A Violet Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

the poor heifer felt. Finally she, too, put on her wrap and pulled on Oliver’s old boots to join Frank in the barn.
    This heifer, the daughter of their milk cow, had never calved before, and she was clearly anxious. Whereas she usually greeted Ida with a nuzzle, tonight her eyes bulged fearfully and seemed to see nothing. She had lain on her side, and from time to time she lashed her legs so hard against the stall that Ida thought she would knock it down. But Frank knelt at the young cow’s side, his head close to hers, and mumbled nonsense in her ear as he stroked her tawny neck. When he saw Ida in the lantern light, he glanced up but made no move to leave the heifer’s side. He simply said in a quiet voice, “You can see the hooves. She’s coming along.”
    Ida peered over the stall’s edge, and the astringent smell of amniotic fluid rose up. The heifer strained her neck and lowed again, and Ida could see the two pointy black hooves of the calf poking through the tender, fleshy opening of her birth canal.
    “Poor girl,” Ida said, coming around to her head again, though she didn’t reach in to touch her. Frank continued his stroking and his low murmur, words meant only for the heifer.
    “Are you going to help her out?” Ida asked, wondering if he would rope the baby’s legs and pull it into the world.
    “Give her some time,” he said, and ducked his head to the heifer’s again.
    Much as she felt for the cow and wanted to see her through, Ida knew Frank would call if he needed help. It was more important to stay with the baby. Reluctantly, she left the heifer to her labor. In the house, Ashley was sleeping soundly, a tiny bean of a baby in the middle of a great mattress.
    Not long after, as the room lightened before dawn, Ida heard a final squawk from the barn, then quiet. Her heart quickened, waiting for word. Twenty minutes later, Frank returned with the news that a female calf had been born. He sat on the edge of the bed and mussed his short-cropped hair with wet hands; he had already buried the placenta in the woods, to keep predators at bay, and washed at the outside pump. He might have caught a few minutesof sleep before his day began, but as he dropped his hands to the mattress, the baby yapped in disapproval, then latched on to Ida’s breast ferociously and suckled for several minutes. Frank stared at Ida and the baby, his face slack with exhaustion. Then he stood and padded barefoot into the kitchen.
    Not half an hour later, Ida rose to join him, and by the time Ashley’s aunt and uncle came to call, the household was awake and at work. They said they imagined the baby looked a mite better than he had the afternoon before, and though Ida felt considerably worse, she was relieved at the suggestion. After the aunt kissed Ashley a tearful goodbye and they took their leave, Alice watched them depart from the kitchen window.
    “What will you do when you get one that won’t nurse, Ma?” she asked.
    “I hope I never shall,” Ida said.
    “But what if he hadn’t nursed last night?”
    “Eventually he would have died,” Ida said. “But he’s going to be all right now, aren’t you?” she cooed to the baby in her arms, knowing that her words were really a prayer.

3
    S hortly after Ashley’s arrival, Frank brought home a few burlap sacks of new violet cuttings. That evening Ida and Alice got to work, pulling or slicing off all but the top two or three leaves, pinching off early roots, and discarding damaged runners. The work was important, for the cuttings they prepared would grow the next year’s violet crop. While the cuttings took root in raised beds outside, the men spent the month of June plowing up new soil and harrowing in manure. The resulting mixture was shoveled into the freshly whitewashed greenhouse beds.
    In a few of the greenhouses, the plants had been allowed to set their own runners, but the job of planting eight thousand cuttings in each of the remaining twenty greenhouses was