Calving

By Bridget Apfeld

It had been her cousin Laurie who’d taught her. Laurie sixteen, she eleven. Jessie conscious of the weight of those five years but Laurie reassuring, serene. Ripe with knowledge and, willing Madonna, generous with it too.

They went down to the park to sit on the swings. Jessie wore her cousin’s old suede coat with the fringe. She picked at the tassels and swung her arms to make them shake. If she thought Laurie was not looking, she took the sleeve to her face and smelled it. Peppermint and old fur and a nutty, warm shampoo. That scent made her dizzy, yes: it was knowledge. It was those five years and everything that might spiral out of them, clutch her by the wrists, and shake her good.

Geese in the sky: high November, a brown cold day. The ground hard like shin bones. The playground creaking in that shiver-wind.

Watch me, Jessie said. Hand over hand on the monkey bars. Thin legs dragging on the ground, already too tall. White ankles stretching out of frill-collared socks. And Laurie on the swings, self-contained, legs pumping up-down, up-down, corn-flax hair flying high behind her. Dervish and the wind itself. Mysterious Laurie, sixteen.

Come here, Laurie said. I’m going to teach you something. Jessie dropped to the ground. Wood chips on soft palms. Red welt imprints, suck out the splinters.

Farm girls are best at it, Laurie said to Jessie. We know how to drag it out of them because of the cows. Stroke by stroke.

Laurie spoke with authority, preacher at her pulpit, outlining from the shadows a sudden miraculous maleness, red-plum fullness, blood and heat and precious softness, the rise, slow rise, of something sentient and seeking; Jessie marveled at the anatomy unveiled, that unknown-known nubbin, the thing, suddenly transformed into a veiny disattached organ, a rope of flesh and blood and sinew and twitches and yearnings: animal thing of anatomy books. Truffle-scented flesh and salt. The body at its bodily work. This was a thing with a mind that could be won. This was a thing you could touch.

When they’re ready you can tell, Laurie said. Under your fingers. Under your tongue. A rush—like bubbles up your nose. Only in them, not you. Jessie wondered at her cousin’s craftsman pride. Bubbles, she murmured. She sniffed the suede jacket. Gnawed on the trim a little.

They’ll look like it’s hurting them, Laurie said. But it’s not. Her gray eyes lightly lashed, catching sun. They love it.

Jessie wondered about this, the intersection of love and pain. Wondered how to delicately probe this question, of how to tell when pain was pain and when the pain was love.

Now catch me! Laurie cried, and she whirled away again. Up the slide, down the slide: reverse, Laurie a verse of herself. Laurie plain and simple on the slide.

Bubbles, Jessie whispered again. See them both, two girls on a neighborhood park swing set. Autumn oaks blowing leaves with satisfied gusts. The blackwing night approaching, though yet the lamps are unlit. The girls’ heads bent together, thick with conspiracy. They are shelter. They are girlish love. They are everything they ought to be.

Jessie loved the way the boys looked like calves at a bottle when she took them in her mouth: the way their eyes rolled and shut in pleasure, how they tipped their heads back a little, necks stretching, their skin jumpy and hot when she massaged their thighs. How they shivered little moans of happiness when she suckled on their cocks, her hands working with even firm strokes to bring them to finish—a hard hand, harder than you’d think was all right, the same as with the milking. You were never going to tug off a teat, so grab it hard.

They came to her for what they wanted because they knew she gave it, and she gave it free because she liked it. Took no thought that they were quiet about it, church mice peeping for their bread in the shadows of the altar, penitent and pleading and pleased when she said yes. It bothered her none that they drove to the map’s edge to park in wayside places. In school her name was a mosquito in their mouths but in the shelter of her arms they breathed her living glory. Jessie whose hair smelled of the grass and who could potshot a tin can from fifty yards with a ball made of clay. Jessie of tick quilting and cold-running rivers. A sleek fish swishing her pretty tail.

Jessie lived in the house with her mother and her brother, and in the attic was Tobias Mane, come down from Menasha for the calving. A hundred head and more of Holstein ready to drop, and they didn’t have hands enough. Not hands enough indeed.

Tobias Mane: itchy-foot wanderer, a man with a car and hunger. He wore his black hair long, tied it up when he put his back to work. And Jessie did notice that strip of skin pulled freshly clean above his collar when he bent to braid his hair.

Tobias Mane, she asked one day. How old do you think you are? He popped a shoulder at her. And why, he said, do you think you get to know?

Tell me, she insisted. No pout on her: she called for knowledge as deserved. She stood up tall to his estimation. Let his eyes run over the length of her and make his mind up straight.

Twenty, he finally said. It was true enough. Now he looked at her and smirked. And you, he said, jackrabbit: scrawny little thing.

Sixteen! she shrieked. Birds caught in her throat and released. She said, Sixteen. When she could wait no more for an answer to that she said, Well, what do you know anyway?

Just about enough, he said, and flicked his cigarette into the dirt before he stomped away. But Jessie knew that was no dismissal—knew men, now, like the rattle-bones scarecrow in the threshing field: bluster and bluff but at their center nothing more than last-season straw. Needles if you put your hand right down upon it, but approach from the side and it was smooth as ice.

So Jessie went about her business the way she always did. Sang in the cows and measured feed in the troughs; ignored her mother and her brother calling for her when the sun was close to down. Come inside, they said, there’s dinner on the board. But Jessie wanted to feed on love and nothing more than that. She laughed her pretty laugh and drove down the roads with boys from the town. Couldn’t keep her head from notching to the mirror to see if Tobias Mane noticed when she left, but she left all the same. She was a farm girl and no fool: wasn’t going to wait on something that wouldn’t help itself.

And all the time, was she noticed? Did he care? Could anything be said about the way he stood at ease and saw just how strong her shoulders were when she chained up the swinging gate, laughing while the dogs yawped at her knees? He closed his eyes: her body, chained to his. Endless shackles. No key for the padlock. Or: he’d eaten the key. Could feel it in his gullet where it slipped and bumped his spine.

Tobias Mane, his hostess chided. You’re standing like a dope. He shrugged his sorries to her. Shook Jessie from his mind. Jessie, in cars with boys. Driving down the sumac roads to places where the dirt flew about, and when the car was parked ice dripped slow in the wheel wells, soaking up heat from the run-rubber tires. Jessie of generous love and revenge. Jessie of algebra and soccer games and spit and swallow and movies with vampires and pain.

She is becoming who she is, can feel it every day. Then one morning: in the stables at dawn. Ice-jawed March twisting its nose in the frost. Jessie hanging over the fenceline to watch Tobias Mane muck the yard.

Tobias Mane, she said. Do you know how to read? He set his spade and stood. You think I’m pretty dumb, he said. I’m just wondering about you, she said. Tobias Mane put his hand on the fence. Looked her square in the eye. You should wonder a little less, he said. You’re too smart to wonder like that.

You threatening me? she said. Got her dander up and spitting. You think this is your house to tell?

I’d be careful if I were you, he said. Oh, would you? she snipped. I could tell you something about being me.

And what would you tell me? he asked. Softer in his voice but still that rasp of mean.

And what would she tell him? Oh, she’d tell him the world, that ocean inside her: the rheumy-eyed hound who thumped his tail at her every day, and the sour skittles she ate by the handful, stolen when the cashier wasn’t looking—the bitter sugar, tongue-shrivel taste. Her awe of her brother, his solemn weight at the head of the table, no more her playmate. No more, none of that. The willow tree in the spring. Cicadas sawing through the night. Fearsome winter, days of staring dizzy into the snow until her eyes burned and she felt thinned and pure. Boys against her chest. Her nipples hardening, hard. She could tell him that part of being her, the hot giddy love she had for the boys, how it felt to be tender to their secret desire. Tender to their pride and shame. She could tell him something about generosity. She could tell him something about power.

I’d tell you to throw yourself in the pond! she hissed. And Jessie, then: gone.

I see you look at that Tobias Mane, her mother said.

Can’t avoid looking at someone who’s here, Jessie said. She pounded the dough flat on the table.

Don’t see you trying to avoid it. Her mother’s hands white with flour. Red arms thick and strong.

I’m not stupid, Jessie said. You know where your cousin Laurie’s gone, don’t you? her mother said. You know why she’s in Nevarre?

I wonder what she’ll name it, Jessie said. That’s the wrong question, you miss! her mother said. Jessie thought of the fringe-tailed coat in her closet. The smell, musk and peppermint. The glorious shimmy-shake of that fringe.

She slapped the dough with an open palm. It resisted, firm and plump.

I hope she names it after me, she said.

Jessie stepping from a car. March slush stomped under her boots.

Then, behind her: a shadow—Tobias Mane. His heart beat so very fast.

Where you coming from? he asked. And why do you want to know? She stood at the door and smirked. He thought: pinking her cheek with his hand. He thought: his lips on that pink, on her hair. Because, he said. Because.

Tell me why, she said, pouting. Tell me why. A memory came into his mind, he a small boy with his nose at the table’s edge. Tell me why, he said—to whom? He did not know anymore; that life was gone—tell me why the moon is round.

Jessie watched him from the car. Oh, that wicked smile she had. Tobias Mane burned to make it his own. Those others, the boys, they could not treat her right. It was not possible they knew anything of how to make her body move. It was not possible they deserved her.

I’ll tell you my secrets, he said. I’ll tell you what I’m thinking when I think it.

He saw her perk and listen. His secrets—so. It worked. She took a step closer, then another.

I know where it is you’re coming from, Tobias Mane said to her. All those boys.

So what? she spit. Not your business. Not at all. Maybe so, he said. In his mind her little pink tongue flicked, her teeth snapped. He nearly stopped his breath for want.

She waited for his offer. Cheeks red from that late-season wind. But with me, he said. You’ll never need that again. I’ll give you everything.

It struck him that it was a lie—but was it not the truth too, that he wanted to pour himself into Jessie and fill her like the deepest well? Water into water: she would be a second skin for him.

Yes, he nodded. Everything.

They lay in the attic together. She cupped him from behind, nestled his rear in her belly-bend. This way she could put her hand on his heart and her ear on it, too, from the back. All of him, hers. All that flowing blood and body was hers.

Do you know, Tobias Mane asked, about icebergs? Those great big chunks of ice?

Jessie thought of water the color of a wolf-dog’s eye. Whales the shade of the moon.

Most of them is hidden, he said. They’re even bigger underneath. So what? she said. You tell me what’s special about that. Tobias Mane shrugged. Maybe nothing, he said. But. But sometimes they break. Sometimes they pull apart.

Jessie heard the baseball-bat crack: a white sheet crashing down. Wolf-dog’s eye splintering from the glassy iris.

Know what it’s called? he asked. Calving. He paused a moment. Said, Isn’t that funny? Calving.

It is, she said. Something so strange and mysterious called the same as was happening in their very barn, which was not mysterious at all. Fat cows dropping their bawling young. She liked the other calving better: the fresh cold ice. Clean and pure.

Tobias Mane, she said. Tell me what you’re thinking. She squeezed a little tighter. She wondered, Could you do the opposite of calving? Could you fuse two skins together if you tried hard enough?

She felt him take a breath. Waited for his voice—but nothing. He was asleep. Her heart moved in tenderness for his limp body, so bare, in her arms. They were always like that when they were through, those child- boys. He was no different. And she loved him for it: for that silly mistake in thinking he were anyone other than one of her boys. They all wanted that, and she was happy to let them think so. Why make them come to grief? They would know themselves soon enough in life.

She was Jessie of love and mercy. Generous to all. She held Tobias Mane and slept.

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A native of Wisconsin, Bridget Apfeld currently lives in Austin, TX where she works as an editor, production assistant, writing consultant, and reader for Carve Magazine. Her previous and forthcoming work can be found in a variety of journals, including So to Speak, Midwestern Gothic, Able Muse, The Fem, Brevity, and The Alaska Quarterly Review.

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