By Matt Kendrick

Monday morning. A trickle of milk across the kitchen’s terracotta tiles. Hardly anything. Certainly nothing worth crying over. Might as well cry about the overbearing clouds, or the molehills in the garden. Carl gets on with cleaning things up. But Amy cries. Clutches an empty trug to her trembling chest. “It’s only milk,” he says. “No eggs,” she says in return. Then she opens the fridge. Closes it again. Looks out the window while Carl inspects the bucket. Finds a tiny hole no bigger than a pinprick. Hardly anything. Certainly nothing worth crying over.

Tuesday. It becomes a game. Carl milks the cow, lifts the bucket, crosses the yard, then scurries through the scullery with the aim of getting to the kitchen counter before he spills a single drop. He doesn’t do well. The trickle is wider and whiter than yesterday, Amy’s sobs a little louder as she watches from the door. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing to the envelope in her left hand. “Nothing,” she says. Then she smiles as if she wasn’t crying a moment before. “Best get on,” he says. Feels a lethargy at the thought of fences to be mended, ditches to be dug. She slips the envelope into an overflowing drawer.

By Wednesday, the clouds have darkened from pigeon to slate. They are low and threatening, like Amy’s jowl. When he gets inside, and a whole stream of milk has dribbled out behind him, her sob catches the morning like a circular saw. She tells him a rabbit has been nibbling at the carrots. There are lesions on the cabbage. Small things. Hardly anything. Certainly nothing worth crying over. He tells her to take a breath. Clasps her in his arms—tight, tighter, tightest. Something passes between them that sticks in his throat.

Thursday, early. The cow is sick. A foul smell growls through the air. The clouds today are taupe and charcoal, and it is so dark indoors it might as well be night. When he enters the kitchen, Amy is sitting at the table with the accounting ledger. He wants to make a joke about her cooking the books, but her eyes are glistening, there’s tension in her jaw. “Where’s the milk?” she asks. So, he explains about the cow. “She’ll be all right by tomorrow,” he says. But he feels that globule in his windpipe that won’t be swallowed down.

On Friday, he is out in the fields when the silence is hacked at by a howl. His instinct says wolf. Except there aren’t any wolves. Not here in Surrey among the red slate roofs, the haystacks, the scarecrows, the stiff upper lips which don’t tremble like Carl’s is trembling now. When it comes again, the howl hacks inside him. Hacks from his coccyx and up through his spine. Back at the farmyard, he finds Amy by the chicken hutch staring at the sky. “Was that you?” he asks. “You should try it,” she says, her face suddenly bright in a way that makes no sense to him, as though she is no longer bothered by the lack of milk, the lack of eggs, the lack of money coming in to match the money going out. 

Saturday before dawn. The vet is in the cowshed sliding on a long plastic glove. The cow has collapsed in the night and the smell is brawny. Carl is pacing back and forth. Amy is in the farmyard letting out another howl. “What’s to be done?” she asks when she steps inside. When the vet shakes his head, Carl clamps his hands behind his neck. Kicks out at the green plastic bucket with its no-bigger-than-a-pinprick hole. Tastes that rotten globule in his gullet.

Sunday. He doesn’t know what time it is since the power is out. Amy says they’ve been disconnected, and he nods his head as if this is a normal occurrence. “I’ll check the chickens,” he says. Does just that. Then looks in the cowshed where the smell is so muscly, he almost hurls. He wishes he would. It gets inside him, that smell. It gets deep inside like Amy’s howl. When he joins her in the farmyard, he takes her hand. He understands now, at least a little. Her howl today is longer and louder. And after a while, he howls as well, both of them with their backs arched and their eyes wild against the nothing-worth-crying-over, against the blitz of hail stones that hurl towards them from the tombstone sky.