The Milking Barn

Walter is late for the milking. In the still dark morning, he makes out the face of his sleeping wife. Her breaths are calm and steady. Her hands relaxed as if they had nothing weightier to hold than a feather. How can she do it? It was just a month ago that their only son was killed by a bomb explosion in Iraq. She was so free with her tears then, leaned on every proffered shoulder, nestled into every hug. He has not cried, has embraced his wife to provide comfort to her not to be comforted himself. Images of his boy’s body in pieces invade his sleep. Today, they taunt him to say the word he has yet to utter. Dead.

He throws back the covers and dresses without turning on the light. He heads to the kitchen and makes his coffee, which he sips now in his usual haste, his mouth inured to the heat and bitterness. Through the window he sees the milking barn and his arm stops mid-lift of mug to lips. A few lights are on. His hired crew is beginning to arrive. Crew. It used to be family. He and his father. His grandfather with his sons before them. Back generations. He wasn’t supposed to be the end of the line.

The coffee grows cold, the cream curdles on top. The cows are restless. In their voices he hears an insistence, a unity of complaint.

Walter bends to tie his boots. When he rises, prepares to walk out the door, he remains cemented to the floor. He has dreams like this, where he can’t walk, his legs so weighty he has to pick each one up to move it forward. It is the weight of a grief no father should be asked to carry. But he has to. Only by relying on muscles that from years of habit know no other way does he make it out to the barn.

The soles of his boots crunch against the frosty ground. Who might be walking on the shattered bones and melted flesh of his son? The sky is losing its black density. The barn hulks in the gray light. It’s ugly. Walter has never wondered about beauty before. A farm has to function, not look good. He slides the door open. The cows have not yet been brought in so all he sees is this steel and concrete construction. It has no heart, even when filled with the warmth of fifty cows, their steaming breath, soulful eyes, chewing and snuffling. It is an industrial place, not like the original barn, the one his grandfather raised. It breathed the scent of wood and hay even through the odors of piss and dung, milk and bleach. The flanks of the cows were warm and soft when you pressed your cheek against them to reach the udders, a comforting place for cold hands. On a day as freezing as this one, you would be snug.

Walter was eight when he realized that, to make milk, a cow had to give birth. He attended those births often with his father. The sudden existence of a new life, exiting from its mother fully formed, always made his breath stop for a moment and his mind wonder if the calf was just as alive the minutes before it was born as after. But it wasn’t until the job fell to him that he recognized the cruelty of what happened next. The mother and baby separated too soon. The milk siphoned away into vats and trucks and cartons and into the mouths and stomachs of humans. The male calves sent to slaughter. His father told him the cries between mother and baby didn’t mean anything. They would forget about each other soon enough. And Walter wondered if he had died, would his father have forgotten him? Now he knows.

The pitch of the cows’ moans has escalated. Walter looks out to the field and sees their udders—full, red, heavy, teats nearly dragging on the ground. Walter’s heart is engorged with the tears he was taught men must never shed. Not even when a letter comes saying your son has been killed and there are no remains to send home. But the bleat of a lonely calf punctures the bladder of his sorrow. It’s time to practice saying the word dead.

Walter calls the foreman over. Tells him he is in charge of the milking today. He returns to the kitchen. His wife, now up and making breakfast, asks no questions about why Walter has come back so soon, but touches his wrist as she hands him a fresh cup of coffee.

Walter stands again at the window. The barn doors open exposing bright lights and cold metal. The cows enter and file into their stalls, their udders connected to the pumps, the machinery hisses and hums.

Dead. The word is a spigot allowing the tears to run. The cries of the cows lessen as they relax in relief.

Walter will begin the process of drying them up tomorrow.

Judith Hannan is the author of the memoir Motherhood Exaggerated and of The Write Prescription: Telling Your Story to Live with and Beyond Illness. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, The Girlfriend, Brevity, Narratively, and The Forward among others. She is a former columnist for The Martha’s Vineyard Times. Through her work with The Children’s Museum of Manhattan (where she serves on the Board), Prison Writes, The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Arnold P. Gold Foundation she leads workshops for the general public as well as for homeless mothers, young women in the criminal justice system, those affected by physical or mental illness, and medical professionals and students.

Published October 15 2023