Tadpole

Walking from from Granny and Papaw's house to the mailbox on the street required going down their long, straight dirt driveway. From the brick ranch style house to the country road they lived on, the driveway was at least a ¼ mile straight line. No view obstructions, no decoration other than one fence, marking the field on the left. The field on the right had no barrier. A child could veer off to the right into the grass at any moment.  At least one of those fields always contained cows, quietly munching on grass. Some with great round bellies, the sound of grass being torn out of the ground. Every now and then a mama cow would call to her baby, a low moooooo full of searching but not sadness. 

The fields contained cow patties every few feet; those deposits of cow manure, arranged in neat circles larger than my foot, the pattern a gentle swirl. They would dry in place and eventually I assume they would reabsorb into the ground. The grass would grow in uneven patches in these fields, reacting to the patchy fertilizer. If an adult were with me, the call would inevitably come, “Watch out for the cow patties,” as though I wouldn’t notice them, like a large brown, benign landmine. I’m sure boys would grab them and toss them around or even step on them purposefully. I don’t think I ever did. Not necessarily because I didn’t want to get dirty, but, you know, cow poo with flies.

So I would weave through the cow patties, toward the copse of enormous trees across the field. Behind which was another open fields. The cows dotted the fields randomly as the cow patties did. They were auburn brown monoliths to my smallness. Impossibly heavy and dense, gentle giants floating through the fields. They didn’t mind my presence, small and silent. Mostly, I could suppress the image of one of them deciding they did mind my presence and charging towards me, planting their flat foreheads into my chest with the strength of an automobile. Until I spotted the bull. I couldn’t suppress the imagination regarding the bull. I think simply because he was called a bull would have made him scarier. But of course his size helped. He was bigger and more ominous, with his little horns coming off the sides of his head. No, the bull was not something I wanted to get any closer to than necessary.

 I could edge around that outer field in the direction of the house but towards the opening to the woods where a small creek made its way towards the pond. The creek was my quiet place where I could watch the currents of water flow over the rocks and vegetation and my feet. In some places the water would flow with little white waters around my foot. A little further up it would cover up to my shin, the water feeling cool or cold to my skin, my foot or shoe appearing a little more blurry in the muddled water. Closer to the pond were little pools of tadpoles. I had a hard time imagining them growing into frogs, but I believed they did.