Blood Fugues

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Kenny had the soft, delicate looks of his mother, a girl whose grandparents came to America from the severity of rural Ireland to the harshness of New York City in the 1890s from Roscommon, family lore said.

The summer had gone well. He arrived at the beginning of July and fell once again into the six-day routine of rising at five o'clock in the morning to help Gabriel with milking, tending to sterilizing the teats of the sixty milking cows, mixing the solution of iodine and scrubbing the long nipples gently, and then flushing, with a similar solution, the pipes that carried their milk to the tanks for eventual transportation in the tanker trucks from Cloverleaf manufacturing dairy. There, the thick raw milk was pasteurized and converted into the different products that appeared in the dairy sections of the state's stores, the abstract Shamrock of its logo an even greater obscuring of the cattle ownership that centuries before determined wealth and position in Ireland but that meant little to its present investors. By five-thirty in the morning they had placed eight cows into the milking stalls and fifteen minutes later they were done, had swabbed the cows' teats again, a precaution against infection and contamination. The cows were returned to the corral and the open bales of hay that had been scattered there. Eight more cows were then ushered into the milking stalls, the routine repeated until they were done. If it rained the hay was left in covered pens and the cows gathered there, the pungent smell of their waste filling the air to mix with the smell of the rain. Each shift took approximately fifteen minutes, with the milking taking eight to ten minutes and the rest of the time spent in preparation and cleanup.

Seven times eight was fifty-six and then four more and they were done by eight o'clock and came in to eat a breakfast of sausage and eggs and fruit juice, and pancakes or French toast and cold milk and if you wanted, coffee, which he liked. His appetite was prodigious. It was not unusual for him to have fruit juice, three eggs, six pieces of sausage, four pancakes or French toast, and a quart of cold milk. The mornings were cold even in midsummer, the air dry and fragrant with the smell of the grass in the fields as if the evaporating dew carried with it the aroma. When he was done he saddled a horse and began herding the milking cows out into the fenced pasture, which extended a half mile to the edge of the woods and had a brook running through it where the cows gathered to drink. The bulls remained in another pasture that the old man, Henri Brunet, called their den.

When Kenny returned to the farmhouse he helped the other boy feed the calves, heifers and the ten dry cows. He liked tending to the cows and felt as if he were doing something of importance because milk helped people to be healthy. He recalled his mother breast-feeding his sister and wanting to know how her milk tasted. He was three years old and she removed Peggy from her breast. Pressing her nipple she collected a bit of the thin, yellowish milk and placed it on his lips. He had tasted it but was not drawn to it even though he'd been breast-fed until he was nearly eighteen months. This information was provided by relatives. He had no memory of tasting his mother's milk.

Counting the sixty milking cows, the two bulls, the ten dry cows, sixteen calves and nine heifers there were ninety-seven cattle on the Brunet farm. There were also four goats, which roamed about in their pen and were permitted grazing in an enclosed area. There were also three horses, two mules and a small, elderly donkey that brayed in his sleep, often tottering as he stood. There were countless laying hens, rabbits, some pigs, including a pregnant sow, a flock of turkeys that gobbled constantly as if they were laughing at their eventual fate, and ducks that waddled down to the stream below the farmhouse. Lastly there was a peacock and two peahens that were kept in a large wire cage and permitted to roam about the enclosed yard once a day for exercise, the pavonine carriage of the peacock offensive to the lesser fowl, which upon his entrance and display of his feathers immediately segregated themselves from the magnificent bird.

The farmhouse was large and comfortable with lots of bedrooms, a television room and in the basement a pool table. The barn was immense and had a hayloft into which he and Claudia Bachlichtner often climbed for privacy. He liked the smell of the barn with the aromas of the hay and the animals. The barn held the horses and the dry cows and it was where the heifers and calves were kept and protected. Beyond the barn there was a silo, and beyond it a curing house where the old man, following the tradition of the previous owners of the farm, the Vanderveers, prepared his hams and sausages.

Kenny often worried about the old man, who was frail and walked with difficulty. He also worried about his son, Gabriel Brunet. The son's only concern appeared to be the farm and the care of the animals, and keeping extensive charts of their well-being and production. Aided by itinerant workers and a veterinarian, he worked seven days a week from four in the morning when he rose until ten at night when he finally rested. Gabriel said he slept soundly those six hours, but at times it didn't seem as if he'd slept at all. Kenny knew that twice a year, during the springtime and fall, Gabriel Brunet traveled northward through the state and drove into Canada and east toward the Quebec of his ancestors. Gabriel remained there for a week, speaking French and eating . . .

Continues...

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Excerpted from Blood Fugues by Edgardo Vega Yunque Copyright © 2005 by Edgardo Vega Yunque.
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