The steer was born blind. He was the last cow on my grandmother’s
ranch outside Sunnyside, Washington. She raised Angus cattle—a
small operation, 100 head at the most—out there by herself for
years after my grandpa died from drinking too much. In the photographs,
my grandpa is old-timey handsome and sad-eyed.
The cattle lived the good life—out on 80 acres of achingly
beautiful sageland in the summer, in the pasture and corrals and barn
in winter. We drove over from Seattle every third or fourth weekend and
helped. Summer work was mainly mending fence, which involved slowly
circumnavigating the 80 acres in the 1948 International Harvester
truck, making interminable stops while my dad and grandma reseated
posts or messed with barbed wire or the electric fence. The land was
not achingly beautiful to me then; it was just a factual expanse. My
brother and I had contests to see who could hold on to the electrified
wire the longest, which wasn’t ever long. We both learned to drive
before we were 10, grinding the old truck’s gears. In winter, my
grandma got up early—she always got up early—to feed,
breaking apart bales of alfalfa hay and pitchforking them over the
fence. The cattle ate and then stood around making clouds of
breath.
Cows—even large, jet-black Angus ones, like my
grandma’s—are not scary, nor are they smart. (Even bulls
generally fail to go on china-shop rampages, unless you put a number of
them together. A steer is a bull that’s been castrated; you do that
because extra bulls cause problems, whereas a steer is docile.) Give a
bookish little girl with glasses a whip and have her wave her arms and
huh-YUP, and she is a fully functional part of your
cattle-moving operation. I read little-girl novels about heroic horses
and dogs held back only by their lack of opposable thumbs, and I
worshipped anything with fur—but a cow was, clearly, obstinately,
just a cow. The cattle resisted the most persistent efforts at
anthropomorphization: They were just future meat on legs. We branded
them with a branding iron red-hot from the coals of a fire, and they
cared loudly for approximately 30 seconds, then forgot entirely and
resumed eating. All they did was eat.
In terms of fun, you can’t actually tip a cow. They usually sleep
lying down; if upright, given any but the most sudden and muscular
sideways attack, they’d just wake up and walk away.
The closest thing to interesting a cow can do, in my experience, is
lick you. When I was quite small, my dad told me that if I went and sat
out in the pasture and was very still and very patient, I would be
licked. Probably I was complaining about being bored or was otherwise
being a pain. But he was correct. It takes approximately an eternity
for a cow to notice something, and then another eternity for it to make
its way to the object of its notice. It takes long enough that the
world becomes only grass prickings and manure smell and insect sounds
and sun heating the top of your head. When a gust of alfalfa breath
hits your ear and a giant, alien sandpaper tongue goes up the side of
your face, it’s as startling as anything in this life ever will be.
My grandmother let the herd dwindle over time, but she was loath to
let go. When she was 78 years old, it got to be too much for her. The
final cattle went away; my dad always said they only had one bad day.
Most were sold, but one or two came back in pieces wrapped in white
butcher paper—meat for months—bound for the enormous white
coffin of a freezer in grandma’s basement, near the terminally
out-of-tune upright piano. It also filled our freezer in Seattle, and
for a while we had a meat locker out on Roosevelt. We ate so much
beef, I got so I hated steak. After I left home, I didn’t eat it for
years.
So, in the end, only one cow was left behind: the blind steer. I
don’t know why. Things like this—one steer’s left there, and it
can’t see—just happen on a ranch. You don’t think to ask the
reason. His lack of sight didn’t concern anyone much, even him. He
didn’t bump into things or ever seem lost. His eyes were
mesmerizing—not milky, but all mirrored, like a cat’s eyes caught
in a beam of light at night. A cow’s pupils are big, and the expanse of
mirror of the blind steer’s eyes was considerable. You could stare into
the blind steer’s eyes all you wanted, for he liked to stand at the
fence closest to the house. He was alone, and possibly bored, or
waiting for the scraps that got thrown over the fence. I was pretty
much grown, and I’d never named a cow in my life. I called him Ray
Charles.
Ray Charles did not grow old and gray, the pet of our redemption; a
blind cow with a name is still just a cow. One weekend we got there and
he was gone—nobody standing by the fence under the catalpa tree.
I asked. The answer was very briefly surprising to me before I saw its
inevitability: He was in pieces, wrapped in white paper. I was not sad;
that was not part of the person I’d come to be. Those spaces for sorrow
were to be saved. We ate him, meat for months, with thankfulness,
without ceremony. We all knew that the end of him was the end of one
thing—for my grandma, for all of us—without any beginning
to another. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t need to. He tasted extra
good. 
They have raspy tongues.
That said, I prefer beefalo.
I had no idea the world of meat-eating could be made even more uninteresting, but “a cow I feel nothing for tasted like beef” expanded to multiple paragraphs definitely takes the fucking cake.
I’m looking forward to part 2: “Our Deaf Chicken Tastes Like Chicken Strips When Fried: By The Way, Vegetarians, I Feel No Remorse.”
@3: Can I have my broomstick back, please? And give it a wash first, wouldya?
That was nicely written, Bethany.
Bethany. Must you troll?
sometimes an article just rushes by, i was almost a little bummed when it ended.
a cow must have licked my head
i quite liked this article.
80 acres is exactly the same size as the farm i grew up on, 30 min outside portland. and while most people from east of the cascades would scoff at anyone calling that a “ranch,” i still enjoyed the memories this article evoked. we too raised beef cattle (herefords) and i watched many of them being born (as recently as college i retrieved one from the wrong side of the fence it had slide under when its mother had chosen a poor spot for birthing-no small task considering the slime, barbed wire, and super-angry-momma cow) and even named them. but i too felt no attachment for them. our dogs, cats, rabbit, horses–the loss of any of these animals was mourned as if we had lost a family member. but the cows? well, they were tasty. and the lives they lived were about the best a cow can hope to have. because i lived on the farm with the cows, i perhaps got to experience a wider spectrum of cow behavior (steers can actually be quite nasty if properly provoked). one of my most vivid memories is watching my grandfather castrate our steers. my brothers were taunting me for some forgotten reason and my grandfather turned on them, steer blood dripping off his elbows, and with a little bit of his scots-gaelic accent coming through threatened my brothers, “if you don’t leave your sister alone right now, you’ll be next.”
my extended family split the steer so we each (my grandparents, aunt’s, uncle’s, and mom’s families) got 1/4 of a steer. everyone got different “gross” cuts each year. it was almost always just steers that were slaughtered, but every now and then a barren cow would “go down the road” too (it really was literally down the road, we could see the slaughterhouse from our living room window and were good friends with the family that ran it). one year, my mother’s last beloved old cow (that cow must’ve been at least 20 yrs old) went that way. my mom had doted on this cow as a teenager (my poor mom never got a horse, as i had) and it was one of the sweetest cows in the herd. she would actually approach you and always lick your hand (i actually found cow tongues terrifying as a child, they are huge, and cows have really bad breath). so of course, the year she was slaughtered, we got the tongue.
Liked this, Bethany. Thanks for sharing.
I thought I had read elements of this story before, and I was right: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-b…
Still a good anecdote, though.
awesome
Thanks for bringing back my childhood with this, Bethany! My grandparents also raised black angus in Sandpoint, Idaho. I spent a couple summers there and loved the ranch life when we visited and I didn’t have to work. I was especially attached to my grandpa’s black labs who were all called “Tuffy” (he just had one at a time) and I would roam the ranch with the dog helping me to find my way back to the house. We also had a couple freezers full of cow meat… and I was so sick of roast and ground beef I stopped eating it for a few years when I left home and I’m still not crazy about steak. This felt like my own experience ~ sweet and sad memories! 🙂
LOL jnmend. When I finished reading this, I was thinking, How sad to live with a living thing and not feel any connection whatsoever.
Call me sentimental, but just today I realized I ached a little for a lovely old tree I know is going to make way for a new roundabout. And I only drive past it.
I suppose animal farming must, for practicality and economy, require quite a bit of desensitization. I am glad I would not make a good farmer.
Thanks for the reflection. Makes me think of my Gramps who was pissed he had sons who left kids for him to deal with. An abusive bloke when drunk and a horrible driver his drunk driveing left nothing to stock car raceing imagination?
One blind steer? sounds like a rock band from Seattle! MMMMMMMMMOOoooooooooooo!
a literate touch in the big city, although Seattle is not a big city. and the whinings of city folk about the quality of writing of someone who actually experienced something. Those who whine don’t have a clue about the richness of life. “Uh, is it on page 4 or in the Arts and Life section?”
Seattle might as well be new york…one thousand times smaller. Natives born here before 1970 will remember life, heck…anyone who lived here before 1970 will be more in tune with life! Those born since…? welcome to LA
Man, I could actually see this cow, pictured in my mind. Twas a beautiful narrative.
Why is it so rare to have a good bit of writing in The Stranger? I was a little sorry to see that this article came out of that other one. (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-b&hellip😉
Still, THIS is the story: not contaminated with smiling faces and some “important” bit of news. More Clement and less of that self important wanker. I’ll let him remain nameless.
This is basically how I (a vegetarian) want people to feel about their meat.
Great story written from a great perspective, one that is sadly lacking in the folks in town that feel wierd when they are in a place without sidewalks.
Yes please! What a great read! Would be great if you guys could squeeze in more short stories like this when possible!
Finally! Both a story I really enjoyed reading and a comment section that doesn’t make me depressed about the Stranger’s readers! Good on all of you guys!
Thanks, Ms. Clement, for a truly fine piece of writing — the evocative imagery, the self-deprecating humor, the poignant thoughts on the end of your grandmother’s lifestyle. I loved every word!
an old friend was snake-sitting. twelve foot boa or python, or somethin. i dont remember or care whose snake it was.
well, we go and pick up a big bunny, or a hare. snake-food, right? it was big.
i gave him a name–assuming he didnt already have a name–roscoe, whatever. hung out with him all day. held him, petted him.
then i fed him to the snake.
Great article Ms Clement. You could have been writing about my life growing up on an Angus farm in Michigan. Fixing fences, feeding cattle, blind steer, little white packages, children moving the herd. Yup, I remember it well.