Cold’s End

And it came to pass that yesterday was a chilly but gorgeous day, and I was as a stranger unto my wife, for I spent long hours of the day outside with the red-spotted dog, starting with a long walk just as the sun was peeking up over the eastern ridge of the Clinch Mountains.

Mid-morning, I took Jinx for a ride to the county trash dump. He still has considerable fear of riding in vehicles, but I’ve learned not to try and coax him inside. The cajoling only makes him more skittish. So I just opened the door in advance, and went and got all the trash I was going to take and got my wallet and keys, and then I simply picked him up — praise Heaven he only weighs about 45 lbs. — and plunked him down in the passenger seat. A piece of cheese sealed the deal and we were off.

Later in the day, we decided to take another walk, this time up through the woods. At the top of our property line, Jinx slipped under the cattle fence, trotted out a few yards, then turned and with a short yip told me how fine it would be if I would accompany him on a ramble across the neighbor’s pasture. I used to walk in that very field quite often, but have not done so since the neighbor installed concrete feeding troughs nearby, which means that the cattle spend lots of time in that particular pasture, and I don’t want to disturb the feng shui between them and me. But lo, I looked to the east and to the north and to the south, and mine eye did not espy a single bovine, and mine ear did not detect the sound of any hoof upon the earth nor any mouth tugging any clump of grass from it. So I climbed the fence, dropped down into forbidden territory, and followed Jinx through the buttercups.

We walked for a long time, and then I grew tired, so I sat down on a knoll and enjoyed the sun on my shoulders, and I closed my eyes and allowed some thoughts to wend their way through my mind, and I may have even dozed for a few minutes. And it came to pass that after some time has passed, I opened my eyes and I did hear the patter of feet behind me, and Jinx came up from behind me and tried to take my hat from off my head. I laughed and scratched him, and then I heard something else behind me, and I did stand up and turn around.

And behind me was the gathering of the Black Angus Association of America, Local Chapter, with one lone sheep standing in the midst of them. And lo, they were very close to me, and my heart did fear, and my knees did seem to knock together. So I told Jinx, “Come on, boy,” and began to move sideways from the herd, slowly and steadily so as not to provoke their bovinitude, and we were making good progress until a sound to my left caused me to look and I did see another group of twenty or so cows moving towards us…led by one very large bull. “Stay with me, Jinx,” I whispered, and angled off towards the right, and so we zig-zagged like this for some time, both groups of cattle following us, and then one group broke into a slow trot, and I was moved to do the same, and I could see the fence up ahead, perhaps two hundred yards away, and the bull did bellow and my bowels would fain be moved if the bellow had been an decibel louder, and as we neared the fence, Jinx proved his mettle by abandoning me and racing for the fence, which he did clear like a hart and stood panting and longing for me, as I longed for the fence, which I reached with thunder in my ears — whether it was the herd or mine own heart, I cannot tell — and I scrambled with great agility like an arthritic armadillo across the fence, and I did hear an rip, and I tumbled onto the safe ground on the other side and turned to look, and behold! The herd was about a hundred yards back, and they had begun to feed at their troughs, because they were an hungered after their merry chase.

And it came to pass that Jinx slinked, he slinked like a mink back to the house with me behind him, and I was refreshed by the cool breeze on my hind parts, a breeze I had not felt before, nor do I ever hope to feel again. And I entered under the roof of our house, where my wife did wait for me, and in my great thirst I drank two or three firkins of water, and it was a mystery to me whether my wife’s strong wrath and furious anger were more directed at my having ripped the jeans she bought me for Christmas, or at my folly of following a dog of questionable mettle and intelligence into the jaws of Death-Hoof the Destroyer. And she did extract an promise from her husband to never again trust the dog to lead me, and to never again cross into the Vale of Angus, and I did pledge this to her, and peace settled upon our farm.

And in the night, frost came and lay upon all the gardens and flowers and blossoming trees. At this hour,  the hour when churches in the land once sang hymns and settled in to hear the weekly sermon, it is warming up rapidly, and I believe this will be the end of the cold until the months with R’s in them swing round again. The sun is high in the clear blue sky, the sky with no graffiti of vapor-trails sprayed across it, and the trees are swaying with their cargo of birds and young leaves, and the treacherous dog sleeps his easy and guiltless sleep in the soft grass out front, and this is my Sunday, at the end of the year’s cold season.

~ S.K. Orr