I was just a kid. A runaway. I had jumped out of the truck because the man was going to rape me. I got hurt a little, but I got up and ran towards the woods while I looked back at his taillights to see what he'd do.
He turned around his pick up truck in the middle of the highway- he went a bit before he stopped though. I guess he couldn't make up his mind. There was a slight embankment and then some trees.
I made for the trees and then I got real still. He came back driving slow with the window down, looking closely at the side of the road. I didn't wanna breathe. I prayed to be invisible. I prayed for him to forget. I prayed for him to get tired of looking. To remember he had someplace else to be. Like home to his wife, who probably had dinner on the table waiting for him.
He seemed so angry. I thought he would most likely kill me if he found me. After a while he gunned it up and drove away. I didn't trust him though. I thought it was a trick to get me to come back out on the road. I was in rural Texas on a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. I was a run away from a juvenile institution. No one would ever know what happened to me, and my last hours would hurt. I waited.
Finally I realized I'd better get going. I would stay to the side of the road for a few miles, just in case, but if morning came and I was still here, he might get me on his way to work.
Hunched down, I started heading north, keeping one eye on the road and trying to watch where I put my feet in the dark. I was still convinced he was going to come back. I had this feeling that I was being watched. I couldn't shake it. That skin creeping feeling, when you just know someone is watching you. My panic was building again. What a sucky night. I think I broke my collarbone and a drunk cowboy wants to kill me. I'm crawling in a ditch and now someone is somewhere out there watching me and I'm too afraid to look around and face the truth.
Then I heard something. Oh well. If I've got to die, I might as well look it in the eye and end the torture of not knowing. Maybe I'd get eaten by wolves, which would be better than getting fucked by a drunk Texas cowboy.
I was laying on the tall grass in the ditch, out of breath from the combination of fear, the blinding pain in my right shoulder, and the exertions of my stealthy progress. I turned my head and looked. At least forty eyes were calmly gazing right at me, only a few feet away, right on the other side of the fence.
Cows.
I got up and started moving again. They moved with me. When I stopped, they stopped. "Go away! - He'll know I'm here if you keep following me like this" They chewed aimlessly and meditated the small human female crawling along, determined to keep me company. After what seemed like hours, I reached the end of their fence and they had to stop. They piled up into the corner, watching my retreating back.
I stopped and turned to look at them, then sat down. I was alone in the universe, except for those cows. They had become my companions, my family. I lay down on the ground and went to sleep.
In the morning they were gone.