The Education Process
Swerthington College was renowned as one of the world’s preeminent education institutions. Its hallowed halls had seen a Noble prize winner, various CEOs, and many others of note pass through them. Its’ buildings were made of stone to symbolize the firm foundation they were instilling in their young charges. They stone provided structure for a facade of ivy. Ivy on your campus meant you could charge higher tuition.
This night the campus at Swerthington was still. The evening had been spent in the reveries of which college students engage when Midterms are finished. Swerthington was not immune to these traditions. Empty beer bottles and spent cigarettes of unknown origin littered the grounds. The birds of the area feasted on the scraps of pizza and vomitus. But inside, inside the dorms, activity could still be observed.
In defiance of the quiet, room 206 in the Blake house of Thornbury Dormitory had yet to end the day. There, two roommates sat astride their beds, slurping noodles from bowls of hot liquid. The young men were tired to be sure. The lead up to the exams had been brutal with very little sleep and even less relaxation.
“Ugh!” Justin put his bowl of noodle-ey soup on the table between the beds. “I’m sick of ramen. It’s probably all I’ve eaten in weeks.”
“True that.” Justin’s roommate, Kipper, placed his bowl next to his friend’s. “Can’t wait until I can graduate and get to eat some real food.” Justin and Kipper were sophomores.
“What I’d give for a nice juicy steak right now.” Justin waxed nostalgic there.
“Oh man!” Kipper had been sparked to excitement by the mere thought of charred red meat. “With the juices running down your chin when you gnaw the bone!”
“You said it!” Justin, going with the fantasy, smacked his lips. “With some of that fancy butter on top that they sometimes do!”
“Mmmmm.” Kipper was lost in thought.
The young men reclined on their beds, not feeling the urge to sleep. Both college boy’s minds floating adrift in a sea of beef juices and milkfat were interrupted by a visitor appearing in their dorm room doorway. It was a visitor they both recognized immediately. It was Jonesy from across the hall.
“Whatcha doin’?” Jonesy was always wondering what they were doing.
“Hangin’.” Kipper moved over so their friend could sit.
Justin sat upright in his bed. “Say.” He had an idea. “I have an idea.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jonesy there.
“Yeah. You know that farm outside town. The one you drive by every time you come or go from home?”
“The dairy farm?” Kipper knew it well.
“Yeah, that one.”
“You thinking of taking up farming?” Kipper snickered.
“No. I’m thinking taking up eating steak.”
“Dude! You hit your head on somethin’?” Jonesy was the one snickering this time.
“I’ll tell you a little story.” Justin waited for them to stop giggling like little schoolgirls. “My Dad used to say that his grandfather would keep a cow on his land for milk.”
“I could go for a glass of milk right now. “ Jonesy was always mooching something from the guys. “Hey, anyone gonna eat that?” He indicated Justin’s bowl of noodles on the table.
“Help yourself.” Justin pushed the bowl of noodles closer to Jonesy. Kipper poured his bowl into Justin’s.
Justin furthered his story. “Not just the milk though. When they ran low on food he’d take the cow to the slaughterhouse.”
“That’s cold.” Kipper frowned.
“Yeah, but then the slaughterhouse would trade his live cow for pounds and pounds of frozen beef parts from other people’s cows.”
“At least they were other people’s cows.” Jonesy slurped some noodles. “I’d have trouble eating my own cow I think.”
“Don’t think you’d have trouble eating anything.” Kipper jabbed his friend in the ribs. “So what’s the point? You got a cow hidden under your bed there?”
Justin smiled a knowing smile. He was bringing home the thrust of his idea. “We steal one of the cows at the dairy farm. Just think. The farmer’s got so many that he probably won’t miss just one and besides that how much security is there on a dairy farm? They ain’t got no secret service or such, right? No swat teams?” Justin fell into a bit of colloquial language on that last bit.
“Hmmm.” Jonesy.
“Hmmm.” Kipper. “And suppose you steal a cow, how are you gonna get it to the slaughterhouse? Put a saddle on it?” Kipper and Jonesy laughed out loud at that one.
“That’s just a problem needing a solution.” Justin was serious.
The boys fell quiet for a bit. They had a lot of information to assimilate from their friend. The plan sounded preposterous on the surface of it but suppose it could be done? They could be knee deep in beef steaks this time tomorrow.
“My uncle owns a furniture store across from the gymnasium. They have a couple of trucks for moving furniture around and deliveries and such. You could borrow one of those?” Jonesy was letting his voracious appetite get the better of him.
“What? You’re not coming too?” Justin had counted him in on the caper.
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“Can’t. I’m on probation here as it is.”
÷
Jonesy’s uncles’ business had the primary location of the strip mall by the school’s gymnasium. Behind the showroom, the ‘Furniture Mart’ boasted a vehicle lot bordered by a high chain-link fence. The gate to the fence had a chain with a padlock.
“What do we do now?” Kipper seemed resigned to aborting the mission.
“Jonesy said the key was under a rock somewhere.”
The young men scanned the perimeter of the fence with Kipper being to first to spy the aforementioned stone, this one made of granite. “Got it!” He held the key high.
Selecting the truck with the ramp attached to it and finding the keys to the truck under the passenger seat like Jonesy had foretold, the caper was on. All that was left was to drive the thirty miles to the McNamara farm.
The farm itself was dark with little evidence of anything living. The farmhouse where, ostensibly, the owner of the farm lived, was pitch black inside. The big red barn out back was bathed in a single soft light coming from the lamp hanging over the front of the barn door. The fields where the boys had expected to find the cows were empty.
“Where’ the beef?” Kipper engaged in a bit of wordplay there from an ancient TV Ad.
“Dunno.”” Justin was confused as well. “Maybe they put them up in the barn overnight?”
The pair of would-be cattle rustlers made their way to the barn to find the door to the barn locked.
“Why would someone lock a barn door?” Kipper didn’t see the logic.
“For folks such as us, I guess.” Justin did.
“Hey what’s that?” Kipper pointed to the corral by the barn where a large black animal stirred.
” Jackpot!” Justin saw it as well. “Let‘s go get her before we wake the farmer.”
Arriving at the corral the purloiners of farmer McNamara’s beef found a very large animal staring at them.
“It’s huge!” Kipper evaluated the size.
“It’ll produce a ton of steaks I’m thinking!” Justin licked his lips in anticipation.
Now what the boys didn’t know was that the animal they now beheld was a fully mature bull named Demon’s Fire. The beast had a reputation. The reputation had travelled from McNamara’s neighbors to all the farms in the county. This beast, generously named Demon’s Fire, and by generous the farmer was giving the beast the benefit of any doubt (of which there was none), anyway, the farm animal from hell was known to be the most ornery, rage fueled, cowpoke chasing fiend ever to come from Satan’s pits.
But still the boys carried on.
“You grab one horn, and I’ll grab the other. Then we can coax him into the truck.” Justin, ever the rosy-eyed optimist, was the first to climb over the corral railing.
Dear reader, it seems advanatgeous that we should now step away from the story for a bit. It’s been said that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it may be the case here that there is a total lack of knowledge. The difference between a docile milk cow and a hormone frenzied bull will eventually dawn on the boys in this tale, but we fear the knowledge will come swiftly and be earned at great pain.
Let us then content ourselves with the imagining of it. What will transpire will not be pleasant. It will not be pretty. The pursuit of knowledge is noble in and of itself. We dare not keep that opportunity from our young men.
÷
Days later and out of the hospital, the boys, wrapped in bandages and casts, sat on their beds trying to make sense of their escapade at the McNamara farm. Aching from the seven broken bones and nine cracked ribs (not to mention the lacerations and bruising) they had decided that it may not have been their best idea.
The door to their room opened and their friend from across the hall entered.
“So … when we gonna char up some of those steaks?” Jonesy could almost taste it.
“Never.” Kipper looked at his buddies and shook his head. “It wasn’t as easy as we thought.”
“Bah!” Jonesy was disappointed. “You mean I had to clean up all of that blood in my uncle’s van and I get nothing for it!” Jonesy’s eye grew wide with the recollection of it. “My uncle was really pissed!”
“Them’s the gist of it, man.” Justin rubbed his arm remembering the cut there that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
The young men sat in silence. Justin fiddled with his laptop; he had a paper to write for English Comp. Kipper grabbed a tennis ball and began bouncing it off the wall of the dorm room.
Jonesy rubbed his stomach. “You guys got anything to eat? I’m kinda hungry.”
“Over there. In the box.” Kipper indicated the large cardboard box by the door. “Make me one too, OK?”
“Yeah, me too.” Justin looked up from his laptop.
Jonesy rummaged through the box pulling out package after package of ramen noodles.
“You guys want shrimp, chicken or beef?”
Jonesy was startled by the response. He hadn’t expected the animation in it. The chorus came loud and clear. It was sung, nay screamed, in unison.
“NOT BEEF!”
