Free The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County by Jerry Apps Page B

milked. Occasionally a cow would turn her head and rattle the stanchion that confined her in her stall, but it was a subtle sound that mixed with the “zing, zing” sound of milk striking the bottom of an empty pail when one first started milking. Contrasting smells surrounded the hand milker—the fresh, rich smell of fresh milk accumulating in the pail held between the milker’s legs colliding with the sharp smell of cow manure and mellowed by the earthy smell of stored alfalfa hay strung out in the manger in front of the cows.
    Ambrose heard his father yell before he had gotten halfway to the barn. Clarence never yelled; it was not his way. But now he was yelling, “Help, help,” in a way that sent shivers through Ambrose. He rushed to the barn as fast as he could and there saw his father in the bull pen, with big Fred, their Holstein herd bull, bellowing in a way he had never heard before and pawing at his father with his front feet and goring him in the side with his long, black horns.
    Ambrose grabbed a pitchfork and thrust it through the boards of the bullpen at Fred, drawing blood from the animal’s shoulder. Fred bellowed loudly, lifted his massive head, and looked at Ambrose with eyes that were red and menacing.
    â€œGet back,” Ambrose yelled as loudly as he could, thrusting the tines of the pitchfork into Fred’s massive neck, once more drawing blood. Fred backed away from Clarence’s prone body, but Clarence was not moving, not saying anything. Ambrose could see a stream of blood trickling from the side of his father’s mouth, and his right leg was twisted in a grotesque way.
    Ambrose pushed open the gate to the bull pen, thrusting the pitchfork at the enraged animal that had retreated to the back of the enclosure. With the pitchfork now in one hand and one eye on Fred, Ambrose grabbed his father by the shirt collar and pulled him out of the bull pen as Fred continued to paw with his front feet and bellow in a low, frightening way.
    Ambrose latched the gate on the bull pen, laid his father on some fresh straw, and ran to the house trying to yell to his mother what had happened. He was trying to tell her to help hitch up the team so they could take his father to the doctor, but she couldn’t understand him, so he began harnessing the team himself. When his mother arrived at the barn, together they gently placed Clarence in the back of the wagon on some fresh straw that Ambrose had put there. He galloped the team all the way to the doctor’s office in Link Lake, but his father was dead when they arrived.
    For the first month after his father’s death, Ambrose was completely lost. He did the chores around the farm, of course. Milked the cows, made sure they had something to eat, and tried to take care of the crops as best he could. The day after his father’s death, Ambrose contacted the livestock trucker and hauled away the killer herd bull that bellowed all the way into the truck and continued bellowing as the truck drove down the Adler drive and onto the country road that led away from their farm. Ambrose never forgot the sound of the enraged bull bellowing, and whenever he heard a sound like it, his thoughts immediately returned to that terrible day when his father died.
    Ambrose didn’t realize it at the time, but his mother’s grief was even worse than his. He was so caught up in his own misery that he didn’t at first recognize that his mother’s health was slipping downward and quickly. Six months after his father was killed, his mother died in her sleep. Neighbors said she must have died of a broken heart—Ambrose suspected they were close to the truth of the matter.
    Now Ambrose was on his own, with only the farm dog and his pet raccoon to keep him company. He had many decisions to make. For several months, he worked in a daze. He decided to sell the dairy cows and turn solely to growing and selling fresh vegetables at a little