May Day

By Helen Byers
helenbyers.com
[email protected]
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It was a spring afternoon in Medanales, and a gentle breeze was wafting through the screen door. I had just settled down at my drafting table when I heard it.

Someone in the neighborhood was calling out.

"Help!...Help!...Help!"

It sounded deep, like a man's voice—but hoarse, a bit muffled. Then it came again, more urgently.

"Help!...Help!...Help!"

I rushed through the screen door, crossing the garden to the edge of the arroyo. There was no sign of anyone down there. Then where? On the other side of the arroyo?     

My mind flashed back to an early spring morning years ago, when I lived in a quiet town near Boston. I heard a man's voice calling for help, over and over, just like this. I rushed out, calling back, "Where are you?", and he could only respond, "Here! Over here!"

I ran through a neighbor's yard to the next block up, and found the man in agony, sprawled on the frozen lawn of his wood-framed house, with a broken femur. He had been fixing a gutter on the roof, when the ladder slipped.

("What an idiot," he moaned. "I'll never do that again!")

But what could be happening here, in Medanales? Various scenarios occurred to me:  a guy pinned by a fallen tree, or a piece of machinery, or a farm animal? The possibilities were endless, maybe.

I rushed back to the house and woke Ed up from his nap.

"I think someone's hurt or in trouble! I think he's across the arroyo."

Ed was up in a flash, and we were off down 142 in his car.

We stopped first at Djann and Lisa's. Lisa was outdoors with a helper, working on a project of some kind. Had they heard someone calling for help just now? No, they had not, they said, looking concerned. Had we asked the Vigils, next door?

We stopped there next. Three men stood outside. Had they heard anyone calling "Help! Help! Help!" a few minutes ago?  They exchanged puzzled glances. No, but they would keep an ear out. Maybe farther down the road, or in the neighbor's field...?

At the next stop, a woman was outdoors just beyond the gate. While Ed stepped out to ask her, I stayed in the car. Sitting there, I could just gaze off into the pasture beyond the fence, where there were cattle.

​t was there that I heard that call again, though this time louder. The same exclamation—urgent, hoarse, repeated three times—but not in human language. Then I realized: It came from no fellow. It was a cow's bellow.