The Ill Well

The cow’s been sick for three days, like nothing I have ever seen before. Standing in the yard, heaving. A violent rhythm. Like when you’re so sick your body fights to empty the stomach, only her chest is covered in froth, new and virgin-white, not bile. And her mouth hangs open, mucus from her nose running into it. And her moaning is low, not painful, as if she’s somewhere else. As if she doesn’t hear the sound of her own call.

Father would have put her down already if she weren’t so far along. Any day now, he said. When flesh is money, you don’t just bury it. Her calf might be okay, he said. We’ll wait it out. See what happens.

She wanders the yard, lost, with giant golden-brown irises, red matted fur. My brothers and I have quit our play, sitting on the porch. Hers is a slow pace. A stumbling shuffle. We watch her struggle through a bush. I hug my arms tight around my legs. It’s cold, supposed to snow.

She’s like a zombie, Arael says. Why doesn’t he tie her up?

When has he ever cared enough? Michael says.

She won’t even drink from her water bucket anymore, its sides stained yellow from the well, what Father calls strong water.

He knows what he’s doing, I say.

The cow clears the bush and changes direction. Towards the porch, towards us.

We break for the front door; our small fingers frantic to lock her outside.

Night comes, Father standing over me. Get up, he says. She got out, we gotta go find her. I wake Arael and Michael, leaving Joseph and my four younger sisters on the floor mattress to sleep.

We stand on the porch, assaulted by the snow. Each of us wearing jeans, salvation-army coats, and double-layered socks for gloves. Three or four inches on the ground so far. Father leads the way, marching us through the fallen fence. My face is already frozen, making it hard to see much in the white-spackled firmament. Sagebrush births from the predawn darkness under our boots.

Arael! Mike! Follow the fence, Father yells, a screaming match with the howling wind. David! Walk straight ahead until you meet us.

Darkness swallows my father, my brothers. I put my sock-hands over my ears and walk. Moonless, the night is void, the snow coating my eyelashes. The wail of the wind is the only sound alive.

It’s hard to tell how far I’ve gone, the falling snow erasing my footprints almost as quickly as I make them. I push through the storm, through the burning in my cheeks and the cold needles in my toes. Through wet pants stiff against my raw thighs as I stumble. I close my eyes. Dark is dark but everything hurts less with them closed. I imagine heat around my numb fingers, a hot bath in our strong water. How far to the fence? How much longer? I trip on something and collapse into the snow, roll over to see what caught me. The cow and her calf.

The calf is half in, or half out, dead.

Frost has stacked around her large newborn eye, lashes of tiny crystal trees. A still-life portrait of Creation. If only her mother had stayed close to the electric lights and comfortable two-by-fours, the calf might’ve made it. But instinct is hard to overcome. It’s in us all.

In the morning, Father collects her soiled hay, her excrement, a mason jar of water from her stained yellow bucket. Part of her brain, lumped and white, lives inside our freezer next to the sweet peas. We bury the frozen portrait with an aging CAT backhoe, deep. Deep so nothing eats of its sickness. I stand at the grave’s edge as the yellow hydraulics moan, watching the two of them disappear under the frozen dirt.

At the University of Wyoming lab, a vet in a white coat holds up a tawny glass slide.

Well, it’s not good, she says. I’ve seen it before in herds on high sulfate wells like yours: birth defects, neurological issues, brains like Swiss-cheese. That water can’t support plants, let alone cattle. Or people.

My mouth dries and I taste our strong water, like old eggs and pennies. Father accepts the stapled papers she hands him. I listen as he thanks the vet, as he tells her we weren’t drinking the water. That it wasn’t supporting us all.

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