Can Cows Be Afraid?

It was late in the night on the island and most of the houses in the village were cloaked in darkness. They wore their night, blank faces, against a stiff wind off the sea.

At the fork in the road, where a wide gravel path split from the main road and ran down into large pastures, there sat an old farmhouse with a light still burning. Behind the old farmhouse, a small herd of cows were moving slowly in the dark, trying to find a place to lay low until morning. The bells around their necks chimed whenever their heads moved.

In the farmhouse, an eighty-year-old man sat in the kitchen. His name was Jose. He poured another glass of wine, staring out the window at the black trees, the black grass and the black sky. His wife was dead. His children were all married and gone. He lived alone. He listened to the cowbells ringing. Maybe like me they fear the dark. Can cows be afraid? What silly thoughts from a foolish old man.

He poured another glass of wine. The single light bulb hanging above his head exposed empty bottles on the kitchen table; a chair that squeaked; a sink bloated with dirty dishes, and a stove, a refrigerator, and dusty knickknacks on the windowsills.

"Here, to you my friends!" He clinked the air with his glass. "Salude! Another will join you soon." He smiled, he laughed, and he shuddered at the sound of the foreign, metallic voice coming from his mouth. It was not his voice. It was as if someone else were using his mouth to make sounds.

He laughed again, louder. This time a rasping noise hissed between his teeth. Yes, that's me. I'd know that laugh anywhere.

There was a knock at the door. Jose looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. Almost time to sleep, time to forget all that was left to be forgotten.

A young man entered. It was Pedro, his oldest son. Pedro lived with his wife and children, not to far up the road.

"Papa," he said, as soon as he walked through the door and sweeping his hand in the air, "Christ, what a slob!"

"Ah! Is that all you have to say to your father?" Jose polished off the glass of wine and poured the remainder.

"Maybe if you stopped drinking and cleaned up this place, we could have a civil conversation . . . and get rid of these damn bottles."

"Don't you dare touch them," the old man shouted, his lips trembling. Jose tried to get up but his old bones complained. He winced . . . not even the wine could numb the pain.

"Do you have to live this way? Have you no shame at all?" Pedro raised his arms in disgust. "Why do I even bother with you?" He approached his father.

Tall isn't he? Just like his mother, she was two inches taller than me.

"Damn right she was taller than you," the voice in his head said. "And not just in size, but in the everyday small things. The things you never noticed when she was alive." Yes, she was taller, much taller than me. Now, my son is trying to be even taller than her.

Wine dripped down the side of his mouth. He wiped it with the back of his hand.

"You're drunk," his son snapped.

Two small words.

"You're always drunk," Rosa had said, more than once.

Three small words.

The words rolled off his back like rain. He opened his mouth to explain it to his son, but his voice was a gurgling sound of phlegm. Words had become watery and elusive. Perhaps it was the alcohol or being alone. Lately...no, ever since Rosa died, certain words became less significant and their true meaning lost in a haze of wine and cigarettes.

Jose looked at his watch again. It was now past midnight. Time to take out the trash. He smiled at the glass in his hand and the empty bottles on the shelf.

"What the hell are you smiling at? Haven't you any shame? How can you live like this? This house is worse than a pigsty. You smell of booze and manure."

His father laughed. Pedro ignored him.

"Manure, that's the stuff," Jose roared.

"This is ridiculous," Pedro shouted. "I can't keep coming here to put you to bed. I have my own life. I have a wife, children, responsibilities." He stepped closer to his father. "Do you understand me? I have other responsibilities."

"Manure! That's the stuff."

"Goddamn you old man, listen to me. Look at me when I'm talking to you." He took his father's gaunt, skeletal face in his hands. How fragile the bones were. A little twist, a slight squeeze and they would snap like twigs. "Look at me, damn you."

Jose saw his son's eyes. They were brown like burnt grass. If his nose was a little longer, if his mouth fuller, his cheeks puffier, he'd swear on the empty bottles, he was looking at the ghost of his wife.

Dear Rosa, he wrote in his mind, your son is your reflection, your daughter-in-law a scarecrow, and none of them are worth a damn. "God, I miss you, Rosa," he whispered. "Oh God, I miss you so much."

Pedro picked his father up and cradled him in his arms He carried him to the bedroom.

"Take me away," the old man sang. "Let me lie with my bottles. My dear friends. My lovers." The old man rambled on, waving his arm in the air. "All my lovely bottles. Have you ever seen such a display of emptiness? Such elegance."

Pedro placed his burden on the bed. He took his father's shoes off and tossed them on the floor.

It was a cramped twelve by twelve room with a double bed, double-dresser with a mirror, a high back chair, and a small glow-in-the-dark crucifix tacked to the wall above the empty pillow. The cross was a gift from Rosa's brother Carlos, the man with the ski slope body and the breath of bad sex. "For good luck," Carlos had said to his sister who was married to the drunk. "You will need it."

"Papa?"

"Yesss, my ssson," Jose said, with a mouth full of wool. His tongue was useless when he was drunk. He tried to spit it out. Instead, he dribbled down his chin.

"For God sakes, look at you. You're disgusting."

"Sssure, sssure," said his father imitating himself. He sat up and wrestled with his shirt. "Sssee, my ssshirt." The buttons came alive in his fingers. He tried to slip them through the tiny holes in his shirt. "Your mother . . . damn buttons...bought this wonderful ssshirt, with her wonderful money . . . damn buttons." He pulled and the buttons jumped from his fingers like popcorn.

"Merda," Jose swore, slapping his knees. Looking up, he said, "I seem to have forgotten how to do it."

"You're a pathetic fool. Why do I bother?" Pedro fumbled with his father's shirt. "My wife was right when she said I should've put you in a nursing home." He practically tore the shirt from his father's back. "But no," a button popped off and skidded across the floor, "let's give the old man a break, I said."

His father sat soldier-stiff and looked straight ahead at the shadowy reflection in the mirror and waited patiently to be undressed.

"The eyes are all wrong," he said to his image.
"What?"
"See," Jose pointed to the mirror, "the eyes are all wrong."

The son pulled the shirt over his father's head and threw it across the chair. It fell harmlessly to the floor.

"Can you stand?"

"Why not." Jose watched his reflection slowly rise until the face in the mirror disappeared. Only a headless torso remained. He watched his son's hard, tanned hands unbuckle the belt, and pull the zipper down. The trousers fell softly to the floor. Rosa look; I'm naked. He laughed so loud in his head he almost fainted. If only I can find it now? He searched between his legs. Somewhere behind the curtain were two raisins and a soggy wet string. He laughed uproariously at the headless naked body.

"What the hell is so damn funny?" the voice asked.
I can still do it!
"What do you know about making love to a woman?" the voice said, taunting him. "How to hold her in your arms, caress her hair, her lips, her breasts, her hips, her feet. You never did it when she was alive. You never held her in your arms when she needed you. You were always too damn drunk to care. Goddamn it, what do you know about a woman?"
"Shut up! Shut up!" the old man shouted, covering his ears.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Pedro asked.
"Where's my head? I lost my head."
"Will you stop and just go to bed, please."
Skinny white bony legs slipped under cold wet sheets. Jose shivered and felt like dying.
"Go to sleep, papa."
"Ah," the old man sighed.
Pedro walked back to the kitchen and shut the light off.
"Goodnight, papa."

Pedro walked out, leaving the door unlatched. As he walked home, the moon splintered through the trees. The wind feathered his hair. The air was warm and moist on his face. He touched his cheeks. He wiped away the tears.

"He belongs in a hospital, or in a nursing home," his wife had said once too many times. "If you can't do it, I will."
Why can't old men just die quietly in their sleep?

Jose lifted one rusty elbow and, trembling with fear, touched the empty pillow beside him. "I miss you Rosa," he whispered, and fell asleep.

A morning chill seeped into Pedro's house. He sat at the kitchen table eating breakfast. The windowpanes were filled with a flat gray sky. He was wearing an old sweater, the one his mother had knitted the year before she died. He wore it every day. It was frayed at the elbows and unraveling at the collar. Sometimes if he sat very still, he could see her sitting out on the porch in the back yard; her apron full of corn meal, feeding the chickens; and the half knitted sweater in a basket, on the floor by the chair, and whenever he thought about his father, all he could think of was the drinking, always the drinking.

Pedro packed a lunch in a burlap bag and slung it over his shoulder. He grabbed the milk-bucket with the other hand and left. He walked the path behind the house, up a small rise, to where the cows were. As he climbed over the hill, sunlight had burned a hole in the sky. The cows were restless and bumping into each other, and their swollen udders almost touching the short stubble of grass.

Pedro called them by name, hushing them with firm pats on their stiff flanks. Some of them had to be shoved aside. He put his weight to their hind legs and urged them to move with small cries of affection. As he cleared a path between them, he stopped suddenly, dropping the milk-bucket and burlap bag. "Papa," he screamed.

He rushed to his father's side. The old man was naked, except for the pillow between his legs, and the empty bottle clutched in his hand. The grass was burgundy where the wine had spilled.

"You old fool. You drunken old fool."

Pedro took his sweater off and covered his father's naked shoulders. He picked him up and carried his father back to the house where his wife and son were still sleeping. He placed him gently on the couch and covered him with an afghan his wife had made for chilly nights.

The old man opened his eyes.
"Jesus papa, you scared the hell out of me. What the hell were you doing out there?"
"The cows are afraid of the dark. I went to keep them company."
"Can't you ever be serious with me? I wish you were sober, just once."
The old man closed his eyes. He reached out for his son's hand. Pedro let him find it.
"I too . . . am afraid . . . of the dark," Jose whispered.

Contributor: Joseph M. Faria

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