hoof in the boot

I heard the Scout drive up, and the garage door open and close. Then I heard my mother chiding, “What the hell did you do now?!? What the hell?!?!…..”. No sound from my dad, but my mom continued on with the interrogation and I could hear a lot of panicked fumbling in the dining room. I slunk in and saw the dining room floor now dyed a lovely and scary crimson color that I had not seen since I almost cut my wrist off in the glass door incident. My dad was sitting on the settee and there was blood seeping out over the top of his right work boot. He always wore these big rubbery work boots when he was working in the field, which was pretty much ALWAYS.

My mom was trying to pull off the boot, but her hands kept slipping from the slick blood and rubber. Each time it would come partway off and then fail and his foot would settle back into the boot as the serum and blood would push over the top and spill on the floor yet again. My dad finally saw me standing there in total horror and yelled at me to get out with that clipped whipsaw way he had of commanding. “Get out – NOW!” I was too scared to move but was able to slowly back out the door and stumble up to my bedroom. I could hear my mother’s accusing voice as she wondered how my dad could have caused such a mess, and it was a long time before the sound faded back into quiet.

I later found out that my dad had been behind a cow that had a problem with its hoof, a common situation where you have to muck out the hoof and apply some sort of medication to it. He had gotten careless and the cow had kicked back at him, missed, and stepped down right into his big rubber boot. It immediately started kicking and trying to free its trapped foot, and had created one hell of a terror inside that boot. His lower leg was badly torn up and it was a long time before he wore that boot again. But I don’t think he ever got careless standing behind a cow or horse after that, you never know when things might go wrong.