Stories (2011) (90 page)

Behind him Martin called, "Watch for cow plops!"

The lieutenant smiled in their direction. He could barely
see them through the trees, the engine behind them, a splotch of clay road. He
turned and walked. After a while he turned on the talkie.

"Nothing I can see. Thought you guys were going to
start the light?"

He waited. No responding voice. No light.

"Start the light," he repeated.

No light.

"Martin, would you start the light, please?"

Nothing. There wasn't even static on the talkie.
"Dead," the lieutenant concluded aloud. He started back to the truck
for another communicator.

He would have to start over.

Presently he came to a patch of wood, but could not find the
opening. It looked different somehow, but common sense told him this was the
right spot.

He took off the pump can, leaned it against a tree, pushed
his way into the foliage. Branches picked at his uniform like magpies. He went
twenty feet, thirty.

No fence.

No road.

No truck.

The wood seemed to go on forever.

Now how in the world could I have gotten that turned
around?
 he thought.

He navigated back to the pasture, strapped on the pump can,
and began to walk along the edge of the pine stand. He tried the walkie-talkie
again, but still no soap. He called out by cupping his hands megaphone-style
over his mouth and got the same nonresponse.

"Hey, Martin, Ted," he yelled. "I'm turned
around out here. Say something. I'm lost."

Silence.

He started across the pasture toward a clutch of pines on
the other side.

Like those near him, they seemed to run as far as the eye
could see, then mixed with the strange pre-morning darkness.

Perhaps he was completely turned around, so much, in fact,
that he had crossed the entire pasture and was trying to get out on the wrong
side.

That was a pretty crazy thought, but it was possible. It was
early and he was half-asleep, and his wife had always said, "You wake up
crummy."

As he neared the other side of the pasture, he noted that it
sloped off dramatically to his left, dipping down into the greater darkness. He
could hear sounds down there. Ted and Martin, perhaps? He walked that way.

It was too inky to be sure, but something seemed to move
down there.

Shapes — animals, from the way they milled about — and it
looked as if there might be a pond. Yes, thought the lieutenant, that was it,
animals drinking from a pond. Cows, most likely.

Behind him came a sound, like a truck. He turned, saw
lights. At first he thought it was the fire truck, that they had found a way in
after all. But no, the lights were different from that of the fire engine, and
the motor sound, now that he listened closely, was different. This vehicle
breathed its roar with a smaller set of metallic lungs. Probably a pickup.

Some strange compulsion caused him to stop staring and turn
in the direction of the pines at his left. He walked briskly, removed the pump
can, and placed it between two pines, easing himself into the concealment of
the trees. Fire department or not, uniform or not, it was not wise to wander
about in a man's pasture at night. People still rustled cows, and ranchers
still shot rustlers. It might be judicious to wait until a more opportune
moment to introduce himself. Were they to come upon him suddenly they might
shoot first and take names later. In many ways the Old West was still very much
alive in this part of the country. Besides, not too long back this area had,
like much of the nation, been plagued by oddball cattle mutilations. If they
spotted him with this pump can out here, they just might mistake him for a
little green man.

He waited silently in the pines.

The lights swelled. It was a pickup, all right. Two men were
riding in the truck bed. He could make them out against the gray skyline. There
was also something else stacked high in the bed; it looked like bales of hay.

Attached to the truck, and rattling behind it, was a long,
narrow trailer made of bars.

So he had been right about the pond and the noise. Cattle.
Made sense.

Early morning feeding, and these folks were the sort to
start early.

–•–

The truck came even with him, stopped on the slope above the
pond. He waited until they killed the engine. He was about to call out from his
concealment and explain why he was here, when his mouth froze forming a word.
His brain locked up like a frozen brake.

Was it Halloween? Something was very wrong here.

The two men in the truck bed, standing up and looking over
the top of the cab, did not look like men at all. In fact, they looked like
—No. Couldn't be.

Lieutenant Maynard rubbed his eyes and looked again.

The truck doors opened and two more got out, one on either
side. The one on the passenger side took hold of a spotlight fastened to the
door and flicked it on. The light was harsh in the near-morning darkness. It
gave Lieutenant Maynard a good view of the pond.

Down there by the water, milling about like cattle, were
people. Women, men, and children. Black, brown, and white. There must have been
two dozen. They were stark naked.

Suddenly one of the men turned to look up the bank. He made
a snorting sound, rushed halfway up the incline, threw his massive chest out,
opened his mouth, and yelled "Moooooo." He tossed his head from side
to side.

Spittle foamed and rolled out of the corners of his mouth.
The mooing turned to a loud bellowing.

The others, mostly women, drifted away from the pond and
gathered behind him in the same manner the lieutenant had seen cows gather
behind the lead bull in a pasture.

The one with the spotlight chuckled softly.
"Ferd'nand's a feisty old male, ain't he?"

Lieutenant Maynard looked at the speaker, hoping he would
fade away like cotton candy on a hot afternoon and that he himself would wake
up on his hard firehouse bed with a stomach ache from the spaghetti they had
eaten for supper. It had caused bad dreams before.

But the image did not fade. It was as real as pain. The one
with the spotlight, like the others, was dressed in farmer attire: overalls,
boots, coarse shirt, and straw hat. One even had a hay strand in his mouth, and
he was working it between his leathery lips like old Huck Finn.

However, their resemblance to farmers stopped right there.
Horns poked out on either side of the hat crowns and reminded the lieutenant of
those ridiculous University of Texas Bevo caps. Only
these
 horns were
not attached to the hats, he was certain of that. Below the hat brims were bull
heads. Wattles of thick flesh draped their necks; dark snouts glistened with
dampness. Their chests were massive.

Lieutenant Maynard trembled. This was the real thing, not a
masquerade.

But how? One moment he had been wearing the coat of reality,
and now this. It was as if crossing that barbed wire, pushing through those
woods, entering this pasture, had plunged him into madness.

Or did something lie catlike and ready to pounce at the
turning of twilight to day? Did this coincide with stories he'd read about
people starting off across a pasture and suddenly disappearing? Were there
rifts in reality, little rips in the tent of life? Did an even bigger and
wilder circus lie beyond our everyday world?

Lieutenant Maynard looked down at the pond again. The people
did not go away; and when he turned back to the pickup, the bulls who walked
and talked like men were still there.

"Jerry Caleb, toss down some hay," said the
driver.

"Sure thing," said one of the bulls in the truck
bed, and as he swiveled toward the bales, Maynard could see that his back was
humped beneath the overalls like a brahma bull's. And God, now that more rosy
light had percolated into the morning, he could see the others more clearly.
Wasn't the one with the brahma a white-face Hereford? And the other two, with
black and white spots on their face and hands — could they be holsteins?

The brahma cut the hay with his pocket knife, and the little
hay squares fell apart like cough lozenges. He cut another. The white-face
began tossing the bundles over the cab toward the humans, who, like wild
animals, were dropping down on all fours and tearing at the hay with their
teeth. Strands of it projected from the corners of their mouths like massive
whiskers, wiggling savagely as they chewed.

My God!
 thought the lieutenant,
They're
herbivorous! And that means the
bulls are...

He didn't like to think about that part.

"How many ya want loaded?" the brahma asked the
holstein who'd been driving.

"Aw, better make it four good ones, Caleb. Goin' to be
a pretty good sale at the auction barn this afternoon."

Producing four ropes from the truck bed, the bulls uncoiled
them and moved down toward the humans, speaking calmly and softly to them as
they went. "Easy there, old girl. Easy now."

Maynard considered making a break for it, but where could he
run?

Then, as he watched the four bulls drive four humans up from
the pond toward the loading trailer, something occurred to him. If he could get
turned around topsy-turvy by coming through those woods on the other side, then
just maybe, if he went back through, he could find his way home.

If that were possible, he would have to move quickly.
Daylight was sticking its bright, pink claws into the gray, and soon he would
be spotted.

There was another thing. If daylight came, it just might
close the door to his world forever — the door that may have been opened by
twilight.

–•–

One thing was for certain: the idea of being some cow's
filet mignon did not appeal to him.

The bulls loaded the humans in the trailer and locked the
gate. After tossing their ropes in the pickup bed, the brahma produced a big
ice-chest from the cab and set it on the hood of the truck.

"Oh, hell," the white-face said. "You mean to
tell me you guys can drink beer this early in the morning?"

The brahma opened the ice-chest and smiled. That smile was a
hideous thing to see. He lifted out a beer in his fist and said,
"Breakfast of Champions, Jerry."

The bulls got comfy by leaning on the pickup, three of them
with beers in their hands, and rode Jerry about not drinking. They laughed and
guzzled like Maynard had seen so many of his friends do in the past. Christ,
like he himself had done.

Daylight came on pinkly.

It was now or never.

Lieutenant Maynard removed his clothes. He eased silently
out of the wood and, creeping low, started for the pond and the humans. The
bulls were so wrapped up in joshing one another that they didn't notice him.

And maybe, without his clothes, they would think him one of
the herd.

The lieutenant reached the water hole and the other humans.
One of the women caught his eye. Except for her tangled hair, she was a beauty
—could have been a
Playboy
 foldout. She turned and looked at him with
what Maynard could only think of as cow eyes. She sniffed at him curiously.

"I won't hurt you," he said softly

She just looked at him.

"I'm getting out of here. Want to come? Do you
understand?"

The woman opened her mouth and mooed.

"Say," Maynard heard the white-face say, "is
that one of ours?"

Oh, hell, Maynard thought. He turned and bolted the wood
beyond.

"A stray," he heard one of the bulls yell.

"Not when he's branded," another said. Suddenly
Maynard heard the roar of the pickup.

He ran as hard as he could go. Damn! If only he had kept his
shoes on.

The grass burrs were tearing him up.

"We about got him," someone yelled. Maynard
chanced a glance over his shoulder and saw the pickup roaring across the
pasture, clattering the trailer behind it.

But now the woods were looming before him. He was going to
make it.

Less than ten feet in front of the truck, he entered the
woods, felt limbs and branches tear at his naked hide as if it were ancient
cheesecloth.

"I'll get 'im," one of the bulls said. Maynard
turned to see the brahma hop out of the truck bed and enter the trees after
him. Not far behind him came the white-face.

The woods went on and on. Maynard felt himself tiring. His
feet hurt and he bled from a score of wounds. He looked over his shoulder
again.

The brahma had considerably outdistanced the white-face and
was closing in. In an instant the big bull would be on him.

Frantically Maynard spun, and though it was tight going, he
managed to land a solid right to the brahma's shiny black nose. The bull went
down on one knee. "Take that, and moo to you," Maynard snapped.

The brahma looked up at Maynard, shook his head, and blinked
his eyes, but already the fireman was turning and running again. Behind him
Maynard heard the white-face crashing his way to the brahma, heard him ask the
downed bull, "What happened to you?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," the
brahma said. "But you're right, it's too early for beer."

"He'll break out on the other side soon," the
white-face said. "Boss and Billy have gone around with the pickup. They'll
get him."

Oh, God,
 thought Maynard.
They've gone around,
and it's almost light. I'm
trapped, lost here forever in something right
out of the Twilight Zone.

The trees thinned. Maynard began to run. He could see the
road before him, dimly illuminated by ever-widening bands of sunlight.

Suddenly he felt a sharp pain and found himself flipping
head over heels into the middle of the road. He realized that he had run
blindly into a four-strand barbed wire fence and had somersaulted over it.