“Oh, good,” Brett’s mother said several hours later. “You’re back. Who’s your friend?”

“Mom, this is Meredith VanArnhem. You’ve heard me talk about her. We’re going over to talk to those people at the winery tomorrow, and I figured it would be all right if she used one of the spare bedrooms tonight.”

“Sure, that would be fine,” his mother smiled. “The bed is made up in Shirley’s room. I’m pleased to meet you, Meredith. Brett has told us some stories about you.”

“Probably not much good,” Meredith shook her head.

“Oh, he says you’re a fine actress and very professional. Brett, you’ve had a couple of calls. That principal over in Salem wants you to sub for that fifth grade class again tomorrow.”

“The furious fifth grade fiends from hell?” he shook his head. “I hope you told her I wasn’t available.”

“I told her you weren’t here and didn’t know what you had in mind for tomorrow. She said she’d try to find someone else, and then call back if she couldn’t. That was a couple hours ago, and she hasn’t called back yet.”

“Good, maybe I’m safe then. If she calls back, I’m not available.”

Meredith shook her head. “I take it these kids are a little uncontrollable.”

“Think of nineteen ten-year-old versions of you,” Brett smiled.

“I was actually pretty good when I was ten. It was later before my horizons got stretched a bit.”

Brett was going to lose that round, and he knew it. It was clearly time to cut his losses. “Mom, what was the other call?”

“Ed needs you to sub for him tomorrow morning. It seems Tony got his arm between a stanchion and some cow’s foot when it tried to kick him.”

“Good old 649, I’ll bet.”

“He didn’t say. Tony has a broken arm and it’s going to be in a cast for a while. Your father is over helping Ed out now, but he doesn’t want to have to do it regularly.”

“Well, if push absolutely came to shove, I could pitch in tomorrow morning,” Brett conceded. “I really don’t want to if I don’t have to. I really need to be at my best tomorrow, for more reasons than one, and kicking off the day at three-thirty in the morning is not the way to do it.”

“Three-thirty?” Meredith smirked. “That’s a good time to be going to bed.”

“I couldn’t agree more, but if not if you make a good part of your living by milking,” Brett shook his head. He turned back to his mother. “I’m not absolutely saying no, but if this deal with the Ammermans comes off tomorrow it’s probably going to mean the end of my subbing until fall, at least, both milking and school. I really need it to come off the best I can, and that doesn’t include getting up hours before dawn. If I’m going to do it, I’m going out to the garage to see if I can find my old baseball bat. I don’t need 649 lousing up my day.”

“What’s this 649?” Meredith asked.

“A cow with about your attitude when you’re in a bad mood,” he replied bluntly. “Except that 649 is more predictable.”

“This cow doesn’t have a name? No wonder it gets in a bad mood.”

Brett shook his head. “You sure aren’t a farm girl, are you? When you’re milking a hundred and fifty head or so, you don’t have time for names, and nobody would want to think up that many or try to remember them. If you’re milking the same herd a lot, you get to know the cows pretty well, but usually you have to identify them by their ear tags.”

“Ear tags?”

“A plastic tag with a number on it. Cows wear them in both ears, like you wear earrings.”

“Isn’t that cruel?”

“I’ve seen you wearing earrings that have to be less comfortable. The tags are about the size of some of those earrings, but cows are a lot bigger than you are. You really don’t know anything about milk, except that it comes from the supermarket, right?”

“You can find it in convenience stores sometimes.”

“Meredith, sometimes I wonder about you. Maybe you need to learn a little about what the real world is like. Figure on crashing early, because you’re going to be getting up when the alarm goes off at three-thirty.”

“Me?”

“I’m going to need someone to keep my baseball bat close at hand, at least when I get to 649. You’re elected. Mom, Meredith didn’t bring much in the way of work clothes with her. Is there something around here she could wear so she doesn’t louse up what she needs for tomorrow?”

“I’m sure I could find something,” his mother smiled. It wouldn’t be the first time either she or Brett had enlightened someone about life around a dairy farm.

“I don’t know,” Meredith shook her head. “This seems kind of … uh, well, uh …”

“Come on Meredith. You might have to play a modern milkmaid someday, and you might as well know what it’s like. Besides, if I have to get up at that hour, you should too. I want you to be about as far behind the eight-ball as I’ll be. I’m going to be the one doing the work, and you’re just going to stand around watching. It’ll take about three hours.”

“You really want to make me work for this job, don’t you?” she replied petulantly.

“Yep,” he smiled. “This is a test. I know I can work with you on stage. I’ve done it for years and mostly I’ve enjoyed it. Offstage, well, I guess we’re going to have to find out if you can keep your cool. And you have to, since it’s never a good idea to startle cows when they’re in the milking parlor. Especially 649.”

“That’s right,” his mother said. “I was milking when I was the age of one of those fifth graders Brett gripes about. They might even be a little more docile if they had to get up early to do the chores like we all had to when we were milking here.”

“That sure is the truth,” Brett said. “They have no sense of responsibility at all, which is part of what makes them a pain in the butt.” He looked straight at Meredith and added, “That doesn’t extend to just fifth graders, either.”

“You’re really going to make me do this?”

“Might as well.”

“You said I’m just going to be standing around. Could I read a script while I’m doing it? You said you had a copy of The Fourposter.”

“I’ll have to look for it, but it’s around somewhere upstairs, I think. You’ll want to read quietly, though.”

“It can’t be worse than getting stepped on by a CGI monster.”

“Yes it can. There you just pick yourself up and brush off the dirt when the shot is done. Tony got a broken arm out of milking.”

“Jesus, the things I do to get a job.”

Meredith wasn’t exactly at her best after the alarm went off at 3:30 the next morning. As far as that went, neither was Brett; while he was used to getting up at that hour it didn’t mean that he liked it. As far as he was concerned, like Meredith, he figured it was a better hour to be going to bed than to be getting up. “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” she yawned as she came out of the bedroom, wearing some old, poorly fitting clothes left over from Brett’s older sister Shirley.

“If it’s any consolation, I have a fair bit of difficulty believing you’re doing it myself.”

“You snookered me into it.”

“It’s for your own good.”

“Shit, as if I believe that. Can I at least get a cup of coffee?”

“No time for it now. I left the coffee pot on a timer, and we can take a thermos. You’ll have plenty of time to drink coffee. I’ll fill part of a travel mug, and I may not even get to drink it all before it gets cold.”

They went out to the van, which amazingly enough was free of frost, although the dew on it was quite heavy. “Jesus,” she said, looking around at the quiet of the morning. “It’s dark as the inside of the proverbial cow.”

“It can be nice when you get used to it. But I wonder if I ever will.”

“Hey!” she said suddenly as he got the van going. “You don’t have that baseball bat you were talking about.”

“I was just bullshitting. I could get damn tempted to take one to 649 if she gets feisty, but I really wouldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean I won’t be goddamn careful when the time comes for her to show up.”

“They’re on a schedule?”

“Pretty much. Cows like things orderly, done in a routine. She’ll go to the stall she’s familiar with, and will wait for her place in line.”

“How does she know she has a place in line?”

“Cows work it out among themselves. I don’t understand it either. They like to do the same thing the same way all the time. They get upset if their routine is altered, just like you would if you’re in a play and someone threw a line at you that’s out of order or just plain wrong.”

She shook her head. “I guess that part of it I can understand. Why the hell does it have to be so early?”

“That’s not easy to answer,” he sighed. “Some places milk three times a day, others twice, for reasons I won’t go into. Ed milks twice a day. He likes to wrap it up early so he can watch the evening news on TV while he has dinner. It takes him about two and a half hours to do a milking, so that means he has to start about four in the afternoon. If he’s going to do it at twelve-hour intervals, that means he has to start at four in the morning.”

“And people do this all the time? And voluntarily?”

“That’s life on a dairy farm, and it’s been pretty much that way for hundreds if not thousands of years. Every day, no day off, the cows won’t put up with it. If someone like Ed or Tony has to take a day off, well, that’s where I come in, at least when I’m available.”

“You like doing this?”

“No,” he sighed. “Not really. I know how to do it, and don’t mind doing it if I have to, but like doing it? I’d much rather be doing something else, and that includes pounding the pillow at this hour. But this and putting up with boisterous brats as a substitute teacher are the price I have to pay if I want to try to continue to work in theater. If I didn’t do it I’d need a regular job, and that would probably kill most of my chance to do what I want and like to do.”

“I sort of know what that’s like. I mean, I’ve had to work in burger shacks and other crappy jobs to keep the ends together myself.”

“It’s a hell of a life but I guess we’re stuck with it. I keep hoping that someday something will break right for me and I can give up this substitute job bullshit, but the older I get the longer a long shot it’s looking to be, at least to do it as an actor or somewhere in theater.”

“Yeah, it’s starting to look that way for me, too. The hell of it is there isn’t much else besides theater and acting that I’d really rather do.”

“Me too, Meredith. Me, too.”

By now they were pulling into Ed’s place; Brett could see that the lights were on in the milking parlor – they were on in the barn all the time – and that had to mean that Ed was getting things together to get started. Brett hoped he wasn’t too late.

“Ye gods!” Meredith exclaimed. “What’s that smell?”

“Manure,” Brett grinned. “You don’t get cows without cow shit. Ed is pretty good about keeping the place cleaned up, but there really isn’t much you can do about the smell. Actually it isn’t bad right now since it’s been cool overnight. On a warm July afternoon it can get a little ripe.”

“This isn’t ripe?”

“Not compared to July,” he replied as he pulled into a parking spot outside the milking parlor and shut off the minivan’s engine.

“God, I don’t know how you can stand it. I’m really going to have to wash my hair before we get on the road for this wine place.”

“You get used to it, and cleaning up afterward is part of the deal. We’ll have plenty of time for a shower.” he said, getting out of the minivan. She followed him, however reluctantly, and they went inside, to see that Ed was just getting things set up; he hadn’t actually started milking yet.

Brett didn’t know how old Ed was, but guessed he had to be about sixty. He was on the grizzled side, and hadn’t shaved this morning. “Morning, Brett,” he said. “I was starting to wonder if you were going to make it. Who’s your friend?”

“This is Meredith,” Brett explained. “She’s a city girl and wanted to see what this was all about. I told her to just stand back and stay out of the way. How’s Tony?”

“Still madder than a wet hen,” Ed shook his head. “I told him that 649 was being a pain in the ass, but I guess he didn’t take me seriously. I’d sort of like to get rid of her, but she’s one of the better producers.”

“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Brett agreed. “I’ll be damn careful around her.”

There was plenty Brett still had to do before the first cows came into the parlor, and he spent some time explaining it to Meredith, who seemed mildly interested at best. When she got a second she asked, “How does he know that cow he was bitching about is one of the better producers?”

“Computer,” Brett shrugged. “You’d be surprised how much computerization there is in this. Each milking stand measures how much each cow produces, and Ed watches the results like a hawk. If some cow starts to fall off her average, he’ll want to know so he can figure out why.”

“Amazing,” she said, shaking her head. “I had no idea it was anything like this. I figured it was something like a three-legged stool and doing it all by hand.”

“No, couldn’t be done, at least not without a small army of milkers, say a dozen or more for this many cows. It’s part of the reason that milk doesn’t cost, oh, ten or fifteen dollars a gallon at the supermarket. The only way a farmer can stay in the dairy business is to cut costs by being as efficient as he can and take advantage of the economy of scale. That’s part of the reason my family isn’t in the milking business anymore. Now, I’ve got to get busy. You just stand back and watch.”

In Ed’s operation, Brett was in charge of twelve stalls at a time; Ed was doing another twelve a little ways away. The cows were used to filing into their regular positions, so that simplified matters a lot. Brett had to wash each udder, get the cow entered into the computer system, and get her hooked onto the milking system. It was a chore that took several minutes, along with some other things, and he was at different stages with each cow at more or less the same time. There wasn’t much chance for a breather; cows were coming and going, and either he or Ed had to let them into the parlor and get them back to their pens when they were done. It was busy.

Meredith watched with a reasonable amount of interest for a while, but with nothing to do she soon got bored. She found an out-of-the-way place to stand leaning up against the wall, and soon was busy reading the script for The Fourposter. Brett didn’t get much time to monitor her, but it looked like she was interested. He made a mental note to ask her about it while they were on their way over to the Curlew Creek Winery, but right at that moment he had to pay more attention to the cows.

In time, everything was done for the morning. The last cow filed out of the milking parlor, and Brett got busy with the wash down – which included cleaning up some of the inevitable manure that was left behind; cows didn’t care where they were when they needed to go, they just did it. The milking system needed to be washed, too, and that took a while.

The sun was up when they finally finished up. “Glad you could make it over this morning,” Ed said as they walked out into the early light, with Meredith following along behind. “You sure you can’t make it tonight?”

“Real sure,” Brett said. “Meredith and I have an appointment a couple hours away, and it could take us all day and then some. Look, Ed, if this works out, I may not be available again for a while.”

“If your dad can help out for a few days, until Tony can get back to working, it shouldn’t be too bad, but I sure would like to have you around.”

“You might call over to the Gravelines,” Brett suggested. “They might have someone over there who wouldn’t mind a little work on the side.”

“Might have to think about it,” he nodded. “It’d about have to be someone who can speak English, though. And these cows ain’t used to that mariachi music.”

“Well, in a pinch,” Brett replied, and let it go at that.

“Yeah, I suppose.” He turned to their visitor. “Meredith, did you learn anything today?”

“You mean, besides the fact that I don’t ever want to be a dairy farmer?”

“You ain’t the first one around here to figure that out,” he snorted. “Hell, if I’d had a lick of sense, oh hell, forty years ago I wouldn’t have been one either. But it’s been a living, and I know I could have done worse.”

Soon Brett and Meredith were back in his minivan and on the road for home. “That was interesting for the first half hour,” she reported. “It got a little dull after that. I was keeping an eye on you, and I noticed you were sure good with it.”

“Actually, I’m about average. I don’t get the practice Ed does. He does things automatically, while I have to stop and think about them. I suppose if you were doing The Mousetrap over and over again you wouldn’t have to stop and think about what the next line is.”

“I suppose,” she sighed. “To tell you the truth, I think I’d get bored with that after a while, regular paycheck or not.”

“I know I would, but at the same time I’d rather be doing more of it than I’m doing now. That’s part of the reason I want this thing with the Ammermans to go well. I don’t know that it’s a ticket out of substitute milking, but it could at least be a good line on my résumé, and could lead to something even better. At least I feel like I need to give it a fair try, and I want to make it work the best I can.”

“You’re talking to me about responsibility again, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, and you just had a real good look at why I want to make a go of it, so I can get the hell out of milking parlors and stay the hell out of them. I realize you like to have your fun, Meredith. I don’t blame you. I like to have fun myself, even if it’s not the same kind of fun, but I have to keep in mind what comes first. You really ought to learn that, too. Meredith, I told you yesterday I’m concerned about your habit of twisting people’s tails just because you can and you think it’s fun. Now, you see what I’m trying to get away from. I don’t want anything to screw this thing up. What I’m worried about is that you could screw something up for both of us because you’re not thinking it through. I don’t want to say this is our last chance, Meredith, but it’s getting damned close to mine, and I don’t want anything to go wrong.”

“God, you make it hard. Well, I suppose it’s only for three or four months. I’ll try, Brett. I really will.”

“Good,” he said. “Now let’s go get showers, climb into some clean clothes, and get on the road. This isn’t a done deal yet but it may be by the time today is over.”

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