Fluoxetine

I never asked Ma about her favorite animal, but it was probably one of those birds that eats insects off the backs of sub-Saharan oxen. She had a neurotic desire to look after people, and if they swatted her away, she’d swoop right back in and start pruning again. After she retired from nursing, she bought a herd of bison and spent her days fluttering around them instead.

Before the Big C took her, she used to say, without a lick of humor, that they were her kids. All fifteen of them were good as gold, she’d add, ‘cause they did nothing but chew on grass and fart. Besides, she saw them every day. She knew they were safe.

But me and Tom?

Ma always said she never quite saw us enough. 

I can spot my bovine siblings through the kitchen window: they’re blobs of brown in sunlit fields, distorted by the smudge on my glasses. Across from me, Tom sits with his feet up on the dining table, watching tendrils of smoke from his blunt spiral up into nothing. His nose is wrinkled; in less than a week at her farmhouse, Ma’s patchouli-scented candles have already infused themselves into our clothes.

“We don’t know squat about bison, Billy,” he mutters.

“Don’t matter,” I grunt back, still peering out the window. “They’re our siblings. They’re sick. We have to look after them.”

“They ain’t our siblings. They’re just bison. Big cows.”

“Still our responsibility.”

Tom winces at that. “So, the vet’s coming. Then what?”

“Depends what he says.”

“Will it cost?”

I shake my head. “Said he’d come here for free. On Ma’s account.”

“But after that? He ain’t gonna cure them for free. ‘Sides, you know I don’t like pills and such.”

Suddenly self-conscious, I suck my stomach in. He hasn’t commented on the weight I’ve gained since we last saw each other. But he’d definitely have something to say if he knew it was from my medication.

Taking my silence for assent, he puffs out another cloud of smoke, watching the vapor melt into the space between us. A frown creeps onto his face.

“We got enough going on as is. There’s this place,” – he waves the blunt around – “her money, all her stuff, a funeral to sort out, and now the bison?”

My nose pinches, but I force the tears back. I haven’t cried in front of Tom since we were kids, and I don’t plan to now. I let my breath flow out through puckered lips, controlled, like my therapist taught me. 

“We knew about the bison long before she… you know.”

His eyes soften. “Eh, you’re right. Guess we didn’t think she’d go so fast.”

My eyes drift from Tom’s face to the wall behind him, where Ma put up a framed photo of us three years ago. In it, a teenage me sports the same glasses I’m wearing now; she bought them for my birthday in my last year of high school. Tom’s beard was shorter back then, trimmed around his jawline, and his eyes still had the optimistic light of an apprentice tradesman. Ma’s head is sandwiched between our shoulders, her smile so wide it compresses her eyes into wrinkled ovals.

He follows my gaze, craning his neck to look at the photo.

“That was when she got the bison, wasn’t it?” he sighs. “I wonder if the Big C was growing inside her back then. We just didn’t know it.”

“That’s why we gotta look after them. For her sake.”

Now Tom’s looking out the window. He pulls his feet off the table and draws in another puff, deep in thought. The sun shifts in the sky, and I close my eyes, enjoying the warmth on my face. We sit in companionable silence as the morning leaks away.

“They teach you much about bison farming in engineering school?” he says finally, his lip tugging upwards. “’Cause I’m just a mechanic. You got the brains.”

“Think our knowledge is about the same.”

“So, you gonna drop outta school and take care of your bison siblings? You know I can’t. I got bills to pay.”

“I can’t either.”

“Then what do we do?” A glint forms in his eye. “Could we sell them?”

Like a magnet, the photo draws my attention again; to Ma’s effervescent, innocent smile.

“Or,” he continues, “you know what I’ve heard?” He blows out smoke and lowers his voice. “Bison meat is supposed to taste pretty good. Aren’t they sick already? Might be kinder to just… let them go.”

I bow my head and tear my eyes away from Ma’s, squeezing them shut. A whiff of patchouli wafts past, as if she’s still here, bustling around the kitchen with her chessboard apron on.

“Billy?” Tom falters. 

Bereft of words, I point across the kitchen table to the thin, threadbound book underneath a porcelain vase of marigolds. I hear the vase thump against the table, then wood scraping as Tom drags the book towards him. Each turn of the page is a shallow breath that tickles my nose.

“She gave them all names,” he murmurs. “And birthdays. They’ve got favorite treats, like apples and bananas. Jesus, she even measured how fast the calves grew.”

“They’re her kids too.”

He snaps the book shut. “Should we cut them a slice of the inheritance, then?”

The tinkling of the doorbell cuts off my reply. Ever the traditionalist, Ma never replaced the vintage brass bell hanging outside, even though a century of tarnishment has left it black as midnight.

Knees creaking, I clamber to my feet. “Must be the vet.”

Dr Johnson stands in the doorway with a clipboard under one arm and flowers in the other. His brow is furrowed in sympathy. 

“Some lilies. In Jane’s memory,” he says, flashing a smile.

I thought my lips had forgotten how, but they surprise me by returning it.

We slip our gumboots on and traipse into the fields, weak sun at our backs. I notice Tom’s holding the bison scrapbook in his hands, but on the other side of his body, as if he doesn’t want me to notice. Waving bugs away from my nose, I ask the vet how Ma looked after the bison.

“Jane was a force of nature,” he remarks. “I don’t know many people who can manage a bison herd by themselves, but she was one of them. Those bison were looked after exceptionally well.”

“Then how’d they get sick?” 

Dr Johnson shrugs. “We’ll see. They were healthy until just before she passed. Maybe she was too weak to care for them towards the end.”

Tom walks in silence a few steps behind, sniffing. I stopped badgering him about taking allergy tablets a while ago. “Pills aren’t good for you, Billy,” he’d told me. “Natural’s best.” And that was that. For all the trouble it gave her in life, I wager Ma’d be proud at least one of us carried on her famous stubborn streak. 

The bison have scattered themselves across the grass, some chewing, others lounging on nature’s futon. The stench of droppings is overpowering. 

Up close, I fight back a pang of fear at their size. Their heads droop curiously close to the ground, but their humps rise to above my eye level. There’s no consistency to their shaggy brown fur: on their heads it grows long, the color of dark chocolate; on their backs, it’s shorter, faded to sun-worn teak.

The vet picks his way past piles of dark droppings, hot grass crunching under his boots. He leads us a short distance from the largest of the bison.

“You see that one?” he says, pointing. “That’s the male. Your mom did well – fourteen cows per bull is a good ratio for a herd this size.”

The bison stands there, chewing. On second glance, I notice its head and horns are much bigger than the others. Its shoulder muscles, too. It looks like it could easily flip a car.

“His name’s Zachary,” I mutter. “Ma named him.”

The vet nods. “Well, Zachary is sick. Can you hear that?”

I cock my head. Under the wind and birdsong, there’s an odd, wheezy sound every few seconds. It’s strangely familiar.

“He’s coughing,” the vet continues. “You’d better hope it’s just influenza and not tuberculosis. I’ll need a saliva sample for testing.”

Something wrenches in my chest, and I glance at Tom, but his eyes have glazed over. He fishes in his pocket for a lighter, and the blunt reappears between his fingers.

“Everything okay?” Dr Johnson asks, eyes darting between us.

Tom’s looking away, far in the distance, so I break the silence.

“Sorry. That cough - it just sounds like Ma did when she got the Big C.”

“I understand. Take a moment. I need to check the other bison, anyway.” He strides off.

I wait for Tom to say something. He always has something to say. Yet we remain ensconced in our own little worlds, listless as cows standing in a field under an empty sky. My mind wanders back to the past week - the first without Ma - when my life was on fast-forward. Faces, words, and emotions revolved so quickly through my brain they’d congealed like dried blood, hard and impenetrable. I felt as if my mind and body had lost all capacity for sensation.

But now, there’s a weight on my eyelids, a pressure behind my eyes, a yawn waiting to escape whenever I open my mouth. The minutes trickle past effortfully.

I’m about to leave, admit defeat, when Tom finds his voice again.

“They’re suffering, Billy. Just like she did.” He lets out a breath that lasts an eternity, smoke billowing from his lips. “You were right. We gotta look after them.”

“You were right, too. What if it costs?”

“We’ll figure it out. I know we will.”

I take a deep breath. His back is to me, his gaze still fixed somewhere far beyond the horizon.

“Tommy?” I croak. 

“Yeah?”

“I’m in therapy. They gave me pills. I know you don’t like them. I’m sorry.”

He looks back at me, eyes red-rimmed and moist. Watching. Then, he puts out his blunt and spreads his arms wide, beckoning me in for a hug.

“I’m gonna look after Ma’s big cows,” he smiles, “and I’m gonna look after you, too.”

The tears fall before I can stop them, but this time I realise I want him to see.