4. The Cow ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

The blustery weather of November was at hand. The wind moaned beneath leaden skies, and the branches of the twin oaks near the barn tossed and creaked. Robert and Charles helped scatter ground chicken feed from a repurposed coffee can along the tin feeders inside the old chicken house. Next, it was off to the barn to milk the Holstein cows, which had already come in from the pasture on their own without having to be herded. Fuzz watched from the high threshold of the door of the corn crib within the barn while Charles and Robert used other discarded coffee cans to scoop ground feed from a sack and to pour it in the shallow boxes in the stalls. Their father said, “Watch out below,” and, shortly thereafter, dropped a hay bale through the rectangular hole cut in the bottom of the mow. He followed down the ladder that was nailed to the wall there and began to scatter last summer’s sweet-smelling clover and timothy in the deep hay boxes that ran the length of both sides of the alley down the middle of the barn and that held a shallow feed tray in each stall.

While Joe balanced on a one-legged milking stool and rhythmically squirted the milk into an enameled bucket, Robert and Charles sang songs in the alleyway.

I’ve been working on the railroad
All the live-long day.
I’ve been working on the railroad
Just to pass the time away.
Can’t you hear the whistle blowing?
Rise up so early in the morn!
Can’t you hear the whistle blowing?
Dinah, blow your horn!

Dinah, won’t you blow,
Dinah, won’t you blow,
Dinah, won’t you blow your horn?
Dinah, won’t you blow,
Dinah, won’t you blow,
Dinah, won’t you blow your horn?

Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah …

… and on went the rollicking song and others like it, until Joe had finished milking the few cows that needed to be milked. He had almost a full bucket, which he had to carry carefully so as not to spill a drop.

Back at the enclosed porch to the east of the house, the boys and their father unsnapped the line of buckles down their boots, kicked them off, and hung their wraps before sitting down to dinner.

Ida had prepared buttery grilled cheese sandwiches and a huge batch of chili. The conversation flowed without cessation while the four of them ate and ate.

After dinner, the television was turned on so that the family could watch Gunsmoke. All too soon, it seemed, everyone had to go to bed.

In the middle of the night, Robert slowly awakened to unaccustomed sounds. He rubbed his eyes and tried to comprehend why light was coming down the hallway from the kitchen to the boys’ bedroom. He heard his parents’ anxious voices.

Charles was already out of bed, so Robert tossed back the warm covers. Following his brother’s lead, Robert pulled his jeans over his flannel pajamas and put a flannel shirt over the flannel pajama top. In the cool darkness, he accidentally put pajama buttons through the shirt button holes and had to start over. By the time he had found his shoes and socks, he was well behind Charles.

Robert was frightened. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

“I suppose I ought to wake up Glen Bisel,” Joe was saying to Ida when the boys came running into the kitchen.

“What’s wrong?” Charles asked.

The boys’ mother replied, “The cows got out, and one of them fell in the hole.”

Robert suddenly became aware of a distant bellowing. The mournful sound seemed blown by the gusts of wind. The hole was almost as deep as a cow was tall and had been dug to fix a tile problem. It could not be backfilled until Joe could be assured that the difficulties had been resolved.

Joe put on his denim coat and his cap with the ear flaps. Soon, he was driving his GMC pickup to the Sinclair gasoline station to awaken his friend Glen.

Before long, the GMC returned. Behind it came Glen’s wrecker. Joe parked the pickup so that its headlights illuminated the scene. To Robert, the occurrence felt like a weird dream: beams from headlamps casting fantastic shadows, groaning wind, black-and-white cow mooing in distress, Glen carefully lowering his truck’s heavy chain with a canvas sling attached, struggling to position the sling under the belly of the terrified cow, and slowly lifting the cow from the hole that had swallowed it.

As the sling came away, the cow scrambled to trot away. Joe herded it and the other cows through the broken fence before setting a metal fence post and using pliers to splice new wire around the breaks.

“Would you come in for a cup of coffee?” Ida asked Glen.

“No, thank you,” Glen smiled in the light from his wrecker. “I think I’ll go back to bed.”  It was—after all—the middle of the night.

While Robert, Charles, and their mother trudged back to the house, Joe drove the pickup around to the driveway.

“I guess Dad should have listened to you,” Robert said.

“Don’t find fault with your father,” Robert’s mother warned. “Once there’s a problem, it’s time to fix the problem. It’s never the time to say, ‘I told you so.’”

Charles and Robert went back to bed while Ida and Joe had a cup of Nescafé instant coffee to settle their jangled nerves. It had been an eventful night. Robert lay awake for some time, listening to the roar of the wind. He thought about how his father was an excellent farmer, and Robert wondered how his father could sometimes make slapdash fence repairs that anyone could see would not hold back cows for long. Robert guessed that his father had much to do and could not give every task the same degree of attention. Thankfully, his father had fixed the fence properly on this night! Then Robert thought about how his father worked hard throughout each day, including hours before sunrise and after sunset, and Robert remembered what his mother had said about not finding fault. He felt embarrassed that he had been critical of his father’s fence-mending. With a sense of guilt, he tossed and turned until he finally fell asleep. Inspired by his mother’s frequent readings of Winnie the Pooh stories, Robert dreamed that a Horrible Heffalump had fallen in the hole.