Red Devon Read online

  by taking her lad lamping that side of the ridge

  so they sit for a while in the car watching the moon

  and comparing guns. Teague likes a ballistic head

  which shatters on impact, leaving no trace. Grunt says

  last year testing left thirty-five thousand cattle dead

  so frankly anything goes; vaccination, poison, gas.

  Far off down the valley they hear a vixen howl

  calling her mate. After an hour they go back to the farm.

  The sheep are grey ghosts in the kale,

  their eyes bright dots reflecting the Clulite’s beam.

  Grunt sends in the kelpie. She looks like a fox.

  He’s saying how easy it is – the glint through your sight

  could be the eye of a fox, or a torch face,

  or a button. Even a mobile phone reflects light,

  and these days kids are always – when a shot

  cracks round the hills like a whip cracked right.

  Teague raises his gun towards Rolster Bridge in salute

  to what they both reckon is one less black-and-white.

  They are in the field that Grunt has just cut for grass

  when something whirls overhead, low and close by,

  rotor blades slicing segments out of the stars

  and a searchlight roving the hillside like one bright eye

  that has both men and beasts running for cover.

  After that there’s nothing moving, so they go home.

  Grunt is paunching rabbits in the yard when it goes back over

  and he glances up as it passes, its low drone

  sending the dog whimpering under the Fendt,

  making his own teeth rattle and his stomach vibrate.

  The trademark red and blue of the air ambulance

  soaks the hills all around in crimson light.

  He puts the meat in the fridge and turns on the PC

  for a game of his favourite shoot-em-up, ‘Badger Season.’

  As he blasts the black-and-whites red, the events of the evening

  fall into place like cartridges into a gun,

  the soft click into the breech, the gentle squeeze,

  and a bad call which blows everything to kingdom come.

  * lamping – hunting rabbits or other nocturnal animals using off-road cars and high powered lights

  * to paunch a rabbit – to remove the innards

  Full Load

  The rumour runs round the parish like a case of lice:

  the Garveys have gone down with TB.

  Even Teague admits he doesn’t know for sure

  but at seven this morning Jo Tucker, thirty-three,

  the best haulier for miles and not just on price

  points her truck towards the Garvey’s place.

  The verge runs red with rain and the Devon mud.

  She flips the wipers on to double speed,

  turns the radio on and, as the road starts to flood,

  drops down a gear and slows to walking pace.

  Been a while since Jo has driven down this way.

  A line of young alders has sprung up along the brook

  and a new gateway gapes in an old hedge

  fresh laid with a chainsaw and baler twine for crooks.

  Garvey’s farmhouse squats in a veil of grey.

  Grunt, in waterproofs, heaven diluting his tea,

  stands by the slate porch. Jo Tucker steels

  herself for the sight of Grunt’s face. Just one look

  and she doesn’t need to ask, can already feel

  the awful weight of a full load to Hatherleigh.

  She backs up to the shed and drops the ramp,

  slots the side gates in as Grunt opens the doors

  and they watch the cows come out and sniff the air.

  They smell of good grass and good straw,

  the smoky molasses stink of Grunt’s silage clamp.

  Grunt goes to push them on in but Jo says to wait,

  there’s plenty of room in the truck. She walks past

  working their flight zone, and the cows move on

  slipping a bit on the wet ramp. At last

  they are all in and she slams the partition gate.

  “One more to come,” says Grunt, his face a blank

  and out of the shed looms his Red Devon bull.

  The truck rocks as he walks in, his head low,

  the knock and echo of his hooves terrible,

  sweat on his nose and shoulders and muscled flank.

  Jo starts the truck, fighting something like horror,

  and pulls away, wheels briefly adrift in the mire

  only then daring to glance back at Grunt in the lane

  staring at her, at the truck, hands loose at his sides,

  getting smaller and smaller in her rear-view mirror.

  Kingdom Come

  At market the talk is all about Colin and his

  six-month sentence suspended for two years

  and the boy

  and the other boys

  Tom who took the tractor for a swim

  Dick who fell in the sheep dip

  Harry rolled flat by round bale hay

  the wives who drown in grain silos

  flailing in bullion like calves in a slurry pit

  brothers winched away by an unguarded drive shaft

  or last seen dancing on overhead power lines.

  “Closer to thee, my Lord,” says Teague.

  “Skip, trip or fall,” says Grunt.

  Trapped by stacked material

  Uncontrolled exposure to poultry dust

  Manslaughter by gross negligence

  “Meant the world to him, that boy,” says Teague.

  They observe a minute’s silence.

  “And to top it all, he’s disqualified from holding a shotgun licence.”

  Once Upon a Time in the West

  As Jo hands an entry form to the market men

  she clocks Grunt unloading fat lambs in the pennage.

  Waiting to wash out, she’s behind him in the queue,

  parks alongside his Bateson, plotting a duel.

  Two quid for the lad. She grabs the high pressure hose

  and gets a squirt in quick while Grunt is still dozy.

  He’s right back at her, gets her full blast in the chest

  then it’s back and forth like a Spaghetti Western

  until Grunt surrenders, hands reaching for the sky,

  Jo’s barrel cocked at his groin and ready to fire.

  The effect of Grunt’s smile wasn’t part of Jo’s plan

  – Sedgemoor livestock market is no place for romance –

  but when Grunt offers lunch “for the sharpest shooter”

  Jo flushes bright red and finds herself strangely mute.

  A Load of Old Bull

  One deliberate hoof tests the ramp. Head low,

  the bull shoulders out of the slant shadow,

  sashays into the pen with a swagger,

  muscled like a bovine Schwarzenegger,

  and leans on the gate, enjoying the strain.

  “Seven hundred quid,” says Grunt. “A bargain.

  And if he brings me any sort of fight

  he’ll be off quicker than a bride’s nightie.”

  In the late sun, Grunt and the bull glow red.

  Midges dance a garland around their heads.

  Driving home, Jo broods on the loading bay,

  four blokes with sticks, the seller’s cagey eye

  and wonders what postscripts have been added

  to the given pattern of this old bull’s blood.

  New Blood

  Grunt says he got him for a good price.

  Jo says, “Buy cheap, buy twice.”

  Grunt says, “Better buy than borrow.”

  Jo says, “Buy in haste, in leisure sorrow.”

  Grunt says, “Pedigree blood for pedigree seed.”

  Jo says, “Better a good bul
l than a bull of a good breed”

  and “Many a good cow hath an ill calf.”

  Grunt says, “Have you seen his EBV percentiles graph?”

  Grunt says he took a first at the County Show.

  “Handsome is as handsome does,” says Jo.

  Grunt says the vendor is switching to A.I.

  Jo says, “Half the truth is often a lie.”

  Grunt says he covered fifty cows last year.

  Jo says, “Naught so brisk as bottled beer.”

  and “They that promise quick, perform slow.

  Speak as I find,” says Jo.

  Shoot Supper

  There have been two, maybe three, other men for Jo.

  She’d say “mind your own” if you asked her who.

  There have been two, maybe three, other women for Grunt

  but not lately. He confronts the mirror, splashes on Brut,

  digs out his one good suit and is good to go.

  Jo rakes through her wardrobe, twice, but nothing appeals.

  Weeks, she’s been waiting for this – like an old fool –

  the one day of the year Grunt’s off duty in a public place.

  She looks in the mirror, checks her face, her arse.

  “A Devon heifer,” she mutters. “Beef to the heels.”

  It’s boy-girl-boy at the supper. John Teague

  sits up straight all night admiring Jo’s cleavage

  until Colin invites him outside to see his new pick-up.

  Jo empties her glass for courage, and another for luck

  and the evening starts to come unstuck. She has vague

  impressions of Grunt laughing, Grunt filling her glass,

  his arm warm on the back of her chair, his eyes amused,

  his smile lopsided like a tick, a sum well done,

  and she decides to take the chance before it’s gone,

  leans forward to kiss him (just do it!) bold as brass.

  Jo lets herself in back home, quietly, late.

  Sees herself in the mirror in a different light.

  She’s clutching a napkin covered with Grunt’s rough scrawl.

  A map to a meeting place, a car park on the moor.

  Not quite the romance she’d been hoping for. But a date.

  Tercio de Muerte

  Blokes in this business would write Grunt as Theseus.

  Godlike (him being a god) he grapples the bull,

  lugs it to London to parade along Pall Mall

  then coolly butchers it in the name of Reason.

  Or Grunt as Toreador, humble but worthy

  practitioner of fine art playing to the stands,

  his suit of lights coruscating against beige sands,

  dealing hard truths in the Tercio de Muerte.

  Or Grunt as bull-runner, giving the beast the slip,

  vaulting or somersaulting honed handlebar horns,

  depicted in a mosaic, a fresco or as a carved figurine

  in a rite of passage, an initiation ritual, or act of worship.

  So much for history, then. Teague found him huddled

  at the foot of the shed wall, flail chest, not a moan,

  crumpled in all the wrong places. Grunt as dead man.

  But how it was, after the first broadside hustle,

  when things started to get… how to put it… ugly,

  when that great head, that alien will of iron

  kept on coming for Grunt, what flashed before his eyes,

  what he was thinking, no-one knows. Not even me.

  The Ballad of Grunt Garvey and Jo Tucker

  Oh for a story as simple as boy meets girl

  with a love that lasts and a future little Jo

  who walks plastic cows up the ramp of her toy truck

  while little Grunt waves a stick to make them go.

  At eight Jo parks, unfolds and folds the map,

  listens to the metal tick as the big truck cools.

  Low sun flames the gorse. A buzzard mews.

  How does she feel? How do you think she feels?

  I wanted so much more for Jo than this

  slow lengthening of shadows, this swift descent

  winding her way back home through chilly lanes

  trying to guess what was or wasn’t meant.

  And still to come: the horror of Grunt’s yard.

  Jo standing unacknowledged in the crowd.

  Shambles

  Poets and pigs are appreciated only after their death

  – Italian proverb

  Agnus Scythicus

  Also known as the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, this legendary

  animal/plant hybrid was believed to grow sheep as a fruit.

  In medieval times it was used to explain the existence of cotton.

  Here in God’s Own Country, our harvests are legend.

  From John Mandeville to Gulliver, travelers flock

  to rhapsodise the fruits of our sun-kissed ground.

  The jewel in our crown is the Vegetable Lamb

  which springs skyward on a single artichoke stalk,

  pendulous limbs hanging slack from a fleece-blurred bloom.

  Each fruit is wrapped in a boll of whisked wool

  to protect it from wolves. When the monsoon smiles

  water pours from the pods like silk from a spool.

  The umbilicus bends to allow the lamb to graze

  as far as the cord goes, on nard and camomile.

  It circles daintily on hooves of parted hair.

  People in God’s Own Country borrow and sow, sow

  and borrow, attended by thrip and moth and worm

  all keen to help light traps and trenches overflow

  while our children fall like fruit from the neem trees,

  gasping for breath. Bees refuse to sting or swarm,

  and the last cows rock-and-roll and kick up their heels.

  Under the banyan a girl licks her lips and stares

  slow as molasses in spring. Beside her, a boy,

  whose strange, bifurcated hands reach for the stars.

  Witches’ Broom

  Witches’ Broom Disease ravaged cocoa plantations in South America in the 1980s.

  It came on the wind, on the sole of somebody’s shoe,

  on the blade of a machete. And before you could say “stout Cortez”

  spores were forming alliances under the canopy.

  It spread like a secret. Our trees grew ears.

  We watched their biochemistry unravel, limb by limb,

  the ineluctable shift of gold from host to pathogen.

  Now every pod is empty. What can we do?

  Fill our gourds with annatto, so our mouths are a red stain?

  Burn the fat to the devil? The old Gods don’t listen, don’t hear,

  caught between a rock and a prickly pear.

  Ours is bitter water, washed down with bitter certainties,

  and everything swept away by these new brooms.

  Shambles

  This is the cow that peered down the black hole of the captive bolt

  shrugged its clod against the head-gate

  and said, like Gary Gilmour facing a five-man firing squad in

  Utah State,

  “Let’s do it!”

  This is the sheep that held out a hoof

  as the tongs ear-muffed her temples

  and said, like John Amery greeting the hangman in Wandsworth

  Gallows,

  “Oh Mr Pierrepoint, I’ve always wanted to meet you

  but not, of course, under these circumstances.”

  This is the goat that, incompletely stunned,

  offered his throat to the knife

  and said, like Walter Raleigh mentally thumbing the axe,

  “So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.”

  This is the chicken that, shackled by one foot to the rack,

  reached the electric bath for a partial KO

  and said, like Tony Mancini receiving t
he hood at Pentonville

  Prison,

  “Cheerio.”

  And this is the pig that, trotting through the race to the gas cubicle,

  put down his regulation-issue Bible

  and said, like Sean Patrick Flanagan readying his arm

  in a small white room in Nevada,

  “I love you.”

  Pigweed

  Remember the pigweed in twenty-twelve

  decimating our corn. Our bean crop, halved.

  Farming forums debated lost wheat yields

  while combines ground to a halt in the fields.

  Shoots elbowed up through gravel and concrete.

  Cotton was throttled. Ploughs broke, harrows bent.

  Six foot trespassers thick as a man’s thigh

  cocked a snook at all of our pesticides.

  The only advice was “sharpen your hoes.”

  We put chopping crews in to work the rows.

  So much for science and its magic wand.

  Ever cleared a million acres by hand?

  Where we were headed was anyone’s guess

  once the weeds had worked out how to resist.

  *

  The white coats brainstormed a cluster of tricks –

  overlapping residuals, tank mix,

  burn-down, pre- and post-emergence programs –

  all old tactics in a frightening new game.

  Some tried to turn back to the good old ways –

  cover crops, green mulches, long-term grass leys,

  seven year rotations rebuilding soil,

  pre-PKN, pre-chemicals, pre-oil –

  but as marestail, waterhemp and rye grass

  ganged up for a triple-headed advance

  we privately knew we had lost the race,

  caught here between a rock and a hard place.

  Thanks to the pigweed in twenty-thirteen

  we harvested famine, famine, famine.

  *

  We needed a new approach. That’s where I

  came in, an old ranch hand able to fly

  twenty-four/seven, under the radar

  no baggage, no pack drill, codename hades,

  with a great big tank of something orange

  tucked in my old Provider’s fuselage.

  Don’t ask me what I know. All I can say

  is you can’t get proper coverage today

  with your bog-standard tractor mounted rig

  and Dad says faint heart never fucked a pig.