Page 4 - FINAL DESTINATION

G B TAYLOR
sign of it. Shouldn't there still be a foundation or the remains of the huge stone fireplace his mother and aunt had talked about?
Neil climbed out of the car and stretched. His muscles were stiff from hours of sitting on the plane and in the car. The humid late-Summer air, with the added warmth of the after- noon sun, loosened the aching muscles in his back and shoul- ders. He drew in a deep breath of what he expected to be fresh country air and got a nose full of the stink of cow dung instead. His mother had always complained about the smell of the city but he would take bus fumes over the reek of livestock any day.
He walked around the car working the fatigue out of his legs and looked over the fields for the missing house. A barbed wire fence enclosed a field that held a small herd of cows. Most of the cows were grazing along the fence line. Some of them were trying to poke their heads between the wires for what they must have thought were the sweeter grasses on the other side. The closer ones looked up from their foraging and watched Neil with dull curiosity as he approached the fence.
Leaning forward, he put both hands on a fencepost and arched his back, loosening some of the kinks. When he looked up one cow was ambling over to him. It stuck its head over the topmost wire to sniff at him. He thought he saw some expecta- tion in its large dark eyes.
"Sorry girl," Neil said. "I don't have any treats for you." Then he thought, what the hell would be a treat for a cow? He knew horses liked sugar cubes and apples but did cows eat anything other than grass and grain? He reached out to pat the large brown head but stopped himself when he could not remember if cows bite or not. He said, "Good cow," and looked away from the expectant eyes.
It was then that he noticed that the patch of gravel he had pulled the car onto extended beyond the fence. Several feet into the field, it divided into two parallel dirt tracks. The grass was reclaiming the tracks, but they were still visible running across
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