“There is a bull in the road.”
“What?”
It was too early for a problem thought Johnson. What now? I have to go to work.
“There is a bull in the road.”. She was standing at the door. Her feet were bare. She was holding the door open and hiding behind it.
Johnson went to the door. The bull was clacking around on the road. There were children in the yards. Now Johnson, you see, was a farmer’s son. It was just another cow out to him. A cow had almost killed Johnson’s grandfather but generally the animals can be “rounded up”.
Johnson quickly put on his jeans and shoes.
“You going out there?, she said. Her round face tilted as she spoke.
“It’s a bull.”, he said. “There are children.”
Johnson went to the porch down the stairs and to the road. There was a field on the other side of the road. The barbed wire fence was down in one area. Johnson found a gate. A gate in a barbed wire fence is a pole with three strands of barbed wire tied to it. Johnson pulled the pole out of the loops and layed the gate open.
The bull meanwhile was still standing lazily in the road. Johnson crossed the road and confronted the bull.
….to be continued
Johnson noted the children down the road but they did not concern him. He had spent his youth on the creek, in the “hollow” rounding the cows up every evening. His grandfather could call the hogs and they would come. Soo pig. Soooeee.
Cows were different. The cows would wander up the creek and this meant a round up every day. Every farm boy had a rounding call for cows. A “heeaa” to get the creatures moving. You don’t lead cows, you drive cows. Cows have a healthy respect for Isaac Newton and resist motion. Johnson had a call to get a cow moving too. He used it now on the bull.
“Heeaar….heeaa…heaaa now cow….come up there”, he yelled.
The bull, seeing that Johnson was a man of experience in these matters took it in the manner expected and turned slowly toward the fence.The jig was up. Move toward the fence slowly and give in to the small creature who seems to know his stuff.
Johnson and the bull did the I’m going this way, oh no you are not for awhile and the bull was slowly directed through the gate and back into the field.
Johnson then went to the part of the fence that was down. He pulled and positioned the fallen post until it temporarily did the job. This left a few strands of barbed wire to crudely wrap around things to form a barrier that might last until the fence was repaired. As Johnson was grabbing the last strand the end of it let loose and, swoosh, gained velocity. Johnson’s head jerked to one side to avoid the rapier like strand of loose wire hell.
“Whoo that almost got me”
Johnson corralled the last strand and conquered it quickly but something was not right. His hand went to the side of his head and came back red. There was something wrong with his ear. He crossed the road quickly with his hand over his ear and could see the bus coming down the road as he climbed the steps.
She opened the door.
“”Oh my! You are bleeding.”
“I’ve hurt myself”, he said
……..to be continued
david michael jackson
