Ch.50 – Udders

Diane's cow didn't like me.

I'd come back to the farm the next afternoon to check on the garden. The bugs were gone or dying and the plants looked better and Diane was pleased with both and she'd been walking me along the rows pointing out which tomatoes were recovering when she stopped and flexed her wrist and winced.

"Sore?"

"From yesterday. The spraying." She rotated her wrist and the joint popped. "I squeezed that can for two hours and my hand's been aching since."

"Need ice?"

"I need someone to milk Bessie."

The cow was in the barn. The barn was old and wooden and smelled like hay and animals and warm dirt. Light came through gaps in the siding in dusty shafts that moved when the wind pushed the door. Bessie was a brown-and-white Holstein standing in a stall looking at us with the patient boredom of a creature that had been milked every day of its life and had no opinions about anything except whether the bucket was clean. She was bigger than the sprite. Bigger than I expected a cow to be when you were standing next to one in a barn and she was looking at you with eyes the size of plums.

"This is Bessie," Diane said. She patted the cow's flank. Bessie didn't react.

Diane pulled up a wooden stool. Set a metal bucket under the cow. Sat down. She was in the same tank top and shorts from yesterday and her hair was pinned with the clip that was always losing the fight and her boots had mud on them from the garden.

"Watch." She grabbed a teat with her right hand. She was wincing slightly from the wrist but the motion was practiced. She squeezed from the top down, a smooth compression that moved the milk along, and a white stream hit the bucket with a metallic ping. Then again. Then a rhythm. Ping, ping, ping. Her hand working in a steady pulse that filled the barn with the sound of milk hitting metal.

"See?" She looked up at me. "Grip at the top. Squeeze down. Don't pull. The motion is all in the fingers."

"Grip and squeeze."

"Grip and squeeze." She stood up from the stool and held her wrist. "Your turn."

I sat on the stool. It was low and my knees were high and the cow was large and close and warm. Bessie looked at me over her shoulder with one brown eye. I reached for a teat.

"Gentle," Diane said. She was standing behind me with her arms crossed.

I gripped. I squeezed. The teat was warm and rubbery and my grip was apparently too firm because Bessie shifted her weight and her back leg kicked out sideways and the hoof caught the edge of the bucket and the bucket spun across the barn floor and what milk was in it splashed on my knee.

"Gentle!" Diane grabbed the bucket. Set it back. "She'll kick you into next week if you manhandle her like that."

"I didn't manhandle her."

"You death-gripped her udder. That's manhandling." She put the bucket back under the cow. Bessie had settled but she was looking at me now with both eyes and her expression had shifted from bored to judgmental. "Softer. Like you're-"

She stopped.

I looked at her. She was standing next to me with one hand on the cow's flank and her mouth was open and her brain had offered her a comparison that her mouth had rejected at the last second.

"Like I'm what?"

"Like you're squeezing a tube of toothpaste." She said it fast. Her cheeks were pink.

"That's not what you were going to say."

"That is absolutely what I was going to say."

"Your face says otherwise."

"My face says mind your business and milk the cow." She crossed her arms. The pink was darker now and her jaw was set and she wasn't looking at me. "Toothpaste. From the top. Squeeze down. Go."

I turned back to the cow. Adjusted my grip. Softer. Top of the teat, squeeze down with the fingers rolling closed in sequence, not all at once. Like toothpaste. I squeezed and a stream of milk hit the bucket.

Ping.

"Better," Diane said.

I did it again. Ping. And again. The rhythm was finding itself. The motion was in the fingers, she was right about that, and once I stopped trying to grip the whole teat and let the squeeze travel from my index finger to my pinkie in a wave, the milk came steady. Ping, ping, ping. The bucket was filling.

"That's it," she said. Her voice was closer than before. She'd moved. She was standing right behind the stool and the warmth of her was on my back even though she wasn't touching me. "Just like that. Keep the rhythm steady."

Keep the rhythm steady. The double entendre was so thick you could have spread it on toast. Neither of us acknowledged it. The cow didn't care.

My hands worked. The teat was warm in my fingers and the milk came in pulses that matched my grip and the sound in the bucket changed as the level rose, from metallic pings to a softer splash. My forearms were starting to ache from the repetitive squeeze. Different muscles than the gym. The same muscles that ached after Jenny. I didn't think about that. I thought about the cow.

"Your hands are good at this," Diane said.

I looked at the bucket.

"The rhythm," she said. "You picked it up fast."

"I've got a good teacher."

Silence for two beats. The cow chewed. The barn was warm and the hay dust was floating in the light from the open door and I was sitting on a stool milking a cow with my forearms burning and Diane was standing behind me not saying anything and both of us were working very hard to keep this conversation about dairy.

She cleared her throat. "You can, um. Switch to the other side now. The other two."

I reached across and grabbed the teat on the far side. My arm went under the cow's belly and Bessie shifted and my shoulder pressed against the cow's warm flank and I started the same squeeze rhythm on the other side.

"Your grip is better on that side," Diane said. She'd moved again. Closer.

"My left hand is stronger."

"I didn't ask why." A beat. "But it is better. More even. The milk is coming smoother."

"Happy to take notes if you want to critique my form."

"I'm critiquing a cow. Your form is between you and Bessie."

The barn went quiet again except for the splashing. I kept milking. Diane kept standing behind me. The cow chewed. A fly buzzed near the barn door and the light through the slats made stripes on the hay bales.

At one point she moved to the side and I caught her in my peripheral vision and she was watching my hands. Specifically my hands. My fingers wrapped around the teat, the rolling squeeze, the motion repeating. Her lips were parted and there was a strand of hair stuck to her forehead from the barn heat and her arms were folded tight across her chest like she was holding herself in place.

I finished. The bucket was full, or full enough. Warm milk, white and foamy at the top. My forearms were cramped from the grip and my fingers were stiff and the muscles between my thumb and index finger on both hands were burning the way they burned after carrying heavy bags for Tony.

I stood up from the stool. My back popped. I wiped my hands on my jeans and they were wet with milk and the milk was warm on my skin and it ran down to my wrists.

Diane was looking at the bucket. Hard. Like it owed her money.

"Good job," she said. To the bucket.

"Thanks."

She picked up the bucket with both hands. Held it against her chest. The milk sloshed and some of it went over the rim and ran down the side and onto her fingers and she didn't notice or didn't care.

"I'll put this in the cooler," she said. She walked toward the barn door. Her shoulders were stiff and her face was red and she hadn't looked at me once since I'd stood up from the stool. "You should probably wash your hands because you've got- you've got milk on your arms and it'll dry sticky."

I looked at my forearms. They were streaked with milk. White running down to my wrists, catching in the hair on my arms, dripping off my fingers.

She saw me looking at my arms and her face went a shade of red that I hadn't seen outside of Judith Dinkle's range. She turned and walked out of the barn.

I stood in the barn with milk on my arms and the cow looking at me like I was the dumbest human she'd ever met and I was grinning so hard my face hurt.

Outside, Diane was at the faucet washing the bucket. She was scrubbing it with a focus that the bucket did not require.

"Thanks for the help," she said. To the bucket again.

"Anytime."

"Maybe I'll ask you again. When my wrist is better." She paused. "For the milking. The cow milking. Bessie."

"I understood what you meant."

"Good."

She scrubbed the bucket. I washed my arms under the hose. The water was cold and the milk rinsed off in white streams that ran into the grass and the afternoon sun was warm on my wet skin. Diane was three feet away scrubbing a bucket that was already clean. A chicken walked past us and pecked at the ground near the faucet.

I dried my arms on my shirt. The forearm muscles were still twitching from the grip work. "Same time tomorrow?"

"For the garden," she said. "The garden only. Bessie can wait."

"Bessie seemed like she'd appreciate the routine."

Diane looked at me for the first time since the barn. Her grey eyes were bright and her face was still flushed and her mouth was pressed tight like she was holding back words or a laugh or both.

"Go home, Arthur."

I went. I rode my bike down the farm road and the afternoon was warm and my forearms ached and my shirt smelled like hay and milk and I was laughing. Out loud. On my bike. Alone on a farm road in a town where a woman had almost said the thing out loud and then spent fifteen minutes not looking at me because she'd watched me milk a cow and liked it more than she was willing to admit.

The game had this scene. The milking tutorial. It was a minigame with a progress bar and you tapped the mouse button and the bar filled up and at the end Diane said something about your technique and the player-character blushed and it was mildly funny in a sprite-and-text-box kind of way.

Funnier in person. Everything was funnier in person. The game couldn't do the flush on her face or her scrubbing a clean bucket for three minutes or the chicken that walked past like nothing was happening.

I pedaled home still laughing. The milk was dry on my arms by the time I got there.