Holy Cow

by David Duchovny

  As I was coming to, I noticed everything had changed. Yes, it all looked the same—even though now the clouds had cleared and the moon glowed like a new quarter in the heavens, but for the first time, I could make out a face in the moon, the so-called man in the moon, and his mouth was open and his eyes were wide in horror and disbelief. I could smell the grass, which had always been such a comfort to me and reminded me of my mother, but there was a sour taste in my mouth, like bile, that was ruining any scent. I did not like the world and wanted only blackness and silence. I wanted to get away from these humans and their Box God and their endless consumption of things.

  On unsteady legs, I started back up the hill to the barn. I don’t know how long I’d been gone—an hour, three hours, five minutes, a lifetime?—but when I got back, all the animals were still asleep. Except for Mallory, who was standing there with a huge smile on her face.

  11

  THE BIRDS AND THE BEES

  (in screenplay form)

  MALLORY

  OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!

  (There were about three hundred more OMGs, but I don’t want you to think I’m padding my story.)

  ELSIE

  What? What? Take a chill pill, girlfriend.

  MALLORY

  Nothing will ever be the same again!

  ELSIE

  You can say that again.

  MALLORY

  No way! Did you hook up?

  ELSIE

  Hook up? Me? No, no, go on, tell me what happened.

  (I didn’t really want to hear, but I couldn’t really tell MALLORY what had happened down at the house with the people and the Box God. Not yet. I still was processing it myself. It was like a bad dream that was not quite over.)

  MALLORY

  It was full-on West Side Story. Frank goes to Steve and he’s like, “Yo, dude, she’s a black-and-white Holstein like me, my mother was a black and white, so she’s my girlfriend,” and Steve was like, “Yeah, if it was the fifties maybe, but it’s not like that anymore and red bulls can be with anyone, anyone can be with anyone.” And I thought, Yeah, you go, Steve, yeah, that makes total sense. They were totally fighting over me. Elsie? Earth to Elsie?

  ELSIE

  Yeah, yeah, they were totally fighting over you.

  (I was trying to listen, but I was totally zoning in and out. I couldn’t erase the images of cows hung on hooks, bleeding, bleeding … Stop! I told my mind, but I couldn’t. Like when my mother always used to say, “Don’t think about pink cows,” and then of course pink cows is all you can think about. But these cows weren’t pink, they were red and bleeding, bleeding … Stop!)

  MALLORY

  They woulda fought over you too, mamacita, but you disappeared. Where’d you go?

  ELSIE

  Nowhere. Okay, so they’re getting all Jets and Sharks with you. What’s with you? You look different. Your mascara is running.

  MALLORY

  I am different. You look different too.

  ELSIE

  I am different. Go on. So tell me. I hang upon your every word.

  MALLORY

  So Steve and Frank and these other guys—I think there were like four or five, um, Jimmy C., Matty, and Jose maybe was it? And …

  ELSIE

  Names not important, cut to the chase.

  MALLORY

  How did you know there was a chase?

  ELSIE

  It’s an expression …

  MALLORY

  Okay, so they do this thing where they’re gonna fight, and they snort and stomp and make weird noises, and then they do fight! It was a real fight! They were fighting over me, but I could tell they weren’t really trying to hurt one another, that it was more of a show. A delicious exhibition of bullness.

  ELSIE

  The chase?

  MALLORY

  Oh yeah, okay, the chase … so they ram into one another a few times and chase one another around, but then Frank kinda gives up and says something like, “You can have her, she’s not so pretty anyway…”

  ELSIE

  That’s hurtful. What a dickhead.

  MALLORY

  Whatever. He’s a loser.

  ELSIE

  I thought you liked Frank.

  MALLORY

  Liked, duh. Past tense, as in, no more, bae, I am moving on.

  ELSIE

  So the other guys take off and you’re left there alone with Frank.

  MALLORY

  Steve.

  ELSIE

  Steve. Sorry.

  MALLORY

  So we’re hanging out there, by the fence, and he’s all kinda out of breath from the half-fake fighting, and I can see his breath, and I can smell it.

  ELSIE

  Ew.

  MALLORY

  Not ew. I liked it. And he’s like all cool now, he’s like, “Babe, I can eat this much grass,” and “Babe, I could escape this place anytime, I just choose to stay ’cause it’s a cush gig…” and on and on.

  ELSIE

  Right.

  MALLORY

  So then he presses his lips up against the fence.

  ELSIE

  Get out.

  MALLORY

  Yes, ma’am, and he closes his eyes, and just stays there like a statue, so I kissed him …

  ELSIE

  No way!

  MALLORY

  Way!

  ELSIE

  Shut the front door! Was it all gross and slobbery?

  MALLORY

  No, it was, it was … I can’t describe it … you would think that exchanging fluids from your mouth with a guy would be the grossest thing in the world, but it wasn’t gross. It was rad. I’m in love.

  ELSIE

  You’re not in love. You barely know him.

  MALLORY

  That’s what love is, Elsie, when you’re crazy about someone you don’t really know. I’m gonna make calves with him.

  I was gonna argue with Mallory, talk some sense into her, but I could tell she was beyond reason at this point, that just as everything—the moon, the grass, the breeze—reminded me of the red death right now, everything reminded her of Steve. And of love. And I thought about telling her what I’d seen, and then I thought, who am I to rain on her parade? I looked over at her and she was lit up like a June night filled with fireflies, and for a brief moment I forgot about what had happened to me, and I was happy. Happy for Mallory, happy for Steve, happy for the world. Happy. And I closed my eyes and slept.

  12

  UNCOMFORTABLY NUMB

  (see Floyd, Pink)

  When I awoke, the middle child was milking me. I must have been awake before that, but I was kind of sleepwalking, half of me could not stop thinking of what I’d seen, which left only half of me to be awake and conscious and make my way through my day. I had always liked the middle child, he was gentle, and he liked to talk to me while he milked me, to tell me about his problems, problems at school, with his parents, with his obnoxious older brother. I guess he thought I was safe, that I didn’t understand a word he said. I was always there for him. But not today. Today, I did not like people. None of them. And I guess it was affecting my milk, ’cause the boy kept asking me, “What’s wrong, girl?” and taking my face in his hands, and looking deep into my eyes, and petting the top of my head, which I had always loved, but today I just wanted to spit at him or ram him. So that’s what I did. I clocked him one right on the chin with my forehead and sent both him and the milk pail tumbling over.

  I recognized the look in the boy’s eyes now. I recognized it because I could feel it on my own face. It was like looking in a mirror. It was the look of betrayal, of being betrayed. And we just stood there frozen for a moment, me and the boy, staring at each other with our betrayed faces. I could see a tear forming in his eye, and for a moment, I almost felt bad. Almost. But then that almost feeling went away, and I realized I couldn’t feel anything anymore. That I would never feel anything again. Ever. I felt dead inside. I was completely num
b. I lowered my head and charged him again.

  13

  THE BLACK DOG

  I guess the middle boy was embarrassed at getting pushed around by a cow and didn’t tell anybody, ’cause there were no repercussions from the head-butting incident. The ensuing months were kind of a blur to me. It could have been a week, a year, ten years. The thing is I didn’t care. I think humans refer to this state of depression as the “black dog” and I don’t really know why that makes sense, but there you have it—I had the black dog, and he was at my side morning, noon, and night, like he was my friend, but I knew he wasn’t.

  My mind would just turn over and over constantly like an old vinyl record stuck in a groove.

  (Hi, parents! You can take a moment to explain to your child what vinyl is, or what a record player is, or what music is, for that matter; you can even tell them about the Led Zeppelin song “Black Dog” if you want to bore the crap out of them. They don’t care about your music. They think it’s lame. But tell them something to make them understand the mental state that approximates the skipping back and forth in a groove on vinyl.)

  It was like I was banging my head against a wall trying to kill the pain or trying to break through the wall, or both.

  And in fact, I was banging my head against the side of the barn quite regularly. So much so that Mallory took me aside one day and said she was concerned about me, that I was rubbing the fur off my forehead and if I made myself bald no bull would want me. As if I cared. And then Mallory told me she was pregnant. That she was carrying Steve’s calf. And I was happy for her, but I knew that was no longer a life that I wanted. I didn’t want to bring another cow into this awful world. I didn’t tell her that, though. I kissed her pretty snout and said I was happy for her, and I leaned into her and closed my eyes, and when I opened them, there he was again, standing right beside me with a tennis ball in his mouth, waiting: the black dog.

  14

  MOM

  Banging your head over and over against a wall is not as bad as it sounds. Or rocking back and forth, or pacing like a panther in a zoo. It’s like you’re going over the same ground again and again and again, knowing that you will eventually wear a path so deep that you will break through to the knowledge that you seek, break out of this world that makes you want to bang your head against a wall and into another, better one.

  So that’s what happened. One day, as I was banging my head against the stall wall, I stopped and just spoke one word: Mom. I just kept repeating that word over and over, Mom, Mom, Mom. And I realized I’d been heartbroken over her disappearance, always nodding when people told me that’s what happened on a farm, that the moms and dads leave when the babies are ready to be moms and dads, but inside, I always heard a voice asking, Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me, Mom?

  I stopped banging my head because I realized Mom didn’t leave me. She was taken away. She was taken away and killed, and then she was eaten. I felt the bile rising again in me from stomachs three and four, and I vomited all over the ground, and maybe I passed out. It was horrible, but it was also freeing. I realized I’d been angry at my mom for leaving and now I wasn’t angry anymore. All my anger was now trained on the humans who had betrayed me, and betrayed her even worse.

  You humans drink our milk and eat the eggs of the chickens and the ducks. Isn’t that enough for you? Isn’t it enough that we give you our children and what’s meant for our children? And if not, when is it enough? All you humans do is take, take, take from the earth and its beautiful creatures, and what do you give back? Nothing. I know humans consider it a grave insult to be called an animal. Well, I would never give a human the fine distinction of being called an animal, because an animal may kill to live but an animal never lives to kill. Humans have to earn the right to be called animals again.

  15

  AN APOLOGY

  I apologize because I want this book to be fun and not preachy, and I argued with my editor ’cause I wanted to leave some of the more incendiary, direct-address, polemical stuff in. My editor says, “You do realize you are insulting your entire audience, i.e., the human race? Not what I’d call a winning strategy. Cows don’t buy books.”

  And I say, “I know, but sometimes you just gotta speak your mind.”

  And my editor argues, “But they’ve heard it all before, this is not the original part of your story.”

  So I say, “I don’t care if they have to hear it a thousand times more, maybe it’s like banging their heads against a wall, maybe this is me banging their heads against a wall and one day the wall will break or their heads will break and they will get it.” And my editor says, “They get it, they just don’t care.”

  “Then they just get it with their minds, intellectually, because if they got it with their hearts and souls, they would change, they would change and rejoin the animal kingdom and once again be proud to be called animals. Until that day, I will keep banging their tiny heads against a wall. You can’t just wear the food chain around your neck like a bauble or necklace. You’re part of it and if you keep treating it with disdain, that chain will strangle you. Do you know how much I am leaving out in the service of being ‘entertaining’? Do you know that the alfalfa they like to feed us (and I am a freak for the ’falfa—guilty) takes so much water to grow that it is leading to water shortages? An unnatural chain is being forged. Do you know that the rampant use of antibiotics on livestock—which cuts down on bacterial diseases that would decimate pigs, chickens, and cows forced into unimaginably cramped living conditions, thereby making that obscene overcrowding possible—is also enabling diseases to mutate and adapt resistance to these selfsame antibiotics? That much of these antibiotics enter the soil and water table through our poop, and we are seeing an appearance of Frankensteinian superbugs and a return of diseases that had been made practically extinct by the medical advances of the previous century? Everything is connected. Everything. That breeze you just felt is a butterfly fluttering his wings in Thailand. Do you want me to go on? I have a list here as long as a giraffe’s neck.”

  “Oh God, no, my eyes are glazing over.” My editor yawns. “You’re banging my head against the wall right now. Nobody wants to read that crap. People like to be made to feel a lighter shade of guilty, not terrified and shamed. But go ahead, keep it in, shoot yourself in the foot.”

  So I say, “I can’t shoot myself in the foot.” And she asks, “Why not?” And I say, “No hands!”

  And we laugh.

  And she says, “A spoonful of sugar helps the globe-warming, drought-inducing, superresistant-bacteria-creating medicine go down. Don’t forget the spoonful of sugar, sugar. We can also recommend to parents that reading this particular chapter to their children guarantees they will fall asleep immediately.”

  I apologize, but I was an angry young cow at that point in my life, and fully taken with making stands against the Man. I refused to be called Elsie anymore ’cause that was what humans liked to call all cows, and I told all the other animals to call me “Elsie Q” because I didn’t know my real name, the Q standing for question mark. Clever, right? And I even had my own ready-made theme song by substituting Elsie Q for Suzy Q. I like the way you walk, I like the way you moo, Elsie Q.

  And I guess the force of this revelation about my mom was too much for me and I passed out. Again. ’Cause when I woke up, Jerry the pig was eating my vomit. Don’t say “Gross,” don’t judge. We animals don’t waste anything. If one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, well, one cow’s vomit is another pig’s dinner. And I looked at him and smiled because I loved my mom again and I was free and he looked at me and smiled and said, “Deeeee-licious!”

  16

  FREEISH BIRD

  (see Skynyrd, Lynyrd)

  So I was free. Ish. Yes, I was still stuck on the farm, but I was free inside, in my mind, which is the true place of freedom. I got into the habit of opening the gate at night, and with my mind-freedom came a new way of looking at things, and I looked at the latch, and
it was simple to open with my tongue. Things that used to mystify me were so simple now.

  And I would just open the latch at night after everyone was asleep and go wandering, usually up in the hills. Away from the bulls. I didn’t care about boys.

  As I’d wander, my mind would kind of turn off and I’d go into this meditative state where I could talk to my mother. And we would have the most amazing conversations. Some were replays of old talks we’d actually had when she was with me, and some were new ones that would just come to me. Before you knew it, I would hear those stupid roosters start to crow and it would be morning. I was free, yes, but I was still sad somewhere deep inside.

  One night, as I wandered through the hills, chatting in my mind with my mom over some insignificant thing like how many times you chew cud before you swallow it, she said to me, “Maybe you should go back down to the house.” I said, “I’m never going down there again, I hate people.” And she said, “Don’t hate. Hate is like a poison you make for your enemy that you end up swallowing yourself.” And I said, “Nice one, Obovine-Wan Kenobi.” And she said, “Why don’t you walk down there, maybe you didn’t get the whole story, maybe there’s more to learn from the Box God.” I said, “As if.” And she answered, “Elsie, do you know how proud of you I am? Do you know? Do you know I love you to the nth degree? Do you know how beautiful you are and smart and how I think about you every day and love you and no matter how long my life was, it was a good life because I had you?”

  And I started to cry, again. Okay, I’m the town cryer. Guilty. I’ve never understood how love can hurt so much, but I guess it’s a different hurt from anything else. Not like a cracked hoof, more like a bear hug of the heart. But then I found myself all the way down the hill, by the side of the house.

  17

  A WHOLE NEW WORLD

  (see Aladdin)

  The Box God was talking to the people. I could tell because of their obedient quiet and the flickering of the light. If you people think lambs are silent, check yourselves out while you’re praying to the Box God—passive and drooling. So I knew I was pretty safe looking through the window, because the humans were zoned out in a trance, like a night of the living dead. They were all watching something called the Discovery Channel. I know this because they broke out of their stupor long enough to fight over “channels.” I realized that the Box God is not just one god, but many gods in one box, and with a magic plastic wand, humans can switch from god to god at any given moment.