Cow and Calf

A short story by
C. William Langsfeld

He looked back at the table. The envelope there. Addressed to his name, County Road 473, Loma, CO. The return address, Annette Cummings, 25791 East Cascade Ln, Cle Elum, WA. He didn’t have to open it to know what was inside. He just looked at that name, Annette Cummings. That told him everything.

He downed the rest of the lukewarm coffee and stepped down the two steps and out the door of the trailer. 

A desert morning hung cool and bright. The highway hummed sporadically in the distance and a pair of red-winged blackbirds warbled from atop a juniper as the flimsy trailer door slapped shut behind him. There was still something about that faint light of early morning and the smell of animals. The feeling it evoked was like a living memory of his childhood, even if ranching wasn’t what he thought he’d be doing at this point in his life, and certainly never in this place. It was something he’d fallen back on. A trade. And it was a fall, or at least that was how he thought of it.

Rhett stretched against his body’s ache. Maybe he’d take a half day. Day five in the saddle and the four preceding it each longer than the one prior. He never thought he’d be the sort of person to complain about getting older, yet his body had its own story to tell. Vastly different from the one it told ten years earlier. It crossed his mind that at thirty-five years old, fifty was the same distance down the road as twenty was looking in the rearview. Two dots on the line of his life that seemed impossible to connect, yet here he was, straddling the midpoint like a bad tightrope walker, just hanging on and trying not to slip. 

Annette Cummings. The name clung to his thought while he crossed the sandy ground past the holding pen that was really an octagon of green paneled gates wired together to where Rag Boy stood tethered to a post at the foot of the cliff. This was where he’d bring the barren heifers. The ones who’d lost their calves or threw stillborns. How he’d find them was another matter. The range in this dry land was so damn big, so little grass grew between the swaths of dry wash and slickrock, and the mesas and canyons made it hard to see anything at a distance. Twice as hard to get anywhere. 

Why anyone would ever think to graze cattle in this country remained a mystery to him. Barren heifers in a barren land. Sure, the foothills on the inland side of the Cascades were dry as about any, but things grew there. The trees were big and heavy, the grass on the hills green and verdant in the spring. 

Not here, though. This was real desert. A Clint Fucking Eastwood dehydrated grimace slumped over the saddle on a bony-assed horse, buzzards circling kind of desert.

Annette Cummings. God damn.

He let out a sigh that did nothing to release the tension that constricted his chest and the lower portion of his back. Stood straight and let his spine pop. That got a little of it out of his system, but it was all still there, simmering below the surface, as he undid the tether that held Rag Boy to the post and exchanged the bridle for a halter. The thin steel bar, shiny and grooved from wear, jangled as he swung it up and slipped it between the horse’s lips, the jaws working a little to settle it into place. Saddled, he put a leg in the stirrup, mounted up, and rode out down the dust-laden two-track.

A terse whistle shot through the air, the echo of it slithered down the canyon, and immediately Rusty, the little blue heeler mix, darted out from beneath the trailer. Rhett knew he was there, watching him the whole time. Likely half asleep with one ear fully cocked. The dogs were the closest thing to company out here and they always kept tabs on where he was headed. The other two mutts, Rambo and Trixie, followed Rusty after the horse and rider from their own spot of less ideal, yet still pretty good shade beneath a juniper beside the corral. Even in the early morning the dogs stuck to their shady spots, anticipating the sun that was only half up, the blue shadows of mesas and sandstone humps lying long across the land.

A half mile down the two-track from the trailer, they turned east and followed a cow trail up a rocky drainage to access the shelf of land between Horsethief Mesa and the river. That’s how things went here. You had a route that you followed to all the salt licks, stock tanks, and watering holes. All the places the cows were most likely to congregate. Not like at home. Not at all like he’d learned to do it. Binoculars from the hilltops. Horses and 4-wheelers, pick-up trucks, all out across that open country. There was a part of him that missed that, though it was exactly that which he’d come out here to get away from. Not that he’d been looking for a different way to cowboy. Not even close. That part was an accident.  He’d come out here to make some money. That was it. 

The gas boom had come on in the early aughts, and he drove east out of the Cascades across the rangeland between the great mountains of the continent. Rolled into Colorado twenty-some odd hours later having driven through the night, a power nap at a rest stop north of Salt Lake, and within a day or so he’d landed a job on a fracking crew north of Fruita. The work was hard, days long. But he was used to that. No use for the speed some of the other men took to keep them going. Wanted nothing to do with the meth that would ravage the minds of some of the other men, not to mention their teeth. No. He’d learned to push through the fatigue his own self, and he was good at it. It wasn’t necessarily a job he’d dreamed of having, but it was work, and if he could just make her see that, maybe things would have turned out different. 

That was always the problem, though. There was that disconnect between them, and try as he might, he could never get through to her. There were certain things that he clung to, unable to let go or move on in any meaningful way. Like the conversation they’d had when he was still working for the gas company. The one where, he felt, everything began to run off the rails. There were parts of it he came back to, over and over, like a faulty reel. As if by repeating that which was most painful he could somehow find peace. Or at least make sense of it. But it had gotten to the point where he wasn’t even sure if the way he remembered it was the way that it had happened, but no matter. The feeling it evoked was real enough. He had asked her to put their son, Stewie, on the phone. She’d said, “He doesn’t want to talk right now.”

He didn’t want to talk. Did Stewie say that or had she made an executive decision? What cut him most was that he’d never be able to answer that question. Then again, if it was Stewie’s decision, would he want to know? Safer to stay angry at the boy’s mother. He’s repeated it over and over:

Put Stewie on the phone.

He doesn’t want to talk right now.

Put Stewie on the phone.

He doesn’t want to talk.

Put Stewie on the phone.

He doesn’t want to talk to you.

He doesn’t want to talk to you . . .

•

The calls had grown more sporadic after that. But even that grew to feel normal. And maybe that’s where he went wrong. It’s hard to say. Sometimes you don’t realize a thing is happening until it’s about done with and it’s too late and you’re left holding your empty hands out as if the solution might fall out of the sky for you to catch. 

Then all that is left is to wonder what happened. What. The hell. Happened.

Even so, he drew his paycheck on the first and the sixteenth. Kept what he needed to feed and house himself, maybe cut loose a little on the weekend, just a little mind, and sent the rest home to that wife and son. Still though, it was lonely. 

Of course there were other women. Brief encounters that never went anywhere. He’d bring himself up to the brink and then back off. There was always something holding him back. Was it loyalty or fear? Some kind of self-righteous faith? Whatever the case, after the encounters he’d go to bed tired yet unable to sleep. The cold sheets around him a constant reminder of everything he wanted and did not have. The miles and miles between him and her, the one that mattered. Everything he wanted to say but never got the chance.

Sometimes he went out to bars with the other guys from the crew, but mostly he just went home after work. Home wasn’t much. A place to lay his head and keep a few beers cold in the fridge is all. All he had the energy for after a fourteen-hour shift. Living off take out and Miller High Life. The Champagne of Beers. As if that were something to strive for. Those people with their strollers and shiny SUVs drinking mimosas on the patios of cafes downtown on a Sunday morning. No siree. They could keep it. Those people didn’t know the meaning of a day’s work. And that’s why he’d come out here after all. To work.

•

Before long, the layoffs came. Started with the ones who made more money, which wasn’t him, then moved to the ones who hadn’t been there as long, which was him. So he’d fallen back on what he knew, and isn’t that how life is sometimes? You take a risk and strike out and the only or best option left is the life you’ve always known. Or not quite. The life he’d known lay a thousand miles northwest of where he was and he couldn’t go back there, not like this. And all because of Annette Cummings. Annette fucking Cummings. Goddamnit.

After a while, he and Rag Boy popped up out of the draw and the land flattened out below a line of sandstone cliffs. Juniper and bunchgrass struggled through the sand and silt, clung to cracks in the rock. Finding some water there beneath the arid surface. Out in the distance, the line of the river, gray and glimmering, wound through the broad canyon. He found a set of heifers with their calves wandering about. They eyed him leerily. He crossed a draw and left them there. Looped around the mesa to a cleft on the east side. Passed a few more groupings of cows and calves. Reassured, yet somewhat bored. The vigor he’d once had for jobs like this had gone out of him. Mostly now he was just tired. Past tired. His body ached. Every corner of it. Even his fingers were stiff and swollen.

He dismounted and led Rag Boy up through the cleft. There was no real reason to go up here. The cows never went this way. They preferred the silty flats where the better grazing and water was. But Rhett liked it up here. The loose trail spit him out on the sparse mesa top. A few strands of brittle grass swung in the perpetual wind. Rabbit brush, pebbles, and slick rock. And it was quiet. That’s what Rhett liked most. The breeze was pleasant. From the high point there it was like he could see the long line of his life unraveling before him, stretching out across endless sky, and he had risen far enough above the fray to be able to hear himself think. 

A fleeting moment. 

He moved on.

Crossed the mesa to the trail on the west side and rode back down into the fray.

The down trail landed him at the top of a broad wash that at some undefined point petered out into the standard scrubland that was this place. The moment of peace he’d found vanished and the hamster wheel of his brain turned anew, squeakier than ever, and it said: Annette Cummings. Annette Cummings. Annette. Cummings. Cummings. Cummings. Goddamn that fucking woman. 

He spied a cow bedded down beneath a juniper. The day was still on the early side of midmorning and already it was hot as a bastard. He almost envied the cow who could pass as much of the day in the shade as it pleased, and perhaps it was that bit of self-pity that triggered him. 

Rhett almost rode past. Probably should have. Marked the heifer and her calf and carried on . . . but the calf. He reigned up a second and looked around. Where was the calf? Rhett sat the horse there, not moving. Only watching. The winds of late morning rose all at once as they seemed to do. One second they weren’t there, then a bit of huff and puff and the day was windy. It whistled in the juniper where the cow lay, alone, he saw. The wind hit his face broadside, pushing up the brim of his hat. Strands of Rag Boy’s mane drifted off one side of his neck. The dogs trotted here and there, keeping one expectant eye on the man on horseback. Soon enough the cow grew restless with the closeness of the man and his hard, brooding stare. It rose, extending first its hind legs with its great body tipped forward, then the front legs heaved up as it stood and walked a short distance off, not wanting to turn its back to the man and the dogs.

“Where’s the calf,” said Rhett. No rising intonation of a question. Just said. Then restated, a little louder the second time. “Where’s your goddamned calf?”

The cow stood there, perhaps sensing that the dogs would run after it if it moved. Or perhaps just staying there staring at the man to see what he would do because that is often what cows do.

As for Rhett, the anger inside him that had ebbed and waned throughout the day as he thought about the course of his life, the events and decisions that had brought him to this point, began to build toward a boil, filling him with that fierce, unfettered electricity, and like a drug, it would take him.

“You stupid cunt,” he yelled. “Where’s your goddamned fucking calf.”

Two short whistles and the dogs fell into line behind him. He nudged Rag Boy forward in a slow, tentative walk. 

“Where’s the calf, huh? Where’s your baby? Where’s your goddamn baby you stupid cunt. Huh? Where’s your baby?”

The cow turned to face horse and man, lowered its head, tossed it from side to side, pulsating the ropey neck muscles.

“You fucking cunt,” the man went on. “You fucking cunt.”

His hand went to his hip. Grasped the hard black leather handle and pulled loose the coil and as the full length of the whip unfurled, one short whistle and the words, “Git ‘er,” and all three dogs at once came around the side of the horse, teeth blaring and throats snarling with menace.

The cow kicked out and bucked, dust rising around the animals like a small, concentrated storm that was swept off by the wind. Rhett got in a couple of good licks with the whip. The dogs yipped and nipped, never doing all that much to the animal, but pushed it here and there. Rambo nearly got the side of his face taken off by a flying hoof, but ducked and swung out at the last second, and soon enough the group of them, man and horse, dogs and heifer, settled into a trot across the red dust desert. The dogs flitted in and out, not really trying to get at the cow, only move it along, agitate it some. Dust kicked up at the heels of all the animals, trailing off on the lee side of them. 

Rhett settled into a broody silence, that volatile energy expended, replaced by sullenness. As he rode, he thought of the envelope and what it contained, the name there. Annette Cummings that was Byers and now Cummings again. He’d sign the divorce papers and send them back. There’d be more to follow, he knew that. Custody hearings. He would not win. Would not put the effort into winning because what was the point? The boy would stay with his mother, his father a vacancy in his life. What would be told about him? The mothership is real, he’d been told. Children of a certain age need their mothers. But isn’t it also true that a son needs his father? Isn’t that also true? Important, even? It didn’t matter what he thought or believed. The outcome would be what it was, and that’s really all there was to it.

They rolled in around lunchtime and got the heifer settled in the green gate octagon. The dogs drank hard from the trough there that was constantly filling and overflowing at a trickle, gagging some in their haste. Once they’d settled, Rhett went inside. He passed the heat of the day napping and watching bad television. Local news and soap operas. Daytime talk shows. A lunch of leftover Mexican food from a place in Fruita just off the interstate. The envelope was still there, right where he’d left it. He didn’t want to deal with it though, not right now, so he did his best to ignore it. 

After a while he went back out to the pen to check on the heifer, cooing as he approached. 

“Hey girl. Heey there.” 

The cow shied away and eyed him, alert. The fear he evoked in the animal saddened him, and he leaned on the fence feeling sorry for himself, knowing who could blame her? He let the shame of it wash over him like a sickening flood. 

He looked at Rag Boy. Maybe he’d take the rest of the afternoon off too, not for himself, but for the horse, though the man would not protest. They’d both gone hard in recent days. Plus, there were things around here that needed doing and maybe he would do them instead. But he didn’t. He went back inside the trailer and stretched out as best he could on the small sofa and switched on the television set. The rabbit ears off the top wrapped in tinfoil caught only a couple of the local channels and that was it. Around three or four in the afternoon he cracked his first High Life. After his third, somewhere around dusk, he stepped outside to piss. He had a good buzz on and there was still some light in the west. Everything felt light and good in that moment, and he forgot for the time being how lonely his life had become. 

Time. It was time that had gotten him into this predicament in the first place, too much time, and just letting things go whatever way they would. Now he could think of no other remedy than to go on letting time do its thing, smooth out the creases of its own accord, while he battened down the hatches and braced himself for the storm that he had been too proud or stubborn to recognize, though it had been building over the horizon for quite some time.

Just now, though, he didn’t want to think of any of that. So he focused on the beer and the dry earth and sky. The lights of Grand Junction had just begun to glow on the horizon. The Junk-Show, he thought. He’d need to make a run in there soon. Stock up at Costco, the big liquor store next to City Market where a half a case cost $8.99. But at that moment, it was just him and the animals. Trucks hummed as they passed on the highway. Sunset faded and the stars came out, no moon, and the dry land became a dark place. A dark place that would swallow him whole. Every. Last. Bit.

C. William Langsfeld lives outside of a small town in southwest Colorado. His fiction has appeared in Midwestern Gothic.