My Cows
My Cows
“My cows!” Petra called out.
“Gosh darn it,” I returned playfully. The whole ride we had been playing the “My Cow” game. Whoever shouted “my cow” first won all the cows in the field. It was a way to pass time on a long ride. Petra had been playing since we started the ride almost four hours ago with impressively unwavering enthusiasm, even though she had won every single cow so far. It was like letting a kid win at checkers, I told myself. Sure, let’s go with that.
Fifty three miles. Only nine more miles to go. My triceps were aching, and we were riding into a headwind. The washboard of the wind-blown caliche jostled the bike beneath me, and I was pitched too far forward. It was like doing a thousand mini pushups. I experimented with letting my head sag, hoping to take the strain off my neck and shoulders. It didn’t really work. I returned my gaze to the road.
Up ahead I could see we were coming to another turn. I maintained my pace. I was going a speed stronger riders would have slowed to. The turn was pretty loose and on a slight descent, but on-camber and not too tight. I could probably just peddle through it. I watched my friend, Petra, who was up ahead, to see how she approached it. Yep, peddled through. Okay, here I went.
I was pleased with my mini victory as my tires rolled over the scattered rock, but just as I began to straighten out, I was hit with a wall of sound; a booming, thunderous rumble. My instinct was to stop, but the wind direction changed, and I began speeding forward unnaturally. Ahead, Petra skidded to a stop and dismounted. She held an ear with one hand and tried to steady her bike with the other. Long strands of unbound hair whipped madly against her helmet. She leaned back as she walked, trying not to stumble forward.
I rode to where she stood and dismounted as well. She looked at me and pointed, the hair now lashing at her face. She ignored it and fixed her gaze on me, beckoning me to look. I squinted, and strained to see through the veil of dust. In the distance, a line of bodies laid on the dirt road. Bikes were strewn about; one seemed to stand upright unsupported despite the wind. I surveyed my surroundings. Cows were gathered against the barbed wire fence where they could retreat no further. Broken hay bale wraps flapped like flags. Bits of plastic, twigs, and lots of dust flew past me and disappeared into a cloud of continuous disturbance where bodies rested. Long grasses rushed in torrents, except for bald spots created by fire ants. There was one only a few feet away, and I could see the exposed hole of their nest.
Petra carefully laid her bike, derailleur side up, where she stood. Then, cupping her ears in her hands, she trotted forward. I followed after her, keeping my bike with me and gripping my breaks on occasion to steady myself. We reached the cyclists. I only recognized one of them. She was a pro. I had attended a clinic where she talked about sports nutrition once. She was still clipped in, and her foot was twisted painfully. She had a bloody nose.
“We have to get help!” Petra yelled. I couldn’t hear her, but knew what she was saying. I nodded. The cyclists at my feet appeared to be unconscious. It occurred to me that perhaps we should move them out of the road, but then again, I heard you were not supposed to move people in case they had a spine injury or something.
Petra and I turned away from the scene and trudged into the headwind. I still had my bike, and she stopped to pick up hers.. The hill at the turn was not that steep, but we walked our bikes up anyway. The wind was incredible.
As soon as we rounded the turn, the noise suddenly died as if it had been sucked into a vacuum. Petra jogged her bike a few more feet, dropped it in a panic, and fumbled for her cellphone. Her hands were shaking. “Ambulance,” she said. “Yes, I’m on FM 1586…”
While she spoke to the operator, I noticed the tree at the bend in the road was pulled in two directions. The branches on our side were blowing toward us, and the branches on the other side were blowing away. I expected to see a twister or something in the “V” of space between the branches, but there was nothing. I supposed the winds would need to be blowing at each other for a twister to form. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Petra stuffed her phone back into her jersey pocket. “I have to go back. She wants me to check if they are breathing. Maybe I have to do CPR? I don’t know.”
“Okay, I’ll go with you.”
Once more, we fought the headwind, descended the hill, and turned the corner into deafening sound. We were sucked forward in the wind change, and used this momentum to sprint to the fallen cyclists.
Petra jumped off her bike cyclocross style—something I was too scared to do—and knelt down. She placed two fingers on a cyclist’s neck. I stood and watched as she impatiently tapped around looking for a pulse. She placed her hand on his chest. She hovered her palm over his mouth. She rose, and fished her cell phone out of her pocket. I watched her peck rather violently at the screen with her thumbs. She turned the phone around and shoved the screen at my face.
I stepped back and let the words come into focus. I can’t hear breathing obvs. I can’t tell if there’s a pulse. I’m not a doctor!!!!
I shook my head and shrugged at her. I knelt beside another cyclist, and awkwardly imitated the pulse check maneuver. Nothing. I wasn’t a doctor either, and I felt kind of stupid pretending at what I knew nothing about. I stood back up. The roaring wind was physically painful. This was a real bummer, to say the least, and I wanted to leave.
Just then, a tree branch flying overhead abruptly stopped, and dropped. Thud. It landed right on top of the pro, and she didn’t even notice. Oh no.
Petra’s eyes widened in disbelief. She looked at me, stood, and reached forward. Her hand stopped. Pat. A wall. She retracted it quickly and grabbed her bike. Bearing down, she gripped its handlebars and pushed into the headwind.
I kept up best I could, but it was like trying to run in a swimming pool. Sticks and other debris flew at me, and I was thankful I was still wearing my helmet. I pulled my bandana over my nose, and secured it under the bridge of my sunglasses, the way I would do in the dust wake of a passing truck.
We pushed our bikes back up the hill, and around the corner. Once again, the cacophony was sucked into a vacuum, and we were suddenly in relative silence. My ears rang, and the wind change whipped us forward.
We were full of adrenaline, and raced our bikes aimlessly. I looked down at my bike computer. My heart was racing. 185 bpm. I couldn’t sustain that. Petra seemed okay. She was in better shape than me. I panicked and was overcome with the fear of being dropped.
Another cyclist was riding toward us about 50 yards ahead. She was looking down, fighting the headwind as we had earlier.
“Heeeey!” Petra called out. “Turn around!”
The other cyclist didn’t seem to hear her, but we were getting closer.
“Turn around! Turn around!” Petra yelled.
Confused, the other cyclist came to a stop and waited for us to reach her. I didn’t recognize her. She was really slow though, I thought. A good thirty minutes behind us, and we were only averaging maybe 14mph on this ride. Selfishly, I hoped Petra wouldn’t invite her along. I mean, it wouldn’t be the best getaway. But then again, Petra was slowing for me. I was the slow one. How could I be thinking these thoughts? Ugh.
“There’s a crazy crash up there. We’re getting help,” Petra explained with heroic importance.
“Did you call 911?” the cyclist asked.
“Oh crap,” Petra said, and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. The call had ended at some point. “Yeah, I had, but we got disconnected. I told them where the crash was though. I feel like an ambulance should be here any minute.”
“Maybe it came from the other direction,” I said. And then I wondered what was the other direction. What was on the other side of that wall?
“I passed a house maybe 5 minutes ago?” the other cyclist offered helpfully. “I bet with this tailwind we’ll be there real quick. I’m Jett, by the way.”
“Petra.”
“Gemma.”
The house was an old stone ranch-style set back on the property. I guessed it was built in the mid ‘60s. We crossed over the cattle guard at the end of their private road and followed crushed granite to the concrete driveway of their three car garage. Fancy ranchers. Jolly fancy ranchers.
Petra leaned her bike against their massive truck, which I worried they’d be mad about, but said nothing. I squeezed between their vehicles and joined Petra on the doorstep. She pressed their video doorbell thing.
Dogs barked, and a woman appeared behind the screen door. “Can I help you?” she said. She looked like she was in her late sixties, early seventies—old enough to be my mom and Petra’s grandma.
“There’s a big crash a few miles from here. We called 911, but we haven’t seen an ambulance yet. Everyone looked really hurt. I couldn’t tell if they were breathing. I hope so. We’re really far from our cars. We parked in Gonzales,” Petra said.
“Hold on,” the woman said gruffly, and disappeared into the house.
She returned with a hunting rifle, and pushed open the screen door. We cleared out of her way. She was tall, big. Intimidating. The gun didn’t help. She was wearing purple linen and rainbow sandals like an old Austin hippy. Her toenails were painted a pearlescent blue. But with her swagger, she may as well have been all Dickies and Carhart.
She marched over to her truck, saying to us, “Y’all climb in the back. Leave your bicycles here.” And then, after a pause, “Keep the helmets on.”
I jogged over to my bike and moved it out of the driveway, finding a tree to lean it against. I worried for a minute someone would steal it, but remembered we were in the middle of nowhere. Also, I was ashamed of myself for not being more helpful back when we were checking on the cyclists. I always let other people take the lead. I was pretty useless. Maybe getting my bike stolen was a penance.
The woman’s two dogs followed us into the truck bed, and we were soon headed back down the road, kicking up dust on our way. I pulled up my bandana. The dogs barked and wagged their tails. They couldn’t care less about us strangers, which was good because I didn’t much like touching dogs. They all smelled like dog, for starters.
We came to the cleaved tree, and rounded the bend. I wished I had something to stuff into my ears. The three of us pulled our knees up to our chests and hid our faces. It was hard to breathe.
The truck made a sharp left, and parked perpendicular to the street, blocking the road. The woman opened the driver’s seat and cab doors. She pressed one side of her body against the truck to maintain her balance. She must have weighed more than two hundred pounds; if she could barely stand upright, Jett, Petra, and I were really in trouble.
The three of us half climbed out, half fell out of the truck bed. She motioned to us to help her pull a long hose from the cab, about eight inches in diameter. Once we had uncoiled several yards, she passed it under the truck, and, head down, walked around to the other side to pull it through. I saw her dogs run off into the field, but the woman seemed unconcerned.
The large lady leaned into the truck bed from where she stood and flipped a switch on the side of its toolbox. I couldn’t hear it, but the vibration made me think it was some sort of generator. Suddenly, the hose lurched, and pink foam gushed out on end. The woman straddled the hose, still fighting to keep upright with the wind blowing at her. Foam splashed back at the truck. She turned, flipped off the switch, and pounded the side of the truck in frustration.
I had no idea what was going on. Petra and Jett looked just as bewildered.
The woman picked up the hose again, and dragged it lifelessly toward the easement. She gestured for us to follow. Reluctantly, we abandoned the truck, which was our windshield, and stepped out into the flurry.
The woman stumbled to the fire ant clearing, and knelt over the hole. She aligned the openings, and motioned for Petra to take the hose from her. Then she grabbed my arm as if I were a small child, and had me hold the hose as well, just behind Petra. Jett anticipated her next silent instruction, and grabbed hold of the hose behind me. The large woman made her way back to the truck, and I held my breath, bracing myself for when she turned the hose back on.
The hose kicked wildly, and a forceful pink stream gushed out. Petra was strong; the end of the hose remained at the mouth of the ant hill. I imagined foam flooding an enormous network of subterraneous tunnels.
I wasn’t wrong, but I couldn’t have imagined how right I was. Moments later, dozens of pink geysers shot up in the fields around us. Their trajectories elbowed, and large pink globules made horizontal rain that splattered against a wall of nothing. A dirty pink plane developed before our eyes, slicing its way across the fields and road. Thin tributaries dribbled toward the source of the vacuum—the reason for the wind—a fire ant hole in the middle of the sky, mere feet above the cyclists. Everything was wrong. The entire landscape was a mess of gray dust and pink mud. My friends and I were tarred by sludge, feathered by straw and grass. I was cold, it was loud, and everything smelled exactly like that industrial size pink soap they use to refill the dispensers in public school restrooms. Is that what the pink stuff was?
Jett mouthed “Whoa.” I looked up. Pink sludge belched from that celestial ant hole. It squirted a twenty foot stream before thickening into a dough. Marbled pink and gray blobs tumbled along a vertical drop, and deposited where the fallen cyclists laid helplessly. Even if they were dead—which I prayed they were not—it seemed irreverent and disrespectful to allow the sky to… poop on them.
I abandoned the hose and scrambled to where they were lying. Not one of them had moved since Petra and I saw them last. I wasn’t very strong. I spotted a weight-weeny—probably a good hill climber—and slid my arms under his armpits. I lifted his upper body from behind, and dragged him toward the truck. I opened the tailgate, and surprised myself when I successfully lifted him into the truck bed. I was so short; I shouldn’t have been able to do that. It must have been the adrenaline.
Petra and Jett abandoned the hose as well, and followed my lead. We managed to get half the cyclists into the truck before the woman saw we had abandoned post. She looked at us, then at the erratic, raging hose, then back at us again. Finally, she chose the hose. She wrestled it down like it was the rodeo, and stuffed it back into the ant hole. The geysers sprayed with renewed vigor.
Once the last cyclist was safely slumped in the bed of the truck, it wasn’t clear what the three of us should do. The woman had the keys, so we couldn’t go anywhere. I looked down at my arm. The pink goo that coated it was speckled with a hundred little curled up dead fire ant bodies.
I just then noticed that the wind had died down. The sky hole was plugged with a pink crust. The ground hole was capped by a lopsided abscess. It was eerily quiet.
The woman grunted and walked back to the truck with heavy footsteps. She flipped off the pink stuff pump, and turned a wheel inside the cab that retracted the hose. She then dug around for something on the floorboard. Her gun. The three of us watched her quietly while she loaded it and took aim at the sky zit. “Bang!”
“I thought guns were louder,” Petra remarked.
I shrugged.
The big lady had good aim. The pink blob dislodged and smacked the ground like a rotten watermelon. Good thing we had moved the cyclists!
She turned and shot the ant hill. A small cloud of dust went up where the bullet struck the ground, and the pink pimple busted into a small explosion of puffy pieces.
She unloaded, locked the safety, and marched back to the truck without a word. Then she half climbed in and grabbed the CB radio. She spoke in some kind of trucker jargon and hung the mic back on its mount.
“Y’all climb back in,” she directed.
Petra, Jett, and I awkwardly squatted in spaces between lifeless people in the bed of the truck.
The dogs came running. The woman whistled loudly and pointed at the field. The dogs turned and ran toward the herd of cows, still huddled near the fence. They looked like massive plastic figurines, being covered in putty pink as they were. The woman started the engine, and we headed back up the hill.
I noticed the tree at the bend was no longer split. A crop duster flew over and released bright yellow-green liquid. Seconds later, another crop duster did the same. And then another.
The whole acreage was being rained on by crop dusters. Everyone in the bed of the truck was absolutely soaked. It smelled like pickles.
“It’s pickle juice!” Petra said. She threw her head back and opened her mouth.
I couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t she afraid of being poisoned or something?
The pro cyclist stirred. “Look!” I said. And then, “Hey are you okay? Can you hear me?”
The pro looked at me with eyes half open. She was quiet for a few moments and finally asked, “Where’s my bike?”
The other cyclists began to stir. Thank goodness they were okay.
The group of us moaned as the truck bounced roughly on the cattle guard. My bike was still leaning against the tree.
I heard the dogs barking, and could see they had herded the cows to the property. They were much cleaner now, although I imagined they’d smell like pickles for days. A little soap and a whole lot of pickle. Hopefully it would rain soon or someone would do them a favor and hose them down… with water, that is.
The large woman opened her truck door and stepped to the ground. She grabbed her gun from the back bench, and followed the landscaping stones around some mulched flower bed to the front door of her house. I had not before noticed her doorknob was an old crank. The porch railing was a bunch of forks welded together. She had little succulents growing the bowls of upturned bike bells. A bumper sticker in her window read “Be kind to cyclists.” Okay, so Big Lady used to ride bikes.
Before pushing her way inside, the big, tall woman clad in purple linen looked back at us.
“My cows,” she said.
Copyright © by Amalia Litsa 2022