The Quickening by Michelle Hoover

doesn’t want to break. There’s something precious in it, precious too in how close to sleep it seems. The light when it comes shows the richness of the soil under your feet. The cows are close with the scent of milk, their eyes dark and lush. We brought them in from the outdoor pens and lined them up, keeping our tongues except to whistle at the animals when needed. After steadying a cow in its catch, we straddled our stools and pulled the buckets between our legs. Frank worked as well as my brother did, though he didn’t know which of thecows had a temper or were slow to milk. He sat with his hat low on his head, his hands in an easy rhythm. He worked those cows as if he’d known them his whole life.
    I probably did the same. I’ve always had a way with animals, or so others have said. It’s sympathy, I guess. I take what I need. No more. No less. I treat them as creatures that know pain and stillness and the pleasure of a stomach when it’s full. Just the same as us. That morning at my brother’s place, I drew up my skirts to fit the bucket between my knees and pressed my forehead against the animal’s flank. I could feel her breathing, knew she was nervous by the way her ribs shuddered. Those cows smelled good and warm, the smell of hay and something sharp enough it makes your eyes water. Some might call it a stink, but that smell has always been home to me. It’s the same as the smell of my skirts after a good day’s work, the heat of my lap. As I milked, I talked to the animal hushed-like. Nonsense it was, but calming. My brother did the same. Then I heard it. Someone was humming. I’d worked in barns most of my life and never known such a sound.
    I turned my head and saw Frank. He pressed close to his cow, straining his neck so he could see me where he sat. He hummed as he worked, and the cow chewed at her hay without a twitch. That humming was low and clear. A song I didn’t know, but familiar all the same. Not calling attention to itself and quiet, barely more than whispering. That’s when, you see. You might not understand how your grandmother would go with a man who was little more than a stranger. You might think it was handy for us or that our families wished it. But really, it was the way that soundfilled a dark place and stayed with me for weeks. Even now I can hear it. A kind of brightness. And Frank, he seemed to think a woman with such a soft touch on an animal was worth watching. A woman who’d never lost a bucket, who didn’t mind the itch of a cow’s hide against her cheek. He seemed to think that was something. And I suppose it was.
    It was later that morning after breakfast that Frank shook my brother’s hand and brought me home in his wagon. The air was cooler that day as we went. It promised rain. When we turned onto the road where I’d always lived, it looked like a foreign place. The gravel beneath us lay rutted with wet. The grasses were a strange silvery green. This was the beginning, I thought. This shrinking of all I’d known, it promised a new life. The trees stirred and I stretched my limbs. The ground beneath our wagon leveled off. We stopped just far enough from the house so Frank could tie the horses, and there was my mother. She must have heard the jolt of the wagon wheels, for she stood in the yard out front, squinting under her hand.
    “Mother,” I called. “This is Frank.”
    “Well, now. Look at that,” she said. She studied him as he fed the horses. “Just wait for your father,” she said and turned back to the house. When she came out again, she held two glasses of lemonade. She pressed one into Frank’s open hand and stayed to watch him drink it. After that, she brought him a second glass and hurried us to the porch where my father waited.
    “Let him be,” he started before my mother got anotherword out. “Eddie isn’t the kind to sit in the kitchen and be still,” he said to Frank. He had already grown ill, my father, though we didn’t know it.