Chapter Text
Maybe I would be okay if I let this go forever
Send it into space and watch the planets turn
Maybe I will, someday, let this go forever
Hold me until I find the nerve
“Papa? What’s wrong?”
Three-year-old Dennis stood near the horse stall’s opening, dressed in his eldest brother’s hand-me-down pajama shirt. His mama had specifically told him to stay out of the barn tonight. But he had heard one of the cows bellow out in pain, so he came barreling down the front steps and through the heavy wooden doors to see what was the matter.
His heart couldn’t contain itself around the animals, especially when they were in distress. He always tried to help them, even if he didn’t know how, and it annoyed his father sometimes. He loved to pet the newborn livestock, or put his hand up for the horses to sniff when Papa wasn’t looking, or bottle-feed the baby goats whenever his mama would let him. His whole world was the farm animals.
He peered further into the barn. There, in a stall, sat his papa, holding a premature, shaking calf, mooing for its mother. What caught little Dennis’s eye wasn’t the obvious torment the animal was in, but the deformation in its face. It was a two-headed calf.
“Go back to bed, Denny,” Papa retorted firmly. His father looked tired, his undereye bags deep, and his hands still red and brown from delivering the calf. Papa began to clean off the two-headed animal with a linen cloth and a metal bucket of water.
Dennis looked startled by the sight. He felt as if he wasn’t supposed to see this. A rare beast in anguish. But he didn’t feel frightened at all. He felt… pity. “Is he okay?”
Papa shook his head. The calf squealed for its mother again, wriggling away from the wet cloth.
The animal was sad, so Dennis figured they should try to make him happy. “He needs his mama?” The boy inquired. The mother was one stall over, resting after giving birth. Dennis could hear the familiar spurs on his older brother Judah’s boots click-clacking as he walked into the stall, taking care of the mother cow. “Judah’ll bring him to her.”
“His mama didn’t want him, Denny,” Papa replied matter-of-factly. He finished cleaning off the calf and placed the small creature in his lap.
“But she will after a little,” Dennis argued quickly, wanting to maintain hope. “She always wants the babies after a little.”
His father started scrubbing his hands clean of what the mother cow had left on him. His voice sounded tired, frustrated, and slightly sad. “Not this time. She’s spooked, Denny. And the calf won’t last the night, God bless him.”
“Oh.” Dennis’s small brow furrowed. He could not fully comprehend what that meant. “You take him to the shed?” He glanced in the direction of the slaughterhouse. He was too young to understand what really went on in the ‘shed,’ but he knew that if a ‘calf won’t last the night,’ it ended up there, and that once his father took little animals in there, they did not come out.
Papa sighed. “Yes.”
Dennis hesitated for a second time, a question on the tip of his tongue. He finally whispered, “Can I pet him till you do?”
Dennis’s father faltered for a moment. His face softened, and he nodded. Whenever Dennis remembers this night, he recalls the kindness his father showed. A kindness he wouldn’t experience for the rest of his childhood.
Holding the calf in one arm and Dennis’s little hand in the other, Papa began to lead them out of the barn and into the field. Dennis sat in the grass, and his father placed the trembling animal over the small boy’s lap, along with a cloudy blue woolen blanket.
Dennis sat and gently stroked the calf’s back as his father retreated to care for the mother cow. The little boy pulled the wool blanket over both him and the calf.
Sitting in that vast field, wool rubbing against his bare arms, and grass peaking out and around them like a nest, Dennis let out a deep breath. He felt at peace. As much as a boy as small as him could feel that way. A cool breeze drifted like dolphins in the ocean, leaping through the tall grass, sending shivers down his spine. He could smell the comforting, fresh scent of the pie his mother had baked earlier that evening as he let himself close his eyes and rest his head on the calf’s back. He started to whisper to the creature.
“I’m small like you. Mama had me before she was supposed to.”
The calf let out a soft moo, almost like a response.
“My mama doesn’t want me sometimes. Like your mama didn’t want you.” Dennis whispered, softer than before.
It was true. His mother barely spoke to him like she used to. She used to hug him all the time and tell him how good his drawings were and kiss him on the forehead when she’d tuck him in. But now she barely speaks to him, let alone hug or encourage or say goodnight before bed. She yells until he cries when he doesn’t wipe his shoes, or when he complains about going to mass. He didn’t know why. It was like she wasn’t his mama anymore, and he was expected to start acting like a big kid.
Dennis lifted his head and gazed at the cow’s two faces that looked up at him. “It’s not your fault that you’re different. I don’t think that. I’m different, too. Mama and Papa say I am.”
A small pause. The calf lies closer to him.
“Look at the stars. And that is the moon.” Little Dennis pointed at the sky.
His brother Steven had sat with him the other night and told him all about the stars and the moon. Dennis was fascinated by them, especially tonight. He had never seen that many stars in the sky. It was the same sky, of course, but it was almost as if there were twice as many stars as usual.
The calf looked at where the little boy was pointing.
“It’s okay…” He gently scratched behind the calf’s ears. “Maybe we stay awake, and Papa won’t take you. I’ll tell him not to.”
The calf let out another soft moo before resting its head in finality.
“We play in the yard, it’s fun. The dogs run with me, and you can run with me too.” The little boy smiled to himself, thrilled at the idea of running with this little calf.
Dennis rests his head back down on the calf’s back again. Before he could get a grip on himself, he fell asleep. His father found the two curled up together a few minutes later. The little boy was carried to his room, and the calf was carried to the shed.
Dennis woke up in the middle of the night and peeked through the window to catch a glimpse of his father carrying something relatively large wrapped in brown paper. Papa placed it in the front seat of his truck and began driving down the road leading to the city.
The boy asked about the calf in the morning, and his father told him the animal was in God’s hands now.
***
Dennis would be tasked to write for an essay contest in high school, the prompt being ‘your first memory.’ After racking his brain for a couple of hours and deleting several paragraphs about the first mass he could remember, he’d recall this night. A hazy memory that he hadn’t thought about in years. But for some reason, as he sat in his dad’s old desk with the crucifix hung above it in the unfinished basement where he’d done every homework assignment for the past twelve years, every detail came rushing back like it was just yesterday.
He’d go into detail about his experience with the calf and the science behind polycephaly, the condition that causes a cow to be born with two heads. He’d write about how similar he felt to the animal that night. His entire life, the world had felt amplified. Too loud, too mean, too careless, too dismissive. It was like he had two hearts and two heads. His heart was too overwhelming for others, and others were too overwhelming for his head. He hoped that when he had held the calf that night, it felt the overwhelming love from Dennis’s two hearts. The love that no one else had ever accepted.
Dennis would write about how heartbroken he was when he woke up and heard the calf was ‘in God’s hands.’ He hardly knew what it all meant back then, but as a seventeen-year-old, it hurt worse to recall than it ever did to remember as a small child.
Halfway through writing the essay, something would cause a halt in Dennis’s train of thought. He remembered whispering to the calf about how his parents had told him he was different, but he couldn’t remember what his parents had said was different about him. It was like he dropped something in the sewer grate, and his arm was just long enough to touch it, but too short to pick it up. The very thought of that conversation made his stomach churn. How was he different? Was it developmental issues? Was it because he was born premature? His personality? His attitude?
Was it something he was too afraid to even admit to himself to this day? Could his parents tell back then? Did they know now?
***
Dennis would win a scholarship for Creative Writing at Columbia University for his essay about the calf. But it wasn’t a full ride. And his parents didn’t want him moving all the way to New York. They still needed hands on the farm, and the rest of the Whitaker boys were already all married and moved too far to drive every afternoon just to lend a hand.
He liked to think about what life might’ve been like if he had taken the scholarship. He could’ve. He was eighteen when he received it, and he could’ve applied for more aid or a loan. He was a hard worker. He could’ve gotten a nice job to pay off his debt.
But his parents' iron grip was still around his throat back then, and when he had told them about the scholarship, they off-handedly shut him down.
“Didn’t you want to go to Mid-Plains, that community college about 20 minutes away? God’s calling you there.” His mother had remarked.
“We still need you on the farm, son. And this New York school seems a bit unreasonable.” His father had added.
And he… agreed. Didn’t argue, didn’t talk back. The ever-present guilt that loomed over that house in Nebraska still weighed on him back then.
But Dennis still liked to dream. He might’ve gone to Columbia and moved to New York and rented a decent apartment with the money he earned from a steady job. He might’ve met someone nice who treated him right and held his hand, and told him how proud they were of him. He wouldn’t have to go to mass and sing songs and pretend he believed like everyone else. He could’ve written the great American novel and moved to his own farm up north after college. Maybe he’d lose touch with his parents, and maybe that would be okay.
Whenever Dennis sat in bed and daydreamed about these things, his mother’s voice would ring in his ear. The words ‘foolish’ and ‘pipe dream’ repeated until he couldn’t breathe. Until he couldn’t think for himself. He belonged on the farm. He should know that. He was a man, not a boy anymore. He wasn’t allowed to lie with the newborn calves and whisper how much fun they’ll have when they play in the yard. He wasn’t allowed to care for the animals like he used to because he wasn’t a child anymore. He needed to wake up early, do his chores, take a few classes at community college, go to mass, repent, pray, and listen to his parents. He doesn’t know how to be an adult yet, and they know what’s good for him, so he should be looking to them for direction.
So he stayed on the farm. And he started taking courses at Mid-Plains Community College. He did what his parents said. He never argued anymore.
Sometimes Dennis wondered what it might’ve been like to be that newborn calf. It wasn’t too hard, since he already knew how similar they were. Born into a world too early. A world that looked at you differently. A world that was too noisy, too rude, and too reckless. A world where even the closest in your life turn their heads at your presence. A world where the people who are supposed to love you just push you away. A world that doesn’t want you, and doesn’t even tell you why.
The only stark difference between him and that calf was that Dennis was blessed with a long life, while the calf died only hours after being born. Sometimes Dennis wished he’d been granted the latter.
But he’d never tell anyone that.