Life & Death - Stories for the Whole Family by Antonio Rocha and Adam Booth

Antonio Rocha (0:00)

There was this very big ox. Long, long, broad horns.

Adam Booth (0:07)

That when the first goat got to it, it dropped down onto its knees and kind of... Underneath of it.

Sam Payne (0:20)

Welcome to The Apple Seed, the storytelling podcast from BYUradio, where your family can gather for great stories from great storytellers in every episode. Stories bring us together, and we hope the stories on the show will spark memories and thoughts that you can share with the people you love. I'm your host, Sam Payne. You know, there are big moments in our lives. The births, the deaths, the moments of reverent awareness of our vast and strange and wondrous existence. And sometimes we try to tell the stories of those moments in a way that includes words about the lessons we take from those experiences. Words to describe what they mean.

But other times, just relating the tale of the thing that happened somehow contains all the meaning that can be made.

In this story, we hear from storyteller and mime Antonio Rocha about one of those experiences, the gentle passing from this life of an enormous ox, beloved to the people and animals where he lived. The story doesn't work too hard to make a lot of meaning of the ox's death, but in it you may feel a sense of vastness and strangeness and wonder. I do. I think you'll enjoy hearing Antonio tell you about Piano the Ox on The Apple Seed.

Antonio Rocha (1:45)

When I was a little boy, before I was five, my mom would sit me on the window sill facing the street, Couplestone Street in Miracema, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro State. Rio de Janeiro is a state and a city. But we live far away from the city in this tiny little town called Miracema, and people would be going by on bicycles.

There would be somebody pulling in a donkey, and the donkey would be connected to a wagon, and the wagon would have sugar cane, coffee, whatever it was that was produced on the farm, on the outskirts, and brought to Miracema to be sold. And one day, there was this very big ox, long, long, broad horns, whoosh, his lump on his back, and he was pulling a heavy load, mm, down the street. And my mom, la vai o piano, la vai o piano, she was saying, there goes piano, there goes piano. And I heard that often growing up, sitting on the window sill, she would see a big black ox, she like, there's piano. And when I was old enough, I asked her, you know, what is piano? And she told me the story about the farm where she had grown up. And now she lived in this farm for 14 years. She was not the farmer's girl, she was the daughter of Sr. Manuel, who was a sharecropper. Sharecropper. And so they were very poor, and the farmer had this habit not to kill the animals whenever the animals were too old to work. So he kind of had a retirement plan for the animals, one would say. You know, he would just let the animals loose. There was a lot of land, and the animals would just go about their business and not have to work anymore. And piano was one of them. Piano was this big, big ox, black, with that lump on his back. Every time he laid down on the grass, he looked like a grand piano.

And that's why they nicknamed him Piano. And piano was a major help in the farm. He would pull wagons uphill. Then they would switch the wagon to the front, and he would let the wagon downhill. And when it was harvest time, they would prepare his wagon just right, a carrosa. They made it grind. They made it create a sound so that the people knew the parade was on. And so they would decorate his wagon. They would decorate piano. And piano would come down Main Street with his buddies, with the other oxen.

And those wheels would go.

It was this haunting sound that reverberated through the town.

Sound of the wheels grinding and piano pulling and piano work day in and day out. Until he was very, very old.

And the farmer took the ropes, the harnesses, and he was retired. Now, my mom was horrified of the oxen and the cows. You know, all the kids, she would say, you know, those animals, they scared us. They just stand there, chilling forever and drooling. And their eyes were so intense sometimes. And the kids were always nervous of walking near cows and the oxen. But Piano was different. Piano was different. Piano, after being retired, he would come and take naps right next to where my mom lived, right next to my grandparents' house. He would just lay down. He would lie there.