Kine: Book

The Last Green Pasture

She ran back to the barn. Old Ben was standing at the gate, his nose pressed between the bars. The other eleven cows were behind him, utterly silent. No mooing. No shuffling. Just twelve pairs of eyes glowing in the moonlight. kine book

The drought had come like a thief. Three summers of brittle sun had turned the family’s "Kine Book" — the leather-bound journal where her great-great-grandfather had recorded every birth, every sickness, every wandering of their herd — into a record of loss. The last entry, in her own hand, read: "Pasture D dry. Selling Bessie and her calf. No rain in sight." The Last Green Pasture She ran back to the barn

Elara was the fifth generation of her family to wake to the lowing of cattle. But this morning, the sound was a mournful one. No mooing

Old Ben, her lead cow, stood at the fence line, his great head pointing not toward the barn, but toward the distant smear of gray that was the city. His eyes, the color of wet river stones, held a question Elara couldn't answer.

"Show me," she whispered.