The White Bone Read Online Free PDF Page B

water, She-Demands leading them downshore from the She-S’s. Hail Stones limps behind the cows, and She-Soothes rumbles to him, “Try not to soak that foot! She-Soothes will bring you all the tail grass you can eat!”
    “Let’s not overdo it!” cries She-Screams. “What little food there is left is going to have to last us until who knows when!”
    “That hasn’t stopped you from feasting like a bull,” She-Snorts rumbles.
    “Or you!” She-Screams shrieks. She tosses her trunk.
    She-Screams is an ugly cow. Her face bubbles with warts, her tusks are blunt and chipped, and yet she carries herself with the arrogance of a beauty. Like She-Snorts (a true beauty), she sways her rump and tosses her trunk, except that in her case the intent is not always clear, especially to strangers, who have been known to back away in alarm from her haughty greeting gestures.
    “I have my suitors to consider,” says She-Snorts. She lolls her trunk at Swamp, who–an odd thing for a fourteen-year-old bull calf, especially such a handsome one–shows no interest in the females. Far from attempting to mount them he scarcely sniffs them, and it is this unnatural but welcome passivity that has allowed him to remain in the family well past the age of expulsion. “Oh, don’t rebuff me,” She-Snorts says as he ducks away from her, and although pretending to pine for him is a relentless amusement of hers, to which he has never paid any attention, there is, today, a note of melancholy in her voice, and he looks around at her and rumbles, “I am not rebuffing you. I am withdrawing from you.”
    “Hurry up, son,” brays She-Screams. “I feel a spell coming on.” She grabs the end of his tail but he pulls free and enters the water on his own, with his customary torpor.
    Most of the She-S cows make their way toward the sedge grasses. She-Sees has given up trying to chew the coarse browse, and she stays in the shallows to feed on the thinner grasses and creepers. With her are She-Soothes, She-Scavenges (named for her habit of eating whatever falls from anyone else’s mouth) and the three small calves. The She-D’s keep to the shallows as well, She-Demands frequently lifting her trunk in the direction of her dead calf, where She-Stammers lingers as if she wouldlike to stand over the body. Eventually She-Stammers moves into the water and contents herself with standing over her brother, Bent, and after that She-Demands appears less fretful.
    For an hour or so the two families bathe and feed. The She-D’s lean into each other and caress each other with their trunks but still maintain their strange silence, and consequently when She-Demands trumpets, although it is a thin and rattled sound, the She-S’s are so alarmed that they start up a chorus of “Help!” and “Beware!” before they know what the danger is.
    It’s a spotted hyena. Up on the bank, trotting back and forth above the corpse of the newborn. She-Scares sloshes to shore. By the time she reaches it, She-Demands has chased the hyena onto the plain, but for good measure She-Scares chases it farther.
    Back on the beach She-Demands walks over to the corpse. She turns and raises a hind foot. Looking off to one side she brings the foot down on the torso.
    The whoosh of impact carries out onto the swamp. She lifts her foot again. Whoosh!
    Four times she steps on her dead newborn. She kicks sand over the remains, walks to where the sand is dryer and blows two trunkfuls over herself. Her daughters and Hail Stones go to her as the rest of the She-S cows start moving out of the swamp, and She-Scares–who watched the spectacle from up on the bank–slides on her haunches down to the shore and herself kicks sand over the body.
    “Mud,” She-Demands says.
    Mud is coming out of the water a little behind her family, who now surround and sniff the corpse. Surprised at beingsingled out, she nudges her way through the big cows until she is in front of the She-D matriarch. She-Demands used to