Red Tag
The old rancher’s chopped, buttery voice hummed as he told me my task for the day. “Tag the youngins’. Green tag’s good for breeding, yellow tag’s alright, and red for meat.” It was a simple task, yet it still made my heart ache.
There was eight calves in all. Three boys, five girls. He’d told me all the tricks to tell which one’s would be good but I can’t pick. I’m a rancher. Trying to be at least. I’ve shot deer and ran a knife between their skin and muscle. I’ve gutted pigs watching their entrails hit the ground like a clumsy child. I know violence and I know death. Meat cows make hamburgers and I can’t lie, I love me a good steak. I ain’t just a ranchin’ man; I’m a smart man so I know this I swear.
That still don’t stop my hands from trembling for each calf I walk up on. One with grayish white fur and big black eyes won’t stop staring right at me no matter where I go. Even when with the other calves his eyes track me like he knows. He knows he has his father’s strong muscle and lily white fur. He knows he’s safe but his sister gets sores easy and screams all day and all night. He watches me place a red tag on her ear, and for an animal that can’t see much color or feel much emotion I see his tiny heart break.
When I finally get to him he lets out a low moo of greeting as I reach him in the silver cage. “Yeah, yeah I know. I hate this too.” I look him over feeling the muscle in his legs and remembering how he’s the only calf to never get sick with nothing. I reach for a green tag but even in his knowing eyes, this don’t please him. “Chin up you lil’ thing you’re gonna live a long life of green pastures and lots and lots of babies.”
His moo echoes in the barn as I clip his ear and the more I shush him the more it ticks him off. When I’m done, I rub the top of his head which only ticks him off more. He tears his head back chomping down on my finger in the process. I swing back my hand into a fist on instinct. An instinct I never have and never will use. My hands fall to my side, my fingers shaking against my jeans.
When I was little my momma always said I couldn’t hurt a fly. She’d laugh when I said I wanted to own a ranch. “Now Riley you know ranchers kill things by trade.”
I’d always respond the same way, my boyish southern drawl sounding like chicken scratch personified into speech. “I know momma, but you gotta help it live first. That’s gon’ be my favorite part. Watching it grow up cause of me.”
I stare at him, the green tag bobbing up and down as he shudders his ear trying to wave it off and shake my head. “Your gonna live a long ass life and when your old and stubborn, your gonna drop dead.” I look over to the sister of his who was born on the same day from the same father. She has speckles of chestnut running up her legs and haunches that are covered in sores. Her nose is runny from a cold she couldn’t shake from birth, her eyes wet from the constant pain of being alive. “I don’t know what he got planned for you two, but I know if he’s a god who wants any of my prayers you’ll see that little girl running like the day she’s born when he decided to take you from your body.”
I reach out to pat his head again, the malicious look on his baby face gone. I never met a cow who could speak a lick of English, but something in his body knows what I’m saying. He can taste a long easy life like the ball of hay in his lips were replaced with sugar cubes and dew drops.
As I go to leave, I stop as I see the old man hunched over in the doorway to the barn. “You did as I said?” He asked his body a curled over shadow like a comma blocking out the evening sun.
“Yes sir. Eight calves were tagged three green, three yellow, two red.”
He nods slowly, his short frame coming closer into view. His plaid button up has holes in the bottom that never have and never will be mended. He’s a white man with dark leathery skin that has more creases than a crumpled piece of paper. As he gets closer, his soil colored eyes look through thick eyebrows up at me. “Good. They’ll all be grown enough in about three months and the truck’ll be here to grab them then.”
I try to be neutral. Nod my head and not give a damn. I really, really try. I don’t know if it was the widening of my eyes, the crease of my eyebrows, or the tiny downward slight of my lips. Something small and useless no one but that old man would notice.
“You named them didn’t you?”
“What!”
“Don’t play stupid; you heard me, boy.” He gets closer to me, his eyes staring through mine straight to my whirring brain. “Did you name them?”
I look down, my chest full with heavy guilt. “Yes.”
“What’d you name the two headed to the meat truck?”
I walk backwards so he can get a visual. I point to the boy who I chose for the meat truck, his fur pitch black with huge bug eyes. “I named him Soldier cause he looks like he just got back from Vietnam. How big his eyes are and all.” I keep walking until I get to the little girl, her ear trying to twitch off the tag like she knows what it means. “And I named her Lucky cause I think she’s anything but.”
I look to the older farmer expecting him to smack me upside the head and call me an idiot. Instead when I look to him, his eyes have this begrudging softness I’ve never seen in him. “You know the difference between my job and some company that sticks a thousand cows in a warehouse?”
I shake my head and he leans his old tired body on the gate keeping the cows in; it letting out an ancient creak as he does. “They know what care feels like. I had it when I first got this ranch from my father. I was a little older than you but I was just like you. I’d give em names. I’d pat their head and talk to them about my day. I had that and I’ve lost it. It ain’t a bad thing boy, but it’s a tiring thing.”
“What are you saying exactly?”
“I’m saying hold onto it as long as you can. The longer you have that, the more human you’ll be when your maker calls you home.”