Bleeding Kansas (9 page)

It was still dark, but it was almost always dark for the morning milking. They started at five, finished around six-thirty, and this time of year the eastern sky was barely turning gray even when they finished.

He hurried to the washroom and dumped the equipment into the sink at the corner. Dale would disinfect it and set it out ready for the evening milking.

The light was on in the kitchen. Nanny would have breakfast ready. He mustn't dawdle, but he still took a chance and ran over to the new enclosure, where Soapweed's new calf stood in a lonely state. She was bawling, longing for company, for her mother, for food. She was only four weeks old.

Robbie hated that part of dairy farming. It was cruel to take babies from their mothers. The other calves didn't fare much better than Soapweed's calf, being pinned next to little sheds outside the main barn. Working cows couldn't be sharing their milk with their own offspring. It all had to go to the farm. At least the other new calves were outdoors. They all could see the sun and each other.

Soapweed had cried for forty-eight hours straight when Serise was taken from her. And poor Serise, she was in this god-awful—
sorry, Jesus, but it is
—pen, no sunlight for her, no friends. Robbie undid the lock and went in to pet her.

“King Jesus, He moves the mountains,” he crooned, rubbing her nubby red head.

The cow nuzzled him and tried to suck his fingers. He smelled of milk. He had it on his clothes. She wanted to nurse so badly it hurt him.

“Your bucket of ultrapure is coming soon, girl, don't you worry. And when you're rich and famous, don't forget who looked after you, either, you hear?”

“Hey, Robbie!”

Robbie jumped, but it was just Dale, who added, “You know Arnie don't like you in here. And I seed your Nanny looking out the kitchen window for you. Maybe you'd better go on inside.”

“W
HAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?”
Myra asked. “I saw Dale cleaning out the jars before you showed your head.”

“Yes, Nanny,” Robbie said. It was easier to agree with her than to offer excuses.

“Those Jews are coming from Kansas City this afternoon to look at the calf,” Arnie announced. “Make sure you're not playing that music of yours while they're here. We need them to give us a favorable answer, and that guitar churning up the air isn't going to put them in a good frame of mind any more than it does me. And don't wipe your mouth on the back of your hand. What do you think that piece of paper is next to you? A copy of the Ten Commandments?”

Junior snickered. Robbie gulped down his eggs and raced upstairs to shower. He couldn't stand to go to school with milk on him. It had happened earlier this year, when he started in ninth grade, in town, and the memory of the girls mooing in the hall as he passed still made his ears burn. Lara Grellier had been in the group. He suspected it was she who told the others. They were city girls, who wouldn't know how fresh milk smelled, just that Robbie smelled funny.

He stood under the shower until the hot water ran out, then rubbed a clear space on the mirror to inspect his upper lip. Junior had only started shaving last year, when he turned seventeen, but Robbie was hoping that dark-haired musicians grew mustaches faster than blond football players.

“I won't wait all day for you, Romeo!” Junior bellowed, rattling the bathroom doorknob.

Robbie sprayed himself with the bottle of aftershave he'd started keeping in his backpack after Junior filled a previous one with ammonia. He pulled on his black
BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE
T-shirt. They were his favorite Christian metal group, the one he modeled his own sound on. He'd stenciled
JESUS ROCKS
on the back. Nanny hated the message, hated the shirt, and she'd ruined his first one in the laundry by deliberately pouring bleach on it. It was another thing he kept in his school backpack, folded flat inside his social studies notebook.

Robbie ran back down the stairs, his backpack draped over his shoulder. More than once, Junior had gone to school without him and he'd had to hitch a ride. Robbie had been lucky one time back in September, getting to the crossroads just as Chip and Lara Grellier were pulling out of their yard. Chip was going to drive on around him, but Robbie jumped in front of the car, waving his arms frantically, and explained that Junior had left him behind.

He'd scrunched into the back of Chip's Nissan, his knees around his ears, his nose almost resting in Lara Grellier's soft brown curls. Her hair smelled like fresh grass, and he could see the line where her tan ended beneath her tank top. He felt himself contract with longing. Was this love? And could he be in love with Lara Grellier, who had broken his front tooth in a fight when they were in sixth grade, whose family always went out of their way to hurt the Schapens? Besides which, she went to a church where they believed in evolution instead of the Bible, so according to Myra, Arnie, and Pastor Nabo she was bound for hell. Maybe it was his—Robbie's—job to save her.

When they got to school and she jumped out, he'd been imagining her breasts under his hands as his passion guided her to Jesus. Her mocking “End of the trail, milkboy” made him blush, as if she had seen his thoughts.

The next several times that Junior left without him, Robbie had sprinted to the crossroads, hoping to get there ahead of the Grelliers, but each time they had already left for town and he'd been forced to walk the long mile to the main road before getting a lift.

After that he'd tried harder to be ready ahead of Junior, since Myra thought it was good discipline for Robbie when Junior left without him. “This is what it will feel like when Jesus comes again in glory, to be left behind with the sinners. So you learn to be ready, ready for school, ready for the Lord.”

When it was his turn for early-morning milking, he imagined his workload next fall if Junior went on to college. The one good thing was, he'd get to take the pickup to school himself, no more of this hassling by Nanny and his brother. Chip would be gone, too, probably, taking his little sports car off to college, so maybe Lara would ride with him, Robbie Schapen.

“Lulu” was what her family always called her. Back when they were in grade school at Kaw Valley Eagle, he used to tease her: Lulu makes doo-doo, Lulu the boo-boo. Now he blushed with shame. No wonder she called him milkboy.

“Lulu,” he murmured into the foggy mirror.

Junior rattled the knob again. “Last call.”

Today, as he bolted out the door, Nanny shouted, “You change that shirt when you get home from school, young man. I want those Jews to see you looking like a Christian, in a real shirt. You hear me?”

“But this is a Christian band, Nanny,” Robbie called, jumping into the truck, which Junior was starting to put in gear.

“Says you.”

Junior sprayed gravel as he spun out of the yard.

“Says me, says Pastor Nabo, and says anyone who isn't too ignorant to listen to music.”

“Yeah, when the roll is called up yonder Nanny will be miles ahead of
Becoming the Anti-Christ
in the line. So listen to her, knucklehead.”

“
Archetype,
not anti-Christ, you ignorant ape. Anyway, why is Nanny so bent out of shape about some Jews coming to the farm?” Robbie complained. “Lawrence is full of Jews. We know lots of them from school and the market. Why do we have to put on good clothes and let a bunch of strange men fool around with Soapweed's calf?”

“If you'd get your head out of your ass and listen to something besides your own useless guitar, you'd know that this could be the end of the world starting right here on our farm. We could be so rich we'd never have to milk another cow again.”

“If the world comes to an end, we won't have to, anyway, we won't need money. Besides, we're not supposed to lay up treasure on earth.”

“I'd love to have me a little car like Frenchie Grellier drives,” Junior grumbled. “It'd be great to rub those golden Grellier noses in our shit for a change.”

The remark reminded Robbie again of sitting squashed behind Lara, the smell of her hair, the softness of her skin at the nape of her neck. If Junior had a little sports car, he and Eddie Burton would ride around in it, terrorizing the county. Not that they didn't already, on Junior's bike.

“Chip bought the car with the money he made working last year's harvest. Do you know that Mr. Grellier
pays
him for his time in the field at harvest? Can you imagine Dad paying us to do the milking?”

“If Soapweed's calf is this special heifer the Jews need, we'll be able to hire two men to do the milking for us,” Junior gloated.

All that day at school, Robbie thought of Soapweed's calf, alone in her special pen behind the barns, crying for company. Then he thought of buying his own sports car, of Lara Grellier sitting next to him. They'd be parked out back of Clinton Lake, with the top down. He'd be playing a song to her, a love song. Her lips parted, eyes glowing at him, her blouse unbuttoned so he could see her breasts. He drew a picture of them in his Spanish notebook, small, firm, the nipples little raspberries.

When the bell rang, he saw her in the hall, laughing with Melanie Derwint and Kimberly Ropes. The trio passed him as if he weren't there, so they didn't notice the blush that turned his dark skin to mahogany.

When he and Junior got home a little after three, Pastor Nabo was already there, pacing restlessly around the front room, the room they opened up only when company came. Myra had lit the oil heater, so that the room was warm but smelled greasy.

Robbie went upstairs to change into the blue-striped shirt Nanny had ironed. The sleeves were already too short, but she wouldn't buy him another shirt until next year. Arnie would never pay him for his work on the farm; he and Myra thought the Fifth Commandment was the cornerstone of Christian faith. More than not committing adultery or murder, you must honor your father and grandmother.

Robbie studied his reflection in the bathroom mirror. If he rolled up his sleeves, the shirt wouldn't make him look so much like a chimp, his too-long arms swinging at his sides.

He went to the landing and peered over the banister. Junior was sucking up to Pastor Nabo, calling him sir and laughing heartily at something the pastor had said. “Yes, sir, Pastor, I suck dick,” Robbie muttered. He pulled a grimy notepad from his back pocket and sat on the top step.

Like what? Like little ice-cream sundaes with cherries on top? He'd never seen any girl's breasts, just snuck looks in a magazine when he was out on his own in a place where no one could possibly tell on him. Lara's breasts weren't like that, not those huge, gross mounds of flesh in the photographs. Hers were small and white. When she wore a tank top to school, he could see the soft shape through the fabric, so small his hand would completely cover them.

I love my neighbor, but she doesn't know I exist, and if she does think about me she imagines I'm the same kind of jerk as my brother. He put the notepad back into his pocket and went downstairs before his grandmother sent Junior up to find him.

“Ah, Robbie,” Pastor Nabo said when he came into the front room. “I understand the mother has been your special charge.”

“Yes, sir,” Robbie said, pulling his mind away from Lara to Soapweed and her calf. “She's a Guernsey-Jersey mix, and we bred her with a bull we've used before, a Jersey-Canadienne up in Wisconsin.”

“And this is the first time you've had a solid red calf?”

“Yes, sir,” Robbie said. “Sometimes they'll be born all one color and the markings will come in later, though. And Serise, well, this calf, she's only four weeks old, so it may be too early to tell if she'll stay solid.”

“Yes, yes.” Pastor Nabo rubbed his hands together in the oily room. “I think we all understand it's too early to be certain that the Lord is sending His messenger to us here in the valley of the humble Wakarusa and Kaw rivers, but we can pray, we can pray for spiritual guidance, for the strength to be worthy of His grace if He is showering it on us.”

“Roll down your shirtsleeves, Robbie,” Myra snapped, before bowing her head along with Arnie, Junior, and the pastor.

Pastor Nabo was only a minute or two into his exhortation when they heard the Jews' van pull up in the yard. He gave a hurried amen, and rushed out with Arnie and Junior to greet them, Nanny stumping along in her black Hush Puppies.

Robbie hung back, unexpectedly nervous. When the party returned to the parlor, Robbie bit back an exclamation. The three men were nothing like Mr. Lewin, who taught chemistry at the high school, or Julie Sugarman's dad, who owned one of the shoe stores on Massachusetts Street. They looked like a picture out of his history book, with their long, dusty coats, their beards, and the corkscrew curls that stuck raffishly out underneath their black hats. They were dressed identically, which made it hard to tell them apart. Two were heavy, with round cheeks puffing out from their graying beards. The third was short and slender, with a square jaw that made him look like Abraham Lincoln.

“So let's go look at this miracle heifer,” the short man said. “You mustn't get your hopes up, you know. If she's only four weeks old, well, a lot can happen in the next thirty-five months.”

“We know that,” Pastor Nabo assured him. “And we aren't calling her a miracle. But it did seem like, well, something special, that she just
happened.
I've read about these efforts to breed a perfect heifer, and I've always thought God would provide one when the time was right, that it was
sinful,
almost, to try to breed against His will, if you follow me.”

“Sinful?” the tallest of the trio said. “I wouldn't say sinful. If we are to rebuild the Holy Temple, we have to prove we are willing to labor for it. The work is large and the day is short. We must do as much as we can.”

“Nonetheless, if we're to believe the Seventy Weeks prophesied in the Book of Daniel, the end of days is near,” Pastor Nabo said, “and the Lord will show us by giving us a sign that He is ready for the final battle between Chri—between the forces of Light and the forces of Dark.”

The tallest man said something in a foreign language. Was it Hebrew? Robbie wondered. Was this how Jesus had talked, in that funny language they'd used in the movie about His Passion?