Helping Little Brother Out

The field is drenched in sunlight and the wind splashes through the grass setting ripples and waves across the land.

Mother gets up.

He rises too, on legs that only tremble a little.

But she grunts and pushes him back down. He grunts too, he pushes to stand. But he cannot match her.

Not yet.

From the shade and brush, he watches and wishes. Curled in on himself, head resting on his own fur, he waits.

Will she always come back?

***

He hears her voice, her grunt.

His ears twitch forward.

Even over the patter of the rain he hears her.

….the sound of her footfalls, from the tall ferns.

They find a broad white cedar and bed down in the dry twigs under its boughs.

A sweet and fat memory floats to the surface of his dozing mind, he searches and yearns for her underside, reaching for milk….

She nudges him away.

They sleep.

And thunder rolls across the hills.

***

In the morning she chews the rain soaked cedar.

The leaves are tender.

He drinks too and follows.

***

It’s easy walking, but the forage is sparse: sugar maple seedlings poke skyward, but most have already been plucked bare of their leaves.

***

Now his legs are tried and sore.

He has followed her all day.

Now his stomach is full.

Now the sun is dipping below the horizon and everything smolders red and orange.

And now it is almost dark.

They come out on a smooth, level path.

In the dusk this path looks like water but it feels like stone.

He hesitates at the edge of this new terrain.

She walks briskly.

He follows tentatively. Stopping here and there to sniff the flat, acrid earth.

The smells are pungent and thick, they burn his nose.

He doesn’t know what to make of this.

Then his ears prick up.

There’s a sound, a sensation.

Rumbling from the distance, the ground beneath his hooves rattles and he feels it in his bones.

A splash of light, like a sunrise but smaller and whiter— it cuts across mother.

Mother leaps, he hesitates.

The light fills his eyes.

The rumble fills his ears, it’s so loud it hurts.

Is she calling him?

His muscles tense.

He feels a rush of hot wind, it smells awful.

It snaps him out of his freeze.

His nostrils flair and the muscles in his hind legs coil.

He leaps.

Too late!

Screaming metal rolls overhead with deafening force.

Something catches his back leg, presses him down against the road and his leg cracks like a twig.

His desperate bleats are stampeded by the roaring metal.

He tries to rise, but that cracked leg flops and folds and white hot agony overwhelms every fiber of his body.

He crawls.

He makes it beyond the strange trail and tumbles down into the brambles.

His mother grunts, her breath soft and moist on his face.

***

He wakes from a nightmare of primal, ancestral fear: a wolf with ravening teeth, giving chase. It snaps at his heels and sinks its teeth into the gristle underneath his fur.

But light spills out of its slavering jaws and makes his blood shine like a river in the sun.

***

An owl calls from somewhere overhead, it sounds like mourning.

She nudges him and he struggles to rise.

He limps and stumbles and bleats out his agony.

One whole leg is wasted, he cannot keep up.

***

She guides him under the eaves of a red walled structure.

There are smells here, smells that remind him of the howling night and the metal and and the crack of bone.

The same pungent stink.

Metal beasts. He sees them glinting in the shadows.

They are dim and quiet.

No rumble.

No light.

No roar.

And here the ground is dirt and straw.

He is too tired to fear.

All he can do is trust, that his mother will lead him right.

And things will be alright.

And he will be alright.

***

His leg is hot. He feels it radiating like the summer sun.

He stirs and a flair of sharp, cutting anguish makes him cry out.

Mother does not reply.

She is not nearby.

***

When he wakes again a smell assaults his nostrils. He wants to rise and walk and leave the smell behind but when he stirs the hurt is too much.

The smell is thick and sticky.

Is it coming from him?

Is the smell from his leg?

He noses towards his wound.

Yes, the smell is far worse here.

His leg is large, swollen and fat. The fur is matted with dirt and the salt-grime that came from his own body.

He knows he should groom it, but each gentle lick is unbearable.

There’s a large sound, movement.

His head swivels around, he hopes for mother but knows it is not her.

A large strange animal.

It walks on two legs.

It makes a sound, deeper than his mother’s grunts. But softer and smoother than the metal monster.

The animal steps towards him.

It smells strange. Spicy.

It means him harm.

Where is mother?

He rises on three legs and trembles and runs, clumsy and lurching.

The tall animal calls after him, but does not give chase.

***

He needs to find mother, she can protect him.

She can make him right again?

But where?

He cannot search because he cannot wander because he cannot stand.

He limps back to the red shelter, away from the sun, away from the flies, but they follow — buzzing at his dangling leg.

They land at the place where his flesh oozes.

They land in numbers.

***

The shade is good.

His throat is dry.

He sees a perfectly round thing like a rock and it’s full of water.

The water smells different from the dew and different from the streams.

It smells hard.

And the bowl has that strange, spicy smell of the two legged animal.

He laps at the water with his tongue.

There’s a sweet smell too, another round rock with a depression in it. This one is full of apples, they are cut very small.

But he cannot eat much.

His stomach won’t hold.

The flies buzz louder and they chew at his flesh. He feels a squirming. Little things move and wriggle in the raw grey of his open skin.

He has not seen his mother.

He still smells her, but only barely.

She is gone and ever her scent is fading.

***

The same spicy smell, he opens his eyes.

The two legged animal.

It’s moving toward him.

Slow steps.

His leg is on fire.

The smell is so thick that each breath stirs rancid air into his gasping lungs.

The two legged animal is making noises and little clicks with its tongue.

He rises, trembles.

Clumsy.

He stumbles.

Tries to flee, but there’s another two legged animal. This one casts something over him.

Something new. It drapes over him, wraps him tight.

This animal smells like flowers. Like lilacs.

He cannot flee.

He kicks. But he is pinned down and wrapped tight.

He cannot run.

He can only cry.

He cries and he bleats.

He hopes for his mother and he cries.

There’s something sharp in the flowery animal’s hands. Something clear, filled with bright blue fluid, it’s bluer than the bluest sky.

The animal presses it into the muscles of his neck.

It stings.

The blue fluid disappears inside him.

His eyes glare at these terrible creatures. These monsters.

What are they doing to him?

He screams.

But his mother is gone.

She has abandoned him.

He is on his own.

He has been captured by wolves with two legs and sharp things and blue fluid.

He must escape these wolves.

He knows they will eat him, like the machine on the road tried to do.

A fighting energy burns within him. He kicks. But the two legged animals stoop low and press him and hold him down.

The flowery one pats his shoulder and sighs.

His breath pulls dirt and the stink of his own rot into his nose.

He is hopeless.

And his heart beat is in his ears again but it is slowing down.

His leg hurts but the hurt is more distant.

The hurt is far away like it is no longer part of him.

His eyes stare at nothing in the distance

His eyes stare at the mowers and the tractors and the gas cans in the barn.

But he sees his mother under the cedars.

He doesn’t know how or why they did it, or where they’ve gone— those tall, strange animals with their piercing thing filled with blue fluid— but they have brought him back to mother.

The spicy animal says “it’s okay little guy” but the sound is nonsense to the fawn.

He hears mother grunt and he rises and walks to her and there is no pain.