A Pastoral Tale By Susan Dickerson

It’s not nice to compare women to cows. But in the future, there will only be cows and no women. This is a true statement. It’s not as scary as it sounds. Once the technology is perfected, cows will give birth to human babies and nurse them directly from their teats. The men will change the babies’ diapers so they will still be doing their part. Everything will be as it is now. Pretty much.

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The whole world will be a giant golf course. A trillion hole golf course. Truly heroic men will attempt to play all the holes before they die, even though everyone will know the course is designed to make that impossible. But still, they will try.

There will be a hole at the top of Mount Everest. There will be holes on deep-sea oilrigs. The entire Middle East will be a gigantic sand bunker, but it will have holes to play, too. Those will be the hardest holes. Men will die playing those holes. But the men who survive those holes will get two free beer chips to use at Lou’s. Lou’s will have locations in Dallas, Dubai, and Dubbo, so the chips will be easy to exchange. The chips will not be a total rip-off.

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The cows will live in small warehouses beside the fairways. The men will wave to the cows as they play through. The cows will moo, and the men will wear cool sunglasses. The cows will wear cool sunglasses, too, because the men will get a second pair of frames for free.

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The cows will be killed. Sometimes for food. Sometimes for fun.

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Cows will have baby cows to replace themselves before they are killed. Men will have baby men to replace themselves before they die. Neither the cows nor the men will care what happens to the baby cows or the baby men. It will be called the Circle of Life.

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The cows will have smiley faces branded into their flanks. The men will read pamphlets to the cows explaining, in simple terms, the philosophical essence of smiley faces.

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Cows will not own anything. Cows will not own their bodies. Men will be forbidden from coveting each other’s golf clubs; however, the men may covet each of the cows’ bodies.

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The men will grow intensely jealous of the cows. They will resent how they, the men, must die playing golf across the world, while they, the cows, simply watch from the sidelines.

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In a fit of rage, the men will take the sunglasses away from the cows.

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The cows will get cataracts from the sun and become blind. The cows will see this as an improvement.

A hole will be added to the moon. Only men who have saved up four chips to Lou’s can play through to the moon.

Everyone will agree the chips are not a total rip-off.

© 2014 Susan Dickerson

Susan Dickerson is a new writer who recently earned an MFA from The University of Tampa. She has been previously in Drafthorse.

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