Chapter 8
The Lost Calf
At the church, everyone counts heads. Mrs. Patterson’s face is ashen—her calf, Bessie’s newborn, is still trapped in the low pasture by the creek. Men exchange worried glances, their hands full with sandbags and wet children. Billy hears but knows he is too small to join the rescue. Yet he sees the calf’s white spot from the hill, a dab of cream in muddy water, and remembers a hidden deer path that winds through the woods and comes out behind the pasture. No one notices him slip away. He moves through the trees with silent steps, branches catching his shirt, but he knows this land like his own skin. The calf’s frightened lowing guides him.
The rain had softened to a steady drizzle, but the creek was still a wild, brown thing, chewing at the banks and swallowing the low ground whole. Billy stood at the edge of the churchyard, the wet grass cold against his bare ankles, and watched the men talk in tight circles. Their voices were low and quick, the kind of talk that meant trouble. He caught fragments—“can’t get a boat through there,” “too fast,” “that calf won’t last the night.”
Mrs. Patterson stood apart from them, her thin hands pressed together like she was praying or holding herself together. Her eyes were fixed on the hill that sloped down toward the creek, toward the pasture that was now more water than grass. Bessie, the mother cow, stood at the fence line, her low moans carrying through the damp air. Billy had seen Bessie’s calf just two days ago, a wobbly-legged thing with a white spot on its forehead like a dab of cream. He had watched it take its first stumbling steps, and now that spot was somewhere out there, swallowed by the flood.
“She’s just a baby,” Mrs. Patterson said to no one in particular. Her voice cracked, and Mama Annie put a hand on her shoulder.
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