Howard

by Sean Sexton

‘Time we got the first group penned, Howard would be in the barnyard, parked in the corner over by the loading chute, his blue truck pulled against the fence, topper lid open, him setting on the tailgate, waiting on us with his dog—Heeler mix I believe. He wore that smile and his mama’s blue eyes and always half laughed as he told you things revealing his true shy nature; although he could get chatty in the course of a day after he’d been around us a while and had an opinion to express about something in the air. One thing you could say about him is that once he was in his place in the middle of cowwork—doing his job—he got it done, and never held us up. 

Most men put on their boots to go to work, but he took his off. I never saw him in a set of cowpens except in bare feet, and that’s how it went all day, bleeding cows, giving heifers shots, runnin’ back to bring one up—need be—he was unshod. Usually, Polly Osceola or Dru worked with him days they were vaccinating, one handling the other end—him up front, tagging pliers in his back pocket, fresh tags in a card on a ledge where he parked the tattoo gun, ink and brush and in deft, seamless motion, he could tag and tattoo a heifer in an instance. 

Eldon said he knew another feller worked cows bare-footed, even put on spurs when he rode. I know a slew of bee-keepers work their bees that way. Lamar Carlton’s nephews for instance—no veils or suits either—hard to picture—I swear its true. Like them, Howard was an exception to everything. Looked like he could’a lived out of that truck; no doubt it had everything he needed in the back, and of course the dog. He’d bring him into the pens and make him stay off in a quiet place out of the way, laid down waiting while we worked the herds. The dog minded. We’d go to Mrs. Bs for lunch during the break—he’d be there under his truck when we returned, just like a calf—a mammy set down in a clump of grass tellin’ him whatever they say. He’ll stay right there till she gets back—grazin’ or goin’ for water, socializing, whatever—however long that takes. Howard talked to his dog like that, but we never heard him say a word.

And we’d go through the cows, them was the tail-bleeding—card test days of the Bangs program when the government was trying to control the spread of Brucellosis in the State of Florida. We had to run everything on the ranch through the chute, always timed it with the preg-check in the Fall so we didn’t have to do anything to them twice. Larry Lewis would come over from Fellsmere, go in ‘em one at a time, (fortunately he was right-handed and stood on the other side of the chute—[we always called it Larry’s Corner and said his right arm was smaller than his left—from checking over 200,000 cows a year—wear and tear we said—he never denied it]. He’d get done checking her, call her pregnant, or open like the Lord himself, standing at the gates, and then lift the cows tail for Polly or Dru—whoever was there that day—and quick as a striking snake, she’d stick her, draw a sample, and return the little squeeze-plastic vial of blood, to its place in the hundred-slot box on the work table, all in order adding the cow’s number to the list they kept track of.

We’d need to know who the reactor was if we had one—there’d be a record by the way they did things. We’d be notified, have to go find the cow and get her out. Sometimes the Brammer cows showed positive: something about them being Bos Indicus,—as the Beef Science professors called them—caused them to have a bad test, and the state would send Old Boss a letter telling him the cattle had to be retested, and we’d have to get up a crew and go to the trouble to pen the whole herd, part out the particular cows and draw blood or milk. They’d perform the Ribenol test— supposedly more conclusive—send that off and nine times out of ten, it’d come back negative. 

We didn’t have Bangs, been calf-hood vaccinating for years. One time the state figured it was  unnecessary and didn’t issue vaccine that year, wouldn’t send the technicians around. So Old Boss found bootleg vaccine on the black market and we had the vet come and shoot ‘em anyway. He believed in it—already’d been through bad days and didn’t want any more. 

But back to Howard—he’d was born out in that wild land around where they wound up building the airport South of Orlando, you can see from the Bee Line when you’re going by about eighty miles an hour to get on a plane. He told us he’d never had power out there when growing up and talked about how he had trouble finding women to date because they didn’t want to go home with him after he kept on livin’ that way. He got in a conversation with my wife about it, who called this into question while we were taking dinner with the crew at Mrs. B’s. 

It was good enough for my mama—It oughta be good enough for anybody else!

Then discussion arose about things to eat as word had gotten out about Howard’s unusual habits out on the land. No one questioned him about deer, turkey, wild hogs, rabbits, and squirrels, game birds, ducks and the like— but as you might expect—talk soon turned toward outright varmints, their kith and kin. The boys delighted in a long list of query, moving quickly past possums, coons, armadillos, and gophers, to comprise more unusual alimentary aquatic and amphibious fauna: frogs, gator, cooters and sliders, crawdads, snails and crabs, mudfish and gar, all this moving inevitably toward slithery things: eels, snakes, and such, all upon Howard’s patient confirmation. The list took on the dimension of stumping a band with songs they couldn’t play as they posited the unimaginable: 

Wildcats? Yeah. 

Panther? Uh huh…

What about a fox? 

He’s pretty good. 

Armadillo? All day long! 

Otters? Of course.

At last Howard’d had enough. He could tell they’d already had too much fun at his expense and decided they’d have no more. In sudden conclusion, so to not have to talk about anything anymore, he declared firmly: 

They’s just two things I ain’t et—A buzzard and a skunk!