Spring 2001 The Anthologist
Up in the Valley
Time Myer
Ezra must have eaten something bad last night because he looks more awful than usual. Mud and sawdust break from rolled cuffs and unlaced boots when he knocks the bedpost. The knees bend, legs open, body twists in fits. He fingers the pink of a bloated belly where his shirt ends and jeans begin. Thick, red stalks sprout from a flannel jacket under his head. He's been up since Jake left to milk the cows when it was still dark.
The pains had settled from sore to tender to numb, just like Iris said, but it's the numb that worries him most. The twisting in his intestines and the taste in his mouth preclude hunger, but he knows when he hears the breakfast bell ring three times, stop, and ring three more, that he needs to be hungry to get through this long day.
They all mizzle slowly through the double doors of the boarding house where Chuck has posted another poem about a slipknot lasso and the rodeo. His wife wears long sleeves today and long pants, and everyone heard the noise coming from their house last night. Jake wheels in a fresh shotgun of milk and pours some into a saucer on the floor for Petri, who jumps on three legs from the shelf below the picture of Marilyn Monroe.
"Judith's chasing any guy that can throw a rope . . . ." Abe turns his eyes down and fills his plate quietly when Iris motions towards Ezra and smiles.
Iris and Abe have old hands: brown with liver spots, the skin stretching and sagging with each late season, the tense meat and ridges and scars of lasso splinters. Jake's fingers are tapered and delicate, dextrous from the rhythms of the dugs, and they blister easily now that the dairy cows have given birth and need more milkings. Silas' fat hand slaps the glass of the door as he barrels into the boarding house after a morning smoke and says, "I could kill for a cigarette." Chuck has strong, presentable hands and he keeps them clean with the nails trimmed and callouses filed.
And Ezra's fingers, small, like a girl's, but lean with bulging knuckles and creased with a gardener's grime, sort through the sausage links and patties.
Judith and Bunny are already at the lower ranch firing the branding grill and tacking the horses.
"Hi Ezra. How are you?" Bunny's voice is thick from cigarettes, but still
kind.
Ezra thinks of her dull mouth giving blowjobs to faceless men in dark alleys.
"Morning. Hi Judith."
"Morning, Ezra."
"I didn't know you'd be here today."
"My mom didn't tell you?"
"She didn't tell me. Did you get my poem?"
"I got it. But I didn't get it."
"That's alright. What did you think?"
"I guess, whatever you were feeling when you wrote it, I felt it, too."
"Morning Jude. Morning Bunny." Iris takes a small, black knife from her pocket and hands it to Ezra. "You can use this today."
"That's a fine knife."
"Abe gave it to me for our wedding. Jude can sharpen it." Iris unfolds the blade and presses it against the back of her hand. "It'll do for now."
A calf runs into the pen, kicks up sawdust and manure. Abe on his horse swings the rigid lasso overhead in fluid elipses, misses, misses again, throws the rope in front of the calf's hooves, gives a jerk, and wraps it around the saddle horn three times.
"I hope you're not planning to fish like that all day."
"It's early Iris. Don't start."
Jake grabs the front and back legs, pulls the calf towards him, kneels on its side, bends the left front hoof into the body. Silas ties the lariat around the back two legs as Abe tightens the rope. Ezra walks over with the knife, antiseptic, and a large syringe. He cuts one inch V-notches into the ears, and blood spots his jeans from a broken artery. He pushes the fat, oblique needle straight into the calf's shoulder and injects the copper.
"Iris, I think this one's a girl."
Iris stands over him. "Looks like it to me."
The next calf is small enough for Jake to wrassle alone. He backs it against the corner of the pen, and tackles when it tries to slip between wooden planks.
He carries it to the center and sits across the back two legs, digs his heel into the front right shoulder and presses the left hoof to its body. Ezra kneels gently on the calf's face and cuts through the ears and through his own finger. He injects the copper, and the calf shifts, belches a slow, muffled
complaint.
"Jake, he's a bull and I'm not getting kicked again. You better hold him."
"Toughen the fuck up."
Ezra pulls the bull-calf's skin, measures it, cuts one fingerwidth down,pockets the cap to count the once-males from the day. He presses the abdomen,slips the fat back along the tube uncovering a soft blue alabaster, winds it around his index and middle fingers, pulls smoothly and quickly straight out from the body to shock the calf's system and prevent as much pain as possible. Silas drops the prize in a jar of salt water for later. The next one he butterflies on the branding grill. Ezra sprays the antiseptic into the shriveled sack in a clockwise circle, wondering if they do it counterclockwise in Argentina, and Silas braces his foot and presses the glowing red brand to the rump to Iris' repetitions, "Commit, commit," and to the billows of smoked flesh
and leather.
It was a good pull, and the only blood was Ezra's. He squeezes the dust from his cut and Iris curls his finger in her hand and fills it with fresh manure.
"You'll be fine. Jude can sharpen the knife."
Judith runs the blade gently over her whetstone. She holds it up to admire howstraight she keeps the edge.
"Judith, you know I love you."
"Yes."
"Would you call me?"
"It's easier if you call me." She folds the knife and gives it back.
For lunch, Chuck drives from the upper ranch with a camp stove and a skillet.
The smells of eggs and hamsteaks and bread soaked in fat make Timezra almosthungry enough not to think of Judith or his numbness or his pocket full of caps and the clumsy butchery.
"The only thing I can't stand more than that Yuppie tea is that homestyle orange juice." Chuck carries around a pot of fresh coffee and pours it into Abe's mug.
"I know what you mean."
"Do you know what I mean? I'm talking about that orange juice, adds in extra pulp to make it look fresh squeezed, when it's just been shipped from Florida as concentrate."
"Before you know it, they'll start making Yuppie coffee." Judith holds her cup close to her nose and breathes the steam.
"Honey, they already have Yuppie coffee. That French roast and that vanilla."
"Not coffee."
"Yup. Coffee."
Even with all the snows from the winter, the land is still desert, hardly good enough to raise cattle. Ezra thought somehow it might change this season by his being there. He inhales the old dust, the heat of the April sun, the dry infertility, the salt of sage, shadscale and rabbitbrush. Alfalfa and cows, bodies and bacon are all far away if you close your eyes for the afternoon and if you don't think about what you're doing.
A good sunset needs clouds and up in the valley the clouds only come as thin wisps, a dustdevil or two at a time. Ezra still likes to watch them and he counts how long it takes for the sun to sink behind a mountain and the first coyote to howl. Iris drove past back when Ezra and Judith were sitting on the haystacks before a dinner, but she's never said anything. Maybe, she was watching the sunset, too.
The dinner bell rings three times, stops, rings three more. Ezra empties his shirt pockets and Iris counts the caps. Judith and Bunny bring the horses back to the stable. They've had a good day and Iris smiles.
Ezra can smell the apricot glaze and the pork chops even outside the boarding house door, and he thinks what a shame it is as he watches them with an empty plate, until the phone rings and Chuck tells him there's a call.
"Hello, ma'am. Is dad around?"
"I put your father to bed for the night. How are you, chippies?"
"Fine."
"Have you seen a doctor?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I just don't want you to bollix up your system."
"I won't, ma'am."
"You shouldn't go around fritzlyditz after what happened. Take a rest for a few days."
"I took a rest."
"Be good, duckling."
The food is mostly gone when Ezra hangs up, but Jake hands him a full plate.
"You need some meat on you."
Judith probably went back to the Pack station from the lower ranch since she isn't in the dining room. "Thank you Jake. We did some fine work today."
Ezra lies back in bed and runs a hand over the belly, pregnant in repose, andthe bloating underneath, and he thinks what a shame it is about Chuck's pork chops because they always taste so good.
"It's a fine place to be kicked. A fine place," he whispers, rolls onto his side, and through his window watches the moon settle somewhere along the valley floor before it falls from existence.
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