“So, who do you think put it there?”
“I dunno, Miss Lane. It was jus’… there.”
“Seriously? You folks just …woke up this morning, and there was a bull in your pasture?”
“Yep. Dunny got wind of it a ruckus outside, started makin’ a racket, and he ran around ‘til he just about fell over. Next thing we knowed, there was a gol’danged bull in the back pasture.”
All right. Ruckus, passing out… bull.
Dear Diary:
It had seemed like an easy call. For once, Harvey sent me, with my newly minted journalism degree, out of the office to cover a call that wasn’t a City Council meeting, and I’d jumped at it. Sure, he hadn’t sent me along with a photographer, but I’d treated it like a serious story nonetheless. Putting on a touch of lipstick, I’d shrugged into my mostly wool blazer, and had driven out to the farm in my brand new leather heels. And now, here I was, jotting down notes on… a UFO call.
It was massive, a scarred rusty edifice of pitted red metal, roughly the size of a water tower. A narrow ladder – looking too rickety to be trustworthy to climb upon – led to a hatch on the head. I was assured that the police had been there, had checked things out, and that the bull was empty. There were no human footprints on the ground, only a series of scratches, which could have come from anything. The police were dismissing it as a prank.
The yokel was a total caricature of a farmer – peach-down on his cheeks, blue chambray shirt, a cowlick in his straggling gray hair. His son or his ranch hand – was this Dunny? – had remained silent so far, which wasn’t making me any more comfortable. I’d glanced his direction a few times, to gauge his reaction to the older man’s line of patter, but his face was a closed book.
Darn that Harvey. He would send me out on some stupid call like this.
“Miss? You listenin’ to me, Miss?”
“Yes. I’m listening. And is this Dunny?” I nod to the young man, glancing into his slate gray eyes.
“No, this here’s Freddie, our new hand. He came right along last night, he did, and a good thing, too. Didn’t none of the others want to go out today, after that there Dunny raised such a fuss. Was scared to death, scared like I never seen him.”
“Freddie?” I begin, feeling stupid, “Did you see or hear anything strange before… when the bull appeared in the back pasture?”
“No, ma’am.” Freddie’s voice is deep, slow and sonorous, perhaps what a bull would sound like if it spoke aloud.
“And so you saw nothing… Okay. So your information comes from… Dunny with regard to the …appearance of the bull?
A slow blink. “No, ma’am.”
“No?”
‘No, ma’am.”
Behind that slow wall of a face, it would seem that Freddie, smug in his snug white t-shirt and dirty jeans, that farm hand is … laughing at me. I feel blood suffuse my face.
“All right, I think we need to wrap up here. This Dunny? I need to speak with him. Now.”
“Dunny?” The yokel’s faded blue gaze lingers on my face in bewilderment. “Miss, Dunny can’t talk.”
I close my eyes in aggravation. “He can’t talk?”
“No, Miss. Dunny’s my redbone hound.”
Well, Diary, I snapped shut my notebook then. As my heels sank into the mud on the way back out to the car, I wondered if I was cut out to be a reporter, a real one. I wondered if journalism would ever remember the name Lois Lane…
I’m just not sure. Maybe Mom was right – and I should see if the junior college has a home economics course I can take. Who am I kidding, anyway?
The inspiration for this Ficktion piece comes from this picture taken by Flickr user Franc-tieur. More ficktion from the usual suspects at Ficktion.ning.com
I have eaten