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The Curious Incident of the Bull in the Nighttime

Couple's therapy

By Jamie JacksonPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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The Curious Incident of the Bull in the Nighttime
Photo by Sandra Seitamaa on Unsplash

I love the night. I love the quiet, the stillness, the shimmering lights on the horizon spied from an upstairs window, the coolness of the air, the almost inaudible hum of a main road or motorway far off in the distance that was imperceptible during the hustle and bustle of the day but now seeps in through an open window carried by the night air.

There is a farm, half a mile away, fields with cows and one giant bull, with a massive head and a dead-eyed stare. I’ve walked past him enough times, his enormous, morose face looks at me from over two fences as my dogs run around my feet, oblivious to this frozen hunk of muscle, glaring at us all.

He scares me, the bull. His size is something that must be seen to be believed. Everyone thinks they know how big a bull is until they see one, they are unfathomably large creatures.

A week ago I was laying in bed, the dark of the night touching my face and filling my bedroom. My wife lay next to me asleep. Breaking the silence came a sudden crashing, a snapping, creaking and groaning of wood, the noise of bushes shaking and being ripped from their roots and thicket being trampled under… something.

I lay frozen. Why is the first reaction to fear always to freeze? Evolutionary it seems the worst of responses. My mind span, I pictured people breaking into the garden, my suburban sanctuary invaded by drug-fuelled maniacs and psychopaths with nothing to lose, hellbent on chaos and destruction. I got up and went to the window as the cacophony outside fell silent. I could see nothing. I peered into the inky black but could make out only vague outlines; the decking, the washing line, the walled follower bed.

It was then I saw a mass moving. So large it made no sense, a dark blotch against a darker blotch, moving across the lawn. Was this my eyes playing tricks? The night creates sensory illusions, aural and visual. Things go bump as much as they dance in the corners of your vision.

No wait, it’s there. I see it. My stomach turned. As much as I love the night, I am ashamed to admit, at 40, I'm still scared of the dark. Mellifluous sounds of distant nighttime activity were one thing, giant moving black blotches across my garden were quite another.

Then I heard it; an exhale of some kind, a huff, a giant, baritone snort that echoed up into the atmosphere.

It was a creature! Relief swept through my body. It must be the bull. Then almost instantly, alarm ran through me once again. No knife-wielding maniacs but an enormous bull, what could be done to stop it? What if it decided to crash into the house through the french windows? What if it ruined the decking I’d only just repainted this summer?

I woke my wife up by shaking her shoulder vigorously. “There’s a fucking bull in the garden!”

“What?” She was groggy and replied to my panic with eyes still closed.

“Wake up, there’s a bull in the garden. An actual giant bull.”

“What are you talking about? I was asleep, let me sleep.”

I turned on the bedside lamp and her face screwed up.

“What the fuck!”

“I’m sorry but you have to get up. I need help. There’s a giant animal in the garden. I think it’s the bull, from the farm. Unless there are loads of bulls just wandering around at night.” I made myself laugh but was quickly interrupted as my wife sat up.

“Shut up! There’s a bull in the garden?”

“Yes. Or, there's something.”

She moved to the window and peered out. “Turn the bloody light off, I can’t see anything.”

She stared out again.

“No there’s not!”

“There is!” I joined her side. “Listen.”

Then we heard a snort. Another deep exhale.

“Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed, pulling back from the window. “There’s a fucking bull on the garden!”

--

We stood at the back door, house lights off so we could see the garden clearly. I was armed with a broom, she was armed with a mop.

“Don’t wake the kids,” she said.

“That’s the least of our worries right now!”

“It’s eating from my flowerbed, look at it. We’ve got to push it back through that hole in the hedge.”

I was shining torchlight onto the side of the bull. Its body was so big you could project a film into its side and watch it comfortably from a good distance.

“I’ll go round the back, push its backside so it turns around to face the hole, you push its head around with the broom so it can see where to go.” My wife dished out instructions with a military tone, not taking her eyes off the beast.

“But that’s where the horns are" I moaned.

“For Christ's sake! It’s wrecking the garden, it needs to be moved.”

“But why me with the horns?”

“Ok, fine, I’ll take the horns.”

“No, no I’ll do it” I replied as shame ran through me. “I’ll do the head, and the horns, it’s OK.”

We crept up to the bull. I’d never seen it anything other than docile, but then, I’d never seen it out of its field. Why was it here? Maybe it’s scared, angry, hungry, or worst of all, horny.

“I’ve seen YouTube videos of bulls,” I said, trying to add some level of expertise to the situation.

“And what did they say?”

“It was a compilation of people gorged by their horns. In Spain or whatever.”

“This doesn’t help.”

“I’m just saying they’re dangerous. Can kick-off any time.”

“We’ll best not poke it with anything then,” she replied, deadpan.

I moved towards the side of its huge face, it glanced in my direction then kept on eating whatever it had found in the flowerbed.

“My begonias! It’s eating the bloody begonias!”

“Stop shouting, you’ll startle it!” I said in a hushed panic.

My wife manoeuvred around the side with me, the bull at a 45-degree angle from the flowerbed, the both of us sandwiched in the gap between.

I lay the torch on the side of the flowerbed, still illuminating the scene.

“After three, push. I’ll do the back as you push the head. We’ll push it straight into the middle of the garden, facing the hole, then both move around the back to push it towards where it needs to go.”

“Wait,” I replied. "Are we pushing on three or a beat after three?”

“After.”

“So on four then?”

“Yes, on fucking four then!” she replied through gritted teeth.

“I don’t want to move its head if you’re not pushing, is all.”

The bull raised its head again, distracted from the begonias once more.

“Fuck it! Just push now!” I shouted. “Push, push, push!”

We shoved the beast hard with the mop and the broom. It didn’t budge. I managed to move its head but he just turned back towards me, his massive neck overpowering me easily because of the odd angle I was holding the broom.

“Stop. This isn’t working. It’s a stupid idea. It’s got to be half a tonne” she announced.

“Metric or imperial?”

“What?”

“Metric tonne or imperial ton?”

“I don’t know, it’s just heavy, why do you have to be like this?”

“Why do you have to be like this?” I retorted.

“Christ almighty! This is a metaphor, this bull is your shit I have to deal with every day” she snapped as the animal buried its face once more in the flowerbed, letting out a huge snort as it went back to the business of eating.

“My bullshit? All you’ve been is aggressive like this is my fault. How’s an animal breaking through the garden fence my fault?”

“It’s not your fault, it’s how you deal with it.”

“Oh, so a real man could deal with it better? What do you want me to do, knock the fucking thing out? Wrestle with it, bare-chested. Kung-fu kick it in the head?”

“These are your issues, not mine. I just want someone who can solve problems, not have me deal with everything.”

“Deal with what? All I do is work, pay bills, make sure you and the kids are good. I used to do things with my life, how I’m a money machine who gets shit from you every day.”

“Being a husband isn’t just about paying bills, that’s the bare minimum. You want a medal for working. Every person works. I work. Everyone works.”

“You’re never happy. This is what it comes down to. You want to be angry so you don’t have to look at yourself.”

“You’re the one who needs to look at themselves!”

Our voices escalated in volume and we were shouting at this point. She was waving her mop to make a point, I was thudding my broom into the soft grass to emphasise mine. A neighbour’s light came on.

Then, perhaps because of the commotion, the bull looked up and then promptly walked off. He lumbered down the garden, sniffing the grass and snorting as he went and left directly through the hole he came from.

“What’s the noise?” said an irate elderly neighbour through an open bedroom window.

“Nothing! A bull. It came in through the… an animal… big thing… we were pushing it… the begonias.”

We both gave garbled explanations at the same time, then looked at one another and burst out laughing.

“Keep it down! It’s the middle of the night!” said the neighbour and he slammed his window closed.

All was quiet. We both stood in silence for a moment. The hum of the distant motorway drifted back into our ears.

“I love you.” She said, turning to me.

“I love you too,” I replied.

family
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About the Creator

Jamie Jackson

Between two skies and towards the night.

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