Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

WE HAD ACQUIRED TWO yearling heifers in the summer, one mostly white with black splotches and the other mostly red with white splotches. Their names, according to Mandy, were Moo-Moo and Pinky, but Jemmy had been browsing my Merck Manual and had nicknamed them Leprosy and Rosacea. Jamie said practically that it scarcely mattered what they were called, as he’d never met a cow that would answer to its name, in any case; he called them Ruaidh and Ban—“Red” and “White,” in Gaelic.

At the moment, he was calling the red one something in Gaelic that I translated roughly as “Misbegotten daughter of a venomous caterpillar,” but I supposed that I might be missing the finer shades.

“It’s not her fault,” I said reprovingly.

He made a Scottish noise like a cement mixer, and gritted his teeth. He had one arm inserted into Rosacea’s backside up to the elbow, and his face in the flickering lanternlight was as red as her hide.

It truly wasn’t the poor cow’s fault—she’d been bred too young, and was having a lot of trouble delivering her first calf—but I didn’t blame him, either. He’d been trying for a quarter of an hour to get hold of both feet so he could pull the calf out, but Rosy was skittish and kept swinging her rear end away. The calf’s nose poked out now and then, nostrils flaring in what I thought must be panic. I felt much the same way, but was fighting it down.

I wanted to help, get my own much smaller hands into the cow and at least locate the hooves. I’d cut my right hand badly during the day, though, and couldn’t countenance exposing a raw wound to what Jamie was handling at the moment.

“Nic na galladh!” he said, jerking back and shaking his hand. In the scrum and poor light, he’d accidentally shoved his hand into the wrong orifice, and was now flapping his arm to dislodge a coating of very wet, fresh manure. He caught sight of my face and pointed a slimy, menacing finger at me.

“Laugh, and I’ll rub your face in it, Sassenach.”

I put my bandaged hand solemnly over my mouth, though I was quivering internally. He snorted, wiped his filthy hand on his shirt, and bent again to his labors, muttering execrations. Within moments, though, the execrations had turned to urgent prayers. He’d got the feet.

I was praying myself. The poor cow had been in labor since the night before, and was beginning to sway, her head hanging in exhaustion. That might help. If she was tired enough to relax … Jamie snatched up the rope bracelets he had made—essentially two small nooses joined by a common rope—and shoved them over the tiny hooves before they could slip out of his hand. Then was squatting behind Rosy, pulling for all he was worth. He stopped when the contraction eased, panting, resting his forehead against the cow’s haunch.

It was dark in the byre; it was a small cave with a gate across the front, and there was no light save a small oil lantern hung from a nail pounded into the rock. Even so, I saw the ripple of a new contraction start and leaned toward Jamie, trying to will my own strength into him, to help.

He set his feet hard in the straw and pulled, making an inhuman noise of effort, and with a squashy sort of glorp! the calf slid out in a cascade of blood and slime.

Jamie got up, slowly. He was panting from the effort, face and clothes smeared dark with blood and manure, but his eyes never left the calf and his face was alight with the same joy I felt as we watched the new mother—remarkably placid, considering recent events—sniff her new offspring and then begin to lick it with long, rhythmic swipes of her tongue.

“She’ll be a good mother.”

For an instant, I thought Jamie had said it, but he was facing me, looking surprised, and there was a faint movement behind me. I swung round with a small yelp and saw the man who had stepped soundlessly into the byre with us.

“Who the hell—” I began, groping for a weapon, but Jamie had raised his hand in greeting to the man.

“Mr. Cloudtree,” he said, and paused to wipe his forearm across his blood-slimed face. “I trust we see ye well, and your family?”

“They’re well enough,” the young man answered, keeping a wary eye on me and the wooden shovel I’d seized. “And since I got the chance, ma’am, I meant to thank you for it. For my babies, I mean.”

“Oh,” I said, rather blankly. Cloudtree. The pieces of memory fell into place around that name. The fecund smell of the byre, the swamp of blood and birthwater, brought back that night out of time in a small cabin, the endless effort, and the timeless forever when I held a small blue light in my hands, praying with heart and soul for it not to go out. I swallowed.