Coop Page 4
Amy doesn’t know it, but we’ve already procured the pig. My sister-in-law Barbara is part of a multistate rodent rescue ring. I am not kidding, and if you are tempted to snicker or make jokes about the Underground Rodent Railroad, I should add that Barbara spends six months of the year driving a Mack truck and is licensed to argue cases before the United States Tax Court—the woman has a lot of ways to hurt you. I for one applaud her efforts on behalf of the order Rodentia, and intend to send a check to the appropriate foundation.
The animal in question came from Indianapolis. Aunt Barbara drove down there and picked it up herself. Again, I am not joking, and may I remind you, the IRS is not lumbered with the standard statutes of limitations. The guinea pig is currently residing with Barbara and my brother John until we can arrange the handoff. They live in a small log cabin up north, sharing quarters with a small herd of gerbils and hamsters, a large fish named Oscar, and our guinea pig, to be named later.
We are on our way to see the midwife. This will be my first visit. I missed the first one because I was on the road. My mother—who once worked as an obstetrics nurse—went in my place. We are driving north to a small town where the clinic is situated. There has been little snow. The countryside is mostly brown, and my mood is perfectly suited. I am quiet and grumbly. Things always look fine on the calendar, but then when the time comes, invariably I have six other things I’d rather do. Considering the circumstances, this renders my grumpiness pure selfishness. I have no excuse, only self-awareness.
The midwife rents space from a chiropractic center. We enter through a back door facing a parking lot and pass down a hallway past plastic skeletons and posters of the nervous system before we reach the small room where the midwife is set up. “Welcome!” she says. “I’m Leah.” She greets me with a smile and a handshake, and hugs Anneliese. Leah looks athletic and earthy, and she smiles beautifully at Anneliese, oohing and remarking over her belly. When she shakes my hand her grip is strong and we both smile politely, but I see reservation in her eyes, and I know she sees the same in mine, because there are reservations in my heart. She knows from Anneliese that I am a skeptic. I am open to the idea of home birth because I love my wife and this is what she wants, but I am also bucky about the idea of delivering babies old-style if it is simply in service to some whole-grain earth mother sensibility picked up during a women’s studies course in Colorado. As a former fundamentalist gone agnostic, I tend to dig in my heels at the first whiff of evangelism, whether it be deployed in the service of salvation, Girl Power, or the curative wonders of organic yams. There is also the frank issue of testosterone—four years in nursing school and three Indigo Girls albums notwithstanding, I am not purged of all chauvinism and not interested in achieving complete anemia. In short, a man likes to drive. Even when he’s lost.
Leah asks if we would like tea. Amy chooses chamomile, and Anneliese chooses a prenatal brew combining herbs possibly capable of aligning the baby with the axis of the earth. I choose green tea, figuring its caffeine is the closest I can come to recalcitrance in this setting. Amy goes for a box of toys in the corner, and Anneliese and I sit beside each other on a small couch. On the low table before us I see a fanned set of pamphlets advertising a woman coming to town to speak on Bible prophecy, and right about then Leah produces a form and says she needs to update Anneliese’s health “herstory.” I can feel the voltage of my force-field cocoon ramping up.
While the kettle heats, Leah pulls her charts and papers and begins interviewing Anneliese. I am struck by how animated my wife has become. She pulls a list of written questions from her purse, and as she and Leah run through them one by one, I feel a twinge of something like jealousy wrapped in unease. She is gushing about the baby, about her body, about how the days and nights have been going. Even when she describes her problems with insomnia and lack of appetite, she seems palpably grateful for Leah’s attention. It’s bracing to see her come to life this way, to sit outside the circle of sisterhood and understand how this baby is inhabiting my wife beyond the womb. On the floor, Amy is playing with a reversible pregnancy doll. Flip the dress one way, the doll has a belly bump; flip it the other way, you have a mother holding a baby.
After checking and charting Anneliese’s vital signs and testing her blood for iron (she is holding steady from the last visit but still a little low—this is one of the standards that must be met to have a home birth), Leah turns to me and asks if I have any concerns. I tell her I am in, but want assurance that if there is trouble, we pack up and head for the big hospital with the shiny lights. “Of course,” says Leah, with no trace of defensiveness. “It is my responsibility to be honest with you if we are in a situation beyond my abilities.” By the time she finishes reciting the list of risk factors that trigger “transfer of care,” I am more settled.
We move to the examination booth. As Leah palpates Anneliese, Amy and I study a large wall poster showing fetuses at actual size along various stages of development. We find the six-month image—clearly recognizable as a human, but not much bigger than a Cornish hen. When we turn to look at Anneliese’s belly and extrapolate, Leah is leaning over her wearing a stethoscope that projects from her forehead on a spring-loaded frame reminiscent of a phrenological measuring device. Using her forehead to press the bell against the skin just southwest of Anneliese’s belly button, Leah listens, repositions the bell, and then listens again. I feel the frisson of waiting for confirmation. Then Leah smiles and, with her head still down, turns her eyes up to Anneliese. “Do you want to listen?” Anneliese nods, and Leah passes her the earpieces, and when the rhythm reaches Anneliese’s ears, her smile spreads and inhabits her eyes. Amy listens also, and then it is my turn. Well, hello there, I think as soon as I hear it, tapping along over twice a second, and behind it the backbeat of Mom, bassier and running solid at half the speed. Then Leah takes my hands and guides me around the dome of Anneliese’s belly, pressing my fingertips down as we traverse from spot to spot. “There’s the head…that’s the butt…the feet are here.” As I do when feeling for something in the dark, I close my eyes for focus. “The head, the feet, and the butt,” says Leah. “The constellation of baby.”
Back around the little table we drink our tea and discuss everything from birthing tubs to doulas. Leah mentions that if Anneliese tests positive for group B strep, she will need an IV antibiotic, and since it can only be given by a licensed registered nurse, she would have to go to the hospital. “Well, I’ve got a nursing license,” I say. “I can give it.” “Perfect!” says Leah. In truth, my bravado is exceeding my confidence. Just what your wife wants during labor—you poking away at her veins trying to start your first IV in nearly twenty years.
The last thing is to set up the next appointment. When I say I can’t commit to a date without consulting the calendar on my computer at home, Leah cuts a quick look at me and then at Anneliese. As we stand to say our good-byes, I look at the collage of photos on the wall—all babies Leah has delivered—but instead of the babies I am noticing all the beaming, gently hovering husbands and thinking I do not measure up.
But I leave the visit feeling better than when we came in the door. Above all it was good to see Anneliese so transformed. And I was impressed with the way Leah did her professional duties but allowed the visit to follow its natural course. She gave Anneliese all the time she required. There was no push to wrap things up, and not until we stepped into the hall and saw another family gathered did we realize there was an appointment following. During the drive home I do declare that if the term herstory is used again, I will lodge a polite but firm objection. “False etymology is no way to run a revolution,” I say in the sort of declarative tones that precipitated the revolution in the first place. But what really keeps circling my head was the phrase Leah used to describe the landmarks of our child: the constellation of baby. What a gorgeous image—the unborn infant afloat in the universe of mother, identifiable but unknowable.
On a cold night getting colder, we are off t
o fetch the guinea pig. Amy knows we are going to visit Aunt Barbara and Uncle John, but we haven’t told her why. She has inklings, however, and by the time we turn the final corner she has gone all wiggly. When we climb out of the van, she is in full pogo mode. In the house, Barbara brings forth the guinea, and Amy pulls it to her chest. “Oh!” she says, inclining her cheek to his. The guinea pig nestles in. He has the coloring of a Guernsey cow, fawn and white.
Now Barbara is loading John and me down with an astounding array of accoutrements—a ventilated travel box, Carrot Crunchies, a bag of timothy hay, liquid vitamin C, claw clippers, an exercise sphere, assorted rattle toys, two dishes, a gravity-drip waterer, a cardboard crawl tube, and a fully stocked cage sufficient to house a brace of wombats. John and I lug everything out to the van. As we pull out of the driveway, Amy is in her booster seat, clutching the guinea pig to her heart. I look back to see her face beneath the dome light, and with wide eyes she says, “I am trem-buh-ling with joy!”
I turn back to face the road, so as not to dampen her happiness with my watering eyes.
By the time we’re back at home in Fall Creek, it is bitterly below zero. I stoke the stove while Anneliese slices cheese, butters bread, makes a salad, and fries herself a burger. She is hungry all the time now. The three of us sit on the floor before the stove and turn the guinea pig loose. He roams, and we giggle at the sight of his bouncy behind, transported by two woefully undersize legs. Popular mythology holds that if the laws of aerodynamics are applied, bumblebees are calculably incapable of flight; watching his improbable giddyup, it strikes me that guinea pigs are the bumblebees of the rodent set. He toddles along like a wobbly fur-lined sausage, his butt all waddle and humpety-bump. He stays shy of Amy and me but makes regular loops back to Anneliese, putting his forepaws on her legs and begging food. At one point he tips her water glass and sticks his fat head inside, the scalloped surface giving him four red eyes. Amy beams through her missing front teeth. She is wearing her favorite purple footie PJs, and her neck and forehead still bear the fading red marks of the chicken pox.
Even with the fire going, the house feels chilly to me. I’ve been a little brittle lately. I think it’s the move, the sick kid, the baby pending. For years I slid through life with no more on the line than my own hide. Now I have these other lives, and I’m feeling a little onerous, which is three syllables for whiny. I can’t imagine how it was for my parents with everything on their plates. I look at the little girl so happy here, my wife with the baby in her belly, I feel the killing cold outside, and my head tumbles with the usual Big Questions, ranging from “Hello, God?” to “What character improvements are available via the adoption of a pet guinea pig?”
Amy wants the pig near this first night, so we allow her to unroll her sleeping bag beside the cage. Up in the bedroom then, I reach for Anneliese and hold my palm flat over the half-globe of the womb. No hiccups tonight. Palpating gently, I try to remember what I learned from the midwife. The constellation of baby. Even though it’s dark, I close my eyes, straining to visualize what my fingertips feel. The head there, maybe? A shoulder here? I keep returning to one particularly prominent protuberance. It juts out, and I can’t place it. I kiss Anneliese on the brow and roll over to sleep.
It seems we are bound to deliver a unicorn.
CHAPTER 2
I am building a glorious chicken coop in my mind. Each day I tweak the design based on an image I printed off the World Wide Web, or a weeded-up tumbledown model I spotted behind a barn while driving, or a photograph I found while paging through a 1928 issue of Crows and Cackles (edited by Prof. T. E. Quisenberry). I have sworn I will not house my chickens in blue tarps and chipboard. I am committed to providing them a sturdy, aesthetically pleasing home with a cute little drop-down gangplank, just like the one in my childhood edition of The Little Red Hen.
I don’t understand architecture to any great depth, but some intangible element of the farm buildings of the early 1900s has always pulled at me. I can’t put my finger on it any more than to say it has something to do with proportion, and they look like they belonged on the place. They weren’t plastic or steel, they didn’t look like oversize Fisher-Price accessories. I dream of a chicken coop that looks like it’s been there a while. I want to view it from my window some hazy morning and imagine I am preparing to harness horses for the day’s plowing. I will then grind a batch of imported free-trade coffee beans, fire up the computer, and update myself on the travails of decadent starlets. So it goes. Imagine the wizened quality of a life blanched of contradiction and double standard. And lest I disparage the Internet, today while noodling around it I wound up at the online home of the North Dakota State University Extension Service, where I discovered a historical archive of poultry housing plans dating back to 1924. It was like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls, without all the spelunking. We’re talking Colony Cage Layer Barns, Broiler Breed Barns, Roll-A-Way Poultry Nests, Sloped Strawlofts, and—with an eye to the possible future—a Turkey Brood & Grow Barn. After three hours of close study and lost man-hours, I am currently mind-planning a gorgeous hybrid based on the Shed Roof Poultry House (particularly the 1933 and 1950 models) with significant modifications drawn from the 1951 Portable Brooder.
Vintage coop plans notwithstanding, history is not on my side. As a wannabe handyman, I am haunted by high hopes, false starts, and even worse finishes. Evidence surrounds me: the engine heater I bought and left beneath the truck seat until the packaging fell away; the bathroom faucet I bought after purchasing my New Auburn house twelve years ago and never installed (it’s still there, under the sink); a perfectly hung screen door (I hired a guy). I can trace the trouble all the way back to when I was five years old. Dad was remodeling the barn, and I decided to help. It was deepest winter, but I bundled up and trekked outside, determined to pitch in. Dad handed me a hammer. First thing I did was lick it. Rather than the sweet electric taste of the shiny steel, I felt a numb, crinkly sensation as the hammerhead froze fast to my tongue. Panicking, I yanked it loose, pulling away a perfect circle of skin. I forsook carpentering and went into the house to read comics and taste the raw spot over and over.
One does not become a farmer simply by taking possession of a milk cow, but it does drag you in that direction. The night Dad tied that Holstein to the Falcon, he tied an anchor to his ankle. From that day forward he would find his way to the barn a minimum of twice a day, every day, morning and night, seven days a week, with no break, year after year after year. Whenever we went to Christmas dinner, or visiting of a Sunday afternoon, Dad kept shooting looks at the clock. Sometime around 4:00 p.m., he’d say, “Weeelll, I s’pose…” Then someone else would push back from the table and say, “Yep, them cow’s ain’t gonna milk themselves,” and we headed home.
Dad went pretty easy on us with the milking. While many of our schoolmates had to milk every morning and night, John and I traded off helping Dad every other evening. The chores began when Dad switched on a vacuum pump plumbed to pipes that ran the length of the barn and created the negative pressure that drew the milk from the cow’s udder into the pail of the milking machine. The pump was vented outside via an exhaust pipe that emitted a noise similar to an extended bout of oily flatulence. If I heard the vacuum pump start before I crossed the yard after supper, I knew I was running late.
Before applying the milker, we washed each cow’s udder with a cloth and warm soapy water. This removed any caked dirt or manure, but it also stimulated her to let her milk down. By the time you returned with the milker, beads of milk were forming at the end of each teat. Our De Laval Milkers were composed of a stainless steel bucket that sat flat on the floor and was capped with a detachable top sprouting several sets of hoses. One set was plugged into the overhead vacuum pipe. The other two hoses—a narrow black “pulse tube” to provide vacuum, and a larger clear tube to carry the milk—were connected to a shiny silver claw from which radiated four hollow rubber tubes called inflations. The inflations were collared by individu
al stainless steel shells that created a potential space wherein the air pressure was alternately lowered and released by means of a revolving mercury switch and a wonderfully named unit called the pulsator. The pressure changes drew the milk from the teats through the inflations. Almost immediately after you opened the vacuum valve and swung the inflations into place, a white trickle appeared in the clear tube, and shortly a steady wash of milk was pulsing into the pail. If the cow was a good long milker, you had time to go scrape cow pies into the gutter or perform some other small chore before she was ready to have the milker removed. Sometimes you’d hear a suck-whooosh! followed by a muted clatter, and when you got back to the stall the milker had been kicked to the cement and was vacuuming straw chaff while the cow flicked her ears in irritation.
If the cow was a regular kicker, I’d stick right with her, pressing the top of my head into her flank and weaving my left arm in front of her near leg and behind the udder to grip the large tendon just above the knee of the far leg. When the cow raised her near leg to kick, I pressed my head in hard, hung on tight, and raised my left shoulder to keep her from getting a hoof over. Usually after about three or four rounds, she’d give up. But now and then you got a cow heavily into bovine karate, and you’d have to take additional measures. Some farmers used a piece of binder twine to tie the cow’s tail to a nail driven into a beam overhead. Others had someone else hold the cow’s tail in a twist until she milked out. Some farmers used hobbles. Others designed medieval anti-kicking devices. We once had a cow who treated every milking as an audition for the Rockettes. We tried everything I mentioned above plus a few other tricks. Nothing worked. Night after night she peeled the milker off and stomped it to the straw, occasionally nailing one of us in the thigh, or flicking our ears with her dewclaws. Dad must have been talking about her at the feed mill, because some farmer lent him a homemade anti-kicking tool, which was basically a giant horseshoe-shaped clamp that fit around what you might imagine as the cow’s waist. The clamp was held in place by means of a screwjack apparatus.