Dig

by Todd Stansfield

We dug out as many cattle as we could find: two, in total, out of the eighteen heads. It had been me and my father, Billings and Wilmer, the two helping hands, who left to save them. There was snow and then sun; the blizzard left the ground smooth, endless and white. My father drove ahead in a tractor fitted with a plow, the rest of us trailing in the Bronco. Sometimes he could tell a steer had been buried by the bump in the surface; most of the time we just had to start digging.

My father woke me up early that morning. He had coached us the night before at the kitchen table, Billings and Wilmer and me, with my mother in the other room listening.

"As soon as it clears up," he said.

Billings nodded. Wilmer nodded too. Later, I could hear my parents arguing, my mother saying, "Do we need him?"

"Yes, yes, we need everyone."

We saw our first steer a hundred yards from the house. My father waved his straw hat to signal from the tractor. He pointed west, toward County Road MM, buried except for the green peak of the road marker. Wilmer parked and Billings spilled the shovels on the ground. Only my father, standing high in his tractor, could see what we were looking for. The rest of us were blind over the banks on either side of his path.

"Remember your shoes," said Wilmer. I had started out of the Bronco when I forgot them. My father wore my grandfather's snowshoes. Wilmer and Billings made their own. They used garbage pails and plywood, anything that could distribute weight. My father made my pair out of blue plastic from our backyard pool--rectangles he'd sawed out.

I grabbed my shoes and followed Wilmer around back where Billings stood facing toward County Road MM. The banks were seven feet tall, and I remember looking up at them as we got our shovels, and stood ready to climb the banks. The sun was not high enough to break over the edges. I held my shovel, thinking impossible: eighteen head, my father had told me, and we must save half, at least. He didn't say any more, any less; he left me with no reason for that particular number.

There was an awful smell when we reached the mound where the first steer was buried. It smelled of shit, and Wilmer, who was used the smell of manure like we all were, made a face. My father drove his shovel into the mound--which moved, slowly at first, but more and more as the shovel cut deeper and deeper. He stopped when we saw the brown back peeking, wedged at all sides from snow.

"Jesus" said my father. "Bode, come around with that shovel." He pointed to the side of the steer across from him. "Wilmer, watch his feet."

I moved to where my father had pointed. He dropped his shovel and started digging with his hands. His gloves were tan, the leather kind, not the kind for snow.

I used my shovel, digging slowly. I moved the slowest, afraid I might drive the shovel in the steer's back. My father looked up and with his eyes on me, never leaving me, he said, "Hurry up, guys. Hurry up."

Wilmer and Billings bent over to help, their knees sinking, Billings telling Wilmer "careful, careful" as if the ground was quicksand and might swallow him whole.

When my father uncovered the head, his face changed. He was bent over, leaning to the side, facing me. His lip was drawn over his teeth.

"What is it?" said Billings. He sat next to Wilmer.

"Snow's plugging," my father yelled. "God damnit."

The brown head moved quicker and quicker. I had thought the steer's nose must have plugged during the dig, with my father moving his hands that way, backward and violently. The steer was still alive, but panicked, whipping its head back and then falling forward. My father ripped off one glove, and brought his hand to the snout. He moved with the head of the steer-- up, down, up, down. First there was a noise from my father, then a moan from the animal. My father sat up, the snow under him collapsing a bit. He put on his gloves and started digging again; all of us digging.

We dug out another path for the steer, toward the Bronco. It had been close to my father's original path, but with the three of us, it took close to an hour before we cut through the bank. The steer could hardly walk, when we got it free, but Wilmer and Billings led it to Quonset where my mother had buckets of warm water ready, and towels.

"We all have to get faster or we're only going to save a few," my father said, the two of us standing alone by the tractor. He took my shoulder in his hand, his gloves dark and soaked. "Can you do that?"

When Billings and Wilmer returned, the three of us rode in the Bronco with our shovels standing between our legs, leaning against our stomachs. My father sat in the tractor, waving his straw hat when he saw something. We emerged over the banks with our shovels, but my father was wrong most of the time.

It was hours after we saved the first before we got to the second. By then the sun had been melting the snow for hours, and over the banks, the ground collapsed easier. I remember climbing the bank to get the second, my father telling Billings he was worried. "The snow's getting heavier," he said.

My father walked ahead, Wilmer behind him, Billings walking behind me in case I fell in. We moved slowly, our heads down, the sun beating our necks. It should have seemed peaceful atop the snow; to be out of the shadows of the banks, to see parts of the sky blue and clear again. Peaceful because the last blizzard of the season had come and gone. But my father worried us all in his movements: his snowshoes trudging in small, broken steps; his shoulders squeezed and whole body tense and stiff. I should have seen this too, in Wilmer and Billings, who had as much to lose.

When we reached the second steer, my father thought it was dead. By then he had grown quieter, and no longer mentioned time. His eyes were drawn, and I remember watching him bend over the mound, not caring when he fell over the steer because he had sunk so far in. His gloves were off and I watched his hands, bony and red, shaking and cupping the snow off the steer's head and snout. He cupped more and then, like a dog, started flicking snow behind him. The snow, catching in my snowshoes, was red.

"Help," said Billings. He nudged me before dropping on his knees, sinking. They moved fast, and it seemed I never caught up.

I started digging. My legs were buried. I stood at the rear of the animal. My father had dug out the head. It moved a bit while he was still on the back of the steer. Then he crawled. More snow must have plugged its nose because my father reached for the snout.

The sun had set when the second steer was in the Quonset. It was dark then, one of those moonless nights when there's nothing to see but stars.

I remember the feeling riding in the Bronco, the headlights falling over the thick tread of the tires, and my father, hardly visible, sitting atop and waving his straw hat. My legs were dead, my hands and wrists swollen, and there was something sick in my stomach. Billings and Wilmer didn't talk; only the sound of the tractor churning forward.

When it was all over, my mother was in the kitchen, my father over the sink. Billings and Wilmer were in the bathroom, soaking their feet in the long porcelain tub my mother had filled with warm water. My father rubbed his hands together under the faucet, turning one over the other, again and again, until my mother scooted her chair out from the table. She stood up. "What does it mean then?"

The light was dim in the kitchen, but I could see the dish towel had turned red when my father was done drying. "It means--" he said, and looked at me. It was a blank look, his face losing all tightness. He didn't finish or continue, just turned and stared out the window over the sink. The window must have been black, a mirror with the light behind him. I think now my father was looking at himself then.

Billings and Wilmer came down the hall from the bathroom. I sat near my mother in the kitchen, and could hear Wilmer talking about how badly his feet itched. Billings was silent when he pulled a chair to the table.

"So what's the plan?" said Wilmer.

"What plan?" my father said. He had grown tired after climbing down from his tractor.

"What do we do?"

He shifted his weight in the kitchen as if there was an answer. Wilmer and Billings waited for it; but I think my mother was done waiting and already knew.

No one talked until later, when my mother pulled out the cot--the second time--for Billings, and remade my bed for Wilmer. Even then, it was small talk: my mother saying, "Goodnight," or "Sleep well," or "Rest your feet." Her voice echoed down the hall. In the kitchen, my mother returned, drumming her fingers on the table. My father flipped on the faucet again (hands turning over and over). At the center of the table, there was a cold plate of bread that no one touched. I wanted it. I hadn't eaten since that morning, and the pain in my stomach worsened. But I didn't touch the plate; I felt I couldn't, since no one else would.

My father dried his hands with the bloody dishtowel, and then hunched forward, leaning with his arms spread wide, looking at the window. Long after my mother left for bed, while I kept my eyes open, my father was still there, still at the sink, still looking.

Todd Stansfield is an MFA candidate at the City College of New York. He is the Assistant Editor of Fiction. His work has appeared in The Metrosphere and is forthcoming in Psychoanalytic Perspectives. He is currently at work on a collection of short stories entitled The Good Grow Tall