Three Little Words

By Wednesday it had stopped snowing, and the snow plows had cleared the roads. We had school like we usually did, and it went well, but afterwards I felt as if the walls of my little trailer were closing in on me. I called Betty to let her know I was coming over, and that I would be walking. She sounded concerned, but I assured her the weather was fine and I couldn’t get lost between my house and hers. I geared up in my carhartt work pants and coat, and my snow boots, and set out down the road. Traffic had been nonexistent since the storm, and I walked down the center of the road at my leisure, drinking in field after field of soft white. It was difficult to tell where the field ended and the sky began because they were the same hue of white throughout.

I had nearly reached the cattle gate that marked the halfway point when Ben arrived on one of the four wheelers. “Mom sent me out here to pick you up.” He helped me on, laughing at my difficulty moving in the stiff Carhartts. “We need you to help us separate some of the cows.” Now it was my turn to laugh. I knew he was joking. I didn’t know the first thing about separating cattle, and what I really wanted was to get out of the cold and spend some time in Betty’s warm kitchen catching up on all the news I’d missed over the last couple of days.

We pulled into the yard and I was all ready to jump off at the door, but we drove right on past. I turned to look at Ben. “You weren’t kidding, were you?” “About what?” he responded, heading toward the bridge. “You’re really putting me to work?” “Yup,” he replied. We stopped at the end of the bridge and he motioned for me to dismount. “Just stand here,” he handed me a big stick, “and hit any of the cows that try to go past you.” With that he zoomed off into the field, leaving me standing with a stick in the middle of a bridge wondering what they heck I was going to do if a cow really came at me.

Here’s something most people don’t know about cows; they’re vicious. The week before the storm, Scott and I had taken the four wheelers out to do a little tagging. When we found a cow with an unmarked calf we pulled out an identically colored ear tag, wrote the corresponding number on it, loaded it onto the ear tagger, and tagged the calf. The tricky part was actually catching the calf. Scott rode ahead of me with a calf hook, leaning out on his four wheeler so he could snag the hind foot of the calf. Bawling in protest, the calf would then be hauled over close enough for Scott to tag it and give it a vaccine. Usually it worked like clockwork, and a tagging would take two minutes, tops. But then there were the mothers. A cow, if she was a good mother, couldn’t stand to hear her baby bawl. On this particular day we ran into the most protective mother in the pasture. Scott knew she was a mean one and had come prepared. When he caught the calf, he made sure to keep the four wheeler between him and the cow, and told me to keep my distance. Feeling useless, I sat back on my machine and watched as the cow came rushing at Scott, disregarding the four wheeler completely. She came right up on top of the machine, hooves resting on the cushioned seat, hollering her protest at the treatment of her son. Scott was forced to use the calf hook on her, beating her nose until she backed down, simultaneously tagging the wriggling calf and injecting it with vaccine. Having nothing else to do, I took pictures. It seemed like a rather morbid thing to do, knowing that the cow could easily have torn Scott to shreds, but I was obeying orders. It turned out alright in the end, except for the calf hook. When we got back to the house he realized the hook was missing. “That’s the second one I’ve broken this week!” he yelled in exasperation. I knew he wouldn’t hear the end of that for a long time.

So, now I found myself, cow-beating stick in hand, ready for the next vicious monster to challenge a human authority. I had to admit, I wasn’t nearly as daunting as Scott’s six foot frame and I was sure a cow wouldn’t hesitate for a second if it had a chance to run me over. I could see the first pair coming now and gripped my stick nervously. They didn’t look too mean, but I couldn’t be sure. They were coming down the hill at a pretty good pace and were headed straight for me. Come on, turn into the field, turn into the field. No, no, you’re coming too fast, turn into the field “Turn into the field!” I yelled as the cow, now mere yards away, had her eyes set on the pasture beyond the bridge. I raised my stick, ready to strike, when she casually turned to my right and loped through the gate into the field, as if it had been her plan all along. And so it continued. Every pair looked as if they would run me right over and then remembered suddenly that their destination was not some distant field, but the one right next door. I ended up spending most of my time talking to them, using my stick as a leaning post. “Why, hello, pair number twenty-nine. Welcome to the field, where those who have gone before are now enjoying a nice pile of hay. What’s that? Tired of men yelling at you to move? Well, if you just keep on trotting to my right here, you won’t have to worry about a thing. Yup, just keep on going. There you are, right through the gate, good job.” And so on. After a couple of hours I had run out of things to say and just sat in the middle of the bridge, hoping the work would be done soon so I could go thaw out my toes. My snow boots were old, probably half as old as me, and whatever insulating power they once had was gone. I needed to get a pair of nice muck boots, like the ones the boys owned, but they ran upwards of $150, and it would take a couple of months for me to save that money up.