One Good Mama Bone Read online

  The mother cow left the herd under a ceiling of darkness, as dots of white, even twinkling white, sprinkled above her and around her in patterns of order and beauty. She headed across the pasture. The light from the full moon lit her way, but she did not need it to see. She knew where she was going. She had made the trip a dozen times before over this familiar land. The other cows did not follow, although it was customary for them to do so when one decided to move. But this early morning, for this mother, none of the others moved.

  She crossed the earthen dam that held back the pond’s muddy waters and made her way to the creek, where the flow over the years had carved deep and jagged into the red clay soil. She arrived at a spot on its bank near an old cedar tree and dropped to her knees, folding herself onto the earth. At first, she kept her head high, but as daylight dawned, she lowered it, surrendering herself in full.

  The mother had come to deliver one of her own.

  Neither the farmer nor his workingman had noticed her udder, how it had begun to sack up. Nor had they noticed the top of her tail rising and her lower back softening, her ligaments and tissues becoming supple, so that her babies, twins, lying on their backs and surrounded in fluid warm, could follow their natural course and move from their high place near her tail head past her pin bones to their new place, deep in her womb, where they rotated to their bellies for the rest of their journey.

  Like the times before, there would be no mother or sister or friend to instruct her as to what to do. She would know, and it would come from a place deep inside where maternal love lives and maternal love grows, a place that is regardless there, never wavering there, nonnegotiably there.

  It lay in her bones.

  In the growing light, her uterine muscles began to contract. At first, her squeezes stayed small, but as they became harder, her legs stiffened and lifted. They trembled.

  All of this could be seen from above. Life, seen as ripples, moving along the mother’s skin.

  A single buzzard circled above her. A dark, ragged patch against the beginning blue. The mother cow drew in a breath and released it from her nose and mouth, her breath warmer than what it greeted. It formed a mist that hovered near her face.

  From her vulva, a right hoof, the tip of it, appeared. It was midnight black and sheathed in a cloudy membrane. The hoof slipped back in as if timid. She squeezed again. This time, the baby’s left hoof joined the right, and together, as if holding hands, they slid under the roof of the mother’s lifted tail, along with the tip of its nose. Soon, the rest of the baby’s front legs and head came forward in a sack of milky white, transparent and sticky and laced with tiny veins of blood. Already, the baby’s nostrils made little sucking noises, popping the white, while its eye lids tried to blink, letting in the first light. From that warmth, steam rose.

  The mother cow pulled in her front legs, curled them to her chest and rocked her upper body until she was able to get on her knees. On other days, such would not take much effort, but her advanced age of sixteen years, and having just delivered a calf, made rising taxing. When she could, she lifted into the air her back side and then pushed up on her front legs. She turned towards her calf, wet and bloody and sealed, and leaned down and smelled, beginning at its back legs, then up its body to its face, where her tongue stretched. She began licking in long, slow strokes, lifting its head northward, where a second buzzard, and then a third, now joined the first.

  Down its body, she moved her tongue, her young’s blood flowing with her. The calf was a male, a bull, and the same color as she, the red brown of their breed, Hereford. But it would be their faces that would summon all attention. They were mottled, carrying a pattern of red brown and white, his, a small version of hers.

  The smell of smoke curling from nearby chimneys and woodstoves floated through the air, now filled with light and a fourth buzzard.

  The young bull calf curled his front legs, digging into the land. He wanted to stand. He managed to do so, but he could not stay. His legs wobbled. He toppled over.

  A fifth buzzard now circled.

  The mother stood over him, her mouth nudging him, until he could rise again and stay. This time, he moved his mouth to her underbelly, nubbing along until he came upon a teat, swollen and patient. He wrapped his lips around it.

  She bent to the earth and took inside her blades of grass, soon to go dormant.

  A second set of hooves emerged from her, dangled like rocks tied to ropes. In a rush of liquid, the rest of the calf’s body fell to the ground, landing on its back. The mother jerked her head that way. She had never delivered a second. She turned her body towards it and leaned down and smelled the newborn’s face. She began to lick. Her firstborn followed along and continued to drink from her.

  A dozen buzzards now rode the thermals above the mother and her babies.

  Her tail lifted and exposed a bluish pink bubble, full of fluid and blood and all that had nurtured her young, the bubble’s buttons having now disengaged from the mother’s womb, the bubble now expanding and extending downward and falling to the ground. She turned again, lowered her head to it and opened her mouth and took it back inside.

  The first buzzard landed beside the newborn. The first peck was made at its eyes. The baby jerked its head. The mother cow released a long bellow and charged towards the bird, pulling herself from her firstborn’s mouth. The bird hopped back.

  By now, the rest of the buzzards had landed. They stood in jagged layers behind the first. The mother ran at them. They hissed and lifted into the air, scattering back a few feet. She ran at them again, her right front leg giving way. She leaned hard to her left and steadied herself and then returned to her new baby, lowering her head and smelling, beginning at its nose. From her mouth, she brought her tongue and drew it up its face. Its head quivered.

  Three of the birds hopped towards the mother and her young, the firstborn now on the ground. The remaining birds stood with their wings spread.

  The mother ran towards them. They hurled low hisses, flapping their wings and lifting. All except one. It now was near her firstborn, at his rear, pecking.

  She ran at the bird. It hopped away.

  A patch of tall grasses and young cedars grew near the fence line some fifty feet away. She hard-nudged him with her nose, prodding him until he was able to stand, and then she moved in a slow run towards the patch, her calf following. When they were deep inside the cover, she bore down with her mouth on top of his back, until he laid his body on the ground, even his head, which she pressed to the earth.

  She ran back to her second born. The buzzards now surrounded it.

  The mother charged them.

  They scattered.

  Most of her newborn’s eyes were gone. Splashes of blood and tiny specks of white lined the two hollow holes, both the size of a case quarter. Its eye lashes were still intact.

  The mother moved her tongue down her young’s body, moved it in long stretches. The calf was a female, a heifer.

  A bevy of buzzards fought over what remained of her bubble, their pecks rapid and loud. Two, though, hopped in towards her newborn. On their beaks, traces of red and white were sprinkled about.

  The mother began to circle her baby, her sounds gutteral. Her udder, full with milk, swung beneath her. On the rounded ends of her teats, milk seeped. She rammed one bird with her nose. It grunted and hopped back. She moved faster now. Almost running. Charging the second one to her left. Then to her right. Only for a third buzzard and then a fourth to join in. The mother’s breathing was hurried. Her mouth dry, bone dry.

  Her back left knee hit the dirt. She fell to the ground and rolled. She rocked her body hard but could not get up on her knees. She pawed at the ground, digging grooves, deep ones.

  She extended her neck and released a cry, her voice hoarse now. Streaks of sweat in jagged white lines crisscrossed her body. Her second-born lay five feet away. But the mother cow could not see her for the curtain of buzzards.

  In time, and it would be just befor
e the sun hit its highest point that day, the mother cow managed to return to her feet and to her firstborn, still in the patch on the ground, his head still against the earth, and his whole being, his whole being still alive and set to carry the prayers of all who would cross his path.

  part 2

  MEET

  MARCH 12, 1951

  On her knees against the linoleum floor, Sarah Creamer ran her flat hand over the two shelves in her kitchen cupboard, patting every inch of the whitewashed wood as if she was searching for something lost.

  She was searching for food to feed their boy.

  This was in the early morning, just before the sun showed itself. She would like to have pulled on the light over the table to help her see, but electricity cost good money, and she and Harold were already two months behind on their light bill. She thought about burning the kerosene lamp, but kerosene cost a whole nickel a quart, and only one finger high remained in the jar. So Sarah patted in the dark.

  But all she felt that morning was everlasting crumbs.

  She had no food for their boy’s breakfast. He’d eaten the last three spoonfuls of grits the morning before.

  The paper sack to hold his school dinner lay on the table behind her. It held nothing but wrinkles. She would have to give him the same dinner she’d given him the last two weeks and a handful of scattered days before that.

  She went to her bedroom, just across the hall from the kitchen. Beneath the chifforobe, three pears lay huddled together. They’d survived the long winter wrapped in newspaper to keep them from ripening too fast. She tucked one in her apron pocket and returned to the kitchen table, where she used her hands like a hot iron, pressing the sack against the hard wood that still carried Mattie’s stains. She had tried to wash them out, but the blood had soaked in and made itself a home.

  Sarah found that if she pressed her hands long enough, she could make the paper look somewhat presentable.

  She wished she had a new one to give him, but that would have to wait until she could afford more food, and that was in question now that Harold had come home with that letter the day before.

  She unwrapped the newspaper from the pear and set the pear inside the sack. The paper itself, half of a full page, then half again, she left in the shape it had become, a cantaloupe bloom gathered in to protect. She placed it in the peck basket on the floor by the woodstove. It was the lone piece. She’d used the last one to start the fire that morning.

  The school bus would arrive in an hour. With nothing to feed their boy, she would let him sleep an extra few minutes.

  She went to the kitchen sink, leaned forward towards the window, and strained to look to her far right at Harold’s barn. Light, thin lines of it, traced the door on the front, and in the wood itself, she saw a sprinkling of dots like stars out at night. He’d left his kerosene lamp on again. Some nights he had the state of mind to blow it out before he became too intoxicated. But those nights had become increasingly scarce.

  No lights were on across the old garden at Mattie’s. Sarah looked for them every day. There had been none since her death. Billy Udean arrived in a police automobile escort a little after half past noon that day, the siren announcing him breaking though the open window over her sink, where she had been standing, keeping watch with the baby in her arms. The sound came in from afar, high pitched and moving in circles. Sarah had thought about running across and telling him, “There was a gunshot, and I think our Mattie might be dead. I couldn’t get her to the door, Billy Udean, I couldn’t.” But the baby was asleep, finally asleep, his belly full of the milk she had driven to town, to Richbourg’s, to buy with the change she had found in Harold’s overall pockets. No parade was held that day. Since then, the house had sat empty, the garden growing only tall weeds and brush. She and Harold had thought about trying to make a go of one again, but he called the land stained and couldn’t bring himself to go get the mule for plowing.

  Frost covered the world outside the window that morning, the dirt and grass and weeds, anything bold enough to stay in temperatures that fell into the low thirties overnight. At least the kitchen would be warm for their boy. She hoped it would surround him like a good coat.

  She walked down the short hall to his room. His sheets still smelled of the air where she’d hung them out to dry the day before. She took a deep breath and brought the scent into her body. His sheets were clean. She could do that for him.

  He lay on his right side, facing the window, where the sun’s light, however dim, found its way in. His face showed a feature he shared with his mother, her nose, as delicate as a china doll’s. But that was not the most prominent feature he and Mattie shared. He had her dimples.

  But they lay asleep.

  Sarah folded herself onto the floor, placed her knees on the planks beside his single bed, and called his name, she called, “Emerson Bridge.”

  His eyes opened, showing her the light green of butterbeans, the ones she and Mattie used to pick. Harold’s eyes were that color.

  But what she lived for came along next, his dimples. They sank into his cheeks like a finger in biscuit dough, something Sarah loved to make for him, the flour and lard and buttermilk in a big bowl, her fingers bringing it all together. She imagined her finger now dipping into his dimple’s curve the way a spoon would, scooping grits. But she remembered she had no grits to feed him, nor any biscuits, and did not know when she would.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him. She knew her voice quivered. She wanted it strong for him and tried to think of something hard and straight. She pictured the boards beneath her. “But I ain’t got nothing to feed you this morning, hon.” She managed to keep her voice flat until she said “nothing,” and then her voice went wavy again.

  “That’s all right, Mama,” he said.

  Mama.

  Her eyes flooded. Harold had taught him to call her that. As a baby in his crib, Emerson Bridge would raise his arms, Harold picking him up, their bodies swinging left then right, the two of them, blood kin, moving as one, while Sarah stood alone at the door and watched. She wished he would raise his arms like that for her, let her feel his dimpled face against her bosom. But he never had. He liked to stay private, buddying with himself, except for his papa. They were best friends.

  When he passed through the kitchen that morning, she handed him the sack. “You have a good day now, hon.” She tried to put a lift in her voice.

  From the window at the sink, she watched him run down the dirt driveway towards the school bus. In his little hand, the sack swayed left and right.

  He was a boy of only six. His birthday would come in three months, would come in June. He needed food to flesh out that tiny body of his, especially his cheeks where his dimples lived.

  The lone pear she’d sent was not enough.

  She took in her hand the bottom of the curtains. They framed the window like a child’s bangs with a short run of hair along the sides. She squeezed the fabric. She squeezed hard.

  She leaned towards the glass and spotted his footprints in the frost just out from the porch’s bottom step, his right, then his left and right again. He’d taken his first steps on Father’s Day, a week shy of turning a year old, Harold behind him, his hands on Emerson Bridge’s sides, Sarah in front, her hands holding the tips of his little fingers. “That’s right, come on, let’s walk,” she had said and wanted to add, “Mama’s got you,” but she had stopped herself, saying instead, “Papa, Papa’s got you, hon.” Sparkles, their boy had stepped into sparkles that morning. And they had cushioned him, like his papa’s arms.

  Maybe, one day, hers.

  The mouths of the mother cow and her calf, inches apart, hovered over the newly reawakened Kentucky 31 fescue and ladino clover. Flecks of green glistened on their lips, a testimony to the plentifulness that spread across the seventy-one acres of pastureland like a rug. This was particularly welcome after the long winter when the fields had gone dormant, and they were left to the mercy of the farmer, whose worker on most days had
brought them buckets of ground corn and tossed bales of hay off the side of the farmer’s truck.

  The two were part of a herd of five dozen, all of them grazing and making their way down the sloping land to the pond that sat into the earth like a bowl. The mother and her calf would eat, then walk, then eat some more, all the while keeping their sights on each other. Every few minutes, the calf would suckle her, wrapping his mouth around a teat and pulling hard. Milk, long warmed from her body, poured full inside him. He was four months old and born a bull in the off-month of November, his heifer sister killed when a bevy of buzzards attacked her. But the farmer, a few days after the bull’s birth, had his workingman slit the bottom of the calf’s sack and reach inside and yank down a cord, which he cut, making the cord fall to the ground and the bull, a steer now, his only use as meat.

  He was his mother’s first male calf. Always before, she had delivered females and in the early spring, the customary time for births. All remained in the herd with her except two. Each had missed delivering a calf for the farmer’s use and was sent to the sale barn for slaughter. The mother cow was old, sixteen, an age unheard of to still be alive. But she had continued to deliver calves, and, for that, the farmer had let her live.

  The wailing cry of another steer, this one a year and a half old and the offspring of one of the mother cow’s heifers, sounded up the slope near the lot. The mother cow located her own calf, who was at the pond now, taking a drink and splashing water with his head. She looked back the way of the cry. Many of the other cows looked that way, too, but then lowered their heads to resume eating or drinking.

  But not the year-and-a-half-old steer’s mother. She lingered up the hill, her head high and looking, as the farmer’s truck sounded, and from her mouth came her own sound, bellows, which, for a while, her calf returned, until he was carried too far away.

  Sarah took herself to the barn. Harold’s lamp sat on dirt in the midst of Old Crow whiskey bottles, some standing upright, others on their side, but all empty. Two bales of straw, placed end to end, sat behind the lamp. Her husband lay across them. She had expected to find him sprawled and dangling the way he presented himself most of the time now, but this day he lay as a baby would inside his mother, curled chin to knees, his arms folded and tucked in at his chest.