Millicent Corbin studied the two, spindly legs and rubbery muzzle extending from the south end of her favorite cow. Her breath sledge-hammered her chest, the cadence making her ears ring. A loop of baling twine cut into each wrist as she held the lines taut on the calf's ankles. Dropping her head, she used her shoulder to swipe with frustration at a damp lock of hair. The cow's low bawl and the calf's spindly legs tore at Millicent's heart.Lowering to a hay bale at the rear of the laboring cow, Millicent planted one boot sole on each black and white rump. With a deep breath and clenched teeth, she began a steady, strong pull on the delicate legs. Letting out one long breath, she drew in another, kept the rope taut, and spoke loving encouragement with each contraction. As the face of the calf emerged, she reached out quickly and swathed the mucus from it, exposing the wet hair beneath.
Breathe, sweetheart, breathe.
"C'mon, Mollie. C'mon, baby. You can do this." Sweat tricked down Millicent's nose, dripping to the hay between her knees.
Liquid-slick, the tiny creature slid from the womb in a pungent trail of amniotic fluid and blood. Millicent skittered backward and stood up, brushing the hay from her jeans. A fresh breeze from the open door hit the sweat on the back of her shirt and she shivered. Her arms trembled from exertion as she released the twine and touched the calf with satisfied fingertips.
A little girl. Life goes on.
Within moments the new mother was sweeping her great tongue over the calf, encouraging it to move. Millicent watched the new calf struggle to stand on quivering legs, then she left the cool of the barn.
In the brilliant morning, she stood outside the big doors, closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun. Spring was only days away--not by the calendar, by what she knew of her land. She could hear the breeze caress the tree buds, waking them into new, delicate green. She loved the loamy smell of the soil freshly released from it's blanket of snow. In the meadow below the road, the creek swelled it's banks and two mallards let the current carry them by.
But with the spring, came the birthings and days of hard labor unsuited for a woman, she knew. Pulling calves, plowing gardens, fixing tractors and equipment, clearing brush...the list went on forever. Spring didn't recognize grief.
She paused for a moment, remembering that day a year ago when she'd stood in the lush green of spring, 1991, but Spring hadn't recognized her grief then, either. On that day, she'd stood in the Corey, Pennsylvania cemetery. Grey rain had slashed across her face, peppering the soft, fresh dirt that covered her husband's grave. She'd watched thin rivulets form and snake downward through the dirt. The wind had tipped over a cut glass vase of roses. The blossoms spilled, strewn over the dirt mound, leaves muddy and petals torn.
Behind her, the cow mooed low and sleepy, bringing her back to spring, 1992. To the bright sun and the fragile green of her farm. To awakening challenges and the now distant sting of Phil's death. Grief eventually gave way to apathy, which became a balm of endurance. Willful, focused detachment from the memories allowed her to carry on, fulfill her responsibilities to her farm. But occasionally, when a day was filled to the brim with emotion, memories would creep in and her soul would pause and crouch under the veil of them, to be released later, under some new, mind-occupying task.
* * *
The screen door squeaked and slammed as she stepped onto the service porch. Through the window she saw Frank, one of her two herdsmen, stroll out of the east field and ramble slowly toward the house. Where had he been through Mollie's labor? She had a hunch, but for the past couple weeks, with the spring work, it had turned into an issue for the back burner. She tried to suppress her anger now, no time for it. No heart for the consequences of it.
Shedding her muck-laden boots, she pulled off the socks that had accordioned around her toes and slipped on a pair of worn deck shoes. In the dark kitchen, she washed her hands and scribbled a note to Frank: Warm a bottle of colostrum from the freezer and feed Mollie's new calf. I'll be back in a couple hours.
Snatching a list and a hand-written notice from under a magnet on the refrigerator, she shoved them into a pocket of her jeans. Pulling her shirt gingerly away from her middle, she scanned it for stains, shrugged, and neatened the tucks into her waistband. With her jacket and keys from a hook by the kitchen door, she slipped through the house and out the front to her pickup. The old engine fired up and Millicent headed into town.
* * *
Outside Corey, she slowed to forty miles an hour. The old truck seemed to find every pothole in the road, jostling her slender frame back and forth behind the wheel. Old victorian houses came into view as she closed in on the only intersection in town. Their front lawns seemed neatly manicured even while freshly uncovered from winter. Corey citizens loved their old homes, many of which had been registered as historical buildings. Within a heartbeat, she'd reached the center of town. Small, neatly painted shops bumped shoulders like soldiers at attention. Bearing right around the square then right again down Alder, she headed north a few blocks.
The feed and hardware crouched long and low at the end of the street. Chipped, peeling letters stretched the length of the building: Schat's Feed and Hardware. She rolled through a few puddles from last night's typical Pennsylvania spring shower, backed up to the bulk grain end of the building and turned off the engine. Hopping up a few cement steps, her thin deck shoes crunched over the grain littered floor of the long, open warehouse.
A cool burst of air chased her in a side door that snapped closed at her heels, and she walked the aisle of loose-seed bins to the store's front counter. The smell of raw, crushed grain and dust rose from the plank wood floor, thickening the air. Skirting garden equipment and gardening how-to books iced with dust, she pulled the notice from her pocket and pinned it to the store's bulletin board by the front door.
Wanted: Herdsman for 60 head dairy farm. Clean, well-managed herd. Responsibilities include replacement animal care and milking. Familiar with animal reproduction and birth processes and operations of farm equipment (maintenance and repair). Record keeping a must. Free housing. Monthly pay. Apply at Corbin Dairy Farm, off Rt. 39, on Hamilton Road, 5 miles outside Corey.
She sighed and stared at the ad. Kurt Johnson and Frank Hubble, the men she'd hired a few weeks after Phil's death, were a dissapointment after only a month. Their sly drinking warranted walking papers, but replacements were rare in the small farming community of Corey. She'd sent notices to all the larger papers, but decided to post here too, leaving no stone unturned. She was tired.
Three old coverall-clad farmers on worn, mismatched barstools rested their elbows on the far end of the long, u-shaped counter at the center of the store. Gnarled hands hugged steaming coffee mugs as they smiled amiably, nodded at Millicent and went back to their farm gossip. Fred Schat's teenage son Ryan ambled past the low conversation and leaned toward her over the counter. Raised, red acne peppered his neck, and oily hair spaghettied over one eyebrow. He slid her a friendly, lazy smile.
"Hi Ryan. I have a list of things I need." She pulled the list from her jeans and smoothed it on the worn linoleum covered surface in front of him. "Would you throw it all in the back of my pickup?"
He read the list on his way down the aisle to the rear dock door.
Heavy steps tramped up the front wooden walkway outside, and three brass cowbells suspended inside the main door jangled as it opened. The door's draft flipped ads on the bulletin board before the latch clanked shut. Millicent heard feet scrape the welcome mat then step to a display of equestrian supplies.
Through the thin dirt frosting of an overhead security mirror, she saw a tall man. She glanced back down and toward the door. Only a black western hat with a narrow, silver band was visible over the top of the display. The hat kept dissappearing and reappearing as the man dipped to examine items on the shelves.
Ryan re-entered the store and called toward the front, "If I can help with anything, let me know!"
The man flashed two fingers in the air, Nixon-style, then moved to the counter side of the display.
Millicent discreetly eyed the man's sheepskin lined, denim coat. Weather-worn jeans covered strong thighs, their sharp front creases riding the instep of immaculate western boots. A thick, black ponytail trailed midway down his back and a faded circle embossed the fabric of one hip pocket. She wondered vaguely if it was a snuff box. She noted the broad shoulders under the jacket. He sure didn't fit here among seed corn bins and garden tools. Still...her eyes drifted to the bottom of the denim coat. A border of white sheepskin buffed the pale blue circle on the back pocket each time the big man raised an arm to pick something up. A feeling long forgotten, like the petals of a wind-blown flower, shivered within and then was gone.
She casually watched his careful take-and-put investigation of things, then he stepped to the register with a hoof trimming kit and a tin of saddle soap. She shook a peppermint candy from an antique milk bottle at her elbow and busied herself unwrapping it.
Ryan stood behind the register.
"This be it?"
The big man settled against the counter.
"Yeah. For right now. But....I'm wonderin' if you can help me with somethin'."
"Yeah, sure." Ryan reached for a Bic and the order tablet.
"I hear I need a tractor. Somethin' big." He splayed his arms.
Amused, Millicent eyed Ryan. She watched as a torrent of curiosity and the dawning of a big sale played over his face and struggled with his sense of manners. She felt a burst of satisfaction at his well-schooled response.
"Well, we can order you a John Deere or a Massey-Ferguson, or you could go up to the International Dealer in Forsythe." Ryan flippped his oily hair back.
"I hear that's a good piece up north of here, huh?"
"Yeah," Ryan replied. "Let me go get directions from my dad." He headed for the back of the store.
Millicent knew it wasn't for directions. Old man Schat would be out that office door in a moment, all teeth and handshakes. Maybe she'd stick around for the entertainment.
One of the farmers sauntered down the counter, spitting a shot of tobacco juice into a can clamped between a thumb and forefinger. Stepping around Millicent, he extended an arthritic hand.
"Name's Jerry Hawkins. That's Allen Boone and Jake Brothers." He aimed his chin toward the other men and they nodded in unison.
Darn it, Jerry, I knew you wouldn't include me. Chauvinism lived on in old farmers.
Making another deposit in the can, Jerry swiped a tobacco drip from his chin with the back of his hand and inspected the stranger with bold curiosity.
"You live around here? New in town?"
"Westin Barrister." Millicent watched the cowboy extend a big hand. "Nice to meet you. Got some property outside town."
Barrister...Barrister...where have I heard that name? Quickly, she swept her memories.
"Where 'bouts?" Jerry asked, leaning an elbow companionably on the counter.
"Oh, 'bout ten miles out." Cowboy grinned.
"Why you buyin' a new tractor, son? You got money ta burn? The board by the door's got some good ones. No used ta buyin' ya a new one. Save yerself some money." The old man shrugged. "Hell, I even got me one on that board."
"You got a tractor for sale, Jerry?" Boone called down the counter.
"Yeah. That old 620 Deere. You know...the one sat out in m' west field..."
Jerry's words faded as the conversation of friends drew him back to the other side of the room. Millicent took the opportunity to extend a hand.
"I'm Millicent Corbin. Nice to meet you, Mr. Barrister."
He faced her. The dark Stetson sat low over well shaped, blue-black eyebrows. His lips were generous with wide bowpoints. Millicent watched his mouth spread into a grin that crushed his cheeks against eyes the color of deep pine timber before a thunderstorm. The smile engaged his entire face. There was that old feeling again. The one she thought she'd buried for her own good. It was back, rippling through her. Stronger was the sense that she'd heard the name Barrister before...long ago...when?
Come to your senses! Say something intelligent.
"You might actually find what you want on the board. Have you given it a look?"
Step away from the Cowboy. Now.
"It's over by the door, here." She twisted around him and the horse tack display and he followed. A distinct scent of mint and cinnamon drifted up behind the man. It moved to either side of her and seemed to finger a lock of her hair.
Proping one hand on the wall, she leaned in and scanned the ads under push pins and brittle, yellowed scotch tape.
"Here." She finger-pinned a curled ad. "Caterpillar 85 with tracks. Skip loader. 275 horse power with enclosed cab, radio, AC..." She drifted off and glanced at him. "It's used, but they only want a hundred thousand for it."
She let go, the ad curled back up, and she pushed her hands into her jacket pockets. His gaze flickered to the tousled braid over her right shoulder. The scent of him---something cinnamon---settled around her, too close, too intimate.
"Well, looks like that's about it." She shrugged and took a step back.
There was that smile again. My God! A dimple! Move away. Move away.
"Wait." He touched her arm. "Do you know this party? Ahh...." He flattened ad again, reading the name at the bottom. "The...ahhh...Lassiter Farm?"
Something inside her shuddered with a sweetness she didn't expect, but finally recognized. And something else...fear? Guilt? Disloyalty? She stepped a few more feet away toward safety.
"No. Not personally. I think their place is up near Juliette."
