The cow looked at me suspiciously as we approached. I gave her a scratch behind her velvety ears and she snorted, dipped her head and nuzzled my palm. I felt myself grin. You can’t have a cow nuzzle your palm and not grin: it’s physically impossible.
We led her back to the barn and Cal set two short, thick logs down on their ends to serve as stools. From down there, the cow looked enormous. “She’s a thousand pounds,” said Cal. “She could break your foot if she stepped on it, so be careful.”
“Gotcha,” I said nervously. “What’s her name?”
He frowned as if he didn’t understand. “She...doesn’t have one.”
I stared at him. He’d stripped life down to just the practicalities, with no time for sentimentality. And yet he’d still gone out of his way to help me.
He shuffled our stools closer until we were shoulder-to-shoulder and almost underneath the cow. Then he showed me how to gently wash and dry the udders and nudge against them like a calf to get the cow to let down her milk. He taught me how to strip each teat, squirting the first few ounces onto the ground in case it was contaminated. Then he put a tin bucket underneath and started milking the front two teats, alternating his hands in a steady rhythm. Warm milk hissed into the bucket. He nodded towards the two rear teats. “Now you try.”
I hesitantly wrapped my fingers around them and tried to squeeze the way he had. A few drops of milk fell, then nothing. The cow gave a moo that might have been despair.
“Almost,” said Cal reassuringly. He leaned closer and then his big, warm hands were encircling mine, gently pressing to show me. I went a little heady. “Relax when you get up here,” he said, “to let the milk in.” His lips were right by my ear, his voice a warm rumble, and I could feel his beard brush my ear lobe, the hair softer than I’d imagined. “Then squeeze down,” he said, doing it. “Then back up….”
I swallowed and nodded. Milk hissed into the bucket. “There,” he murmured. “Good.”
He slowly released my hands. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore my racing heart and the tingling, sensitive skin all the way down the side of my neck where his warm breath had blown. I focused on keeping a steady rhythm. After a few moments, I settled into it.
“There. You got it,” he told me and I grinned, pleased.
When we were done, we took a mid-morning coffee break. The coffee beans were hand-ground in the all-purpose grinder in the kitchen, the water was from the well, heated on the stove, and the milk was rich and creamy, still warm from the cow. It was the best cup of coffee I’d ever had and drinking it outdoors, leaning against a tree, I felt like an actual farmer, ready to take on the world. What would I be doing, if I was back in the call center? I’d be on my twentieth call of the day, mentally and emotionally exhausted and counting the minutes until the end of my shift….
I sipped at my coffee and listened to the wind in the trees. I could get used to this.
* * *
The days fell into a routine. I’d start the day by feeding the chickens and milking the cow and goat. We’d tend the garden together, then he’d either go hunting or chop wood. It was peaceful. I couldn’t forget about the men looking for me, but I was sure they wouldn’t find me: we literally didn’t even see another person.
I was amazed at how little went to waste. Every food scrap that could be composted went on the compost heap and the rest went to the pigs. Back in Seattle, I’d tried to save the planet by buying reusable coffee cups and tote bags...which I kept losing. My old life suddenly seemed crazily complicated and wasteful.
There were things I missed, like the internet. But there was plenty to make up for them. One night, I was just about to get into bed when I glanced out of the window...and then ducked down and craned my head so I could look up in amazement. “What?” asked Cal when he saw me.
I ran to the door and stumbled outside in just the t-shirt I’d been planning to sleep in. The night air was shockingly cold against my bare thighs but I barely noticed. I was looking at the sky.
The clouds had cleared and above was a midnight blue bowl dusted with a billion shining stars. I was used to seeing maybe one or two in Seattle. This was something else: clusters and constellations and the broad sweep of the Milky Way. Every star was so clear, so bright, that they felt like real places, not just abstract dots in the sky.