“We’re totally best buddies. Like sisters now.”
He made a few more vigorous strokes with his rake. Within seconds, number 17’s stall was empty.
“We get by,” I amended. “Her back is killing her, so I’ve been filling in for her quite a bit. She has to treat me a little better.”
His brow furrowed. “Diz? Skipping work? That’s a first.”
I shrugged and kept pulling out sawdust. Earnest spread number 17’s clean bedding from a pile I’d put at the head end of the stall.
“So,” he said, “aren’t you dying to see the present I brought you?”
“Perishing. Actually, I figured you had forgotten to get me anything and were covering up.”
“No. It’s something I thought you needed, up there in the wilderness.”
“Twenty-minute walk isn’t wilderness.”
“In the woods, then.” He dug in the pockets of his jacket and produced a field guide to New England trees and shrubs, the size of a ham sandwich but twice as thick. He presented it to me with a certain ceremoniousness and a somber expression that struck me as incongruous. I had hoped he’d be as happy to see me as I was him.
“Earnest, that’s very sweet of you!”
He dipped his head, moved on to the next stall, which was empty; its occupant was out for a meal or drink elsewhere in the shed. I moved on to my next stall and began raking out clots of manure and wet sawdust.
“I mean,” he explained, “you live among the trees, I figured you’d want to know more about them. They’re like … the walls of your house.”
“True.”
“I work with trees every day. Know them intimately. They’re really very interesting when you get to know them better. Incredibly complex and diverse organisms.”
I didn’t know why, but the way he told me this felt sort of stiff, artificial—unlike him. Something had changed in the dynamic between us.
The cow in the next stall along the row was Queenie, the biggest and orneriest of Brassard’s herd. She had an alpha attitude, and facial markings that looked to me like war paint. I had often seen her humping her sisters in the pasture. She didn’t move when I urged her out, just turned her head around to show me her sullen expression. I was reluctant—afraid, actually—to get into a shoving match with her in such close quarters. Even Diz was wary of her.
“Earnest, what should I do with Queenie?” I asked.
He came over. He squeezed himself up to her head and spoke to her in a friendly way: “Honey. It’s Earnest. You know what happens when you and I have to get physical. Right? Let’s get your place tidied up.”
Queenie backed out and went down the aisle to get away from us.
I marveled but didn’t say anything. Earnest raked out her stall and spread the new bedding. But he stayed quiet, thoughtful in what I felt to be a troubled way. It put me into a similar mood.
“Ann, I have some stuff to attend to,” he said. “I might be away for another while.”
“But you just got back!”
“I know.”
“Where are you going?”
“Good question,” he said gloomily.
I leaned on my rake to frown at him. “Seems like you’re avoiding answering me.”
“It’s personal, complex, and at the moment it’s awkward. Let’s leave it. Want to see what I got Will?”
“Okay …”
He grinned, pulled another book out of his pocket, and flashed me its cover: Pretty Good Joke Book, by Garrison Keillor.
My brain clicked through a selection of responses. I frowned at him: “What, Will needs a manual for being funny?”
Bronze-colored people do change color when embarrassed.
“Earnest! Are you being unkind?”
“Of course not! But he is sort of … a reticent guy, isn’t he?” He slipped the book back into his pocket. “You know I love Will. He’s practically like a son to me. I just thought he would, it would … be a fun book for him to have.”
He worked with me until the job was done, then went back to the house as I pushed the used bedding down the alley with the skid-steer. He headed up to Burlington a few days later and we didn’t see him again for almost two months.
In fact, Will did bring that book out to the parlor a couple of times, and he and Lynn and I had a hoot reading jokes to each other at odd moments. It helped break the tedium of those chilly predawn milkings. I put the field guide on my kitchen counter, next to my egg timer and salt and pepper shakers, where it mainly served to remind me of Earnest. It was winter now, and identifying trees would be difficult—no leaves to compare to the lush photos, hard to get to the woods in the snow.
Chapter 24
Until that winter, I’d only ever done the milking with Diz or Franklin, once in a rare while with Earnest, and I found it much more pleasant with an amiable companion such as Lynn or Will. It’s a sort of intimate experience and has its odd charms.
Typical mid-January morning: Alarm goes off at four thirty. I wake up in the dead black, grope my way to the coffeemaker, which I’ve programmed to start brewing ten minutes earlier. Fill up a huge plastic mug emblazoned with the UVM Catamounts mountain lion logo. The cup holds a quart and has a screw-on top with a sippy slot in it so I can take it around the barn with me. Check the thermometer tacked to the porch pillar: eight below.
Then, tights and shirts and pants and coveralls and a big, dirty, checked wool jacket, stocking cap, gloves, boots. It’s usually around forty degrees in the shed this time of year, around fifty in the parlor—tropical compared with outside—but bone chilling after an hour or two.
Stumble out into the dark, which is breathtaking from beauty as well as cold, stars crisp and shivering above. Motion lights blink on over house door and barn. Crunch on brittle snow toward the bare bulb glowing over the milking parlor door. To my left I see a
