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A Twisted Strand

By Lynne Tagawa

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Rachel Davis took a deep breath of cool spring air. The workweek was over, and she wasn’t cooking. She could relax. And forget.
“Junk food Friday!” Abby skipped at her side.
Smiling, Rachel squeezed her daughter’s hand in response. Walking ahead of them across the parking lot, Jason carried their box of fried chicken, its contents suffusing the air with a warm peppery aroma. And she’d snagged a new horse movie to watch while they ate.
“Will Buttercup have her baby today?” Abby’s curls bounced as they approached the Honda minivan.
“No honey. Three more junk food Fridays, at least.” Four more weeks. Maybe.
They piled into the van, and Jason pushed the side door shut. Brushing an errant strand of hair behind her ear, Rachel started the van and eased the vehicle out of the restaurant’s parking lot. Gravel scattered beneath the wheels, and soon the shops of Floresville were behind them.
She took another deep breath. The country settled her, reminding her of why she had decided against a stuffy city apartment, despite the long commute to her office in San Antonio. At eleven, Jason was old enough to care for Buttercup, and Abby could ride Brownie, the pony. Well, with supervision. The kids seemed happy.
Last weekend’s storm had brightened the limp lawns of the houses scattered along the country road. The live oaks dotting the fields on either side were always green, but the mesquite and other brush country flora along the fences were now bursting with new leaves, painting the landscape in the pastel green of spring. Refreshing. It almost reached that hard knot deep inside her chest.
“Look, Mom, bluebonnets!” At his age, Jason rarely showed such child-like enthusiasm.
Yes. Swaths of soft indigo brightened the ditches. By next week the humble flowers would be entrancing motorists to stop their cars, wade in, and take pictures.
One final familiar live oak cheered her heart. They were home. After checking the mailbox, she eased the vehicle down their long unpaved drive.
“Mom, is there something wrong with Buttercup?” Jason sat rigidly alert, peering ahead at their property: ten acres with a small mustard-colored stone house, several spreading oaks, and their animals. Rachel blinked, trying to focus, and as they approached she saw what her clear-eyed son had spotted. The heifer was down.
She bit her lip and frowned. She pressed the brake pedal too hard, and the van came to an abrupt halt before they reached the house. Their Jersey shouldn’t be delivering this early.
“Abby, stay in the car. Jason, here.” She unzipped the side of her denim satchel and pulled out her iPhone. “Find the vet under contacts.” She opened the door and jumped out. Something above her caught her peripheral vision.
A buzzard. The black bird circled high, alone. She shivered.
She poked her head back in the van. “Jason, keep your sister here. I’ll check things out.” She made her way to the downed animal just fifty yards from the house. Tender spring grass and several bluebonnets bent beneath her feet as she drew near.
Rachel froze. Buttercup lay motionless, and blood leaked from her nostrils. Her chocolate brown head with its delicate angular features was frozen into a death mask. Her tongue, abnormally purplish-red, protruded grotesquely from her mouth. Behind the animal lay a bloody mass. The buzzing of flies interrupted the silence.
The heifer was dead. Rachel’s steps slowed. What had killed her? Stomach tight, she circled the animal, avoiding the blood that had splattered onto the grass. Buttercup had delivered a stillborn calf, still wrapped in its amniotic sac and surrounded by blood. Stems of grass bent beneath globs of brick-red fluid. A metallic tang suffused the air, bringing to mind her ER rotation during nursing school.
Could this be a complication of delivery? But what would cause the bleed from her nose? Even the heifer’s eyes seemed affected. Bleeding everywhere. How? Last evening they had fed her and checked the water in the stock tank. She had been fine. Fighting a surge of nausea, Rachel slowly backed away, noting in the back of her mind that the body hadn’t stiffened yet.
The animal had hemorrhaged. Bled out. And not because of the stillbirth. Goosebumps went up her spine and she called to Jason, who was poking his head out of the van. “Don’t get out of the car.”
Frowning, her son obeyed and rolled up the window.
Reaching the van, Rachel clambered in. “Call Uncle Don.”
“Uncle Don?” Jason studied her. His hazel eyes, so serious now, reminded her of Will’s.
“Yes, he’s on the contacts list.” She turned the van and headed back down the drive.
Jason scrolled.
“Mommy, what about Buttercup?” Abby’s voice trembled.
“I’m sorry, honey.” She took a breath. “Buttercup is dead. And her baby too.”
Her daughter sniffled.
Rachel stopped the van at the end of the driveway, just long enough to take the phone from Jason. She wasn’t sure why her brother seemed like a lifeline. But she needed one right now. Her heifer had just died of what looked like a hemorrhagic fever.
“Hello, Don? Can I come over?”

“Kids, we’re going to Uncle Don’s and Aunt Mel’s for supper.”
Jason nodded. Abby sobbed.
Thinking of her brother’s steady voice on the phone, some of the tension left Rachel’s shoulders. Next, she needed to call Dr. Rodriguez. She hoped the vet wouldn’t make light of her story. After all, what did she know of cattle? She wasn’t a rancher—everything she knew she’d learned from university webpages.
Hearing Abby’s whimpers, she decided to pull over and get out of the vehicle to make the call.
As she waited for the vet to pick up, the gruesome scene on her property flashed into her mind. Then other images—images she’d seen while preparing a PowerPoint for her boss, Dr. Stuart. The blood. It looked the same. No, she was right to get her kids away from there.
“Andy Rodriguez speaking.”
The breeze picked up strands of her hair as she described the scene, forcing herself to speak slowly and accurately. She couldn’t panic.
“How has she been this week? Off her feed at all?” Patiently the vet asked questions and confirmed the symptoms. “I’ll be there at seven in the morning. Stay away from the carcass.”
She breathed with relief as she ended the call and got back into the van. He had taken her seriously, listening carefully to her descriptions. What a relief. Even her ex-husband had belittled her … and this could be serious. She wiped away Abby’s tears with a Kleenex, then turned back around and started the vehicle.
The sunlight of early evening flickered through the trees along the side of the road as they approached San Antonio. Hiccups punctuated her four-year-old’s quiet sobs.
Rachel merged onto the main freeway. Brake lights ahead caused her to slow as they made their way to her brother’s house. People complained about rush hour traffic in San Antonio, but truly, Austin had been worse. Austin had been worse in a number of ways.
“Mom, what’s hema-ragic fever?” Jason asked.
He must have overheard her conversation with the vet. Rachel checked the rearview mirror. Abby was sleeping. How do I explain?
“Well, you know what a cold is,” she said. “It’s caused by a tiny particle called a virus.”
“So Buttercup had a viral infection?”
Wow. Where did Jason get his vocabulary? From his dad, no doubt. Last Christmas Will had delivered several packages, one of which contained a couple of books for their son. Last week she’d discovered a biology book on the floor of Jason’s room, accompanied by the inevitable assortment of dirty socks. She should probably pack away the Hardy boys.
“I’m not sure. But her symptoms match something I learned in my research for Dr. Stuart.”
“What is Dr. Stuart again?”
“An epidemiologist.” She pronounced it slowly, eyes on the road. Gripping the steering wheel with clammy hands, she forced herself to sound calm. “I’m going to call him when we get to Uncle Don’s.”
“Epi-demi-ologist,” Jason repeated. “You told me he researches diseases, right?”
“Yes.” Rachel decided not to tell him about the Ebola symposium her boss had just attended. Don would call it “need to know.” Or was that the CIA? Don was an FBI agent. Wouldn’t it be the same?
She changed the subject as they turned off the freeway into a wooded residential area. “Right now I’m just thinking about feeding you guys.”
Driving under the huge live oak branches of the old San Antonio neighborhood, Rachel felt a measure of relief. She didn’t know exactly why her brother and sister-in-law’s home seemed like such a refuge right now. She didn’t see them often, and didn’t think they had a lot in common. Not since their college days, anyway, when Don had told the rest of the family that he’d been “saved,” whatever that meant. He had become an extra-strict brand of Christian, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
She pulled into the driveway. The house would have been considered upper-middle-class once, with a pleasant brick exterior. But time had faded its beauty, and a crack zigzagged up through the red brick on one side. Don had once mentioned that it gave their home “character,” as well as making it affordable.
“Here Abs.” Rachel gently woke her daughter and eased her out of the booster seat. The side door of the house opened and Melanie emerged, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
“Come on in, have you eaten supper?” Her sister-in-law’s large doe-like brown eyes were fixed on her.
“I’m sure the kids are famished. We picked up chicken.”
“Come join us.”
As the kids made their way in, Rachel’s brother came to the door. She sagged with relief. Maybe he could help, though she didn’t know how.

“Hemo-what?” Don asked, prodding the last of his pancakes with a fork.
Rachel sat across the table from her brother, picking at a chicken leg. Her children, enthused at the idea of breakfast for supper, had traded their chicken to their cousins for eggs and pancakes, scarfed down their food, and joined the other children in the playroom. Even Jason was willing to go, after a meaningful glance. She didn’t want to include him in the conversation. Not yet, anyway.
Mel brought coffee mugs steaming with decaf. She sat next to her husband, her chestnut hair gleaming. She would be beautiful with a little make-up and a nice dress. Rachel scolded herself. It wasn’t as though she got dolled up herself. Not anymore.
“Hemorrhagic fever is a general term for a certain type of viral infection,” she said. “The first symptoms are like the flu—aches and pains. As the virus takes over, tissues begin to hemorrhage. To bleed.”
Her brother pursed his lips. “Like Ebola?”
“Ebola is one of the known strains. Marburg is another. But Ebola is the most famous.”
Mel’s eyes widened. “Your cow had Ebola?”
“Ebola is a human disease. But she contracted something with similar symptoms.”
Don frowned, and a line appeared in his forehead that Rachel had never noticed before. Her big brother was approaching forty, and it was starting to show.
“Rachel, have you ever read or heard of a disease like this among cattle here in North America?”
She shivered inside. Don had pulled on the persona of an FBI agent, his face serious. “Not to my knowledge. The vet didn’t mention anything, although he did ask questions on the phone. He seemed concerned. And maybe puzzled.”
Her brother shifted in his seat. “I’m going to make a call.” He left the table, leaving his coffee behind. Melanie ran her finger around the rim of her mug, then looked up.
Rachel met her gaze. “I think I’ll get in touch with my boss. He specializes in hemorrhagic fevers. Human ones, that is.” As she put the call through, her sister-in-law rose and went to the sink. Clearly she had understood, but she didn’t seem unduly alarmed, attending to the dirty dishes and kitchen clutter with grace and poise.
“Hello?” Dr. Stuart’s voice bellowed into her ear. She had probably interrupted his dinner. Rachel apologized but then dove right into a description of Buttercup’s symptoms.
For a few moments there was silence on the other end. “Were any other animals affected?”
Brownie! Wouldn’t she have noticed? But she didn’t remember even seeing Abby’s pony.
“Hang on, I need to check with my kids.” She scooted to the playroom. “Jason? Did you notice Brownie when we were at the house?”
“Sure, Mom. She was against the back corner.”
“Was she okay?”
“I guess. She was standing up anyway.”
“Thanks, Jason.” She turned back to the phone. “Apparently my cow was the only one affected.”
Dr. Stuart cleared his throat. “I’m calling someone I know at A&M. It’s probably a bovine virus, but still, treat it as if it can spread to humans. Make sure the vet and whoever else comes in the morning knows that too. You know the drill.”
Rachel pressed the end call button and bit her lip. She frowned, brushing back a strand of loose hair. Biohazard safety protocols. But outside? In the country?
Scrolling, she found the vet’s number.
“Dr. Rodriguez? We’re going to need bleach.”
 

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