Gotten Good

The sun rises golden over a modest dairy farm somewhere in the American countryside. Down from the rays is a modest house and small barn. Down, down to the grass and through the barn door there is a ruckus, and over the air we hear the voice of a young woman…

“When I was ‘lil whenever I heard someone say ‘life got em down’ I always figured it was strangers that did it to ‘em. But now that I’ve been through it, I know that’s not it. It’s them closest to you that get ya. It’s yer neighbors, yer boyfriends, friends, family…”

We hear the swish of jeans—little legs are making their way through the barn, rushed. Small hands grip a bucket handle. The silver bucket is spilling milk. The bucket is abandoned. Tennis shoes and milk-prints stick in hay. We realize the footprints belong to Abby, twelve, not as grown-up as we might have suspected, overalls and a curious head now peaking around a washed up barn-board.

The voice returns. We suspect it’s Abby, but she’s not speaking…yet.

“That’s what happens ‘cause ya trust ’em, trust 'em enough to let ‘em in. And then they get ya. That’s what happened to me—I wasn’t watching my back, didn’t think I needed to—why would ya ever with your own Ma? Your brother...your Pa?”

In the driveway, we now see what has captured her attention. A sleek-looking car arrives. And there to greet the newcomers is Pa, a tall, but gangling farmer, trying his best to look otherwise, face-shaded and steadfast against morning, no more than forty.

“But they crept in there, then twisted the way they always do—then poked ya, poked ya good. And here I am down with the rest of 'em. It sounds real bad. Looks real bad too. But really I’m just older. That’s what it means I guess to be older— means you’ve been gotten, gotten good.”

Two men in all white suits like painters emerge from the vehicle. The discussion is tense, but we can't hear it...

Abby strains to get a glimpse of something now being taken from the trunk. What are they saying? A cow moos. It’s daisy, heart-shaped locket around her neck. Abby’d given it to her when she was just a calf.

“Shhh! Daisy quiet!”

Papers are exchanged. Pointing at the barn!

Abby hides. The sun shines through the barn-boards. Is it safe to look? Another peek...but the car is gone...

***

That night at dinner, Abby twiddles with her fork, but really she is twiddling with something else. Twiddling with the idea of what to say, if anything. The table is fully set, but the food is yet to be served. No one speaks, sat waiting as Ma, traditional and unassuming, brings the last tray around to the table.

Abby’s brother, Jack, the youngest at six, reaches quickly for a piece of bread.

“Jack…” Ma scolds.

They pass the food around systematically, clockwise, carefully, politely. When the trays return to their original positions, Pa checks around the table then initiates a sheepish sign of the cross which sets off three more little signs of the crosses around the table.

“Bless this food, bless our bodies. May our bodies receive you and your blessed food. Amen.”

“Amen,” they chorus.

The sound of chewing and clinking holds the room for several moments. We aren't sure if this is all that the night holds, or if this is what every night holds.

Finally Abby puts her fork down, slowly as if she might not be able to pick it up again once set down, “Pa? Who were those men?”

Ma stops chewing, interested. Perhaps she didn't know about the visit.

Pa, brushing it off, “They are going to help us make the cows healthier.”

“The monitors came?” Ma tried secretly.

Pa motions to quiet the conversation with his wife. She drops her eyes and resumes eating. It is difficult to tell if this is obedience or repressed irritation.

“The cows are sick?” Jack pipes in, half-involved. 
 “No. They just need their nutrition...like you. Eat your carrots.”

***

The next morning, Pa unloads large white bags of feed into the barn. They look to Abby like large marshmallows. But she doesn’t tell Pa about their looking like marshmallows.

So bag after bag, Abby pours the new feed into the machine, bag and bag until at the ninth or possibly tenth, tenth or possibly eleventh bag, she drops the bag and screams. She wasn’t usually one to scream at things like worms or maggots, but under the circumstances, white creeping and sneaky burrowing, the reaction is visceral, guttural…pure.

Arms raised and still shouting, she caught his attention.

“The feed! The feed—” was all she can breathe over and over.

Pa's running back to the barn. But when he arrives at the spilled bag and spinning turbine, the scene is less dramatic than we remember. The bag is lain on the concrete looking very small, and the feed that has spilled out rather insignificant.

“Maggots,” Abby manages, but she feels silly now.

Pa sifts through the feed, an archeologist in search of bone or other treasures. But somehow, as we already know it will, his hand comes up clean. Pa checks the whole bag. Nothing.

“But I—”

Then she has a terrible memory: An ant. Giving cracker to the ant one day and the next taking it away. Giving it, taking it...giving and taking until the rest of the colony realizes you’re a liar. You're a liar and the colony finally orders your ant execution.

***

The next few days Abby is removed from feed duty, but she makes it a point to visit Daisy and the other cows in the barn, playing their favorite cow games especially “I moo-ve, you moo-ve.” But it wasn’t long before their cow games turn sour.

After only a few short days after the feed fiasco, Abby was quick to notice the cows' bad behavior, even very good cows like Daisy that never lifted so much as a hoof to her, now stumbled aggressively and even worked themselves into a frenzy at such time when it became clear they might loose.

At dinner Abby could have expected Pa’s reaction, she could have guessed who he would suspect was the real trouble-maker, but she forgot to leave incaution carefully behind.

“Pa, the cows don’t like their new food.”

“They like it jest fine.”

“How do you know?” Jack, eager, could’ve been asking either family member, gripped by cow preferences, or just in finding value where it was offered.

“They don’t smile anymore,” Abby shared.

“Do I have to tell ya?” Ma pointed to their plates still full of peas.

But sunrise and sunset Abby would grow as unsmiling as Daisy. And one particular sunrise as Abby is walking passed the barn she hears a squeal. A squeal!

In through the barn doors--swish, swish--the familiar sight of rushed overalls. But her heart beats the loudest, louder, louder, in sync with her running footsteps--crushing hay. One cow, another, the line of cows, one cow after the next. Somehow we know where she is going.

“Daisy!”

Abby takes one look: Her eyes, mad, wide and ravaged. This is not the cow she knows: Daisy has been transformed! Inside and out.

Her eyes drift. And there in the corner of the barn is the feed: a pile of soft, chewy confection stacked in equal rows. We know what to do.

Quickly now! Marshmallow after marshmallow little Abby hands dump feed onto the concrete. Do we dare to check for maggots? How many have we dumped? But before counting, before daring to look, Pa has arrived, he holds her by the waist, furious, concerned. He squeezes.

No! We won’t go.

“Daisy!” Tears are blurring feed with concrete, concrete with cow.

***

“Doctor Constance wants you to take these.” Pa puts two white pills, her new medicine, on her plate at dinner.

“But I’m not sick,” Abby protests.

“But you don’t always have to be sick to take somethin.’”

“Kinda like vitamins,” Ma chimes in.

“Yer trust me dontcha?”

Abby stares at the pills and then at her family. Her eyes are wide with indecision.

“Problem was I did. But I don’t think those vitamins did what they was supposed to do. ‘Cause after that I stopped playin’. The first few days I didn’t really feel nothin’ But after awhile it was the nothin’ I felt the most of all. Just nothin and nothin’ like I wasn’t hardly there or that nothin’ at least was all ‘round me. I was like hay or somethin’—jest feed or grass to be stomped ’n eaten or blown away.”

***

“It’s the new regulations…” Pa is trying to re-assure Ma, but it isn’t working.

“How can you be sure it’s safe?” Ma tries to whisper, but she’s too exasperated. “I git it for the other farms…but for dairy?”

“…they must think…I don’t know. I don’t know the science--”

“If we loose any…If we loose her…”

“Shhh…”

“Abby won’t be able to take it…”

***

The morning brings harsh punishment. Abby is put on her best behavior, milking the cows without so much as a glance toward the marshmallow bags or inquiry of the cows’ latest sensitivities and feelings, the black car returns. The sleek wheels and shiny wax are rolling right up into the driveway as if part of procession.

Pa shakes the hands of the white-suit men. It is not long before Abby is ushered out of the barn.

“Go help yer mother. In the house. Go on.”

The men follow Pa into the barn. Puffy white—in fact they are all marshmallows.

The barn door slides closed. Swish, swish—‘round to the side of the barn. It’s much harder to see in then see out. It is so dark and they are just shadows now.

Pa unbolts Daisy’s panel. The men take something from a medical kit. What is it? A needle!

“No! Daisy, No!”

It’s too late. She’s been stuck.

Slam! The barn door. Swish, swish…into the field. Clouds by and by rush. Footprints in hay're crushed—but not fast enough. A little stumble…and two puffy arms claim her and tell her ‘hush.’

***

Abby wakes in her bed. How long had she been there? An empty plate sits on her night table. Oh no—what had she eaten? And beside it…a glass of water. What had she taken? Her eyes flutter out…dark, perhaps into sleep or perhaps passing out.

The next morning or maybe, several mornings next, Ma brings in a new tray full of food.

“Thank you,” Abby smiles and takes her pills with ease.

An old cowboy film plays in the background, it’s just ending.

Later the sun begins to set out her own window and she falls into another sleep, but before long, her eyes flutter open again.

Tip-toe, tip-toe…down the stairs. The wind blows billows her nightgown, but the clouds are missing…it’s a chilly night.

Could she be going anywhere else? ‘Round barn boards and across the wet grass almost turned to mud, she makes her way into the barn.

“Daisy…” she whispers. Where is her locket? “Wake up.”

But of course the cow is very sleepy herself.

The barn lock has gone missing, or perhaps someone has forgotten to put it on, or maybe it was never there.

So by cow-leash, Abby takes her. Out the barn, across the fields, passed the road and into the sunset we ride.

“I heard sometime later—a few days, or maybe years later—those white suit men came n got ‘em. Rounded up Pa and Ma and even Jack…n’ made ‘em take their shots and eat their special food too. But not me n’ daisy. Out here nobody’s gunna git us.”