Next Pops went to the animal’s husky testicles. “The key to a successful castration,” he explained as he removed a long, thin knife and a syringe from his bag, “is to act with dispatch, before the bull knows what you’re up to… and to use copious amounts of lidocaine so you don’t get your head kicked in.” He shot the bull’s scrotum full of the anesthesia and stood for a moment while it took effect. After a few minutes, he quickly cut off the bottom third of the sac, reached in and snipped the bull’s balls, and dropped the gonads in a nearby metal bowl. It took about four seconds. Blood and fluid ran from the hollowed sac. My hand went instinctively to my crotch. Pops sutured the blood vessels and sprayed antiseptic onto the wound. Through it all the young bull happily chewed his cud and gaped at the gardening tools on the other side of the barn. Pops opened the stocks and pushed the head of the bull out the gate and into the exit run that led back to the holding pen.
The second bull stood in the corner of the pen facing us. Grubby started toward it, waving his hands wildly. “Hep, ha bull piyow ha hep ha bull.”
The bull regarded us contemptuously. As Grubby neared, it jerked away to the other side of the pen and stopped, facing us again.
“Hep now, ha bull yipe hiya.”
Grubby closed and the bull jerked away and ran to the other side, facing us once more.
“Ho bull, ho hep bull hya.”
Same result.
And again.
“I think he’s on to us, Grub,” Pops deadpanned after Grubby’s sixth unsuccessful attempt to herd the animal. “That’s an uncommonly smart bull.”
“Well, he ain’t smarter than me… hep, hya bull now.”
Same result.
“Normally I wouldn’t argue the point, Grubby, but he’s still got his oysters attached and all you’ve herded so far is wind.”
“Lemme show you how it’s done, Grub.” Paitsel hopped the fence in a single easy motion and sauntered toward the bull. As he approached, arms flailing, the bull put his horns in gear and chased him around the pen—it made for a sight as Paitsel, running as if hard to home plate, streaked to the gauntlet and one-stepped over the fence with the athleticism of a professional rodeo clown. We all collapsed in laughter as the bull speared the fence post.
“Paitsel, that bull almost herded you into the stocks. If he had, I’m afraid I might’ve done my business on you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t a paid you then,” Grubby responded. If nothing else, Grubby Mitchell was a practical man.
Pops reached into his bag and removed a syringe gun, then loaded it with brown liquid.
“Keep him occupied.”
He walked around the outside as Grubby eased off the fence into the pen. While the bull was distracted by the flapping human, Pops quickly stepped over the fence and shot the solution into the bull’s flank, then rejoined us by the squeeze chute.
The bull was stationary, watching us with engaged horns. After about two minutes he snorted and jerked toward us, leaving his four hooves in place, falling chin first into the dirt.
“Jus bout had him,” mumbled Grubby to nobody in particular. He was embarrassed at not being able to control his own farm animals and still angry at Shem Glick for quitting the place.
“Kevin, my dehorner, please,” Pops said, already at the bull’s head. “And the chloroxylenol; I don’t want such a clever bull to get an infection.”
I came back with the instrument and the disinfectant and watched him go to work. Within one minute he had the bull dehorned and deballed.
Grubby took the bowl, turned to the house, and yelled, “Maynaaaaaa. Oysters is up.” After a few moments, Mayna Mitchell banged out the side kitchen screen door and walked toward us, full frontal apron dusted with flour. She was an ample woman with small eyes sunk deep into an oversize head. She wore stern, square-toe shoes holding up ankles run over by the fat in her calves. Titanic, slung-low breasts that lolled from side to side and seemed ready to rip from their moorings on a single misstep. She wordlessly took the metal bowl, turned, and walked back up to the house.
We washed up and exited into the yard just as the bleeding bull made his first awkward steps. Paitsel went off to repair the siding on a grain shed, and Grubby Mitchell stood with his abnormally long arms wrapped around his thin frame, hands tucked so far behind him he could swat a fly on his right buttock with his left hand. He took a step toward Pops and whispered, “Been wonderin your take on this Paul thing.” He unwrapped an arm to scratch a place on his cheek.
“It’s a damn molehill, in my opinion. Everybody needs to just untwist their girdles and get back to living their own life. What Paul does is his own business.”
Just then, a piercing explosion broke across the valley and a plume of smoke and debris rose from the hauled-off mountaintop at the back of Grubby’s farm. We all turned to it as if we were watching fireworks on the Fourth. A clump of cows charged to the other end of their field. A horse bolted and kicked at the air. “That ain’t no dang molehill.”
“Betty Dodger would agree with you.”
“Goddamn Bubba Boyd. All that blastin is makin my herd nervous. I think that’s why the rut went so poorly.”
“No doubt. That’ll put any animal off of conjugal activities.”
“Says he wants to meet with me. Think he wants to buy me out.”
“Who, Bubba?”
Grubby nodded.
“Don’t do it, Grub. This land here is who you are.”
He shrugged and looked over at the lopped-off mountain that used to tower over the farm.
Pops frowned and placed his satchel in the truck bed. “We’ll see you in a month for the blowfly.”
He backed up the truck and we headed down the road, dust eddies swirling in our wake. I kept thinking about all that blood and how the bulls didn’t even flinch or cry out. “Don’t they even feel it when you cut them like that? I mean, it’s like they don’t feel a thing,” I said as we turned onto Route 17.
Pops thought for a moment. “Well, I did give them a local, but that’s the one thing the bovine community has over us humans. God gave us the power to reason, but he made them pretty much impervious to pain. To be honest, I’m not sure who got the better deal.”
That evening Pops brought Mom out to join us on the porch. She folded her arms around herself and sat like we were strangers at a bus stop in a bad town.
“Kevin, you did real well today,” Pops announced with one eye on Mom. “I’m proud of you.”
“I didn’t do much,” I mumbled and turned to the street so I wouldn’t have to look at her.
“That’s precisely my point. You stayed out of my way and didn’t get gored by one of those bulls. A splendid first day as a veterinary assistant, in my book.”
“What do you mean, ‘first day’?”
“I mean I’m hiring you to be my personal veterinary assistant. Pay you ten dollars a week; all the Appalachian mountain oysters you can eat.”
I nodded and said nothing, but a secret smile climbed within me.
“Great news, Annie,” Pops said hopefully to Mom, who was staring at the great hickory tree in Pops’ front yard as if a primer on loss and heartbreak had been written into the bark. “Kevin’s graciously agreed to join the Peebles Veterinary Practice. We may have to get a new sign, ‘Peebles and Grandson.’ What do you think, Kevin?”
“Why not ‘Grandson and Peebles’?” I said, too loud to sound natural.
Both of us looked eagerly for a response. She put her hand to her mouth and went at the thumb quick.
“Not until you do your first solo castration,” Pops said, his voice trailing to a whisper when he realized we would get no answer.
I inspected a divot of paint that had been chipped from the porch floor, revealing years of alternating white and gray coats, seven in all, as Pops regarded his silent, broken daughter and the ice in his sour mash glass shifted.
That week was calls in the morning with Pops and afternoons with Buzzy learning the mystic ways of the mountains: a sheep dipping on Tuesday and a dammed-up creek; a hoof clipping on Wednesday and a home-strung zip line; blue tongue shots on Thursday and a found fox pelt and bones on Friday. Each time I mentioned the Telling Cave, Buzzy waved the notion away. “Got somethin better.” And off we’d go, breaknecking the hills and plundering the hollows where the compounded guilt and grief I felt would fall away like original sin at a baptismal.