Demon Box Page 6

  The tie had been replanted, the rails replaced, but not since Hamburger had the little square been occupied. Abdul entered without a squawk. To my surprise, he had to squeeze in the gate that Hamburger used to pass through easily.

  "Abdul ol' buddy, you're big enough to know some of the harsh facts of life," I told him as I fastened the gate. "It ain't all free love and frolic." Abdul stood without comment, munching the bucket of green apples I had used to lure him. Watching from across the road, Tory's bull had a lot to say about his rival's incarceration. He was terrible. All afternoon he kept up his needling of Abdul with bawled innuendos and sexual slurs. By the time I went to bed, the Hereford had worked up to downright racial insults. I promised myself to have a few words with old man Tory about his beast someday soon.

  Old man Tory beat me to it. He was there at sunup, cracking at the windowpane of my front door with a flinty old knuckle.

  "Yer bull? Yer gor-gor-gordam black bull?" He was shirtless and shuddering violently, from both the morning chill and the heat of some as-yet-unbottled anger. "Yer sell him er yer still got him tell me that!"

  Tory is a toothless old veteran of some eighty embattled years of farming, with the face of a starved mink, and not much bigger. It is said that he once accosted a pair of California duck hunters trespassing after a flock of mallards they'd seen go down in the slough that gullies through Tory's property, and had proceeded to chew them out with such snapping ferocity that one of the hunters suffered a coronary. Now, as I watched him shuddering and sputtering on my doorstep, toothless and scrawny in his bib overalls and no shirt, I feared that this might be his blood pressure's time to blow. Soothingly I told him, why yes, as a matter of fact, I still had Abdul. "If you'd like to size him up he's out in my bullpen -"

  "The gordam hell if he is! He's been over in my field since afore light, tearin' up fences an' gates an' all sortsa hell. Now he's into it with my bull - t' the death!"

  I told him I'd get after the delinquent right away, soon's I got my clothes on and my kids up to help. I apologized for the trouble and old man Tory cooled off a little.

  "I'd've broke 'em apart myself," he growled, as he started hobbling back down the steps, "but I ain't had my breakfast yet."

  I hollered everybody up and we headed over to our field car, a '64 Merc convertible. We didn't have to drive down to Tory's gate; the hole in his fence looked like a road grader had opened it. I maneuvered through the fractured wood and wire, then headed us bouncing toward the cloud of dust in the distance. I drove alongside the freshly rutted trail left by the battle's progress. The distance traveled into Tory's land showed who was winning. Bull fashion, the Hereford had planted himself between the black attacker and his whiteface herd, but Abdul had forced him steadily backwards, more than half a mile. When we reached the scene of the conflict the Hereford was nearly to the edge of Tory's gully. His tongue was dripping blood from the corner of his mouth and his eyes were rolling wildly to and fro, from Abdul, standing mountainlike a few feet in front, to the lip of the chasm a few feet behind.

  They both turned their heads to regard the car honking and reving its engine at them. I got out. "Abdul!" I hollered. "Knock it off! And go home!" He gave me such a look of apology I thought for a moment he might obey, like a dog. But the whiteface tried to take advantage of the distraction with a charge for Abdul's turned neck: butt! Abdul staggered. He pawed for his balance, stepping backwards, then dropped his head in time to meet the next attack: ka-dud! The two big skulls crunched together with astonishing force. Thousands of pounds of conflicting inertia rippled down their backs to their butts and right on through the earth. You could feel it underfoot: ka-dud! Then again: duddd! and Abdul regained the turf my shouting had cost him.

  What a spectacle! They would collide, and drive, heave, grind until they were exhausted, then stand panting. Sometimes they placed their big foreheads together without a charge, almost affectionately, increasing the force until the huge necks would accordion with the effort; sometimes they would sling their heads from side to side and bring them together with a sharp crack before starting their push. But whatever the tactic, inch by inch Abdul was forcing his weary opponent to what looked like certain defeat; even if the Hereford didn't lose his footing over the edge and expose his underside to Abdul's murderous trampling, he would still be fighting downhill. Downhill from that much weight would put him at a conclusive disadvantage.

  I didn't want to be paying Tory purebred prices for a dead blowhard, so I jumped back behind the wheel of the Merc and gunned it into the fracas. The bumper caught Abdul in the fore shoulder while he was brow to brow and pushing. He didn't budge. I backed off farther and came at them again; again there was no give. But the impact had jammed the radiator back into the fan; the ensuing racket distracted Abdul long enough to let the Hereford escape the precipice. For a second it looked like he was going to turn tail on valor and run for discretion, but his ladies across the chasm raised such an outcry the Hereford had to swing back about. There was nothing to do but fight to the finish or spend the rest of his days hearing them nag.

  He spread his feet groggily for his last stand. I tried to maneuver the car into position for another side shot, but it was beginning to steam. Abdul hiked a couple of disdainful clods into the air and lowered his head for the kill when a sharp crack! crack! startled all of us. Up out of the gully came old man Tory. A clean white shirt was buttoned over his overalls and his dentures were in; his lips and stubble were flecked with toast crumbs and berry jam. In his hand he carried a little green leather buggy whip, the kind you buy as rodeo souvenirs.

  "Good gord ain't yer broke these sonsabidges up yet?" I told him I'd been waiting for them to wear themselves out, they'd be less dangerous.

  "Dangerous? Dangerous? Why good gordamighty damn stand outter the way. I ain't a-skeered of the sonsabidges!"

  And waded into them, whip crackling and dentures snapping. His Hereford received two snaps on the snoot and, to my amazement, took off bleating like a lamb. Abdul spun to give pursuit but there was that little wizard right in his path, green wand cracking like firecrackers. Abdul hesitated. He looked after the panicked whiteface galloping for the barn, then back at the stick conjuring green sparks, and decided if Old Blowhole was that scared of it it must be pretty strong medicine. He turned around and started toward home in a shambling walk, his black brow lowered.

  "Yer see that?" Tory pointed the whip after his fleeing bull. "When the sonabidge was a calf my great gran-kids useta tie him to a wagon an' whup him inter pullin' them - with this shittin' little whup. Never forget it, did 'e?"

  We gave the old farmer a lift back to his farmhouse. I told him I'd fix his fence; he said it was done past that; now that my bull had topped his it wouldn't rest till it had topped the whole herd. "Prolly won't even rest then, yer know? There's only one thing to do. And if yer don't I b'gord will."

  So that night we called Sam's, and the next morning John came turning in the drive before I'd even had coffee. Riding the running board, I directed him out to where the herd was bedded in the green clover around the main irrigation pipe. Ebenezer commenced bellering a warning, as she has come to do whenever she sees the approach of the silvery little death wagon, but she was too late. John was already out, walking around toward the target I had pointed out. Because of the size, he was carrying a.30-.30 instead of his usual.22. Abdul was just blinking awake when the shot exploded in his brow. He fell over the pipe without a sound.

  As the herd bucked and bawled John hooked his winch cable to Abdul's hind feet and dragged the carcass away about fifty yards. I used to insist that he drag them clear from the field out of sight, so the herd wouldn't have to watch the gory peeling and gutting of their fallen relative, but John'd shown me it wasn't necessary. They don't follow the carcass; they stay to circle the spot where the actual death occurred, keening around the taking-off place though the hoisted husk is in full view mere yards away. As time passes, this circle spreads larger. If one were to
hang overhead in a balloon and take hourly photos of this outline of mourning, I believe it would describe the diffusing energy field of the dead animal.

  Abdul was the biggest animal we'd ever killed, and this mourning lasted the longest. Off and on between grazing, the herd returned to the dented pipe and stood in a lowing circle that was a tight ten feet in diameter the first day, and the next day fifteen feet, and the next day twenty. For a full week they grieved. It was fitting: he'd been their old man and a great one, and it was only right that the funeral last until a great circle had been observed, only natural - with the proper period of respect fading naturally toward forgetting while Nature shuffles her deck for the next deal around.

  But at this point up pops a joker.

  The bathroom floor rots through. Buddy and cousin Davy drive out in the creamery van with a load of plywood and we work the night away nailing it down. When they leave in the morning Buddy is attracted by a bellering in the field. It is Ebenezer. Another duty of her office is to let us know when one of the young cows has started labor. Buddy sees the supine heifer and throws his truck into reverse and comes hollering and honking back. "Looks like there's a calf about to be borned," he yells at me. Betsy hops in with him while I open the gate. We head out to where Ebenezer is trumpeting her announcement.

  "That's right where Abdul got it last week," I told Buddy. "They've been bedding down there every night."

  "Listen to Ebenezer," Betsy said. "O, me, I hope she doesn't think -!"

  It was too late. Ebenezer had already made the mistaken association: early morning, an approaching truck, a killing still strong in her memory... and what had begun as a call for assistance became a shriek of warning. She planted herself between us and her laboring sister and bellowed, "It's the killer wagon! Head for the woods, honey; I'll try to hold the fiends back."

  We were the rest of the morning trying to find the cow in the swamp. We finally located her hiding place by her ragged breathing. She was on her side under a thicket of blackberries. From the size of the calf's front hooves sticking out, we could see it was a whopper, far too big for so young a heifer. Maybe she could have squeezed it out on her own out in the field when she was still fresh, but Ebenezer's misguided alarm had sent her running and spent her strength. Now she was going to need help.

  I tried to get a loop over her head, but she was as skittish as I was unskilled. The rest of the afternoon Betsy and the kids and I chased her from one stickerpatch to the next. There was never really any room for me to get a good toss of my loop. At length, I traded my lasso for my old wrestling headgear and climbed into the low branches of a scrub oak. When Betsy and the kids drove her beneath me I leaped on her and wrestled her down bodily. I held her until Quiston got a loop around a hind leg and Betsy got another around her neck. We got a third tie around her other hind leg and lashed her to three trees. Quis sat on her head to keep her from rearing up. I wrapped the calf's protruding hooves with clothesline and started pulling. Betsy massaged her stomach, and little Caleb talked to her and stroked her neck. When a contraction would start I would brace a foot against each side of her spread flank and tug. When the clothesline broke, I doubled it - and when it broke again, I double doubled it and kept pulling.

  The sun went down. Sherree brought the flashlight down from the house and some wet rags to towel some of the stuff from our faces while we labored. Blood and mud and sweat and shit. Finally, with a mighty tugging and grunting and rending of orifices, out it came: a pretty little bull, all black with one stripe of white in the corner of its mouth, as though he'd been drinking milk already and had drooled. It wasn't breathing. Betsy blew air into its lungs until they started pumping on their own.

  We let the cow up but kept the tie around her neck so she wouldn't flee in exhausted craziness before she accepted the calf. Sherree brought her a bucket of water, and while the animal drank we stood back out of sight and shined the flashlight beam on the calf. Calmed by the drink, the cow stepped forward to sniff the wobbly child. I switched off the light.

  The moon had come out and was dappling down through the oak leaves. She had begun licking the calf. I wanted to take the rope from around her neck so she wouldn't tangle in the brush, but she wouldn't let me near the loop knot to loosen it. I opened my buck knife and slipped up as close as I could and began sawing very gently at the rope a few feet from her back-straining head, humming as I worked. She looked back and forth from me to her calf in the moonlight. You could see the trust returning.

  But apparently both jokers had been left in this deck. As the last strands parted, a car came rattling down the road and screeched to a halt by our mailbox, then backed up and swung in the drive and shut off the ignition. As the engine quit it gave a loud backfire and off the cow stampeded, right over the hapless calf.

  Betsy and the kids went after the cow while I went after the car. It was unloading a rowdy crew and a barking dog. The crew was a bunch of Dairy Manufacturing majors from Oregon State who'd had a few brews after class and decided to drive down from Corvallis, check out how the famous commune was doing - and the dog was a goddamned German shepherd barking about how many chickens he could kill given the opportunity. I dispatched them quickly back northward, clattering and backfiring and cursing back at me - "Grouchy old baldheaded prick!" - then I returned to the swamp.

  The cow was back with her calf, licking it and lowing. Betsy whispered it looked like she was going to stay. We crept away to the house and washed up. Betsy visited the mother and child once more before we went to bed.

  "She's still with it. He hasn't got back up yet, though."

  "He's probably exhausted. Lord knows I am. Let's get under the covers before something else happens."

  In the morning the calf was where we had left him, dead. Lifting his body away from the grieving cow, I could feel some of his little ribs were broken. Who knows? From the rigors of the birth or the backfire that stampeded his mother over him? From Ebenezer's confused warning? Tory's bull's taunting? The position of the stars and the planets, the dice throw of destiny?

  I buried him near what was left of his great-aunt Floozie. He made a small new hump next to the big old hump, blooming blue and yellow from the crocus bulbs we had planted there last fall. I haven't decided what we'll plant over his nutrients. Cowslips sounds about right.

  Let's go Stewart; this dew has all my toes froze. Nighty-night, Ebenezer. Lie back down and tell the rest of the gals to cool it. It was just a fox, tell them, just a varmint in the dark.

  THE DAY AFTER SUPERMAN DIED

  Strung out and shaking he was, pacing distractedly about the clutter of his office upstairs in the barn, poking among the books and bottles and cobwebs and dirt-dauber nests, trying to remember what he had done with his colored glasses.

  His special glasses. He needed them. Since before noon he had been putting off the walk to the ditch out in the field because the air was clogged with an evil eye-smiting smoke. Since the first smudge of dawn, long before his eyes had started smarting and his sinuses had begun to throb, and even before the hassle he'd just had with those hitchhikers down in the yard, he had been telling himself that this dreary day was going to be one real bastard without some rose-colored armor. Those glasses, he had been telling himself, would surely ease the day's sting.

  As he paced past his window, he heard the heartbroken bleating of the mother sheep start up again, baffled and insistent, twisted by the hot distance. He pushed the curtain back from the sunlight and looked out over his yard into the field, shading his eyes. He couldn't see the lamb because of the thistle and Queen Anne's lace, but the three ravens still marked the spot. They eddied above the ditch, arguing over the first morsels. Farther away, in the ash grove, he could see the ewe bleating against her rope and, farther still, past the fence, the backs of the two hitchhikers. Little was visible beyond that. Mt. Nebo was only a dim line drawn into the hanging smoke. The merest suggestion. It made him think of Japanese wash painting, a solitary mountain form stroked hazily
into a gray paper with a slightly grayer ink.

  The Oregon farm was uncommonly quiet for this hour. The usual midafternoon sounds seemed held in one of those tense stillnesses that ordinarily prompt the peacock to scream. One New Year's Eve the big bird had called steadily during the half minute of burning fuse before Buddy's cannon went off, and last week it had screamed within seconds of the first lightning that cracked the iron sky into a tumultuous thunderstorm.

  A storm would be a relief now, Deboree thought. Even the peacock's horrible squawk would be welcome. But nothing. Only the little clock radio on his desk. He'd left it on for the news, but it was Barbra Streisand singing "On a Clear Day, etc." Terrific, he thought. Then, above the music and the distant grieving of the sheep, he heard another sound: a high, tortured whine. Certainly no relief, whatever it was. At length he was able to make out the source. Squinting down the road toward the highway, he saw a little pink car coming, fast and erratic, one of those new compacts with a name he couldn't remember. Some animal - a Cobra, or a Mink, or a Wildcat - with transmission trouble, whatever the beast was. It squealed around the corner past the Olson farm and the Burch place and came boring on through the smoky afternoon with a whine so piercing and a heading so whimsical and wild that the hitchhikers were forced from the shoulder of the road into the snake-grass. The blond gave it the finger and the blackbeard hurled some curse at its passing. It screamed on past the barn, out of sight and, finally, hearing. Deboree left the window and began again his distracted search.

  "I'm certain they're up here someplace," he said, certain of no such thing.

  Deboree's eyes fell on his dog-eared rolling box, and he took it from the shelf. He gazed in at the seeds and stems: maybe enough could be cleaned for one now, but unlikely enough for one now and one later both. Better save it for later. Need it more later. And just as well, he thought, looking at the box in his hands. The little brown seeds were rattling all over the place. He was still trembling too violently with the surge of adrenaline to have managed the chore of rolling. As he returned the box to its niche in the shelf, he recalled an old phrase of his father's: