Sometimes we get a story that is so . . . odd we don’t know what to make of it. We’re not sure if we like or dislike it, but we can’t reject it because it’s like an earworm song you can’t get out of your head. The following story was like that. It sat on our short list until we could understand its attraction. We’re still not sure—other than the notion that the nature of one’s existence and place in our careening universe is not always a choice, but a mandate. And that seems to be okay . . . until an entity decides it wants to be something else . . .
Dad gently pushed me towards the other barn. We were already past the fence, the one he told me to never pass, and I never did, not once, not even after me and Alisha got married. There was Dad’s barn, and the other barn, for as long as I could remember. Passing the fence was going to get you a whipping for sure, and after you’d grown and married, it came down to respect. He pushed me again, and I looked back to see him smiling. All his teeth were gone now, and his tongue lolled in his mouth, tobacco stained and spotted. Finally, we stopped and he stood behind me, his hand on my shoulder, squeezing. He pulled his hand away, and I could hear the suckers on his palm pop off my windbreaker.
“Why are we here, Dad?”
He came around me, reaching into his jacket with his good hand, the one that looked like mine, and pulled out a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes. He used his left hand, the misshapen one, to light the match because it was easier with his long nails. It was the cancer that did this too him. It made him stay home all the time and miss church every Sunday. It changed him, made him strong, and made him feel good, all the time. Strange how cancer was supposed to send you to the grave. Dad’s just kept him from it.
Until recently.
He pulled a long drag off the cigarette, then looked at me. “Your time has come.”
“For what?”
“Can’t really explain it. Just the way it is, I suppose.”
“Please, don’t talk in riddles.”
Dad coughed and spit on the ground. It was best not to look where he spit. “I don’t know why this has come to us. Ain’t no riddles, son.” He looked over at the barn, nodding. “Best you go in there and see her yourself.”
A sweet odor drifted through the air, and it took me a second to place it. I pointed at the barn. “Who’s in there?”
He just nodded.
“That smell. Is that hot chocolate?”
He grinned. “That’s her. She knows you’re here.”
“Who?”
Dad pinched the cherry off his cigarette, flicked it into the brush, and coughed. He turned away, shoving his hands in his pockets. The smile never left his face.
The padlock for the door handle was open, hanging from the chain. He must have unlocked it before he called me to come over. The odor was so sweet it almost gagged me. Pushing the door open, I peered into the darkness. Two hundred head of cattle in the backfield lowed in unison when I opened the door. I looked back at Dad. He was still looking away, staring back at the house. “It’s dark in there,” I said.
“You don’t need any light.”
I stepped inside the barn, half expecting some kind of surprise party to scream out, though my birthday was half a year away. (There’s nothing special about turning forty-seven. It’s just another birthday.) But there were no people yelling, no streamers or confetti, no music. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I made out a dim light behind the stalls past the drive bay. The light was coming from some kind of wall built into the back of the barn. Once I got closer, I found it was nothing more than a thick tarp thrown over a cord strung from one end of the barn to the other, making a small room.
The light was brighter behind the tarp, throwing a washed-out purple hue on the walls. When I stepped around the tarp and looked into the room, I really didn’t know what I was seeing. It was like looking at a blown-up photograph of someone’s guts, how at first it just looks like coils of lumpy blue rope soaking in a cherry pie, and you’re wondering why in the world someone would make blue rope, and then why would they put it into a pie—and all that happens in the very second you understand that it’s a picture of someone ripped open, their intestines threatening to fall from their gut onto the floor.
Except this wasn’t a coil of intestines.
I suspect it was a cow at one time. The things that made it a cow were still there. Short brown fur, one small, lopsided horn pointed to the ground. The flattened nose told me it was probably Ayrshire, though it was a little hard to tell. That was the only cattle breed Dad ever raised. Where one horn was small and aimed low, the other was massive and curved toward the roof beams. The brown hair was normal around the head and neck, then became splotchy and bare where it grew past its shoulders. The skin there was dry looking, flaky, and close to where the shoulder was, there was a large stalk. It looked like another limb had started to grow out of its back. The end of the stalk appeared burned or cauterized. I stepped as close as I dared, trying to get a better look.
The skin was scales. The scaly flesh extended down its legs, which ended in hooves, as expected, but the hooves spread out now, almost like long claws. When I reached out to touch the stalk near the shoulder, it flinched from my hand. There were two stalks actually, one behind each shoulder, both flinching when I tried to touch them.
The cow snorted loudly, making me jump back a little. It leaned close to me, then quickly stood up on its front legs. It stared at me, the left eye off-center and multicolored, the right one larger and the brightest green I’ve ever seen, though watery and bloodshot around the white. It snorted again, filling the air with the richest odor of hot chocolate I’ve ever smelled.
Whitish-purple light came off the cow. Even keeping my distance, I could see the tiny veins in the scales glowing. The light was coming from its blood flowing through the veins. I tried to see its hindquarters, but there was nothing but shadows. Something large shifted there, though it looked more like a flipper than actual legs. A coil of snakes behind it twisted into action, grew upwards, and swayed close to my face. Not snakes, but tentacles, each sucker poised to strike. They pulsed in the air like nostrils flaring.
The udder that once brought milk into the Maxwell household, milk I’d probably drunk, lay on the ground beside her, swollen to three times its normal size. Six teats, each a yard long, squirmed on the ground around my boots. I stepped back, not wanting them to get any closer.
“She’s quite a sight,” Dad said behind me.
“What is this?”
“Don’t know, probably never will. My dad didn’t know either. She’s been here for a long time.”
I turned and stared at his shape in the darkness. “Grandpa knew about this?”
“He was the first.”
“How did you . . . I mean, how did . . . ”
“How’d we keep it a secret? Now, Grady, you know us Maxwells are the best at keeping secrets. She’s our prized possession, son. And now she’s yours.”
I shook my head. “This is crazy. You’ve kept this from me all my life?”
Dad nodded.
“This . . . thing, it needs to be taken out to pasture and shot between the eyes.”
“You don’t think Granpappy didn’t try? He tied her to his old Ford pickup and dragged her out into the field. Spent all afternoon shooting it with buckshot, and that was nothing but a waste of time. I don’t think you can kill her. I tried myself. Tried to drown her. But she’s still here, and after a while, you’ll understand that’s all that matters.”
“She?”
“She.”
“Well, maybe it was a female at one time, but how do you know that now? I mean, maybe it used to be cow, but this . . . this is something else. Why do you call it a she, why even say it like that?”
“Well, I guess because of the calves.”
Back at the house, Dad poured me a cup of coffee and sat at the table with me. “Her name is Cocoa, and ever since she was born, we knew she was special.”
I took a sip of coffee. The hot-chocolate smell lingered in my mind. “Was she always like that?”
“No. Looked just like any other heifer, maybe a little stronger, a little faster on her legs than most. Your grandmother loved her, and took her to all the shows. There’s a scrapbook in the attic with all the ribbons she won. Won every show in Texas. All ‘Best in Show’.”
“When did she change?”
Dad gripped his coffee mug with his left hand, the fingers like tentacles, flexing and releasing, flexing and releasing. “She started years ago, before you were born. Your grandmother used to tell this story about a storm in the night and lights in the sky, and all this crazy stuff she liked to think about all the time, but I think it just comes down to that Cocoa wasn’t happy being a cow.”
I was getting tired of talking about it. “What happened to those things behind her shoulders?”
“Her shoulders are fine.” Dad released his mug, the suckers on this thumb and first finger sticking to the porcelain for a second. He caught me staring and put his hand in his lap.
“You said calves earlier. What happened to them?”
“Nothing really. They’re probably all gone. I guess she can’t breed now, I don’t know.”
“Were they normal, or like her?”
“Normal, I guess.”
“So what now?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Dad?”
“It’s your time, I do know that.”
I stared at the table. When he called me earlier, asked me to come alone, to leave Dennis with the neighbors for a couple of hours, I never expected this. He was all by himself out here now, all the ranch hands long gone to find better-paying work. I figured he wanted me to help him move something, dig a hole for a fence post, talk to the lawyer again, or put the ad back on the Internet to sell some more land.
To think for one second I almost said, “Screw it, Dennis is coming with me.”
“This is why we couldn’t go past the fence?”
He nodded.
“What about the rest of the cattle?”
“They won’t come within a hundred yards of her.”
That made sense. Ever since I could remember, the herd would always stay far back in the field, never getting close to the house. All this time I thought it was the ranch hands that kept them back. I started to ask about Mom, the words right there on my tongue, but I looked at Dad and knew he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. When it came to her, he never told the truth.
“Did Lindy know?”
At the sound of hearing my sister’s name, Dad hung his head down, answering my question without saying a word. She drowned in the lake when I was fourteen years old. Dad told me he tried to save her, but there was just too much water in her lungs.
“Why now?”
At first, I thought he didn’t hear me. I watched his lips moving like he was going to say something, but the words just wouldn’t come. This went on for a few minutes until I set my coffee mug down on the table, hard enough to get his attention. He looked up at me, tears cutting creeks into his wrinkles.
“I’m not going to do it,” I said.
His bushy eyebrows rose, but he wouldn’t look at me. “You will,” he said, his voice soft and low.
“No. Tomorrow, I’m going to come back here, get the rifle, and put a bullet right between its eyes.”
Dad looked up and started giggling like a little boy. He pulled a rag out of his pocket and wiped his eyes dry.
I slammed my hand down on the table. “It’s not funny,” I said, standing up. I put the mug into the sink and walked out to my truck.
Dennis had a million questions about Dad. Only seven years old, he asked about everything. “Is Pawpaw dying?” he asked, shoving a spoon of mashed potatoes in his mouth.
“No, Pawpaw’s not dying.”
He nodded. He pushed his green beans closer to the edge of his plate. “Is Pawpaw turning into an octopus?”
This made me smile. “No, silly. It’s the cancer. Now, eat those beans before you start turning into an octopus.”
After he bathed, he came into the living room wearing only his briefs, his hair still dripping. “Is God real?”
I hit the Mute button on the TV remote. “What kind of question is that?”
“This boy at school, he said God isn’t real.”
“Why would he say that?”
He dug a finger into his ear then looked at his feet. “He said God is dead, and my momma is too.”
“Your mother is not dead. You know that. Didn’t she call last week? Isn’t she coming down from Dallas next month just to see you?”
He nodded. “What about God?”
“Did you wake up this morning?”
“Yes.”
“And we had food on the table tonight for supper, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Who do you think made that happen?”
Dennis clapped his hands, unable to keep the smile off his face. “You did.”
“And?”
His face grew serious, respectful. “God.”
“You just answered your own question. Now get to bed.”
After the news, I turned off the TV and went to check on him. He kept his eyes closed when I went into his room, pretending to be asleep. I reached under the blankets and began to tickle him. He squealed and howled, begging me to quit, and after a few seconds, I did, fearing he might wet the bed. I kissed him on his forehead and left his room.
Lying on Alisha’s side of the bed made me think she was still here, even though she was never coming back. Part of me wanted her to come home, but the best part of me, the part that was not so full of neediness, knew it was better she was away. She wanted her friends and the city, and all I wanted was what was right.
Yes, it was better she was away.
The next day at work, my thoughts drifted to my dad, and the barn. Grandpa shot it with a shotgun, and Dad said that was a waste of time. I wondered what went through my dad’s head when he tried to drown it, what he used to hold it down in the water. I couldn’t imagine how he felt when the damned thing wouldn’t drown.
Did he think about the cow when Lindy drowned?
When I finished loading two sacks of chicken feed into the last customer’s truck, my boss, Sam, tossed me the keys to the building, telling me to give it another thirty minutes then lock up.
It was the longest half hour ever. I guess it was because I knew I was going to have to drop Dennis off at the neighbors’ again, make up some new excuse, and head on down to Dad’s house. Before I locked up, I pulled a carton of .22 rounds from the back counter and paid for them in the register. I thought about buying another box, but I didn’t have the money.
Dad was lying on the couch when I got to the house.
“You all right?”
He opened his eyes, seeing the rifle and the box of ammo in my hands. That started him laughing.
The barn was unlocked. Maybe he never locked it. Hot chocolate hung in the air, sinking into my clothes, my skin.
She was standing on her front legs when I walked into the barn. Her green, watery eye followed my every move. Kneeling in front of her, I opened the box of rounds, knocking a few on the ground. My hand shook when I picked them up. The cow snorted at my efforts. Maybe I was just a little nervous, probably just from being around her again. I put a round into the chamber, pulled the bolt back, then slammed it in place. Aiming at her felt silly, so I stepped up close and placed the barrel against her head. She looked at me, the watery right eye staring into me. Something told me she knew what I was planning on doing, and that was okay. Maybe she was ready to die.
I took a deep breath and put my finger on the trigger.
When I squeezed the trigger, the bullet fired and exploded against her head, causing the end of the barrel to split open. The explosion rocked me off-balance and I fell into the beam behind me, nearly five feet away, slamming my head against it. I tried to scramble back to my feet, but everything turned grey, then fell to black. There’s no telling exactly how long I was out, but it only seemed like a few seconds. Once I was back up on my feet, I picked up the rifle and looked at the barrel.
It looked like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.
I turned the gun around in my hands, held the butt high, and charged at her. Bringing the butt down on her head, I started pounding, as though I were driving a fence post.
She didn’t even blink.
The butt of the rifle cracked, then eventually splintered and fell off.
There were a few small scratches on her head where the rifle butt hit, and a powder burn in her hair between her eyes, but other than that, she was unharmed.
Cocoa mooed, her eyes never moving off me.
The next day I tried a nail gun I found in the stockroom at work. After three nails at point-blank range, the gun busted.
Dad laughed at me when I stomped back to my truck. I watched him wave and walk back to the house. He was looking a little paler than usual, a little more stooped over when he walked. Nevertheless, he was smiling all the same.
The following day I went back and just sat in the barn with her. She kept mooing at me now, knew it was me sitting on the ground next to her. She ate the hay I put in front of her and would stand on her front legs to drink water from the trough beside her. Her teats would crawl on the floor like eyeless worms, stopping to sniff the air around me before finally nudging my boots. The first time I reached out to touch one, the teat recoiled back, aware of my hand. Eventually I could touch her teats, and it felt good to let the leathery skin wrap around my fingers. Every so often, she would snort and stamp her hooves, telling me she approved of my presence. The cocoa smell was just as strong as before, but it didn’t bother me anymore. I liked it actually.
I never was a very healthy person. Chronic sinus ailments and a bad back made sure of that. Mornings were usually the worst for me, but after that first week of staying with her, I began to feel good. It was like every day was brand-new, which it was, but now it really felt like it. Even my right shoulder, which would bug me whenever rain clouds rolled in, didn’t let me know to wear my slicker. It rained hard for hours, and when Sam finally let me off work, I jumped in my truck, soaked to my underwear. When I turned on the windshield wipers, my fingers hung on the shifter like they were sticky, but I didn’t worry about that.
Dad died about two weeks after I started sitting with Cocoa. He quit eating. I think he knew it was time. One evening I walked in the ranch house and found him lying on the couch, his eyes open, mouth slack. I turned his hand over and touched the suckers on his palm, now closed up and dry. I started to call the funeral home to come pick him up, but something twisted in my head, made me put the phone down. All I could think about was someone coming over here and smelling her, and wanting to see her. That would change everything, the secret would be out, and if there’s one thing we Maxwell’s are good at, it’s keeping secrets.
The scrapbook was in the attic, just like Dad said. I took it down to the kitchen, at the table, and turned the brittle pages, reading the dates my grandmother wrote at the bottom of the pictures, in her tiny handwriting. The date on the next-to-last picture read “July 1964”. There was Grandma, standing next to her prize heifer. Cocoa looked just like Elsie the Cow, staring directly into the camera lens, as though telling the world that she was a winner.
She was the best.
The last picture had no date. It was blurry and in color. Cocoa must have already started her changing by then. Her rear legs were just starting to grow together, forming a flipper. I looked at that picture for a long time, wondering exactly how high she must have flown.
For my dad to have her all this time, letting her fly, keeping it all to himself, how hard it must have been for him to ground her.
Once I completed the sale and shaved off another two hundred acres of land, I sold my house and moved Dennis and myself into Dad’s ranch. Sam, my boss, thought it was a good move since Dad’s house was much larger than my own and we still owned plenty of land.
I showed Dennis where Dad’s grave marker was near his barn. Not her barn. “Is this where you want me to bury you when you die, Daddy?”
“You can. But I’m not going to die for a long time.”
We walked to the edge of the fence and looked over at her barn. I put my hand on his shoulder, letting the suckers on my palm squeeze and release the cloth of his shirt. Cancer apparently ran in the family. Not the cancer that killed, but the cancer that made you stronger, made you feel good all the time. At least for a little while.
“See this fence, Dennis?”
“He nodded.”
“You cannot go past this fence,” I said, feeling the words my father said so long ago rise inside me. “This is the no-pass line. If I catch you or any of your friends past this line, that’ll be your ass.” I looked down at him. “Understand?”
He nodded.
I told him to run inside and clean up for supper.