2019. Here’s how it starts. A farmer says goodbye t o his cows, what remains of them – he’s lost two in the past week already – and climbs over the shaky fence that divides his parcel of land from the rest of the moor. His dog lowers her belly to the ground, cat-like, and squeezes below the fence. Then, the farmer calls the dog daft: daft dog.
What he doesn’t know is that women understand the moor differently. In his truck, the farmer sees nothing at first, just sketched-out roads leading through the heath. It is only when the dog barks that he sees a blonde head, diving through bracken. The face is thin, body wiry, laden with bags. A tramp, he thinks. He watches as the boy (for he’s decided that is what it is) scuttles up the side of the big rock, scarab-like, all arms and legs and joints. The farmer grips the steering wheel. He thinks he can hear the click-clacking of limbs in the distance.
He wishes it were ten years ago, perhaps twenty, when he could pull his air gun from the back of the truck and scare the strangers off the moor. Now the world feels all about sympathy and understanding. He’s supposed to consider the feelings of the youths burning blazes on dry gorse, leaving spent barbecues and rusted cans across his fields. He thinks of his daughter, gone now. He thinks of her more often now that she is back in the ground than he ever did when she was alive, but this is not something he would ever admit to himself.
The dog barks: daft dog. The farmer leans over and opens the passenger door, sends the dog a-running to the boy. Of course, the dog sees what the man can’t. The stranger atop the rock is not a boy, or even really a stranger. See, women know the moor differently, and the moor knows its women well.