What Comes Naturally
Manolín, a small brown ram belonging to a man who owns a parcel of land with some outbuildings along the train tracks in the river bottoms, was my excuse for stopping when I walked by the farmstead and saw the man and his wife sitting in lounge chairs in their yard, facing the gate. It was mid-July, and I was walking my dogs. I’d come this way for a view of the crazy partying already underway at five p.m. at the big field on the outskirts of my town—the site of the Carmín, a local fiesta to which thousands of people, mainly young adults, flock from all over Asturias. Why do they come? It’s summer, time to party.
I called out a hello, and the man’s wife recognized me immediately, probably because of my dogs, a black Lab and a German shepherd. First the man’s wife and then, a little more slowly, the man came out through the gate to greet us. The dogs were on their leashes and standing obediently at my side, as they had not been three months earlier, when they had passed this way.
On that occasion, after the dogs had escaped from the field where they normally stay, they had presumably passed by this farmstead with its three guard dogs and yard full of geese, but had gone no farther than the next field where Manolín was housed. Had they squirmed in under the fence? Had they jumped it? Had someone let them in, believing they were shut out of their own yard? That is the explanation the owner, Rafa, favored. However it happened, they got in. Then they got to work on poor Manolín.
On arriving at noon that day to check on the ram, Rafa had found the creature prostrate but still alive. Lying in the shade nearby were my two dogs, both of them spent from their exertions.
“It’s not their fault,” he said over the phone after getting my number off one of the dogs’ tags. The dogs had been missing about six hours. “They’re good dogs,” he assured me, and he told me so again when I went to retrieve them. Rafa recounted that he’d had no trouble going right up to the Labrador, who had wagged his tail. For my part, looking around the field, I was aghast at the quantity of wool strewn about. Just one sheep? The tufts appeared to be from a flock. Then we went to see Manolín, safe now in a shed. Rafa told me the thick wool had saved the ram: if the attack had occurred two months later, after shearing time, the scene would have likely been different. Less wool, more blood. Rafa’s wife appeared without introducing herself and frowned at me. I apologized profusely, both for myself and my dogs. Rafa broke in to tell me again that it wasn’t the dogs’ fault, and I accepted the implication without a murmur of protest.
My insurance company paid the vet bills, and I stayed on good terms with Rafa. I moved the dogs from their big yard to my patio. I kept an eye out for Manolín, and whenever I spotted him in his field, I would stop to pet him, as I told Rafa and his wife that July evening. The lane began to fill up as we chatted, and my companions both cast derisive glances at the young people spilling out of the field 100 yards away. Some were just arriving while others who had been drinking for an hour or two came down the lane towards us in search of a bush. “Badly organized,” was Rafa’s pronouncement, mentioning that too few portable toilets had been set up. “Those girls don’t care about showing their bottoms,” he said. “But older people? What are they supposed to do?”
I looked where he was looking, and sure enough two girls with their underpants down and their skirts hiked were squatting beside the road. People were coming and going, not giving them a glance. Not even a surreptitious one. All along the lane people were milling. Young men were unzipping without a trace of embarrassment, and other young women were brazenly squatting in full view beside the lane. Rafa and his wife had seen the same thing every summer for years and were not a bit surprised, but I was astonished. Fifteen feet away, one young man prepared to urinate against the fence just as Rafa looked around and saw him.
“Don’t piss on the gate,” Rafa hollered, and the surprised fellow stopped in mid action. He looked confused. Then understanding dawned. “Oh, you’re the owner,” he said.
“That’s right. Pee all you want into the hedge on the other side,” Rafa answered, and the guy moved across the lane to finish his business against a tree.
Rafa explained that they’d set up the chairs not to view the fun but to protect their property because within a few hours the people in the lane would be drunk. “This is the worst night of the year,” Rafa said.
“Does it go on all night?” I asked.
“Until they all move into town to continue carousing,” said the wife.
The next morning at seven a.m., when I took the dogs for their walk, I saw the evidence: broken bottles all through the streets of the town center, plastic glasses strewn and trampled, clothing left on gates and benches, paper and food littering the sidewalks, some blood splotches here and there, pink and tan puddles of vomit, and one display window knocked out of a business, done not to loot the interior, it seemed, but for the joy of destruction. Amid the trash and debris of the festivities, several partiers still stumbled along. In a doorway two people embraced. Street cleaners were working with brooms and hoses. A few patrons sat at tables in a café. “No dog will resist a sheep,” Rafa had said, able to forgive my dogs, and it appeared that no happy carouser will resist another drink. Just as Rafa had sympathized with my dogs resting in the shade after their attack, I sympathized with a young man seated on a bench at a bus stop. He was asleep, hands hanging between his knees and chin on his chest. On the ground between his feet lay his phone. It seemed likely he’d either step on it or eventually walk away from it. “Hello,” I said. No response. “Hello?”
The fellow didn’t move. I put my hand on his shoulder. Still no response. So I shook him gently. Slowly, slowly his eyes opened, but he didn’t look up. “Your phone,” I said. He was staring down at it. Slowly, slowly, he bent forward to pick it up. “Too much fun last night?” I said, and he slowly raised his eyes. He smiled sweetly and nodded. “Too much.” Then he was asleep again, doing what comes naturally.
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