I see no reason to explore the details of my family’s departure from Chicago and will say only that we left in search of transcendental enlightenment centered around cattle.
I see no reason to explore the details of my family’s departure from Chicago and will say only that we left in search of transcendental enlightenment centered around cattle. There has been cynical speculation regarding our true motives—the wholesale collapse of my wife Annie’s unusually successful Gold Coast Lamboughini dealership and hedge fund consulting service, for example, had left some of the neighbors, those who hadn’t committed suicide, unhappy, yes—and also, my short-lived habit of walking to Navy Pier pantless and riding the Ferris Wheel with the children on pleasant summer evenings had produced a surprising amount of legal consequences and death threats—but I can tell you for certain that our first weeks at that eastern Colorado ranch, away from the sights and smells of city life, falling asleep to the gentle moos of the thousand head of Texas Longhorn cattle we’d purchased along with the ranch, had a tremendously soothing effect on myself, on Annie, and on all three children, who cried themselves to sleep each night out of sheer joy.
“Listen to them mooing,” I said to Annie, one night in bed. “It’s like they’re welcoming us.” Annie and I both looked at the ceiling and listened.
“It’s more like screaming, Philip,” Annie said. She rolled over. “The children are having nightmares,” she said into her pillow. “Every night. So am I. You’ve destroyed our lives.”
It turned out the herd was infected with something called Accelerated Bovine Viral Diarrhea. I tried to contact the man who’d sold us the property and the cattle, only to find that the old farmer had taken our money and retired to Southeast Asia to become a cabaret dancer and was therefore unreachable. Roughly ninety-seven percent of the herd was dead within a week, and we suddenly found ourselves with a major carcass problem on our hands. Even though the children did find some relief playing hide-and-go-seek out amongst the mountains of dead flesh, I was devastated, as you might guess, and felt as though my dream of transcendence was slipping through my fingers. I called in some experts in the field of mass graves. I became convinced incineration was the most cost-effective strategy, as it often is. Also, the local reverend was concerned a mass grave could become haunted—something, he told me, that had happened three counties over in the late 1970s.
“You don’t want that many cow ghosts,” he told me. “No one does. One or two you can handle, but we’re talking about several hundred. You’ll have to let me bless this house and land, even if you do burn them up. There’s always a chance. I’ll try to keep the costs down. But if Satan catches wind of this before the last fire is out, he’ll show up and give the reanimated cattle long, barbed fangs covered in poison, acid saliva. I can guarantee you he’d give wings to the leaders. This would be a disaster for the whole Earth, as this army of demon cows would slowly travel from continent to continent, killing off the human race and making steaks out of us. That’s right, sir. They would connect milking machines to the women and castrate all the men and attach them to yolks to drive other infernal, Satanic devices that are too complicated to explain to you since you don’t have a PhD in religious studies. We would be enslaved for eternity. Don’t you agree that would be a disaster?”
“It’s actually really hard to respond if you frame the question that way,” I said.
“I’m glad you agree,” he said, and spent a week blessing everything in sight before we flew in the country’s best dynamite and flamethrower crews. He blessed me, he blessed Annie, he blessed the children, he blessed the thirty remaining cows, he blessed the land and the house and the bodies of all those Longhorns who’d died.
The fires around the ranch burned for two weeks, and we stayed indoors and spent much of that time wearing gas masks and playing Uno. I would occasionally relax and forget what had happened to my dream of spiritual freedom, but inevitably, I’d glance out the window and see the black smoke rising up, and I’d remember.
I now think of our rocky start as the work of providence; just like in the rapture, the disasters were only a preamble to a time of great enlightenment. Omens, if you will. The herd died in May and we burned the bodies in June. We spent July recovering our spirits. And in August, on a night when a tempestuous summer thunderstorm floated down from the Rockies, that which had been foretold came true, and the Deconstructed Multicolored Cow of Transcendental Destiny was born.
Her mother was named Hilda, a piebald survivor of the diarrhea purge. By the time the family and I reached the barn, Hilda had collapsed in exhaustion, and her calf lay calmly by her side, watching the veterinarian and his assistant with curiosity. We could all see something was a little different about this newborn calf. For one thing, her torso was made of horizontal pieces of blue steel. She appeared to have no internal organs. Also, another blue I-beam, decorated in brightly-colored squares, extended vertically through her brain, ending in two speckled crowns that looked like God-listening antennae: one red, one yellow. And while this calf did have hooves, beneath each one was a large alphabet-block, also brightly colored. The letters spelled the word NCBI.
“Is this some kind of…hybrid species?” I asked. Annie was silent. The children were again crying in joy.
It was only now that I saw the veterinarian was very pale; his assistant, a young Japanese man who went by the name of Bucephalus, I believe, was trembling and leaning against the barn wall. The veterinarian, who couldn’t tear his eyes away from the newborn, said in a trembling voice, “I’m a man of science, sir, and I can only say the birth of this calf challenges my most fundamental metaphysical assumptions about the universe. Bucephalus can attest to my staunch, sciencey nature.”
“He is very sciencey,” whispered Bucephalus.
“I have conducted a thorough semen analysis on your remaining bulls,” said the veterinarian, “which is a completely normal part of my job, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is no father of this calf. This is a virgin birth.”
Annie and I both took a step closer, the children huddling around us. This precious young creature, I realized, was staggeringly beautiful; I felt a warmth overtake me and encompass us all. There was something…celestial…happening.
“But what does it mean?” I asked.
Just then, a tremendous thunderclap resounded throughout the barn, and a great gust of wind blew open the barn doors. The children, and Bucephalus, all screamed. When I turned to look, lightning struck again, and I saw a figure silhouetted against the raging sky. It was the reverend, and he was wearing a really big fur cloak.
“I’ll tell you what this means,” he said, taking a step toward us. “I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life. That,” he cried, pointing to the calf, “is the Deconstructed Multicolored Cow of Transcendental Destiny.”
“That’s actually really good news for me,” I said. “I’ve always had this, ah, thing about cattle and spirituality.”
“But beware, family,” said the reverend. “There is another part of the prophecy.” He set his cold eyes on me. “It warns of the dangers of exploitation. I urge you: live simple lives, and protect this creature’s anonymity. Do not seek fame and fortune because of it. You may never yourselves reach transcendence, but keeping this cow safe means keeping the world safe from the nightmare scenario I described earlier, the thing with the flying demon expansionist cows. Do you understand?”
I looked at Annie, who nodded.
I looked at the children, who nodded.
I looked back at the reverend. “We totally will not exploit this cow,” I said.
I began making love to the magic cow the next summer. This was only to comfort her after the children had so casually betrayed her trust in the family. She had been hiding from humans for weeks, darting nimbly behind the barn, or the tractor, or bales of hay whenever anybody came around; she needed a friend, it seemed, and I was the only one willing enough, or gentle enough, to be her friend, and to not use her for some sort of personal gain; unbeknownst to Annie or me, you see, the children had entered her into the state fair, and one night, they stole her away and put her on display for all the locals. Not only that, but I also learned the children had been secretly selling t-shirts, coffee mugs, and posters of the The Deconstructed Multicolored Cow of Transcendental Destiny, and they had entered into negotiations for our family’s story to become a dramedy television series on TNT.
Annie and I were of course both outraged. She took the lead in chastising the children; as I said, I took the lead in rehabilitating our special cow’s self-esteem.
“Don’t you children understand the prophecy?” Annie said to them all during one memorable family meeting. “Don’t you see, this is exactly what the reverend predicted? Aren’t we better than that? Or are we shameless profiteers? Did you even copyright any of that merchandise?”
The children were silent.
Annie and I smiled at one another and nodded.
“I’ll just go check on the cow,” I said.
I returned from the barn seven hours later, nearly unable to walk. Annie was asleep but she looked up when I came in.
“Is everything okay?” Annie asked sleepily. “Is she still spooked?”
I remembered the warm, intricate polka-dotted caverns of secularly-spiritual-gnostic-nature-based-individualist flesh my penis had recently been exploring.
“She’s fine,” I said. “I’m super-tired though. I have to go to bed.”
My confidence about having the situation under control, however—something that has always been my Achilles Heel—proved misguided one week later, when I discovered certain documents in the office. Annie and the reverend, it appeared, had hatched a scheme to butcher the cow and sell small holy steak medallions to the world’s ruling class for two million dollars apiece. When I confronted her with the documents, she didn’t bother trying to deny it. “You just don’t understand the current economic climate like Ernie does,” she said. “We’ve already sold thirty steaks through his website.”
“The reverend’s name is Ernie?” I said.
“It’s his middle name,” she said.
“What’s the url of this website?” I demanded.
“It’s h-t-t-p-s colon slash slash w—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s too late. Your diabolical plans have been foiled by me, the savior, and my genius. Capital G.”
Eyes wide, she went to the window and looked toward the barn.
“What do you mean?” she said. “What have you done?”
“She’s gone, Annie,” I said. “She’s somewhere safe.”
Just then, we saw the reverend emerge from the barn. He was wearing an extremely large, pointy helmet and holding a long, oaken staff. He yelled a really, really long thing in Latin, then raised his arms into the air and cried out in anger and frustration.
I changed my name, forsook my identity, left them all there to stew in their own juices, and together, a certain special cow and I moved to Schaumberg, Illinois. We are still here. We have a nice duplex, about fifteen hundred square feet, two floors, laundry in the basement, and I work as a local bureaucrat. I keep to myself, always eat lunch alone, and never reveal to my coworkers my sacred mission of protection.
Who knows? Perhaps you’ve passed me, a silent hero, on the street.
If you have, and you didn’t notice the gigantic bruises all over my face, or the large, platinum udder medallion I sometimes wear around my neck, you would not be able to tell how I spend my evenings. So let me explain. Most nights I come home exhausted. She is there, usually standing in the middle of the living room, looking at the wall. We embrace, I make dinner. She eats hay, I eat people food. Later, we watch television together; when I catch myself lazily adjusting her antennae as I drift off to sleep, I know it’s time for bed, and we both go upstairs. Crowding onto our queen-sized mattress together is tricky, but possible, and snuggling only works if she decides not to sleep standing up. The enormous, polygonal, ceramic shits she takes in the night were hard to get used to, but we adapted. As all members of interspecial, multi-dimensional couples know, the ability to adapt is paramount.
That’s the point of this story, that’s transcendence, if you ask me. That’s what I’d been looking for my whole life. A kindred spirit, someone who did not criticize me, someone with a long, metal tail on a swivel who accepted me for what I was. In turn, I accept her. This deep symbiosis drives us both onward. We know what we both mean to the universe, and to keeping cow demons at bay, and to you, the innocent, ignorant, safe, normal population. We are your guardians. You are welcome, though we don’t expect your thanks. And I assure you all, good people: we will never, never let you down.
Patrick Somerville grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and later earned his MFA from Cornell University. He has taught creative writing and English at Cornell, Northwestern University, Auburn State Correctional Facility, and The Graham School in Chicago. His first book of stories, Trouble, was published in September of 2006 (Vintage) and named 2006's Best Book by a Chicago Author by Time Out Chicago, and his first novel, The Cradle, was published by Little, Brown in March of 2009. His writing has appeared in One Story, Epoch, GQ, Esquire, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and he's the winner of the 2009 21st Century Award, given annually by the Chicago Public Library. You can find out more about him at www.patricksomerville.com.
