Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky Page A

starts with S. Now we need another S -word for her baby daughter.”
    â€œSuperman,” he shrieked, jumping up and down.
    â€œIt’s an S -word, all right, but is it a good name for a girl?”
    And then he thought of Sugarplum, because it had been near Christmas, and she’d read him about visions of sugarplums, not that he knew what a sugarplum was.
    Nanny had this bitchy attitude toward the cows because when Mom took off Dad planned to sell the herd. He’d turned against the cows, probably because Mom loved them, and he caused mastitis in a lot of the herd by his rough handling of the milking machine—information Robbie got from outsiders, at 4-H or the farmers’ market.
    â€œYou’re the one who made us keep those cows, Robbie,” he could hear his grandmother saying. “You’re the one who can name them.”
    It didn’t make sense, but there never had been anyone Robbie could discuss it with to try to make sense of it. Nanny made it sound dire, as if naming the cows was like mucking out the milking shed, so that the pleasure he’d had with his mother in thinking up names had disappeared.
    He reckoned in six years he had named over a hundred cows. He was running out of ideas and was starting to reuse names from cows who had died, starting to hate the whole routine. Only the unspoken knowledge that his grandmother would feel triumphant if he stopped naming the animals kept him going to lists of wildflowers and colors, even turning to foreign languages, to come up with new ideas.
    He slapped the last of his cows on the side and urged her out the shed door. Dale had finished already and was bringing in the water hoses to swab out the pit below the milking stands. Robbie disconnected his milk lines and took them out to the washroom with his milking jars and teat cups.
    It was still dark, but it was almost always dark for the morning milking. They started at five, finished around six-thirty, and this time of year the eastern sky was barely turning gray even when they finished.
    He hurried to the washroom and dumped the equipment into the sink at the corner. Dale would disinfect it and set it out ready for the evening milking.
    The light was on in the kitchen. Nanny would have breakfast ready. He mustn’t dawdle, but he still took a chance and ran over to the new enclosure, where Soapweed’s new calf stood in a lonely state. She was bawling, longing for company, for her mother, for food. She was only four weeks old.
    Robbie hated that part of dairy farming. It was cruel to take babies from their mothers. The other calves didn’t fare much better than Soapweed’s calf, being pinned next to little sheds outside the main barn. Working cows couldn’t be sharing their milk with their own offspring. It all had to go to the farm. At least the other new calves were outdoors. They all could see the sun and each other.
    Soapweed had cried for forty-eight hours straight when Serise was taken from her. And poor Serise, she was in this god-awful— sorry, Jesus, but it is —pen, no sunlight for her, no friends. Robbie undid the lock and went in to pet her.
    â€œKing Jesus, He moves the mountains,” he crooned, rubbing her nubby red head.
    The cow nuzzled him and tried to suck his fingers. He smelled of milk. He had it on his clothes. She wanted to nurse so badly it hurt him.
    â€œYour bucket of ultrapure is coming soon, girl, don’t you worry. And when you’re rich and famous, don’t forget who looked after you, either, you hear?”
    â€œHey, Robbie!”
    Robbie jumped, but it was just Dale, who added, “You know Arnie don’t like you in here. And I seed your Nanny looking out the kitchen window for you. Maybe you’d better go on inside.”

Ten
THE RED HEIFER
    â€œW HAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?” Myra asked. “I saw Dale cleaning out the jars before you showed your head.”
    â€œYes, Nanny,” Robbie said.