Cow Country

PLAN B

“So then what happened?” asked the man sitting next to me. “After you blew away the disco strobe to the screams and shrieks of faculty and accreditor alike? After you ran outside and collapsed in the parking lot? After you violated your colleagues’ naive expectations of meat and vegetable and sunk your college’s attempt to reaffirm its accreditation? After your three friends went outside and found you bleeding and unconscious on the asphalt? After they brought you back into the cafeteria to sleep until the following afternoon? After all this took place, then what happened?”

“Then the world ended.”

I looked out the window of the bus. The brown fields were passing by for the last time. The bus was vibrating softly under us. Everything was dry and bright and desolate. Now it all seemed as lifeless as barren prose.

“That’s not what I meant,” said the man. “What I meant was after you finally woke up what happened? After the dust settled and the accreditors left? After the woman who once dreamed of being a historian finished sweeping the floor how did everything work out?”

“Oh that….”

I shook my head remorsefully.

“Well,” I said. “After receiving my suspended sentence and performing my community service to the judge’s satisfaction, and when the semester had finally come to its dissolution with barely a whimper — after all of that had come and gone — I gathered the stuff from my apartment and made my way down the stairs to the esplanade, where I met Dr. Felch and Bessie and Raul. It was nice of them to see me off.”

“They met you on the esplanade?”

“Yes. Outside my apartment. It was a poignant meeting. I still had the cuts on my face. Dr. Felch shook my hand and wished me well. Bessie gave me a kiss on the cheek and wished me well. Raul told me to wear his chaps in good health and wished me well. You may even notice that I’m wearing the boots he gave me right now….”

I wiggled the tips of my boots as evidence.

“…But that wasn’t all. Before I left campus Raul made sure to leave me with one final diagram to remember him by. One last visual representation to encapsulate my nine-month experience at Cow Eye Community College. I still have it here in my shirt pocket somewhere….”

I spilled all of Raul’s various diagrams onto the seat between us. The papers were mixed and folded and chaotic. Ruffling through them, I found the last diagram that Raul had drawn for me before I left. It was a schematic representing the eternal functions and promises — the rights and responsibilities — of a community college:

“And then what?”

“And then he autographed it.”

“And then?”

“Well, and then they asked me about my plans for the future and I told them the god-honest truth: that I don’t really have a plan for the future. That my plans have yet to be determined. That I don’t really even know where I’ll go from here — that this, in fact, tends to be the way with me. But that I’ve always wanted to live and work in an exotic far-off locale with beautiful scenery. A place where people don’t judge you for the mysterious gaps in your curriculum vitae, or the widening gaps in your teeth — where your past accomplishments are taken at face value no matter how contrived, and nobody faults you for your many failings in educational administration. Somewhere a little out of the ordinary perhaps. A place where I might be reborn and that I could call home. A place that would be my final stopover before moving from this life to the next.”

“For example?”

“Arizona maybe. Or, better yet — Alaska.”

“And then?”

“Then I suppose after that doesn’t work out I would move on to someplace even further away. A place that’s even less contiguous. Someplace both remote and exotic with an endless array of…”

“No, that’s not what I meant. What I meant is….what happened then — after you told them about your plans?”

“Well, then I wished the three of them all the best and headed off with my suitcase and my duffel bag. My friends waved goodbye as I made my way by foot down the long esplanade. At the entrance I exchanged a handshake with Timmy at the guard shack. ‘Take care of yourself, Mr. Charlie,’ he said. And I said, ‘You too, Timmy!’ From there I walked out across the railroad tracks and out past the waterless ditch and out onto the highway where I hitchhiked my way back to the makeshift bus shelter. My friends had each offered to give me a ride. ‘It’s the least we could do!’ they insisted. But I declined. ‘In that truck?!’ I laughed. No, I told them, it would be more honest if I just found my own way back. And so I walked out to the highway alone and stood there on the side of the road waiting for a ride. It took a lot longer than it once would have. But eventually an old cattleman pulled over and he drove me all the way to the makeshift bus shelter. It was a slow ride, I have to say, and a bittersweet one. From the edge of the highway he drove me along the ditches and vacant fields past the jail and the post office and the boarded-up remnants of the once-great Cow Eye Ranch. Slowly we drove past the windless American flag — all thirteen stripes and forty-nine stars. And at last we reached the makeshift bus shelter where I’d first arrived less than a year ago. Except that, well, it wasn’t makeshift anymore…”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. It was new. And modern. A marvel of contemporary engineering. Award-winning architecture with a welcoming facade made of brick and glass. An airy lobby with air-conditioned comfort. Plush chairs inside the building and solar panels on the roof.”

“Photovoltaic panels? Renewable energy is the wave of the future, you know!”

“So I’ve heard. In any case, I had arrived at the new bus depot. And as I waited in the lobby I thought about the things I’d learned at Cow Eye. I thought about these things for some time. And then my bus — this bus — pulled up and I got on.”

“And now?”

“Well now I’m sitting on this bus with you. And there’s a long road up ahead. But this seat we’re sharing is so much more than just that. It really is ineffable. You see, right now I am sitting with you perched on the very pinnacle of history. You and I are balancing on the threshold that separates tradition from innovation, love from efficiency. Moving in this bus, I am traveling in the wake of time toward a future that is as bright as it can be. Brighter even than the flickering fluorescent bulb of a dim and timeless cafeteria.”

“So it all worked out in the end?”

“Yes. I suppose you can say it all worked out.”

The man nodded. Outside our window, the scenery had changed for the final time. The desiccation was all-consuming. The sun was eternal. And for the last time I looked out at the recent world where fountains flowed and birds chirped. A place where sycamores grow next to banyans and the love vine wraps its loving embrace around it all. Through the tinted windows I could still see the bull mounting his heifer. And the pelicans loafing along the grassy banks amid the timeless sounds of paperwork getting done. And of course the sound of forgotten history snapping in the wind — all thirteen stripes and forty-nine stars. In that place of not-too-long-ago, the cattle always lowed and the grasses never stopped growing. Poetry flowed like water and water flowed like time. In my mind, at least, this was how Cow Eye had been for me; and in my mind it would always be exactly like that, faithfully and forever. As the bus took me past the golf course where the Cow Eye Ranch used to be — the great ranch that once fed half the country — I took it all in. The bus groaned. The man next to me slept up against the window. Somewhere in the distance the great dams of the area were crumbling — though too imperceptibly for anyone to notice. Fish spawned upstream. Calves chewed their hay. Ducks quacked.

Alone once more I took out a new book of history and began reading.

* * *