Chapter 9: Bad Pizza

On Friday at six, Maxwell found me scrubbing the kennel floor and said, "Get your boots."

"Why?"

"Heifer calving, forty minutes north. The farmer's wife just called. It's backward, and I could use hands."

"I'm a first-month student."

"You're the only one who stays calm when something goes wrong," he said. "I noticed. Boots."

We stopped for pizza at a gas station on the way.

It was the worst pizza of my life, with a crust and cheese that tasted of plastic.

We ate it in his truck with the windows down, and neither of us said anything for ten miles.

It was the best silence I'd had in years.

"You're not going to ask me about this morning?" I said at last.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you'll tell me if you want to."

He wiped his fingers on his jeans.

"And I'm terrible at small talk, so I'd rather just sit here."

I laughed.

He glanced sideways at me, and the corner of his mouth tipped up.

The farm was a long white house with one light on in the barn.

A couple in their sixties waited at the door, gray-faced.

Inside, a young heifer lay on her side in the straw, groaning, with two small hooves showing and nothing else moving.

"Backward," Maxwell said. "Tail first. Ellinghaus, wash up to your shoulder."

I did as I was told.

For two hours, the barn smelled of iodine and hay, and the only sounds were the heifer's low bellow and Maxwell's voice giving quiet orders.

"Hold her head. Talk to her."

"Hi, mama," I whispered. "You're doing so well. Almost there."

"Chains on the legs, on my count. Now pull when she pushes. Not before."

My hands did what I asked, steady as they had been for every night shift of my other life.

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