A poignant tale about pushing limits and challenging destiny

Humiliated by his hoofed legs, the flies on his haunches, and the grass in his mouth, a bull named Être tells his tender story about the brutal insignificance of cow life at Gorwell Farm. In a world where the line between disgrace and dignity is drawn by a pasture fence, Être finds himself alone in his awareness and utterly powerless to change his circumstances. Être searches for understanding among the broads, bulls, and calves on the pasture, but finds none. On the best of days, Être listens to the farmer's boy sing lullabies at the fence. He likes those songs and loves the boy. But the grasses thin as the seasons pass, the cows hunger, and Être grows desperate. He is the only cow truly starving.

Moo!'

This happens so often I rarely take notice. Girls and men, boys and women call out to me, and to every one of us here, from outside this fence of wire and wood confining my pasture.

'Moo, cow!' they shout, and I try not to turn. But I do, and as always, I am humiliated. They call out to my hoofed legs, the flies on my haunches, and the grass in my mouth. They cry at my stinking cowness. I am a bull, not a cow. But I am a beast and so are the others, and the shame of this burns like the sunshine on my back.

It's more crowded than ever on the pasture, and I can't count us all—a few brutes, perhaps a few hundred broads and their calves. All the good grasses been chewed long ago and now we have only yellowed patches to fill our bellies.

I haven't eaten a daffodil in several seasons.

When the rain comes, brilliant green sprouts burst through puddles and dung and dirt but are quickly trampled by the curious and careless. None of us here are ­patient. The men on the horses with their grinning dogs will soon come and move us all to better land, and we will eat without rest. If they don't move us, we'll starve. And if we starve, they starve, that's my understanding of things. So I wait, with the others. They call this place Gorwell Farm, and I call myself être. It's the only word I can say.

I don't reckon they say. But I do reckon. I'm not sure how long I've been doing that. It's hard for me to tell. It's like a cocoon just splits open one summer, a butterfly beats its wings and zigzags away. To the butterfly, the caterpillar never really figures. That's how it happens, I think.

'Unghf,' I say and swallow the blades on my tongue.
'Unghf,' a nearby bull answers.
'Anghf,' a cow says.

The ants are on the move again, snaking their way through the grass in a jagged line. They pay me no notice even as I loom above them. In one direction most are hauling tiny bits of world in their pincers—leaves, insect wings, rotting pulp of apricot, and globs of mud. I follow one of them. He cuts under the thickets, over sticks, and in and out of cow tracks, holding a mantis head in his jaws. The mantis eyes look at me and I look away. I'm careful where I step when I follow. The ant disappears, and I push blades of grass out of the way with my face so he does not get lost to me. Along the path, ants crawling in the other direction meet this one, touch him, flail their antennae, and then move on. I nudge two sluggish broads with dim eyes out of the way; they are slow to move. I find my ant again. In the clearing he crawls faster and straighter. And when he finally arrives at his home, he drops out of sight down the hole. I wait. Then I decide to stop waiting, and I plough one of my hooves through his mound. This gets all the ants excited. They storm up my legs, bite at my flesh, and taste my enormity. To them I am incomprehensible, and after a while they leave me be.

'Unghf,' I say, and pull roots from the dirt. 

Many in the herd are moving to the water at the long end of the pasture, where side by side they'll gulp from the stream until they are fat and slow. On hotter days some will even stand in it. Water looks more interesting when a cow is standing in it. And I like to look at that. But this day it's not that hot.
I don't much like going to the stream ever since my first time. I was smaller then, and I recall I got there just like the others—I followed. I slipped and crouched and bent my way between hundreds of cows, and then stretched my neck long until I reached the water's edge. But my legs buckled. Under the water the most awful beast eyed me like it had been waiting for me all along: this hideous water-cow.

'Mneweh,' I turned to the others, using a cry only calves can cry.

For certain, the others had seen the water-cow. But they stood calm. So I crept back to the water's edge and peaked in again. I didn't go so far as to see its horrible face, but when I saw those ragged ears flickering on the surface, I thrashed my body backward. I turned, pushing and twisting my way between so many cows, and I ran from the stream until my legs folded.

Later, when the other cows lumbered back to the pasture one by one, I walked back to the stream alone and again the water-cow was waiting for me.
He had a rotten-apple nose, black and wet. Ears like mangled leaves. Two bird-egg eyeballs low on his head jutting from the sides of the skull. His hide was clay colored, not the rusty brown, black, or white I'd seen on the other cows, just the color of water-meets-earth. Like me the water-cow was a bull, or turning into one, with stubs for horns. His tongue, brown and thick and mottled, hung limply out of the side of his mouth. I moved my head this way, then that way, then this way again, and so did the water-cow. I snorted and so did the water-cow. His ears flicked. So did mine. I dipped my face into the water; he poked his face out. Our noses touched.

©2010. Dr. Sean Kenniff. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Etre the Cow. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442