A Rhinestone Button Read Online Free PDF Page B

killing somebody.” Ben hurled the snowball at the silo that read
Jesus is Lord!
Missed. “Dad kind of gave in. Said he’d stay on the farm and give it a try.”
    Jacob was kneeling on the straw of a calf pen, working behind a cow that was lying on its side. He stood when he saw Job, let him take over. The calf’s legs were just sticking out the cow’s back end. Chains above the calf’s hooves with pull handles hooked to the chains. The cow still tied by its halter to the corner post. Sloppy. Job untied the halter, let the cow’s head drop. She wasn’t going anywhere. He repositioned the chains above the calf’s ankles, ran a second loop above the hooves to distribute the load; the feet were already swollen from too much pulling. “Hand me that rope,” he said. Jacob passed it to him, and Job slung it over his shoulder. “Hear you might be staying awhile.”
    Ben glanced at Job and kicked a frozen cow patty, but said nothing, his face flushing red. A look on Jacob’s face that Job had seen on his father’s, before he got the strap.Job regretted he’d said anything. He knew Ben would be in for it now.
    Job rolled up his sleeves, wet his arms with water from the pail Jacob had brought with him, then with birth fluid from the cow’s vagina for lubrication. The smell of cabbage and liver. “So you’re staying.”
    Jacob held the top of his right arm, as if nursing an injury. His hands the size of dinner plates, the colour of ham. “I don’t know what else to do. We’re broke. I doubt I can find another position after what happened. I’m sure Ben told you about that as well.”
    Job said nothing. He reached into the cow’s vagina to check for the position of the calf’s head. When he didn’t find it laying on the legs, he pushed back against the base of the calf’s neck.
    “What’re you doing?” asked Ben.
    Job grunted from the strain. “Head isn’t coming. Got to push the calf back, to reposition it.” Not an easy thing, pushing against the cow’s contractions. But it had to be done, and quickly, or the calf might die. The cow too, by the look of her. She’d pushed for ages and was bawling high and long in pain, a noise that created a shower of brown sparks in front of Job, like a spray of dirty water from a garden hose. “You’ve just been pulling on the two legs here,” he said.
    “Yeah, so?” said Jacob.
    Job didn’t bother trying to explain. He’d only end up making Jacob look foolish in front of his son. The calf’s head was bent back. Jacob could have pulled for hours and got nowhere. It seemed he’d forgotten the basics, that he needed three things to pull a calf: two feet and a head, ortwo feet and a tail. He should have reached in to make sure both feet were from the same calf, and that it wasn’t twins, that he wasn’t pulling one leg from each.
    Job grabbed hold of the calf’s nose, and held its jaw so its bottom teeth wouldn’t cut into the uterus. He swung the head around, so it rested on the front legs. Worked the rope in around the calf’s head, behind the ears.
    “Okay, tug gently on the chains.”
    Jacob took both handles, pulled.
    “Gently!”
    With his left arm still up the cow, Job held the calf’s head with his left hand, and tugged on the rope with his right, as the calf was pulled from the cow, slid to the ground. A gush of amniotic fluid. The sweetish smell of newborn calf.
    The calf’s tongue was sticking out, swollen and blue. Job hauled the calf up by the back legs, held it as high as he could.
    “He’s got to make sure the fluid drains from the lungs,” Jacob explained to Ben. Hoping to save face, Job thought, to appear like he knew a thing or two about this business.
    Job lay the calf back on the ground, pushed the tongue back in and covered the calf’s mouth, then blew into a nostril to clear the way and get the calf breathing. It snorted, drew breath. Thrashed. He grabbed the old cow’s head and pulled her off her side so she was lying normally