Mark Jacobs
Lou’s Cows
As the end of the world comes on, comes on, Lou’s cows get loose. His humiliation is complete. He can’t get out of bed to go after them. He can’t even see what happened. A fence post has gone down in the lower pasture, that’s the only explanation. But the pasture is out behind the house, sloping south into a patch of pine woods. From the automatic bed, which is set up in the dining room where the table used to be, the tall narrow windows look north. His impotence galls. His rage is redder every day.
“I ain’t blood relations with the Gillispies,” the girl is telling him. “It’s Bradford, my ex, is Marjorie’s first cousin. But her and me are Facebook friends regardless. She knows Brad has got his faults. That’s who told me is Marjorie. She says your animals has tore up their vegetable garden pretty terrible. She took pictures and posted them on her page. She says, you don’t do something about those damn cows…”
“Shut up.”
Home health aide. That’s the name for what she does. It only just now comes to him. But not her name, not yet her name.
She shuts up as told to. Pouts a little. Big-assed blowsy blonde woman with tattoos running up and down her arms the way they all do any more, like the bastard offspring of ten thousand drunken sailors. She hands him a glass of water, then a paper cup with colorful pills. They both know she will have her revenge. Soon. The moment she decides she wants it.
Jezebel. She was the instigator, no doubt about that. Jez is the second youngest but still the ringleader. Greener pastures, she thinks in her cow brain. Then sets off in search of them with Ruth, Delilah, Naomi, and Bathsheba ambling along behind her.
Stella said it was a sin, naming his cows after Bible women, it was sacrilegious. Then she went and died on him, which spoiled the fun. What he could not explain – it was not within his gift – was the respect he intended with those names. They are the most beautiful Jersey cows in Broadhope or any other county in Southside. They are easy to love, a thing that cannot be said of aught else in his life.
You will live to rue the day, Louis Rainbolt. His wife’s last words and testament. She was gone before she could tell him what the occasion of his ruing would be. Well, it’s not like he doesn’t know what she would have said if she’d had the breath to go on. Every now and then he finishes the thought for her. You will rue the day you sent your son away to live his life with strangers. Prophecy and curse tied up together with a ribbon. It was one sharp knife cut that ribbon.
Here comes Katie Lynn’s revenge. Funny how her name pops into his head like it was never gone in the first place. Her smile is deadly sweet in the anticipation of victory.
“You ready for me to get you to the bathtub, Mr. Rainbolt?”
“Not today.”
She’s got him now. Knows it.
“Social Services says you have to bathe or be bathed, one or t’other. That’s the rule. I can help you to the bathroom or either give you a sponge bath in bed, respecting the sanctity of your private parts of course. You choose.”
This is blackmail. There’s a Commonwealth institution for the indigent aged out there waiting for the recalcitrant ones, like him, who won’t follow the rules. He’d rather die. Lying in the bed he can visualize the label on the bottle of rat poison under the kitchen sink. The poison is old, but then so is he. Worse comes to worse, he can get himself to the kitchen and drink his death by hand.
Katie Lynn knows he wants to die here, in his own bed, in his own house, on his own land, rather than be sent to expire by installments in one of the state-run homes. What she wants is to see him crawl, in a manner of speaking. Fine. He can crawl and silently curse her, where’s the harm in that?
“Tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll take a bath tomorrow.”
His voice mimics the truckling surrender she wants to exact from him. But it’s complicated. She’s not dumb. She knows he is capable of faking his capitulation, taking it back the moment she turns the handle of the front door on her way out. What happens next depends on her.
She’s staring at him. That fat soft face, those incurious blue eyes: they enrage him further. There is no limit to the ways and forms by which a young person can dominate an old person, once the old person loses the power of locomotion.
She’s thinking something, that’s for sure. She turns tail, goes to the kitchen, comes back with one of Stella’s china teacups, and the matching saucer. Blue roses, which never made any sense to Lou since no such flower is to be found in nature, but they meant a lot to his wife.
“It sure is beautiful,” says Katie Lynn.
Lou nods. Make her say the words.
“You don’t mind, Mister Rainbolt, I’d love to show this here cup and saucer to my momma. She’s got an eye for fine things.”
So it’s a double-barreled blast today. He has to surrender not just his pride but Stella’s china, too. This is the price of staying at home.
“You go on and take it, let your mother have a good look at it.”
“That’s awful sweet of you. I’ll bring it right back tomorrow, you can count on that.”
It’s her way of letting him know he’ll never see that cup and its saucer again, not this side of the grave. So be it. He wonders idly whether Tim has a wife and if so does she care for china cups.
The home health aide goes. For a moment Lou feels the lightness of freedom as the yoke of her presence lifts. Only a moment. Then the problem of the cows returns full force. There is no one he can call. By degrees over time and then suddenly, it now seems, he has angered and alienated anybody who might be persuaded to go round them up.
Through last summer he could have called Edgar Sams’ boy at the Black Angus farm over on North Branch Road. The boy – his name won’t come – has a gentle way with animals that works real well. But in a moment that a wise man would regret, Lou called him a clumsy horse-faced son of a bitch. This came about because the boy broke a screwdriver, bringing a hammer down on it while trying to pry apart two warped plywood boards. That was the end of the kid’s willingness to do chores for a few dollars.
Lou is tired. In a fog of weariness he tallies his losses. They are so many, it’s easier just to say everything.
Who is that old guy in the automatic bed? So gray, so gaunt, so grim. He has earned the contempt that is showered on him by all and sundry. Sowing and reaping, Stella used to talk about.
The Sams boy does have a horse face. That cannot be denied. The mother comes from a long line of studs and fillies.
A rest. Tim looms in his dream, as he often does. My son my son my only chick and child: the words bang and bounce around in the sleeping man’s mind but find no exit.
Waking, Lou remembers that it’s May, the pleasantest month of the year in Southside, Virginia. He smells or thinks he smells grass leaping up green. He resolves to go round up the cows himself. Why not? But the prospect is daunting. The task he envisions has an unending sequence of linked steps that must be taken in the proper order. Take them one by one, that’s the only way.
He sits up. Makes a mental list, proceeding methodically so as not to leave anything out. Get down from the bed. Put some clothes on. Shoes. No, socks; then shoes. Out and down the porch steps taking the truck key. Where is it? Must be in the kitchen, on the hook below the light switch unless somebody’s been fooling with it. Who? Back the truck up to the trailer. (He has forgotten the stick of limber hickory he used to drive the cows with, back when his legs worked. It must be found.) Drive. Start at the Gillispies’. Track his animals. Smile and ask people, Did you see my cows? Locate them. Open the back gate of the trailer. Lower the ramp. Persuade Jezebel up. The others will follow. (Now he has forgotten the corn to tempt the cows with. There must be a sack in the barn. At some point in all of this preparation, go into the barn, taking a plastic Kroger bag. Fill it with corn kernels.)
The trick is to remember every single step, and take them in order. The danger is forgetting one that seems insignificant but turns out not to be.
He can do it. He lies down again to gather his strength. Closes his eyes against the prospect of failure.
He wouldn’t put it past Billy Chocklett to shoot at least one of his cows if they get into his garden. There is bad blood between the two men. There is bad blood, Lou realizes with sudden acuity, between him and everybody.
Here’s Tim again, still sixteen, young, dumb, and full of cum. Change the oil in the Massey before you drive it, Lou tells him. Tim refuses. Of course he refuses. Blithely he hops onto the tractor and drives off like he’s in charge of the whole damn world. Lou lights out after him in righteous fatherly rage. He pulls him off the tractor and lays into him. The boy is strong now, as strong as Lou or possibly stronger. In their angry tangle on the edge of the alfalfa field both men get hurt. Badly? Lou can’t remember how badly. This aggravates him. It’s not a minor detail, it’s an important part of what happened. He vividly recalls a split lip but not whose it was.
The clear water of memory runs away down a hole of heartlessness. It’s the muddy dregs that stay behind. Drink from those dregs if you dare, but they will gag you, they will damn sure gag you.
He is upright now. Just barely he reaches the walker and pulls it to him. Neuropathy is what the doctor told him took his legs. The word has stuck with him because of its ominous sound, like a sentence pronounced by a judge who is deaf to the criminal’s plea for mercy. He’s up. For an instant he is sure he will fall, but he steadies himself leaning on the handle of the walker and looks around for his clothes. There’s a pair of work pants on the floor. He spears them with a cane that somebody left leaning against the nightstand. He sits in the chair to work the pants up over his legs, and the effort tuckers him. His mind goes blooey. Where is he, and why?
Good thing there is no clock in the room. He’d rather not know how long it takes before he shuffles down the hall behind the walker. Into the kitchen. Where the truck key is nowhere to be seen.
He takes a breather at the table, his mouth making shaped movements that might, under different circumstances, turn into words. It’s a fine thing, really, to be sitting there. Katie Lynn left the window open above the sink, and the air being pushed in by the breeze is freshness itself. A pair of mourning doves out in the grass are lamenting the loss of Lou Rainbolt’s legs, for one thing. For another, the things he can’t remember, and the things he can.
An inspiration. He stands, wobbling. Sits. Stands again. The sugar bowl. In the cupboard. That’s where he stuck the truck key, so nobody would try any funny business. A thief would say, That old coot ain’t ever gonna drive again.
There are grains of sugar on the key. He licks them off.
You will live to rue the day, Lou Rainbolt. The vehemence with which Stella spoke has made him think, now and then, that she died in a state of bliss, contemplating the suffering that was surely coming his way. She never forgave him for banishing Tim. A mother’s prerogative, he can see that now. He is certain, this glorious May morning in a kitchen that feels like it belongs to somebody else, that the times Stella went away she went to be with Tim. Makes sense. She refused to say where she went. Somewhere in another state, most likely. Tim would make his home in another state, far from his father. That too makes sense.
He can’t sit here all morning rehashing the past. There are cows to be wrangled. Now that he thinks about it, he’ll have to find somebody to come fix the fence. Who? A stranger. A stranger will have nothing to hold against him.
Ten minutes later he is in the truck, backing it up to the trailer. He used to be good at this. Still is, if you discount the effort he has to make at getting out and down, hobbling back to the trailer gripping the side of the truck like a seasick man on a rocking boat. With difficulty he lifts the coupler and places it on the trailer ball. He fastens the safety chains. He remembers, too late, that the wiring harness is shorted out. If he hits the brakes, the signal won’t reach the lights on the back end of the trailer. A sheriff’s deputy sees him, he gets a ticket. So be it.
Back to the truck. It feels good, behind the wheel. Feels normal.
He wonders, again, whether Tim ever married, and does the wife like china teacups.
There were days, some years back, when he’d put the cows in the barn, take a bucket of water and a long-handled scrub brush, and clean them up so their coats shone. There is a particular richness in the brown shine of a jersey, not found in other breeds.
A feeling of competence recovered slowly percolates through him as he pilots the truck down the driveway toward the road, the trailer following obediently behind. Then he remembers the corn. He backs up slowly, using his mirrors, all the way to the barn, which now that he notices it up close needs a serious coat of paint and some repair work on the doors. It’s starting to look like one of those scenes of ruination and despair you see in the movies.
Corn.
As he steps down from the truck his legs betray him and he pitches forward. Goes down. Lies there. Confusion is his comeuppance, that’s what Stella would say, and well deserved. It was a near thing, her deciding to stay with him once Tim was gone. She must have had her reasons.
They remain a mystery to him, all these years on.
A nap would be nice, just a quick one.
No.
With an effort of will he gets to his feet and makes his way to the barn. He forgot the Kroger bag so fills his pants pockets with corn to bribe his cows with. His pockets bulge lasciviously.
It’s hot. Already. May in Southside. Agreeable weather as the end of the world advances toward him at a deliberate pace. What will become of the farm? He has not given enough thought to the question, or has he given it too much?
Back down the driveway, turn right on Buggs Creek Road. He drives slowly, as if for the first time. The novelty of self-propelled motion is all to the good, all to the good. Right onto Choate, where as luck would have it Marjorie Gillispie is backing out of her own driveway in a red SUV, two kids strapped into car seats in the back seat. She recognizes him. Gets out of the car ready to blister his ears.
An idea comes to him.
“I heard my cows done some damage to your garden. I come by to make restitution.”
She is as blonde and blowsy as her Facebook friend Katie Lynn, with this difference: the tattoo is on her neck, which gives her a creaturely aspect. He sees her wondering what he is up to. But it works, his offer to make good the cows’ damage mollifies her.
“You think about it,” he tells her. “Tell Katie Lynn what’s a fair dollar amount for what they done, and I’ll send her around with a check.”
He ran out of checks a while back. He has been intending to order some more.
She tells him she will assess the damage. Not that she trusts him. Not that she believes him. Keep thinking ahead, he counsels himself.
“You see which way them cows went?”
She points west down Choate. He says thank you. She’ll make a story out of that, to be sure.
Slowly down Choate Road. The cows could be anywhere by now. Their absence has drilled another hole in him.
He has forgotten the hickory stick. That’s okay. He’d just as soon not strike anything anymore even for a good reason.
A streak of woodpecker crosses the road in front of him, followed by that infernal laugh. It cannot be denied that everyone and everything in this part of Virginia would be glad to be shed of him.
I have gashed, he thinks, and I have been gashed. He’s not sure what he means but believes it must be true.
At the corner of Choate and School Heights Roads he brakes. Puts the transmission in neutral. Feels a line of sweat run down his cheek. Wonders, but fails to find an object to which he can attach the motion of mind.
Then, from the corner of his right eye, he sees them. They are clumped together, the way they prefer to do, on the east side of School Heights, just off the road, where the land drops away to a bottom spreading for a good half mile. He used to know the name of the man who farmed that bottom land. Soybeans is what he remembers.
He goes slowly hoping no vehicle comes up or down the road. The cows will be skittish, in foreign territory. He takes his foot off the gas as he comes up on them. Stops. Steps down from the truck. His luck holds, and he keeps his footing. As softly as he can, he opens the back gate of the trailer. Slides out the aluminum ramp. No traffic. Let them all stay away.
“Jezebel!”
He hopes they recognize his home voice. All five of them turn their heads as one in his direction. Good, that’s exactly what he is after. He pulls a handful of corn from his pocket. A cow is born with an excellent sense of smell. These pets of his know what corn smells like. He clucks. He is under the impression that they like his clucking and will be reassured by the familiar sound.
Holding the corn in his open palm he takes a step toward his cows. Neuropathy. A vile word. He stumbles and goes down. The corn scatters in the gravel of the berm.
He wants Tim to have the farm. Do with it whatever he likes. Sell it, if he can find a buyer. It’s what Lou has wanted since the day the boy came back. How old was he? Nineteen, twenty? There he stood in the front yard in the shade of the weeping willow, defiant and beautiful. One of them said the wrong thing, Lou can’t remember which one. What lasts, what will last to the end of the world, is the blind anger he felt, driving the boy away a second time, and the shame. How does a man without the use of his legs go about finding his missing son when he has no idea whether he is even living in the same state?
Here comes Jezebel. Lou lifts his head. He watches the cow’s great efficient tongue scour the berm for corn kernels. She’s his favorite, can’t pretend otherwise.
“It’s more corn in my pocket,” he tells her. “It’s plenty more there for you and your girlfriends, too.”
He shifts onto a haunch and reaches out another handful.
“Time to go home,” he coaxes the cow.
Jezebel lifts her head. She studies him. In the long little minute before anything happens, Lou hopes to be understood.
