Getting the Longhorn Home

Getting the Longhorn Home

There was a cow on the train line this morning. English Longhorn, rare breed. I know this because my Grandpa used to keep them before the bank forced his farms’ closure. Grandpa lived for his farm, his Longhorns especially. He had fire surging through his seventy year old veins and I believed every word when he said “over my dead body will they take this farm and my cattle away from me.” I assumed he never meant those words literally but the day before the bank took possession of Grandpa Oswald's farm, one of the farmhands found him lying in the hay beside Bertha, his oldest and most beloved Longhorn, his hunting rifle resting on the ground near his feet, a single bullet wound to the side of his head.

    Grandpa’s old farm stands behind the tracks, all six hundred acres of arable and cattle land. The station serves the adjoining village, nothing much, just a stone built ticket office, a couple of donated benches made by my deceased father’s hands and a stereotypical station clock hanging above a digital timetable. There is but one outbound and one return journey to and from the nearest town each day so it’s quiet around the station area most of the time. Leading down from an opening at the back of the farmland is a path which eventually meets the line where it runs alongside it. It’s an opening I often used to worry would provide an escape route for Grandpa’s herd of Longhorns but not once did they roam. Too content in Grandpa’s care I guess but the cow on the tracks this morning must have taken that very path to end up where she did. There was no other way for her to get there. Lord knows why she wandered off, probably unhappy now Grandpa’s no longer around, or so I’d like to believe, and Longhorns usually stay close to the herd so it was unusual behavior. One things for sure, that cow was once belonged to Grandpa. I saw the tag clipped in her ear, later, when I came face to face with her, the code referring to her birth two years previous. The guy who bought the farm at the auctioneers six months ago had the herd of Longhorns thrown in with the business. For free. An opportunity as rare as the breed itself in my opinion, an opportunity too difficult for my family and me ever to accept after the decades of sweat and grind Grandpa put into those animals.

    The sun breaking through the slats of the blinds, the dawn chorus of house sparrows and blackbirds had woken me bright and early this morning. After breakfast I headed to the top of the banking by the old tracks with a few apples, a crust of buttered bread and a flask of water in a back-pack. I like buttered crusts and apples. There’s something simple and rustic about them but then again, Grandpa taught me all I needed to know about simple rustic food – blackberries eaten straight from the bush, peas eaten straight from the pod; dirt shaken from a freshly pulled carrot, briefly washed beneath the outdoor hose before chomping on it. When I set off from home my watch read six twenty, give or take half an hour on my unreliable timepiece and knowing the one and only departure from the station to be three hours away, it was my intention to sit beneath the vast spreading oaks and the wildflowers at the edge of Grandpa’s old farm whilst taking in the peace and warmth of the summer day. I have been unwell for a few months, still grieving I suppose, and it’s where I find my peace, my antidote, at the edge of Grandpa’s farm. It’s the nearest I get to a feeling of belonging these days. What wasn’t on my list of expected finds was a cow, an English Longhorn to be exact, a breed I knew only too well and hadn’t seen since Grandpa had lost his farm, standing in the middle of the lines. I watched her for a while, enthralled as she ripped up the dandelions from the grass banking, her square jaw rotating slow and wide, the yellow petals and dark green leaves disappearing inch by inch into the corner of her chewing mouth. I climbed down the banking and on to the track to meet her. Having had a soft spot for Longhorns since being a young girl, I simply couldn’t resist.

Grandpa told me time and again Longhorns were the epitome of docile within the bovine world and from the moment I moved among the herd, as a little girl, I understood how right his interpretation of the breed had been so felt nothing but comfortable approaching the animal. She spotted me as soon as I stepped from banking to track and immediately started towards me. That’s the thing with Longhorns, they are sociable creatures, inquisitive. To the layman they may look rather menacing, bullish animals, what with their wide, muscular, low slung bodies, their horns curving from their heads down to their nostrils. Yet to those of us in the know they are strong yet passive beasts, quiet and trusting. They are gentle beings, creatures I had once sat in the fields with, leaning back against their robust bodies as they snoozed in the sun, snuggling into their thick warm hides of white and chocolate whilst I looked up at the sky, daydreaming, or dozed along with them. Among those huge beasts was where I felt most safe, most protected and when it was finally snatched away, I felt a heartbreak no-one alive would believe could ever be felt for cattle.

    "Hello girl," I said, taking an apple from my bag and offering it to her. She took it and munched voraciously. That's when I spotted the familiar blue tag in her ear, the one coded with her birth date and farm location. I couldn't believe it. I turned the tag over. Hettie, it read, in Grandpa's distinctive handwritten scrawl. Hettie, one of Bertha's offspring.

"Oh my goodness, Hettie! How have you been?"

She nudged my arm with her head as if in response and sniffed at my bag. I took out another apple which she took without hesitation. She reminded me so much of her Mother, Bertha, who also adored apples and would help herself to low hanging fruits from the apple trees in and around the farm whenever she got the chance. Bertha would nudge humans with her head too, signaling her need for attention, usually a head rub or a back scratch, just as Hettie was doing after finishing her apple. So I took the opportunity to be up close and personal with her, ruffling the long brown mullet which sat flat between her horns with one hand whilst stroking the top of her nose with the other, sniffing in her cow-scent, feeling the reassuring power and snug warmth of her tonne-weight body as she leaned into me. The experience sent me right back to those wonderful days on Grandpa’s farm, if only for a fleeting moment, when my journey back in time was broken by the cutting scream of a siren, the rattle of a tractor towing a cattle box and shouts of get away from the cow Miss, we need to move her off the line.

    A kiss on her nose as I had once kissed all of Grandpa’s Longhorns, a last scratch of her mullet and whilst the police officers looked on, the farmer came for the cow - him being the man who had purchased Grandpa’s farm - dressed in fine tweed jacket and matching cap, a noose of rope to throw around the cows’ thick neck in his hand. I stood back to watch, expecting the farmer to call and the escaped Hettie to follow obediently as Longhorns usually did. Only she had other ideas. Each time the farmer pulled and steered the rope with a call for her to come, the cow turned her head to the banking with its swathe of luscious sunset- yellow dandelions, ripping plant matter from the ground and chewing slowly, matter-of-factly, as if she hadn’t a care whether she was stood on a train line or not, seeming quite happy to have the freedom of tasting dandelions and grasses freshly harvested from the banking instead. I heard the farmer raise his voice, heard the forceful slap of his hand against her shoulder and rump, and realizing none of his actions were having any effect, the man shouted as he heaved the rope until he was forced into the stance of a tug-of-war participant, balancing on the backs of his heels, the low distressed moo of the cow as she went against him, the rope eventually slipping from the man’s grip when he almost lost his balance. I could watch the debacle no longer. I made towards the man and Hettie, retrieving an apple from my bag as I went.

    “Try this,” I said. “Longhorns love apples.”

    The farmer’s eyes narrowed, his top lip curled. “And what do you know about Longhorns? You look like you haven’t worked a day in your bloody life.”

    Grandpa once told me the man who wanted to get his hands on his farm at a giveaway price wasn’t a pleasant man and had tried coercion and bribery to force Grandpa’s hand long before the bank issued its repossession notice. At one point the man had informed Grandpa he was an old fool who had no idea about the modern farming business and was therefore to blame for the ruin of his farm, for damning the reputation of the Oswald farming name. If I’m honest, there was a hint of truth in the man’s statement. Grandpa had never been interested in making millions, he cared more for the fact the farm had been passed down through generations, cared far more for his Longhorns being hand-milked to make specialty cheeses and yogurts rather than machines yanking the milk from their teats. This old-fashioned way of working created a small income, paid the running costs until those costs began to spiral. He increased both herd and production but by that time the specialty market was swamped with entrepreneurs and famous brands. Grandpa was forced to borrow from the bank several times over in the hope he could maintain the business long enough to pass it on to his granddaughter – me - but it hadn’t turned out as planned. I know for sure Grandpa would have felt ridiculed, a failure too and now the man who caused Grandpa to suffer this way, and more, stood before me for the first time since he’d taken over the Oswald farm. I could have been offended by his rudeness and his treatment of Hettie, I could have rammed that apple where the sun absolutely did not shine. Instead I held my composure because it was a moment of clarity for me, the ripest of openings to seek consolation.

    “My Grandpa once owned and bred English Longhorns, he was an expert on the breed. You may know him. Kenneth Oswald, of Oswald’s Farm? Dead now, God bless him. He was forced to sell up after decades of hard work and graft, wanted the farm to pass onto me like it had been passed down in the family for several generations. Sadly it didn’t happen that way. Grandpa was an excellent farmer, too. Kind and gentle. He taught me from a very young age to treat the Longhorns with respect and compassion. That way, he said, they give respect right back to you.” Hettie nudged my arm again, peered at me through huge soppy eyes. I stroked her face in response as I continued to speak. “Longhorns give so much but you can only truly see how much they have to give if you really get to know them, spend time among the herd, watching and learning from them. But I guess you don’t have much time to do that these days, do you? I can tell that by the way you handle this dear lady.” I pat the Longhorn, let out a sigh. “It broke Grandpa’s heart to lose his farm and especially his herd. Still, you got the benefit of his labors so that counts for something at least.”

    As the man gawped at me, speechless and with an angry glint in his eye, I held out the apple for Hettie. She sniffed it before trying to take it from my hand. I took a few steps back before she had the chance to grab it and she moved forward, doing so with every one of my retreated steps, the apple held out to her like a promise she found too hard to resist. Within minutes she was treading the ramp up into the cattle box and once inside, I tethered her rope to the bar, kissed her nose once more then handed over the apple.

    “I’ll look out for you, should you ever come my way again and I’ll make sure to have plenty of apples. Just for you.”

    As she crunched and salivated, I jumped down from the box and slammed the box door shut. Nervous, I nodded to the farmer.

    “She’s tethered and set to go.”

    He said nothing, not a word and I wondered if his silence was due to the police presence. Still, I offered a half-hearted smile and set off towards the banking beside the train lines, a sense of being watched upon my back as I went. I scrambled up the banking, retook my spot beneath the huge sprawling oaks in time to see the police leave the scene and I expected the farmer to follow suit. Instead he stood solid beside the cattle box, staring in my direction for minutes but which seemed like hours. I stared back but not at him. I was gazing at the box holding one of Grandpa's English Longhorns, the loss of their quiet companionship, their protection and the sense of belonging I had once felt among the herd that bit more painful, the loss of my Grandpa ever more raw. Then I heard a thud - the Longhorn stamping on the floor of the cattle box. The man glared one final time before climbing up into his tractor. Had I realized who I was? I didn't think so. I had never been present during his visits to Grandpa's farm. Or maybe he'd figured out a connection from the way I spoke. I didn't care either way. I'd released something I had needed to say to the man for some time.

The machine roared into action, the tinny-rattle of the tractors’ body and internal components echoing in the silence of the deserted station as it slowly started to move, driven away by the new owner of Grandpa’s farm, the beautiful Longhorn cow, Hettie, who had allowed me one more, albeit brief contact with my old life, being pulled behind in her cattle box. And as I sat on the banking, once more alone and in the peace at the edge of Grandpa’s old farm, I found myself hoping, praying as hard as I could, that Oswald’s farm would one day, by any chance of a miracle, be returned to me and along with it, our treasured herd of English Longhorns, Hettie included. It's a long shot, I know, but it's my dream for the taking.