That was the theme of the day. As soon as I got to the farm, Dawnell told me. The trailer that took Ralphie to Cornell early Monday morning was on its way.
A trip to Cornell is nerve-wracking for the rest of us left behind. What will they find, what will happen. Whether we form words for it or not, the question arises, will they come back to us.
Ralphie had to go up last year. He stayed for almost two weeks, while the vets did tests. It was Andy who licked Ralphie over and over when he got back.
In the afternoon, storms crept up over the mountain to the south and east, then moved across the sky to the north. Then the call came. Fifteen minutes away.
No one told the steer, but they gathered together at the corner of the field closest to the driveway.
And they waited. And Andy mooed.
Phil got the gates ready and then the humans went back to doing the normal because normal goes on and the towels have to be folded and Brewet needs to be taken out of his sling and the pigs have to get fed and the farm doesn’t stop even when the sun and moon of Andy’s world is in a horse trailer on the last leg of the journey from Ithaca.
Phil sees the trailer on 212, just outside the farm. The driver backs down the curved driveway. Ralphie sticks his nose through the bars. He paces and moos. The others call back.
And then the trailer is at the field. The door opens and Ralphie jumps out onto the grass.
The driver tells us about 4 steer she drove to Illinois. “Beef cattle. They wouldn’t get off the truck,” she says. “It took forever, they kept circling back.”
Maybe it was the heat or the rain, but Andy’s eyes were dripping water down his cheeks.
Rebecca said, "Did you see how worried his face was? And strained—not like Elvis.”
The steer all go back to eating hay. And keeping Dylan, the baby, away. Because he’s the youngest and that’s the way it works when things are back to normal and the ones you love are with you and the moon rises over things just the way they should be.
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