And Sister Josie spoke. Holding the tiny broken-heeled shoes in her lap and poking a little naked foot from under the madness of the mauve skirts, at last she felt the need to speak, to speak to me: “Edward trying to walk down the road on Phyllis, sir?”
“Of course he is, Josie,” I said softly, “of course he is.”
“Walk down the road for babies?”
“Yes, Josie. That’s what he wants.”
So we ate out of Bertha’s pot, watched Edward jumping up, watched Freddy using his nose for life—“See how he goes at it, Kate,” I said, “no holding him back”—Freddy ramming his head straight out and nuzzling, drawing back his lips, that famished steer, and snuffling and waving marvelous long streamers from his glazed bubbling nose. And in our lazy heap we noticed idly that Alma and Beatrice and Gloria were playing tricks with their tails or trying to mount each other or one of the steers.
“Poor Alma,” I said. “She looks like Pagliacci, don’t you think so, Sonny? But look there, Sonny, when Beatrice tops Gloria and then Gloria tops Beatrice you really have something, don’t you, Sonny? Divine confidence, isn’t that it? Blessed purpose anyway, eh? And who’s to say nothing will come of it?”
They planted their hoofs among our legs — sticky hoofs, outstretched legs — and they lowered their brown eyes on us, and Gloria licked my cheek and Beatrice even lay down next to little Josie, cow’s head next to cowled head, breaths mingling.
“Now, what about this poor little Sweet Phyllis, Skipper? You going to make her wait all day?”
“In good time, Sonny,” I murmured. “She’ll wait, she’ll keep, don’t worry.”
The blackbird danced, the cows switched flies or picked off tom little leaves with their big teeth or tried to get everything started up again, the black spring continued to steep the roots of the tree and keep Oscar cool. We dozed. And Sonny sighed for Bertha, put his long skinny panther paw on Kate. “Hugging is all right, Kate,” I thought to say, “but nothing more, Kate, do you understand? You mustn’t hurt the baby.” Then I pulled little Sister Josie’s swaddled head down to rest on my broad steaming mahogany chest, gave her Uncle Billy’s crucifix to hold.
“No lady of the cloth ever had it this good, Josie,” I whispered — shoe-button eyes unmoving, mouth big with gold — and in my half-sleep I heard the animals and through a warm speckled film saw Kate kneeling and rinsing out Sonny’s drawers in the spring, then standing in shadow and turning, reaching, as I seemed to see the very shape of the earth-bound child, and hanging Sonny’s white drawers on a dead limb to dry. Shades beneath the calabash tree, soft sounds, leaf-eating dreams, grove of perpetuation. Silence. The tree was suddenly still, perfectly still, down to a bird. Love at last.
But we awoke together, and like Josie, Catalina Kate must have felt the need to speak, must have thought that it was her turn to speak to me, because she was leaning over Sonny and looking down at me, and I could see the shoulder, arm, small face, naked hair, and I heard what she was saying: “God snapping him fingers,” she said, and that sudden moment of waking was just what she said, “God snapping him fingers,” though it was probably Edward breaking a twig or one of the birds bouncing a bright seed off the smooth green back of a resounding calabash.
And on my elbow, suddenly, and wide-awake in my old time out of time: “Yes, Kate,” I said. “Snapping for you!” She giggled. And had the hours passed? Days, years? I put down the thought because I was wide-awake and the sharp harmony was like a spear in the ribs.
“Now, Sonny,” I said, and already I was crouching at the lip of the spring, “let’s take care of Phyllis. What do you say?”
Black spring, black ferns, last remnant of ice the size of a dime, bright little glass bottle upright, gleaming, cool. The genie had wreaked havoc on Oscar, I thought, and I picked up the bottle — the bull in the bottle — and weighed its fragile cool weight in my palm.
“Come, now, Sonny,” I said briskly, “let’s be done with her. Where’s the tube?”
He whipped it out of the satchel then, that resilient tube, long amorous pipette, and I snapped the neck of the bottle, stuck an end in the bottle and caught the other end between my teeth and quickly sucked the few pure drops of Oscar into the pipette and dropped the empty bottle down the spring and popped my finger over the end of the tube to keep Oscar where I wanted him.
“Battle stations, everyone,” I said softly, but they were already moving, dancing, and the somehow suspicious cows were already composing themselves into a single group-attitude of affection, and the arms were raised, curved, quick and languid at the same time. Apparently some brief intelligence was stirred in Alma, Freddy, Edward, Beatrice, Gloria, because suddenly they had sense enough to keep out of our way, and drew back and hung their heads and watched us with big round glowing sylvan eyes.
Late afternoon under the calabash tree. Closing in on Phyllis. Speckled shadows. Trembling, smiling, soothing. A cow and her sisters. And it was a simple job for me, and nothing for her, merely a long hair rolled up lengthwise and lost in a hot muscular blanket of questing tenderness, but nonetheless we smiled, closed in carefully and in our own sweet timeless time, expectant, bemused, considerate, with fingers and arms and in soft dalliance transplanting the bull and stopping the tide of the heifer.
Late afternoon and only faint sounds of breathing, brief shifting activity in the shadows, and Sonny was embracing the smooth alerted head while Catalina Kate and Josie were posted on her starboard side, were rubbing and soothing and curving against her starboard side and Bertha, Big Bertha, was tending the port. And I was opposite from Sonny and knew just what to do, just how to do it — reaching gently into the blind looking glass with my eye on the blackbird on Sonny’s cap — and at the very moment that the loaded pipette might have disappeared inside, might have slipped from sight forever, I leaned forward quickly and gave a little puff into the tube — it broke the spell, in a breath lodged Oscar firmly in the center of the windless unsuspecting cave that would grow to his presence like a new world and void him, one day, onto the underground waters of the mysterious grove — and pulled back quickly, slapped her rump, tossed the flexible spent pipette in the direction of the satchel and grinned as the whole tree burst into the melodious racket of the dense tribe of blackbirds cheering for our accomplished cow.
And wasn’t she an accomplished cow? And wasn’t it, this moment of conception, this instant of the long voyage, a time for bird song and smiling and applause? So she gave a sprightly kick then — one pretty kick from Sweet Phyllis but too late, much too late, because I had seen that pretty kick coming even before I took Oscar’s little bottle off the ice and was standing back well out of her way and smiling when she let fly so prettily in the face of her fate — and then, and only two years old, she gathered herself in sulky modesty and pushed through the screen of leaves and without much hurry but with clear purpose trotted off alone across the empty field. I waved, I watched her diminishing and rising and falling brown body until it turned into the heavy bush and was gone.
“Well, too bad, Phyllis,” I said to myself, “you won’t quite catch up with Kate,” and I smiled and shook my head.
And then Sonny was pulling on his sun-bleached under-drawers and Bertha was hoisting up her pot and Josie was putting on her shoes and Kate was plaiting her long dark hair again and trying to arouse my heart, I thought, with sight of the child. Any time now, I knew, and the sun would die.