LOST

Dawned with a sky peach color and the smell of steam of freshly milked milk. It was January 1, 2012, in Navarro, and the field still kept echoing rockets and firecrackers that had shown up to the wombs. It was 2 AM on a silent morning and Pedro Godoy launched the vacuum pump, the same as any day of the past 30 years, a buzz that was for him as music of work. Opened the gate of the corral waiting for you to come the cows that were brought from the field. Then we saw it: the ears on the tip and the muzzle smutty ground, a black dog, skinny, standing among the Holstein who were entering as if he had belonged to the group all the life.

—What are you doing here? —murmured Peter, while whistling to rush the first cows on the milking row.

The dog did not respond, of course, but neither moved. He looked at the cows with serious concern, as if he was counting one by one after the scare of midnight. Each explosion of pyrotechnics had been pushing farther into the country, to the point of being in the middle of a dairy cow herd who grazing and ruminated smoothly in the middle of the night. There, between udders and tails, the noise of the world seemed muffled.d.

After a while, when the last of the liner came out with their “plop” and the milk stopped humming for the spouts, Peter came up with a green plastic bucket and served as a squirt of warm milk with its foam. The dog took it with care, without anxieties, as if he knew that drinking milk in the dairy farm is almost a ritual. After he layed down on the edge of the hallway, tongue out, guarding the door while the cows walked back into the field. When the last one passed, he arose and left the place walking after them.

—If you want to stay, stay, " said Peter. But here we´ve got work to be done.

The dog stayed. After some time, everybody called him Black. He wouldn´t bark at the cows neither would hurry them as they moved just went with them. As the cows left the parlor he would walk side to side, to step even, and if any are hung around looking at a butterfly, he made a slight detour, without hesitation, to get her back in pace. He met the electrified fence from the first spark that pinched his nose, and since then it has been respected as a law. He knew where the fence was, where the studs were loose and where tender grass was growing faster after some rain.

The routine was softening. In the waiting pen he would choose the shadow of a paradise where he rested with the patience of those who understand the times the dairy: milk, resting, grazing; and milking again. In the winter snuggled up nicely and close to a grass bale frayed behind the shed, which still smelled the warmth of the engine, and slept deeply with the runrún coming from the milking machine as a lullaby. In summer looking for a stain of fresh alfalfa, curled up, watching “his” cows as a serene guard.

The cows adopted the dog without assembly. The 283 licked his head with the harsh tongue; the 97 would let him pass through a small step in when it was muddy; a curious heifer more approached the cold muzzle to his ear, and Black barely flickered, stoically. Sometimes reclining in the middle of the paddock, and the animals grazed around, as if he were a live landmark, which confirmed that everything was in order. Other times, coming back from milking he was ahead on one side f the path, looking at how the muddy cows rears vanished in the low fog with the satisfaction of the stallholder to see the job well done.

—Black has his own agenda —said Peter proudly—. When the dog look at me it seems he´d understand me; but has a better understanding with the cows.

There were rainy days, when the sky stitched clouds and the mud trying to swallow the boots. Black walked through anyways, and It shook itself at the end like emptying a bucket. There were mornings of frost where the wiring sounded like a cold guitar and the breath of the cows drew ghost in the air; Black, would put the nose in the straw, and only peeked an eye, without leaving the booth. There was also an afternoon of north wind that flies wowed at the herd; that Black walked between cows legs, without hurry, as if his presence could calm the general annoyance.

And there was the fresh milk ceremony. Peter, true to his word, he withdrew a green bucket at the end. The Black would drink and then stand with his white mustache, serious, as if he were wearing a medal. He asked for nothing more. That daily gesture was enough, a handshake between man and dog sealed with warm milk.

Years passed like this, with Negro almost invisible, so integrated was he, until that morning when the news hit like hail on the iron roof: the dairy was closing. The owners had decided to sell the cows. Pedro remained silent; Negro bowed his head, sensing a new sadness in the air. The trucks arrived. The corral by the chute became a corridor of farewells. The cows lumbered up the ramp, each with its yellow number like an ID tag in its ear. Number 283 mooed a long, drawn-out voice; number 97 took two extra steps; the curious heifer sniffed the board before daring to approach.

El Negro didn't bark. It's not a guard dog's job to shout during duels. He sat to one side, tail straight and body tense, watching every movement. When the cage door closed and the truck disappeared, kicking up dust on the road, the silence of the countryside seemed different, deeper. El Negro sniffed the air: there lingered the smell of manure, of cut grass, of damp straw… and the figure of his friend Pedro Godoy, still, his hands in his pockets.

"Come on, Negro," Pedro finally said. "We got another dairy farm. It won't be the same cows, but it's the same work. If you want to come..."

The dog got up without hesitation. He walked over to Pedro, brushed his back against his leg, and glanced sideways at the gate from which no troops would ever emerge again. It wasn't betrayal; it was continuity. After all, he had arrived fleeing the noise, seeking refuge among the cows, and now he was staying, following a voice. Loyalty, Pedro thought as he secured the last little post with wire, has these silent ways.

From then on, at the new dairy farm, Negro repeated the choreography he knew: tend, accompany, wait. He learned about other pens, other pastures, other 283 with different numbers. But every now and then, when the sky turned peach and someone in town lit a belated firework, Negro would prick up his ears and gaze into the distance, as if counting, once again, that all his cows were where they should be. Then he would lie down by the door of the parlor, waiting for the milk jug and the “Come on, Negro” that confirmed him that his world—made of cow hooves, mud, and foam—kept turning.

Because some dogs don't have an owner or a farm: they have a job. And Negro's job, since that morning in 2012, was to be the guardian of the cows on a dairy farm and the companion of a man named Pedro. And that job, as long as there were cows and as long as there was Pedro, he never left undone.