I look at the gentle creature; you were born for the slaughter. 

I stagger beside my grandmother, watching as the rest of the herd seeks shelter. The barn shakes at the mercy of the winds. A storm that will rattle the bones of Texas blows in. The gloaming of the day paints the sky in various hues of orange and purple. These vulnerable moments always come when the land is at its most inhospitable — in the middle of a tornado, in late February when frost traps everything in a freeze frame or beneath the sweltering August sun. This calm before the storm is no different. The sun sets, coyotes howl their malicious intentions in the north pasture and a ravaging storm brews, searching for a scapegoat. 

The tin walls of the barn clatter. The oak tree growing in the cattle pen scratches against the gutter. The rusted red gate drags across the ground, pulling up goat weeds, the roots clinging to clumps of rich soil. Upon entering the barn, the smell of hay and sweet, dry earth bombards my senses, evoking a warm feeling within. Three incandescent lights hang from the ceiling, casting everything in an aureate light. 

The mother cow overcomes her quiet labor in the corner of the barn, nestled behind the last of winter’s hay bales. I stand back while my grandmother treads lightly over to the tired mother. As my grandmother gets closer, the mother’s breaths increase in tempo, each like a plume of smoke in the cold air. The mother is too tired to resist, and my grandmother checks the cow’s cervix to ensure the baby is making safe passage through the canal. I watch in admiration as the woman who raised my father aids in the birth of this gentle creature. I watch her soothe the cow with compassionate coos, her wrinkled hand petting its head. 

With a swift thud, life metastasizes before my eyes. On the ground, among the dirt and remnants of hay, a newborn baby lays wrapped in amniotic fluid. The mother’s breath steadies, and I am enveloped in serenity. The cow begins to clean the calf immediately after its birth, and I bear witness to the tenderness that comes with it. 

My childhood is a compendium of moments like this. Creatures were constantly passing through my care. 

In the unfortunate event that a mother rejects her calf, my family becomes the caretaker. When a mother refuses to feed her calf, you must prepare a twice-daily bottle of two cups of formula mixed with six cups of warm water. Calves are scared of humans at first, and I spent afternoons chasing babies around the barn, pleading with them to eat. Usually, when the babies are small enough, you have to trap them between your legs and force feed them, which they fervently resist. Slowly, they become more accustomed to the bottle. I once fed a calf that my cousins and I named “Mookie” and she loved the bottle. The second I would step into the barn, she would run up to me searching for food, even if there was none to give. 

The creatures grow, weathering the winter and developing personality in the spring. I look out my kitchen window onto the pasture and see the calves playing with each other, bounding through the summer clover and grass. I watch them nurse, and their mothers call them back each night to take refuge beneath the patch of oak trees. 

As my grandmother grows older, and it becomes harder for her to take care of the animals, I assume the role. I learn the intricacies of the cows, their likes, dislikes and fears. Each spring, we gather the calves in the pen to vaccinate them against all the ailments that plague the East Texas cattle: foot and mouth disease (intramuscular, left side of the neck), leptospirosis (subcutaneous, upper neck of the cow) and rhinotracheitis (subcutaneous in front of the shoulder). I adorn their ears with tags to identify them. I put a mixture of chemicals on their backs to protect them from the aerial assault of flies and mosquitos. 

When the Earth freezes over in the winter, the stock of hay bales sustains the calves. I aid in cutting the string that binds the bales to allow them to eat. Any exposed skin is seared by the cold, but they must eat. On the coldest days, I bring them apples and sweet feed. They stampede the four wheeler. A thousand pounds of mammal hurdling itself at you can become a dangerous situation; many toenails have been lost, toes broken, phones cracked, and close calls due to the velocity of these creatures. The cows must be forgiven, for they know not what they do. When they each stick out their tongues and wet noses for a treat, it becomes impossible not to forgive them.

There comes a time in the animals’ lives when you must decide their fate. When the winters grow cold, and the barns begin to run empty, the time to sell comes. In selling the cows, I guide them through the end of their lives. I decide their fate. 

The boys, or the bulls, are usually the first to go, as one male cow presides over a herd of females, leaving little room for their kind. I run them into the pen, funneling them down the chute into the trailer. I ride in the trailer with my father to the sale barn, and I see them off, doomed to disease, further displacement or death. The mothers stand at the gates and watch us drive away. 

I aid in the birth of this gentle creature to ultimately betray their trust and send them to the slaughter. Cows grieve their children like a human mother would grieve theirs. Guttural bellows, the mother pulled from its calf, tears streaking the soft fur around its eye — grief transcending species. 

In this moment, I feel everything all at once: the love and heartbreak of a mother, the necessity of separation, and the weight of feeling like a monster. I raise them for the slaughter; I guide them to a gruesome death to fill the plates of carnivores. These poor creatures skinned for a pair of boots or a cowhide rug, flesh fileted in various cuts and skulls adorned with turquoise to be sold at exorbitant prices. 

However, the creatures lucky enough to stay live peacefully in our north pasture. They take on names, and I learn their personalities intimately: one named Tater, rambunctious when eating haphazardly swinging its head around, another skittish, named Butter, taking cattle feed out of your hand with a cautious tongue. We learn about the overbearing mothers, the bellicose bulls, the matriarch of the herd, the nervous nursers and the curious calves. It is a community that is shaken by death and birth. 

Sorrow envelops the herd when a cow dies. My grandmother gets the tractor and lifts its lifeless body to be carried to its final resting place. The herd always follows, ensuring the body receives a solemn service. Dark, glass-like eyes follow the tractor’s every movement. When the bucket of the tractor reaches the ground and the corpse lays on the Earth, the mothers go to inspect the body of their sister, their mother. Again bellows rise from the creatures, a collective grief coming over the herd.

Once laid to rest, the Earth takes the body back gently, the carnage feeding the vultures and the coyotes. The bones become bleached by the Texan sun, and suddenly, that is all that remains of the mammal, the other cows holding onto her memory. When I was a child, these bones scared me. I have now lived long enough to have experienced the emerging and fleeting life of these creatures. Calf, mother, corpse.