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Non-Fiction
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| Cattle Calls | |
| By hutmaster | ||||||||
| 19 August 2007 | ||||||||
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Small boys with little imagination can still learn from their mistakes. Twice a day the little herd paraded, sullen as a funeral, past the row of ten houses, making their way uphill to pasture. The bones of their hindquarters flexed on skin glistening with subtle movement; each step a fascinating mobile of articulated grandeur. Veins on swaying udders shone blue as rivers on a map. The liquid slap of clap on tarmac punctuating their steady gait. Sean, the herdsman, flailed the air with his rude stick, signifying command of the lumbering column. 'Gerrow,' 'Whaa, there.' These nonsense words, like the redundant stick, implied authority. His charges, pink tongues poking at wet nostrils, ignored the timid words and plodded on, flanks twitching their soft moos anticipating the relief of milking. He was the skinny, unsmiling, son of the farmer. When he spoke, which wasn't often, a palate defect gave his words a nasal airiness. We burlesqued his thin sound with our high voices. 'Splahh ow that.' 'Snarr. Snam, there.' 'S' words, ventilated through our noses, echoed Sean's difficulties. 'Nnfock off,' he'd shout. His temper failed to spike the air, his roar soft as wind through whin. He shouted again, swishing his stick at a loose stone then his voice trailed off. We relished the sound of his broken ranting and teased again and again, but he realised that it was his ragged rage that we wished to provoke. 'Nnfock off, Shnon', we'd bellow from our gorse green hideaway. 'Ssnake them ncows home, an' nnfock off yourself.' Then one day, and for all the days after, a silent aloofness greeted our shouts, spoiling forever our cruel game. Our unfunny impersonations ceased. Cast down silences marked his triumph and our shame. The shy herdsman had had the last word. We skulked away from the hill, each wrapped in a new kind of silence. Sean passed by, the pleasant tick and plock of hoof on tarmac the only sounds orchestrating his triumph.
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