Something For Billy

I awake suddenly, sweat pouring down the side of my face like warm rain drops. My hands are trembling lightly, and I know at once I have had the dream again. I sit up in my bed as my eye’s slowly adjust to my darkened room. There is a light breeze blowing through the open window.....I am grateful for the cool wind now hitting me in the face. I can hear my grandmothers hurried footsteps coming down the hall towards my bedroom door. Did I cry out in my sleep again??? Probably so.

“Jimmy, are you Okay?” My grandmothers worried voice almost cries from the other side of my door.

“I’m fine Grandma, just another bad dream. I'm okay now” I hear myself say. We both know it is a lie though.... I haven’t been fine or anything close to it in the last seven years, not since Billy’s death.

“Do you want me to fix you a glass of warm milk, it will calm your nerves, maybe make you feel a little better?” she asked. Of course, she already knows the answer, but must ask any way out of some grandmotherly duty.

“No, I’m fine Grandma, I just need a little time.... sun will be up soon anyway.” I say, hoping she will take the hint, and she does. After all, this is nothing new for either of us, the dream is some thing that has affected both of our lives over the years since Billy's death. When I was younger, she would never just knock, my grandmother would simply burst through the door and wrap me in her arms and let me cry into the warmth and safety of her bosom. But I am not a child anymore, and the horror's of the dream are mine to face alone. I can now hear her softly walking back down the hall to her room. There will be no more sleep for her or me, in less than an hour the whole farm will be wide awake and buzzing with the start of a new day.

I swing my feet over the edge of the bed, and they land hard on the cold hardwood floor below. My feet clumsily search for my bedroom slippers, as usual they are hiding just under the bed, but I am finally able to wriggle them on. The old farmhouse and its wood floors are incredibly old, and it is never a good idea to just go walking barefooted across them. Billy had found that out the hard way the first night we had come to live with our grandparents, he had caught a splinter as long as his pinky finger right up the middle of his left foot. It had took damn near two months for the splinter to completely work itself out of his foot, it was a hard lesson neither of us ever forgot. One of many hard lessons we would both learn about life on a farm.

Finally.....I pick my self up from the bed and walk slowly to the open bedroom window, and lean out just a little. I take in a deep breath of cool Kentucky springtime air, and try to shake off what is left of the dream from my head.... The dream is a stubborn thing though, and does not give up its perch in the middle of my brain easily. The cool morning air helps.

Off in the distance the rooster is already starting to crow. Just across the yard, I can make out the outline of the barbwire fence, and unbelievably just beyond that... I can hear the old bull grunt at me from the pasture. It’s like the beast knew I had dreamed about it again. Anger and shame quickly replaces what is left of the dream. I never understood why my grandparents kept the bull after what it had done, it should have died that very day. My grandfather said no one else in the county would take the bull, and and he couldn't just kill the beast, it was the only of age breeder in damn near all of Eastern Kentucky. So the bull had stayed.

My father had been a lineman down in Georgia.... He had not been a very bright man when it came to how electric currents actually worked and had accidently gotten himself electrocuted one fall afternoon in 1929. It had been the start of the great depression, times were hard, and about to get harder. My mother did the best she could, cooking and cleaning for a few penny's a day or any other work that she could find just to scrape out a meager existence for Billy, me, and herself. Then in the winter of 1932 she had caught the cancer and died a short two months later.

Billy and I had been sent to live with our grandparents in the spring of 1933..... I was ten and he had been twelve at the time. Farm life was hard, but we both immediately fell in love with it.

There was always something to do, animals to look after and such. Me and Billy loved to feed the chickens, ducks, pigs, and goats. We had even adopted one of the baby goats as a pet and named him spider, because the crazy thing was always eating spiders.

My grandparents were hardworking, but loving people.... They had been angry that my father had taken their only daughter and moved all the way down to South Georgia..... however they had happily taken us in after our mother died.

My grandfather really had only one rule, and that rule was never to go into the bull’s pasture.

“You boys stay out of that pasture, that bull is mean and ornery..... as most bulls are. I reckon he would make quick work of the likes of you two before anybody could get there to help ya” he had told us....and we had believed him.

Then one afternoon about a year or so after we had come to live on the farm, we heard Spider squealing loudly..... We looked out into the pasture, and there was Spider running for his life. The bull was right behind the little goat trying to gore him with those big horns of his.

Before I even knew what was happening, Billy jumped the barbwire fence and ran out into the pasture..... he got to Spider and scooped him up in his arms and started running back towards the fence. My brother did not quite get five steps off before the bull was upon him. I watched in absolute horror as the bull’s big horn burst through the front of Billy’s chest, knocking Spider to the ground.... the little goat immediately ran full speed for the fence.

By the time my grandfather had gotten there to scare the bull off with his old shotgun, it is beyond too late.

In the dream, all this happens in extra slow motion....I can see the shear terror in Billy’s eye’s right before the horn burst through the front of his chest. I am helpless and can do nothing but watch in horror as the bull furiously shakes it's giant head back and fourth trying to dispatch my brother's lifeless body, finally Billy comes free from the bulls massif horn and is thrown to the ground in a bloody heap.

I back away from the window and get dressed.... it is time to start the day.

My grandparents are already at the table eating breakfast by the time I finally get to the kitchen. My plate is waiting at the table as usual.... I barley give it a second glance as I walk to the back door and pick up my grandfather’s old double barrel shotgun. It is always propped up in the corner behind the door. The gun is always loaded, so I know it is ready for the business at hand.

Both my grandparents are looking at me hard.....but with knowing eye’s. “What are you doing son” my grandfather calmly asked.

I just stand there for a moment, feeling the cold hard steal of the shotgun in my hands, and then finally answer….

“There's something I gotta go do, something for Billy."