A Rhinestone Button (5 page)

“Yeah, so?” said Jacob.

Job didn’t bother trying to explain. He’d only end up making Jacob look foolish in front of his son. The calf’s head was bent back. Jacob could have pulled for hours and got nowhere. It seemed he’d forgotten the basics, that he needed three things to pull a calf: two feet and a head, or
two feet and a tail. He should have reached in to make sure both feet were from the same calf, and that it wasn’t twins, that he wasn’t pulling one leg from each.

Job grabbed hold of the calf’s nose, and held its jaw so its bottom teeth wouldn’t cut into the uterus. He swung the head around, so it rested on the front legs. Worked the rope in around the calf’s head, behind the ears.

“Okay, tug gently on the chains.”

Jacob took both handles, pulled.

“Gently!”

With his left arm still up the cow, Job held the calf’s head with his left hand, and tugged on the rope with his right, as the calf was pulled from the cow, slid to the ground. A gush of amniotic fluid. The sweetish smell of newborn calf.

The calf’s tongue was sticking out, swollen and blue. Job hauled the calf up by the back legs, held it as high as he could.

“He’s got to make sure the fluid drains from the lungs,” Jacob explained to Ben. Hoping to save face, Job thought, to appear like he knew a thing or two about this business.

Job lay the calf back on the ground, pushed the tongue back in and covered the calf’s mouth, then blew into a nostril to clear the way and get the calf breathing. It snorted, drew breath. Thrashed. He grabbed the old cow’s head and pulled her off her side so she was lying normally and had an easier time breathing. Then he washed in the bucket of water and took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his hands. He felt the confidence of being in his element. He knew cattle. A skill Jacob didn’t possess. “The calf was in a normal position except its head was dropped to the side. When that happens,
it doesn’t matter how much you pull. Calf won’t budge. It’s a common mistake, if you haven’t calved much.”

“Well,” said Jacob. “Learn something new every day.” But he didn’t look happy about it.

“So what would you do here?” said Job. “Build a herd? You never took much interest in farming.”

“More to the point, I was never much good at it, right?” said Jacob. “Yeah, well. Remember that story Grandma Sunstrum always told? About how her dad sent her into the field to pick rocks with her brothers, and she came home saying she couldn’t find any rocks? Sometimes I didn’t know what I was doing, but sometimes I just wanted to get out of the work. I wanted to read my books. I hated working with Dad. All he did was yell at me.”

“You know you’re welcome to stay awhile,” said Job. I can sell a few cows and hire you for the summer if you want. I could use a hand with field work.”

“I’d appreciate that. Anyway, I don’t know that I’d end up farming. It may come down to selling this place.”

“But Dad was born into this house,” said Job. “Granddad built it. We can’t hand it over to strangers.” Or more to the point, what would he do without the land? Who was he without this farm? He’d imagined he’d live his life here, as his father had. It was an assumption Abe had planted in him, one that he’d never questioned.

“I’m not saying we will sell. I’m just saying it may come down to selling. In the future. We’ll have to settle my part of the inheritance sooner or later. You could always buy me out.”

“The bank isn’t going to loan me the money to buy you out. My income isn’t enough.”

“You could sell a quarter.”

“We’ve only got the two quarters. I need it all to keep the operation going. An investor may buy it and rent it back to me, but that’s a long shot. In any case, the house is on one quarter, the outbuildings on the other. If I sell either one I’ll have to go to the expense of building.”

“You see how it is,” said Jacob. “If you aren’t going to buy me out, then we’re going to have to find a way to share the land.”

Job took a step back into a steaming cow patty. Felt his heart tattoo a rapid beat. He saw the months, maybe years, before him, living in that shack, eating canned tuna sandwiches, without mayonnaise, because he didn’t want to deal with Lilith, who’d taken over his own kitchen. He wouldn’t be able to bring a woman home to entertain, or promise her anything. He felt as he did when he drove the tractor too close to a slough and was pulled in, one back tire spinning uselessly, the other still on firm ground but arching its way inevitably into mud.

Then Ed. The summer following Jacob’s return, Job dropped in on Will early one morning, unannounced, and found Ed sitting at the kitchen table in nothing but his Stanfield’s. Morning bristle on a wrestler’s chin, dark ruffle of chest hair, arms as thick as thighs. He made no attempt to cover himself. Will had answered the door in a terry bathrobe. “This is, ah, Ed. He’ll be staying with me. Working with me.”

Ed didn’t act like a hired hand, didn’t live in the trailer on the other side of the yard but moved right into the house with Will, ate every meal with him. Made supper alongside Will when Job was over. It was clear Ed wasn’t a guest; he was family in a way Job wasn’t. Although Ed didn’t impose himself when Job went out with Penny and Will, he was there, in the kitchen, during the Tuesday-night Bible study when Job found himself complaining, again, about the lack of eligible young women in the area.

“You just need to get out more,” said Ed.

Job supposed this was true. Other single men his age drove up to Edmonton discotheques looking for a date. Or went to the Godsfinger Bar and Grill for a beer and bum darts, a game in which contestants put quarters in the fabric of their butt cracks, walked a space, then released the
quarters into a cup; or chicken bingo, for which bets were placed as to where on a numbered grid the bird in question would take a shit. Or, as a last resort, single guys went to the karaoke nights at the Godsfinger community hall, where residents sang from lyrics typed onto recipe cards. On the Saturday nights that Job didn’t go out with Will and Penny, he stayed in his farm kitchen with his cat in his lap, listening to his vacuum cleaner.

“Even if I found somebody, how would I entertain?” said Job. “I can’t bring a woman into that cabin.”

“A girl would understand,” said Will. “It’s just a temporary situation.”

All of them were crowded at the kitchen table. Job in jeans and a Sunday shirt. Wade in his NAPA Auto Parts cap and Jerry Kuss in his white cowboy hat, neither thinking to take them off inside the house. Penny in a sweatshirt with a picture of a cat on the front. Ruth Swanson, sitting head and shoulders above them all, with the hands of a basketball player. Ed in jeans and undershirt, though there were ladies present. Will in his Mackinaw, itching his beard. A duck, wearing a diaper, sat on his foot.

Job took a sip from his coffee. “Jacob’s talking about staying, running the farm.”

“He’s no farmer,” said Will. “Never was.”

“I know it. He knows it. But they’ve had some problems. Lilith wants to stay put for a while.”

“You happy about that?” said Will. “Farming with him?”

Job shrugged. “What choice do I have? Dad left half the farm to him.”

“Even if he does stay, that’s no reason why you can’t go out, have a little fun,” said Ed.

“Yeah, but who with?”

Godsfinger wasn’t brimming with single women. Job had found his one and only date at Jacob’s wedding reception, held at the Godsfinger community hall. Amanda Krumm was a second cousin from Saskatchewan; when Job watched her from across the community hall, she gave him the eye in return. As they petted in his father’s pickup behind the hall, it never occurred to him that she might try to take his shirt off. He didn’t notice she’d undone several buttons until she spoke.

“Your chest is so smooth. And your arms. What do you do? Shave your arms?”

“No.”

She ran a finger down his cheek. “And the skin on your face, it’s so soft, like a woman’s. You don’t have to shave, do you?”

There was wonderment in her voice, as if she had just seen a rare eastern bluebird, flitting cerulean in the lilac. It was true, at nineteen he shaved only occasionally and even then he shaved just for himself, to say he could. His beard was a scattering of downy white hairs.

“You
are
a man, right?” She giggled. It rose like hiccups and wouldn’t stop. Job asked politely if Amanda would please leave the truck and then he drove himself home, abandoning his father at the reception, though there’d be hell to pay. He knew his embarrassment would be all over that hall within the hour.

“Why not put an ad in the personals?” Ed asked.

Job took a sip from his coffee, didn’t bother answering.

“I’m serious,” said Ed. “That’s how I hooked up with Will.”

Around them the kitchen was more or less as Barbara had left it, though nowhere near as tidy. Three days’ worth of dishes in the sink. Stacks of newspapers in the corner. A bag of Pampers Newborns on the counter. Two weeks of grit underfoot. But the walls, the tops of cupboards, and the fridge, were covered with Barbara’s fridge magnets and framed inspirational sayings, knick-knacks. Chickens, mostly. A ceramic-chicken cookie jar on top of the fridge. A chicken mobile dangling above the window. Thirty or more sets of chicken salt-and-pepper shakers scattered here and there. Gifts from friends who felt it necessary to give her chickens for her birthdays and at Christmas. Barbara had once told Job that she had never liked these chicken trinkets but felt duty bound to display them all, in case one of the friends who’d given them should drop by. She’d left it all when she moved into town, bought everything new. But didn’t want Will to throw anything out.

“It’s one thing to find a job through a newspaper ad,” said Penny. “It’s another to find a wife that way. It’s sort of desperate.”

“Who said anything about a wife?” said Jerry. “Why not just someone to have a few laughs with. A little hootchy-kootchy.”

Jerry had little trouble finding women, though he couldn’t seem to hang on to them. He had the cowboy look that the local women went for. Brilliant blue eyes in a sunbaked face. He’d opened a country mechanics shop in his father’s old machine shed. Scraped a meagre living until he went back to church and joined the local Christian businessmen’s association, and changed his business name from
Kuss Repairs to Good Samaritan Towing and Repairs. Business went up thirty per cent.

“Exactly,” said Ed. “I’m just talking about someone to get out with, so you’re not always hanging your sorry ass around here.”

“How about Liv?” said Ruth. “You seem to get along with her.”

Liv worked at the co-op, waitressing in the café, manning the tills in the grocery, and had a habit of sitting at Job’s table when things were slow, sharing a coffee and a bit of gossip with him. She sliced him larger pieces of pie than the other waitresses did. Spooned on bigger dollops of whipped cream, ice cream. She’d moved to town with her husband, Darren Liebich, several years before, just after Darren’s mother had died and left him the family home in the centre of Godsfinger, a grand turn-of-the-century two-storey house with elaborate fretwork on the veranda and upper balcony. Darren was a trucker and wasn’t home much. He and Liv had a son about eleven or twelve, Ben’s age, named Jason. Liv had an easy way about her, a ready laugh that produced, for Job, a fall of tiny silver balls. He liked her. She was one of the few women his age, other than Penny and Ruth, who he felt comfortable talking to.

“She’s married,” said Job.

Will picked up the duck, put it on his lap, stroked its head. “She and Darren split. Mom said his truck was parked over at Rhonda Cooper’s several nights in a row.”

“She doesn’t mow her lawn,” said Penny. “There were complaints. Barbara said she gave Liv a warning. If she doesn’t tidy up her yard, Barbara’s going to fine her.”

Will put the duck on Ed’s lap, stood to get the coffee
pot. “That’s my mom.” Barbara not only judged and awarded ribbons on the vegetable and flower arrangement entries at the fall fair, but placed sticky notes on the winners and losers alike with what she felt were helpful criticisms:
These carrots should have been cleaned better and had the hairy root ends cut off
, or, on Liv’s blue-ribbon flower arrangement, in which she had used a pretty yellow button flower,
Tansy is a noxious weed. Why you used it is beyond me
.

“She
is
pretty,” said Job.

“She’s fat,” said Penny. “You’re not really thinking of asking her out?”

“I’d ask her out,” said Wade. “If I were you.”

They all turned to Wade and waited for him to say more. But he put a whole almond square in his mouth and chewed. Wade and Jerry were best friends, though what kept the friendship going was anyone’s guess. Wade worked in the Leduc auto-parts store that Jerry frequented, and Job supposed that was how the friendship between the two had been struck. But while Jerry grated, Job liked Wade. He didn’t expect talk, rarely spoke. There was something in his manner that demanded respect. Maybe it was his silence. Like Proverbs said, “Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.”