Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

( —_ very hard. They saved money. Chickens and eggs went to | market every week; cherries brought good money in summer; _ there was always enough corn for the hens, and enough hay for the cows and calves, and plenty over. Whenever a new calf came she cried a little. The mournful tender glassiness of a cow’s big eyes after birth was something she could not bear. She liked to lift the soft wet heads of the new calves and hold them in her arms. She liked the smell of milk on their faces, and the gluey suck of their mouths if she fed them from the bucket. After they had been married twenty-five years, she stood one morning in the small cowshed at the back of the house and __ watched a calf die in her arms. It was a red heifer calf, and she | began to cry bitterly. The calf had been dropped in the meadow ~ the previous afternoon, prematurely, while she and Mortimer were at market. A cold wet wind with hail in it was blowing _ from the west. The calf could not stand on its feet by the time she and Mortimer found it, and there was a drift of wet hail along _ the side of its body. She went on to grieve about the calf. The death of the calf became a personal thing. She found she could not sleep at night. She bit the edges of the pillow so that she could lie and cry without a sound. After a time there was a continuous pain in her chest; a great bony bolt that shot across her throat and made it difficult to swallow. At the same time she began to despise herself. ‘‘ Don’t come mear me. I’m no good to you. You should have found someone else, not me. What have I done for you? What good have I ever been? ” “ Don’t say that. Don’t talk like that,’’ Mortimer said. ‘‘ You’re not well. You’re not yourself. I’m going to get the doctor to look at you.”’ The doctor spent a long time with her in the bedroom, alone, sitting on the edge of the bed, asking questions. She stared at him most of the time with pallid, boring eyes. After a time, he went downstairs, and gave Mortimer a pipe of tobacco, and walked about the yard, among the crying geese, and talked to him. ‘““ All she can talk about is how she’s been no good to me,” Joe said. “ How I’m not to go near her. How she hates herself. How she’s been a failure all the time.”’ The doctor did not answer; the geese cried and squawked among the barns. “Neither one of us is sleeping well,’ Joe said. “I can’t put up with it. I can’t stand it much longer.” ‘“* Was there something that began it?” comichooks.com 5