The Floating Cradle

Nine

All of us are pulling on our boots and winding scarves around our necks, save for the tantum, who pops his collar and fiddles with his phone—one of those high-end tantic models that's magnetized to an implant under your forearm. Sufficiently bundled, we traipse across the field toward the barn, crunching through the thin crust of snow overlaying the mud. I wonder if the tantum's feet ever get cold.

The expectant cow paces in a segregated stall Blake laid with fresh straw several days prior; he's closed the door leading into the main barn, but she doesn't seem to want the herd's company anyway. Every so often she lets out a low moan. Her tail is crooked and the expanse of pink flesh beneath it is swollen and leaking. I see Pete has brought along his sketchbook—because what's more avant-garde than cow placenta?—and resist the urge to jostle his elbow.

"Really, it's not bad," I hear Allie telling Jack in a low voice. "I've seen plenty of births—cows, horses, kittens. More often than not the mother knows what to do."

"It's Lucy's first, though," Gilberto points out. "She might need help."

He waggles a pair of long plastic gloves in the air for effect.

"You're joking," the tantum says in disgust.

"I'm not." Gilberto flashes him a wicked grin.

"Well, ain't neither of 'em pickin' up," Lyle says, pocketing his phone. "Left 'em a message. Can't imagine where the Hell they're drivin'."

"Maybe they went to a show," I say. "I heard Mary Poppins Returns is real good. Just Mama's speed."

Nobody laughs, but I like to think it's because they're distracted by Dan puking behind the hay bales.

Lucy makes little headway for the next half hour, pawing, heaving, lying down and getting up. Gilberto and Lyle lean against the partition, talking in low, gruff voices. I peer over Pete's shoulder at his sketchbook, expecting to see a parade of lumpily rendered cows, but to my surprise he's drawing the tantum, struggling with placement of the high, angular nostrils.

"Maybe try makin' it look less like a bat," I suggest quietly. Pete hunches his shoulders and hides the sketchbook against his chest. Across the barn, Allie and Jack are having a private conversation; something in her stance makes me think they're arguing.

"I'm pretty sure he never wanted to come here to begin with," Pete says. "Can't say I blame him. What a bunch of assholes we're bein'. Treatin' him like a leper."

"That's so untrue," I rejoin. "Quit it with all your 'tortured soul' crap. Ain't our fault he's probably the only scabfoot in Arkansas. And only Mama's bein' an asshole—what d'ya expect the rest of us to do? Run up and give him a big hug? You ain't done shit neither."

Pete doesn't respond, just goes back to sketching. I wonder if he will move out with Felicity after the divorce—undoubtedly, she will relocate closer to civilization, rent a duplex in Fayetteville with a supermarket less than a mile down the street, and make no mention of ever living on a dairy farm to her new oral hygienist and bank teller friends. Pete is so contemptibly misplaced here—flipping that stupid K Pop hair out of his eyes every five seconds, hot glue gunning pyramid studs around the pockets of his black skinny jeans—but I can't imagine he'd fit in better in the suburbs, or anywhere really. It's stupid, but I guess that must be the point.

"Gettin' close now," Blake says. We all shuffle over; Lucy seems beyond minding an audience. Everyone present but the tantum has witnessed this staple of agrarian continuity on multiple occasions, but I still feel a twinge of anticipation as the membrane-bound, blue-black head starts to emerge between pulses of the heifer's massive flank, preceded by two petal-shaped hooves. A newborn calf: the most ancient thing on Earth.

"Jesus, it's like that scene from Alien," the tantum says in a tinnier, much less collected voice than before. Gilberto chuckles.

"What, this not how they do it on Cognata?" he asks.

The small back door of the barn scrapes open and Mama's short, ample figure enters, followed by Daddy's hulking one. Without speaking they join us by the stall.

The cow moves like a bellows, side rising and falling, and the calf gains a few inches of air. Its head emerges, the shining disc of its snout leading the long, sloped face its mother forged for it. The forelegs are fully extended; the shoulder clears, and the cow rests. Curtains of mucous hang pendulous off the calf's stirring body. The barn smells of mammalian sweat and cow dung, of rich, earthy life. Lucy bears her baby in full, clambers to her feet, and turns to meet it, a slick, bloody train clinging to her rear.

This doesn't belong to you, I want to say to the tantum, who stares dazed at the trembling newborn, his scales half erect. I want to wrench Allie's fingers from his and shake her—how can she, of all people, not see? I want to storm outside and spit at the dark sky, at the flotilla of lights delineating the Whelk as it circles the Earth like a hungry shark. The shuttles that come and go from New York and London and Tokyo day by day, the ships that suckle at the Whelk before charging like lemmings into the great blackness—I would have them never return. How do they not see what they threaten, what they trivialize, in parting with this, our rock of ages? Hewn for us, our ancestry is here, in blood transcribed to exceed the temporary truss of memory—but sure, throw it away. It only took several billion years to build.

"Y'all can stay," Mama says, watching the cow lick her calf.