Agnes Chapter 1

The couch was plenty worn and filled with winestains, torn at the edges and scuffed from her hooves. There it lay out in the frontyard, it was Agnes' couch.
"I knew it!" I barked loudly inside my country house.
"I knew she would love it!" I shouted, with a hop in my redpainted toed step.
There, out in the grassy yard she stood. One ecstatic onlooking pet Angus cow,
delighted (!) with her gift.

She was a ragged rootbeer brown splendid piece of prime T-bone, splashed with creamy white stiff paintbrush fur at her ears and she had a nose as rough as my uncles 1970's boat seats (but not full of 1970's glitter).

But wait, I am not sure what this all means to you the reader, but so what if I reconsidered that whole getting-a-dog-thing and choose wholeheartedly on getting-a-cow instead.
Maybe it was that mild depression I was going through last year, where I needed 'more-love' than a small dog would bear. I am not sure, but the cats didn't seem to mind the mild acquisition.

I then ran out passing her and sat quietly alone on the couch as she swankly trotted her hooves forward catwalk style.
I saw her coming for me, so I moved to the absolute right side of the couch. She did weigh a hefty bit, as she was ALL cow.
The couch was all busted up and was missing the left side arm so I knew she would fit handsomely there with me. Again, she kicked up her front hoof and tore the dirty dry earth, as if looking for my comforting Mommy voice to invite her.

The sun flickered through the branches covered in white apple blossoms and I could just start to see the sourness of its budding crabapples ruin the whole 'sweet feeling' it gave to it's daily Agnes the cow onlooker. Agnes was headed my way and looked quite tired. Tired from what? I am still unsure of.

I had placed this couch outside of my country home sometime last year.
There it stood, in the front yard aging in the sun. It had seen better company, and I felt poorly for tossing it out. Surely my house had seen enough of the worlds worst 1990's floral pattern from The Sears Catalogue. Not that I shop entirely with a Sears Catalogue, but I once had a friend who worked there so I got a reasonable discount at the time.

So out it went.

It was certainly a floral print that would be left 'to-the-cows' to rot in the sun.
A sort of 'play-thing' for her to sit on and rummage through.
"A mini trampoline to bounce on!" I laughed and imagined.

My closest neighbour was a good half acre away and of the stubborn Irish (what else is new) sort. He worked nights down at Patti's Pub and slept days. I knew he wouldn't see it, nor would he care for my odd couch taste that I had back in the early 90's. He was always tied to that bar and it's drowning John Deere locals. Though ironically enough to some, his father had tragically been hospitalized from kidney problems. So he did actually, yet ONLY upon calls from The General Hospital, make it out once and a while. Yes, in full daylight.

I often wondered if his flesh would ignite via the rays of the sun.

He told me he slept with a pillow over his face to keep the light out. Maybe this was so he wouldn't see the ugly couch, or his odd greying neighbour with a pet cow and it's 1990's floral couch-toy-plaything.
He was the nearest to our house so I would often see him scurry off to the hospital. I was always kind enough to start conversation and add in a joke or two, if I ran into him at the mailbox.
But he was never the sort to take me seriously, and he, never the sort to marry.
He was just of the sort to take care of you on a human-to-human level.
This human (me) had sat constantly at Patti's with a minor drinking problem last year. I sat alone with my smudged mascara and my tangled curls and my warm pints of Guinness.
I sat and imagined happiness and what it would feel like. He did care for my long stories of finding happiness, and thankfully kept the Deere men off me who were into that whole purdy-looks-kind-of-thing they shared. So I at least respected my neighbour.
He also knew that one day I would snap out of it, leave the tired pub and find it.

But snap so far as to buy a cow? no.

Curling up on the couch and waging her tail Agnes looked my way and paused...
Her mouth was giant and housed her tongue, the kind that you see at The Butcher Shoppe,
only alive and faded green with grass. She then licked my now dirty cotton sleeve and this apparently sealed-the-deal of her being quite happy on this pure 90's relic.