“With a noise machine that covers every sound but the telephone.”
“Okay, but what about B.C.?” he whispered into her left ear.
Abby rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you!”
B.C. was their private shorthand for birth control. It had always felt sexy to talk of doing what they weren’t allowing themselves to do. It had made them feel mature, superior, horny. Three girls they knew of had gotten pregnant in the last few semesters at Small Plains High School. Abby and Mitch knew they couldn’t let that happen. They had to face parents who would kill them, or be horribly disappointed in them, if it happened to them.
“Don’t you have one, like, in your wallet?” Abby whispered back to him.
“Me?” Mitch looked offended. “Do you think I carry them around?”
“I thought all guys did. Rex has one in his wallet.”
“Oh, yeah? How do you know that?”
“I saw it one time when he left his wallet someplace.”
“Well, you’ve been through my wallet enough times. You know what’s in there.”
“I just thought, maybe you had one-”
“Well, I don’t,” he said, and smiled at her. “I never wanted anybody to think that you-”
She kissed him. “Thanks.”
They fooled around for a while, and then she said, “My dad has some. Downstairs. On a shelf in his office.”
Her father was a physician, a general practitioner who practiced out of an office attached to the rear of their house.
Mitch pulled away again. “How do you know that?”
“How do you think I know? Don’t you ever go through your dad’s stuff?”
Mitch grinned. “Which shelf?”
“In the supply closet off the examining room. Fifth shelf up from the bottom on the left as you go in. They’re in a box labeled-”
“Don’t tell me. Trojan?”
She giggled. “Yeah. Super lubricated, supreme pleasure, maximum protection.” But then Abby frowned in concern. “Is that bad? To have to use one? Do you mind?”
Mitch blushed. “I have no idea if that’s bad. It all sounds good to me.”
“Me, too.”
“Abby-”
“Mitch! Yes, yes, yes. Now, now, now. You, you, you. And me.”
“I love you,” he said. “I think I’m in shock, but I love you.”
They heard a toilet flush down the hall in her parents’ room.
They froze again.
“I’d better wait,” Mitch whispered, while Abby groaned with frustration.
“Let’s make sure they’re asleep before I go get it,” he said. “I’ll call Rex and have him cover for me in case my folks notice I’m not home.”
“I can’t stand waiting any longer!” she said.
“I’ll take your mind off of it.”
They started kissing again, but this time it had a nervous edge of anticipation that it had never had before.
Chapter Three
When Rex got yelled awake by his older brother, he shot out of bed feeling surprised and stupid. He had fallen asleep in his bed while he was doing his homework. Damn, he thought as he staggered to his feet, couldn’t anybody let a guy get any sleep?
“What?” he called out, into the hallway. “What time is it?”
His brother Patrick yelled back, “Time to get your lazy ass out of bed and into the truck!”
“Why?”
“Look out your window, dumbshit!”
“Patrick!” their mother called reprovingly, and then coughed.
Rex turned toward his window and instantly understood the summons from his older brother. Oh, shit. The night was bright with snow. Lots of it. Flying, blowing, window-pinging, sleeting, blizzard snow. His dad was going to be furious. If the old man could arrest God for dumping this storm on them, he probably would. And then he’d arrest their neighbor to the north and string him up from the nearest barn door. Nine months earlier, that rancher had let one of his bulls get through the fence that separated his fields from where the Shellenbergers were grazing their heifers, the young females who hadn’t given birth yet. The inevitable result was that instead of calving in March, when they were supposed to, they were due now, and at the worst possible time. A few calves had already arrived, but there were bound to be at least one or two tonight. If they didn’t get to them in time, the calves, all wet from their mother’s wombs, would freeze to death in minutes, and it wouldn’t do the heifers any good, either.
“Mom? You coming with us?” he called out.
“No,” his mother called back, sounding hoarse and really tired. “I’ve already half-got pneumonia.” Between coughs, she managed to tell him, “Don’t go out there without a coat, Rex.” She knew him well, he thought, knew he’d run out of the house in nothing more than his boots, jeans, and sweater if nobody made him dress any warmer.
The ranch house was icy at that hour. His mom always turned the thermostat way down when she went to bed at night. Over the hours after that, the two-story white house got progressively cold enough to freeze your butt if you made the mistake of having a nightmare that woke you up and reminded you that you needed to piss.
Knowing his mother would get out of bed to make sure he was adequately dressed, Rex whipped off his jeans, pulled on long underwear, put his jeans back on, then put on an extra pair of socks. Sure enough, when he emerged from his bedroom, there she was, standing in the doorway of the bedroom she shared with his dad. She was short and plump, her men were all tall and lean. Rex pointed to his feet. “Extra socks, Mom.” He pointed to his legs. “Long johns.” He pointed downstairs. “Coat. Gloves. Hat.”
“Good boy.” She resumed coughing, and turned back toward bed.
With one hand on the railing and one on the wall, he vaulted down the stairs three at a time, grabbed the stuff he’d told his mom he would, and then raced outside. His father and brother were already waiting for him in his dad’s truck, which was idling at the front of the house. Rex saw that Patrick was in the backseat, so he climbed in front. “I thought we were only supposed to get a couple of inches,” he observed to his dad.
“Goddamn weatherman,” his father muttered. “There oughta be a law.”
In the dashboard lights, his dad’s complexion, always red from high blood pressure and a choleric nature, looked dark and purplish, from the heat of anger and the cold of the weather. Nathan Shellenberger jerked the truck into first gear so furiously that the vehicle’s rear end whipped from left to right and back again on the icy driveway.
“Whoa, Dad,” Rex said, putting a hand on the dash to keep from banging into things.
In the backseat, Patrick laughed as he got jerked around by the centrifugal force.
They were still fishtailing as their headlights picked out the highway. It was going to be a slick, hazardous trip to their first gate. If his mother had been with them, Rex thought, she would have said, “Let’s don’t end up in a ditch, all right, Nathan?” But she wasn’t there, so his dad continued driving too angrily and too fast for safety.
They knew which pastures to check, but the pastures were large, with many draws and hard-to-reach spots where cows wandered off to give birth to their calves. Fairly easily, they located one “girl” down in a draw where she was on her front knees, bellowing in pain and difficulty. Under their father’s direction, the brothers dragged a metal Y-fork, winch, and chains from the back of the truck and used them, working together as a practiced team, to pull the bull calf from his mother. Within moments, after delivering the placenta, the mom was back on her feet, turning toward her new calf, nuzzling him, trying to get him on his feet, too. But the baby was soaked and shivering so much it couldn’t stand. Patrick scooped it up in his arms and carried it into the truck with him-blood, excrement, and all. Rex and his dad led the new mother up a ramp into a narrow stall in the bed of the truck, where they shut her in. When the three of them climbed back into the cab, with the baby in Patrick’s arms, and his dad turned up the heater, Rex smelled the rich, animal, comforting stink of new life all over them.