Let Dead Cows Lie

The sun stings my eyes, so I squint down at the ground. At the little clouds of dust kicked up by Emily’s holey sneakers.

“Pick up your feet,” I say. “You’re gonna choke me back here.”

“Shut up,” she says. But she takes the next step more carefully.

Gravel crunches under our feet. Fields stretch out on either side of us, green and brown and smelling of broiling earth and dung. In the distance a stand of cottonwood trees rises up. Slim saplings in uniform rows waiting to be harvested, turned into pulp and paper and cardboard boxes at the mill upriver in Longview, Washington.

Beneath her thin gray t-shirt Emily’s shoulders slump. Her hair falls limp down her back, the same dull brown our mother’s was. Emily reaches up, pulls her hair into a high ponytail with a rubber band. The bruises from her run-in with Bailey this morning are already blooming on her neck and shoulders, purple blossoms hugging her pale skin like ivy.

I try my best to protect Emily, but I can’t be there every second. Even though the law fancies Bailey our guardian, I know she considers us her property. And distant blood or no, Bailey will never be family. A fly buzzes near my head. I slap at it hard and fast, feel it crunch between my palms. When I turn eighteen in thirty-six long months, nothing will stop me from taking Emily away from Bailey, away from here.

Ahead of me, Emily’s steps slow. “It’s not too much farther,” I say, anticipating her question.

“You sure it’s dead?”

“You sure you wanna see it?”

She spins around, plants her feet wide and slaps her hands on her hips—a one-girl blockade. “So help me God, Dinah, if you’re messing with me.”

Emily’s old for nine. She’s as wiry as those saplings and barely reaches my shoulders, but there’s something fierce in everything she does. I touch her shoulder and point up the road.

“See those flies?”

She looks. “Let’s go,” she says, and then she’s off, running.

I chase her. The sweat drips down the back of my knees. I only catch up with her when she’s reached the ditch, flies hovering about her heaving shoulders.

“It broke its neck,” she says. She squats at the edge of the drainage ditch. She doesn’t swat the flies.

“But why?” I ask.

She swings her legs into the ditch then lowers herself in. Her sneakers squish in the last bit of mud left in this parched summer. She drops to her knees beside the cow. Its head is half her size, its fur a dirty white except for patches of black on the legs. Flies skate across its glassy eyes like water bugs. She reaches out a hand, lays her palm flat against the matted fur of its face.

In the distance, far down the road, a plume of dust rises. I hear a rumbling, like an approaching thunderstorm. But there are no clouds in the sky.

“Hurry,” I tell her. Then I jump into the ditch. If I weren’t used to it the smell of the rotting carcass would make me gag. I squat between its stiff, outstretched legs, and lay my hand beside hers. Our elbows and fingers touch.

“She was trying to get free,” Emily says.

The ground trembles beneath us.

“Someone’s coming,” I say.

She nods. Tears squeeze at the corners of her eyes.

“Go,” I tell her. “I’ll take care of it.”

She looks at me, her eyes shining and wet. She pulls her hand away from the cow’s head, away from me. Then she crawls over its belly and across its back. She nestles herself along its spine, her body curving against the animal’s as if they’re made of the same flesh. The flies disturbed by her movement settle back down. One lands on her closed eyelid. Then another. She doesn’t flinch.

The sound of the truck is unmistakable now. I stand...