So it went, man by man, around the long table, no one willing to risk limb if not life in taking on the treacherous dairy cow. “Damn it,” Jones seethed, “all in hell I’m asking is for some one of you to pitch a little hay to the horses, slop the hogs, gather the eggs—”
“—and milk an animal you won’t go anywhere near yourself,” Peerless inserted with a smirk.
“Now, listen here,” Jones tried to shift ground from that accusation, “it’s only for a couple of days. It won’t hurt—I mean, embarrass—any of you to be choreboy that long.”
He looked pleadingly at the one last figure that gave him any hope. “Pockets, can’t you talk them into—?”
Highpockets was as firm as the others. “The boys are in their rights. We hired on to put up hay. Nothing else.”
Whether it was that or inspiration circling until I could catch up with it, I suddenly realized: Wide open for the taking, the job of choreboy would not end with haying. Before the chance was lost, I crept my foot over to Herman’s nearest one and pressed down hard on the toe of his shoe, causing him to jerk straight upright. Now that I had his attention, I cut a significant look toward Smiley’s empty chair. He followed my gaze and after a squint or two, my thinking.
Clearing his throat as if he had been saving up for this announcement, Herman spoke out. “Nothing to worry. I am champ milker. Famous in old country.”
“You are? I mean, are you.” Jones turned to me, as he so often did when it came to figuring out Herman.
“Yeah, well, if Gramps says he can do a thing,” I put the best face on it I could, “he generally pretty much can.”
The foreman took one more look at Herman, sitting there with a grin skewed up toward his glass eye. “O-kay,” he dragged the word out, “let’s see how they do it in the old country. He can even yodel if he wants. Snag, go get the milk pails for him.”
Need I say, the breakfast table was abandoned in a hurry and the barn gained a full audience to watch Herman take on Waltzing Matilda.
? ? ?
DAIRY COWS NORMALLY plod willingly to their stanchions, ready to stick their necks into captivity in exchange for being relieved of their milk. The other two cows did so, nice and docile, when Herman and I herded them in to the milking area, while the angular brown-and-white Guernsey lived up to her name by dancing sideways and snorting a shot of snot toward us and the stanchion. Bawling like she was being butchered, Waltzing Matilda then backed into a corner and rubbed a stub of horn on the barn wall as if trying to sharpen it.
“So-o-o, bossy.” Herman approached her using the handle of a pitchfork to prod her out of the corner. I crept along right behind him, wishing he had the sharp end of the pitchfork at the ready. Giving another snort, Waltzing Matilda plowed past the two of us as we jumped back and, as if it were her own idea, plugged along to the waiting stanchion.
“There, see, that’s half the battle!” Jones called from the safety of half the barn away, where he and the rest of the crew were clustered to watch.
“Stand back,” Herman warned me as he sidled in to shut the stanchion on the cow’s bowed neck. I thought I was, but still had to leap away when Waltzing Matilda shifted hind feet, flashing a kick that would have taken out a person’s kneecap.
“Jeezus,” Peerless cried, “watch yourselves, fellas. That critter’s a killer.”
Herman and I would not have disagreed with that as we huddled to consider our next move. “Any eye-dea?” he started to ask, interrupted by Waltzing Matilda loudly breaking wind and then letting loose as if to empty her bowels to the last degree. In dismay, we both stared at the switching tail now coated with manure, perfectly capable of swatting a person hunched on a milking stool.
“Puh,” said Herman. “Maybe Smiley was right, a dose of lead is best answer to this creature.”
“We have to do something about that tail.” I was thinking hard, warily watching the crap-covered pendulum. “How about if we—” I outlined the only scheme that had popped to mind.
“Worth every bit of try,” Herman agreed, both of us aware of Jones prowling impatiently back and forth in front of the other spectators. “You go git the tool, I git the other. Bunny-quick.”
I ran to the blacksmith shop and grabbed the longest tong off the forge, about two feet in length. While I was at that, Herman ducked into the tack room of the barn where saddles and such were kept, and came back with a pigging string, such as was used to tie up the legs of calves during branding.
Our audience craned their necks in curiosity, their mutterings and whispers not exactly a full vote of confidence. “No betting,” Highpockets decreed, to the evident disappointment of Skeeter.
I made sure with Herman: “Ready?”