“I’ve got it, Pop Pop,” she told him.

He nodded and sat back down, picking up the drumstick he was still working on, thinking nothing of her offer.

She started for the room with her coat and boots, Eugie nipping at her heels. They’re going to let this tiny nothing of a girl deliver a calf by herself?! I jumped up and everyone’s eyes turned toward me. Bridge eyed me strangely. I stood there a good minute, debating whether I should chase after her like a goon.

“Would you like to go?” Ellie asked me, saving me.

“Is that too weird?” I asked.

“Not at all. I didn’t think you’d be able to see this for a while, but the ranch is fickle and the heifer had different ideas. Go.”

I followed Cricket but not before noticing Ethan’s furrowed brows. He was catching on, but I couldn’t seem to care.

I grabbed my coat and gloves and opened the door to freezing temperatures. The cold was so bitter; it made me step back slightly. I pushed through the frozen wind and saw Cricket’s little frame entering the barn, Eugie right behind her. The wind whipped against my face and I raised my scarf higher against my mouth and nose, reveling in the warmth from my breath. I made an immediate mental note to buy a cap of some kind.

When I entered the barn, it was several degrees warmer than the outside, the cows and hot lights brought it to a tolerable temperature. I looked around and noticed Cricket crouched in a corner messing with something. “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” began to play. Oh my God, could she be any sexier? She stood and did a little shimmy dance move and my jaw went slack, but then she left out the other side of the barn. Where in the hell is she going? I started to follow but she quickly came back into the barn leading the heifer by a rope. She still hadn’t noticed me. She guided the animal into a metal stall and it tried to ram itself through to the other side. It was caught by a hinged gate butting against its shoulder blades and enclosing its head. The gate prevented the heifer from stepping back, most likely to stop her from trampling Cricket. I stifled a shudder.

“You gonna just stand there?” I heard, startling me. Okay, she had noticed me.

“Uh, no, Ellie said I could come down? Is that cool?”

“Sure,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

I walked over to her corner of the barn and carefully made my way around the heifer.

“She’s early,” Cricket said.

The cow kept shaking her head up and down, side to side, snorting through what I could only assume was labor pain. She had a shiny auburn brown coat and the heat from her skin permeated in clouds above her from being so long in the cold, but she didn’t look at all uncomfortable in that respect. It was as if she was made to survive those temperatures. The heifer saw me and stilled. I placed my hand on her head but she didn’t flinch.

“How now brown cow?” I asked seriously.

Cricket snorted but stifled a smile, shaking her head. “You’re a troublemaker. I can already tell.”

“Can you?”

“You’re inciting Ethan’s wrath. Yes, you’re a troublemaker.”

I lifted my shoulders in question, feigning I had no idea what she was talking about. She rolled her eyes and started making her way around the barn. I followed her, keeping pace with Eugie. Hey, lapdog, looks like you’ve got some competition.

“Do you do this a lot?” I asked.

“About ten percent of our cattle will need help birthing during the season. I’ve gotten pretty good at wrestling a calf from its mother when I have to.”

I looked her up and down in appreciation, but she mistook it for skepticism.

“I may look small but I’m capable,” she huffed.

“Oh, I believe you.”

She furrowed her brows but continued walking. She grabbed some wicked chain thing with metal-handled grips covered in black rubber as well as two metal bars and some strange contraption I couldn’t put a name to. The barn was made of wood, much like all the buildings on the property, but this one had a concrete floor, sloped slightly to meet several drains at the base of the slant running through the middle of the barn. There were approximately twenty other cows inside, each in a stall lined heavily with hay.

“So you like The Flaming Lips.”

“That I do.”

“And you have a mixed breed German shepherd named Eugie.”

“Yup, he’s German shepherd and Australian Cattle Dog.”

“That explains the face.”

The dog had ears a little longer than a standard German shepherd as well as large patches of peppered white hair on his face but around his eyes were two large spots of black.

“Hey, watch it!” she said, waving the large chains at me.

I lifted my hands as if in surrender. “I didn’t say he wasn’t awesome.”

She let the chains fall in acceptance and kept walking.

“Calving stall,” she said, waving her hand in a circle toward the trapped heifer. “Head catcher,” she continued the lesson, pointing to the hinged gate thing. “It’s open all the way to the floor so if she wants to lie down, it can’t bind, and won’t suffocate her.”

“And these,” I said, gesturing to the chains in her hand.

“Chains?”

“Oh.”

She took the chains and dropped them on a bale of hay next to the stall. That’s when I saw that the calf’s front legs were protruding out, covered in the sickliest-looking shit I’d ever seen. I nearly gagged.

“What’s the matter, city boy?” Cricket asked, when she took in how wide my eyes had gotten.

I checked my expression. “Nothing.” She laughed anyway.

The cow or heifer or whatever it was cried out.

“Poor thing, she’s distressed. The heifer’s not pushing,” Cricket said.

She bent for the chains.

“What’s the difference between a cow and a heifer?” I asked.

“A heifer is a cow who’s yet to give birth.”

“Ah.”

She wrapped the middle of the chain around the calf’s legs.

“You’re really doing this,” I stated.

She looked at me like I was a moron. “What else should I do? Let her and the calf die?” She began pulling on the rubber-lined grips. “See if we can incite her to push,” Cricket grunted. She pulled a little harder, but the heifer didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Cricket sat down and positioned her legs against the stall for leverage and began pulling a little harder. The animal cried out. “Come on, girl.”

Several minutes passed where Cricket would pull then release, pull then release, but the cow wouldn’t help at all.

“I’m gonna need to do all the work, I guess. Stubborn little thing.”

Cricket pulled, her face tight, her eyes crinkled. She pulled until the tip of the nose was peeking through. She kept pulling but wasn’t making the progress she wanted, I could tell. She looked up at me, appraising me.

“No,” I said.

“Why not, greenhorn? You got something against getting those pretty digs dirty? Listen, I can call Ethan down here, but it’d be easier if you volunteered. This calf’s pretty big and the heifer’s pelvis is really narrow. I’m going to need some help.”

When she mentioned Ethan, I’d already stepped forward, pushing up my sleeves. “What do I do?”

“Just position yourself like I did and gently, keyword gently, pull. Try to wedge the calf back and forth. We don’t want anything tearing.”

I nodded and sat on the floor, bracing my feet against the metal stall and gripping the handles. I gently pulled, shifting the calf back and forth steadily until the head popped out. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Keep going,” Cricket prodded.

I repositioned my hands on the handles to get a better grip and pulled once more. I was trying to be gentle but the calf wasn’t budging.

“Be a little more aggressive,” she encouraged. “Give it a little more.”

I pulled harder and the shoulders started appearing, then the belly, and finally the entire calf spilled out and into my lap. I’d never experienced anything like that before and it was incredibly exhilarating. I smiled down at the baby but it wasn’t breathing.

“She’s not breathing,” I said, panicking a little.

“Hold on,” Cricket said calmly.

She took the calf and dragged it to a stall lined with hay. She sat down with it and stuck pieces of straw up its nose. I’d stood and followed her in by then.

“What does that do?”

“It stimulates breathing. Gets him to hack up any junk in his upper respiratory tract.”

She rubbed the little thing’s chest back and forth, massaging, and encouraging it, speaking softly to it. Sure enough, the calf started breathing, its eyes dazed with little control over its muscles. Its little head bobbed back and forth, the muscles unpracticed. Cricket tucked its legs underneath it and propped it against a wall of hay.

“There you go, baby,” she said.

“It’s a boy, you said?”

“A little boy.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever used this word before, but that thing is cute as shit.”

Cricket laughed out loud.

She cleaned up the cow then released her into the stall with her calf. She began sweeping hay from the birthing stall. I saw a broom in the corner near her stereo and pitched in. She locked eyes with me and nodded. We swept it all up and tossed it in a huge barrel for trash. I thought we were done, but she went to one of the long sides on the inside of the barn and started uncoiling a large hose. She began to spray down the stall and tools, the remnants washed down the drains. She then replaced all the tools back where she had gotten them. When it was all said and done, you couldn’t even tell the heifer had given birth. Until, that is, you looked down at my clothing.

“Disgusting,” I said truthfully.

“Just a little blood and guts,” she explained.

“This all cost me around five thousand dollars,” I said, gesturing to my clothing.

At this, she burst out laughing.

“Greenhorn, I don’t even know where to begin.”

She turned off her music and started toward the door we’d entered before coming from the main house.

“What am I supposed to do?” I yelled out.

“I suggest you wash up and get some rest. Work starts at five.” She stopped and turned my direction. “I also suggest you wear something else, if you catch my drift.”

“These are the only kind of clothes I own.”

Where most girls were impressed by my clothing, by her expression alone, Cricket seemed to believe I was insane.

“Then I guess we’ll have to buy you some new ones. Ones that, I don’t know, don’t cost more than my annual salary?”

She closed the door behind her and I stood there feeling like a first-class asshole...as I should have felt, but all that really made me want to do was check the balance in my account. I was going to start counting down the days, no, the minutes, until Bridge turned eighteen. I wanted out of there. Five thousand a year for grueling, thankless work? No, thank you.