Words Are Hard

Beatrice looked up from her knitting, and for a moment she didn’t recognize the man standing in the doorway as her husband. Instead, he appeared to be little more than a collection of bruises and dirt and torn suspenders in a vaguely human shape. Only when her eyes met his did she spring to action.

“Jed!” she cried, rushing over to him to help him inside. Once she got him seated at the kitchen table with a cold glass of water, she asked what had happened.

“Well, Beatrice,” said Jed, “I’m afraid to say we’ve been visited by a snake oil salesman. Only, no. I should not phrase it that way, as doing so erases my own culpability in the matter. Visited we were not. Instead, it was I who invited this snake oil salesman into our home, through the vast yet unseeable cloud of devilishness that has so poisoned the minds of today’s youth known as the internet.”

“I don’t follow, Jed,” Beatrice said, taking a seat across the table.

Jed took a long drink of water and fell into an extended coughing fit. When it finally faded, he continued. “You’re aware, are you not, of the purchase I made recently from an apparent store without walls located on the highway paved with something so immaterial as information? The one I thought prudent due to its appeal to both our livestock and to us, given that our life here on these acres requires quite a lot of time spent on our feet?”

“I am aware, yes,” Beatrice said.

“Well, I had left it in the box for some time, for I wanted its inaugural use to be something of a special event,” Jed said. “Then, given these stretches of such unkind weather, I thought: perhaps now is the time. So I took the device with me to the barn, hoping to ease the muscles and, in turn, the minds of the younger among our cattle. Only, despite being promised convenience by its marketing copy, I found it impossible to apply this quote-unquote calf massager to any of our calves. In fact, the more I tried, the more the bunch of them grew restless, and the only part of their mind that seemed to ease was the swath of synapses that keep mutinous thoughts at bay. Soon enough, they began kicking. It was here that I sustained the injuries you see before you. It didn’t take long, though, before they expanded their catalog of destruction beyond yours truly. They seemed to grow a sort of malicious bovine sonar, capable of seeking all of the weak points within their living area. A loose board in the wall, the exact spot on a fence door to swing it wide open–these are the places they planted their hooves. I tried briefly to regain control, but eventually, I gave up and closed my eyes, waiting for the chaos to swallow me whole and grant me entry to the afterlife. Obviously, no such thing happened. When the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears quieted enough to hear the silence beyond, I looked around, at which point I found we now live as cattle farmers with no cattle. They’ve all escaped, Beatrice, every last one of them.”

“Oh dear,” Beatrice said.

“If there is a single glimmer of positivity to be found among this literal mess of hay,” Jed said, “it is that the device worked better than promised. On me, at least. While it could do nothing to ease the aches in my arms, chest, forehead, ears, nose, cheeks, back, hands, or thighs, its deep kneading rollers and adjustable intensity relieved not only the pain in my feet, as promised, but also the musculature at the rear of my lower legs.”

The room fell into silence. After a moment, Beatrice said, “Jed, you know that what you’re describing, the muscles on the rear of your leg? They would be your… calf muscles.”

Jed looked at his glass of water for a period of more than a minute. “Beatrice,” he said, at length, “I’d like to buy you a nice summer dress in exchange for your silence on this morning’s happenings at tomorrow’s knitting group meeting, so as not to spread my homonym-related foolishness all about the county.”