The HooseCows

“Mount, tuneful Bird, and join the immortal quires!

She soared – and I awoke, struggling in vain to follow.”

– William Wordsworth

“We can be heroes

Just for one day.”

– David Bowie

Swing and Miss

            Fiona didn’t have time to react when Roger tackled her. Instead, she landed in the muck of his front lawn. He rolled her over to examine her face and, when he finally realized who she was, he sighed and went to sit on his front porch.

“Not funny,” Fiona said. “Not funny at all.”

“Not even a little?” Roger said. He felt his cheeks flush with shame. He wanted to walk into his house and lock the door. He could always drive the extra twenty minutes to the next closest bar.

“What the hell, Roger?” Fiona said. She hadn’t stood up yet.

“I saw someone looking in my windows. I thought it was you.”

“So you tackled me?” she said.

“I thought you were the Water Witch,” he said. He wondered if she knew it was true when she laughed out loud. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders. It was all happening again.

“You tried to tackle a ghost?”

“I thought someone was playing a joke.”

Fiona stood up. She wiped off her jeans like a softball player after a bad slide. She walked toward Roger and smiled, making no effort too hide the muddy stains. She gently squeezed Roger’s shoulder.

“You’ve got some problems. I figured that,” she said. “I’ve been a married woman and a bartender long enough to see that one coming.”

“If you saw me coming,” Roger said, “you should’ve moved out of the way.”

“I probably should have,” Fiona said. He wondered if she would leave. She sighed and shifted her weight, but she did not move to the unattached garage where her car was. In this town, they couldn’t risk leaving her car out in the open.

“We can go inside,” Fiona said.

“I really did see something out there,” Roger said.

“I’m sure you did,” Fiona said. She brushed the hair out of his eyes. “Maybe the next time you see the Water Witch, try a gentler approach. A quick talk before tackling, maybe?”

Roger stood up and held her hand.

“I can’t believe you’re staying, but I’m not going to try to talk sense into you,” Roger said. “If everyone was as forgiving as you, I’d have never ended up here.”

“If everyone were as forgiving as me, I wouldn’t have ended up here either,” Fiona said.

“I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came and made
My heart as dry as dust.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“I was gone for fourteen days

Coulda been gone for more

Held up in an intensive care ward

Lyin’ on the floor.” – Alice Cooper

Seeing Footprints

In the early evening, Roger Gordon established Smut the Bulldog liked splashing in the river. He took his dog to a bend where the current wasn’t so swift and Smut waded in, so blissfully dim he seemed unaware of the differences between land and water. The dog splashed with his front paws and looked into his new owner’s eyes. Within a few moments, Roger was laughing and taking of his socks and shoes.

If it were warmer in the water, Roger would’ve swum out into the river and fought his way through the current. He moved as effortlessly in water as he did moved clumsily on land. With the water cold enough to turn the skin under his toenails blue as soon as they were underwater, he settled for splashing his rescued bulldog and laughing as the animal snorted and grunted happily in muck.

There were small footprints in the mud at the edge of the river bend. Roger had to grasp Smut’s collar to hold him steady, away from tramping over the evidence. Then, as the sediment in the water settled and the water calmed itself, he kept the dog steady at his side. When everything was calm again, including Smut, he peered into the water and saw the footprints were not a figment of his imagination.

The footprints ranged from nearly adult-sized to infant-sized, so small Roger couldn’t believe they child above them could walk without crawling. They mottled the river bed everywhere he and Smut hadn’t trampled over in their horseplay. They all moved upstream. Roger could see the footprints on any part of the river bed where the water was clear enough.

He released Smut. The bulldog darted back into the water, biting at the splashes that arose in front of him. Suddenly, the songwriter was very cold. Roger went back to the bank and began putting on his socks. When Smut noticed this, he galloped over and began licking Roger’s face. Once his new master had laughed himself silly, the dog sniffed and ran back into the water.

It must’ve taken hundreds of children to make those tracks. He crouched by the edge of the water and gently felt the outline of a footprint with his finger. Then, he closed his eyes and reached in with the same finger. He was able to find a footprint just by feeling into the mud. There were indentations for five toes he could feel with his pinky finger.

The songwriter lay back onto the ground. The cool, wet mud and bits of snow underneath him made him shift his position slightly, but he did not move. The dog sensed his distress and left the river. Smut placed his head on his master’s belly and lay down in the muck. Without looking, Roger placed a hand on the dog’s head and stroked its ears.

Darren was never one to keep secrets, and he said he hadn’t heard anything about children running around the river. With all of this new evidence, either Darren was lying or Roger was seeing things. He had tested his senses and proven them correct, but he still believed Darren’s word. Roger Gordon was seeing things. Again.

“Come back inside,” he heard his neighbor Minnie shout to her son Bernard. Roger smiled. Minnie must’ve been dreading the day her new neighbor passed out and died in his backyard since he bought the house.

A tear collected at the corner of his eye, and Roger rubbed it with the back of one hand. It was starting again. The last time he started seeing things, he didn’t catch on until he had lost a wife, a child, and a career. He had ended up here, mending his wounds by the riverside. If he was seeing things again, he didn’t know where else he could

“Wedded she was some years, and to a man

Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;

And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE

‘T were better to have TWO of five-and-twenty”

– Lord Byron

“I want a mistress

For Christmas.”

-AC/DC

“Like him?” Darren Florence asked Roger. Roger tried to answer, but he was laughing too hard to breathe. The bulldog Darren brought over to his house greeted the former singer by running into his legs, then stopping and looking up into his eyes. The dog panted and fell onto his back like he was melting, exposing a belly in need of scratching.

“Guess so,” Darren said.

“What’s his name?” Roger asked.

“Smut,” Darren said.

“Really?”

“He’s a rescue from a stripper who got busted with a whole lotta meth. My buddy was her landlord, and he’s already got two dogs.”

“Smut it is,” Roger said. He briefly stopped scratching the dog’s stomach. Smut groaned, and Roger returned his attention to the bulldog.

Darren put a hand-rolled cigarette into his mouth and leaned into his truck. He lit the cigarette with a Zippo lighter and then slid the lighter into the breast pocket of his denim shirt. Years after Garth Brook made being a cowboy cool again, Darren continued to dress in the Western style he had when he was in a boy. Now that he was in his fifties, Darren might be the last Midwestern man who could wear boots and a cowboy hat without looking ridiculous.

“I’ll take him,” Roger said. “Of course I will.”

“He’ll be a good watchdog for you,” Darren said.

Roger smiled, knowing full well the only man in town with reason enough to come out to his house to shoot him was Darren himself. Darren’s cool, reserved manner and large bank account kept him interesting to younger women. The woman he married, Fiona, was a younger woman to Darren but an older woman to Roger. He was not adverse to having an affair with an attractive, older woman, even if he deeply respected her husband.

“I think there are kids running around the river at night. Young kids,” Roger said. “I saw tracks in the mud.”

Darren shook his head.

“That’s a new one to me,” he said. As a local bar owner, Darren heard all of the complaints about what local kids were doing.

Smut ran off into the trees. The men could hear the ragged sounds of his breathing as he crunched through twigs and leaves. Any animal dim enough to get caught by such an awkward animal deserved its fate. Darren laughed to himself, and then his laughter stopped suddenly. Roger prepared to hear the older man say he knew all about the affair, but he said nothing.

“If you do see the kids, get a good look at them,” Darren said. “If you tell me, I could probably figure out who they belong to.”

Roger nodded, then almost crumpled to the ground. Smut rammed the back of his knees at full speed. When the dog figured out he was facing the wrong side or Roger, he panted and scrambled to face his new owner.

“Whatya got, boy?” Roger asked. He pulled a thin, white strip of fabric out of the dog’s mouth. Smut smacked his lips together, sending slobber into Roger’s face. Roger dried the fabric on his jeans and held up to the sunlight. It was warmer out than when the deputy, his first visitor of the day, had come over to harass him. The snow in the neighbor’s lawn had melted noticeably.

Darren whistled.

“That’s old,” he said. “They don’t make ‘em like that no more. What do you got going on out here?”

Roger shrugged. He knew he could never really answer Darren’s question.