Chapter 14
Sexy swamp beast
Zoey
Come on. You know you want to,” Wes prompted.
“You’ll like it. I promise,” Harry assured me with a wink.
I groaned. “This is the weirdest peer pressure I’ve ever experienced.”
“Just hold out your hand,” Isla advised.
“How did my life come to this?” I wailed as I held out a palm full of dried pellets to a farm beast that was big enough not to notice when it trampled me. I was really going to miss that hand when it was bitten off.
Fart Blaster 2000, the ridiculously named Holstein, lumbered her black-and-white body toward me. I automatically took two steps back, which only made the cow pick up speed.
“She won’t hurt you,” Wes promised, trying to hide his amusement.
“Unless she accidentally steps on you. She weighs a shit ton,” Harry warned as the advancing cow boxed me in against the pasture fence.
I squeezed my eyes shut, preparing to face the end of my life. I’d always known my demise would involve livestock. “I changed my mind! I don’t wanna be the town publicist!”
That was what had gotten me into this mess.
Frank and Pep had insisted on giving me a tour of their property since I was going to help them launch their nonprofit farm sanctuary.
It was a Sunday, and Laura’s kids had volunteered to conduct the tour, which was definitely going to end in my tragic death.
But the anticipated squishing never came. Only a soggy, velvety brush against my palm. I opened one eye to find the cow neatly snacking on the pellets in my hand.
“Aww! Fart Blaster 2000 knows you’re nervous, and she’s being gentle,” Isla observed.
“Until the cow food is gone and then it eats my entire arm,” I said, bracing for the attack.
“Gramps calls her a therapy cow because she can tell if you’re sad or scared or if you want to play,” Harry explained. “When I failed my driver’s test, she almost crushed me when we were sitting in the field.”
“Not a great time to share that story, bro,” Wes pointed out.
The food was now gone, and Fart Blaster was staring at me with bland brown eyes. “Moo?”
“Ah! Tell Hazel I want to be cremated!” I screeched as I covered my head with my arms.
Once again, the murder by farm animal I’d expected didn’t happen.
Isla giggled. “She just wants you to pet her.”
“Like a dog?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just think of her as a bigger Melvin,” Harry suggested.
“I’m not petting this thing’s belly,” I said, eyeing the udder with terror. I did not want to find out how many nipples a cow had.
On cue, Melvin and Bentley, Frank and Pep’s beagle, jogged up proudly, each carrying a stick that should have belonged to the other.
Harry wrestled the tiny twig from Melvin’s massive mouth while Wes took Bentley’s leafy tree limb.
The boys hurled both deeper into the pasture, and the dogs took off after them, barking joyfully.
I gave Fart Blaster’s nose a tentative stroke. Hmm. Who knew cows were kind of soft and fuzzy? It was…not terrible. The cow sighed and leaned into my hand.
“Look! You’re making friends,” Isla said.
“Do you wanna meet the new alpacas?” Wes offered.
“Watch out. They spit a lot,” Harry warned.
“I’ll pass on the alpacas. So what are you guys all doing on the farm on a sunny spring Sunday?” I asked, continuing to stroke the giant cow.
When I was a teenager, I spent my Sundays in coffee shops, crushing on baristas, or at friends’ apartments, crushing on their older brothers.
But even I had to admit Story Lake’s farm life had a certain aesthetic appeal.
April sunshine bathed the rolling green pastures in warmth.
The trees were showing off fresh, new leaves.
And the sky was the kind of blue I never got to see back home.
Spring had a whole different vibe here compared to Manhattan, where the season was traditionally marked solely by the return of the sundress and pollen on parked cars.
“Family workday,” Harry said, hoisting himself up to sit on the top rail of the fence.
“We take one Sunday a month to come and help out around the farm. The uncles take another one. Mom and Dad always said they wanted us to understand the value of hard work, but we figured they were into the idea for the free babysitting. Gramps and Gram were cool with it because it’s free child labor,” Wes explained, giving the cow’s haunches a pat.
“What do you all get out of it?” Fart Blaster shifted her weight and leaned against me as I scratched around her ears.
“Lunch,” they said together.
“And it’s nice to help out and be all outdoorsy and stuff,” Isla added. “Plus, driving the tractor was pretty fun.”
“She’s really good at it too,” Harry said. “She’s the only one of us Gramps will let back it into the barn.”
His pride in his sister’s abilities struck a funny chord in my chest. I couldn’t remember the last nice thing my own sister ever said about me. Hell, I couldn’t remember the last time we’d even texted.
“You can drive a tractor, and you don’t even have a driver’s license yet? Maybe Cam should have hired you to teach Hazel to drive,” I joked.
Isla grinned. “He tried. He couldn’t afford my rates.”
“So what do you guys think of the whole farm rescue idea?” The cow angled away from me to munch on the grass at my feet while I stroked her back. Her tail twitched and flipped in what I hoped was happiness.
“I think it’s awesome. Gram and I always wanted horses, and now we’ll be able to rescue some,” Wes said, greeting the dogs as they raced back, this time sharing one regular-size stick.
“It’s good for Gramps too,” Harry said. “After he had his stroke, the day-to-day of running a farm got to be too much. So they leased some of the fields to another farmer and focused on the animals. I know he misses the work. With a rescue, they can take on volunteers to help with a lot of the physical stuff.”
“If Gramps learns to delegate,” Wes pointed out.
“We Bishop men are stubborn as hell,” Harry said proudly.
An earsplitting bray interrupted our conversation.
“Jesus! What the hell is that?” I asked, bewildered.
“That’s Pepe,” Isla said. “Come on! You have to meet him. He’s so cute I can’t stand it.”
“Who or what is Pepe?” I asked, following the teenagers and dogs out of one pasture and into the next.
Harry cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled. “Come on, Pepe!”
There was another horrible screeching cry, and a short gray blob galloped into view.
“That’s Pepe. He’s a mini donkey,” Wes said.
“Hazel named him Pepe after some movie called Romancing the Stone. Something about ‘my little mule’?” Isla offered.
I gasped. “You’ve never seen Romancing the Stone? You poor, deprived child.”
Pepe looked as if he had a regular-size donkey head attached to a barrel body and stumpy, matchstick legs. And his teeth. Dear Lord, his teeth. The yellowed buckteeth looked like they could gnaw through a human leg in under four seconds flat.
The dogs greeted the donkey with enthusiasm.
“Usually donkeys aren’t safe to have around dogs because they’re bred to protect other livestock from predators like foxes and coyotes. So they have a tendency to kick and stomp anything that size,” Harry lectured.
“Jesus,” I said, stepping nervously toward Bentley. Melvin was the size of a compact car and could probably hold his own, but the beagle was definitely stomp-size.
“It’s okay. They’re friends,” Isla promised. “Pepe was raised on a farm that bred German shepherds. He grew up with litters of puppies and thinks he’s a dog. He gets along better with them than he does our full-size donkey, Diva.”
Pepe trotted up to us with another horrific donkey greeting.
“I can’t believe that noise comes from nature,” I said.
“You can hear him all the way over at Uncle Gage’s,” Wes said, giving the donkey a friendly slap on the back. A cloud of dust wafted up into the spring air.
Pepe accepted the kids’ greetings and then pranced up to me expectantly. His weirdly cute donkey ears only came up to my chest. He looked perky and enthusiastic about life and bore an uncanny resemblance to the donkey in Shrek.
“Hi. Oooph!” I lost my breath in a rush when the donkey headbutted me in the chest. “Um, ow!”
Harry grimaced. “Sorry. That’s just how he says hi.”
Pepe looked at me expectantly.
“What does he want?”
“Your undying love and affection,” Isla said.
As if to prove her point, Pepe nudged me in the hip with his nose.
I was glad I’d dressed in my least expensive jeans and a sweatshirt that I’d spilled an entire glass of red wine on.
“Okay, more pets. Got it,” I said, reaching out to tentatively stroke his wiry hair.
“Gross. Did you take a dirt bath or something?”
“He likes to roll around in the dirt. It’s hilarious when you see his spindly little legs flailing around in the air,” Isla explained.
I wiped my hand on the butt of my jeans.
The roar of a small engine caught our attention. Wes pointed out a dirt cloud cresting the hill to the farmhouse, and one of those weird little utility vehicles the size of a small car came into view. There was a man behind the wheel and a golden retriever in the passenger seat.
“Looks like Uncle Gage is coming to say hi,” Harry said.
As if annoyed at having to share the attention, Pepe’s lips parted over his obscene teeth, and he grabbed my sleeve with a sharp tug.
“Excuse me, sir. That’s my shirt,” I complained. I reached out and ruffled the bristly black hair between his ears, and the donkey released my sleeve.
Gage pulled alongside the gate and got out of the vehicle. He looked annoyingly good as usual, this time in worn jeans, a T-shirt that hugged all the best chest places, and a backward ball cap. I didn’t want to say yummy, but I definitely thought it.
“Hi, Uncle Gage,” Harry called, dropping to his knees to wrestle with Nana, who was, as always, delighted to see literally everyone.
“Gramps said he needs your help stripping the stalls in the barn. Gram sent me to take over the tour.”