TO WHERE THE LIGHT TOUCHES

To Where the Light Touches is a short story about a boy, a struggling farm, and a very lucky cow.

1

The day is unborn, but we are up, the heavy presence of my father beside me, muffling my hand with his own. The mud sloshes beneath our gum boots. It’s cold, bone-cold, the mud almost ice and the grass frosted over. When I breathe I can feel it in my lungs, like fingers down my throat.

It’s too early, my father tells me, it’s come too soon. And she’s bellowing into the early morning, somewhere in the distance. Our torches cut through the fog, twin beams, tangling between each other. I catch her in my light. The feet are out, two tiny black hooves.

Daddy, Daddy, I say, and I’m leaping through the puddles to her, and he’s behind me, calling my name into the day. The cow lets out a low sound as I reach her. She’s not happy I’m here.

It’s too soon, he says again, voice gruff, and my grubby hand reaches up to pat the cow’s side. She’s sweating, the sweat freezing over in the cold. It’s come too early. It won’t survive.

But he helps me anyway, and we guide her through the birth. The sun starts to rise and you can see her eyes in the soft morning light, big and black and round, long eyelashes flushing across her face as she blinks. She watches the day come. Her swollen stomach rises beneath my tiny palm.

It’s coming, I say excitedly, and Dad’s already behind her, easing the calf onto the ground. He bends over and flips the baby. He lets out a curse I probably shouldn’t have heard.

Of course it’s a bull, he mutters, standing, and the calf wriggles. It’s so small, slick with its own afterbirth, shuddering as air and light kisses its skin for the first time. The mother nudges it with her face. It lets out a small snort.

Oh Daddy, it’s so cute, I tell him, and I want to cuddle it but it’s still all new and wet. His hands are on my shoulders, heavy, covering all of me, and he says, it won’t live, son. Look at it. It’s too small. We should just end it quickly now.

No! I cry. I’ll look after it, I promise, and I’m crying a little bit. Please, Dad. I’ll look after it.

He stares at me for a while. I think I’ll remember his face in that moment forever – the morning light clinging to his beard, jaw tucked in, breath around his face, work coat hanging off his shoulders.

I’ll talk to your mother about it, he promises, and starts to walk off to the milking shed. I glance over my shoulder at the calf, shuddering in the cold. His mother nudges him again.

I don’t know what Dad said to Mum that day, but tomorrow morning my calf was out by the front porch, a red ribbon hanging limply around his neck.

I don’t remember smiling so hard in my entire life.

2

It’s spring now and my calf is no longer a calf. Age has changed his body but his eyes are still young. He’s not in a good mood today. We got rid of his reproductive organs yesterday, so that’s understandable.

I’m sorry, Gerry, but we had to, I tell him through the front entrance. I named him Gerry after my favourite book, Geronimo Stilton. He nudges against the flyscreen and Mum brushes past me.

Get the cow off the damn deck, she tells me, whacking a wooden spoon over my head. I giggle and slip out, tugging Gerry over and down into the yard. He’s allowed here – the other cows aren’t. But the other cows aren’t Gerry.

The others are in the distance, specks of white and black and tan along the horizon, all the spring calves fresh from the womb, the novelty of life springing in their small legs. I look at Gerry and I wonder if he sometimes feels left out.

He nuzzles my leg with his wet nose and I wrap my arms around his torso. He’s still small enough to hold. I can feel his heart beating through his whole body, and so I close my eyes and listen to it – soft and faraway.

3

I don’t sleep. I don’t sleep because of the yelling and I know I don’t sleep because I can see a wink of the sun just at the horizon and Dad will come to wake me soon.

But he doesn’t. It’s late now, too late, the sun high enough that I know we should be up by now, so I slip from my sheets, my feet padding against the wooden boards. I can hear myself walking, feel every toe against the floor, the slight draft from an open window as I pass through the living room.

I’m making my way to their bedroom when I see a shadow out on the porch, a man with a big coat and a headful of wiry grey hair, sitting silently and watching the morning come. I know it’s Dad. His big, leathery hands grip the side of the chair he’s on and his shoulders shake a little, and then I hear something I’ve never heard Dad do before.

I hear him crying.

4

I ask for a new bike this year, since my old one is rusted out and all the other kids at school have neat new models. Mum’s lips are tight but she tries for a smile anyway.

We’ll see what we can do, she says to me, and my father says nothing, staring out the back window and into the fields. I wonder what he’s thinking about. I feel like I never know what he’s thinking anymore.

We milk the cows tomorrow morning when the sun is only just scraping against the sky, and the world is soft and muted, all greys and blues. We usually have Mitch working on Fridays, to help out with the milking, but when I ask my father he just shakes his head and gets to work on a cow.

As we’re leaving the milking shed he puts his hands on my shoulders again, and I remember the morning Gerry was born, when I felt as if I was swallowed up by them. I’m bigger now. I feel stronger beneath his grip.

We had to let Mitch go, he tells me, and he doesn’t look at me. The farm isn’t doing so well.

And that’s all he says. Nothing else. We walk back to the house in silence where Mum is waiting for us with a cup of tea. I think of the night I saw him cry, and then I’m looking at Mum and I wonder if she cries, too, and suddenly I’m feeling very, very sick, so I excuse myself and go lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling.

I wake up on the first day of school and in the living room there’s a cherry-red bike waiting for me, bright and shiny in the morning light. It’s not brand new, Mum tells me, but Dad fixed it up himself. I try to look happy but all I can think of are Dad’s muddy old work boots and Mum’s fraying dresses and here I am with my stupid new bike and guilt gnawing at my insides.

5

We sell the farm when I go to high school. My parents tell me it’s about my education, but I know that it’s not, not really. We’re out of money. I don’t even know how we’ll find a place in the city.

I stand on the porch of the house I grew up on and I look out over the farm. The cows, the calves, the old shed by the back fence. And everything is still. It’s just before dawn, and I can feel it, the sun, the light about to bathe the world, like something tickling the base of my throat. Then there’s my father’s hands on my shoulders again. They feel light as a feather now.

I’m sorry, is all he says. And I know he means it. But as we shudder down the dirt road in the old truck I watch everything I know out through the back window, getting smaller and smaller, and I know I shouldn’t cry but I do. I cry silently, and then I see Gerry. He is the first thing touched by the light. It feels stupidly symbolic.

When I open my diary in our new house, I write, The End of All Days. Because it is. Sunrise will never be the same in this concrete tangle of short, frantic lives. That night I lie awake and I think of my calf – I think of him as he first was, all gangly legs, hair matted to his side with dried afterbirth. And I miss him so much it hurts.

I hear something from the other room. I wonder if my father is crying too.