#1: Old Bulls

A low-slung moon spills in the tiny window by the open shelves like a frozen case job. 

Bradley takes a short pull from the hexagonal glass, the legs of the dark liquor restless and long to settle.  Perched atop a folding kitchen chair from the 50s, his gruff, grey winter beard hides a deceivingly soft jaw line and tiny pock marks. 

“Martha, bring me my slippers when you come.  The floor is practically on fire!”

He realizes how bitter winter makes him, especially New England ones.  It has intensified with each of late; growing out his beard in the fall is an itchy chore and no longer pleasurable. 

He rises and approaches the kitchen potbelly stove.  Bradley slowly takes one knee, cocks his head and swoops low near the grated door. 

“Christ,” he says.  “Damn wood is whistling wet.  Should have known better than to trust that swindling excuse for a neighbor.  Tree was only fell since late fall.”

He opens the furnace door.  Straw oak peers at him.  Heavy smoke perforating every split and crevasse, upwards climbing towards the heavens like an ancestral signal willing its way through the narrow stovepipe, creosote pulsating and sparkling to the unfettered rhythm.  A few harsh pokes, a few exaggerated grunts and the meager flames fan.

He returns to the chair, slumps and takes a long pull from the glass extinguishing the contents.  His chapped lips burn as the liquid vapes.  He realizes that Martha is taking unusually long.  He realizes he feels spinning drunk – an intense stage of buzz that rarely lasts.  He wonders if she is actually taking long or if his sense of time is skewed.  His face is flush from the stove and scotch, his feet burn from the cold tile and mind throbs from the woodpile betrayal, and the scotch.

“Brad, again…. tonight?!”  Martha says as she gestures towards the suddenly debased bottle.

Bradley doesn’t wait to be told.  Slippers are snatched from clenched fists, stepped into forcefully, rifle is slung from the right shoulder and he stomps out into the night.  A few minutes are taken as his eyes adjust to the grey blue which blankets the farm.  Shadows reserved for the day are where they should appear, but more intense, the black deeper.

He scans the foreground.  Soft rolling contours of dirt pass for hills, latticed posts pass for western fences.  His property line extends out of eyesight from his current position, day or night, and abuts the Ramer plot on three sides.  Bradley’s means stem from a government pension, he served two tours in Southeast Asia in the 70s, and cold cash garnered from the slaughter house.  Two hundred Hereford head bray lowly and crowd to stave the chill.  His fence line used to extend further onto the Ramer land via a grandfathered right-of-way, but the eldest son quickly put an end to that when he took the reins this past summer.  It made for several weeks of painstaking post digging in the heat, not to mention the recent sale of a half cord of questionable firewood.

Bradley sighs and steps towards the closest fence line when an unmistakable sound grips the hollow air.  Deep on the westerly fence line, line of sight disrupted by a downward slope, frantic brays coupled with a gnashing of thick skulls and hooves on the frozen ground serve as a prelude to panicked yelps and quick snarls. 

“Damn cai-yote.  Poor timing,” he chuckles humorlessly.  He consciously left horns on a few of the biggest most senior bulls.  A nightmare for the slaughterhouse hands, but insurance against losing small calves and cows to the omnipresent menace.  On a usual night he would hear the combat from bed and rest easy.  On a usual night he wouldn’t be this drunk, on a usual night he wouldn’t be fuming from his wife’s grumblings or neighbor’s recent actions.

He walks to the near fence line, stops and backtracks his gaze to his house.  The small A-frame was built in the 70s with lent money from his parents who sympathized with his emotional scars from the war.  It was the summer of ’74 that he started raising cattle, the winter of ’76 he married Martha, and the bottle sometime during ’77.  The land and herd held all his equity, the house was in dire need of remodeling, but Bradley had no intention of undertaking that anytime soon. 

He pulls out a slender 100, fumbles with the metal lighter and inhales a few quick drags. 

No, the house wasn’t a priority, he thinks as he slides over the bottom rung of the interior fence.  Martha could consider it an eyesore in the face of the Ramer’s new log cabin and Bradley wouldn’t give a damn. 

Moving with purpose now.  The sound of the struggle still pitching.  Eyes adjusted to the steely ambiance, rifle un-slung and held under the crook of his shoulder.  The key was to approach from above, survey, fire a few warning shots and retreat victorious.  A chain-smoking, hard drinking vet of a Jesus, tending, always tending.

The struggle dies down.  He sees a few flashes of white horn in the light, one might have been stained red, can’t tell.  Two bulls, one horned, surround several cows and a calf.  There is no sign of the intruder.  They stamp nervously, pupils shine wide-eyed, but the threat passes.

He laughs a smoker’s cackle and pitches to and fro on uneven earth. 

“They knew better than to stick around,” he says to the group. 

The bolt action snaps open then closed, safety never on like a wily gunslinger; smooth large caliber brass rises into place the rim slamming against the barrel opening halting a premeditated skyward launch.  Two clicks of the trigger and pin send plumes of fire from the barrel’s end, the bulls’ sockets glare against the flare.  Quick snap of the wrist, forestock slams into outstretched offhand, shock against his gold wedding ring like a mini report, single fluid move shell ejected, spring advances, heel of his hand locks the bolt handle’s silver marble down – He exhales sharply through his nostrils, his trigger finger drifting off course. Something catches his eye beyond the exterior fence.

The main reason for the Ramer boy revising the property line was so their main farmhouse footprint could be increased via a deck addition.  A monstrosity of a thing, the porch was unscreened, yet fully furnished.

Despite being a couple hundred yards away, Bradley had the advantage of elevation.  He swore he saw something pass through his line of sight across the porch and obstruct an interior light.  Why this registers as his business, he can’t self-articulate, but feels an urge to investigate.  Not enough time would have elapsed after the report for someone to react and venture outside.  No, whatever it is had to have been outside prior and surely had seen the muzzle flash. 

Something inside of him tugs on his shoulders in the direction of his A-frame, back to the sputtering fire, the lamentations of his wife, the vapor of the dissipating bottle like a bottled apparition suddenly released.  He shoulders his rifle, crouches and moves to flank the porch from the north. 

Sometimes it is best to leave the horns on the patched and weathered ones, he thinks.