The Fate of the Cows

“I’m worried about the cows,” Mother said.

Father looked up from his newspaper. “The cows?”

“Yes, the fate of the cows.”

Father folded up his newspaper, removed his reading glasses and took a sweet out of his jacket pocket. He unwrapped it slowly. It was a Sherbet lemon. It was bright yellow even in the half-dark.

“Indeed, the cows,” Father said. “The fate of the cows.”

He placed the sweet in his mouth and closed his eyes.

We knew not to disturb Father while he was sucking a sweet. I continued spinning a brass button on the floor. Mother was looking at the fire. Her mind was in the cowshed.

In the silence I could hear a moving and a not-moving.

It was seven or eight minutes before Father finished his sweet, at which point he opened his eyes.

“The cows will come with us.”

“Thank the Lord,” Mother said.

“And so too the house.”

“The house?”

“Yes,” said Father.

“All of it?” Mother asked.

“Yes,” said Father. “Every last brick.”

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