Farm Hand
Eve Marx
Word Count 713
In college, I met a blond, blue-eyed, guitar-strumming fellow student who grew up on a working farm. We’d been together six months when he invited me to Sunday Dinner, which punctually began at 1 o’clock. He said we would be staying over for the night so I could meet his parents and admire the property he would one day inherit. It was implied that were we to stay together, I’d be a farmer’s wife. I had no plans to be anybody’s wife and thought that was obvious.
I was gobsmacked by the physical splendor of the family place, situated on a significant elevation poised above the Delaware River. A charming century-old stone-faced farmhouse was the first thing I saw; a short distance up a rolling hill stood an imposing red barn and a view of a lush, emerald-green meadow dotted with grazing ewes and lambs. The property climbed upwards to 20 or so acres of cultivated land planted with corn and soybeans. Two large fields were dedicated to growing hay. The rest of the eighty-acre property was forested with oak, hickory, beech, ash and elm trees.
Halfway through the beautifully prepared meal featuring a butterflied leg of lamb, I became uncomfortably aware of my boyfriend’s father staring at my forearms. His intense gaze at this exposed portion of my body was unsettling. When the meal was over, and I began helping out by clearing plates, my boyfriend pulled me aside and told me his dad had a different job for me and would be knocking on my bedroom door that night.
His words were worrisome.
Why was your dad staring at my arms? I blurted.
He looked embarrassed.
He says they’re the ideal size to help him out with a ewe. It’s lambing season. Your arm is just the right size if one gets stuck.
Shortly before midnight, there were two hard raps on the guestroom door. I quickly pulled on clothes and followed this man, who had barely spoken two words to me, out to the barn. The herd was inside, milling around. In a corner, one ewe lay on her side panting. Her eyes looked wild.
She’s in trouble, the farmer said. Let’s try to get the baby out without killing her.
He brought over a bucket of hot, soapy water and a towel to wash my arm. After it was clean, he painted it with betadine solution to sterilize it. Next, he slipped a disposable veterinary OB sleeve over my hand, rolled it up to my elbow and applied a gloppy gel. He nodded for me to approach the ewe, who was now standing up and bleating loudly. She smelled foul and was surprisingly large. The farmer spoke soothingly to her. The barn was dark, but he had a battery-powered lantern to light my way. At his direction, I anxiously pushed my hand inside her, not as far as my elbow but what felt awfully deep.
I feel feet, I said.
The farmer grunted in assent.
The live ones are born front feet first, he said.
The ewe shuddered and gave out a great groan, and the force of the thing inside her pushed itself and my arm out of her body. The newborn, still encased in its birth sac, fell to the straw. The farmer tore the sac open and cleared the animal’s mouth. Its impossibly spindly legs thrashed a bit, and then it began breathing, and after a minute or two, he severed the umbilical cord.
Afterwards, I sat on a bale of hay, watching the ewe lick her baby until it stood up and butted its tiny head against her in search of a teat. The farmer tossed down fresh straw and gave the mother a restorative hot mash. He still said nothing to me when we’d returned to the farmhouse and took turns washing up at the kitchen sink.
In the morning, at breakfast, no one mentioned the night’s events, and it occurred to me that it wasn’t worth mentioning because it was all in a day’s (or night’s) farm work. I’d been brought to the farm and put to the test to see if I could handle the job. It turned out it wasn’t the job for me, but I’m still proud of my performance.
Eve is a journalist and author currently scraping out a tiny living crafting police reports for newspapers in New York and Oregon. She is the author of What’s Your Sexual IQ?, The Goddess Orgasm, 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Sex and other titles bearing some relation to her stint editing Penthouse Forum and other ribald publications. She makes her home in a rural seaside community near Portland, OR with her husband, R.J. Marx, a jazz saxophonist, and Lucy, their dog child.
