Free Can't and Won't: Stories by Lydia Davis Page A

that there is a layer of snow on their backs. There is also a layer of snow on their faces, and even a thin line of snow on each of the whiskers around their mouths. The snow on their faces is so white that now the white patches on their faces, which once looked so white against their black, are a shade of yellow.
    Against the snow, in the distance, coming head-on this way, separately, spaced far apart, they are like wide black strokes of a pen.
    A winter’s day: First, a boy plays in the snow in the same field as the cows. Then, outside the field, three boys throw snowballs at a fourth boy who rides past them on a bike.
    Meanwhile, the three cows are standing end to end, each touching the next, like paper cutouts.
    Now the boys begin to throw snowballs at the cows. A neighbor watching says: “It was only a matter of time. They were bound to do it.”
    But the cows merely walk away from the boys.
    They are so black on the white snow and standing so close together that I don’t know if there are three there, together, or just two—but surely there are more than eight legs in that bunch?
    At a distance, one bows down into the snow; the other two watch, then begin to trot towards her, then break into a canter.
    At the far edge of the field, next to the woods, they are walking from right to left, and because of where they are, their dark bodies entirely disappear against the dark woods behind them, while their legs are still visible against the snow—black sticks twinkling against the white ground.
    They are often like a math problem: 2 cows lying down in the snow, plus 1 cow standing up looking at the hill, equals 3 cows.
    Or: 1 cow lying down in the snow, plus 2 cows on their feet looking this way across the road, equals 3 cows.
    Today, they are all three lying down.
    Now, in the heart of winter, they spend a lot of time lying around in the snow.
    Does she lie down because the other two have lain down before her, or are they all three lying down because they all feel it is the right time to lie down? (It is just after noon, on a chilly, early spring day, with intermittent sun and no snow on the ground.)
    Is the shape of her lying down, when seen from the side, most of all like a bootjack as seen from above?
    It is hard to believe a life could be so simple, but it is just this simple. It is the life of a ruminant, a protected domestic ruminant. If she were to give birth to a calf, though, her life would be more complicated.
    The cows in the past, the present, and the future: They were so black against the pale yellow-green grass of late November. Then they were so black against the white snow of winter. Now they are so black against the tawny grass of early spring. Soon, they will be so black against the dark green grass of summer.
    Two of them are probably pregnant, and have probably been pregnant for many months. But it is hard to be sure, because they are so massive. We won’t know until the calf is born. And after the calf is born, even though it will be quite large, the cow will seem to be just as massive as she was before.
    The angles of a cow as she grazes, seen from the side: from her bony hips to her shoulders, there is a very gradual, barely perceptible slope down; then, from her shoulders to the tip of her nose, down in the grass, a very steep slope.
    The position, or form, itself, of the grazing cow, when seen from the side, is graceful.
    Why do they so often graze side-view on to me, rather than front- or rear-view on? Is it so that they can keep an eye on both the woods, on one side, and the road, on the other? Or does the traffic on the road, sparse though it is, right to left and left to right, influence them so that they graze parallel to it?
    Or perhaps it isn’t true that they graze more often sideways on to me. Maybe I simply pay more attention to them when they are sideways on. After all, when they are perfectly sideways on, to me, the greatest surface area of their bodies is visible to me; as soon as