A Good Day's Work by John Demont

day teachers stayed late of their own free will to coach school sports teams. Doctors made house calls.
    Now get sick, go broke or bonkers or otherwise fall by the wayside in a Canadian city and you’ll find out who has your back. Sometimes it seems that we may as well be in the wilds of the Arctic. If you suffer the big one while walking down the street in broad daylight, I hope that your old elementary school teacher—not some fresh-faced family physician worried about “liability issues”—is passing by.
    So it does my heart good to know that in certain places in this country the “we’re all in this together” spirit still lives. Make no mistake, standing here and waiting is part of Jessica’s occupation, for which she is decently compensated. But there are easier ways to make a buck than being a country vet. She never wanted just a “job,” she says. Jessica wanted something more than a mere exchange of labour for lucre. “It is a combination of things,” she says when I ask her what it is about this work that appeals to her. “I grew up on a dairy farm so I like cows and horses and find working with them rewarding. I like helping farmers. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I need the farmer and the farmer needs me and we need the cows and horses. It’s an important industry. I wanted to be part of it and this is how it worked out.”
    We’re back in the truck now. Amelia has received her last dose of oxytocin. There’s nothing to do but see if it kicks in. Jessica is going to pick up her son, William, at his babysitter’s and then drive me back to Moncton, where my rental is parked. William comes out of the house wearing a big furry hat with earflaps. “I think I know him,” he says of me to his mom as he climbs into the back seat. “That can’t be the case,” Jessica starts to say. But it’s been a long day and the little guy’s out already. And so we drive, K94.5 filling the car, through this country where she knows not just the people but the cows and horses by sight.
    Delirious from hunger, I’m imagining an artery-narrowing Angus Burger at the McDonald’s I know is just a few minutes from where I parked my car. Jessica, who has already put in a day that’s as physical as a stevedore’s, hasn’t had a full meal since breakfast. A half an hour from now, when she returns tothe Gauthiers’, she hopes to discover that Amelia has dropped her placenta. Otherwise, this woman has miles to go before she eats, let alone sleeps.
    It’s not like there are really options. Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to slide open that barn door with frozen fingers and keep watch until these folks she knows so well are in the clear. That she might say the hell with it and head for home is out of the question. It has never entered Jessica’s mind. She has been training, in one way or other, for this moment her whole life. These are her people. This is her world. It will take as long as it takes.

CHAPTER
THREE

THE MILKMAN COMETH

    B ILL was fretting. If his neurons seemed hyperactive, they had reason to be. In his mind, he pictured hangdog kids gazing at empty cereal bowls. He saw seniors, their porous bones softening on the spot. He visualized bakers, feet up, reading the day’s
Chronicle Herald
as their mixing bowls sat idle. He imagined coffee drinkers at Tim Hortons drive-throughs, gape-mouthed upon learning that a medium double-double was suddenly as accessible as lasting peace in the Middle East. “Oh man I’m late,” whispered Bill. “I’m late.” And so he arrowed east, his white van careering forlornly through the gathering dawn, his eyes scratchy with fatigue, his gut clenched with worry.
    He had been on the job for six hours by now. The workday began at midnight at the Farmer’s Co-Operative Dairy at thedead end of a country road outside of Halifax. The day was