for the “BL -” part, as if you were blowing a raspberry. Practice this. Amaze your friends.
There are other sounds, too, like the comforting “Uh-hn-hn” of a doe to her newborn kid, the outraged “Wlaaah!” of a kid getting butted by a sibling, and my favourite, the contented moan of a hungry goat tucking in to a bit of juicy hay. A goat moan is just like the sound your pillow mate makes when you give him/her a really good massage.
It was cold in the barn, and there was the thinnest skin of ice in the water buckets. I ran water from the main tap into a big bucket, plunked in the water heater, which looks like a giant potato masher, and plugged it in. Like most of us, goats appreciate a warm drink first thing in the morning.
I cleaned out the mangers, tossing the picked over hay into the pens so they’d have something to play with while they waited to be milked. Then I measured a couple of scoops of high grade, molasses-fortified grain into a feed pan and hooked it over the milking stand.
I milked Donna Summer first. She is the herd leader, a dignified old girl who has dropped triplets every spring for the past ten years. I opened her pen and she trotted out eagerly, conscious of her ranking as the first to get grain and the first to have the heavy pressure of a couple of pounds of milk lifted from her bulging udder. Milking her was like trying to milk somebody’s forearm. She’s old, and her udder has stretched like an overfilled water balloon. The younger ones are easier, but none of the others gives as much milk as Donna Summer does.
I leaned my head against her warm, hairy belly as I milked, humming a gospel tune to keep the rhythm. Donna Summer likes Swing Low, Sweet Chariot the best, although there are times when she responds quite favourably to show tunes.
After milking her out, I let her wander around the barn to make her morning visits while I weighed the milk and recorded it in George’s book, along with the tune I had hummed. George’s methods of record keeping are unorthodox, but if you discover that you get an extra ounce or two of high butterfat milk if you hum Dixie rather than Feelings”, then why not be consistent?
I was nearing the end of the roster, trying to coax a thin spurt out of Annie Oakley, a yearling who had got into Dweezil's pen by devious means and fooled around, later giving birth to a healthy pair of bucks that she hadn’t told us she was carrying. Milking her was a trial—her teats were as narrow as ballpoint pens and she misbehaved when she was in the milking stand, fidgeting like the teenager she was.
“You’re up early, Polly. Are you feeling all right?” George came in, carrying a pail full of vegetable scraps, the morning treat.
“Nightmare woke me,” I said. Annie was trying to kick the milking pail over, and I was only half listening.
“Detective Becker dropped in again on his way back last night,” he said.
“Hmmm.”
“He runs hot and cold, that young man. Friendly one minute and stiff as a board the next. Seems to think you are trying to put one over on him.”
“Yup. He sure does.”
“You’re not, I know that, Polly. But be careful around him. I don’t trust him.”
I started humming a Shepherd’s Pie tune from their latest CD. I didn’t exactly trust Becker either, but my reasons had more to do with chemistry than anything else. He was a cop investigating the murder of my best friend’s husband, but he was also a good-looking guy who had already pressed more than a few of my buttons. Being a child at heart, I knew that if George told me to stay away from “that Becker boy”, it would automatically make him even more attractive than he was. I had to keep my perspective, and it wasn’t easy.
“You don’t know where she went, do you?” George said.
I shook my head.
“Good. It is better if you don’t try to find out. You were never a very good liar. That policeman would have it out of you in no time.”
I didn’t argue, although I thought George was laying on the Finnish uncle routine a bit thick.
“George, we’re going to need some more grain,” I said, changing the subject. “It looks like we’ve got a raccoon again, and there’s a couple of bags gone.”
“I’ll drive in and get some this afternoon,” he said quickly.
I finished milking Annie and let her off the stand. “No need for you to go,” I said. “That’s always been my job. I have to go into town anyway.”
“The truck has been misbehaving,” George said.
“Since when?” I asked. “It was okay yesterday, wasn’t it?”
“It coughs a bit. It might be an idea not to go all the way into Laingford, I was thinking. Maybe we could try that new feed store out by the highway.”
“George!’ I said. “How could you? Aunt Susan gives you a better deal than you could get anywhere else and she’d be so hurt if you bought your grain somewhere else.”
He shifted uncomfortably and avoided looking me in the eye.
“Hey,” I said, “have you two had a fight or something?” George and Aunt Susan were good friends, and I had been suspecting recently that the friendship might be turning into something a bit more serious. He had been over at Susan’s a lot during the past month, having dinner and not getting home until late. Perhaps they had got too close, too fast. Precipitous relationships run in my family, and my aunt Susan’s more afraid of commitment than I am. She’s fiercely independent, and if George was pressuring her, I could understand why they were having problems. She can be pretty prickly when she’s mad.
“I did not say that,” George said. “You go if you want to, I don’t care. Just be careful on the hills.” He turned away. What was bugging him? He was usually perky and full of fun in the mornings. Maybe it was delayed shock after yesterday. He had coped with finding the body awfully well, but maybe he had had bad dreams about it, too.
“I’ll be careful,” I said to his retreating back. He just shrugged his shoulders. I weighed Annie’s milk.
“Wow,” I said. “Annie’s outdone herself. George, you have to learn this tune.”
Rico Amato grabbed both my hands and kissed me on both cheeks when I stepped into The Tiquery. He had left a message on George’s machine, asking me to drop by. I knew why.
“Oooh, sweetie, you must be so upset,” he said. “Here, sit down. Let me make you an espresso.” I could see that he was dying to hear every detail. He was practically drooling.
The gossip grapevine works quickly in Cedar Falls. The day after John Travers’s body was found, everybody knew about it, everybody knew who had found it, everybody knew that Spit Morton had been donked on the head, and everybody had a theory.
“Is it true there was an Italian stiletto sticking out of his chest?” Rico said, with great relish.
“No, Rico, he was shot.”
“Oh. Thank God. They’d think I’d done it, wouldn’t they? All those big policemen in my little shop.” The concept was not without its attraction, judging from the way he was grinning. Rico’s delicate olive features simply glowed with suppressed excitement.
