When a Bull Gets Angry

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Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

When a Bull Gets Angry

August 22, 2008

The West's Awake by Cormac MacConnell

IN Drimconga Upper last Tuesday evening at around three o’clock there were occasional bursts of bright sunshine between scattered showers of warm rain from the west. The face of the road from Teelmore to the town through Drimconga Upper steamed when the sun shone, making it hazy then, and slicked blackly when the showers came back again.

There were cumulus clouds high above, hardly any wind to speak of, a heavy kind of evening, but not the worst of them by a long chalk.

Jimmy Rochford was coming down from his own place on the hill on the tractor when he saw Dan McCarthy’s green Land Rover stopped at the gate into the field where his heavy bullocks are this time of the year.

He stopped just in front of the Land Rover and waited patiently for Danny to come back out of the field. This was during one of the sunny spells, and the road was steaming again.

Jimmy’s black and white sheepdog went on down to the cross ahead of him. Moore’s two terriers at the bungalow at the cross barked first, but then soothed down when they recognized Bertie Ahern.

Jimmy is a Fianna Failer and calls all his working dogs by the name of whoever is taoiseach (prime minister) at the time. Bertie’s big long wet tail wagged lazily as the three dogs started a sniffing session, the terriers’ butty tails wagging furiously.

The postman’s green van passed the dogs and they moved out of its way but passed no heed on it. Jacko had finished his round for the day and was heading back to town. He passed Jimmy’s tractor with a casual wave and kept on going.

Jimmy knew he would be having a quiet pint in the Rook’s Feather inside 20 minutes and would be chatting horses and racing with Tomsie Noone and the Quare Fella. Both of them are on the dole, never worked really in their lives, always have enough for slow pints, cause no harm to nobody.

Jimmy Rochford lit a cigarette, sitting there on the steel tractor seat, and wondered lazily how the Quare Fella got his nickname.

When he concentrated a bit he knew the man was Frawley by surname but couldn’t remember his Christian name. It had been the Quare Fella for so long probably everybody had forgotten it.

He was one of the few who was always addressed by the nickname, “Hiya Quare Fella.” That’s rare enough.

He never worked after he came back from England in his early forties. He’d been married over there to an Englishwoman but it broke down.

It was said he got a bit of compensation for a foot injury on the buildings. When he came home his mother was alive and he lived with her in the council house until she died, and since then alone.

People say he was very good to his mother always.

The Quare Fella poaches the two rivers round the town and sells the salmon and some eels to the three restaurants. He drinks only Guinness and can carry it well.

He doesn’t talk much to anyone other than Noone. They both vote Fianna Fail, thought Rochford with mild satisfaction.

He came out of his reverie when he heard a loud muffled kind of shout, half a scream, from the field. He was shocked still for a few seconds and then started the tractor and drove it around the back of the Land Rover in through the open gate. He saw the trouble like a shot.

There were no bullocks in the field at all, just the big Hereford bull, and the bull had Danny trapped in the spring well corner near the stone wall. Danny had the bull by the horns but was pinned against the wall as the huge animal tried to get its horns free.

It was tossing the big man around like a rag doll and snorting and snuffling rather than roaring. Danny was clearly nearly at the end of his tether. Getting closer on the speeding tractor, Jimmy saw his neighbor was bleeding from the nose and mouth.

He rammed the tractor into the bull’s backside, shouting, to attract its attention and distract it from its prey. There was a loose rock in the wall. He grabbed it and hit the enraged animal on the back of the skull as hard as he could.

Danny, groaning, began to sag down towards the ground, his hands slipping away, finger by finger, from the horns. The bull turned, as his hands slipped from the horns, and looked at Jimmy Rochford.

The animal’s eyes were red and incredibly malignantly intelligent. It charged at Rochford with surprising instant speed.

He struck it on the slimy frothing nose with the rock, felt gristle crumble at the impact, but then was trapped, as Danny had been, between the huge skull and the big wheel of the tractor. He dropped the rock and caught hold of the horns.

He began to shout for help, but Danny was lying against the wall apparently unconscious. The bull backed off a bit and then drove him back against the tractor again. Something snapped in his back. He began to scream but hardly any sound came out.

He fell to the ground and, deliberately, malevolently, the bull knelt down on his chest whilst at the same time trying to hook him with its horns. Jimmy Rochford would have been dead in less than a minute.

The bull, snuffling bloody froth from its nostrils, went back to kneel down heavily with terrible intent on the inert chest of McCarthy. It then began to gore him, throwing his body all around the trampled corner. The engine of the tractor was still running.

It was Bertie Ahern’s barking that raised the alarm. Tot McGuire was passing on his tractor and saw what had happened.

He closed the gate in case the bull would get out and called the emergency services. It had been raining when the incident happened but there was sunshine when the Guards arrived and the road was steaming again, creating a heavy haze.

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