Catching Corbie

When I was prompted to write about Ernest Hemingway’s definition of courage as “grace under pressure,” I had trouble thinking of examples in my life. Grace, let alone grace “under pressure," is not an everyday quality. Then I remembered Corbie's great escape. Just this April, I was home alone on the three acres at Cortland's eastern edge I share with my parents and two of my brothers. I was trying to get my homework done before making dinner when our chest-high black Angus heifer, Corbie, got loose and headed for Highway 77, three blocks from our house. I snatched up a bucket of corn and my mud-boots and ran. I was the youngest of the dozen people--everyone on the east side of Cortland not at work or school--trying to catch her, but Corbie is our cow: I was responsible. 

Corbie trotted mischievously across lawns, through gardens, over a sand volleyball court, and finally a waste field just before the highway at a pace just quick enough to stay ahead of everyone. I could hear the traffic on 77 as I jogged along behind, weighed down by my heavy boots. Diane, the aging trucker's tiny wife, followed at a distance, carrying a white gallon bucket of cracked corn - futilely, as Corbie turned up her nose at the bribe and trotted off again. The village handy-man, Norv - recently recovered from a heart attack - did his best to herd her using his big white pickup, and the middle-aged woman in the velvet lounge pants who'd told me Corbie was loose walked behind, barefoot. 

For six blocks we worked frantically to keep her away from the highway, but when she made a break for it she got ahead of us. I scrambled to head her off. No luck. I could only watch when she stepped onto the shoulder, contemplating the Other Side. A car whizzed past her nose - I could feel the draft - on her blind side, startling her, enough so that she backed away from the highway. That was the worst moment--imagining how Corbie might look after being hit by a car, imagining telling Dad what had happened--but not the only bad one.

The moment after I tried to loop a dog's leash around her neck, she confirmed my doubts by taking off again. I hit the ground with a jarring thud, and she dragged me on my back along the gravel bike path - Corbie, while small for her age, weighs four times what I do - until I lost my grip on the leash and had to let go. The moment we had her almost past the last house on the south edge of town and headed safely for home, she eluded me once again and turned into a back lot full of farm junk. She was tired and thirsty by then, though, and we surrounded her in the front yard. The handyman drove off to his handyman's lair for a good sturdy rope. I began worrying about getting water for her. 

Corbie was now hot, tired, thirsty, and beginning to limp, and she wanted to know what I was going to do about it. My neighbors kept her in while I began to hunt through the back for a water spigot. A cobbled-together coop contained some well-kept chickens; was there a hose to them, or did their keeper carry water in a bucket? The faucet, when I found it, ran dry. Norv returned with his rope, a good, sturdy noose, and I abandoned the question of water to begin stalking my heifer, assisted by the barefoot woman, whose name turned out to be Pat. Her grown-up son had shown up in support, adding his sedan to my squad of vehicular cavalry.

In the end, the question of watering Corbie was solved simultaneously with the question of catching her. She had reached the next yard over, and lurked in the shade while I assessed the situation. This homeowner was home, but on the other hand Mr. Kohout was someone I knew; he would probably let us get away with a lot in his back yard. Diane, the tiny woman, had gone home and returned with her trucker husband and his pickup in tow, adding to my cavalry. So: Mr. Kohout sent his son out with a lovely bucket of water for Corbie. I tied Norv's rope securely to a tree and set the noose out flat on the ground. Then I coaxed Corbie with the water, allowing her just enough to sharpen her thirst until I set the bucket down inside the noose. This time when she came to drink, I slipped the rope easily over her head. She fought the rope, pulling against it, which was why I'd tied it to such a sturdy young tree--Corbie was ours!

Through all that, through terror and frustration and exhausted despair, I didn't break down. I failed, I fell, I hurt, but I stood back up and smiled and kept going, and I never cried. On the way home I took a survey on everyone’s favorite kind of cookie. Afterwards, when Corbie was home safe, and after I finished my homework, and after Dad and my brothers constructed the new maximum-security cow pen, after absolutely everything was over, I made cookies for everyone who helped. I delivered them myself, grateful for the assistance of my neighbors and for the grace I was granted in the time of my need.

(Printed in the 2012 edition of Illuminations)