"Benton Oakly didn't say much," Willy answered after wiping some spittle off his chin with the back of his hand, "Just said one of his cows woke up sick."

"How sick?" Bart asked.

"I guess sick enough to be a downer," Willy said, "Has the runs bad."

Bart and Willy had evolved over the years from mere farmhands to become what the local farmers referred to as 4-D men. It was their job to go around and pick up dead, dying, diseased, and disabled farm animals, particularly cows, and take them to the rendering plant. It wasn't a coveted job, but it suited Bart and Willy just fine.

The van turned at a rusted mailbox and followed a muddy road that ran between barbed-wire fences. A mile beyond the road opened up at a small farm. Bart drove the van up to the barn, made a three-point turn, and backed the vehicle to the open barn door. By the time Bart and Willy had climbed from the truck, Benton Oakly had appeared.

"Afternoon," Benton said. He was as laconic as Bart and Willy. Something about the landscape made people not want to talk. Benton was a tall, thin man with bad teeth. He kept his distance from Ban and Willy as did his dog, Shep. Shep had been barking until Ban and Willy got out of the truck. With his nose twitching from the scent of death, Shep shrank back behind his master.

"In the barn," Benton said. He motioned with his hand before leading his visitors into the depths of the dark barn. Stopping at a pen, he pointed over the rail.

Bart and Willy ventured to the edge of the pen and looked in. They wrinkled their noses. The area reeked of fresh manure.

Within the pen an obviously sick cow was lying in its own diarrhea. Raising its wobbly head, she gazed back at Bart and Willy. One of her pupils was the color of gray marble.

"What's with the eye?" Willy asked.