We fucked meat plants into the soil on Sunday. By Thursday they were heavy with sirloin, shank, and liver. If Lulu Bell hadn't broke a hoof on a diamond the size of a Red Russet, we'd have had another square kilo of grade USA Choice. Goddamn last month's root crop! Pa hates only locusts more than harvest tailings.
Lulu Bell didn't want my sympathy nor my frustration. She wanted her carrot. Her head contended with her tether to the pen while I worked on her. I caved in and gave two carrots. With them chomped, I checked her fever. Pa'd done an awful job bandaging her. Hoof smelled like it should've been washed and redressed. She needed to be watered. I dreamed of the days of the Great Plains aquifer. Pa said in his childhood, they hardly had to drill a hundred meters down to tap that pure source of million year old rain.
I clunked my wooden shoes two clicks away from our soddie barn and home. Hiking to Canal Corp's branch office, wore my callused feet like iron cat tongues. There, I groveled, licked toes and sucked sand. The irrigation manager wanted my cunt, but he settled for that diamond still dotted with mule blood. Eventually, he called into a speaking tube. Someone, somewhere pressed a button guarded deep within adobe walls. If I raced back, I might catch the water-allotment before Pa could imagine himself taking a bath. He'd wasted last week's ration on a hand-made, canvas slip-n-slide. My feet were bleeding by the time I returned to water Lulu Bell.
"Pa!" I kicked off my dutches. "Put down the ax. Lulu Bell just needs some water. She'll recover in a week and some days."
"Aw, I weren't gonna kill it, just hack off 'er forelock and replace it with a wheel." Pa reconsidered his grip on his tool. "Dad-burn mule! Had to go lame right before the turns to fallow."
"We'll make our plowshares turn those furrows, somehow. Maybe rent a tortoise for a week. Me 'n you still got blood harvest to pack and freeze." I punched our DoA-code into the hand pump and drew a pail of water. Pa drooled.
"There'll be enough for a bath later, if you don't waste it washing your hands before. Go start dinner."
"Sure you don't want mule hocks?" He licked his lips. "Come on, give papa a sip before that crippled beast touches it."
I held the pail up to my chest. He slurped and sucked and nearly drank a third. I followed with my own thirst and then topped up the pail. I kicked Pa out of the barn.
"Sorry, Lulu Belle. Don't listen to that babbling codger." I undressed and bathed her wound. I massaged her forelock. Black blood oozed out.
My breath clogged behind my breasts. I choked. Even the ax wouldn't have been a mercy. The tight air in my lungs squealed out long and soft. My nose snuffled and my eyes submerged. I had to look away. My hands began wiping my cheeks. I ran balling to the sod house. I ran until our straw tick mattress smothered me.
Pa whispered in the kitchen. "Fever ain't gonna go down. Saw it in her eyes. Saw it on her tongue. Saw it in her shit." He abandoned the hearth kettle and plunked down at the table.
The next day we called the vet. We didn't have the right kind of money for animal antibiotics. I paid what I could. Lulu Belle didn't suffer.
A shiny black stationwagon stopped by soon after. Mule skinner said he shouldn't pay as much as he did, but it was enough to rent that tortoise. Stupid creatures, huge, slow, tough.
- - - - - - - - - -
We were turning expired meat plants back under the soil, when a dusty, well-dressed man walked up to me. A great leather suitcase hung from his hand. "Ma-am," he tipped his hat. "Let me interest you in a bargain priced line of fine Europa bath salts."
Pa laughed.
