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“You, who flipped me on my ass without even trying?”
“These cows make you look like a dollhouse person.”
“But you know that cows are gentle creatures, right?”
“I’ve heard of people getting trampled by cows. That happens.”
“Well, sure. If you trip and fall right in front of one that’s already running, maybe. But on the aggression scale…” He tilted his head and thought about it. “Nope. They’re not even on the scale.”
Now I felt like I had to stand up for myself. “I wasn’t the only person scared just now. You came running like a shot.”
“Yeah. Because you screamed.”
“Why did you think I did that?”
“I didn’t know. Copperhead snake? Fire ant attack? Murder hornets? Something scarier than cows?”
But whose side was I going to take besides my own? I doubled down and declared: “One of them attacked me.”
“Define ‘attacked.’”
“It licked me. With intention.”
Now he was suppressing a smile. “You mean, as if it might—what? Eat you?”
“Who knows what its endgame was?”
“‘Trampled by a cow’ might be a thing. ‘Eaten by a cow’ is definitely not—in any way, ever—a thing.”
“The point is, I was licked. By its green tongue. I didn’t even know cows had green tongues.”
Jack’s expression got totally hijacked by amusement now. He closed his eyes, then opened them. “Cows don’t have green tongues. It’s the cud.”
I stared at him.
“It’s grass,” he said. “It’s regurgitated grass.”
“What!” I thrashed around, trying to wipe off my already-dry arm again on my sundress.
Watching this made Jack actually laugh. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on the steering wheel, and I watched his shoulders shake.
“What?” I said. “It’s legitimately disgusting.”
This just made his shoulders shake harder.
“What is so funny?”
Now he leaned back against the headrest, still laughing. “You’re afraid of cows.”
“Um, hello? We are outnumbered.” I looked around. “We are totally surrounded. I mean, what happens now? Do we just have to live here?”
But Jack just kept laughing. “I thought it would be a banana spider, at least.”
“You think I’d be scared of a spider?”
“You’ve clearly never seen a banana spider.”
“Can you just get us out of here, please?”
“Now I kind of want to stay. This could be a reality show.” Then his face just relaxed into a big grin. “My money’s on the cows.”
I glared at him until he put the car in drive and slowly eased forward into the herd. I put my hand over my eyes, but after a second, I had to look. The herd was moving for us, stepping away, like Whatever.
As he turned off the gravel road and into the field, steering a bumpy and wide U-turn over ant beds and thistle bushes, Jack just kept laughing, wiping at tears with one hand and steering with the other.
“Oh God,” he said finally, as we pulled back up onto the gravel, now driving away from the house, back toward town. “Thank you so much.”
“What are you thanking me for?” I asked.
But Jack just shook his head in amazement. “I did not expect to laugh today.”
