Free The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna Page A

the very least.” He tested the bog, which seemed to hold him up. The cow hesitated: should it follow? But when Vatanen turned and ordered it to follow, it summoned up courage. Its hooves did sink a bit, but Vatanen calculated that, in a dry summer like this, a sphagnum-moss bog would support a single cow; besides, the cattle on these outlying farms knew how to cope with bogs.
    But toward the center, the bog turned squashier. The swamp began to give under the cow: it needed to break into a trot if it wasn’t going to sink in the ooze. There was no headway to be made in the mire, so they had to take a detour along some ridges of sphagnum moss. In the slushier spots, Vatanen himself had to break into a trot, and halfway across the swamp his boots stuck in the mud. He gave his leg a furious yank, but his boot remained stuck, and then the other stuck too. With an awkward effort, he managed to jump barefoot onto a dry spot.
    From behind came a lowing. He swung around anxiously to look. The cumbersome cow had been athletically following his footsteps, but now it could no longer keep up. It had sunk to its belly in the bog and lay there motionless, mooing for help.
    Vatanen dropped the calf on a sphagnum ridge and ran to the cow’s help. He tried hauling it by the horns onto a drier patch, but no man is strong enough to heave a cow out of a swamp.
    He had to move fast. Whipping an ax out of his knapsack, he ran fifty yards to some little dead trees that were sticking up out of the marsh. He chopped several down, stripped the sharp twigs off them, and ran back to the cow, which had sunk a little deeper still.
    He thrust the rods he’d made under the cow’s belly. The beast seemed to understand that his intention was good: it didn’t thrash about, even though thin trunks shoved under its belly may well have been painful. The sinking stopped. Vatanen tried to pry the beast higher, but with very little success. The cow was spattered with black mud. The hare loped about in astonishment.
    “Why don’t you do something?” Vatanen snarled, as he prized and heaved at the cow. But the hare didn’t help, harebrained and helpless as it was.
    Vatanen broke off to go and calm the calf, which was on the ridge. He untied the blanket ropes, fastened them end to end, and then went back to fasten the rope around the cow’s shoulders. The cow’s dewlap was deep in mud, and Vatanen was soon black with mud from head to foot.
    The rope just reached as far as the stump of an old marsh redwood five yards away. Vatanen tied it securely to the stump.
    “If you sink now, then that stump’ll sink with you,” he told the cow.
    Anchored to the stump, the cow listened calmly to his words; it made no lowing when it saw him busying himself nearby.
    Vatanen made a tourniquet by separating the strands of the rope and pushing a stick into the gap. Then he began to turn. Soon the rope tightened. The cow’s legs began rising slowly out of the mud. The beast did its best to cooperate. From time to time Vatanen relaxed the tourniquet and went to prize up the cow’s backside, being careful not to injure the udder. The cow was gradually moving toward the stump.
    By turn, Vatanen reeled the cow stumpward, went back to prize the beast up, calmed it.
    During all this labor, time was flashing by so quickly it was evening before Vatanen noticed. He was weary, but he couldn’t leave the cow lying in the marsh all night.
    “No joke, this cowherding!”
    By midnight, Vatanen had gotten the cow into a good enough position for it to struggle out by itself. The beast summoned its last strength for a spurt from the mud and, finding solid ground under it, lay down immediately. Vatanen led the tottering calf to its mother and dropped off to sleep on the ridge himself. It turned cold in the early hours, and he moved over to sleep against the cow’s flank, which was as warm as a chimney corner.
    The morning sun rose on a mucky retinue: a black-mud-bespattered cow; a