Winter in the Blood

by James Welch

“We saw them. We just came from there,” he said. He seemed to be measuring the field. “A lovely woman.”

  Ferdinand Horn’s wife stared at me through her turquoise-frame glasses. She had cocked her head to get a better look. It must have been uncomfortable.

  “We’re going to bury her tomorrow,” I said.

  “The hell you say.”

  “We’re not doing anything fancy. You could probably come if you want to.” I didn’t know exactly how Teresa would act at the funeral.

  “That’s an idea.” He turned to his wife. She nodded, still looking up through the windshield. “Oh hell, where’s my manners.” He fumbled in a paper sack between them. He punched two holes in the bottom of a can of beer. It had a pop-top on top. He handed it to me.

  I took a sip, then a swallow, and another. The wine had left my mouth dry, and the beer was good and colder than I expected. “Jesus,” I gasped. “That really hits the spot.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. What the hell are you doing on that damn plug?”

  “I was just riding around. I visited Yellow Calf for a minute.”

  “No kidding? I thought he was dead.” He looked at the field again. “How is he anyway?”

  “He seems to be okay, living to the best of his ability,” I said.

  “You know, my cousin Louie used to bring him commodities when he worked for Reclamation. He used to regulate that head gate back by Yellow Calf’s, and he’d bring him groceries. But hell, that was ten years ago—hell, twenty!”

  I hadn’t thought of that aspect. How did he eat now? “Maybe the new man brings him food,” I said.

  “He’s kind of goofy, you know.”

  “The new man?”

  “Yellow Calf.”

  Ferdinand Horn’s wife pushed her glasses up, then wrinkled her nose to keep them there. She was holding a can of grape pop in her lap. She had wrapped a light blue hankie around it to keep her hand from getting cold or sticky.

  “You have a low spot in that corner over there.”

  I followed his finger to an area of the field filled with slough grass and foxtail.

  “Did you find her?” The muffled voice brought me back to the car.

  “We’re going to bury her tomorrow,” I said.

  “No, no,” she shrieked, and hit Ferdinand Horn on the chest. “Your wife!” She hadn’t taken her eyes off me. “Your wife!”

  It was a stab in the heart. “I saw her … in Havre,” I said.

  “Well?”

  “In Gable’s …”

  She leaned forward and toward Ferdinand Horn. Her upper lip lifted over her small brown teeth. “Was that white man with her?”

  “No, she was all alone this time.”

  “I’ll bet—”

  “How many bales you get off this piece?”

  “I’ll bet she was all alone. As if a girl like that could ever be alone.” She looked up like a muskrat through the thin ice of the windshield.

  “We just came by to offer our condolences.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” she said, slapping Ferdinand Horn on the arm. “Did you bring her back?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s in at the house now. Do you want to see her?”

  “You mean you brought her back?” She sounded disappointed.

  “You want to see her?”

  “Did you get your gun back?” Ferdinand Horn was now looking at me.

  “Yes. Do you want to see her?”

  “Okay, sure, for a minute,” he said.

  His wife fell back against the seat. She was wearing the same wrinkled print dress she had worn the time before. Her thighs were spread beneath the bright butterflies. I couldn’t see her face.

  “We’re late enough,” she said.

  “Well, just for a minute,” Ferdinand Horn said.

  “We just came by to offer our condolences.”

  Ferdinand Horn seemed puzzled. He turned toward her. Her thighs tightened. He looked up at me. Then he started the car. “How many bales you get off this piece?” he said.

  41

  As Bird and I rounded the bend of the slough, I could hear the calf bawling. It was almost feeding time. We passed the graveyard with its fresh dirt now turning tan beneath the rolling clouds. Bird loped straight for the corral, his ears forward and his legs stiffened. I could feel the tension in his body. I thought it was because of the storm which threatened to break at any time, but as we neared the corral, Bird pulled up short and glanced in the direction of the slough. It was the calf’s mother. She was lying on her side, up to her chest in the mud. Her good eye was rimmed white and her tongue lolled from the side of her mouth. When she saw us, she made an effort to free herself, as though we had come to encourage her. Her back humped forward as her shoulders strained against the sucking mud. She switched her tail and a thin stream of crap ran down her backside.

  Bird whinnied, then dropped his head, waiting for me to get down and open the gate. He had lost interest.

  I wanted to ignore her. I wanted to go away, to let her drown in her own stupidity, attended only by clouds and the coming rain. If I turned away now, I thought, if I turned away—my hands trembled but did nothing. She had earned this fate by being stupid, and now no one could help her. Who would want to? As she stared at me, I saw beyond the immediate panic that hatred, that crazy hatred that made me aware of a quick hatred in my own heart. Her horns seemed tipped with blood, the dark blood of catastrophe. The muck slid down around her ears as she lowered her head, the air from her nostrils blowing puddles in the mud. I had seen her before, the image of catastrophe, the same hateful eye, the long curving horns, the wild-eyed spinster leading the cows down the hill into the valley. Stupid, stupid cow, hateful in her stupidity. She let out a long, bubbling call. I continued to glance at her, but now, as though energy, or even life, had gone out of her, she rolled her head to one side, half submerged in the mud, her one eye staring wildly at the clouds.

  Stupid, stupid—

  I slid down, threw open the corral gate and ran to the horse shed. The soft flaky manure cushioned the jolt of my bad leg. A rope hung from a nail driven into a two-by-four. I snatched it down and ran back to the gate. Bird was just sauntering through. I half led, half dragged him down to the edge of the slough. He seemed offended that I should ask this task of him. He tried to look around toward the pasture behind the corral. The red horse was watching us over the top pole, but there was no time to exchange horses. Already the cow lay motionless on her side.

  I tied one end of the rope to the saddle horn to keep Bird from walking away, then threw open the loop to fit over the cow’s head. But she would not lift it. I yelled and threw mud toward her, but she made no effort. My scalp began to sweat. A chilly breeze blew through my hair as I twirled the loop above my head. I tried for her horn but it was pointing forward toward me and the loop slid off. Again and again I threw for the horn, but the loop had nothing to tighten against. Each time I expected her to raise her head in response to the loop landing roughly against her neck and head, but she lay still. She must be dead, I thought, but the tiny bubbles around her nostrils continued to fizz. Then I was in the mud, up to my knees, wading out to the cow. With each step, the mud closed around my leg, then the heavy suck as I pulled the other free. My eyes fixed themselves on the bubbles and I prayed for them to stop so I could turn back, but the frothy mass continued to expand and move as though it were life itself. I was in up to my crotch, no longer able to lift my legs, able only to slide them through the greasy mire. The two or three inches of stagnant water sent the smell of dead things through my body. It was too late, it was taking too long—by leaning forward I could almost reach the cow’s horn. One more step, the bubbles weren’t moving, and I did clutch the horn, pulling myself toward her. She tried to lift her head, but the mud sucked it back down. Her open mouth, filling wi
th slime, looked as pink as a baby mouse against the green and black. The wild eye, now trying to focus on me, was streaked with the red threads of panic.

  By lifting on her horn, I managed to raise her head enough to slide the loop underneath, the mud now working to my advantage. I tightened up and yelled to Bird, at the same time pulling the rope against the saddle horn. The old horse shook his shoulders and backed up. He reared a few inches off the ground, as though the pressure of the rope had reminded him of those years spent as a cow horse. But the weight of the cow and mud began to pull the saddle forward, the back end lifting away from his body. It wouldn’t hold. I gripped the taut rope and pulled myself up and out of the mud. I began to move hand over hand back toward the bank. Something had gone wrong with my knee; it wouldn’t bend. I tried to arch my toes to keep my shoe from being pulled off, but there was no response. My whole leg was dead. The muscles in my arms knotted, but I continued to pull myself along the rope until I reached the edge of the bank. I lay there a moment, exhausted, then tried to get up but my arms wouldn’t move. It was a dream. I couldn’t move my arms. They lay at my sides, palms up, limp, as though they belonged to another body. I bent my good knee up under me, using my shoulders and chin as leverage.

  Once again I yelled at Bird, but he would not come, would not slack up on the rope. I swore at him, coaxed him, reasoned with him, but I must have looked foolish to him, my ass in the air and the sweat running from my scalp.

  Goddamn you, Bird, goddamn you. Goddamn Ferdinand Horn, why didn’t you come in, together we could have gotten this damn cow out, why hadn’t I ignored her? Goddamn your wife with her stupid turquoise glasses, stupid grape pop, your stupid car. Lame Bull! It was his cow, he had married this cow, why wasn’t he here? Off riding around, playing the role, goddamn big-time operator, can’t trust him, can’t trust any of these damn idiots, damn Indians. Slack up, you asshole! Slack up! You want to strangle her? That’s okay with me; she means nothing to me. What did I do to deserve this? Goddamn that Ferdinand Horn! Ah, Teresa, you made a terrible mistake. Your husband, your friends, your son, all worthless, none of them worth a shit. Slack up, you sonofabitch! Your mother dead, your father—you don’t even know, what do you think of that? A joke, can’t you see? Lame Bull! The biggest joke—can’t you see that he’s a joke, a joker playing a joke on you? Were you taken for a ride! Just like the rest of us, this country, all of us taken for a ride. Slack up, slack up! This greedy stupid country—

  My arms began to tingle as they tried to wake up. I moved my fingers. They moved. My neck ached but the strength was returning. I crouched and spent the next few minutes planning my new life. Finally I was able to push myself from the ground and stand on my good leg. I put my weight on the other. The bones seemed to be wedged together, but it didn’t hurt. I hobbled over to Bird. He raised his head and nodded wildly. As I touched his shoulder, he shied back even further.

  “Here, you old sonofabitch,” I said. “Do you want to defeat our purpose?”

  He nodded his agreement. I hit the rope with the edge of my hand. I hit it again. He let off, dancing forward, the muscles in his shoulders working beneath the soft white hair. I looked back at the cow. She was standing up in the mud, her head, half of it black, straight up like a swimming water snake. I snapped the rope out toward her, but she didn’t move. Her eyes were wild, a glaze beginning to form in them. The noose was still tight around her neck.

  As I climbed aboard the horse, I noticed for the first time that it was raining. What I thought was sweat running through my scalp had been rain all along. I snapped the rope again, arcing a curve away from me toward the cow. This time the noose did loosen up. She seemed surprised. A loud gasp, as harsh as a dog’s bark, came from her throat. As though that were her signal for a final death struggle, she went into action, humping her back, bawling, straining against the sucking mud. Bird tightened up on the rope and began to back away. The saddle came forward; I turned him so that he was headed away from the slough.

  The rain was coming hard now, the big drops stinging the back of my neck and splattering into the dusty earth. A magpie, light and silent, flew overhead, then lit on a fence post beside the loading chute. He ruffled his sleek feathers, then squatted to watch.

  The rope began to hum in the gathering wind, but the cow was coming, flailing her front legs out of the mud. Bird slipped once and almost went down, doing a strange dance, rolling quickly from side to side, but he regained his balance and continued to pull and the cow continued to come. I took another dally around the saddle horn and clung to the end of the rope. I slapped him on the shoulder. Somewhere in my mind I could hear the deep rumble of thunder, or maybe it was the rumble of energy, the rumble of guts—it didn’t matter. There was only me, a white horse and a cow. The pressure of the rope against my thigh felt right. I sat to one side in the saddle, standing in the right stirrup, studying the rough strands of hemp against the pant leg. The cow had quit struggling and was now sliding slowly through the greasy mud. Her head pointed up into the rain, but her eyes had lost that wild glare. She seemed to understand this necessary inconvenience.

  It was all so smooth and natural I didn’t notice that Bird had begun to slip in the rain-slick dirt. He turned sideways in an attempt to get more traction. He lowered his rump and raised his head. He lowered his head again so that he was stretched low to the ground. I leaned forward until I could smell the sweet warmth of his wet mane. Then I felt the furious digging of hooves, and I realized that he was about to go down. Before I could react, he whirled around, his front legs striking out at the air. His hind legs went out from under him. It was only the weight of the cow on the end of the rope that kept him from falling over backwards on top of me. His large white butt thumped the ground in front of me, he tottered for an instant, then he fell forward and it was quiet.

  42

  A flash of lightning to the south of me. I couldn’t or wouldn’t turn my head. I felt my back begin to stiffen. I didn’t know if it was because of the fall or the damp, but I wasn’t uncomfortable. The stiffness provided a reason for not moving. I saw the flash in the corner of my eye, as though it were mirrored countless times in the countless raindrops that fell on my face.

  I wondered if Mose and First Raise were comfortable. They were the only ones I really loved, I thought, the only ones who were good to be with. At least the rain wouldn’t bother them. But they would probably like it; they were that way, good to be with, even on a rainy day.

  I heard Bird grunt twice as he tried to heave himself upright, but I couldn’t find the energy to look at him. The magpie must have flown closer, for his metallic awk! awk! was almost conversational. The cow down in the slough had stopped gurgling. Her calf called once, a soft drone which ended on a quizzical high note. Then it was silent again.

  Some people, I thought, will never know how pleasant it is to be distant in a clean rain, the driving rain of a summer storm. It’s not like you’d expect, nothing like you’d expect.

  Epilogue

  We buried the old lady the next day. The priest from Harlem, of course, couldn’t make it. So there were the four of us—Teresa, Lame Bull, me and my grandmother. I hadn’t told them about Ferdinand Horn and his wife, but they wouldn’t show up anyway. I had to admit that Lame Bull looked pretty good. The buttons on his shiny green suit looked like they were made of wood. Although his crotch hung a little low, the pants were the latest style. Teresa had shortened the legs that morning, a makeshift job, having only had time to tack the original cuffs up inside the pant legs. His fancy boots with the walking heels peeked out from beneath the new cuffs. His shirt, tie, handkerchief and belt were various shades of green and red to match the suit. He smelled of Wildroot and after-shave lotion. I felt seedy standing beside him. I was wearing a suit that had belonged to my father. I hadn’t known it existed until an hour before the funeral. It was made out of a cream-colored wool with brown threads running through it. The collar and cuffs itc
hed in the noonday heat, but the pant legs were wide enough so that if I stood just right I didn’t touch them, except for my knee which was swollen up. It still didn’t hurt. The necktie, which I had loosened, had also belonged to my father. It was silk with a picture of two mallards flying over a stand of cattails.

  Teresa wore a black coat, black high heels, and a black cupcake hat. A black net extended down from it to cover her eyes and nose. It stopped just above her upper lip. She had painted her stern lips a bright red. Once again she was big and handsome—except for her legs. They appeared to be a little skinny, but it must have been the dress. I wasn’t used to seeing her legs.

  The old lady wore a shiny orange coffin with flecks of black ingrained beneath the surface. It had been sealed up in Harlem, so we never did find out what kind of makeup job the undertaker had done on her.

  The hole was too short, but we didn’t discover this until we had the coffin halfway down. One end went down easily enough, but the other stuck against the wall. Teresa wanted us to take it out because she was sure that it was the head that was lower than the feet. Lame Bull lowered himself into the grave and jumped up and down on the high end. It went down a bit more, enough to look respectable. Teresa didn’t say anything, so he leaped out of the hole, a little too quickly. He wiped his forehead with the pale green handkerchief.

  “Well,” he said. It was a question. He looked at me and I looked off toward the slough, fingering the tobacco pouch.

  Teresa began to moan. She wavered back and forth as though the heat were getting to her.

  “What do you think, pal?”

  The air was heavy with yesterday’s rain. It would probably be good for fishing.

  “I suppose me being the head of the family, it’s up to me to say a few words about our beloved relative and friend.”

  Teresa moaned.

  Lame Bull clasped his hands in front of him. “Well,” he said. “Here lies a simple woman … who devoted herself to … rocking … and not a bad word about anybody …”