Field of Hope

One morning the bulls appeared in the field beside the farmhouse. There were quite a lot of them, more than thirty, I would say. Enough of them to make the field seem quite full.

Dave came out to look at them. He was the farmer I worked for, and he’d rented this field out to a friend of his.

“They’ll only be there a month or two,” he said to me. He knew I used that field as a shortcut to get to work in the morning and to go home again at night. “You’ll have to go the long way round until then.” I nodded. There was no point in arguing.

Suddenly, Dave cried out, “Hey, look at that!” A dog had run into the field, barking, and the bulls responded to it violently. In a matter of seconds the field was full of running, jumping bulls, banging into each other, with one half of them chasing the dog and the other half running away from it.

“Victor! Get out of there, you rascal!” It was the neighbouring farmer’s dog, and it knew Dave well. At the sound of his voice it jumped through a hole in the hedge and disappeared. As for the bulls, once the barking dog had left the field they calmed down and started to eat the grass.

“Jeepers,” I said to Dave, “they’re pretty sensitive, aren’t they? He’s only a small dog, and look how crazy they went!”

“Aye,” replied Dave. “They’re only youngsters, but they’re full of energy, and very nervous too. Any excitement will just push them over the edge and they won’t know what they’re doing. They can hurt themselves and anything else that’s in the field with them. It’s a miracle that Victor wasn’t trampled to death.”

“He’s small but he’s quick,” I replied. “He can keep out of their way.”

“Not for long he can’t, not when there are so many crazy bulls in the field with him. Even if he doesn’t get trampled those bulls could hurt each other and I’ll have to pay for it. They may be young but they’ve got horns. And speaking of young bulls, you get back to fixing that tractor. You’re too easily distracted, you are. Just focus on your job for once and stop day-dreaming.” So I went to the tractor shed and forgot about the bulls.

Supper was late that day. Maggie – Dave’s wife – had been delivering vegetables to the local shops and had got stuck in traffic. I always ate my meals with Dave and Maggie because I spent so much time at their farm anyway. So it was after nine o’clock, and quite dark, when I finally said goodnight to them both and left the kitchen to head off home. My mind was full of the broken tractor engine, so I was doing what Dave always accused me of doing – day-dreaming - when I climbed over the gate and set off walking briskly through the field.

Through the field I always walk through to get home.

The field with the bulls in it.

Now it is something of a miracle that I managed to get half way through the field without tripping over a sleeping bull, because they were all lying down on the ground fast asleep. Or at least, they were until they realised that I was there, which was just a few seconds before I realised that they were there, and a few seconds is all it takes for thirty or so bulls to stand up and start running around.

I’m not exaggerating. That’s exactly what happened. One minute they were all fast asleep, and the next minute they were wide awake and jumping around as if that barking dog was in the field with them again. Only it wasn’t a barking dog this time. It was me. And it was then that the half-moon came out from behind some thick clouds and showed me the predicament I was in.

You’ve heard of wolves hunting in packs, haven’t you? Of how they move as though someone is telling them what to do, in a co-ordinated way? Well, did you know that bulls hunt in packs as well? You didn’t? Well, neither did I until that night.

I’d walked about half way through the field by the time I’d woken them up, so it was the same distance to get out of it whether I went forwards or backwards. And although the bulls had been pretty evenly spread out over the whole field when I entered it, they’d now divided up into several groups.

One group of five or six bulls ran to block my path to the gate I was heading for, and another group of five or six bulls ran to block my path back to the gate I’d come from.

Seriously. I’m not kidding you. This is exactly what happened. The remaining twenty or so bulls were undecided what to do. Some just lay down again, some of them remained standing where they were, and the rest of them came over to investigate me. Now I had stopped walking as soon as the bulls woke up, but seeing them ambling towards me prompted me to start walking briskly again.

Which was the worst thing I could have done, because now some of the undecided bulls decided to join the group in front of me, some decided to join the group behind me, and the rest decided to join the group investigating me.

And the faster I walked, the more agitated they all became, so that now they were starting to jump around again as well as running to cut me off or investigate me. I could see that I wouldn’t make it to the gate without being trampled to death, so I did the only thing I could do. I stood still. Completely still. Even though I was panicking inside, even though I was starting to tremble and was desperate to run, my rational mind – what there was left of it – took a firm grip of my irrational mind and closed it down. Freeze was the message, so I froze.

The bulls in front and behind slowed down, stopped, and remained where they were. The rest of them lost interest in me, and started eating the grass. All was quiet in the field, so I set off walking again. Just like pressing a button, all of the bulls began to move once more, resuming their former actions. The group which had been approaching me now surrounded me, and the other two groups remained vigilant in front of and behind me.

I stood still once more. I wanted to scream. I closed my eyes and concentrated on slowing down my breathing. I wasn’t looking at what was happening around me, but I could hear the movement subsiding until all was still again.

I was just about to make my next move when the touching began. The bulls nearest to me were smelling me, licking me, and nudging me with their heads and their horns. They were pushing through each other to get to me, so there was some jostling going on. I could feel their breath on my hands, arms and body as they explored me. It didn’t feel aggressive, just curious.

To say I was terrified was an understatement. I could have been crying with fear, but I was beyond that. I was even beyond panic. I was inwardly a block of ice, doing my best to be invisible to the bulls.

And it worked. The longer I stood there, utterly still and silent, letting the curious ones satisfy their curiosity, the calmer the bulls became, until finally they lost interest in me. As they drifted away I started to walk again, but it was like inserting a coin in a slot machine. Their movement started once more, and they came back to me, sniffing and prodding. So I stood still again, enduring the licking and the head-butting until they lost interest once more, and then began to think properly, to focus, just as Dave was always telling me to do.

I was in no danger as long as I stood still, but as soon as I moved they came for me. I was desperate to run, but this could prove fatal.

There was only one logical way of getting out of that field alive. And that was to take only one step at a time

And that is what I did.

One step was enough to excite them, but as soon as I stopped they calmed down again.

At last! I had a way out! I had a solution! But it was counter intuitive. It went against everything I was feeling, but it was the only thing I could see working.

So I walked through the rest of that field full of young, excitable bulls one step at a time. Literally. With a five to ten minute break between each step. A break where bulls leaned on me, stuck their snouts into my face or my armpits or my – well, no part of my anatomy was free from their inquiring noses.

As I approached the gate the temptation to break into a run increased, but I didn’t dare give into it. The bulls followed me all the way. And it wasn’t as though I was walking in the nice straight line that I normally took when walking through this field. Oh no. If a bull was standing in front of me – which happened most of the time – I had to walk around it, one step at a time. And at some point in that detour I would be very close to its head, with its curious nose and tongue.

With my hands kept firmly by my sides, and my robot-like step, it took me one hour and a half to cross that field, a distance I would normally cover in five minutes of brisk walking.

When I arrived at the gate I’d been aiming for I put my hand on it and kept still once more. The bulls were close packed around me, so I climbed the gate the same way I’d been walking, one movement at a time, with a break in between each of them.

Finally I sat on top of the gate with my feet on the outside. I didn’t want to drop to the ground just yet, because I wasn’t sure that my legs would support me if I did. So I slowly climbed down the other side of the gate and allowed myself to slither to the ground and lie there on the grassy path.

I released the fear that I’d been holding, and imagined all the terrible things that could have happened to me. I shook all over as though a storm was passing through me, and then, after several minutes, the storm passed and my body relaxed. Well, it collapsed, actually. I lay on the grass and looked up at the sky. The half-moon was still there, brightening the clouds, just as it had when I’d entered the field of bulls a lifetime ago. But I saw it differently now.

The last time I’d noticed it was the moment when it revealed the herd of killers that surrounded me, who hunted me like prey. This time it spoke to me of life renewed, of light in the darkness, of a visible path forward, of a future which I’d lost all hope of seeing. Of a new beginning.

And even though I knew my way home so well that I could find it in the pitch dark of night, I was very happy to be accompanied by the moon as I hauled myself up from the ground, using the gate to hold onto, and walked slowly home.

I didn’t look back.