Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 835 & 836, March/April 2011

The Backyard Cow by Trina Corey

Trina Corey debuted in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in March/April of 2009. (See “Vacation.”) The teacher of twenty years lives with her family in northern California and is currently at work on both a new short story and a novel. The following tale arose from her own family history: a great-grandmother who was widowed young, worked in a laundry, and bought a cow to keep in the yard...

We agreed not to talk about it, to each other or to anyone, but she’s been dead for — how is it possible — forty years, and I’m an old lady now, and who pays attention to what old ladies say? So there can’t be any harm in old words about what is lost and forgotten...

Alma and I ate breakfast every morning before there were any lights outside, except the stars and the moon and below them a few lanterns bobbing gold light in the darkness, carried by folks out to do chores or visit the outhouse or heading early to their work. Mama left soon as the sky grayed, every time saying, “Wash the bowls before you go round with the milk,” and, “Watch out for your sister,” as if I needed telling. We scrubbed our faces and hands at the sink, getting rid of every bit of grime. We’d learned more people bought milk from clean children.

Like always, the covered pail was on the bottom step where we’d set it before breakfast, and it took both of us to lift it, the milk sloshing close to the hood, the pail digging into our fingers. The gravel crunched under our bare feet, but we hardly felt it. By the time fall came, we could step on broken glass.

We sidestepped past several houses to the Harrisons’. The honey-colored light from their kitchen poured out onto the little porch, and when we called, “Hello, hello...” Mrs. Harrison came out without making us knock.

“Just set it down right there, girls,” she said. “I’ll get the pitcher.”

Alma unhooked the end of the dipper from her apron and handed it to me without a smile. I’d just started letting her carry it, and she took her responsibility seriously, like she did everything.

“Bless your hearts, girls, bringing us fresh milk every day,” said Mrs. Harrison, holding out the chipped blue pitcher, moving it just enough to keep it under the sometimes wavering stream of milk as I dipped and poured the four cups it took to bring the milk up to the lip. She put the pennies in the palm of my hand one by one, Alma counting them out loud, and I put them in my pocket. I wasn’t ready to share the job of carrying the money with my sister.

The pail was lighter now, but we still carried it together as we turned and went the other way to the Micklebys’ house, and then down the street to the Garneys’. The baby’s crying was loud, like every morning. All the Garney babies cried and cried, and then they stopped and never wept again. Nobody could make a Garney child cry once they grew big enough to decide not to. Even when their father or the worst bully at school caught up with them, they still wouldn’t cry, but just stand there and take it, hands clenched and green eyes burning holes into whoever was whipping them, and when it finally stopped, they’d hand over their lunch or get back to whatever chore they hadn’t been doing good enough. But five minutes or an hour or a day later, whenever they could, they’d run away, like a wild thing to lick its wounds. Maybe they cried where no one could see them, but I doubt it.

When Mama led Patty home that first summer, and told us we’d have milk and butter for ourselves and money from selling the rest of it to the neighbors, Alma and I said we were big enough to help. We planned which houses we’d go to and which we’d skip and we never meant to stop at the Garneys’, but that first week, walking home with the near-empty pail swinging between us, we saw Jessie crouched under her porch, skinny arms wrapped around her bent knees, and I couldn’t help going over to her and touching her shoulder. Her head came up, eyes shining like I thought emeralds would, the bruise under the left one coal-dark.

“What happened?” I asked, and Jessie shook her head. Alma reached out, but stopped, her fingers not quite touching Jessie’s face, milk-white under the freckles and the bruise.

“Doesn’t matter.” And the hopelessness in her voice was echoed in the thin, mewling cries coming from the house, and in the tired voice that called out, “Who’s out there, Jessie? Who’re you talking to?”

“It’s Alma and Marie, Ma,” she answered. I wondered if Jessie had been watching us since we first came down our steps that day, and how many other mornings she left her house to crouch on cold dirt and watch who went past.

We heard steps on the porch, and we moved away from Jessie to where her mother could see us. “Good morning, ma’am,” I said. “My sister and I are selling milk from our cow. We could come by tomorrow if you’d like, a penny a cup.”

She stared at us, her eyes flat and dull as the stones kicked around in the middle of a road, fussing baby in her arms, another, just old enough to walk, clinging silently to her skirts. She pursed her lips, then nodded slightly. “That’d be all right. Tomorrow. Two cups, I think.” She bent over the rail. “You come in now, girl, take the baby.” Jessie stood up and went inside. We’d turned around by the time we heard the door slam shut.

Jessie didn’t come to school that day or the rest of the week. It was different for boys. Her brothers came no matter how many bruises they wore on their faces. The teacher never asked about it, of them or any other child, not like nowadays when such things could not go unremarked or unreported. Why would the teachers care when they had rulers and switches always close to hand and used them every day on one or another of their students? Not me or Alma, though. Never on us. We never talked out of turn, and our work was always done well. We knew what school meant for us. It was the way out. Out of icy mornings in the shed, when we took turns milking. Out of a home where there wasn’t enough to eat and we’d always pretend we were full anyway because the pain on our mother’s face when we’d asked for more, before we understood how much had changed, was so much worse than the hurt in our bellies. Alma and I made plans. We’d be teachers ourselves, or clerks in a store, any work would be fine as long as it was in a place that was warm and clean and dry, and we could use our minds more than our bodies. Bodies wore out or broke. Like our father’s under the wheels of a wagon, from one instant to the next. Like our mother’s in Johnson’s laundry, worn down day after day from lifting the water-logged clothes from one vat to the next, her hands and arms scoured by hot water and cheap soap made from tallow and ash.

Not all the other children saw school in the same way. The Garney boys certainly didn’t. For Stephen and Micah, the twins, school was a place to sit with their primer open in front of them and stare at it, their lips twitching a little as if they were reading, but when Miss Collier called on them to recite, they’d startle like they were waking up from a deep sleep, arms jerking out, bony elbows bumping whoever was sitting to the side of them. We learned to shift out of the way when the teacher looked in their direction. But the twins came every day, at least every day that we didn’t see them in back of their house, set at first light to hours of splitting green wood kindling or lifting wet sheets that must have weighed more than they did from the washtub and twisting them through the mangle. The Garneys came to school and didn’t seem to learn much of anything, but it must have felt an easier place than their home. On the winter days when the marks on their faces were fresh and raw, and the cold air when we played Crack the Whip or Fox and Geese would have cut sharp, Stephen and Micah stayed inside, near the wood stove, and stared at the orange flames wavering behind the bars of the little iron door.

When we got home from our rounds, we’d take Patty down along the river and let her graze where she liked, on the stretches of soft, long grasses in the spring, or the summer rushes, then the dry, crackling stems of whatever she could find in the fall. When the snows came, we let her go no further than our yard, for fear of her breaking a leg on a patch of ice, and fed her hay we had bought out of the money she made for us.

We counted it over and over again. Out loud, keeping the total in our heads as we walked from customer to customer, the coins clinking in my pocket. We made a small, tidy stack on the table before we left for school, and again when we got home, carefully adding the day’s count to the paper that we folded and kept in the little box. No one we knew kept money in a bank, no one had enough of it. No one we knew locked their doors. It wasn’t neighbors that posed any threat. Ma would check our addition, and subtraction, when we took money out for hay, and for tithing. The total slowly, achingly slowly, grew. We made no plans for the few dollars in the box in the drawer. We weren’t saving for something special. We saved for the day when a knock came at the door, and everything changed.

So we managed somehow, the three of us together. Ma walked the two miles to the trolley every day except Sunday, took it across Ogden to the laundry, and retraced her path every evening. When she came home to us and bent close as we showed her our homework, she smelled of soap and starch and near-scorched clothes. She always took a book with her, told us she read it on that clattering, swaying ride that set my stomach to churning when we’d go to visit our grandfather, but the bookmark never advanced from morning till night, not until she sent us to our prayers, then sat there at the worn table, reading in the small circle of yellow lamplight.

I don’t know if help was ever offered, and my mother refused just because we were lucky that the house and yard were ours and we could scrape by, or because whatever help might come from my grandfather would be grudging and bitter. He had enough for himself, and what he had he kept. We had taken his son from him, and in his mind, we deserved no more after we lost what he valued most.

The day before it happened, February third, after days of hard snows, we left for school. There had been no new money for Alma and me to count that day, nor had been for weeks. We had dried off Patty as she was due to freshen in March and needed her strength. Mama told us not to worry, that after the calf came there would be plenty of milk, and money from the promised selling. The Mickelbys would buy the calf, if it was a heifer, or the butcher would buy it if it was a bull calf. Alma understood, and contented herself with counting over the same small stacks of coins, a tiny copper and silver fence that only a small child could believe was a guard against disaster. It was harder for me. I missed the early morning milking, when the air was cool even in summer, and the only warm thing was the cow’s body, heat rising from it as I leaned my face and shoulder against her side, and the milk pulsing through her teats warmed my hands.

John Garney shoved past us as we walked, making us stumble. He was muttering, to himself or to the wind, who knew, the words slurred and angry, and the smell of alcohol sharp on his breath. At the corner, where we would always stop and plan our way across with care, for the road sloped and besides the snow that had hardened there into slick ice there were manure piles in various stages of freezing, John — I can call him that, for I am more than twice the age he ever came to be — rushed across and into the path of Harrison’s wagon. Mr. Harrison pulled up his team, but John Garney swore at man and beast and raised his hand to the horses. Earl Harrison was off the wagon before I could blink, and he and John were flailing at each other, then fell and rolled, shouting, on the frozen ground. I pulled Alma back from the road and the men and the stamping, nervous animals. We huddled against the fence of the nearest yard as other men came to the fray and pulled Mr. Harrison off the bleeding and swearing John Garney. He turned over, managed to get onto his hands and knees, swaying, raised his head, and looked at those who had not hurried off, eyes averted. Alma and I were still there, stunned at the public violence between grown men. This was not the norm in our experience. The town was dry, and the hand of the church was heavy. John’s gaze slid over my sister and me and fixed on something behind us.

“You. Come here.” His voice was hard as ice, and the twins, who I guessed had seen near everything of their father’s defeat, went past us as silent as two small figures made of snow. They knew, as did we, what would happen once they helped their father back to their house. But even though they’d bear the brunt of their father’s anger for having witnessed his fall, I believed they would be in school, bruised but stubborn in their quiet staring attention if not to our teacher, at least to the fire dancing in the iron stove. They knew better, I realized later, and Stephen held Micah’s hand in his as they walked to their father. Stephen came alone and would not explain his twin’s, or Jessie’s, absence. Alma and I watched that day and said nothing. What was there to say? Who was there to tell? All we did was sit on the hard bench beside Stephen, silent except for our recitations of that day, the capitals and products of the Mid-Atlantic states, and the conjugations of the verb “to choose.”

I woke during the night, as I had every night since my father died, and turned over and set my hand close to Alma’s mouth to see that she still breathed. Then I walked to my mother’s room, the bare floor cold on my feet, and watched for the slight rise and fall of her shoulders. Satisfied that all was well — as well as it could be, within our house — I wrapped my mother’s green shawl over my nightgown and went to the back porch, slipped on my boots, and went out to check on Patty. The moon was no more than a thin line of light, the snow dull as unpolished silver, and our cow slept in the deep shadows of the shed. As I stood there, watching her breath make little clouds, I heard footfalls on the snow, someone passing through our yard. I looked out and saw a moving shadow, picked out by the light the small figure carried. I must have made some sound, though I meant not to, because he stopped and raised his lantern to see, though it did no more than brighten his face and blind him to me. I was quiet then, and after a few moments he moved on. I watched the light moving away, bobbing as Stephen leaned down to slip through the rails of our fence. So I was not the only one who woke, and walked, though I would not venture as far as he did.

The cries and alarm rose not long afterward. I had returned to bed, though not to sleep, when the shouts and sounds of running pounded in from out on the street. Alma had startled awake, and begun her noiseless crying when Mama came in and took us by the hands, and we went to the door together to see what trouble had come. The neighbor men were rushing past, down to where a glow rose behind the Harrisons’ small house. “Get dressed, girls, quickly,” Mother told us, “we’ll go to see if we can help.”

The fire was burning high when we got there, orange and yellow against the still-black sky, the men throwing buckets of water and shovelfuls of snow on the flames rising from the wagon and the two-stall barn. The snow hissed and melted and ran in ashy streams to where we stood with the other women and girls. The boys pushed in closer, and voices rose, loud and harsh as crows, crowded together in a babble of words and cries. “... happened... start... both horses out... saw anything...” Then a few words began to be repeated. “Lantern... broken... Garney... Garney... too much... no more...”

Finally the fire died down, and the men stood beside the collapsed wagon and the fallen beams and boards of the barn, warning off the boys who danced in near as they dared to the sparking embers. The elders of our ward gathered around Earl Harrison and what they talked of we could not hear. Earl Harrison walked into his unburned house and came out carrying a rifle. The elders turned as one and without regarding those of us who watched, set their buckets and shovels against the fence and walked, each man slow and weary-looking, down the street. Some younger men stayed to stand sentinel over the fire lest the wind rise and feed it, others saw to the horses, and several women went inside with Sarah Harrison to tend to those who had been burned on their hands or faces, but the rest of the crowd, and us with them, followed the elders. Men broke off from the group, went into their dark houses, and when they caught up, carried rifles of their own. I wondered how long it had been since any were fired. Since deer hunting months before, I thought.

They stood at the foot of the steps and looked up at the dark windows of the Garney house. “Brother Garney,” they called out, so he must have been a member of the church at some time, though I had never seen him inside its walls or following its teachings. They called again, voices roughened by smoke and exhaustion. These were men who worked fourteen hours or more most days, and to have lost half of what little rest they could claim each night lay heavy on them all. I wondered what they would do if no answer came, but the door opened and Sarah Garney stood there, the baby in her arms.

“We’ve come to speak with your husband, Sister Garney.”

She shook her head, said, “He’s asleep.”

“Wake him, then. We must see him.”

A long minute went by as she stared at us, then turned away. Before she went back in, I saw her mouth move, though I heard no words from where I stood, but what she said satisfied the men for they stood quiet, shoulders sagging.

A match must have been struck and a lantern lit, for light flared behind a window, and John Garney came out. He leaned against the door, reaching across the narrow space with his other hand, holding onto the frame, and I could see how he shifted, looking for balance and not finding it.

“Where have you been tonight?” he was asked. And so it began, the questions that had no answers anyone wanted or would believe.

“I’ve been in the house all night and what business is it of yours?”

“A good man’s wagon and barn have been burned, the same man you fought for no reason just hours ago. Several of those who helped have suffered injury.”

“That was no doing of mine. If I come at a man he sees my face when I lift my hand to him.”

Through the doorway, I saw Sarah Garney return, to stand behind her husband, just out of reach, and from around the back of the house, Jessie walked, so slowly I think few people marked the movement. She had both twins beside her, one arm around each.

The men waited, calm and implacable, and Garney turned, so unsteady I thought he would fall, but he grabbed his wife by the arm and thrust her before him.

“Tell them,” he said. “Tell them where I’ve been all night.”

Again she waited, silent long enough to give weight to whatever opinion the listeners had of her — that she would lie to protect him, that she would lie out of fear of him, or that she would tell the truth no matter how many were set against her husband.

“He’s been here. He’s been here since the accident.”

Mutters rose in the crowd that it was no accident if a drunk filled himself with moonshine and stepped in front of a team of horses. Nor was it an accident when a lantern broke against both wagon and barn.

I looked over at Jessie, who crouched there now in the snow with her brothers. No one else noticed them. She had made them put on their shoes and coats. I wondered, was it for waiting in the cold while the grownups talked and made their decisions, or was it preparing to run. She saw me watching her, and her arm tightened around Stephen.

The men shifted, stood with their shoulders touching, made a fence of their tired bodies. One spoke. “You will have to leave, Brother Garney. Whether this burning can be laid at your door by the sheriff or not, we know where the blame rests. This is not the first of the many troubles you have brought us. It must be the last.”

Garney took a step toward them. “I’ll not go. Damn all of you.”

“You will. The elders of his ward will speak to the owner of this house and he will evict your family tomorrow.”

I saw Jessie flinch, and heard the outcry from her mother.

“Or you leave by yourself. We have no quarrel with your wife or children. If you are gone, they may stay. We will help them find work. Choose now.”

Jessie’s eyes blazed through the darkness. She knew. There would be too few lanterns in her house for her not to see that one had vanished. Her hand crept further around Stephen, closer to his mouth to keep him from calling out. But I knew he would not. He was still and silent as the ice frozen down to the mud on the floor of the river.

Had he done it to free them? Known the blame would fall on his father? Known to use the men who stood there to finally stay his father’s hand? Men who waited there tired and worn, who would risk their lives to save wood and iron, but would never have saved his family from beatings. Or had he done it out of the broken thinking of victims I have seen so often acted out, to turn on the one who attacks their attacker? I didn’t know. I still don’t. I only knew Stephen would use no words that night. Whatever sent him out into the night with fire, now he would stand and watch, and see what else was done.

As I watched, I knew what the loss of a father, even one so miserable as John Garney, meant to a family dependent on his earnings, but I said nothing. If any of us who knew — Jessie, me, Stephen himself — told that he had set the fire, a promise of restitution would be demanded, but then everyone would turn away and leave Stephen at the mercy of his father. The smell of smoke and burned things hung in the cold air as we waited for Garney to make his choice, the men thinking they were protecting neighbors and property, while I knew they were shielding one boy. Garney turned to his wife, and Sarah, after a wild-eyed look at the people crowded round her steps, wrapped one arm tighter around the baby she held, the other hand on the toddler who clutched at her skirts, and stumbled down the steps.

“You worthless piece of...” he snarled at her, “I’ll be well rid of you and those brats.” He clenched his fist, ready to strike, but she was out of reach so he leaned down, grabbing the worn railing, and spat at her, then spun awkwardly around and disappeared.

My mother moved forward then, put her arm around Sarah Garney, said, “You and your children come home with us until your husband has taken his things and left. The elders will see to him. Marie, Alma, you bring Jessie and the twins along.” So she had noticed them, too.

Before we could turn away, he came back out, a rifle cradled in one arm.

“You’ll not tell me what to do or where to go, you self-righteous sons of whores,” he shouted, and lifted the gun to his shoulder, the barrel swaying back and forth, but always pointed into the crowd.

Two shots rang out, one after another, and he fell back, his shot wild and harming none of us.

Sarah seemed to collapse against my mother, but my mother was strong from lifting clothes heavy with water, so she bore Sarah and the small ones quickly along, and Alma and I followed, Jessie in the center, me beside Micah — I could feel him shaking — and Alma next to Stephen.

My mother forced cup after cup of tea into them all, and then food, and that night they slept in our beds. By the morning, the body was gone, the blood scrubbed from the porch, and the family returned to their house. But a sort of friendship had begun out of the smoke and secrets of that night.

The elders found Mrs. Garney a place at the laundry where my mother worked. Jessie stayed home to care for her little sisters. At her house after school, we would take out our books and homework and teach her what we had learned that day. Stephen and Micah were given jobs at the grocer’s, measuring out grain, washing and trimming vegetables, cleaning up after the butcher. They would come home with their hands nicked and clothes stained, but they would also bring the beets or potatoes or green apples that had not been good enough to sell, and the marbled trimmings the butcher gave to them. The twins never returned to school. Micah eventually drifted off, disappearing for weeks, then months, and then we saw no more of him. As the years passed, Stephen was given increasing responsibilities and came to be manager, and then started his own store. Jessie never married. She had seen enough of the institution and had no use for it, though she would spend her life taking care of other people’s children.

When I finally realized what had come to be between Alma and Stephen, I sat Alma down at the old table and told her what he had done. Not to keep them apart, I had no expectation that was possible, or any wish for it. He was no more like his father than my own had been like his.

Stephen never asked me for silence. I don’t know if Alma told him I knew. I expect she did. They were so close they seemed to share each breath, and after she died, too young, too young, he walked through this world only out of obligation to all those who depended on him.

Copyright © 2011 by Trina Corey