Christopher rolls his eyes. “Who is in charge of marketing for this wire company? It’s obvious that they have no idea what they are fucking doing.” He continues to walk out to the car and opens the door. “What do we need this for again?”
“To make some temporary safe areas for the puppies to play in outside until they are older. They can’t just roam free; they are too little and will get lost.”
“Are you sure?” He frowns. “That doesn’t sound right to me.”
I raise my eyebrow. “What do you think happens?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Let them roam free and sniff shit out, guard-dog style.”
“They are little baby puppies.”
“My point exactly, they don’t want to be kept in chicken wire. It’s emasculating.”
“They can’t be left alone this early.”
“But we are just inside.”
“Christopher! Just fucking do it,” I snap as I lose the last of my patience.
He rolls his eyes and gets into the car. “I’m going now.”
“Good.” I cross my arms. “About time.”
“And I might come home with all sorts of shit from the hardware store.” He grabs his crotch with a wink. “Hardware.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe even some more animals.” He shrugs casually as if trying to scare me.
“Okay, if they have baby chickens grab me a few.”
“What?” He scoffs. “You cannot be serious?”
“Well…you are buying chicken wire.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Hayden. Enough with the animals.” He looks up into the house. “Eddie,” he calls. “Hurry up.”
Eddie comes flying out of the house and bounces into the front seat.
Christopher won’t go anywhere without his trusty little apprentice farmer. I smile as I watch them disappear into the distance, I can only imagine the conversations they must have about the errands I send them on.
Christopher
We pull the car to a halt in the crowded parking lot, there are trailers and trucks everywhere. We are at the cattle auctions, I made Elliot come with me.
“Never thought I’d be fucking doing this, that’s for sure.” Elliot says as he looks around.
“What’s that?”
“Buying cows for your fiancée to wank.”
I smirk as I turn the car off, “That makes two of us.” We get out of the car and walk across the large lawn towards the hall.
“Tell me why we’re doing this without Hayden again?”
“I want to surprise her. Up until now she’s bought everything but…I,” I shrug.
“You what?”
“If I’m honest, I’m kind of loving this farm thing and I want to surprise her with something that I know she will love. Something meaningful.”
“Okay, makes sense.” He frowns, “I guess.” We turn the corner into the hall and stop dead on the spot.
“What the hell is this?” I whisper.
There’s a million people, cows are in the centre and the auctioneer is talking so fast that I can’t even understand him.
“It’s like Times square on fucking crack.” Elliot frowns.
“What’s the plan?” Elliot asks as he looks around.
“We buy five strong looking male calves and then get the fuck out of here.”
“All male?” He frowns.
“Yeah,” I shrug, “That’s what she needs.”
“That’s dumb.”
“How is that fucking dumb?”
“Think about it, who’s going to be hornier? Five boys stuck in a paddock together or three boys who have four hot, big titted chicks in the next paddock to imagine fucking.”
I narrow my eyes, “You think we need cow porn?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Okay, three boys, four girls.” I think for a moment, “Maybe four boys and three girls.”
“No, they need variety.”
“Okay, four boys and five girls. But they have to be hot girls.”
Elliot nods as he looks around, “This will be a piece of cake, if anyone knows cows it’s us.”
“Why do you say that?”
“We’ve both fucked a lot of cows in our day.”
I smirk and then chuckle, “This is true.”
Three months later.
“No, no, listen to me and concentrate. This way here…” the teacher, Mr. Enid, points to a piece of paper with his pen, “…goes over to this one here, remember like we did the other day?”
Eddie sits back in his chair at the dining table, deflated.
I feel sick to my stomach.
This hard to watch, Eddie is struggling with his reading and writing lessons and we don’t know how to help him.
It’s like everything is on hold in his life until we can get this under his belt and achieved. He can’t even work at McDonald’s unless he can read and write.
He loves the farm and is so happy working with Hayden, and he needs this family time, we know he does. But in the back of our minds we also know that he is destined for more, and he needs to conquer this reading and writing thing to accomplish what is meant for him.
“Let’s go back over that again, Eddie, and I want you to concentrate this time.”
“He is concentrating,” I snap.
The teacher looks up. “With all due respect, Mr. Miles, you can’t interrupt my classes. Eduardo needs to try harder.”
“That is all for today.” I cut him off.
Eddie smiles up at me and I can see the relief written all over his face.
“In fact.” I pause as I contemplate our options, Hayden wanted to fire him a week ago and I talked her out of it, I came home from work today early to specifically sit in on the lesson. Hayden is right, this isn’t working. “We won’t be needing your services any longer. Your teaching style isn’t working for Eddie.”
Eddie bites his bottom lip to stifle his smile.
“Please send us an account of all that we owe you.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Mr. Enid replies.
“I disagree. Good luck with everything.” I shake his hand and direct for Eddie to do the same. “Thank you,” Eddie says with the best of manners.
Eddie and I watch on as Mr. Enid walks out and gets into his car, and I turn to Eddie. “What a tool.”
Eddie smirks. “Maybe.”
I stand at the window and stare out over the London skyline, my mind is miles away, it’s with Eddie at home.
“What’s wrong with you? You look like you just have the world on your shoulders.” Elliot asks from behind me.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” I sigh.
“Such as?”
“I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing with Eddie, maybe I should have put him into school. He is struggling with this language barrier and I don’t know how to make it any better for him.”
“I thought you had him a tutor?”
“I do…did, he came to the house four times a week. But he’s…everything seems to be like really hard and I know just how intelligent he is, I don’t understand why he’s struggling so much. The thing is, he’s never read or written in any language so to add to it a new language is another level of hardship. Maybe we should put him in school?”