Snow Blind - Lori G. Armstrong [31]
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, cranking 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.
104
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 complacent, 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 butchered 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.
106
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