The Wall That Isn’t There

Last night in Melvin’s barn frost almost covered the interior walls and when I went to fill the wheelbarrow with sawdust, I had to chip it away from the pile in frozen-together chunks. Melvin told me how when he was a boy and it got real cold, he’d go at the sawdust pile with an ax, chop it almost like firewood.

I rolled the bale down the aisle, listened as the chorus of chewing built in my wake. You ever stood in the middle of 40 chewing cows? My advise is if you get the chance, don’t turn it down. Besides the chewing, there was the metronomic backdrop of the gutter cleaner, clacking as it carried the day’s worth of shit and piss up and out of the barn. Melvin straddled the cleaner at a strategic point near the exit, using a shovel to guide the slurry so it didn’t overflow the sides.

When I came out of the barn, it was 7 below zero and the wind was picking up. I went home. Had soup. Stoked the fire. Bed.

This morning, it was 23 below zero when I set out to milk. I’d been up in the night listening to the wind and thinking of the animals. I can’t help it when it’s this cold. The night before I’d given the pigs a fresh bale of bedding and an extra ration of milk, the cows and sheep a serving of precious second-cut from the small stash reserved for such occasions. Web duck got a particularly fat handful of grain, and everyone was fine. They’re always fine.

We milk by hand, in an open-sided pole barn, and I thought I was going to be cold, but I wasn’t. Chores had warmed me, brought blood to fingers and toes. The sun was coming over the eastern horizon. It looked like it was rising straight out of Melvin’s hayfield. Web duck had her head tucked deep into her back feathers. She was next to me. Waiting for her milk. Waiting for the sun to slide a little higher, slant its way through the wall that isn’t there.