Yard

by Ian Zwaschka
Visual by Veronica Hernandez

There was that kid the other day in his backyard. That little fucking brat. Lived diagonal and down the street. Trailer on the left. There were about four of them and he couldn’t tell you their names, or even really tell one from another, but he knew they were all brats. 

Parents acting like kids too is the only thing you can take away from that whole deal. Ken was on his porch smoking a Black and Mild and saw the fucker through his patio’s lattice step up onto the curb. As he was walking toward the barbed fence that separated Ken’s lawn from the cow’s grazing field, he was unwrapping a chocolate bar. 

Ken had a time beholding the cows chew while blowing a smoke ring in the weekend afternoon, which was his designated break time from customizing his motorcycle or trying to fix the water damage that bled into the ceiling of what he thought of as his home. The other week he saw a brown cow fall from the tall ledge into the creek. Just walked right over. Dirt broke and she lost her footing. Fucking legs whipping into the air as she rolled downhill. The other cows and a couple bulls circled their jaws as they spectated her squirming and splashing on her tall shoulder blades, thinking that she was a “jackass.” Unlike them. She was eventually able to get her hooves back under her, standing against the current. Ken had finished his entire cigar in one sitting, but he decided to remain on the plastic patio chair to watch the cow as she guided her head back and forth between the current and the others looking down on her from the top of the ledge. Stop fucking watching. Ken decided he’d better get back to work.

When that fucker had reached the fence, he crumpled the wrapper and pushed it through a hole in the wired fence. Just to let it lay there on the tall grass. Ken thought of that brown cow and how she liked to lean against the posts and graze on the grass separate from all the others. Park made him fix the bent posts himself, which he had to do instead of going to his welding subcontract for a day. Plastic going through a throat like that. Could four stomachs decompose shit like that? Turn into methane or something. Though, Ken couldn’t live with himself if he went out on the porch in the fog one morning and saw that brown cow lying with her tongue out of her mouth and her eyes open, reflecting the slow passing clouds. Had to say something: “Hey, pick that shit up,” Ken shouted from his porch.

The brat just laughed, raised the middle finger of his fucking hand that was holding the chocolate bar, and walked on back home, eating his chocolate in big bites as it melted into his palm.

Ken trudged across the lawn, down the sloped hill towards the fence. Looked over the top wire, which was the only one barbed, and saw the crumpled-up silver wrapper sitting gently between weeds. He grabbed the top wire between two barbs and pushed it down so that he could mount the fence. Since he was wearing his cargo shorts, when he swung one leg over, one rusted barb dug into his calf and pulled his flesh to expose a new dirtied wound. Ken inspected it for a time before picking up the wrapper. Another fucking cut is all he needed. Hope no fucking snake jumps up out of the grass or nothing. Dig its damn fangs into the other leg. Even more difficult to get up over the fence the other way since the hill kept going down from his yard to the field. He made sure to be more careful this time though. Once he’d made it back over to his manicured lawn, he walked up the hill and turned around to look over the fence.

Off in the distance, it looked like Williamson was letting the cows out for the afternoon.