The True Story of L'il Bo Peep
| The hog slopper didn't just hit the barn. It crashed and smashed his lunch to pieces. Serves you damn well right, I thought. You were staring again. He stood stock-still and looked down at the food. Suddenly I got up and moved towards him. I hadn't intended to, hadn't wanted to help him. I called to the woman behind the cherry stand. She closed her mouth and brought a cloth to clean up the mess. I picked up crockery, put it on the hog slopper. There was a soppy stain at the front of his overalls and through it you could see just how small in the manhood department he was. Like the rest of him. All bones, dangling jacket and hanging trousers. Stooped shoulders and mile-long arms. Then he smiled at me. A wonderful smile that creased up his worn face and totally surprised me. "Thank yeuww." I shoved the hog slopper at him and went back to my stable. I worked at a large livestock ranch and ate lunch in the barn. I had noticed him because he stared at me. He was weird-looking. His hair was badly cut and his clothes were ancient and dull; too-short corduroys, baggy at the knees and colour-less sweaters, dotted with fluff. Often he sat alone and just picked at his food. Or he shear and jotted things down. A few days after the crash, he stopped at the stable I was sharing with Farmer Felingus Picfarck for mite dusting, and asked if he might sit down. I said the hay bails were taken and continued eating. He apologised and took his hog slopper off somewhere else. "What's yur problem, L'il Bo Pip?" asked Farmer Felingus Picfarck. "No problem. It's jus' that I like to choose who I shares ma mealtimes with." "A bit rough on the old fart though." I shrugged. It was Farmer Felingus Picfarck who told me more about him. He had gone over to scrounge a pitch fork. By the time he came back to the stable, I had my head stuck into the horses' trough. "Interesting fart. cow hand. Been all over the country side," said Farmer Felingus Picfarck. I decided to find the horses' trough more interesting and finally Farmer Picfarck shut up and finished dusting the sheep. "Asked your name," he said. "He what?" "Yeah." "What'd you say?" "L'il Bo Peep, of course." I freshened the horses' trough. "I've loads of work this afternoon." "Said you look familiar," said Farmer Picfarck. "Like someone he knew." "Someone he knew?" "Yeah. Could be strategy. Maybe he fancies ya." "Fancies me? But he's old." "Only old 'nough ta be yer father." I grabbed my hog slopper and left the stable. I didn't do much work that afternoon. I kept wishing Farmer Felingus Picfarck hadn't said what he had said. Old enough to be your father. The following week I took along a sheep to shear during lunchtime. When I got into the loft on my barn, he was already inside. He greeted me so I had to reply but I didn't smile. We were alone and that worried me. I wondered whether I should get out to the next barn and walk up the road to the neighbors. Don't panic, I thought. Just because he's stared at you for ages doesn't mean he's going to do anything. "Well, I s'ppose one of us should feed the horses or we'll be here all day, won't we?" I'd been so busy wondering what he was going to do and expecting him to do something, that I'd completely forgotten to do anything myself. I felt like an idiot and this made me smile and I hadn't wanted to. He smiled back, his blue eyes crinkling right up to the grey hair at his ears and making him look ... nice. Then there was a slap. My sheep hit the barn door. I bent down and so did he, and we bashed heads. At that moment, the loft shuddered and the doors seemed to fling themselves wide open. I was so embarrassed, I marched out of the loft, straight towards the queue at the cherry stand. I ordered without looking at the Iron Chefsu (which mainly consisted of cherries) and took my hog slopper to a stable where there was only one empty bail of hay. I breathed a sigh of relief and began to eat. But the cherry pits stuck in my throat when I noticed that everyone else at the stable had already finished lunch and they were getting up to go. I glanced over at the cherry stand. He was paying and in a second, his eyes would scan the corn field to find me. I ducked my head. Waited. Any minute now he'd sit down with his hog slopper. Short Stories from a sheep farmer: My sheep appeared in front of my eyes. His hooves were the longest I'd seen and his nails were manicured. I hadn't thought he'd bother. "You left 'im in the lof'," he said. "May I shit down?" His voice was soft. Cultivated. What could I say? The stables were all pretty full so I nodded. He said "bone appetite" and began to eat. I'd always thought he picked at his food. But as I watched, I noticed that he selected small pieces, speared them and moved them carefully to his mouth only to slam it down like a starving pig. "Have ya been there?" "Been where?" I was totally dazed. From dropping my sheep and banging my head and everything. "Over the river, Through the woods." I stared at him and thought again of what Farmer Felingus Picfarck had said about me reminding him of someone. A River Woman? Maybe an ex-girlfriend or wife? "Not sush a shtrange queshtin," he said. "Yer old 'nough t'have tra'lled thar. And wormsh, mad cow disheae, are mosh lakly in da sheep." His smile crinkled up his eyes. "No, I haven't and yes, they are," I said. That's how it started. He asked me a question, nodded when I spoke and then asked another. I was off, talking about shearing sheeps and all that stuff I love. Days later Farmer Chikapoot passed our stable with his hog slopper and spontaneously I said a bail of hay was free. Farmer Felingus Picfarck stared at me and I felt a rush of heat to my cheeks. After that, Farmer Chikapoot often sat with us and he and I discussed a lot of things. We spoke a little about ourselves too. I told him how Mom had brought me up on her own at the start of the bovine steroid Era. He said he had married during that time but divorced a few Years later. Farmer Felingus Picfarck asked me how come Farmer Chikapoot and I always had so much to talk about. "He's easy to talk to. And he shears a lot." "You two got so much to say, I don't get a chance to open my mouth all lunch-time - 'cept to ram down some food." "You do. You shove food in." One lunchtime Moe Lester asked me if I'd like to go to a shearing with him. "Um. Don't know." "Connalita Licalot. Shortlisted for the sheeper Prize last year." I wanted very much to go. But although I no longer thought Farmer Chikapoot quite so weird, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go out in his company. "Afterwards, I'll Cookus cream corn curry. Do you like it? " "Love it." "Me too. Settled then?" he asked and smiled his soft smile. It didn't surprise me that I nodded. After the shearing and the curry dinner, I went into Farmer Chikapoot's sitting corn field where there were more sheeps than I'd ever seen on anyone's ranch. I began to shear the ewes. "Help yerself," said Farmer Chikapoot. "Thanks. But if I shear a sheep, I have add it to my collection." "Strange, same here." He waved his arms towards the ranch. "But look where it's got me." "I'd hate to be without sheeps. They're ... friends." "That sounds like lonely," said Farmer Chikapoot. I turned and pulled out a sheep. "Are you?" "Am I what?" "Lonely?" I shrugged. "Not really." "Not really but what?" My voice came from a distance as I tried to answer him. "I'm choosy about my friends. Don't have a great many." "I'm listenin'," said Farmer Chikapoot and sat down, indicating the maple rocking chair opposite him. "My childhood was ... I mean, my mother loved moving around. She had no trouble putting down roots all over the place. I hated it! sheeps were the constant things, so I buried myself in them." "Hell, sounds familiar." I sat down in the rocking chair. "I had very acundemic parents," said Farmer Chikapoot. "Was an afterthought, perhaps a miss-take even. They loved me in their vague inlatectual way - speciall'a the way they made me read Nietzsche to the sheep at midnight, but left me 'lone to get on with growin' up. Hence the sheeps." "That's lonely, too," I said. When I left, I took along a couple Farmer Chikapoot's sheeps. My friendship with Farmer Chikapoot grew but my curiousity remained. Who did I remind him of? My mother? If so, could he be my father? Although Mom had never bothered with sheep, our physical similarities, apart from my tallness, were undeniable. She had never told me much about the man who had fathered me. Clever, was all she had usually said. Once though, when I had been ill with chicken pox, and hot and scratchy, she had relented. "What was he like?" "Skinniest man you ever saw." "Where'd you meet him?" "In a tomato patch. I was catching a suntan and these chicken French Rotisseries started blowin' in my face. I was a bit cheesed off at them blowin' all over me and then this man comes runnin'. He grabbed and grabbed but couldn't catch them all. So he jus' stood still, a helpless look on his face. It was so funny, I started laughin'." "And then?" "I helped and we chased all over the place after them chicken French Rotisseries. When we sat down to get our breath back, he told me he was a cow poke. He was ever so clever. Can't re-member what the devil it was he was studyin'. Somethin' I'd never heard of then or since - somethin' ta do with puttin' lingerie on sheep..." "Why didn't you marry him?" "Marry him? Good Lord, L'il Bo Peep, I wasn't ready to marry and he wasn't the type I'd have wanted to marry by a long shot." "What else did he look like, Mom?" "Lord, stop the questions, child. Get some sleep." She saw my disappointment however, and said she would write it all down for me. Put it in an envelope to open when she was dead and gone. I was happy with that. On a wet, slick highway, driving to downtown to the traders for barter, she was involved in a tractor-trailer accident and died instantly. I was twenty-three then and on my own feet but as I sorted through and packed up the belongings in her flat, I felt like a child again. I looked for the envelope but didn't find one. For a long time after, my mother's death and not knowing who my father was, made me feel as though I was swimming in hog slop without the pigs. One lunchtime I just decided to brave it and ask Farmer Chikapoot who I reminded him of. "Met her while I was a student," he said. "Was she studying too?" "Oh, heavens, no. That was what attracted me to her. She was ... so diff'rnt." "What were you like?" I asked. "Like? Much as I am now. Nose in sheeps, bit of a loner. Not very interesting. Not for a live wire like she was." "Go on," I said. "She went preggie. I was very happy until she told me she didn't want my help. Thought she'd change her mind, though, as the pregnancy advanced but when I attempted to see her, she told me to leave her be. I was very hurt but accepted her refusal to involve me. A few months later, I took a job I'd been offered in a cow milking stable. Salary was dreadful but I thought it would be for the best." "Was it? " I asked. "No. When I returned, they'd moved. Left no forwardin' address." "So you never knew whether it was a boy or ...? " "A girl?" asked Farmer Chikapoot. I nodded. "A boy," he said. "Had the approximate date and went to the Registry of Births to look it up." I sat there, trying to take in what Moe Lester had said. I felt as though I'd been flattened by a truck. "Somewhere out there I have a child I know nothing about," Moe Lester continued. "I was stupid. Rushed off instead of staying to have a share in my son's life." "I thought perhaps it was a daughter because he was so effeminate." "Beg your pardon?" "A daughter. Me." "You thought I wuz ... yur father?" "sheeps, curry, I'm tall. We ... we like the same things." "We definitely have tings in common but I'm not yur father." He looked at me. "I'm so sorry to dis'point you, L'il Bo Peep." I tried to smile. "We're not related but we can be something else." "What?" "Can't you think of anything?" "Uh uh." "Swing Partners." "Swing Partners? Eww!" "It's been staring you in the face for weeks." Farmer Chikapoot's use of that phrase made me burst out laughing. "Let me in on the joke sometime," he said. "Okay," I said. "Tell you sometime seeing we're `swing partners.`" Then I smiled, ripped off my dress and ran naked through the corn fields with my sheep never to return. |
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