The Language of Cows

It started with a subtle, anticipatory inhalation, an almost sound. He pressed his hand flat on her ribs. The long deep exhale resonated through her body in a low steady hum. The lowing call unfurled. The languid melody grew from a rich bass note and rose to a mid-range timbre producing a soothing earthy note.

John leant on the wooden gate, his hand over the side, resting on the side of the cow. The early evening air cooled a degree or two. The change of temperature plucked at his forearms with tiny fingers. He shivered, waiting for the rest of the cows to make their way to the gate. They came in a line, full of sleepy sighs and at a leisurely pace.

Lower in the valley the ground mist returned to herald the end of the day. It crept into the swells of the fields that edged the river bank covering the riverside with a silver-white hue. John didn’t have to go down there to smell the damp earth and coolness, he couldn’t, his bones wouldn’t make the journey now, but the years ingrained the smell of the earth's exhale into his very being. His nostrils widened as if to capture the delicate odour.

A quick jagged flight of a thrush caught his eye. Startled from the leafy green hazel hedge it sought the safety of a spike-covered holly tree. He followed the bobbing flutter. The flutter. He fought the memory's approach focusing on the rough whirls of the cow's coat. The man's hands. They didn’t have the strength they once knew; they flapped on the bedsheets like broken birds with broken wings.

‘Be extraordinary,’ John muttered under his breath, trying to rid himself of the coming image. He could taste the memory on the tip of his tongue, a metallic tingling harbinger. ‘Be extraordinary.’

‘Johnny, I don’t have long,’ the bedridden man said. The substance behind the words weighed down, barely there. ‘Come here, son.’

This memory hadn't shown its twisted face for many years but here it was in multi-coloured glory.

A skeleton covered in taut yellow skin lay on the sweat-stained bedclothes that stank of urine and vomit. The sweet effluvium pierced Johnny's nostrils with sharp acidic tones. All John knew, when he was Johnny and the tender age of five, was that he didn’t want to be in this room, with this man. He no longer recognised his father; this wasn’t the man who filled his childhood with the sound of hearty laughter. Against his will and small strength, Johnny’s mum tugged him forward. He wrapped his arms around her leg squeezing it tight and turned his face into her soft skirts breathing deeply. Her skirts were full of the safe scent of cows and hay.

‘Son.’

Johnny stayed hidden in the comforting embrace of his mother’s skirt. He could hide his face but he couldn’t stop his ears from the blood-clotted speech and this man was not one for empty words of affection. 

In his final moments, the once robust figure imparted words of responsibility, not sentimentality. ‘My father died of this illness and his father before him, don’t you be a fool and die of it.’

Johnny heard his father suck in a tortured breath and swallow a cough, he looked up from his mother's skirts and watched as the shaking hand dragged a twisted cotton handkerchief, red and navy-blue plaid, to non-existent lips. Johnny focused on the movement of the hand, he wouldn’t, couldn’t, see the remnant of the man.

As if his father felt Johnny’s gaze, he pulled away the handkerchief. ‘You have the brains; lord knows where from.’ His lips barely moved, red creased at the corners of his mouth, garish against the yellowing flesh. ‘Figure out what killed me. Use your talent, be extraordinary, striv to live to a ripe old age. Look after yourself to look after the family, look to the farm and the cows­-’ The man didn’t get a chance to say anymore. He fell into a coughing fit. Scarlet droplets erupted from his mouth. He coughed again, then again. Each cough sprayed the sanguine fluid onto his face, his pillow, and the bedsheets.

The sight of the blood and the hideous sound of the choking cough overwhelmed young Johnny. He twisted his shoulders out from his mother's shocked grasp and fled to the meadow.

Within the hedgerow of the high field sheltered from the lifting breeze, Johnny found refuge in the den he crafted over the past summer. He built it to avoid the hushed corridors and foul smells and filled it with hay and his favourite broken toys his mother said should be thrown away. He huddled, wrapped into a ball amongst the hay and discarded toys, his face hot and hard, burnt with tears.

A rustling of leaves by his ear ended with a gentle moo. A cow’s breath blew across his ear. Johnny opened his eyes to see a curious eye peer at him through the leafy green of the hedge. He sat up, startled. The cow moved away. For hours he watched the gentle interactions of the cows. They spoke with little sounds as if they knew, on this day, to be quiet, to mourn the passing of the man who cared for them. They took and shared Johnny’s grief, softening its raw edges into sadness.

John's worst memories, connected by trauma, jostled for attention, woken and lively as if they were willing partners at the side of a dancefloor. John buried his head in his arms as they lay crossing on the top of the gate, his skin cold against his forehead. He didn't want what he knew was coming, yet at the same time he longed for it. A quick sleight of hand, a do-si-do and his father stepped away. Another memory stepped promptly forward and John looked down on the face of the love of his life, his wife Ava.

Ava knew the birth of their fifth child, Toby, wasn’t the same. She said as much but he refused to believe it. She lay exhausted, the child birthed. Hidden beneath the covers of the bed, her blood pooled and the room filled with the metallic, tangy aroma of blood. ‘You'll have to be extraordinary,’ she whispered.

He flinched, surprised by the words, his father's death leapt vividly to his mind from where it had lain hidden, deep within, for thirty years, her words yanked the memory up and out, like a reluctant fish, it caught and thrashed against the line, resistant, but unable to resist the hook's pull to the surface.

The bed, the blood. John held himself firm against the urge to leap up and run from the room and seek the freedom of the high meadow. To do so would mean releasing his dear Ava’s hand, irrationally convinced, as he was, that she would stay with him if he never let her go. Iron grew in him, he swallowed down the vomit that swelled to his throat tsunami-like at her poison-tipped words. The bitter smell of vomit in the room would be too much.

‘Promise to love them all, as I would,’ she said. The tiny bundle in the crib cried, she turned towards the sound and tried to lift her head. A sound born from the depths of a dying soul escaped her lips, a low bellow carrying the weight of unspoken pain. John knew that sound, he heard it in the language of the cows, he pressed his cheek against her hand unable to control the tears that forced their way out.

'Stay with me,' John begged.

Ava licked her blood-drained lips. ‘Promise to love little Toby.’ She waited for his nod. ‘Bring the children up right. Make their lives the best they can be.’

John couldn’t find the words; his eyes held out his promise for her to see. When Ava stopped breathing John held on to her hand as it turned cold, staring at her face, willing her to live.

Toby, his new baby boy, cried a tiny breathless cry.

John drew in a deep breath and laid Ava’s hand gently on the bed. He picked up the tiny pink mass within the bundle of quilted sheets and took him down to see the cows come in, for the first of many times.

His mind, now romping in morbid delight hauled forward memory after memory for his aghast perusal. He focused on his mother. The gentlest death he knew. He nursed her in her last years surrounded by his children and his children’s children. The family drew close in the failing years of the woman so pivotal to all of them. Like most farming wives she dealt in practicalities, her death was secondary to the farm's needs. ‘It’s your farm now, Johnny boy. You'll have to take over. You've done your bit. Your father would be proud but it's time to come back. Don’t let them beat you, John. Don’t let them have it. I know it's hard but you’ll have to be extraordinary.’

Be extraordinary, the words had changed for him. They fortified the rod of iron that ran through him. Commitment forged from pain. The words held him firm when he wanted to break. So, he beat them. It was his duty. Big business. The bank. Even the government and their petty little officials.

The years wound in and out, the dusty bluebells filled the woods, the wheat grew in the fields, the tractors brought in the harvest, the frost broke the ground, and the cows and calves and cows and calves and cows.

And every time the world got too hard, when the iron in him weighed him down, he took his worries to the cows. He listened to the curious wickers, the contented murmurs, the evening lows, and the gentle huffs until his soul was soothed once more.

Twilight turned the world into silvers and greys. 'Hasn't it been enough?' John asked the cows. The cows gathered close now, seeking warmth in numbers. John dreaded the memories that would come if he stood there a moment longer. It was time to go home. He pushed himself away from the gate. His muscles creaking. The cold, bone deep. He turned from the cows and walked the lane to the house in which he was born. He'd done his duty and kept his promises he longed to rest and join Ava in sleep. Death followed his steps to the house, moving to walk beside him. 'I've been extraordinary,' John whispered to the moon.

He’d kept his promise to his father. In school, he studied hard and became a researcher in the biomedical field. By the time he was thirty, before Ava's death, he'd discovered what killed his father, and his father’s father, and found a cure so no one else would suffer that bloody death. His father wanted him to live a long life and take care of the family and farm and he had. He lived an exceptionally long life, too long for his liking. At ninety-five he had had enough and that was twenty years ago. 

He kept his promise to his wife. One by one their children passed through university. They had good lives. He’d loved them all. Then they passed away, one by one, each time shattering his heart into fragments. Two from cancer, one from a stroke, one in a car accident, and little Toby, Ava’s last, from a heart attack right in front of him. The unwanted memory of Toby clutching at his chest leapt into John’s mind. He pushed it back into the dark and thought of the cows and their gentle ways.

He saved the farm as his mother wanted. He kept it safe but he no longer had the energy, or will, to keep it up. Unable to tend the fields, the trees began creeping into them like uncertain rabbits, testing the air before they ran rampant. The days of striding down to the river and watching for fish were long gone.

The hours he spent now, were leant against the gate talking to the cows as they’d come to check on him one by one, gently frisking him with their warm wet noses for the apple slice treats he sparingly handed out.

John didn't feel the cold in the house. Too tired to light the fire or even turn on the light, John moved to sit where he always sat, in the timeworn chair squatting in the shadowed corner of the room. The chair squeaked and moved under him protesting at his slight weight. The walls bore the creeping artistry of mould, a morbid patina of black and grey. Dust blanketed the furniture, muting the once vibrant wood to sombre grey. Spiders made their homes in the corners, under cupboards, and across the ceilings of every room. Shadows danced and frolicked across the walls as the wind moved the overgrown undergrowth against the moonlit window. He traced the erratic dance with rheumy eyes.

A dark figure stood in the doorway. John lifted his gaze, surprised. He raised a hand and then stopped in wonder at the waiting figure. He drew in a slow deep breath ready to ask a question, some question, something to explain what he saw. His heart lifted with hope. The breath was his last one. The question didn't have to be asked. His mouth widened in relief.