Hauling Beef

“Maybe up ahead farther?” I squint through the lifting rain. On both sides are corral fences and enormous mangers full mostly of the perpetually confused expressions of cattle. The dirt road we are following is getting muddier. To the right is a trailer, ahead is just more feedlots and ruts, and to the left the gates are closed, even though there seem to be some buildings.

“Well, that trailer? The sign just pointed down this road.” John tries to sound hopeful. “Well, we may as well check it out. At least there aren’t any fences to back over.” We had already accomplished that on this outing. Frankly, our instructions got bit vague in the last few miles of the 120 that had been sketched out on the back of a receipt. Not that they sounded vague when we received them. But these things just tend to be more complicated than explained.

We turn left toward the trailer. We slowly ease our way through the gravelly mud. A puddle looms ahead. The trailer is very dark. The trailers windows are boarded. “Uh…just don’t slow down too much,” John says. Good advice. “We have a turn around though, so we’ll just come back,” I reassure Kelly. She is getting a bit nervous, but she is still indomitable. She seems to be up for anything, from branding or vaccinating the day before, right up to cliff jumping…although the latter takes some coaxing.

I slowly ease the big diesel truck toward the turnaround. I ease the truck up toward the turnaround, as it turns out. We start to slow. “four low!” says John, urgently. I haul on the lever, shove the truck into four low. We sit. The wheels spin. I let off the gas. The truck, and more importantly, the ten thousand pound trailer of beef on the hoof, settle back into the muck. We are stuck.

John steps out, comes around to my side. “Maybe backing?” We try it. The tires grip, we get purchase, and I breathe as sigh of release. Too soon. I can’t turn, and being halfway up the slope, I am heading the trailer into the field. The steers are bellowing. John is shaking his head. Kelly is looking from me to John. I have to keep my cool. I can’t get too discouraged. I fail. “Shit.”

We take off walking, leaving the unbudgable truck to hoof it over to that distant collection of buildings across the feedlot. The rain has stopped, but a cold wind is whipping the straggler drops into our faces. We trudge, and grumble.

Finally, we approach a semi and a trailer like ours pulled up to a series of pens. “Howdy!” calls one of them. He is a small man, with dark glasses and a ponytail poking out from under his straw cowboy hat. His posture can only be described as bowed, just like his legs. He has a big grin. I think he must know what is coming.

“We got our truck stuck.” John and I say it simultaneously. Then we begin to stumble over each other in an effort to explain, excuse, and plead for help. “We thought it was” “We didn’t know” “over there, the trailer” “the mud didn’t look bad” “Can you help us pull the truck out?” “The truck unstuck?”

The man smiles. “Is that Jamie Freeman’s truck? I thought I recognized it.” We swallow…this could be helpful, but now the story will be out for sure. We explain what we are doing, and that we are working for Jamie. “I’m Ken,” the little man laughs, “Let’s go see what we can do about your truck.
He unhitches his trailer, and we head over, bouncing and jolting over the ruts. I am worried as we close in that Ken won’t be able to stop. He slams on his brakes, and we almost slide into our trailer. Almost, but not quite.

John hooks up the tow strap. I clamber up behind the wheel. Ken steps on the gas. Immediately, he spins out. Then he starts to creep forward, hitting the end of his tether he begins to swing and sway, pulling at the tow rope like a mad bulldog with a passion for geometric arcs. I give a little gas. The truck, and trailer, shift a bit downhill. I let up. “Keep going!” John yells from outside. I shrug, and as the Canadians say, give ‘er. We aren’t moving forward, and Ken is skittering over the canola field like a drop of warter on a skillet, but slowly, ever so slowly, the truck comes around. I crank the wheel like a mad man, and ken doesn’t let up until finally, we are going in a straight line, past the puddle, and back to graveled road.

Back at the loading shoot Ken smiles again, sort of secretly. “Say hello to Jamie, will you?” Then he drives off. We off load our eight steers, hand the manifest to a parts worker (the only feedlot employ we can find) and head off to warm up with coffee. All in a day’s work, I guess.