Stillborn

The calf must have come late in the night, when blue shadows cast their own black shadows.  Stillborn, the calf lay wholly deflated and cross-legged on a patch of dark ground at the very corner of an otherwise snowy pasture.

By the time I drove near the calf at sunrise, the other cattle had cleared a semi-circle around it.

None of them would go near.

The entire gathering of animals was comprised of expectant mothers or mothers with wobbly newborns at their side.

I stopped my truck, stepped out, and crunched over the snowy terrain between the road and the fence.  I leaned hard against the barbed wire strands, peering down at the calf.

The calf could just as well have been a black coat flung to the ground.  For that calf, it mattered not whether the gate was latched shut of flung wide open.  It did not matter that the snow will soon melt and sweet new grass will flush green across the expanse.

The beginning was the end.

Standing on the opposite side of the fence, no more than three paces away, the mothers and newborns cautiously watched me.

What was my place in this, they wondered?

A valid question, that.

I crunched back to my truck, climbed in, and drove away from the rising sun.

This is where I begin.

-- Mitchell Hegman