One Bad Day - Chapter 10 - Cow Leashes and Jellyfish Skies 🪼🐄

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Chapter 10

That is… until we ran out of cows.

“What do we do now?” the girl says as we hover next to an antsy Angus that’s making me nervous. I glance ahead and then quickly down at sharp hooves stepping too near my bare mud-covered toes. She does it too but looks up at me as if expecting my brilliant answer. And when I don’t reply right away and instead quirk my left cheek up to my eye, she throws a hand out to still the cow from stepping too close. Apparently, she’s over her fear of cows.

“I said, what do we do now?” Her commanding whisper is getting annoying.

I look behind us where the herd isn’t as thin and gaze again at the dark spotted landscape ahead. The cows are like far away steppingstones now and we can’t play leapfrog with the jellyfish overhead. The girl scans the skies again.

“It might rain,” she says.

I hadn’t considered this. A good rain would help. I haven’t had a chance to worry about the weather and quite frankly on second thought, I don’t think it’ll make a difference. Not for the jellyfish side, our ours.

My silence, the girl isn’t having it, and she huffs out a breath.

“Okay, kid,” I lay an arm over the cow and point as if this is the most natural thing in the world. “You see that building over there?”

“The one in the distance without the cows?”

I ignore the sarcasm and nod. “There’s a pickup truck parked under the overhang.”

She shakes her, I’m guessing, twelve-year-old head at me and begins to count out her fingers. “We don’t have the keys. It might be out of gas. Those things will follow us in the space in between. We won’t make it a mile and again… there are no cows between here and there.”

She ended by leap frogging her pinky a space ahead and we both stare at it for a second.

“I know, but look around. We don’t have a lot of options, those things in the sky are staying over there and besides, we can take this one for a walk with us across the field.”

“For a walk? You want to walk this cow, across that field? We don’t have rope and neither of us have shoes and he keeps trying to lean against me.” She braced both hand against the cow’s side and locks her elbows.

“Quit that. We need to stay close, and he’ll only keep pushing you. You’ll attract attention from those things it you fight with the cow.”

She slacked her arms away and scanned the sky while I sat my pack down on the muddy ground and crouched nearby while keeping an eye on the cow’s hooves. Inside my bag, I noted the shattered laptop with a click of my cheek and pulled out my longest computer charging cord. As I un-Velcroed the strap, she chuckled.

“What are you going to do with that?”

I doubled the length and twisted the ends. “I know it’s not perfect, but it could be a leash.

“He doesn’t have a collar. There’s no way we’re going to lead a full grown cow with that thing. It’s too flimsy.”

Ignoring her, I said, “Got any better ideas.”

“Maybe we should find a smaller one?” she scanned the field.

“Nope. This one is used to us now. It’s got to be him.”

“How do you know its a him?” She peered beneath.

“I just know.” I wasn’t going there.

But… and this is where I take a moment. Have you ever tried walking a cow on a leash? I mean, this is not a domesticated animal. Not like a dog. I think of him as a walking steak. He’s a heavy ribeye, docile but heavy.

And it doesn’t exactly go how you might expect. Or, perhaps it does and you’re shaking your head knowing a barefoot man is about to feel as if he’s met his maker. Because, exactly what you might think, happens.

“This is a bad idea…” the girl says as I loop the cord around the cow’s neck.

And she’s right… 3, 2, 1….