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“I feel like a lunch lady,” he said, adjusting his plastic gloves, which were making his hands all clammy.
“Nothing wrong with that,” said Nicole, hosing out the tubs with hot water now that they were done. “Our school had one lunch lady the entire time I was there. Her name was Val and she’d give you extra portions if you asked her about how her poodle-breeding business was going because that automatically meant that she liked you.”
“And howdidthat business go?” asked Brendan, now suddenly very invested in this Val person despite himself.
“Not bad actually,” said Nicole with a grin. “She won ribbons and stuff from taking them to dog shows, like she knew what she was doing.”
“Country people are weird,” Brendan sighed.
“Well, so are you, bud. You’re one of us now.”
She’d said it offhandedly but Brendan couldn’t help but take it as the highest compliment. Beingone of themwas certainly fine in his books. Then he thought he heard a sound over the hiss of the hose, like a broken siren or something, or a car horn with a half-dead battery.
He moved out of the creamery, away from the sound of Nicole spraying water everywhere, listening as hard as he could. He thought he might have been imagining it when he heard it again, a painful wailing sound like something out of a horror movie.
“Hey, Nicole,” he said, deciding this was one of those times where he was better off deferring to her superior judgment.
“Yeah?”
“Do you hear that, or am I having some sort of episode?”
“Hear what?” she asked, but turned the pressure hose off and joined him just outside the door.
They waited a minute with nothing sounding out of the ordinary, and Brendan thought that maybe he really had hallucinated it all. Then it came again.
Nicole sighed and closed her eyes as if she’d just been handed the worst news possible.
“Great,” she said, and then let off a stream of some of the most creative swearing Brendan had ever heard. “Here’s a lesson for you, Brendan: that’s what a cow sounds like when something has gone very badly wrong.”
“Could it just be giving birth?” he asked, remembering her many lectures on pregnancies within the herd at the moment.
“Way too early for that,” said Nicole, peeling off her gloves and throwing them to the ground. “So, either way it’s nothing good.”
Brendan followed Nicole’s lead and raced after her as she ran towards the ATVs parked by the milking shed. He didn’t even bother getting onto his own, knowing the keys were inside on the kitchen table, instead just jumping onto the back of Nicole’s as she started the engine and raced off to the field.
It didn’t take all that long to get there, maybe a few minutes at most, but it felt like a lifetime as the wailing got louder and louder. When they spotted the herd, Nicole braked the ATV so hard that they both nearly went flying.
One of the cattle was tangled up in the fence, somehow getting the thick wire wrapped several times around its back leg as if it had rolled to try and get itself free and had only made things worse in the process. Brendan grimaced as he took in the sight of the animal lying trapped and terrified, its eyes rolling as it cried out, whether from pain or fear or both.
“Oh, for the love of God,” swore Nicole, looking over the cow with a fierce scowl on her face. “Quick, we need to go back for some wire cutters to get her out,” she said, jumping back onto the ATV.
“Should I stay with her?” Brendan asked getting back on the machine.
“There’s nothing you can do, not until we have some tools.”
With that they circled back, straight to the tool shed that Brendan hadn’t spent all that much time in, but as soon as Nicole opened the door, he was looking over every cluttered surface and hook, searching for something that could cut the wire trapping the cow that they could still hear in the distance.
“Oh, screw it,” Nicole said and instead of wasting time looking for something a little more practical, took hold of a pair of bolt cutters the size of a chainsaw, lifting them as easily as if she were carrying a bag of groceries.
“You drive, I’ll hold these,” she said, barely out of breath as she climbed on the back of the ATV, gripping onto Brendan with her knees. He waited just enough time for her to get her balance before driving back the way they’d come. He could feel the hard steel of the bolt cutter’s arms pressed against his back as Nicole balanced them on her lap and he honestly didn’t know how she was able to stay seated and hang on to them as well as she was.
The cow was still bellowing, panicked out in the middle of the field, the sound of it guiding Brendan back in the right direction more than anything else.
Nicole tapped him on the shoulder to pull up. “Shoo the others away for me,” she ordered, bouncing off the back of the four-wheeler and making a beeline for the wire fence.
Brendan obeyed without question, ushering away the cattle that had surrounded their friend, looking to see what had happened. It gave Nicole enough space to get to the fence without having to worry about getting trampled.
Brendan tried his best to keep his head on a swivel, to be looking in as many different directions as possible.
