all damn day

LAUREN ROBERTSON

The fence wasn’t but two wires running parallel down the hill, aluminum veins coursing with an electric current. Pete wanted to show me a trick, and he clamped his fist around one of the wires.

“See? Can’t hardly feel nothing.”

He showed me his palm, calloused and leathery. His eyes drifted towards the tree line and narrowed. It was quiet now, but I could see him listening.

He sighed. “You’d never hear a calf bawl so loud like I did the other day. Came out too late with the gun. The coyote had the runt by the back leg. Dragged it all the way into the woods.”

He didn’t look at me as he said it, just watched the tree line like a shadow might move.

I turned towards the field, where his fifty-something cows were grazing, unbothered. A calf sucked on an udder, its tail flicking back and forth with saccharine delight.

It isn’t like watching National Geographic on TV, sitting on your couch, wondering when the cameraman will intervene in the cruelty, stopping the prey from being dragged off-screen. Out here, there’s no editing. No screen for the grotesque to hide behind.

You’re mesmerized. Then, you’re horrified.

Pete isn’t the type of man who watches National Geographic, let alone anything on the TV. While out on my post-sunset walks, I’ve seen him in his living room, whittling in the light of his hurricane lamp. He places his finished pieces like silhouetted trophies on his windowsill. A marching line of basswood cows, bears, ducks.

I’ve never worried about being dragged off-screen while on my evening walks. My alertness makes me appreciate unadulterated vulnerability. That, and I’m too curious as to what all the other neighbors are doing. Every dusk, the new, reclusive family two doors down watches a detective show. Around the bend, Cliff and Lucille, a retired couple, devote their eyes to The 700 Club.

Pete told me about the time Cliff invited him over to watch the show and he declined. He said receiving ministry through a screen was like being a fly bashing its head outside a pie safe. Prosperity gospel. Wasn’t the same as having the real thing in front of you. His eyes narrowed when I didn’t have anything to add. I think he knew I wasn’t religious. The closest to faith I’ve gotten was when I helped him rotate a steaming calf stuck in a birth canal. Praying to a barn spider to let the small thing live.

Pete bats away a swarm of gnats drinking sweat from his neck. The gun rested against his side, the barrel digging into dirt. I hadn’t spoken for a while, but he was having a grim conversation with himself. He nodded, his jaw tightening, “Oh yeah, that coyote will be back.”

“You’re really going to wait here for it?” I asked, even though I already knew his answer.

The fence, the gun, the long hours, this was Pete’s kind of prayer. A ritual. I thought about the inefficiency of his fence, his gun jammed with dirt, the long hours in the hot sun. I sighed, looking to the tree line, too. I thought about the fly bashing its head outside a pie safe.

“All damn day.”

Lauren Robertson is a queer writer based in the Southeastern U.S. She has farmed in California and Vermont, and now works at a farming nonprofit in North Carolina. Passionate about nourishing the land and soul through her work, she has been published by Moonstone Arts Center, 1922 Review, The Raven Review, Bryant Literary Review, and Disco Kitchen Magazine.

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