‘An ugly brute,’ he said out of the blue, ‘irritable, old – near the end of his career – blind in one eye, but cheap. That’s why dad bought him.’

‘What was this?’ I said. None of us, Claire, Murphys, Youngbloods, not even I had any idea what Atlas was talking about. ‘An animal?’

‘A bull, for Christ’s sake: a bull.’

‘He bought a bull? Your dad?’

‘’Course he did. Farmers shared them out in those days. You only needed one to service the cows – all of them in the neighborhood.’ Mrs Murphy giggled, more because of the bull’s appearance at Claire’s dinner table with its Japanese chrysanthemums, I think, than because of his work with cows. ‘He had a ring through his nose, connected to a twenty-foot chain.’

The bull’s first June was hot. Flies were rampant. Bot flies lay their larvae just under the animal’s skin: Atlas was explaining the details just as Claire brought in the bœuf en croûte. Before he began to carve, wavering to his feet (why ever had Claire arranged to let this drunken oaf carve?), he poked through the pastry – carving knife a scalpel – that covered the roast to demonstrate just where a bot fly might be found; steam gushed out of the roast’s wound. At the other end of the table, an infuriated Claire forgot to pour out the burgundy – which left us with the white wine she’d intended only for the fish. Already the repercussions for tomorrow were terrible.

The boils ooze; they’re very painful. While Jonathan inspected the bull’s back, Rayner stood apart, pitchfork aimed like a bayonet. There were at least a dozen boils. Jonathan touched one with creosote. The bull reared. It’s a magnificent sight – a bull rearing – a ton of anguished beef balanced on its back legs, suspended by a chain through the nose. Then the skin of the nostrils burst open. The ring snapped back against the wall of the barn. The bull tore through an open gate. Jonathan grabbed Rayner’s pitchfork and ran: he cornered the animal at the far end of the field beyond.

Around the dinner table, our silver forks waited tensely in front of our mouths, bœuf en croûte growing cold while Atlas, an old man more frail than he let on and now seriously in his cups, but a wonderful story-teller still and just a little boy all those years ago – too tiny to do anything, too scared to run for help – Atlas stood quiet and watched the bull, and the bull stood quiet, too, there in the field, head toward the unenclosed land beyond, presenting Jonathan with his massive rump: tail switching, ponderous testicles swaying between great thighs, hump of muscle erect above his shoulders.

‘Dad really was lousy with animals,’ Atlas said. ‘He said it again and again: “The bastards just won’t do what you tell them to.” Christ, the worst tool you can use with a bull is a pitchfork. He jabbed at that exposed rump – jabbed – Bull kept backing toward him: backing, swaying, backing: then with a sudden, deft flip, he tossed the pitchfork right out of dad’s hands.’ Carried away, demonstrating with his knife, Atlas tweaked the beef pastry that lay on his plate: it arced through the air and landed amid Claire’s chrysanthemums. In the silence that followed, we, the guests – and our fascination with Atlas’s story – grew manic.