Holy Cow

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.