I look up at the hill. No Grimshaw. I follow Angel into the milking parlor, where she puts a rubber apron over my head and shows me what to do. We’re down in the pit, and the cows are on a concrete platform raised about three feet. All I have to do is go from cow to cow, she tells me, and swab off the udders with this rag, like so. Then I take this apparatus off a hook and flip a lever on a black rubber tube which starts the suction going in these cups. I’m supposed to reach between the back legs of this very big cow and put the cups on the teats, like so. I’m to go down a line of twelve cows, doing that to each of them, then go back to the first cow, snap off the suction, and take the cups off with one hand and give the teats a squirt of iodine with the other, from a squirt bottle which hooks on the front pocket of my apron. Then those twelve cows will file out, Angel says, and twelve more will come into the parlor, and I do it all over again. She tells me all this in about ten seconds while she does the first cow, and then rushes back out of the milking parlor, leaving me to face the back end of the second cow alone. I do just what Angel told me to do with the lever and hose and when I reach between the legs with the cups for the teats, it seems to be exactly what the cow expects me to do. It doesn’t help that my hands are shaking, on account of my conversation with Grimshaw. Apparently, I am such a terrible person that I do terrible things without even knowing what they are. I’m just glad to have something to do. Cow by cow, I slowly get over my fear that I will be kicked in the face. Sometimes they try to lash me with their tails, which are wet and caked with burrs and manure. When you’re right up close to them, doing obnoxious things to their private parts, they seem like very big, very dangerous animals. But they just stick their noses in the grain, and don’t seem to notice.