Skunk
appears in the kitchen with the glass empty in his hand. deleted name
sits at the table drinking coffee, watching Skunk go to the taps and run the
water cold a little before filling the glass and downing it in one, spilling
some from both sides of his mouth, the nightshirt collar now dark with moisture
when he turns from the sink.
deleted
name: Okay?
Skunk:
Bad dreams, not, just...
deleted
name pushes a chair away from the table with his foot and nods at it. Skunk
fills his glass again before sitting down. As he talks, he pulls the water from
the base of his glass about the table’s surface with a single finger.
Skunk:
I dreamt that, I ehm, I think I must’ve been living on a farm or something
and... there were, maybe it was just one fox, but there was a fox that was
attacking the cows and em... For some reason, no, I was taking out my laundry
to hang it on the clothes-line in the field where the cows were, and when I
went out the cows all ran off, and that was that was, you know, that was ehm...
normal, that’s what usually happened. But there was one cow that stayed and
when I tried to shoo it away I saw that it had a calf
deleted
name pauses with the mug halfway between the table and his mouth.
Skunk:
but the calf was dead and ehm, so I I carried the dead calf to a, I don’t know,
it was some sort of building, and the next thing I knew it was night-time and
the herd had gone someplace to be fed, and I could see, you know, a silhouette
of the clothes-line on the horizon against the sky, and next to that was the
silhouette of a cow, and I knew it was the cow, the calf’s... and it had its
head tipped up at the sky and it was ehm, not mooing but, something, something
like crying, or what you would imagine a cow’s crying to be like, a very
distinctive sort of
His
throat dries and the words stick; he drinks.
Skunk
(wiping his mouth with the tips of his fingers): There was a phrase in the
dream and I can’t remember it, but it was almost like a voice-over,
something... ehm... “From the sound I knew in my heart that every animal must”
no no... Was it, “I knew in my heart that in what passes for the vocabulary of
every animal is contained a sound to express grief for the passing of its
first-born.”
shaking
his head
Skunk:
or something like that.
Pause.
deleted
name (setting down his mug with a louder ceramic bang than was necessary):
You know what I think about when I think about cows? Hey. Hey, you know what I
think about when I think about them?
He
rises and crosses the kitchen to refill his mug
deleted
name: You want a
waggling
his mug at Brother Skunk, smiling
deleted
name: You want a coffee?
Skunk:
Mm-hm, yeah yeah.
deleted
name (reaching down another mug from the cupboard, filling them both): Cows
are... Imagine you’re a cow, or... You have to imagine that cows are way more
smart than we give them credit for, right? Imagine you’re a cow in a field and
you see a bus going by, or a train, any form of mass transport, even cars,
cars’ll do just... If you’re a cow, or any animal, well say any, let’s
stick with the cows. If you’re a cow your only experience of transport is a big
truck coming to take you or other cows to the slaughterhouse, so I figure
that... These cows that see a busload of people going by, they, if, remember
for this you have to, cows have to be pretty smart, but they must think that
all the people on those trains or coaches, they’re all going to their death,
they’re all destined for some huge abattoir somewhere
setting
Skunk’s mug down in the spill of water.
deleted
name: and that’s kind of true, in some ways.
Skunk:
Maybe, but then if they’re that smart they’d wonder why there, you know,
how come the traffic’s going both ways. There’d have to be
He
places his palm flat across the top of the mug, spreading and shutting his
fingers repeatedly to allow the steam momentary release. He feels a
condensation forming on his flesh, and when he looks up he sees deleted
name looking back. They both smile, a little.
deleted
name (eventually): Hey. How about today we go and see the Falls?
