our mother’s grave Sir I swear we brothers were given that 1/2 stillborn calf fair is fair because that farmer Harris had no knowledge nor notion how to coddle or coax it back to life or how to ruse another heifer to give it first milk. Perhaps it was because his wife & daughters were away that summer with his wife’s sister or perhaps because that rummy son of his could not of reared slugs on a plate of lettuce. I do not know the reason why but he gave that animal to us brothers the way a rich man gives the rotten cut of offal from his table to the poor man & then he took it back & this I think was enough spark to catch a flame to everything I will now tell you on these pages.
For I do recall Tom at the end of a day’s labouring standing up from the crate he sat upon in 1/2 darkness in our digs there among the beasts on the Harris stake in Chillicoth where we took a job of work as farmhands. I tell you Sir I see it now in my mind like it was only yesterday my brother moving over the fresh hay & packed earth to where the calf was held & the calf seeing my brother shifting in his stall & gazing up at Tom with his big round calf’s eyes brown as poured coffee. That innocent thing I tell you its eyes shone with love for Tom in a way that my brother’s eyes no longer shone for anything since he took that minie ball in the mouth in Tennessee. (Well except for one person you will soon see.)
You could say my brother was by now recovered mostly from his bodily wounds & you would be right. He was once again tall & strong but he was a different man than he was before his wounding & things beneath the sheath of his skin were yet roiling & spoilt.
So he could be a hard man to sit with but I did for he is my brother & like that calf I loved him dearly. From my berth on a milking stool I watched Tom nuss that beast’s head like a man would a beloved sheepdog & I tell you Sir that calf lowed like a fat child. You could hear in that noise a kind of joy they say that beasts cannot feel but them who listen close know they can. Them like Tom who was always such a fine man for the animals & is still to this day though not so fine a one for his fellow man betimes.
In the shadows I sensed it more than seen the calf’s fat tongue curl round Tom’s fingers taking the salted sweat from my brother’s skin. After some time of this Tom turned & says to me, “Harris will not have this beast for his own So Help Me God.”
The words were muddled & wet like the calf’s breath in the near empty socket of Tom’s shot through mouth but I could comprehend them & I did not like the journey my brother’s thoughts were after taking. He spoke to me in English as he did more & more as if it was easier on his broken tongue. Or maybe his thinking took a turn with the bullet that carved through his gob so English came to suit it better. I am only after wondering this now for I was too much of the moment to note it at the time.
“I see no way around it Tom,” says I trying to peacify my brother. “Sure we are owed a fortnight’s wages & there is no gain in parting before we take them.” I spoke to Tom in the language of our home for there was more meaning in it for me then.
But Tom went on in English. “We will take our wages tonight by God & be done with this place but he will not have this calf. It belongs to us. It was freely given as worth nothing 1/2 in the lye pit & shunned by his mother. I will kill Harris stone dead before he ever breathes over this calf.”
I stood up from the milking stool & said to him, “Listen to yourself Tom & then listen to reason. There is no gain in killing a man over a weened calf.”