You’d think the cattle might be uneasy around a possessed cowhand. I was worried about that when I first picked up a white spur out of the mud, white in spite of the mud, and felt something that never speaks but I know for a fact is inside me.
In my chest more than my head. You hear stories about cows screaming at vampires and ghosts and chupacabras in the night. But I know things now that I rightly couldn’t, clear as if I always had, and the cows don’t seem to mind.
In truth, they seem to like me more for it. I know where water flows underground and where every body is buried for a hundred miles, but the cows all follow or walk ahead of me neat as you please, and they get as close as they can to me at night. I get the feeling they’d all cozy in around me like a heap of kittens if I let them.
Maybe whatever I’ve got in me now, more in my chest than my head, loved them, too. Maybe they loved it, or him, or her, or whatever the spur was carved out of. I think it’s bone, and it never makes a sound when I walk. I’ve never had to use it to put more pep in my horse’s step – he seems to know what I want as soon as I can think it.
So, on the whole, I really don’t mind. I know I’m lying ten feet above where someone buried an old grudge once – the dust and wind have buried it deeper since then – but as long as the dead don’t mind me either, what’s really to be bothered about?
Maybe they like me, too. Maybe, if they weren’t buried so deep, they’d follow when I give the call that we’re moving on to new pastures.