“Right on,” said Shalom. “Good to meet you, Katmandu. Katnis. Can I call you ‘Kat’?”
“Kamadhenu.”
“Eluhenu.”
“Ka-ma-dhe-nu.”
“You say Kamadhenu, I say Eluhenu. Potayto, potahto, kamadhenu, eluhenu—let’s call the whole thing off.”
Crickets.
“Sheesh, tough crowd.”
I noticed that some of the cows were giggling nonsensically and focused on seemingly mundane things, like a clod of dirt, or their own hoof, or just staring into space and smiling weirdly. They seemed so friendly that Shalom and Tom hopped off my back and went over to hang out with them. I lost track of my fellow travelers for a few moments. That was a mistake.
“What’s so funny?” I asked that group.
“We are the silly cows,” one said, in a lilting accent you usually associate with surfers in California. I guess laid-back beach culture is the same the world over. “What’s up, feathery guy? What’s up, fat pink dude?” A couple of the silly cows became fascinated with Tom’s wattle, that quivery piece of flesh near his neck. Tom was always a little self-conscious of it, thought it made him look fat. “Check out the crazy skin under this dude’s chin—flappa dappa dappa.”
The silly cows started to pull and stroke Tom’s wattle. “Dude, it feels like bumpy rubber. It’s freakin’ me out.” One of those cows offered both Tom and Shalom something to eat that I couldn’t see. It was small and brown, like a lost button. They both gobbled it down. I turned my attention back to the matriarch. She met my eyes impassively.
“Why do you keep company with pigs and birds?” she asked.
“Because they’re my friends.”
“Indian cows only have other Indian cows for friends. We are goddesses. Only we cows are sacred, we cannot stoop to the level of associating with mere animals such as these. You threaten the whole hierarchy with your behavior.”
She was sipping a brightly colored sugary substance through a straw, a small wooden umbrella hanging off the side of her glass, and having her hooves buffed by a little girl. She and some of the other cows had bright metal jewelry around their necks and lovely colored silk sashes tied to them. They looked stunning, like movie stars. But even though the matriarch was my sista from anotha mista, I had taken an instant dislike to her.
“I’m not a goddess, I’m just an animal, we’re all animals, just like the pigs, the birds, just like the humans, for that matter.”
“Heresy!” the matriarch said. There was a lot of consternation and lowing from the rest of the assembled cows. “You endanger our position. If you show the humans that we’re animals, they will begin to treat us like animals, and eat us like animals, the way they do in your godforsaken country.”
“But it’s not right,” I said. “It’s not right and it’s not fair.” I noticed that Shalom had a big poop-eating grin on his face and was staring at his nail bed like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Meanwhile, Tom was flapping around in a circle like a break dancer, showing off how his wattle wattled for the silly cows.
“Fair?” the matriarch said. “Look around you, where do you see ‘fair’? Whoever promised you ‘fair’? Your mommy? You talk like a half calf. Grow up, cow. You’re a goddess, act like one or be shunned by us other goddesses.”
“I’m not a goddess,” I said.
“Yes, she is, she’s a goddess,” said Shalom. “She’s just kidding, she’s a kidder, she kids, she is so goddess you can’t even believe it.” And then, for no apparent reason, he broke out in a soaring rendition of Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All.” He had a pretty good voice for a pig, but still weird.
“What’s up with you?” I asked him.
“These mushrooms that grow on cow poop—‘silly sky’—they are excellent tasty,” Tom announced, then broke into the Patrick Hernandez disco classic “Born to Be Alive.” He did not have a good voice, even for a turkey. But his rhythm was excellent, pounding out that ’70s beat with his drumsticks. The silly cows were mesmerized by how his wattle vibrated while he sang.
“Psilocybin mushrooms,” the matriarch said, “open the mind, and they grow only in our dung, another reason we are sacred to humans. We nourish their bodies with our milk, our dung is used as fertilizer for their crops, and as fuel, and we even expand their consciousness with our mushrooms.”
(My editor called and says she’s on the fence about the drug stuff. “Parents will love it ’cause it’ll make them feel young and hip,” she said, “but then they’ll get uptight thinking their kids are being gatewayed into the world of drugs by talking animals.”
“Much the way my friend Joe the camel was a cute face, reminiscent of childhood cartoons, recruited to hawk the drug called tobacco?” I asked.
“Oh, Elsie.” She sighed. “I guess a big animal needs a big soapbox; you know I love you, all I ask is that you always ask yourself—is it tent pole? Sorry, I got another call here, from a horse, grandson of Mr. Ed by way of Ruffian, who’s written a tell-all tale of excess and redemption. Later, babe.”)
“I’m seeing colors,” Shalom said, “colors that have no name.”
“We are all the same, dudes,” Tom crowed. “Somebody touch me. No, don’t touch me. Lighten up, mama cow, let’s talk turkey, owwww stand back, gonna kiss myself!”
“Blellow. Blellow. Blellow,” Shalom slurred. “Blue and yellow together, that’s a color we need a name for. Coining it.”
“I’m flying again.” Tom crooned like Peter Pan. “You got me straight trippin’, boo.”
“Tell the porker and the fowl to shut up, as I will not address them directly.”
“I will not tell my friends to shut up.”
“Are you Hindu?” she asked.
“No.”
“Muslim? Zoroastrian? Jain? Buddhist? Jewish? Sikh? Parsi? Christian? Other?”
“They’re all the same to me.”
“Interesting story,” said Shalom. “I used to be Jewish, but now I’d have to say I’m Hindu. You guys are Hindu, right? I just converted. I am Hindu as hell, Bapu…” He snatched the yarmulke off his head and tossed it aside like a Frisbee and tried to get one of the cows to lend him a bindi for his forehead. He started chanting, “Can a, can a, can a brother get a bindi? Can a Hindi get a bindi!”
“I used to be Turkish,” Tom said, “but now I am … sooooo high…”
The matriarch shook her head dismissively. “Then it falls to you, American cow. Are you a goddess or an animal? Think before you speak, for we will shun you from our midst if you answer to our disliking.”
“I’m a cow,” I said.
“You didn’t answer my question,” the matriarch kept on. “Choose. I asked you if you were a goddess or an animal.”
“I am both,” I said.
“Choose one,” she said. “Choose one or choose nothing.”
“I am an animal,” I said. “No more, no less.”
“You dudes are really harshing my high with all the neg vibes. Have a shroom,” Tom purred.
“Blellow,” Shalom slurred.
I said again slowly, forcefully, “I. Am. An. Animal.”
47
COMING HOME
It took about twelve hours for Shalom and Tom to descend from the silly sky. But that’s the thing, you can’t just stay high. What goes up must come down. I had spent a long time dreaming of India, it’s true. But I’m not upset that India didn’t turn out the way I had planned, didn’t in the end match up with my dream India. Without my vision of a dream India, I never would have gone anywhere, never would have had any adventures at all. So I guess it’s not so important that dreams come true, it’s just important that you have a dream to begin with, to get you to take your first steps.
I have dictated this memoir in an undisclosed location (Jamaica) and I am flying back to the United States and to my home to coincide with the publishing of my book. We’re all flying back.
“We’re all flying back.”
Tom is
going to try to officially become a pilot, while working toward getting a presidential pardon from President Obama for next Thanksgiving Day. He is also lobbying for Tofurky to replace turkey as the meal of choice for that holiday. It’s a long shot, but he seems to have Michelle’s ear on this.
Shalom and Joe have been short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in the Middle East, and they may very well win. But first, Shalom may have to spend a few weeks in rehab trying to ween himself off his newfound predilection for psychedelic drugs.
Me? I want America to hear of my journey. I want you, boys and girls, men and women, fauna and fowl, to learn what I’ve learned—that it is not right to be reviled, nor is it right to be worshipped. We are not gods and goddesses, nor are we devils and beasts. I know nature is red in tooth and claw. I don’t blame Wolfsheim for trying to eat us; that’s in his nature, what he needs to do to survive. And I know that a life led like Mallory’s can have dignity and sanctity, that you can spend a few good years on a farm, have a child, and then be sacrificed to feed someone. There’s a simple, circular beauty in that. I happen to be a vegetarian like all cows, but I’m not naive enough to ask a tiger to forswear meat and eat bean sprouts. We are all animals and we have our place in the womb of Mother Nature. Only man has separated himself from the great chain of being and from all the other animals, and I think that has been to his great detriment, and sadness, and to ours.
I can no longer be part of the herd. I want to be heard.
48
HOW NOW, BROWN COW?
This is my religion—we’re all animals, perfect animals created in the infinite image and imagination of nature. It’s a life not without pain and competition and suffering, but it can be a life of dignity and mutual respect. I don’t know what awaits me when Tom brings us in for a smooth landing at JFK. A heroine’s welcome? The bestseller list? Hollywood? The slaughterhouse? It’s funny, because after all this, I have been thinking a lot about Mallory, and that maybe I would like to have a calf of my own. A few years out to pasture with a couple of kids seems like heaven to me right now. But I can’t. At least not yet. It was given to me to tell a story and it is my responsibility to tell it. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.
I’ll be landing any minute now to spread the word. Look up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane. No, it’s three underdogs, it’s a cow and a pig and a turkey, and we’re coming for you. We have a message for you:
You, me, the animals in the wild, the animal at your feet, the animal on your plate, the person next to you—
We are all one
We are all holy cows
Moo
BY E. BOVARY AS COWMUNICATED TO
D. DUCHOVNY (COW-WRITER)
FEBRUARY 2015
A NOTE FROM THE COW-WRITER
It’s been brought to my attention that certain aspects of Elsie’s story are implausible: that our heroes could actually pass for humans as they make their way around the world; that Shalom could actually find a mohel willing to work his magic on a pig; that Elsie could be a milk cow before giving birth; and, maybe most suspect of all, that all three of their intercontinental flights abroad left on time. I know Elsie; perhaps she is given to embellishment like any good storyteller, perhaps to outright lies like any great storyteller. I was taught in school to “trust the tale, not the teller,” and I would ask you, dear reader, to extend this generosity to our friends in the animal kingdom.
Trust the tail, not the teller.
DAVID DUCHOVNY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank Eleanor Chai for thinking this could be a book and Jonathan Galassi for reading it, believing in it, and helping me shape it. Miranda Popkey for being able to ask a thousand questions but never be annoying. Maria Dibattista back at Princeton. Disney and Pixar for turning it down as an animated film and forcing me to write it out like a big boy. Albeit many years later. My dog, Blue, for being the best dog ever. And. My kids who are my constant audience in my head. Everything I write I write for them as they were, as they are, and as they will be.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Duchovny is a beloved television, stage, and screen actor, as well as a screenwriter and director. He lives in New York and Los Angeles.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2015 by King Baby, Inc.
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Natalya Balnova
All rights reserved
First edition, 2015
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duchovny, David.
Holy cow / David Duchovny.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-17207-7 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71289-1 (e-book)
1. Cows—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.U343 H65 2015
813'.6—dc23
2014027455
www.fsgbooks.com
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eISBN 9780374712891
Holy Cow Page 10
