The Dairy Man’s Boys

- by Sarah Christine Bolton

Montana falls always turned cold so quickly. It was almost as if the powerful winter that would hold the world captive for seven months didn’t want fall to even have a chance. I remember it was cold, really cold, that fall day when we were invited to the Anderson’s dairy farm for a chili dinner. I didn’t want to go. I would have much rather stayed at home, reading in my bedroom on the window seat, with the heater blowing up hot air onto my legs.

But here we were, driving and driving. Their small dairy farm was far out of town, after the asphalt ended, after the nice gravel roads ended, after the gravel roads ended, and when the muddy dirt roads started.

Mrs. Anderson came out to meet us when we drove up, barely taller than her youngest boy. She gathered all three of them around her, in their flannel shirts and jeans and muddy boots. They stood, tallest to shortest, and smiled politely while they met my parents, smiled shyly at my brother and I. After the adults had moved inside, away from the cold, we stood in silence, kicking mud clods. The middle brother kicked one hard enough to thud against the leg of the youngest.

“Hey!” he said sharply. He reached down with his hand and picked up a handful of crusty mud. The middle brother was too quick and jumped out of the way, laughing.

“Guys, knock it off,” the tallest one said. “I’m Ian.” He said the last part to me and my brother quickly, as if he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

“I’m Christine,” I said, pointing to my chest and then quickly dropping my hand. “My brother is Marc.” My brother lifted his hand in a half-hearted hello.

“This is Isaac, and this is Isaiah,” Ian said, pointing to the middle boy and then the youngest.

I nodded, wondering how they kept all those names straight. I hoped I wouldn’t forget, especially not Ian’s. I liked the name Ian. It was so very modern, so not Montana. And did he have green eyes? I made eye contact with him the next time he looked my way. He did. And then suddenly, I was blushing furiously. I felt like he had to know what I was thinking.

“Hey, you guys want us to show you around?” he asked. I looked at my brother. He shrugged.

“Yeah,” I answered.

Ian led us around the side of the barn. Several apple trees were weighted down with fruit. Rotten apples were littered on the ground, in varying degrees of decomposition.

“Watch this,” Ian said, picking one up and tossing it in his hand. He reached his arm back behind his shoulder and slung it forward. The apple hit the side of the barn and exploded with a satisfying pop. My brother whooped and bent down to gather a handful. I stood back a few steps.

“Um, should we be doing this?” I said. My motherly concerns did little to stop the energy that had been put into motion.

“Oh yeah,” Isaac yelled as an extra squishy one plopped against the barn, exploding juices in a slow brown stain.

I picked one up. It felt heavy, condensed, almost as if filled with a lead center. I tossed it up and down a few times, just feeling the weight of it. And then, suddenly, like an impulse, I threw it hard against the barn. The bursting sound was amazing.

“You throw like a girl,” my brother said. I glared at him.

“Whatever,” I said back. I waited until Ian had turned my direction before I hurled another apple. He gave me a little nod.

After a while, we got bored and moved on.

“Have you guys played stick tag?” Isaac asked. I shook my head.

“It’s easy,” Ian said. He reached down and picked up two sticks. I looked around for sticks, and ended up pulling two thin branches off a nearby tree.

“Okay, go!” Ian shouted and all three Anderson boys scattered in different directions. My brother and I stood still for a second, and then ran after Ian.

“How do you tag people out?” my brother yelled.

“Two sticks have to touch their shoulder for them to be out!” The shout came from Ian as he was running down the hill. He slammed his hand against the rubber tire swing hanging from the tree above the house. Behind him it swung wildly in jerky arcs.

“Why two?” my brother called, stopping right in front of me. I felt his back, sweaty, when I put out my hand to stop myself. Ian turned and trudged toward us.

“Because two makes it more difficult,” he said. Knock, knock - his boots against the frozen ground.

I didn’t see any difficulty in running around and hitting people with sticks but I was a girl. I knew girls were smarter than boys.

“You know, you have to use two hands, so you can’t steady yourself.” He demonstrated. In the fading light, his cheekbones were spotted with red cold spots like tiny veins.

Far away, his two brothers battled with each other. I could see their breaths shoot out from their mouths and float above their heads. It took them a few minutes to realize the game was on timeout.

Once we had decided on the exact rules of the game, we scattered away from each other again, counting to ten and finding our own fighting ground. I went across the driveway and around the front of the milking barn. Through the streaked windows, I could see shadows and shapes moving. The cows. Probably chewing their dinner of alfalfa, producing for the morning’s milking. I slowed down as I reached the back of the barn where a sludge pool, long and rectangular, extended out from the back. The water was dark and greasy. Soggy chunks of manure clung to the rim, the edges, piled into the water. At it’s deepest point, I couldn’t see the bottom, only murk and filth. I shuddered, and stepped back. I wondered if someone could drown in there, choking on sewage. It was horrible.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed my shoulder and pushed me forward. I fell to my knees, and screamed, piercing the air. Before my scream died, I heard my brother’s laugh as his hand left my shoulder.

“Chicken,” he said. I turned around, jumping to my feet.

“You idiot!” I screamed at him, while he scurried backward. “You punk!” I pitched my sticks at him as hard as I could, but he side-jumped out of the way, still laughing.

“You are a chicken, you are a chicken,” he said, running back to the barn. I wanted to cry, my heart still beating a million miles an hour. He was such a brat. I picked up my sticks.

The boys were all at the front of the barn. They had stopped playing when they heard my scream.

“You okay?” one of the younger boys asked. I nodded my head.

“What happened?” Ian said.

“He pretended like he was going to push me into the sludge pool,” I said. I pointed at my brother. Ian turned to him.

“That’s dangerous,” he said. “My dad says we shouldn’t go near it.” My brother scuffed his foot on the ground, his mouth hard. I stared at Ian. He sideways glanced at me, just for a second. I wanted to thank him for defending me, but instead I just stared at him, at the spider veins of cold red color on his cheeks and nose. I wanted to reach out and touch his face.

“It’s cold out here,” I said, half-heartedly. I didn’t want him to think I noticed his face.

“We could go in the hay barn,” he said. My brother grunted acknowledgement. The other two boys looked at each other, and dashed off, pushing and shoving. Ian and I followed, while my brother trailed behind. He was still sulking.

“I think my stick is too long,” I said, lifting it up to show Ian.

“Break it in half,” he said. I stopped walking and tried to snap it. It was green and stiff. It wouldn’t break.

“Let me show you how,” he grasped the stick, his hands covering mine where they held on. I suddenly noticed that I was taller than him, almost a full head taller. I rolled my shoulders down a bit. “Now, you just give it a quick snap…” The stick snapped into two pieces.

I looked down at the two short sticks in my hand. Now, they were useless, too short to do any good. I didn’t care. I threw them aside.

“I’ll get another one,” I said, waving my hand carelessly in front of my face.

He shrugged, and started walking toward the barn again. I rolled my shoulders down even lower and caught up with him.

Inside the barn, it was warmer. Not very much warmer, maybe not even warmer at all, but it felt like it should be warmer. Hay was stacked almost to the ceiling, muffling the sound of our feet on the concrete floor. Here and there, a missing bale made a hole in the stacks. One grunting hoist up, a scramble of hands on the loose hay, and suddenly, we were in a new place. Inside the hay stacks, tunnels and rooms existed.

“This might not be safe,” I called to the boys. I waited on my hands and knees. But my voice was lost. All I could do was keep up with them, follow the sounds of their knees shuffling forward.

Finally, I caught up with them as the narrow tunnel opened up into a hay room, deep in the center of the stack.

I scooted in. Ian was to my right. Close to me. Our shoulders touched. Even through my winter coat, I shivered with the touch. I wondered if he noticed. My quick sideways glance told me he wasn’t showing it if he did.

“So, we could always move the game into here,” he was saying. His voice sounded bigger, deeper in the hay cave.

“It might be hard to move around,” the middle brother, Isaac said. “Quick, I mean. Hard to move quick.”

“So?” Ian said. “It would make it more interesting.”

“I think it would be cool to play it in here,” I said. My voice surprised me; it sounded so different than outside.

My brother was pulling loose pieces of hay from the ceiling above our heads.

“Stop.” I hissed at him. I glanced again at Ian. I didn’t want him to think I was a bossy older sister. He was examining his sticks, rolling them over and over in his hands.

“What if we made teams, and then had a hideout?” Ian said.

“There are five of us,” the younger brother said. “How can we make even teams?”

“The three of you against me and Christine,” Ian said, jerking his head towards me.

“Why three against two?” my brother asked.

“Christine’s a good player,” Ian answered, pushing himself up to standing. I pulled up to stand beside him. My face burned with embarrassment over his off-handed compliment.

When it got too dark to see our hands in front of us in the hay tunnels, we slid out onto the concrete floor of the barn. Our hair and shirts stuck with hay. Just as we pushed open the tall, wide doors into the cold, a sharp piercing whistle echoed off the barn walls.

“That’s my dad,” Ian said. “It’s probably time for dinner.” As soon as he said that, my stomach gurgled. I hadn’t realized how starving I was, out in the cold, running and running.

Their house was above the cow barn. Inside, it smelled like manure and old milk. I wondered if they had forgotten that it smelled that way or had simply accepted the smell as part of their life.

“You guys must be getting cold,” my mom said. She and my dad sat on the couch. Ian’s mom was just coming out of the kitchen.

“It’s not so bad,” I said, pulling my hat off my head. I quickly reached up to shake my hair from its smashed shape. In the light, I felt self-conscious.

Mr. Anderson stood up from his chair in the living room. He smiled shyly at us, his smile just like Ian’s, except his face was so tired and heavy.

“This is my dad,” Ian said. I smiled at him as I struggled to pull off my shoes.

“Did you check the barn door?” he asked Ian, quietly. Ian nodded.

“Yes, sir, it was secure,” he said. Mr. Anderson patted Ian on the shoulder.

“You guys hungry?” his mom asked. She pushed Mr. Anderson’s arm off Ian’s shoulder and pushed him towards the kitchen. “We already ate, but there’s lots leftover.” We all followed her into the kitchen, our socked feet sliding on the cheap linoleum. She dished out chili into flimsy plastic bowls, and stuck a slice of white bread deep into it. As I carefully joined the boys at the dining room table, the greasy red sauce from the chili started to seep upwards into the bread. I sat across from Ian, watching as the steam from his bowl flattened his hair onto his forehead. I picked up my spoon and dug out a heavy heap of beans and meat. The beans were hard. They hadn’t been cooked all the way through.

We were all silent at the table. The boys because they were too busy eating to talk. And I was silent because in the light, with our parents just around the corner, I felt awkward talking to Ian. Outside, in the twilight and the cold, we could talk and even touch, and it wasn’t strange. But in here, suddenly we were back to being a boy and a girl, on the edge of adulthood.

We left not too long after dinner, almost abruptly. I don‘t even remember saying goodbye to Ian. As we drove away, the darkness on the country roads pressing in against my window, I watched the lights of the barn until they disappeared into the black.

The next day, my mom got a phone call from Mrs. Anderson.

“You threw apples against their barn?” My mom was livid. “Whose idea was that?”

“The boys started it,” I said.

“Well, why didn’t you stop them?” she said. I didn’t say anything. Telling her I tried wouldn’t matter since I had ultimately joined in the scandalous behavior. Later, we had to call Mrs. Anderson and apologize. Her soft voice forgave us, and suddenly, I felt guilty. I should have stopped the boys. I had been swept away by them, so much younger and less mature than I was. Something changed in me that day and I secretly vowed to never let it happen again.

Months after our visit to the Anderson’s farm, my mom and I were shopping at the local food co-op. All I cared about was being able to buy a Popsicle. It was summertime and even inside the store, the air was hot. Probably something about organics and energy conservation.

“Well, hello, how are you?” my mom said. I turned around. It was Mrs. Anderson. They hugged, gently.

“How are you Christine?” she asked me.

“I’m good,” I said, rocking side to side on my feet.

“You’ve really grown since the last time I saw you,” she said. I nodded, ducking my head with embarrassment. I had grown, taller and bigger and I felt huge next to her. I was glad the boys weren’t there.

“So, you guys are busy this summer?” my mom asked. “How are the boys?”

I absently picked up packages of nut mix, pretending not to listen.

“Ian’s doing well, about to start junior high school,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I tried to get him involved in the play at the Arts Center, but he wasn’t interested.” She turned toward me. “I heard you were in that play, Christine.”

I nodded. “It’s fun,” I said. I wouldn’t let myself ask about Ian.

“Cathy Sullivan was telling me that her son and Christine are playing the married couple in the play,” Mrs. Anderson said, turning to my mom again.

“Isn’t that a crack up?” my mom said. “They’re still so young, of course, but who knows? Maybe someday we’ll all be in-laws.” They laughed. I looked up at my mom quickly. Her smile was crooked, like when she thinks she is being sly. I wondered if she completely forgot I was standing right there. I blushed, just thinking about what she’d said. And then, I wondered if Ian had grown, too. If he was as tall as I was, or maybe, I hoped, even taller.

Two years later, I heard from someone that had known the Andersons that their farm had folded and there had been a messy divorce. I wondered what happened to all their cows, to the tire swing, to the sludge pool. Was it still there, still silent in its depth? It would be in my dreams sometimes, deep and dark.

I sometimes thought about Ian. His deep green eyes, the way he belonged to that dairy farm. I wondered how he would find himself out in the world. Would he follow in his father’s footsteps and raise dairy cows and sturdy young boys with green eyes? A part of me knew he wouldn’t, that his life had probably changed completely when his parents decided to give up their marriage. But another part of me wished he was still at that dairy farm, still flushed from the cold, his strong hands breaking hay into the feed pans for his cows, and maybe still just a little bit shorter than me.

Sarah Christine Bolton is a self-diagnosed coffee-aholic who also loves to play tennis, cook strange foods, audition (badly) for musicals, and play gin rummy with her husband. She is now a freelance writer and photographer, but other career explorations have included dance instructor, pianist, script writer, and barista. She is originally from California and Montana and misses both the ocean and the mountains.