Husbandry
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

The City of Sedalia in the State of Missouri has always been a cattle town. Sedalia was an important railhead for the great Texas Cattle Drive of 1866. The cattle trade was the backbone of the town in the decades that followed. The stockyards for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad were still standing in the year I was born – 1941. After that, the military changed in the center of the city, but not so much on our farm.

I was given the name Kerry because my father was Irish and I am led to believe that Kerry is a place in Ireland that is wild and beautiful. I wouldn’t. I have never been there. I have met a few men named Kerry since, and some women too.

So, you might say that when it comes down to sex, I was in a state of confusion from the moment I learned my name.

We were livestock farmers. They call it animal husbandry. The farmer is the husband, I guess, because the only other male on the farm is the bull, and he needs to be brought in only when required. People do not understand cattle farming but I will try to explain:

Calves are born from cows after a bull has deposited his seed. Calves (or mavericks as they get older) can be either sex until their time comes, and then the females become heifers and later cows, and most of the males become steers, and steers become steaks. Heifers do too after they have dropped a calf, or they become breeding cow.

Steers is the name we give to castrated cows – bullocks if they are left to grow to maturity. So there are a lot of castrations done by your average animal husband. The reasons are basically because a steer is easier to handle and because the meat does not carry “bull taint” which can be an unpleasant flavor.

Then we have freemartins. That is a cattle beast that is neither male nor female. My aunt said that I was one of those. She would joke that we could “call in the Italian – Signor Burdizzo”. That was the name of the tool that some use. Otherwise, the scrotum could be banded with twine until the balls dropped off by being starved of blood. But the problem there was flies and maggots on the rotting flesh. Neither looked comfortable for the animal.

Castration is a fact of life in cattle farming. The guys don’t think about it. But I do. It may sound crazy by I sort of like the idea of being without my nuts, and not just because my aunt joked about it. I knew I was different from other guys. None of the cowboys working on our ranch would ever dream of losing their balls.

My aunt would tease me because everybody seemed to agree that before I reached my teens anyway, I was too pretty to be a boy. She said to me that she could see some of the men working on our family ranch looking at me with lust in their eyes. Apparently, she could see such things.

I have to say that it went the other way, which is where things start to get a little difficult. When I would come out to the branding and de-nutting with the chuck wagon and see all those cowboys standing around some with their shirts off and bodies glistening with sweat … well, I had desires. Even though I was still a child I knew what I wanted.

Being of that inclination is difficult, but being that in the 1950s and in Missouri, that is dangerous.

My father was religious I guess, but he was a farmer. He had seen bulls try to mount steers, or even other bulls. He knew that it happened in nature, and that means … whatever that means. But he could see his men look at me in my tight jeans and my big check shirt. And he could see that I was enjoying it. He was mad about it, but I had two older brothers who were just like him, so I guess he figured one freemartin in the family was acceptable breeding.

But the problem with freemartins is that we don’t develop like other girls. When the girls at school started to develop breasts, I became jealous.

We all knew about how wonderful breasts were. This was straight after the war. Every GI went into battle with his carbine and three other things: Ammunition, a pack of cigarettes and a picture of a topless woman. There is nothing wrong with a kid like me desiring breasts, it was just wanting them on my own body that was irregular.

I was in high school but I was late developing as a young man (I guess because I wanted to be) and all the older girls were showing off what they had. You have to remember that these were the years of what they called “bullet bras” or even “rocket bras” with pointed tips. Every girl wanted a pair of pointed tits. The teaching staff tried to put a stop to it, but as we have all learned since, there is no stopping fashion.

Oh how I wanted breasts! I wanted to wear one of those bras and push my tits in the faces of those cowboys on our ranch. I didn’t want to be a freemartin – I wanted to be a heifer.

About this time a new vet came to South Sedalia. His name was Pete Bertrand, and he was a fine-looking creature – tall with dark hair and strong hands that I wanted so much to feel on my body. He came out to the ranch, it being the biggest around Sedalia, to talk to my father.

My father called me in. I was wearing a bright check shirt and a jaunty neckerchief and tight jeans. I had not dressed up for anybody in particular – I just liked the look.

My father explained to Pete: “Kerry looks after husbandry and the breeding books and birthing.” I could not help but give him one of my girly smiles. I could see my father glaring at me, but he always loved me in his own way, and he knew that I was of value to the family.

I could see that Pete was momentarily confused. I learned that he had been told that the big rancher had three sons. So, what was I? Pretty, I hoped.

“He is the man you will have to deal with,” said my father. He wanted to put an end to the way we were looking at one another. It brought that crashing to the ground, but I just sashayed over and shook Pete’s hand and said: “I look forward to working with you.” I hoped it sounded suggestive. I sure meant it to be.

Then a few days later, a story came out in the newspaper that changed my life. It was December 1st 1952. The Headline read” “Ex-GI becomes Blonde Beauty”. It was the story of Christine Jorgenson. I wanted it to be my story.

My father said: “That is New York City. That place is a den of sin. That kind of thing can happen where the devil dwells. In Missouri we are God fearing folk. So get that idea right out of your head.”

My aunt was interested. She said that Christine sure looked like a woman, but “that George sure looked like a man, but you don’t”. I never knew how much of that talk was just teasing.

But the thing is that because Christine was beautiful, most men seemed to accept her. When more pictures of her came out and she even appeared on TV, the cowboys would say: “She sure looks like a woman to me. Does she have a pussy? If she did … well, I wouldn’t mind.

Did she? I hoped that she did. That is what I wanted anyway.

I spoke to Pete about it. He just said: “I’m a vet”, but I think that he understood what I wanted. He understood that Christine and I were the same.

Pete Bertrand might say that he was just a vet, but as that he was a physician of sorts – a scientist. He told me that what started to interest him was not the surgery but these things called hormones. There are male hormones in the testicles, and they promote hard muscle but also arrest overall growth. That is why when you cut those off a steer they grow but the meat is not hard like a bull’s. Female hormones are what makes a cow a cow. They don’t get an udder without those.

Female hormones can grow you breasts.

I knew what I wanted to do. I had to lose my nuts and get some of those female hormones. Maybe later I could have a vagina made, just like Christine. In fact I learned later that she did not even have a vagina until after her story hit the press.

Pete said that he would not castrate me, no matter how hard I begged. I said that I knew enough about de-nutting to do it myself, but that I wanted to do it with him in attendance. He was horrified, but I was serious. I did not want those male hormones ravaging my beautiful body. He didn’t either.

I won’t go into the details. His position must always be that I foolishly crushed and destroyed my own testicles and he took steps to repair the damage. I prefer to think of it as an act of love – even a fairy tale. A princess is trapped in an ugly box, or the body of a beast, or a gnarled tree has grown around her beautiful body. The hunter or the woodsman arrives to free her. She calls out: “We will do it together!” He replies: “I will save you, my love!”

It was love. Pete had come to understand that there was nothing wrong for a man to fall for a woman even when she carried a bag of man hanging below. Lovers see the person inside. It took a little time, but when he realized that Kerry was a girl, he was ready to help her.

He got me the hormones too. They were just like the ones that Christine took. He said that plenty of people wanted them. There were so many people like Christine, but only she had the courage to stand up and tell the world. I did not want that. I just wanted Pete to be my husband.

But there were changes before that. I never told my father or my brothers or any other man on the ranch that I was not a freemartin anymore. I did tell my aunt, and that it was my doing. I needed her help me to become a woman. She was not surprised. She might even have been pleased. The ranch was a lonely place for a woman.

Changes were slow, but remarkable. My father would say things like: “You are supposed to be becoming a man but I swear you look less like a man every day – you need to get a haircut!” There was no way that I was cutting my curls. Pete loved them.

Only a blind man would fail to spot my growing breasts. My father was not blind, but I guess he pretended that he was for a long time. He also pretended that he could not see how my butt looked in the tight jeans, or that fact that there was not much of a lump in front and that I could cross my legs like many men cannot.

I was just waiting for the day when I could fill that bullet bra, the solid front pantie girdle and put those curls on top of my head, with my eyebrows plucked and my eyes, lips and nails painted. From that point on Kerry could live the life she dreamed of.

Pete took me to Morocco for the surgery. There were still issues in the US well after Christine’s vaginoplasty

My father had grown to understand. I had collected every newspaper story about “transsexuals” and I had left them around the house. When I went away with Pete my aunt explained it all to him. I was not a freak.

He agreed to give me away at my wedding. I cuddled him as a daughter should, and he realized that was something he had missed without knowing it.

So I have a husband now. The local vet in Sedalia. I work with him. I am still a bit of an expert in husbandry, but now I have one of my own.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2021

Another photo of Christine J.