I
459 Words
I"BESSIE? BESSIE! BESSIE!!"
Where is that darned cow? She knows she's going to get corn this morning and let me pull that extra milk off her. And I need every spare quart I can get, not let her just run it off.
Then I saw the gate to the woods. Like someone had driven over it with a 4-wheeler.
"Great. You're in the woods somewhere and either you've lost track of time or you're in the middle of eating something that's going to make your milk taste funny. Just great." Talking to a non-present milk cow would be a bad thing, if we weren't so far from anyone who could be offended. I didn't have to care.
And that's the trick with running a road-side produce stand to make your living from a farm. No one around meant no sales, and meant no money to pay the soon-coming-due taxes.
"Bessie! C'mere - NOW." Like that would do any good, either.
So I picked up the bucket of grain I had for her and poured half of it into her feed trough, so the rest I could rattle around in that galvanized steel bucket and get her attention. Of course, that would mean wrestling with her to keep her face out of it for the rest of the walk back to the barn. All so I could milk her.
Just hope it wasn't too far of a walk by the time I found her. Far out meant far back.
But it wasn't like she would just walk off like this. That smashed gate didn't help.
Funny, I didn't hear someone running over that gate. To make that sort of hole, it had to be going top speed, and that would make a big noise for sure.
Soon that gate was behind me, and the trees towered overhead. I never noticed before how dark it stayed in here during the daytime. And started worrying that something had happened to my only source of milk, which was close to 50% of my income.
I called and called and it got darker and darker. Quieter and quieter. Soon it was almost pitch-black and as dark as a graveyard in an eclipse.
Then I heard it. Loud. And not a cow noise.
Like rolling thunder - but in the day time?
Then, the ground shook. Knocked to to the ground. And I raised my face out of the leaves and dirt to see a huge imprint in front of me, about a foot deeper than where I was. And that big depression wasn't there a second before I fell.
Means I'd better move somewhere safer - like under the tree with the biggest roots I could find.
And that three-foot-wide tree shattered over my head, with another roar of splintering wood.
I could only think of two things: Duck. And Run.
- Writer
