"Carrie Richerson - A Birth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Richardson Carrie)

prussic acid. And that long nose of his is good for something besides looking
ridiculous: I swear heтАЩs diagnosed a cow with haemophilus infection just by smelling
its breath, and more than once heтАЩs sniffed out a bad shipment of fescue hay and
saved my cows from nitrate poisoning.
I watch him sometimes, in the dew-wet dawns and the gathering dusk, as he
wanders among the cows, greeting each one by name. (I run two thousand head of
Santa Gertrudis and eight hundred head of improved Charolais, and heтАЩs named
every one.) His bright pink hands are a shocking contrast to the dark red Santa
Gertrudis and the creamy Charolais as he runs them over the cowsтАЩ hides, checking
for bots and ticks. He squats to check their manure for worms without the slightest
flicker of disgust. He sings to them in his soft little whispery voice. When I sent the
yearlings north to the feedlots this spring, he cried.
The cows donтАЩt roll the whites of their eyes at him and shuffle away, as they
do when I or the other cowhands walk among them. No, they lean in to him, rubbing
against his shoulder in solidarity, nosing at those narrow pink hands to scratch
behind their ears. IтАЩve seen my 2,200-pound Charolais bull follow him around the
paddock like a puppy.
I think itтАЩs because he smells like them. Like a herbivore.
Like prey.
The air-conditioning sighs a cold, disinfected breeze. The clock ticks. My
chair creaks. My son-in-lawтАЩs ears twitch.
We wait.
****
A few nights ago, before DianaтАЩs labor began, I took my coffee and my
prenatal anxieties out to the porch after dinner. I like to sit on the steps with the lights
off and watch the stars in their grave dance across the sky as I plan the next dayтАЩs
work. That eveningтАЩs weather report had noted a tropical depression forming in the
Gulf two hundred miles southeast of Brownsville. If we were going to have a tropical
storm or hurricane in the next week, the herds would have to be moved away from
the creeks, and all the hay would have to be covered with tarps. I wanted to make
sure I had thought of everything that would need to be done by the time I talked over
the dayтАЩs schedule with my foreman over breakfast.
The summer nightтАЩs air was thick with the buzz of cicadas and the scents of
sun-heated grass and cow manure. I could hear a few cows lowing restlessly, and,
far off, the 9:05 freight out of Alice, bound for Benavides, Laredo, and Monterrey,
Mexico. From around the corner on the south porch came the sounds of
good-natured taunts and laughter that signaled the nightly poker game run by my
ranch foreman, Juan Solis, with Matt, Sonny, and Pablo. Luis had brought out his
twelve-string and was serenading them softly with sad Spanish love songs. The new
hire, Juan Bautista, lounged dejectedly on the porch rail at the corner and sipped at a
bottle of beer. No doubt he had just been told he was too junior to sit in the game.
Juan Solis had asked me to hire Juan Bautista because he was the son of a
cousin who had passed away recently and the boy had dropped out of school to
support his mother, but I knew Juan Solis wouldnтАЩt have asked if the boy werenтАЩt
capable. He had worked hard that day, working the cows with the ease of one who
had been minding cattle since he was old enough to sit on a horse. Which was
probably the case. In this part of Texas, unless you want to hoof it down to the Rio
Grande valley and spend your days stooped over hoeing onions, or ship out for
three-week stints as a roustabout on an oil rig in the Gulf, there isnтАЩt much else but
ranch work. And though I may keep vaccination records and breeding histories on a