words. I called my father over. I don’t know how she did it, but that look told me. We held hands and then it finally sank in to my father that she was ready to go. I kissed her cheek and nodded at her, my father cried, and she was gone.”
“Well, I…I didn’t know.” JP said.
“Well, I always knew how mystical it sounds. How can I be so sure that she waited for our permission for her to go? But I am sure. As much as anything else I know. I can’t explain it rationally, but I know that she wasn’t afraid, and she wanted us beside her, and for us to allow her to go. I know that as certain as any other truth. But that’s not exactly dinner table conversation. I don’t really think I’ve ever put it into words like this. Even to myself. I just knew it.” Etta scratched the calf behind one ear. Its breath had slowed.
“I can understand that.”
“Meanwhile, six months later, my grandfather passed in his sleep, alone in the bed they shared for sixty years of marriage. He wasn’t even ill. My father never forgave him that. I guess all this to say that I think it depends—if a thing need to be alone at the end.” Etta paused. “I can say for certain that nothing is ever alone at the beginning. The mother is always there with the newly born. No one is led through death, but not one little living thing goes through birth alone.”
* * *
“Is he…” JP began as the hay crunched under his weight, lowering himself next to his wife.
“No. But I doubt it’ll be long now.” Etta felt the slight pulse at the neck, barely tangible beneath her cold fingertips. She cleared her throat. She was thirsty and her back and knees ached from sitting in one position for so long. She dreaded shifting her position. She ran both her hands over each forehead, brushing her fingers at the base of the neck where the calf’s two heads met. The rays of the sun wafted in through the open bar doors. Dust motes danced in the light, bouncing off the slab floor littered with straw. Footsteps on the gravel announced Ely’s return: the morning had arrived. The calf closed its eyes.