When I arrived, the farm had a black cow that the farmer, Peter, had affectionately named Cow-Pie — like sweetie-pie. I have a photo of tall, white-haired Peter bending over to bump noses with her. After I’d been there a few weeks, I heard a sharp noise behind the farmhouse and went to investigate. Peter had shot her in the head. Cow-Pie lay on the ground, one hind leg still kicking gently, incessantly, like a dog in a dream. Later in the day, I walked past the kitchen and saw Cow-Pie’s black head, snout-up, on the stove, stuffed into the largest pot. Michael, the serene young man who lived with us then, was making stock. It had filled the house with a dense, complex aroma, something like the scent of fall leaves but a thousand times richer and more alive. I could not decide whether the smell was suffocating or deeply seductive.
Peter had lived on the farm thirty-eight years. Every foot of it bore his mark. And the farm had marked him in turn: an eye that had been nearly blinded, twice; ribs that had cracked when he fell off a stone wall he’d been building; lesions on his chest, shoulders, and back from working under the Arizona sun all day long, for nearly forty years. At sixty-six, he had the lean, sinewy body of an elite cyclist, the strength of a stevedore, the heart of a child. He meditated daily — often under a walnut tree in the orchard — and he shot an elk every December, butchered it for winter food…
