Calloused
Clark Magnan
For my eighth birthday, Mom and Dad got me a shovel. Not only a shovel, of course; my folks were not completely heartless. But the only present I remember now is the child-sized shovel, probably because I had been expecting it. My two older brothers, Christopher and Derek, each received the same gift on their eighth birthdays, and on the next day, they were in the barn cleaning stalls and feeding calves. I picked up on this pattern young. At ten, each of us would be clear to drive a tractor and work the fields. At twelve, we could handle the heavy stuff: sledge for putting in fence posts, axe for splitting firewood, or truck for driving in the fields. So the oddly wrapped gift with the “Jared” tag on it came as no surprise. Not that I was unique. Most of my peers in our little Vermont town had been born so they could grow up and work on their families’ farms.
One morning, Dad told me to clean out the feed collecting in front of the heifer stalls, in addition to my normal chores. I was getting my shovel to do so when the breeder arrived dressed in gray, one-piece coveralls and carrying his chrome case of instruments. Dad must have called him. My dad could look at a cow and tell she was in heat. He would then go to the chart and pick out a suitable sire and call the breeder to perform the impregnation. I didn’t understand how Dad made these choices; I never asked. I liked to look at the stainless steel instruments the breeder used, the anesthetics and rows of meticulously labeled tubes. But when he pulled on the glove that went from wrist to shoulder, I turned back to my work.
By the time I approached the heifer stalls, Dad had just finished clipping their horns. Heifers are older but not yet grown cows—sort of a bovine teenager. If we clip them at that young age, just when nubs are beginning to form on their heads, we can prevent some of the danger posed by the full-grown rack on an adult. The trick is to cut as close as possible to the actual skull. Sometimes—most of the time actually—this process left open arteries spurting blood from the top of the animal’s head, like someone squeezing a water bottle straight in the air.
As a result, I had to work in the path of blood that arced across the whitewashed walls. I watched the heifers try to shake away the crimson streaks coming down their faces. “I guess the stalls can wait,” I said, leaning my shovel against a wall and getting comfortable.
“What, you scared of a little blood?” My dad was smiling, but he also stood still and watched me.
“Why’d you have to cut their horns now?” I asked.
“Why’d you have to be slow getting here?” he replied.
I looked at him, standing in his regular attire of manure-and dirt-spackled jeans, torn flannel shirt, and hard rubber boots. My father’s weathered face looked amused beneath the mass of his dark, uncombed hair, and his eyes squinted at me until my hot, flushed faced turned away. I bet Derek would not have hesitated at my father’s command; Chris would have laughed as he jumped into the bloody mess shovel first.
I walked toward the heifers, holding my shovel out in front of me. I tried to make my steps even and bold. I did not look back.
Setting my shovel at the edge of the accumulated pile of uneaten feed, I pushed in. The air quickly filled with the smell of moist, organic rot. Maggots squirmed and wriggled in the steaming compost. But these were things I was used to.
I felt the first warm spray of blood hit the back of my neck. I drew my shoulders and neck together in a bunch, trying to catch it before it ran down my back; but it was of no use. With clenched teeth and eyes closed into half slits, I continued to work. I was amazed at how hot and tacky the fluid was. Each hornless swing of a head stained my clothes and hair a darker shade of red.
Eventually the flow did stop. By then I was halfway through my work, and my hands felt like they had been dipped in maple syrup. My eyelids were sticky, too. I looked around—Dad was nowhere in sight.
The summer I turned ten, I raked my first field. Dad selected the small Allis-Chalmers, or “Allis” as she was affectionately called, for my tractor. His instructions were terse. Here’s the clutch. Throttle. Don’t go too fast, but you need to keep the rakes moving. Make sure the temp gauge stays under 120. If it goes above that, turn it off. Follow the lines. If you miss, just leave it. If anything goes wrong, just turn the key and walk home.
Dad gave me one demonstration lap around the field, following the lines of hay perfectly, turning over the bottom side of each row to dry in the sun. Then his heavy foot pressed the clutch as he jerked the gear stick into neutral. I saw the deep red sunburn that would linger all summer already highlighting his neck as Dad stepped down to the field and headed home.
I watched him walk away, his old, torn sneakers treading a dusty cow path. Now in the driver’s seat, I let Allis idle in neutral. I checked the temp. I looked back to see that the rakes were still there. I took a sip from my water bottle, and then went back for a long draught. I checked the gauge again and carefully placed my water bottle below the seat where it couldn’t roll out. Then I pulled it out again and put it in the toolbox bolted beside the seat.
Dad was looking back at me.
I put my foot on the clutch and had to stand against the steering wheel for leverage to depress it fully. Then I reached for the gearshift and pushed it into first. I slowly let up on the clutch.
The tractor jumped forward, lurching with a roar. I stood up on the clutch again. Feeling my face grow hot and looking down only at my feet, I reached for the gearshift. I was in third. I moved it to first and let up on the clutch again. This time the tractor rolled forward, and I gently upped the throttle a bit to get some speed. Looking back, the rakes were moving smoothly. By the time I checked, Dad was far off.
For hours, I drove around in that field. It took me a while to get the steering really down, but, eventually, I was cruising along, each circle getting smaller and smaller as I worked my way toward the middle. It grew hot, and I worked steadily through my water bottle, letting my mind wander. I pictured myself grown as an archaeologist. We had been studying Egypt in school, so my mind was full of mummies tucked away in dry desert tombs. I toiled in the sands of Egypt, uncovering forgotten pharaohs and artifacts. I’d become the first person in the family to go college. (I wasn’t sure then if that was true, but I knew that neither Mom nor Dad had finished high school.) I was a leader in my field, a PhD, but I still liked to get my hands a little dirty, and my fellow scientists respected me for it.
By the time I noticed steam coming out of the top of the tractor, the gauge was buried somewhere in the red above 150. I jumped on the clutch and turned the key to kill the engine. With the roar of the motor stilled for the first time in hours, the angry hiss coming from Allis’s front side seemed especially incriminating.
I ran away like I was afraid of an explosion. Finally out of breath and halfway home, I realized I would have to find Dad and tell him what happened. Now my steps were slow and deliberate. I tried to think of what to say, but the words in my head were constantly interrupted by the sound of Allis hissing at me.
I first came across Derek in the tool shed. He was greasing the plows so they could be put away until next spring. I told him my plight, hoping he’d be able to help me out.
“Nice job, Einstein. All those books and you can’t read a stupid gauge?”
“Shut up!” I said. I knew he loved to see me screw up. “I was looking. The gauge probably doesn’t work right anymore.”
Derek snickered. “Yah, sure. Dad’s in the milk house. He’s in a bad mood.”
When I found Dad, the broken gauge was my lead story. I’m not even sure I actually mentioned the steaming engine, just that the temperature gauge was faulty. By then I was shaking. My feet and fingertips had that peculiar tingle they got when I leaned over a roof edge just short of falling.
Dad had been replacing one of the pipes on the bulk tank. The pipe either ran the milk into or out of the tank. Or both. I never asked. I hated to ask Dad a question that I knew either Derek or Chris could answer instinctively. He held a large wrench that had been chipped and battered over many years of use. He listened to my story before asking, “What’d the gauge say?”
I stumbled. My throat had gone dry and nothing came out.
“I don’t expect such a stupid mistake out of you, Jared.” I cringed at his words. The wrench looked menacing in his large, hard hands. “Try to use that brain of yours next time.” Dad went out the door. I wasn’t sure if he had meant for me to follow, but I knew I didn’t want to. Instead, I went to the house, to the room I shared with Chris. For him, the bedroom was little more than a place to sleep. His bureau top was scattered with various pieces of machinery and odd, small tools. The area around his bed was littered with days’ worth of dirty clothing that he often picked up and wore again. The carpet was soiled with dirt and grease. There wasn’t any decoration except a calendar given out by the local creamery depicting a different breed of cow each month.
For my part, I kept my work clothes on one side of the bed, my school clothes on the other. There was a bookshelf half-filled with library throwaways and ten-cent science fiction paperbacks. Above my meager desk was a poster of the solar system I’d swiped from my teacher’s wastebasket. Two thoughts bounced in my head like the ball in a game of tennis:
Someday, I’ll be able to leave.
I’ll do better next time.
Shortly after I entered high school, Dad needed someone to get up early on a Saturday and chop firewood for Grandma. I volunteered so I could spend a day away from Derek and Chris. That same week, they’d gotten together to work on replacing a broken PTO shaft on Allis. They were having trouble removing the old shaft that had broken off inside the tractor. It seemed simple to me, so I offered a suggestion. They looked at each other very knowingly and continued like I hadn’t said a word. I stormed away, seething because I wasn’t sure if they were simply being jerks, or if I’d just said something stupid.
Dad got into the truck as I placed the axe in the back. The short ride was quiet. Grandma gave me my first cup of coffee, then brought me out back to the woodpile and the old chopping stump that had been around for as long as I could remember. Axe in hand, I went to work.
I was still new at this, but I warmed up quickly. Soon the pieces were splitting clean and smooth with one deft stroke. Swinging an axe was much easier when no one else was watching.
As the sun rose, I took off my shirt and fell into a rhythm. Place, aim, raise, fall, replace. Blisters formed on the soft parts of my hands, but I hardly noticed. With each exertion, it felt like the wood was splitting because I willed it to. The axe was a messenger. Jared says break in two. Crack. It was done. I nodded at the mound of split pieces beside me, the mound I’d created on my own with a simple axe.
My thoughts turned, as they often did when I was in a good mood, to the future. Chris had recently come home with a stack of brochures from the local college fair. “Got me outta class all afternoon,” he said with savor. The brochures sat in a pile at the foot of his bed until I rescued them. I sat for hours and devoured their information. Vanderbilt University stood out as the farthest away school that Chris had picked up a brochure for. The Tennessee climate would be warm compared to home, and it was a fine place to get a pre-med degree. I knew it was a bit out of my reach, financially if for no other reason. But the problem I focused on that afternoon was which dorm to live in. McGregor? Near the Medical School. Or Cole? Closer to alumni field. Maybe I could learn to throw a Frisbee.
As I daydreamed, dark gray clouds rolled in. Summer clouds. They let loose, soaking me thoroughly. But they wouldn’t last long, and the cooling rain felt good against my hot skin. I continued to swing the axe, steam rising from my arms. I was a piston at work in a hot engine; no rain would stop me. I wondered if Dad would have stayed out in this.
Grandma came out to get me for lunch. She immediately sent me upstairs to rummage through Grandpa’s old bureau for some dry clothes. The room was dark and smelled like old books. I wasn’t sure where to go first, so I picked out a dresser and went at it.
The first few drawers I opened contained old pictures and memorabilia, macaroni collages, Boy Scout badges and the like. There were a number of pictures of dad and his brothers, grainy black and white snapshots taken mostly in front of a barn or on a back porch. I was surprised at how similar Dad’s brothers looked and how much they looked like Chris and Derek. But Dad was the odd one, wavy hair where theirs was straight, a small nose where theirs were broad. In fact, he looked like me.
Then I came across one of Dad’s old report cards. It was stamped 9th Grade. I knew that Dad had not finished high school, but I didn’t know how far he had gone. I opened the faded manila card feeling like heavy gravel churned in my stomach.
The first thing I noticed was that he had gotten straight As. Second, I realized that none of the classes was woodshop. He took algebra as a freshman. Dad had studied French. I found some more report cards in the drawer. They all looked much the same. Where Dad didn’t get As there were always comments about missing homework assignments or a shortness of effort. I realized these remarks were mostly for the spring terms, about the time that the hay crop would have been harvested. Had Dad been forced to neglect school to work on the farm?
By this time, the rain had won out, and I was chilled. I opened some more drawers and found Grandpa’s worn but clean clothes neatly folded and organized. I changed, rolling up the shirt sleeves and tucking the long pant legs into my socks, then went downstairs.
Grandma told me she had a meal ready to fill up a “hard workin’ man.” I sat down and dug in. She asked me the standard questions about the hay crop, Dad’s back, school, and my science fair project. I had once told her about a science fair project, and I believe, in her mind, I spent the next ten years working on that same project. I asked her if Dad ever did projects like that in school.
“Oh, yes” she said. “He did all kinds of things while he was in school. You know, they wanted to skip him ahead a grade when he was younger.”
I hadn’t known that.
“Yup, but he said no. I think he already knew he was going to wind up on the farm.”
“When did he leave school?”
“Oh, he was a bit older than you. It was when your uncle bought his own place. Dad stayed home to help out on the farm.”
“Did he ever talk about college or anything?”
Grandma stood up. She went to the counter asking me if I’d like some dessert to finish off the meal. She was a small woman, but a typical farmer’s wife: strong and independent even in her golden years. She kept her hair short and left it gray. Grandma favored long, plain skirts and large eyeglasses. Her bony fingers unscrewed the top of a jar of peaches without difficulty. While she was topping a bowl of fruit with whipped cream, I asked again, “Did Dad want to go to college?”
She put the bowl down in front of me with a small sigh. “He talked of it some. But when Grandpa needed him to stay home and work, there wasn’t too much of a fight.” She didn’t look at me while saying this last part, but went to the sink and began drying dishes with a worn towel.
After lunch, I went outside to finish up the last of the wood. I never got into the same rhythm as that morning, though. I tried to lose myself in another daydream, but realizing that Dad had possibly done the same thing once only made me sulky. I worked slowly, pausing each time a blister popped to watch the fluid run down my dirty palm. Dad came to pick me up in the afternoon.
“Did you finish?”
“Yeah, I did.”
He nodded. “Those aren’t the same clothes you wore this morning.”
I looked down. “It rained, so I put on some of Grandpa’s clothes.”
He nodded again. I looked at his rough, calloused hands on the steering wheel. My hands hurt from the axe, but I don’t think Dad had any soft spots left to form blisters on. The fourth fingernail on his right hand was black and ready to fall off. He always seemed to have at least one nail that had been caught in a machine or kicked by a cow.
The truck rumbled and bumped home, the muffler needing to be retired and the odometer ready to spin around to zero a second time. I felt like it was hard to breathe in the truck cab, so I rolled down my window. I thought about Grandma standing at the sink and wondered what “too much of a fight” meant to her. I wanted to ask Dad about it, ask if he’d had a choice and, if so, if he still believed he’d made the right one. But I was at least as afraid of the answer as I was of the asking. Instead, I stared at my hands, at blisters that would one day be calluses if I let them.
Not too much later, Dad announced that it was Turkey Day. This was his name for the annual event in which we butchered the fifteen or so birds we’d raised over the year. But first, we had to get each one out of the coop. Catching turkeys was something like a sport – as close as I would come to understanding the lure of hunting. For years, my brothers and I made a contest of being the first to catch one. With the recent tension among us, I felt it was especially important to beat them this year. The trick was to chase one turkey into a corner. With wire mesh on each side, the bird had no other option but to come back straight at you. That’s when I’d pounce. It was important to pin their wings right away, so I didn’t get a face full of feathers. Also, Dad didn’t like it when they broke their wings in a flapping frenzy. Why, I could not understand, since they had only a few minutes left anyway.
I did catch the first turkey. I carried it a little higher than necessary to Dad who had the chopping block ready and the hatchet leaning nearby. He helped me wrestle the bird onto its side near the block and place a sock over its head. (With turkeys, you put a sock or something over their heads so they won’t move on the block.)
With the turkey hooded, I figured it was just a matter of Dad and me switching places so he could get the job done and I could go after my next bird. But he didn’t move. Instead, he handed me the hatchet and held down the turkey.
“Just don’t hit me,” he said.
I blinked and looked at him. “What?”
“You heard me. Get on with it.” He returned my look with a steady, impatient gaze.
I tightly gripped the smooth handle. Sweat seeped between my fingers. The sock made the turkey’s head a formless mass of gray cloth. But she held still, waiting for me. Dad did not look up as I prepared to swing.
I felt the weight of the hatchet head wobble uncertainly on the end of the handle. It was not like splitting wood with the axe, when missing meant I had slivered off a piece rather than split it neatly in two. Too soft and I might not get clean through. Too hard and I might miss. Dad’s fingers pinned the neck on the block. The turkey’s skin looked loose and tough. A blue vein pulsed from beneath the sock, running to the trembling, delicate feathers of its body.
Chris and Derek watched me raise the hatchet. They looked as confused as I felt. There had always been a routine. Boys catch. Dad kills. Boys pluck.
“Maybe one of them should do it,” I said, letting the blade drop to my side. It was supposed to be just a suggestion. When no one moved, I resorted to a plea. “I don’t want to do this.” Dad never even looked up. “Fine,” I nearly yelled. I raised the hatchet again and brought it down in an angry arc.
The blade hit the turkey’s flesh and barely cut through before bouncing back at me. The turkey jumped, but only a small drop of blood flowed from the wound. The turkey was still very much in possession of its head, and I sat down wide-eyed and pale. I stared blankly at the pathetic nick I had made in the bird’s skin. I was waiting for Dad or one of my brothers to say something, but I could not look at any of them.
“Dammit,” my dad swore. He picked up the hatchet and took a quick swing.
It bounced back, just as my swing had.
We all stared dumbly at the turkey, which now struggled beneath Dad’s hand. The neck was a mess of torn skin and blood, but no fatal damage had been done. Mercifully, the sock hid the creature’s face. I looked up at Chris now. He shrugged. Dad was inspecting the hatchet.
“Dull,” he declared. I looked at it, and sure enough, the blade looked as if it had been beaten against a rock. It would need to be sharpened, and that meant bringing it in to someone. But Dad was lining up the hatchet for another shot.
“Shouldn’t we wait and get the blade sharpened?” I asked. But I looked at the bird’s feet scratching at the ground as if it hoped to run away, and knew we couldn’t. I had the sickening feeling that she knew another blow was coming.
“Sometimes you need to use a dull blade,” Dad responded. He swung the hatchet with more force than before, and this time, the head came off quick and clean. It fell out of the sock and sat in the grass, the beak working up and down, the eyes half open.
Dad nodded approvingly. “Sometimes you don’t get any other choice.” He put the hatchet down with a barely audible sigh and looked at me with a closed half smile. “But the rest of the poor buzzards don’t need to go through that.”
So Turkey Day would wait until tomorrow. Dad told me to wash the hatchet so he could bring it in to be sharpened. Derek and Chris were left to clean the day’s lone kill. I saw them start to fight over who would pluck and who would gut the bird, but I walked away before they resolved anything. The shed behind the house had a spigot that I used to rinse the blade. As the cold water ran over the hatchet, my thoughts wandered to Vanderbilt and barefoot games of Frisbee outside Cole dorm. After the game, I would return to my room, change from play clothes to study clothes, and hit the library. I was a chemistry major pulling off a 4.0 gpa, so there was only so much time for games. I nodded approvingly, then turned off the spigot. I walked to the truck, leaving a bloodstained pool of water that would soon disappear into the thirsty soil.
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