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“Zeus?” he snorted. “Are you telling me this cute little black poodle is called Zeus?”
At his name, Zeus looked up to study our visitor. His rheumy eyes must have liked what they saw because he edged towards him, lazily sweeping the tip of his pink tongue across his greying muzzle, as if savouring the remnants of a rare fillet steak, not a stray smear of my vomit.
“Christ, he’s revolting,” I muttered. “He was my dad’s dog, nothing to do with me.”
“He’s very attached to you, though. Follows your every move. Is he a…um…pet, or a guard dog? Farmers usually have two or three of those knocking around, don’t they?”
Zeus guarded his own fleas and not much more. I felt obliged to defend him, though; he’d seen me through some lonely nights. “Oh, yeah, he doesn’t look it, but he’s a guard dog. Heck, yeah. Ferocious, in fact, if folk turn up unannounced.”
At around the same moment, we both realised Evan was still stroking my back.
Deeming me to be sufficiently recovered, he awkwardly retracted his hand and shuffled across the sofa, a respectable gap between us restored.
“How’s your shoulder?”
“Infinitely better. Thank you.” He lifted his arm experimentally. “Going to feel bloody bruised around the joint for a few days. I should get it x-rayed at some point. I gave it quite a wrench.” Another cautious wiggle of his arm. “I don’t think anything apart from ribs are broken, though. I must have smacked them against the steering wheel before the airbag triggered.”
Once more, he cradled his elbow in his other arm, supporting the weight.
“Hey, do you want a sling? I’ve got a first-aid box—there will be one in there.”
He nodded, relieved. Pale too—woozy even, as he sank back into the sofa. Shattered probably, now the pain and adrenaline had worn off. As much as I'd hogged the spotlight, my unexpected evening was nothing compared to his.
“Stay there. I’ll bring you the sling, and then I’ll nip out and move the back end of your car off the road with my tractor, so anyone else stupid enough to be out on a night like this doesn’t crash into it.”
I was on my feet before I realised how that came out. God, it was no surprise I lived alone. “I don’t…sorry, I didn’t mean you were stupid. I mean, I was out in it, too. The snow came down quickly, and you’ve got a solid…”
“That’s okay.” Weakly, he acknowledged my apology.
After adding another log to the fire, I hurried off to locate a sling and the tractor keys. The sling was a simple white muslin square, the sort nurses in old black-and-white war films deftly folded into two perfect triangles, then slotted around handsome injured soldiers before promptly falling in love with them. I had never completed a nursing course, as my clumsiness with the sling rapidly demonstrated. I’d never fallen in love either, but that was another story.
“Will you be okay steering a tractor in this blizzard?”
A reasonable question, given my recent poor showing in the bravery department.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine.” Tractoring was in my blood. I’d been piloting them since I sat on my dad’s lap, manoeuvring his old David Brown through Fearnley Field. I could reverse one through an avalanche.
Slings (and love), on the other hand, were an entirely different matter. “You fold it like that.” Evan's voice was as weary as he appeared. On the third attempt, I shaped it into something approaching a tricorn hat, and with some assistance from my patient, secured his arm. As the weight eased from his shoulder, he let out a sigh of relief. “Christ, that’s better.”
Zeus wanted to accompany me outside, but Evan called him back, and miraculously, he settled next to my guest on the sofa, with his head in his lap. Gulping down the frigid country air did wonders for my nausea. And my fishing waders kept my fresh socks dry. Sorting the car out took a matter of minutes. I’d come armed with a tow rope, but given the Beamer was a write-off anyhow and my cab nice and warm, I elected to give the back end a friendly kiss with the front fender of my Massey Ferguson instead. I bumped it away from the road and onto the verge. Another dent wasn’t going to make any difference.
Detouring via the cowsheds, I checked in on the girls. All quiet on the western front. Seeing as no one would overhear, I wished them all goodnight, giving the nearest one a fond pat on the rump. So the girl next to her wasn’t jealous, I gave her a pat too, and then X112, who had the most docile eyes, nuzzled at my hand. She earned a couple of minutes of tickling under her chin, as did M987 opposite. My bull was next, splendidly alone in his roomy pen and snoozing adjacent to a neat pile of his own poo, secure in the knowledge someone else would clear it up. Sleek, majestic, and magnificent, and not a fucking care in the world. No self-respecting dairy farm was complete without one. Taking a few minutes, I swung my legs up onto the horizontal bars of the metal barrier separating him from the girls.
“We’ve got a visitor, old boy,” I informed him. Most nights we enjoyed a little chat; one-sided for sure, but I liked to think we both benefited. “So you’d better be on your best behaviour.”
My bull half-heartedly raised an eyelid. His eye, shiny and black like a marble, squinted back at me as he pretended to give a shit.
“A townie, I reckon. From his fancy car, or what’s left of his car. Nice-looking too, although don’t tell anyone I said so.” I cast my gaze around the stall; Bill had stocked him up with plenty of fresh hay before he left for the night. “You warm enough?”
Funnily enough, the sleek black creature didn’t answer, letting his eyelid droop. Overnight temperatures were set to drop as low as minus five. I fretted about the herd with weather like this; I couldn’t help myself, even though Bill had got them in before the conditions had turned. He scoffed when I’d invested in trough warmers so their water wouldn’t freeze over. My shed fully closed on all four sides, even though open-sided ones and windbreaks were cheaper. I even covered the scrawnier cattle with blankets. I’d offered my bull one once, only to come down next morning to find him wearing a very self-satisfied, smug expression standing next to a soggy label and a few strands of blue tartan. I was clearing up blue woollen shit for days.
My dad thought I was soft. He was right.
“I might bring our visitor down to say hello, tomorrow. So be friendly.”
Christ, I’d exchanged more words over the past year with my prize bull than a sexual partner. Freddie’s teasing comments had been right on the money. I needed to sort myself out and soon, before I turned into that weird old hermit bloke up on the hill who scared the kids. With a final rub across his backside using the toe of my rubber wader, I said my goodnights.
As I crept back inside the cottage, soft rumbling snores and the crackle of the wood burner greeted me. Peaceful domestic sounds. I rarely entertained overnight guests, couldn’t remember the last one. Evan had made pillows of my sofa cushions, one supporting his sling. His slim bare feet hung off the end of the sofa, the injured one raised on a cushion, and I brushed the back of my hand against the other, feeling the chill.
