Eric never really had much of a head on his shoulders, but when he suggested we sell Daddy's corpse to Papa Crawler, I thought the whisky had finally taken his last brain cell. Daddy wasn't what you'd call a regular at the Creek Bend Baptist Church, preferring to spend his Sundays worshiping the Dallas Cowboys, but he at least deserved some sort of Christian burial. Eric saw things differently. He and Daddy never got along very well, having nothing in common but the regular consumption of large quantities of alcohol. They could rarely make it through a night without both of them tying one on and getting into a cussing contest or a fistfight. Most times, Eric would end up racing back to the bar for a refill and Daddy would stumble out past the cotton fields in his ratty underwear, bottle in tow, to scream obscenities at the cows. They always managed to find their way to bed, and by sunup the previous night's altercation was usually forgotten. I don't know if they both felt too sick in the morning to continue the argument or if the drink clouded their memory. It really didn't matter much to me as long as they just left one another alone. It happened so often, I never really expected anything serious to come of it. But it was the morning after one of these family discussions that we found what was left of Daddy underneath the tractor. I woke Eric up extra early that morning, just out of spite, and told him to get dressed and help me haul some hay out of the barn for the cows. I wasn't too keen on getting up at 6:30 either but the scowl on his face made it all worthwhile. "Where the hell's Daddy?" he croaked. "Cows is his job." "He ain't in his bed," I replied in a deceptively chipper tone of voice. I downed the last of my coffee and headed out the back door. "You coming?" "I ain't even all the way awake yet. I'll be along here directly." The chances of that happening were pretty slim. I was only slightly less confident I'd find the cows had become tired of waiting and ordered Chinese takeout. As it happened, I wasn't too far off. Daddy didn't have a drop of Chinese blood in his body but the cows seemed to think he tasted pretty good anyway. At first, I didn't understand why they seemed so fascinated with the tractor. They were wedged together like a band of hungry wolves, wrestling for position, knocking one another aside in an effort to reach it. I muscled my way through and finally managed to see what was causing the fuss. Daddy's lifeless form was lying half underneath the plow. An industrious cow was hard at work trying to separate a swollen red ear from the corpse's head. The remaining cows milled about anxiously, their flat teeth scraping violently together. The rusted tractor that had once been some shade of red sat motionless against a lonely pecan tree. Judging by the length of tilled earth in its wake and the lack of trees on our property, the tractor would have dragged Daddy halfway across the state if the pecan hadn't been there to stand in its way. I had a pretty hard time mustering any real sympathy for the man who'd spent the last twenty-seven years treating me like shit, but I hated to see anybody become breakfast for the cows. Overcoming my initial state of shock, I did the right thing and chased them away. The brown heifer fighting Daddy's head for the ear was victorious. As I kicked her hard in the flank, she bolted off in possession of the prize. I heard the screen door slam shut and Eric began his slow approach, shielding his eyes from the already hot West Texas sun with the brim of his stained straw hat. He carried with him a half-empty bottle of Budweiser, cradling it against his sizeable gut as if trying to protect it from harm. When Eric saw Daddy, he stopped cold and lost his previously firm grip on the beer bottle. It fell unnoticed to the ground, a tiny swirl of foam forming a pool at his feet. "Jesus, what happened?" "Best I can tell, old bastard got drunk and fell off the back of the tractor," I replied. "Plow did the rest." "Son of a bitch!" "Uh huh." "I think I'm gonna be sick." Eric's face became a canvas of sickly greens and yellows. Beads of sweat formed around his receding hairline and he covered his mouth with both meaty hands. "Aw hell, don't do it over here." He mumbled something through his fingers. "What?" "Cows don't eat meat." I turned around and they were back, trying in vain to chew through the tough flesh on the back of Daddy's shoulder. "Go on, damnit!" I shouted and they lumbered off around the side of the barn. "Listen Eric, we gotta get him picked up and take him into town." "The hell we do. Look, he's all tore up." "Well, we can't just leave him here for the cows to eat. Just help me get him in the bed of the truck and I'll drive him to the funeral home." I set about the gruesome task of removing the body from the plow blades. "Aw hell." "What?" asked Eric, still keeping a safe distance. "His arms and legs are gone, goddamn cows." "We'll stumble across 'em eventually. Cows can't eat that much, they got to be in the field somewhere." "Well thanks for your insight, now at least help me lift up this plow!" Eric relented and came over to help out, kicking the fallen beer bottle out of his way with a sideways swing of his boot. "I still say this is goddamn strange, cows eatin' people and all." |
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