Spit Delaney's Island by Jack Hodgins

bloated,” Mrs. Starbuck said. “We may have to puncture it.”
    â€œDon’t be silly,” Mrs. Wright said. “They get bloated when they’re on
their backs. This one’s just scared, and probably scraped up a little. Bull or
heifer?”
    â€œBull. It’s marked for fall slaughter.”
    Mr. Porter got into Mrs. Wright’s pickup and started the motor. He
drove ahead slowly until all the slack in the rope had been taken up, then
he eased ahead while the two women and the girl watched the rope tighten
around the calf’s chest.
    â€œWumph,” was the noise the calf made, and Mrs. Starbuck screamed.
“Stop! For Christ’s sake stop the truck. You’ll break him in half.”
    Mr. Porter stopped the truck and came back to see what was wrong.
Mrs. Starbuck was down on the ground with her arms around the calf’shead. She looked as if she were trying to pull it out of the well all by her
herself. “You can’t do it that way,” she said. “It has to go up. Up. Pulling
it along like that will only break its bones.”
    Mrs. Wright would like to have kicked her out of the way, a big heavy
woman like her down there acting so immature. “I’m sorry, Edna Starbuck, that my pickup doesn’t fly so I could pull your stupid calf up the way
you want.”
    â€œDon’t you stupid-calf me. You come over here to help and end up running the whole show, bossing everybody. Maybe there’s something wrong
with your eyes, Millicent, but most people could see that if you drag a calf
along the ground out of a well something’s going to snap.”
    â€œI think it already has,” Mrs. Wright said. “I think your mind has
snapped. If you could just see yourself right now, you look like a know-nothing bohunk straight off the boat. Screaming and hollering like a fishwife. Get up on your feet.”
    â€œAll we need is a pulley. To hang up in one of those trees. We could run
the rope through it.”
    Mrs. Wright hardly ever raised her voice. When she did she suffered for
it a long time after. She thought of what Percy Larkin said about her being
a little fox terrier, yapping, but she pushed the image aside. “Get up,” she
said. “Get up. Get up. Get up. John Porter, you drive that truck ahead.
We’re getting that calf free.”
    Mr. Porter looked from Mrs. Wright to Mrs. Starbuck and then backed
off. “We better all just cool down and do some thinking,” he said. “We’re
not getting anywhere this way.”
    â€œThen I will,” Mrs. Wright said. She marched over to the truck, got in,
and put it into low gear. If Mr. Wright were here he’d just shake his head
at the way they were carrying on. If I acted like that, he’d say, where
would we all be? If a lawyer acted like that, what a mess we’d have.
    Mrs. Starbuck shrieked. As Mrs. Wright let the clutch pedal out and
felt the truck begin to move she glanced out the back window and saw her
lifting Mr. Porter’s axe. She swung with both hands well over her head
and brought it down on the rope. The truck leapt ahead and stalled.
    Mrs. Wright was tempted to start the truck up again and drive home,
just drive straight out of here with rope dragging behind like a tail andleave the stupid woman to solve her own problem. But it wasn’t in her to
leave a job undone. She got back down to the ground and turned to give
Mrs. Starbuck a piece of her mind.
    Mrs. Starbuck was facing her with the axe held up once more over her
head. She’s going to kill me, Mrs. Wright thought. She’s going to throw
that axe and it will land right in the middle of my chest and kill me. She
dragged me over here to help her with her calf and now she will slaughter me in cold blood.
    Mrs. Wright had never before seen such hatred as there was in the
woman’s eyes. In that stunned second they were staring at each other Mrs.
Wright had a vision of her husband