Read Online Men in the Making by Bruce Machart - Free Book Online Page A

heat.
    A hose mender, a marvel of the modern world, you think. One seven-inch length of tubing, galvanized steel or, like this one, cast brass, barbed on the ends like a tomcat's pecker. What goes in must not come out—not till the job's done, anyway. Ram one shank into each end of your ripped-in-half hose, screw some Dixon worm-gear clamps down tight on each side so it holds, and off you go. Couple it to the pump line, open the gate valve and you've got a working hose, holding pressure the way the doctors up in Houston say your anterior arteries will now that they've mended you with stents, their handiwork holding you open from the inside out, your blood slurping past that surgical steel the way now this water's starting to sluice through that brass mender.
    And that deserves a cigarette. You bend yourself over one slow time, checking a plant for the tiny pearls of weevil eggs, and then you head back to lean on the truck while you light one up. You take the smoke in deep and work your tongue over your teeth while the hose holds its own and the sun leans west to kindle the horizon. When a duster buzzes in from the south, crows launch themselves from telephone lines. The plane banks hard just the other side of the farm-to-market road, dives, and you can see the pilot in there, a young guy in a baseball cap, glancing back at his wake of Malathion spray. He'll dust today for the weevils, come back in September to defoliate before the pickers move in.
    It strikes you, as he cuts his spray and throttles up into his steep ascent, that we've got a reliable fix for damn near everything these days, and before you know it you're adding up all your success stories. The weekend you spent with grease to your elbows, replacing the cam bearings and hand clutch on the old Allis-Chalmers tractor you've had since you bought your first hundred acres. The barn roof you rebuilt and shingled alongside your father in a single scorching day after Hurricane Carla sucked the old one off and delivered it half a mile west to the banks of the Navidad. The calf you saved one humid night when the moon forgot to rise and Doc Vacek didn't answer his phone, the way it took you half an hour just to scare that damn heifer into the light of the barn; the way, when you saw the blood coming hard from her and the single hoof showing, you cursed yourself for cursing her. And then your boots kept sliding in the warm slop of shit and hay on the floor, sliding until you called your wife out there to help you tie the heifer off and hold her head, until you wedged yourself between the poor girl and the loft ladder and found enough purchase to work your hand and forearm up inside her. And this, this was something for the poker table, something for the feed store loading docks, something for your pal Grady Derrich to shake his head at. This was one made to be told. The real thing. You know it now and you knew it then, knew it as you worked your arm around and felt the insides of her, the slick and squeezing heat of it, knew it while you followed the soft leather of the shoulder down to the hoof and worked it out alongside the other one. Knew it as you got the calf puller rigged up, with every turn of the ratchet that set the young mother to moaning, with every quiver of her hide. And then the calf came, wide-eyed and alive, and with her more work.
    You cleared the cavities, put down new hay, got the mother washed out and sewed up and the little one sucking, and then, around midnight, you could stand there smoking awhile before stripping down and hosing off just out back of the house. Afterward, on the porch in a towel, while your wife shook her head at you and handed you a cup of coffee, you told her you were sure enough glad you didn't raise elephants. You remember her laugh. You remember how it cut itself short, how she seemed always sad in the eyes those days, even that night, despite the calf you'd kept alive.
    And now, now your cigarette's out and you light another