Night Call

Parish

Chapter 7: Night Call

The phone rings at 2:14 AM. Clem knows the time because the clock on the nightstand is the clock he has watched for twenty-eight years, the digital clock with the red numbers that glow in the dark of the bedroom, the glow being the room's only light when the phone rings, the glow that Clem sees when his eyes open, the opening being instantaneous, the way a vet's eyes open when the phone rings at 2 AM, which is not the slow surfacing of ordinary waking but the immediate arrival of full consciousness, the body knowing before the mind knows that the phone at 2 AM is a call and the call is an animal and the animal is in trouble and the trouble is the reason Clem exists in the parish's nocturnal ecosystem, the ecosystem that includes the owls and the coyotes and the possums and the veterinarian who wakes when the phone rings because the waking is the vocation.

Renee does not stir. She has learned to sleep through the phone. She learned this in the first year of the practice, when the phone rang at 2 AM and at 3 AM and at 4 AM and at every hour that is not an hour for a phone but is an hour for a calving cow or a colicking horse or a dog hit by a car on a parish road, and the learning was not a decision but an adaptation, the body adapting to the sound the way the body adapts to the train if you live beside the tracks, the sound becoming part of the silence, incorporated, absorbed, the phone ringing and Renee sleeping and the sleeping being her gift to him, the gift that says: Go, do the thing you do, I will be here when you come back, and the being-here is enough, and the enough is the marriage.

Clem answers. The voice is young. Male. The voice has the particular quality that Clem recognizes, the quality of a person who is afraid and who is trying not to sound afraid and who sounds more afraid because of the trying, the voice tight and high and speaking fast because the speaking-fast is the attempt to outrun the fear, to get the words out before the fear catches up with the words.

"Dr. Boudreaux, I've got a heifer trying to calve and she's been at it for three hours and the feet are out but nothing else and I don't — I tried to pull but it won't come and she's — I didn't know who else to call."

The sentence. The sentence that is the practice's anthem, the sentence that Clem has heard a thousand times from a thousand voices at a thousand hours of the night, the sentence that means: I am alone with a problem that is bigger than me and the problem is an animal's life and the animal's life is in my hands and my hands are not enough and your hands are what I need. The sentence that is about the calf. The sentence that is about everything else.

Clem is already moving. He is out of bed. He is pulling on the jeans that hang on the chair by the closet, the jeans that are not clean but are the jeans he wears for night calls because night calls are not clean work and the jeans will be less clean when the work is done and the not-clean is the uniform, the jeans and the boots and the shirt that he pulls over his head, the old LSU t-shirt that is soft from a decade of washing and that smells like the laundry detergent Renee uses, the smell being the last clean smell he will smell until the work is done.

"Where are you," Clem said.

"Tanner Road. Past the Clayton turnoff. The place with the blue silo. I'm leasing it. My name is — I'm Dustin. Dustin Hebert."

Clem knows the place. He knows every place. He has driven every road in Concordia Parish and the knowing of the roads is the map that lives in his body, not in his phone, the map that was built over twenty-eight years of driving to the places where the animals are, and the animals are everywhere, and the everywhere is the map.

"I'm coming," Clem said. "Don't pull on the calf. Keep her up if you can. If she goes down, that's fine, but try to keep her standing. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

He hangs up. He goes to the kitchen. He does not make coffee. There is no time for coffee when a calf is stuck and the calf has been stuck for three hours and the three hours is already too long and the too-long is the math that Clem is doing as he walks through the dark house, the math of dystocia, which is: the longer the calf is stuck, the less likely the calf is alive, and the likelihood decreases with each hour, the calf's oxygen supply compressed by the birth canal's grip on the calf's chest, the grip that is supposed to be temporary, the squeeze and the release, the contraction and the passage, but the passage has not happened and the squeeze has continued and the continuing is the clock that Clem is racing.

He goes to the truck. The truck is in the driveway. The truck is always in the driveway because the truck must be ready and the readiness requires proximity, the truck close enough to reach in the sixty seconds it takes Clem to wake and dress and walk through the house and open the door and cross the yard and get in and start the engine, the sixty seconds being the transition from sleep to work, from the bed to the truck, from the husband to the vet, the transition that is the practice's nightly demand, the demand that Clem meets because meeting the demand is the vocation and the vocation is the life and the life is the truck starting in the dark and the headlights coming on and the driveway appearing in the light and the street beyond and the town beyond and the parish beyond, the parish dark and quiet at 2:20 AM, the parish asleep except for the animals and the veterinarian and the young man in the barn with the heifer.

He drives. Louisiana 65 north out of Vidalia. The road is empty. The headlights cut the dark the way they have cut the dark a thousand times, the beams reaching ahead, the road appearing and disappearing, the white lines marking the center and the edges, the lines that the highway department paints and that the sun fades and that the highway department paints again, the maintenance of the lines being one of the parish's perpetual tasks, the task of keeping the marks that keep the vehicles on the road, the marks being the guidance, the guidance being the infrastructure of safe passage.

Clem drives fast. Not recklessly. Fast. The speed of a man who knows the road and who knows that the road at 2 AM is empty and who knows that the calf is stuck and the time is the enemy and the enemy must be beaten by the speed, the truck eating the miles between Vidalia and Clayton, the miles that during the day are fifteen minutes and that at night, at speed, are twelve, the three minutes saved being three minutes that matter, that could be the difference between a live calf and a dead one, the difference that is the practice's arithmetic, the arithmetic of minutes and heartbeats and oxygen and the narrow window during which intervention can change the outcome.

He passes the Clayton turnoff. He turns onto Tanner Road. The road is gravel. The truck's tires find the gravel and the sound changes, the smooth hum of asphalt becoming the crunch of stone, the crunch that is the sound of leaving the main road and entering the side road, the side road that leads to the farm, the farm that is not a farm but a leased property where a young man is running thirty head on sixty acres, the thirty head being the beginning of a herd and the sixty acres being the beginning of a ranch and the beginning being the thing, the hopeful thing, the young-man thing that Clem recognizes because Clem was once a young man beginning something, the beginning being the act of faith that all beginnings are, the faith that the work will sustain the dream and the dream will sustain the work and the sustaining will be enough.

The blue silo. Clem sees it in the headlights, the silo standing dark against the dark sky, the blue invisible at night but the shape unmistakable, the cylinder rising above the tree line, the landmark that the young man gave because landmarks are how the parish navigates, not by addresses but by features, the blue silo and the big oak and the burned house and the pond with the dock, the features that are the parish's coordinate system, the system that works because the parish is small and the features are known and the knowing is the shared language.

He turns into the driveway. A light is on in the barn. The barn is small, three stalls, built of corrugated metal on a wooden frame, the barn that comes with the lease, the barn that was built by someone who is not Dustin Hebert and who built it for horses or cattle or the miscellaneous purposes that barns in Concordia Parish serve, the purposes being as varied as the people who use them, the barn being the rural equivalent of the spare room, the space that holds whatever needs holding.

Dustin is in the barn. He is standing beside the heifer. He is twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, and he looks younger than that in the barn light, the single bulb casting shadows that make his face look thinner and more worried than it probably is, though it is worried, genuinely worried, the worry of a man who has a cow in trouble and who has tried what he knows and what he knows was not enough and the not-enough is the reason he called, and the calling was the hardest thing, the calling being the admission that he cannot do this alone.

The heifer is standing. This is good. Standing is better than down. Standing means the cow has strength, has energy, has not given up, the standing being the cow's version of trying, the cow's body saying: I am still in this, I am still working, the work is not done.

Clem looks at the heifer. She is a first-calf heifer, maybe 900 pounds, black, her sides wet with sweat, her tail raised, and behind her, protruding from the vulva, two hooves and a few inches of leg. Two front legs. The hooves are pointed down, which is correct — a calf presents front feet first, hooves down, the diving position, the head between the legs, the calf aimed at the world it is entering.

But the head is not visible. The legs are out but the head is not with them. The head is turned back.

"How long have the feet been showing," Clem said.

"Since about eleven," Dustin said. "I checked her at eleven and the feet were there. I waited. I pulled a little, just to see if it was coming. It wasn't. I waited more. I pulled harder. It wouldn't come. I called you at two."

Three hours. Clem does the math. Three hours with the legs presenting and the head turned back, the calf's head bent at the neck, the head tucked against the calf's body or turned to the side, the malposition that prevents delivery because the birth canal is wide enough for the calf's body but not wide enough for the calf's body plus the calf's head turned sideways, the geometry of birth being precise, the calf's body must be aligned, the legs forward and the head between them, the nose resting on the knees, the streamlined position that allows the 80-pound body to pass through the 900-pound mother's pelvis, and the position is wrong, and the wrongness is the problem, and the problem is what Clem is here to fix.

He goes to the truck. He gets what he needs: palpation sleeves, lubricant, OB chains, the chain handles, a calf puller — the mechanical device that attaches to the cow's hips and provides the leverage to pull a calf that cannot be pulled by hand, the device that is the last resort before the surgical option, and Clem hopes it will not come to the surgical option because a C-section in a barn at 2 AM on a first-calf heifer is a surgery that can be done and that Clem has done but that he does not want to do tonight, not because of the difficulty but because of the cost, the cost to the heifer and the cost to the young man, the financial cost of a surgery that may cost more than the heifer and the calf are worth on the market, the math that is the cruelty of livestock economics, the math that says: the animal's medical care may cost more than the animal's market value, and the math is true but the math is not the only truth, the other truth being that the heifer is alive and the calf is alive (maybe) and the keeping-alive is the thing that the young man called about, the keeping-alive being the reason for the call, the reason for the truck, the reason for the veterinarian standing in the barn at 2:30 AM pulling on a sleeve.

Clem washes the heifer's vulva with the disinfectant solution he mixed in a bucket from the barn's spigot. He applies lubricant. He speaks to the heifer. He does not speak words that the heifer understands; he speaks in the tone that the heifer understands, the low, steady tone that says: I am here, I am not a threat, I am going to touch you and the touching will be strange but I will be steady, the steadiness being the communication, the tone being the message, the message being: Trust me the way you trust the man who feeds you, trust me the way you trust the ground you stand on, the trusting being the thing I need from you while I do the thing I need to do.

He reaches in.

His hand enters the birth canal. The warmth. The pressure. The muscular walls of the birth canal gripping his arm, the grip that is the cow's body doing what it knows to do, which is to push, to contract, to expel the thing inside, the pushing that has been happening for hours and that has not worked because the thing inside is not aligned, the head is turned, and the pushing against the misalignment is the futility that has exhausted the heifer, the hours of pushing against the impossible, the body's effort wasted by the geometry.

Clem's hand follows the calf's legs inward. He finds the chest. He finds the neck. He follows the neck. The head is turned to the right, the calf's head tucked against its right side, the muzzle pressed against the calf's ribs, the position that is the problem, the head turned away from the exit, the head that must come forward, must be between the legs, must be aimed at the world, and the head is not aimed at the world, the head is aimed at the calf's own body, the calf's own body being the obstacle, the calf stuck on itself.

He cups his hand around the calf's muzzle. The muzzle is warm. The muzzle is wet. The calf is alive. Clem feels the warmth and the wetness and the faint suction of the calf trying to breathe, trying to draw air through a mouth that is still inside the cow, the breathing reflex active even before the birth is complete, the body ready for the world before the world is ready for the body.

"The calf's alive," Clem said. "The head's turned back. I'm going to try to bring it around."

Dustin stands at the heifer's head. He holds the halter rope. His hands are shaking. Clem can see the shaking in the rope, the rope trembling with the young man's fear, the fear that is not about the veterinary procedure but about the everything, the everything being: This is my herd, this is my beginning, this heifer is one of thirty, and thirty is all I have, and the having of thirty is the dream, and the dream is calving in a barn at 2 AM and the calf is stuck and I don't know enough and I called the man who knows and the knowing is what I am watching, the man's arm inside the cow, the man's hand on the calf, the man doing the thing that I cannot do, and the cannot-do is the learning, and the learning is why I am standing here with the rope shaking in my hands.

Clem pushes the calf back. This is counterintuitive. The calf needs to come out, but first the calf must go back in, must be pushed deeper into the uterus to create the space that will allow the head to turn, the space that the birth canal's grip has eliminated, the grip that must be released before the head can be repositioned. He pushes. The heifer pushes against him, the cow's body fighting the veterinarian's hand, the contraction pressing the calf forward while Clem presses the calf back, the two forces opposing each other in the narrow space of the birth canal, and Clem waits for the contraction to end, waits for the moment between contractions when the pressure releases and the space opens and the hand can push and the calf can move.

The contraction ends. Clem pushes. The calf slides back. An inch. Two inches. Enough.

He finds the head again. He cups the muzzle. He pulls. The head resists. The head is tucked tight, the muscles of the calf's neck holding the head in the wrong position, the muscles that are the calf's own body working against the calf's own survival, the malposition being the body's mistake, the mistake that the body cannot correct because the body does not know it has made a mistake, the body only knows the pressure and the darkness and the warmth and the waiting that is the last waiting before the world.

Clem pulls harder. He hooks his fingers behind the calf's poll, the bony ridge at the back of the skull, the ridge that is the handhold, the place where the veterinarian's fingers find purchase and the purchase allows the pulling and the pulling allows the turning and the turning is the thing, the turning of the head from wrong to right, from tucked to extended, from aimed-at-itself to aimed-at-the-world.

The head turns.

It comes forward in a slow arc, the muzzle sliding along the calf's ribs as Clem guides it, the neck straightening, the head moving from the side to the center, the center being the position, the correct position, the head between the legs, the nose on the knees, the diving position that is the position of entry, the position that says: I am ready, the world is ahead, I am aimed at the world.

Clem positions the head. He holds it. He pushes the calf slightly forward, seating the head between the legs, the head and the legs now forming the point of the arrow, the arrow that the calf's body has become, the streamlined shape that will pass through the pelvis if the pulling is right and the cow is strong enough and the calf is alive enough to participate in its own birth, which is to say: to be born, which is the ultimate participation, the body entering the world by passing through the narrowest passage it will ever traverse, the passage that is the beginning of everything.

"I'm going to chain the legs," Clem said. "When I say pull, you pull. Steady. Not hard. Steady and down. Aim for the cow's hocks."

He attaches the OB chains to the calf's legs, the chains looping above the fetlocks, the chains cold on the calf's wet skin, the chains that are the connection between the calf inside and the hands outside, the chains that will transmit the force that will bring the calf from the dark into the light, from the inside to the outside, from the unborn to the born.

Dustin takes the chain handles. His hands have stopped shaking. The having of something to do has stopped the shaking, the doing being the antidote to the fear, the fear that is idle and that is cured by action, the action of holding the handles and waiting for the word, the word that will be: Pull.

Clem keeps his hand on the calf's head, holding the head in position, his arm inside the cow, his shoulder pressed against the cow's hindquarters, his body braced, his feet planted in the dirt floor of the barn, the dirt that is packed and stained and that holds the history of the barn's use, the hoofprints and the bootprints and the stains of the fluids that barns contain, the fluids of birth and of sickness and of the daily maintenance of livestock, the fluids that are the evidence of the care.

The heifer contracts. Clem feels the contraction in his arm, the walls of the birth canal tightening, the pressure building, the cow's body doing what it has been trying to do for three hours, pushing, the push that now has a chance of working because the head is forward and the legs are chained and the veterinarian is holding the position and the young man is holding the chains and the moment is the moment.

"Pull," Clem said.

Dustin pulls. The chains go taut. The calf moves. An inch. The head appears at the vulva, the muzzle first, the nostrils, the face of the calf emerging from the cow the way all faces emerge, wet and compressed and new, the newness being the fact of the face, the face that has never been seen because it has existed only in the dark, in the interior, in the womb where the face was formed and the forming is the miracle that Clem does not call a miracle because he has seen it ten thousand times and the ten-thousand-times has not diminished it but has deepened it, the way a river deepens its channel by flowing through it, the repetition of the miracle deepening the veterinarian's capacity to hold the miracle, to witness it, to be the hands that assist the passage.

"Pull," Clem said again.

The calf comes. The head clears. The shoulders. The shoulders are the hard part, the widest point, the moment when the passage is tightest and the pulling is hardest and the cow is working hardest and the calf is most compressed and the outcome is most in doubt. Dustin pulls. Clem guides. The shoulders pass. The ribcage follows. The hips. The hind legs. The calf slides out onto the barn floor in a rush of fluid, the fluid being the amniotic fluid that has been the calf's world, the fluid that was the calf's ocean and that is now a puddle on the barn floor, and the calf lies in the puddle, wet and steaming in the barn's warm air, and the calf is not moving.

Clem is on his knees. He clears the calf's nostrils. He clears the mouth. He lifts the calf by the hind legs — a brief lift, enough to drain the fluid from the lungs, the fluid that the calf swallowed during the hours of being stuck, the fluid that is in the airway and that must come out before the air can come in. He sets the calf down. He rubs the calf's ribs with the towel he grabbed from the truck, the vigorous rubbing that stimulates the breathing, the rubbing that mimics the mother's tongue, the tongue that would normally clean the calf and stimulate the calf and start the calf's life with the touch that says: You are here, you are born, you are alive, breathe.

The calf breathes.

The first breath is a gasp. The lungs filling for the first time. The alveoli opening, the tiny sacs that have been compressed and fluid-filled and that are now inflating, the inflation being the transition from the fluid world to the air world, from the inside to the outside, from the unborn to the born. The calf gasps and the gasp becomes a breath and the breath becomes another breath and the breathing is established and the life is established and the establishment is the thing, the moment when the outcome shifts from uncertain to certain, from maybe to yes, from the calf-that-might-not-live to the calf-that-is-living, and the shift is visible in the calf's body, the legs beginning to move, the head lifting, the eyes opening, the eyes that have never seen anything seeing the barn and the light and the man on his knees and the other man standing by the heifer's head and the heifer turning to look at the thing that came out of her, the thing that was inside and is now outside and that she must now identify as hers.

Clem moves the calf to the heifer's head. The heifer sniffs. The heifer licks. The licking is the claiming, the mother's tongue on the calf's body being the brand, the invisible mark that says: This is mine, this came from me, this is the thing I carried and that was stuck and that the man pulled out and that is now here, wet and breathing and mine.

The calf is a bull calf. Black. Maybe eighty pounds. He is alive and breathing and being licked and the licking is cleaning him and stimulating him and bonding him to the mother, the bond that will sustain them both through the months ahead, the nursing and the grazing and the growing, the calf growing into a steer (Dustin will castrate him at two months) and the steer growing into a feeder calf and the feeder calf being sold at the sale in October, the October sale that is the young man's payday, the day when the dream converts to dollars, the dollars that pay the lease and the feed and the vet and the things that the beginning requires.

But that is later. That is the future. The present is the barn at 3 AM, the calf breathing, the heifer licking, the veterinarian on his knees in the fluid and the straw, and the young man standing in the light of the single bulb with the chain handles still in his hands and his face showing the thing that faces show when the crisis has passed, which is not relief exactly but the absence of the fear, the emptying of the space that the fear occupied, the space now empty and waiting to be filled with the next thing, which might be gratitude or exhaustion or the simple recognition that the night is not over, the night still has hours, and the hours must be filled with the work that the calf's arrival requires, the drying and the nursing and the watching, the watching that the young farmer will do for the rest of the night, sitting in the barn with the heifer and the calf, watching the calf stand for the first time (the standing will take twenty minutes, the calf's legs wobbling, folding, trying again, the trying-again being the calf's first lesson, the lesson that the world requires standing and the standing requires trying and the trying requires falling and the falling requires trying again), watching the calf find the udder (the finding will take another twenty minutes, the calf bumping against the heifer's legs and belly, searching with its mouth for the thing it has never seen but that its body knows is there, the instinct directing the search, the search being the first hunger, the hunger that will drive the calf for the rest of its life, the hunger that is the engine of growth, of life, of the continuation of the species).

Clem stands. His knees ache. His back aches. His arm aches from the reaching and the turning and the holding, the holding of the calf's head in position while the pulling happened, the holding that was the work, the real work, not the pulling but the holding, the holding being the thing that made the pulling possible, the holding being the practice.

He washes his arms at the spigot outside the barn. The water is cold. The cold is a relief, the cold water on the arms that were inside the cow's body minutes ago, the temperature differential being the transition from the interior to the exterior, from the work to the after-work, from the barn to the truck, from the crisis to the calm.

Dustin is in the barn. He is kneeling beside the calf. He is touching the calf's head, the hand on the wet skull, the touch that is not medical but personal, the personal touch of a man who has just witnessed the birth of an animal that is his, that is the first calf born on his lease, the first calf of his herd, the beginning of the beginning.

Clem goes back into the barn. He gives the heifer an injection — oxytocin, to help the uterus contract and expel the placenta. He gives her an anti-inflammatory — banamine, for the pain, the pain that the heifer has been in for hours, the pain that the heifer does not express the way a human expresses pain, not with words or with cries but with the subtle signs that Clem reads, the tightened muscles and the glazed eyes and the way the cow stands with her back slightly arched, the arch being the posture of pain, the body's geometry altered by the hurting.

He writes the instructions on a piece of paper from his clipboard. Watch the calf nurse. Check the heifer's temperature in the morning. Call if the temperature is above 103. Call if the calf doesn't nurse. Call if anything is not right.

The not-right. The veterinarian's instruction to the farmer: Call if anything is not right. The instruction that is the invitation, the standing invitation to call, to reach across the dark parish to the man who will answer, who will come, who will bring the truck and the box and the hands and the willingness to stand in a barn at 2 AM and reach into a cow and turn a calf and pull a calf and bring a calf into the world, the willingness that is the vocation, the vocation that is the practice.

Dustin stands by the barn door. The calf is standing now. Wobbly. The heifer is licking. The barn is warm with the heat of the animals and the light of the single bulb and the quiet of the after-crisis, the quiet that is not silence but the absence of the emergency, the sound of normal breathing and the heifer's tongue on the calf's coat and the calf's small sounds, the sounds that are not words but that communicate the only thing a newborn calf communicates, which is: I am here. I am here. I am here.

"I didn't know who else to call," Dustin said.

The sentence again. The sentence that is the practice's anthem. But this time, in the barn light, at 3 AM, with the calf standing and the heifer licking and the young man's face showing the emptied space where the fear had been, this time the sentence carried something else, something that was not about the calf, something that was about the young man and the lease and the thirty head and the sixty acres and the beginning that is always uncertain and that requires, always, the call to the person who knows, the person who comes, the person whose hands do what the caller's hands cannot.

"That's what I'm here for," Clem said.

He said it the way he says everything, which is simply, without elaboration, the words carrying only their face value, the face value being sufficient because the sufficiency of simple words is the veterinarian's language, the language of a man who has learned that the words are not the thing, the thing is the showing-up, the thing is the arm in the cow and the hand on the calf and the turning of the head from wrong to right, the thing is the practice, and the practice speaks for itself.

He got in the truck. He drove out. In the rearview mirror, the barn light. The young man's silhouette in the doorway. The farm quiet and the night quiet and the parish quiet, the quiet of 3 AM in a place where the only sounds are the insects and the frogs and the river moving in its channel behind the levee, the river that does not sleep, the river that moves through the night the same way it moves through the day, without pause, without rest, the river's constancy being the parish's background, the constant flow that is the constant presence, the presence that is the river and the levee and the parish and the practice.

Clem drives home. The road is empty. The headlights cut the dark. The veterinary box rides in the back, the tools used and the medications administered and the chains coiled and the sleeves discarded and the box lighter by the weight of what was expended, the weight-expended being the practice's currency, the expenditure of materials and energy and knowledge and time that produces the outcome, the outcome tonight being: one bull calf, alive, standing, nursing by morning.

He pulls into the driveway. He turns off the truck. He sits in the cab for a moment. The refrigerated unit hums. The clock on the dashboard reads 3:22 AM. He has been gone for sixty-eight minutes. Sixty-eight minutes between the phone and the driveway, between the waking and the returning, and in those sixty-eight minutes a calf was born that would not have been born without his hands, and the being-born is the thing, the thing that the sixty-eight minutes contain, the thing that the practice produces, night after night, call after call, the production of living things from the crisis of birth.

He goes inside. He takes off his boots on the porch. The boots are wet. He leaves them by the door. He goes to the kitchen. He washes his hands and his forearms at the kitchen sink, the soap and the water and the scrubbing that removes the evidence of the work but not the knowledge of the work, the knowledge living in the hands the way all knowledge lives in the hands, permanently, indelibly, the hands knowing what they did tonight and what they have done ten thousand nights, the reaching and the finding and the turning and the pulling and the bringing-into-the-world.

He dries his hands. He goes to the bedroom. Renee is asleep. He lies down beside her. The clock reads 3:28 AM. The alarm is set for 4:30. He has one hour and two minutes before the day begins again, before the truck and the box and the roads and the parish and the practice resume, and the one hour and two minutes is the rest, the insufficient rest that the practice allows, the rest that is not enough but that is what there is, and the what-there-is is what Clem has accepted, has always accepted, the acceptance being the vocation's terms, the terms being: You will be called. You will go. You will do the work. You will return. You will rest for one hour and two minutes. You will begin again.

He closes his eyes. He sleeps. The parish sleeps around him, except for the animals and the river and the young man in the barn watching the calf and the calf standing on new legs in the straw and the heifer standing over the calf and the standing being the thing, the standing being the first act of the life that Clem's hands delivered from the dark into the light, from the inside to the outside, from the stuck to the free.

The parish sleeps. The river moves. The levee holds. The calf breathes.