Guernica by Dave Boling Read Free Book Online

from the lower level. That didn’t stop Justo from operatically scapegoating the livestock whenever he
     committed an indiscretion of the bowels.
    “Vulgar cows!” he’d shout, looking down at the floor.
    “Vulgar cow, indeed,” Mariangeles countered each time, causing them both to laugh as if it were the first time they’d shared
     the exchange.
    Miren found the shared housing arrangement comforting. She grew close to the animals, helping milk the cows in the morning
     and evening, leaning her head into their warm, fat sides and telling them about her day, elaborating whenever one would turn
     its head to express specific interest.
    At night, the sounds of the animals’ low groans and rustling in the straw rose through the floorboards, providing soothing
     background sounds. And as she slipped into sleep, she sometimes confused the rumbling fl atulence of grass-fed cattle with
     a storm thundering in the mountains. They were peaceful beasts who were partners in the enterprise that was Errotabarri.
    When sleep wouldn’t come, she often slipped to the floor in the dark and whispered to the animals through fissures in the
     planks. The sheep, placid in all circumstances, were oblivious to her overtures and never considered the importance of messages
     being sent from above. They slept in fluffy clusters and could not be roused by a soft human voice.
    Cows, though, were sociably curious. Miren would call lightly to them, sometimes mimicking their gentle moo-eh, and one directly
     below would tilt its head, allowing a huge brown eye to peer up at the source of the disembodied voice. Had it been their
     nature to reflect and expand, these could have been the genesis moments of bovine religious movements.
    Sometimes she’d whisper her secrets to these friends, feeling the relief that comes from saying words aloud, even if only
     to beasts. She’d speak the name of the boy she liked at the moment or confess her hopes and doubts. The cows were generous
     with their attention, their upturned eyes sensitive and somehow understanding. They seemed to say, “Go ahead, dear, I’m listening.”
     In the warm months, when the stock grazed and slept in the upper pasture, Miren missed their company and for weeks would have
     trouble falling asleep without their muffled lullabies.
    For a time, Justo kept donkeys, breeding and selling the yearlings at the market. When the mares would foal, Mariangeles and
     Miren would midwife the process. The birthing was frightening, but the foals, in their leggy romps, so frisky and clumsy,
     delighted Miren. They entered the world as a fuzzy collection of outsize ears and trembling legs, and Miren could not help
     but constantly kiss their soft-whiskered muzzles and stroke their bristle-brush manes.
    She loved their vigor and the way their ungainly sprints implied aspirations beyond life as a mere donkey. When weeks old,
     they would nurse in the paddocks and suddenly, as if jolted by unseen lightning, let loose with their little honk-and-whistle
     bray and dash in tumbling circles around their mothers. With imaginations faster than their legs, they splayed and rolled
     and reared and kicked, falling flat and rising without shame to race in circles again, perhaps recalling a connection to distant
     ancestors that branched off to become Arabian stallions. And following a lap or two of frivolity, they suddenly would stop
     and return to their mothers’ milk, fueling for the next imaginary race upon the sands of some great forgotten dunes.
    Their performances would entertain Miren for hours, so she always claimed donkey care as her own chore. She once asked her
     father if a foal could stay in her room at night and sleep in her bed. He did not reject the idea because the animal needed
     to be with its mother and it would be frightened in such a situation. Instead, knowing his daughter’s own energetic disposition,
     he kidded her that she would keep the poor thing awake with her attentions, and