Holding Everything Down

The Dead Guy from Nebraska By-Product

11 The Dead Guy from Nebraska By-Product In hot weather, cows will swell in the sun until their udders go purple and one leg jacks up high. The truck holds more if I stab the stomachs and let the bloat go down. Sometimes the vet’s done an autopsy and the stitches break while I’m winching one in—a pitchfork is the only way to get around that. Of course I’ve seen the two-headed calves and a few with an extra leg on their sides— those don’t live for long if they’re born alive. The Dead Guy’s here! The Dead Guy’s here! that kid at the dairy on Six tells his folks when I pull in the yard. I don’t stop there often, since the feedlots always have most of the wrecks. I think of the deads as wrecks— like a broke-down truck you tow from the shed on the morning it finally won’t start. That boy watched me winch a bony Swiss into the box one time. Had a stick with him, like he wanted to poke her but was scared to. That’s Belinda, he said. My dad had to shoot her cause she wouldn’t stand up. Those are the worst— cows that go down and can’t get their feet again. They’ve got a sour smell, not just rot but garlicky, like they sweated hard while they died. He asked me where I was taking her to, and I said she’d go to make baloney. His eyes got big as sunflowers and he didn’t say a word. 12 It’s not a bad job. You get used to the smell— it just smells like cows after awhile. It’s not me stuck in the rendering plant skinning and cooking down the deads. I get to see the countryside, scout good spots to hunt pheasants, watch the sun coming up in the sandhills. We keep people’s dogs and cats fed—the baloney’s a joke. The vet breeds as many as I haul off, and there’s bulls, and seems like always calves. ...