Forever Dead. Suzanne F. Kingsmill

where the country really began and the tree-clad cliffs of the Eardley Escarpment rose above the river valley, which once had been a shallow inland sea. But my thoughts blocked out the beauty of the land and I saw it only vaguely through my self-doubts. Twenty-five minutes later on the straight two-lane highway I crested a hilltop and the Ottawa River spilled across to the horizon, and for a precious moment my thoughts deserted me as I took in the sparkling water that beckoned me. Shortly after, I turned right onto a dirt road that weaved past several houses and then through an old farm gate into the valley that had been my home off and on all my life.

      At the crest of the hill I stopped the car, determined to get a grip on myself. It was my elixir after a long day’s work. Spread out at my feet were rolling fields planted with corn and hay, stretching to the escarpment, which swung up over my head. The barns stood at the end of the road by the cornfields. The old stone farmhouse where I had grown up, and where Ryan and his family now lived, was catching the late afternoon sun, rosy and warm. My little cabin lay out of sight, out behind the barns.

      I wheeled my car in past the farmhouse and pulled up in front of the dairy barn. Ryan’s car was parked there, although he usually parked in back near the entrance to his office. I got out as the hum of crickets, the heat of summer, the feeling of the dried earth, and the smell of manure and hay mingled in the air with my thoughts. As if they needed fertilizing, I thought sourly — there were enough of them already.

      I opened the heavy wooden door and walked into the darkness of the barn down a long narrow corridor, then through a second swinging door into the barn proper. Three lines of fifteen stalls ran the length of the barn and the cows were all in and ready for milking, their impatient lowing matching the full stretch of their udders.

      I caught sight of Ryan on the far side, hauling the milking equipment to a cow, the black snake-like tubes with the shiny vacuum cylinders looking like a modern-day Medusa.

      “Hiya. Where’s Mac?” I was amazed at how normal my voice sounded. My whole career was ready to whirl down the drain and here I was asking about Mac. I looked down the aisles for the tall, thin, rake-like figure of Macgregor with his mane of milk white hair. He’d run the farm since my parents had retired to Ottawa and France, but recently Ryan had been doing more.

      Ryan had the milking stool strapped around his waist so that when he stooped to collar the teats he had something to lean against and save his knees. I watched as he pulled on the long black tubes and expertly hooked the milking unit onto the cow’s udder. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel comfortable with this vacuum pump stuff. I’m always afraid I’ll suck off the cows’ teats when I do it. Being a woman, it kind of makes my skin crawl to see those teatcups clamped down like that. The whole thing was so different from when I was a kid and my parents had hand-milked the cows. I sometimes missed the sweet warmth of the cow against my shoulder and cheek, the pull of the teats, the spray of the milk. When I had finally learned how to do it, the milking had been mesmerizing and strangely relaxing: sitting on a wooden stool about where Ryan was now, my head leaning against the cow, eyes shut, the milk rhythmically splashing into the bucket. That gentle noise was now replaced by the hum of vacuum suction. I looked at the cows and felt sorry that none of them had ever felt a human hand-milking them.

      “Where’s Mac?” I asked again.

      “He’s got some kind of flu bug again.”

      Mac had seemed less vital recently and I realized with alarm that he must be pushing seventy-five. What would we do without him? Ryan couldn’t run the operation on his own. He was too often away on business, and Rose, his wife, had two preschoolers to care for. The thought left me cold, yet life is defined by death. If we lived forever, life could not be the same. Death gave it meaning, where immortality could not. Death made it leaner, meaner, infinitely more exciting, because every second was precious. God. Even eternity was weighing on me today. Where the hell did these thoughts come from?