I had been there two months, and I had enough. I pounded the wrought iron screen door with my fist—supposed to be a knock, but I was too fired up.
If you haven’t actually actually worked in the silage pit, you can’t appreciate the smell of fermented corn. I don’t know how the big calves that were being fatted up in the pens ate it, but as long as it wasn’t too rotten smelling, they were happy to see the truck roll up to the feed bunks with it.
Like most bad smells, it stings your nose, stays with you after you’ve left the place. But worse is that when you’ve worked in it, it’s on you.
Your boots, your jeans, your hands—or gloves if you were smart.
The silage pit ain’t a place, it’s a sentence.
That’s why Mr Graham built it 2 miles down the road, to the East. The wind almost never blows from the East, so the smell wouldn’t make it to Headquarters, or Mrs Graham’s nose.
I managed to avoid it as a life sentence, but Ray Lowdermilk wasn’t so lucky.
Come to think of it, none of us were lucky, since we all had to work with Ray. Lucky for me, that wasn’t often.
Mrs. Graham cooked lunch for us—those of us without wives—every weekday, and served it in a big room off the back of the main house. We were off Saturday at noon and all of Sunday, and we quit every day at six, plenty of time to fix our own suppers. Occasionally, one of the wives would have to go to town, and Mrs Graham would set an extra place for her husband in the lunch room. When we knew it would be Ray sitting there, so on those days we ate fast and got out.
Unluckiest of all was Mrs. Lowdermilk.
I couldn’t understand it when the other cowboys told me—but I still believed it, the smell was all the proof I needed.
“Ray takes one bath a week—Saturday night. That’s it.”
“You just volunteer to work with him Monday and hope Mr Graham assigns you elsewhere the rest of the week.”
How does Mrs Lowdermilk—sweet, old, happy Mrs Lowdermilk—stand it?
“I dunno. Some people just can’t smell it I reckon.”
Just a few weeks ago, we found a cow that had hidden on the back side of the place for months, in the breaks and cholla. Even in this flat country, there are places you can’t see. Smith says those of us who grew up around here are worse about it. We’ve never had to hunt to gather cattle, we get lazy since we can see all of em from miles off. He brags about how he grew up in the rocks and trees of the hill country, that he could find a mute newborn calf even if you dressed it in army fatigues.
But even he missed this cow.
We only found her by accident, when the north neighbor had a bull out. We rode the fence, looking for it, since Mr Graham was always worried about nosy neighbors coming on his place. We saw her duck into a wash, just behind the playa dam, but something was odd—her shape wasn’t right—something held her tail up. She stopped to wait us out, but we found her and the shape made sense. She had started calving but had trouble, hip lock probably, never got it out.
Calving season had ended a month ago.
We tried roping, but with only two of us, we’d never get her down, not enough to work on her. Plus, the smell was awful. We had to drive, pen and push her into the chute. The decay was so far along we couldn’t believe she hadn’t gone septic. It took four of us, both chains, three knives and a hacksaw.
That smell, and the aftermath of Davis’ sick, is still in my nose.
Still ain’t as bad as Ray on a Saturday.
And now it was Saturday.
I had seen the clouds forming. Smith was gone for a trip downstate to visit family. Davis’s boy—the one he liked—got put in the hospital Thursday with the flu.
We got Sundays off, as long as we had enough work done by Saturday noon to keep everything fed til Monday. We were behind since we were short-handed. So I got assigned to the pit. Riding out to the pit in his rank bobtail truck, every bounce shook dust and stink from the cloth bench seat.
Ray was oblivious. I guess. How could he not know? I hadn’t seen anyone bring it up directly to him, and there wasn’t a whole lot going on behind the eyes, but he had to know. Why else would a feller avoid being clean?
We backed up the bobtail to the enormous pile of fermented corn and maize, where the bucket tractor was parked.
“Mr Graham likes a clean operation,” Ray said to me, for the 3rd time this morning.
Yes sir.
He climbed onto the tractor, and fired it up. Letting it warm up, he motioned over to one of the concrete walls that held the loose matter into a pile. A big metal scoop shovel swayed on the wall, hung by its handle on a piece of rebar, a big half-circle rubbed on the wall from it swinging back and forth. A gritty black-spotted sheen of smile.
I grabbed the shovel, hanging my head at what it took to keep a clean operation clean.
The first several loads were fast enough, Ray drove the John Deere’s front loading bucket into the pile, picked up a load then reversed out, to dump it into the bobtail truck’s dump bed.
But then he started looking at me, smirking. So the next few loads, he “accidentally” spilled some between the pit and the truck, giving me something to do. I shoveled and tried throwing it over the side of the bed, but the wind was up. So I had to either wait for him to slow down or climb the steps up the cab and throw it in from there.
This part of the pile smelled fine, the fermenting was prime. But an hour in, he hit an old pile, and the vinegar smell released a cloud I swear I could see.
His face lit up with a gritty, black-spotted sheen of a smile.
The “drops” got bigger. More shoveling. The spring sun was rising, not hot, but not cool either. The wind was picking up, and any time I was down wind, the clumps and clouds were bigger too.
This continued for an hour. Under my breath I was cursing. Cursing Ray. Cursing corn. Cursing Mr Graham for not buying a bigger tractor, one that would make this all go faster.
By the time I had enough, the truck was full.
I turned to take the shovel back when the pile hit my face. Wet strips of stink suffocated me, sticking to my mouth. By the time my shock wore off, I heard Ray laughing, his raspy cackle as he killed the tractor and began climbing back down.
“I gotcha good there, boy!”
I raised the shovel out of instinct, like a weapon, but he was laughing so hard and I choked on the smell and gagged. I had only enough strength to slam the thing to the ground and stumble off, looking for a hydrant or a hose or anything. I found a water faucet, next to the rusted metal stock tank in the abadoned pens where the hay was stored.
Must’ve been an hour later, I calmed down enough to get into the passenger side of the truck, waking Ray from his nap. This made me mad again, but I knew to keep my mouth shut if I wanted a ride back to HQ.
“Don’t you let him in this house,” I could hear Mrs Graham command her husband from the kitchen as he opened the wrought iron screen door.
“Step out here with me and tell me what’s on your mind, son.”
Mr Graham, I can’t do it. It’s too much. You gotta decide if it’s him or me. That dopey old sumbitch knows what he’s doing, he’s making us all sick and this is not what I signed up for.
“Well, the silage pit, it’s a necessary evil. And he does stink. But if I let him go, he’d have to find somewhere else to live, another job, I couldn’t very well do that to a man and his wife. And son, if he was gone, you’d be the one that had to work the pit.”
The blood turning my face red must’ve left quick—Mr Graham hadn’t showed me a mean look, but his directness was softening when he saw how this reasoning caught me off guard.
“It’s as good as Sunday now, take a day to cool off and let’s talk Monday. The fellers say you’re good with a rope, this is probably a good place for you to work, but if you want to move on, it’s no hard feelings. Sound fine?”
Yessir.
He was right. More than right. My bunk was a good setup for me—private, big, bigger than any I’d been in. And this place was a real operation. He’d hired me for calving season, but then asked me to stay on through calf-working, which was approaching now. Although I saw him almost every day at lunch, I had only talked to him alone those two times. He had always been kind but firm. Direct but not short. The others revered him. If I could hang around, it might be the kind of operation I could find my place. The more I put the reality of it together, the more embarassed I was about it. Ray and his wife had a house on the place. Who knows how long they’d been here. Who was I to ask for a man—sumbitch or not—to lose his job and home?
By Monday, I was glad Smith and Davis had been gone. If they’d found out what I said, how I acted Saturday, I don’t know what they would have said or done to me. I regretted embarassing myself in front of Mr Graham, but the torment of those two doggin on me would’ve sent me packing for sure.
I planned to work as usual Monday, but I wasn’t going to risk another Saturday. At sunrise, I was at Mr Graham’s front door, ready to apologize. I would take my lumps for another month then leave. He paid well but I could find work anywhere now that summer was close.
Mrs Graham answered the door, her apron on. Turned out the old man was gone for the day, something about the bank. So I worked the day. We were still shorthanded, but not enough for me to be around Ray. I got to ride solo all day, checking pastures and water.
Late Monday, I decided to wait until Mr Graham found me to talk about things. I didn’t want to tell him I was quitting, even if it was a ways off. He didn’t come looking Tuesday, so more of the same.
Except for lunch.
When I saw the place setting in Ray’s spot, I tipped my hat to Mrs Graham, closed the door and saddled back up. I could skip. Still had a biscuit from yesterday in my room, anyway.
Wednesday morning. Davis knocked on the bunk room door, waking me up.
“I’m back, we’re on fence today—neighbor’s bull again.”
All right.
He turned around to light a cigarette and walk to his pickup. I let the door close and got dressed.
Back to HQ at lunch, we could hear Smith laughing as we walked toward the lunch room. When we opened the door, Mrs Graham was covering her mouth, hiding her laughter, eyes squinting with a smile.
Smith stood when we entered and raised his hands, “Boys! We’ve been saved by the mercy of God and the wonders of modern medicine!”
“Stop it, Samuel!” Mrs Graham laughed.
“Ma’am?” Davis was as confused as me.
“Good to see you for lunch today,” Mrs. Graham said looking past Davis, right at me. I felt embarassed again, lowered my head, but she was kind about it. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to skip any more meals because of table companions,” her eyes were kind.
“To the dentist!” Smith shouted, lifting his glass of iced tea like a salute. “For the first time in her life, ol’ Mrs Lowdermilk went to the dentist. Now he’s gotta…” he laughed again and choked on a piece of ice.
“Apparently,” Mrs Graham picked up, “the removal of an impacted tooth can relieve olfactory blockages—she can smell again.”
“She threw his clothes in the yard and whooped his ass when she got home and could finally smell him!” Smith howled and Mrs. Graham threw her dish towel in his face.