How To Be Sure You Want to Be A Farm Girl

Catherine Elcik

May 2006 / Volume VII Issue III
(Carver Awards Edition)

Finalist

You’ll be three years old the day Dad leads you into the master bedroom, Ma propped up on a pillow, cradling your new baby sister, a peach lump, smaller even than the barn cats. This is the room you’ll run to when monsters wreck your dreams, the one place you’ll feel safer than an egg in a nest, but on the day you meet Amelia, you won’t be able to breathe.

Ma will wipe away the wisps of long, brown hair that have fallen across her face and smile as she waves for you to come to the bed. You’ll hang back, tapping the pocket of your overalls to make sure your present’s safe. 

“Come on, Bertie,” Ma will say, her voice almost a whisper.

Dad will slip an arm around your shoulder, his giant fingers rough against your arm as he nudges you forward. “You heard your mother.”

You’ll climb beside Ma, smiling as you reach into your pocket and pull out the chick you boosted from the coop earlier that day, so sure that something that soft and warm would be the perfect gift for a new baby. But you’ll hardly have the bird on the bed before the screaming starts. Ma will hold Amelia close, scramble out of the bed, and knock the cradle to the ground. In his hurry to remove it from the bed, Dad will crush the chick in his hand. He’ll frown at the dead, yellow bird, then ask Ma if she thinks Amelia will be OK. You’ll scream for the chick, Amelia will launch into the strangest hitched cry you ever heard, and Dad’s hand will feel solid on your back as he ushers you back out of the room.

*  *  *  *  *

Those early years, you’ll be your father’s shadow, looking on some mornings as he herds the cows to that tangle of tubing and metal that pumps their milk. The day he puts on gloves and has to put his hands up inside Daisy to pull out a bloodied, stillborn calf, you’ll be the tiny voice behind him asking if there’s anything you can do. The next season, you’ll watch Dad help Mabel deliver an all-white calf, and after she’s been cleaned, Dad will let you be the first to touch her, let you be the one to figure out a name, even when it takes you a week to decide on Cream.

In those years before school starts, the only thing you’ll know of life outside the farm will come from television. And though Oscar the Grouch’s crankiness will make you giggle, you’ll be more interested in the concrete street he lives on, all those brick houses pressed up on top of one another. You’ll wonder whether any real, live animals could live in a place like that.

One year, Dad will return home from a trip to sell milk contracts in New York City. At supper, he’ll talk about the noise, about how he could hardly tell when it was night for all the lights, how most of the buildings were taller than three silos end to end.

“Can I come with you next time?” you’ll ask, sitting on Dad’s lap as you share the last slice of pound cake.

“The place stinks, Bertie.”

“Stinks how?”

“You can’t go two feet without smelling garbage or exhaust.”

When you’ve been excused from the table, you’ll bike out to the silo and walk around it, head tilted back to look at the top, trying to imagine a building even that tall. You won’t realize how long you’re there until you notice the sky’s turned pink. Then you’ll race to get home before the sun sets, breathing deep the sweet, mixed scent of hay and manure.

*  *  *  *  *

“Tell me again how Grandpa Taylor started the farm,” you’ll say one night, near the end of first grade, after Ma finishes the last prayer and refuses to read you a second story.

“Great Grandpa Taylor,” Ma will say, then tell you again about great Grandpa coming over from Wales, working odd jobs all over this part of Vermont, saving up to buy the farm you live on, then handing it down—first to your grandfather, then to Dad.

Ma will turn out the light, and the moonlight will streak through her loose, freshly brushed hair as she turns to go. “Ma?” you’ll say. “When I grow up, will Dad give the farm to me?”

“That’s a long way off.”

“Yeah, but will he?”

“It’s time for bed, Bertie.” Ma will close the door behind her.

You’ll lie in bed, awake as six in the morning, thinking, what if, what if?

*  *  *  *  *

In the summer, you’ll take Amelia with you to the oak tree that marks the line between the Melanson farm and yours. You’ll turn around and point at the fields between the fence and the house. You’ll tell her: “When we’re as old as Ma and Dad, this could all be ours, ‘Melia.”

Amelia will have just turned four—ownership won’t impress her. She’ll talk about how little the house looks. “How can we all fit in a house so small?”

On your way back from the oak, you’ll stop in the barn to check on Cream, all grown up now and bursting with her own near-due calf, but Amelia won’t come in with you. She’ll slip on a flop outside the door, get it smeared on her yellow sundress and in her ponytail, then run crying to the house.

When Cream finally does crown, Dad will loan you his Polaroid so you’ll have the photos of the birth for show-and-tell once school starts up again. You’ll get it all: the vet reaching in; the legs being pulled out; the placenta in a jiggling heap on the barn floor; Cream licking what’s left of it from her calf. When it’s all over, Amelia will be napping, but you’ll sneak into her room to wake her and show her the pictures.

“Gross, Bertie,” Amelia will say, shoving your hand away. “Why’d I want to see a cow licking up sick like that?”

“It’s not sick, brainless. That stuff kept the baby safe.”

Amelia will turn away and pull the covers over her head. “A cow’s butt’s a cow’s butt.”

*  *  *  *  *

On Christmas Day—you, nine; Amelia six—you’ll unwrap a plastic doctor bag you asked for so that you could pretend you were a vet. You’ll make Amelia stay out in the freezing barn so that you can play animal hospital; you’ll be the vet and Amelia will be the sick barnyard. You’ll invent all kinds of tragic scenarios, give imaginary owner after owner the bad news. While you’re setting up a hay bed for a poor, deformed goat, Amelia will sneak off on you. You’ll find her coming out of the coop carrying a basket full of eggs.

“Twenty-one!” she’ll say. “That’s almost two dozen.”

You’ll take the basket from her and lead her to the bed of straw. “People will pay a lot to see a goat that can talk, collect eggs, and count ‘em,” you’ll say. “I’ll be rich.”

“Bertie, this is a dumb game.” Amelia’s feet will beat the ground, horse heavy as she runs back to Christmas, away from an afternoon playing sick beast with you and your doctor’s bag. You’ll stare at the barn door Amelia just ran through, wondering why Amelia always hates your games.

*  *  *  *  *

Amelia will become not just a better student than you, but a straight-A student. You’ll spend report card day avoiding a lecture about your grades by puttering in the barn, tending to your cows. You’ll plaster a tight smile on your face when Ma brags on Amelia like you’re not standing right there. Dad will try to encourage you: “If you can rattle off the family lines for every cow in that barn, you got it in you to do at least B work.”

You’ll know he’s right, and for a week after report cards come out, you’ll study hard in the room you share with Amelia. But one night Amelia will be bent over her math homework, humming tonelessly as she does some fractions skill you haven’t even mastered yet, and you’ll close your book, sneak past your mother and head to the barn as cloud cover rolls in thick and black. The cows will be antsy, already hearing thunder you can’t. Leila will swat her tail and bellow as you approach her.

“Easy girl. You’re all right.” You’ll pat her flank, then move to the cow beside her. You’ll scratch each one’s head, some coats soft, some wiry. At the end of the row, Marlene will shuffle and broadside her stall. The boom will rattle the barn. You’ll find one of the barn cats curled in the corner of the stall, breathing heavy, licking at one ball of gunk and passing another. When the cat mews, Marlene will shuffle again, her brown eyes pools of panic, her feet dangerously close to the cat. “Marlene, hush now,” you’ll say as you unlatch the stall door. You’ll lead the cow outside to the corral, then return to the cat.

“Hey little miss,” you’ll say, hunching down in the hay beside her. “I’m here.” The cat will hiss, but you’ll forgive her grumpiness—she’ll have just delivered her third kitten with another on the way.

Your father’s voice from behind will startle you: “Why’s there a cow in the yard? There’s a storm coming on.”

You’ll flag him over to see the litter and he’ll laugh, put one large hand on your shoulder. “Good thinking,” he’ll say. You’ll wonder if Amelia would still be the better student if teachers graded you on your ability to calm a restless herd.

*  *  *  *  *

Later that night, you’ll bring your history book to the kitchen table and find Dad balancing the ledger, cursing as he squints at the calculator. Ma will put coffee on and tell him to start sooner next month. He’ll stab at the calculator keys with his stubby fingers. Ma will come up behind him and rub his shoulders.

“Sleep on it and go at it fresh in the morning,” she’ll say.

You’ll try to get back to a passage on King George’s stamp tax, but you’ll keep daydreaming about you and Amelia taking over the farm. It’s true that Amelia can’t find it in her to care about any of the animals on the farm, but she’s a smart one. You’ll imagine her as the brains, doing the books behind the scenes, you on the front line with the animals and the land. Maybe you’ll even build a veterinarian’s practice right in the barn. You’ll imagine telling your kids how the farm was passed all the way down from their great-great grandfather to you and Auntie Amelia.

When you tell Amelia your plan, she’ll look up from her homework, pencil in hand. “You’ll do all the animal stuff?”

“I wouldn’t let you near it.”

She’ll bend back over her paper and you’ll shuffle from left to right as you wait for her to say something.

“What do you say?” you’ll ask.

She’ll shrug. “Long as I don’t have to see anything gross.”

*  *  *  *  *

Your freshman year, when Dad breeds the heifers, you’ll come out of the barn to watch when Mr. Sampson arrives with the bull, and his son Art will jump down from the cab. Art’s a sophomore, just one year ahead of you at school. He’ll have grown at least half a foot since school let out and his t-shirt will pull across the curves of his chest, his bicep bulky even at rest. You’ll wish you hadn’t been stacking hay all afternoon, wonder if your sweat smells sour, and pick a stray stalk from your hair before smiling at him.

“We got an all-red calf in there. Wanna see?” you’ll ask. He’ll follow you into the heat of the barn. After you show Art the calf and introduce him to your favorite milkers, he’ll ask if he can take you to the carnival when it breezes through town next weekend, then tuck a wisp of hair behind your ear.

You and Art’ll be together just a few months when one summer night, lying in the back of his pickup, you’ll reach to unbutton his jeans and Art will roll away from you as he has every night you’d gone this far. You’ll sit up.

“You and I’ve seen cattle do this a hundred times,” you’ll say, shocked at how urgent your voice sounds.

Beside you, Artie will sigh.  “We’ve seen about that many calves born, too.”

“God, Artie,” you’ll say, moving your hand to his inner thigh. “I have condoms if that’s what you’re worried about.”

*  *  *  *  *

That first summer you’re with Art, Amelia will run past you one lazy August afternoon and yell: “Last one in the tree’s the last one in the tree!”

You’ll chase her to the oak on the property line where you’ll sit side by side on a low branch, legs dangling. You’ll stare at the cows milling in the fields, deep gold in the late afternoon sun and say, “We haven’t done this all summer.”

“Seems like the only time I see you now we’re doing chores,” Amelia will say. “What with your boyfriend.”

You’ll laugh. “Artie has eaten up the last few months.”

Amelia will shrug, pull a leaf from the branch, and tie the stem into a knot. She’ll be quiet a few more minutes before she gets to talking about her life this summer, how the youth group at the Holy Rosary Church is going to hold a bake sale at the Harvest Fair and Mrs. Wilson asked her to be in charge of the cash box. Then she’ll grin at you and confess that she watched Dirty Dancing when she slept over at Shannon’s a few weeks ago. “Don’t tell Ma,” she’ll whisper.

You’ll shrug. “I saw it in Middlebury months and months ago.”

Amelia will stare across the fields and sigh. “Can you imagine what it must be like in Hollywood? You can’t move a muscle without bumping into someone famous.”

The sun will have sunk lower on the horizon, orange as an egg yolk. The light will wash across the field making the grass glow gold.

“I bet they don’t see nights like this in Hollywood, though,” you’ll say. You'll turn and study Amelia. On the outside she’ll seem just like you, a Vermont girl in jeans and an old t-shirt, sitting in the same tree, looking out over the same pasture. But even though you’re both looking over the same horizon, the same yellow fields, the same blue sky and hazy mountains in the distance, you’ll know Amelia would never call it beautiful. It will look like Amelia is soaking in the horizon, but something in Amelia’s face will make you wonder if she’s seeing the mountains at all or just trying to figure out what was on the other side. “I wish the summer could last forever,” you’ll say.

Amelia will roll her eyes. “You would.” She’ll look back out over the field and shake her head. It’s the way her lips curl back that will get you mad enough your own hands start shaking.

“What’s so bad about summer, anyway?” you’ll ask, too annoyed to mask your tone.

“There’s nothing fun to do here.”

“You might find something to like if you closed your books and got out of the hammock once in a while,” you’ll say with more vinegar than you’d intended.

Amelia will swing down from the tree and run back toward the house. You’ll sit tight, watching her get smaller, confused by how angry she seems, how put out by something you love.

*  *  *  *  *

“All right, Arthur,” you’ll tease. “If you’ve got something on your mind, spill it before the food gets here so I can eat with Art.”

He’ll grin at you then, hardly able to keep eye contact for more than a few seconds. He’ll take a sip of water, then stare straight at you.

“The thing is, Bertie, I want to marry you,” he’ll say, and for the lightning streaking down your spine and thundering in your stomach, you’ll hardly hear him when he babbles on about how he knows he hasn’t got much, but that your Dad provided his blessing and offered up a corner of land to build on. Art will look up and smile right at you. “If you’ll have me, of course,” he’ll say.

You’ll feel the kind of scared that’s only natural when you lock down a sizeable chunk of your future, but mostly the best memories you’ve made with Artie will flood your head and leave you excited about the idea of forever with him. When Art leans forward to grab your hand and asks you plain—“Will you marry me?”—you’ll hardly take a breath before you tell him yes.

That summer, Art and Dad will start building your new home, talk with Ma will center on planning a wedding, and though Amelia will swear she’s excited for you, she’ll be preoccupied with starting high school in the fall. In mid August, she’ll start summer soccer practice, then beam when she tells you that the coach said she was thinking of bumping her up to varsity right off.

“How much will they make you practice?” you’ll ask.

“Every day but Sunday, except when there’s a game.”

This will be the first year since she was old enough to lift twenty pounds that Amelia won’t come straight home from school and help out. When you ask your father why he’d allow it, he won’t even look up from the ledger when he tells you that Artie can pick up Amelia’s slack.

*  *  *  *  *

The summer after you graduate from high school, you’ll become Mrs. Art Sampson, move into a home one field over from the house you grew up in, and spend the summer working the farm—no different than any other summer you’ve known. Amelia will be on the honors track at school, which means she’ll have books to read and papers to write over the summer. She’ll end up doing a lot of her work on the hammock on your front porch. You’ll mix up a batch of lemonade, pour two glasses, and bring her one.

“You ask me, it’s too hot to think,” you’ll tell her.

She’ll put her thumb in the middle of The Scarlet Letter to hold her place, then look at you as you sip your lemonade. “So, what’s it feel like to be Mrs. Art Sampson?” Amelia will ask.

“Not much different than being just plain Bertie, I guess.”

“What I want to know is when you’re going to start working on becoming Dr. Sampson.” 

You’ll laugh. “I think I’ll concentrate on being a missus first.”

“Yeah, but what do you want?”

You’ll think it’s a funny question. “Same thing everyone does, I guess. Kids, a family.”

Amelia will look at you like she’s searching for something. “You used to want to be a vet,” she’ll say. “Or don’t you remember the hours you made me pretend I was a sick animal to give you something to heal?”

You’ll laugh. “I still want that.”

“Yeah, well,” she’ll say. You’ll feel antsy as you wait for her to go on, but she’ll just swallow the last of her lemonade and go back to her book.

*  *  *  *  *

You won’t pay it much more mind right there on the porch, but when you’re running errands in town the following week, you’ll stop by the tech school, talk with a woman in admissions, and tell her what you’re thinking. A few classes each semester working toward an associate’s degree as a veterinary technician will sound right. But then she’ll talk about transferring, a bigger school, a bachelor’s in biology, and only then vet school. Eight years will seem like a damn long stint of schooling—eight years earlier, you were in Mrs. Benjamin’s fourth grade class. But when you talk to Art about it, he’ll be supportive, say it would be good to have a vet on the farm: “Make us the most respectable spread these parts.”

You’ll decide to be a trooper about it and sign up for the first step on the climb to veterinarian: Animal Behavior I. Trouble is, they won’t teach you a thing you didn’t know before you sat down—they’ll spend an entire class on how to approach cattle to “foster cooperation,” something you’d been doing since you were six years old, probably before that. You’ll go back to admissions to see if there’s some shortcut, credit for life learning or some such, but no, you’ll have to go through all of it like you were some doe-eyed city girl who wouldn’t know the difference between a cow and a heifer.

“They’re robbing us blind,” you’ll tell Artie, “asking money for stuff like that.”

“Some days you gotta jump through the hoops, I guess,” Artie will say.

“But if I went by what they’re teaching, I’d say I was a vet tech before I hit the second grade. We’ll be broke long before I can start charging people to do stuff I knew how to do as early as I can remember.”

“Well, how bad do you want it?”

“I don’t know,” you’ll say wondering how long exactly you’ve imagined being a vet. “I guess I just can’t picture a life where I don’t care for animals.”

“Seems to me you’re already doing that.”

“When you put it that way—”

“I’m not trying to sway your mind or anything,” Art will say, concern crossing his face. “This is your decision to make.”

“And I’m saying it seems like a lot of money and time for something I’ve got already.”

*  *  *  *  *

Over the next couple of years you’ll still think of becoming a vet now and again, only to swat the thought away and keep yourself busy with studding cows and delivering calves. You’ll fall pregnant yourself and deliver Jamie, your own baby boy. When Amelia takes an economics course her junior year, she’ll write a paper on alternate revenue for farms, convince Dad to sell the farm’s development rights to a conservation group, have him spend half the money on improving your milking machinery, then invest the rest—a project that will make you dream again of the day it will be you and Amelia running the farm. So when Amelia starts talking about applying to colleges later that year, you’ll feel as if she’s slapped you. When the acceptances roll in her senior year, you’ll damn near drop your son when Amelia tells you she’s going to Manhattan to study economics. She’ll talk about the internship programs Columbia offers, about how you could come and visit her, about how she could work in London for part of her junior year if she wanted.

“This school floats to the top of the milk,” she’ll say in a rush. “It’s a once in a lifetime chance,” she’ll say. “Once in two lifetimes.”

“Kind of like the chance to take over the family farm?”

“That’s not fair, Bertie,” she’ll say. “I don’t breathe this place like you do.”

“You just don’t want to,” you’ll say. “Don’t want to and never have.”

“It’s not that exactly,” she’ll say. “I just can’t.”

*  *  *  *  *

Amelia’s last six months on the farm, you’ll wake most nights, your stomach so heavy and knotted you’d swear you swallowed all the eggs in the coop. You’ll lie there, imagining Amelia striking out in the big city while you’re home married, a mother. You’ll wonder who went the right way when your lives forked, but the thought that will really keep you tossing is that maybe you were the one who chose wrong.

The summer before Amelia leaves, she’ll get mail from Columbia a few times a month about orientation, about signing up for residence halls, a letter of welcome from the economics chairman. You’ll busy yourself with your son, arrange to have a cattle truck driver come to bring a couple cows with early arthritis to auction. You’ll find an excuse to leave the room every time talk turns to Columbia.

In late July, Amelia will come back from orientation weekend full of city stories. She’ll talk about how she could walk down Broadway just ten minutes and count ads for more shows than she’d ever have time to see. She’ll talk about how she bumped into this old man who yelled at her because she couldn’t stop looking up. “You couldn’t believe how tall they are, row after row,” she’ll say, her eyes lighting up. “And then you can’t walk two blocks without seeing everything you ever could want—produce stands, a bank, laundry, a pharmacy, a movie theatre. Around here, we’d have to drive a whole afternoon to hit all those things.”

She’ll fall silent then, and you’ll wonder what it’s like to have that much concrete around, to eat at a sidewalk restaurant, order a cup of coffee that costs as much as a whole pound of Maxwell House. Amelia will shake her head, breathe in slowly. “Four weeks from today—”

“We get it, ‘Melia,” you’ll say. “You’re excited.”

She’ll stand, hand on her hip, her glare equal parts hurt and surprise. “What the hell’s that for?”

Art will put his arm around you and try to steer you through the door, but you’ll step away from him and glare right back at Amelia. “Nothing comes out of your mouth ‘less it has something to do with New York.”

“It’s time to go,” Art will say softly.

“I’m leaving home, Bertie.”

“And you talk about it so much, I’m dreaming about going.”

“Yeah, like you’d ever make it to New York.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Let’s go, Bertie,” Art will say again, putting his hand firmly on your elbow and walking you through the door.

*  *  *  *  *

You won’t talk to Amelia much her last month on the farm. Ma will try and get you to patch things up. “Envy’s an ugly thing,” she’ll say over coffee one day. “Besides, I’d have never pegged you for a city girl.”

“I’m not, Ma.”

“Then why act like that’s what you want?”

You won’t be able to answer her. You’ll know you’d shrivel up if you had to move to Manhattan, though you wouldn’t mind seeing it for yourself one day. Growing up, you were born into the kind of farm-living you loved, but Amelia craved a city-life she had to dream up, then fight for. You won’t want Amelia’s skyscrapers and car horns, it’s the wanting itself you’ll want, but you won’t know how to explain it to Ma when she asks again: “Why all the fuss?”

You’ll shrug, shake your head, and ask if you can freshen her cup.

*  *  *  *  *

The morning that Dad and Amelia are getting ready to drive to Manhattan, you’ll be in the barn at dawn as Tinker starts labor. Her eyes will be wide and brown, her bellow will grow weaker, and two hours after the water sac shows, she’ll lie flat out, her side pulsing with short, quick breaths. You’ll pull on shoulder-length gloves, scrub the cow, wash your hands, then hunch down behind her. “You’re working harder than you should,” you’ll say softly, resisting the urge to rub her bulging side with your freshly sterilized gloves.

The other cows in the barn will be shuffling, sensing the tension.

You’ll ease your hands up into Tinker to check the calf for position, and she’ll bellow and shift.

“Easy, now,” you’ll whisper. You’ll gently move your hands toward the calf, realize that it’s in perfect position, and, judging from the size of the calf’s head relative to the birth canal, the calf will seem small enough to be born naturally. Should have been born an hour before, really. Gently, you’ll pull your hands out of the cow, and reach for the pulling chains over the stall door with one of the bloodied gloves. You’ll notice Amelia in the middle of the barn, watching you.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she’ll say.

You’ll shrug. “She needs help and I know how to give it.”

“So what do you have to do now?”

You’ll raise the chains so she can see.

“You just tie that on and pull it on out?”

“More or less, yeah,” you’ll say.

Dad will call for Amelia from outside.

“Bertie, I—”

You’ll hold the chains halfway to the cow and look up at Amelia, but she won’t say anything. Dad will yell for Amelia again.

 “You think you might ever visit?” Amelia will ask.

“Could be.”

Amelia will stand there a couple more seconds before Dad calls her name a third time and she turns to go. You’ll plan to let her walk away, but when she reaches the door without looking back, you’ll yell out to her. “Hey, ‘Melia.” She’ll turn around, the sun streaming through her hair. “Knock ‘em dead, OK?”

“I’ll do what I can,” she’ll say, and then she’ll be gone and you’ll turn back to delivering Tinker’s calf.

You’ll attach the pulling chain just above the dew claw, then spend ten minutes walking out the shoulders—first one leg, then the other, inch by inch until you have a brand new, deep-brown calf to tend to. You’ll hold the newest addition to the farm by her rear legs to let the fluids drain. And though you’ve seen it a hundred times or more, when this calf flutters to life, you’ll cry hard enough that your vision will blur, but you’ll blink it back, then reunite the calf with her mother. As she suckles for the first time you’ll brush at your eyes with the back of your bloodied gloves and start thinking about her name.

Carve Magazine. © 2007.  All rights reserved.....
No portion of this site, including images, logos, and text may be reproduced without written permission.
Contact the editor at editor@carvezine.com for more information.

 Carve cares about the environment.
 We recycle all manuscripts.