by Joe Wilkins
At least, she thought, Kent hadn’t known this. After she told him, he sputtered, flapped his mouth like a fish. She didn’t stay to talk it out, though, or wait for him to suggest how to deal with it. She knew how to deal with it.
She poured herself a third glass, poured and poured and was surprised to empty the bottle and see that the glass, an upside-down bell of bloodred wine now, held everything that was left. She got out her phone and looked up the number, called Child Protective Services. Told them about the boy, about the bruises on his wrist.
Verl
20?
How many days now running in the dark? I stop and reckon the sun in the sky and hours later reckon again and am yet not sure. I have eaten the last snickers bar though I don’t remember when. Today gnashed only a little jerky. It tasted so good I held it a long time in my mouth to keep tasting it.
Later
I have found a great pile of bones. All kinds of bones. Coyote. Skunk. Horse. Some I don’t know. Some wider than a man’s big leg bones. Bones shot through with cactus and yellow grass and wild rose. I can’t explain. They are not exactly white but the color of old light. A strange sight. A wonder.
Later
I will not stay here with these bones. I will keep on into the mountains.
Wendell
THEY RAN THE CATTLE THROUGH THE CHUTES, CUTTING THE CALVES INTO the sale pen, the cows into the corrals. In the raw air of early morning the cows bawled for a time at being separated from their babies but eventually trotted off to the feeder and commenced to chewing the good alfalfa hay.
Wendell was working the cutting gate. Timmy Meredith, Glen’s son-in-law, stood at the end of the chute with his lariat just in case Wendell accidentally cut a sale calf into the corral, which he wouldn’t, though Glen liked to cover his bases, and Timmy, the former football and rodeo star, liked to stand around not really doing anything but swinging his lariat and showing off. Glen and the cattle buyer, Babe MacDonald, watched the action from just past the end of the chute. MacDonald’s gut strained the pearl snaps of his shirt, and his nose and cheeks were spidered with broken red vessels. He had a boot on the lowest rung of the sale pen, his elbows resting up top, right near Glen’s. They were near enough that Wendell could at times—over the bellows and stamps of the cattle, the hard thwack of the cutting gate—hear the two of them, their conversation rhythmic and practiced and full of silences, though they were never fully silent, always nodding or shifting or scratching or spitting. They talked Obama and swine flu and the best steak houses in Billings. They talked the wolf hunt up and down, and the recession, and just about everything under the low, gray sky except cattle buying. Yet Wendell knew they were both taking careful stock as each calf bucked and shied into the sale pen. It was a kind of dance, and Glen was the man for it. Wendell would rather keep sharp on the cutting gate.
Freddie Benson had shown up today with his shirt tucked in and his hair buzzed short. For a long time he’d been telling everyone he was going to be a drummer in a heavy metal band, so that haircut surprised the hell out of Wendell. Freddie had come right up this morning and shook Glen’s hand and then nodded to Wendell and Timmy. They’d laughed and clowned around, Wendell and Freddie, back in high school, and Wendell had expected Freddie would know he was the one who’d spoken up for him. Maybe he didn’t, though. Maybe all that was just long enough ago. Wendell had nodded in return, reached once again for his back pocket, for the can of Copenhagen that wasn’t there.
Now Freddie and Rowdy stalked the dusty, shit-spattered alleyway that circled the sale pen and narrowed into the cutting chute. Their job was to keep the herd tight, pointed forward, and not allow them to bolt or stampede. Wendell hadn’t been sure it was the right thing to do, keeping Rowdy out of school, but it was a Friday and when he’d asked the boy about it this morning, Rowdy’s eyes had gone wide, and he’d hurried to pull on his work jeans. What’s more, he’d already proved himself a good hand. Tyler, Timmy’s boy, had tired after twenty minutes and gone in to play his video games. Rowdy, though, had kept at the herding, despite the cold, despite the choking dust, the green fountains of shit, the bawling and walleyed slaver of the calves. Rowdy carried a ring of wire strung with old tin cans. Every now and again he gave it hard shake, and the cattle in the alley bunched up all the tighter. Wendell snapped the gate this way and that, separating the cows and calves as they streamed through, and above the din rattled the rusty music of the boy’s tin cans.
They finished the cutting and turned the cows out, and there was more bawling, though it died away again as the cows found the thick grass in the near pastures. Now Glen readied the scale in the southwest corner of the sale corral, with Babe looking over his shoulder and making his own marks. The corral was a large round-cornered square, which meant there was no natural way to funnel the calves to the scale. By this time they were red-eyed and shifty, dirt ringing their lips and nostrils. The wind ratcheted up another notch, and dust and bits of straw swirled through the air. Wendell sent Rowdy to the left side of the pen and Freddie with his cattle prod around to the right, and he and Timmy walked up the middle, all four of them clapping in time and talking to the calves, massing the animals on the west side of the pen.
Timmy smacked his boot leather with the end of his lariat, and Rowdy jangled his wire ring of cans, and together they pushed the calves toward the scale. A first few piled in, their hooves loud and hollow on the boards of the scale floor, and when Wendell whistled through his teeth and clapped his hands, a dozen or more followed, and Glen slid the metal gate closed behind them. Wendell told Freddie, Timmy, and Rowdy to hold the rest of the calves where they were, and he came around wide and joined Glen at the scale to help count. With the calves piled in there nose to ass, it would be easy to miss some. Wendell took his count and waited as Glen and Babe finished theirs. The counts came out even—seventeen all around—and they took the weight and opened the other side of the scale and let the weighed calves bound out into the alleyway.
It took some time, counting and weighing bunch after bunch, and Wendell, as always, kept his eye on Rowdy. The boy held his ground, rattled his string of cans. On Wendell’s other side, though, Timmy twirled his fancy lasso and sang snatches of some song. Glen pulled the scale gate back for another load, and they all heyed and hiyaed, and just as Glen was about to slide the gate closed, three big winter-born Angus calves bolted between Freddie and Timmy. Timmy stood there wide-eyed, his lasso thunking in the dust. Freddie spun on his heel and tried to follow. Running hard, one of the calves crashed into the far side of the corral. Its skull cracked against the boards. In a whirl of dust, the other two turned sharp and charged back, heads down and swinging—aiming right at Rowdy.
Timmy and Glen shouted, Freddie stooped and chucked dry cowpie at the calves to try to turn them, and Wendell took off sprinting. Hearing the commotion, Rowdy turned, and turned again, and finally saw the calves. Just as fear broke across the boy’s face, Wendell hooked him beneath his armpits and swung him out of the way.
The calves pounded past and a kicked hind hoof caught Wendell in the thigh. He fell to his knees with his arms still wrapped tight around Rowdy. They were still for a moment in the dust and shit, their two hearts banging each against the other, before Wendell relaxed and slid back onto his haunches. Set the boy’s feet on the ground.
—You okay, bud? You all right?
Rowdy’s hands were light and shivery at Wendell’s shoulders but he looked him in the eye and nodded.
—Okay, then. I don’t guess my leg’s bleeding. I believe we’re all right.
Wendell rose, touched the back of his thigh. No blood but he’d have a hell of a bruise.
The two loose calves had run hell-for-leather into the herd and broken it up. The calves were scattered all over the corral now, and Freddie and Timmy chased after them flapping their arms as if it might matter.
Glen came huffing up. He tousled Rowdy’s hair, clapped Wendell on the shoulder. Rowdy breathed, and breathed agai
n, and Wendell kept his hand on the boy’s back, but light.
—Damn. If you boys was looking to wrestle, you could’ve picked some smaller calves. You all right?
Wendell said they were. Rowdy, for his part, swallowed and nodded.
—Would’ve hated to lose my two best hands this late in the game.
Glen motioned toward Timmy and Freddie, both still darting this way and that.
—Once you got your feet under you, what say you get these yahoos lined out again. We got more calves to weigh.
They worked straight through lunch and finished in the afternoon, just as the low ceiling of gray clouds thinned and broke and winter light rained down. They made the last count, summed the numbers, and opened the gates, then herded the calves the other way down the alley and up the loading dock and into Babe’s big silver livestock trailer. Babe cut Glen a check, and Glen folded it and put it in his shirt pocket without even looking at it. Then the two men shook hands and it was done. As the trailer pulled away, Glen grinned and slapped his cowboy hat against his thigh and said it was time to eat.
Carol and Rochelle, Timmy’s wife, had set up two folding tables in the yard and loaded them with platters of roast beef and mashed potatoes and green beans boiled with ham hocks, along with a couple of loaves of white bread and a dish of butter. The men lined up and filled their plates, and after they’d eaten, Glen hauled out a couple of coolers of pop and beer. They all hung around drinking and talking then, save Freddie, who left right after lunch, which again surprised Wendell, Freddie passing up free beer.
Wendell punched open a Budweiser and handed Rowdy a clear glass bottle of strawberry pop, which Rowdy turned around and around in his hands, marveling at its cold, dripping curves. Glen came over and slipped Wendell an extra fifty dollars on the sly, then made a big show of giving Rowdy a crisp new five-dollar bill. Rowdy took the bill and folded it and stuffed it in his shirt pocket, then stuck out his hand to shake, just like he’d seen Glen and Babe do. Glen laughed out loud. He told Rowdy he’d make a fine rancher someday and took the boy’s hand and shook it good. Wendell leaned back in his lawn chair and smiled. He wasn’t even that pissed at Timmy for his inattention. Things had turned out all right. Even with the hard, dirty snow earlier in the week, the light on this day—the second of October—was dime bright and nearly warm.
Wendell snagged a road beer for himself and another bottle of strawberry pop for Rowdy, and on the drive home the light was sharp and clear for miles, the mountains blue and dark and knotted as they’d ever been. Cool wind spilled in through the open windows. Wendell took it slow. It was nice to be driving the hills, sipping beer, talking now and again about something from the day to Rowdy, his boy. Wendell had been thinking that phrase more and more often—He’s my boy. They pulled up out front of the trailer, and with neither of them wanting to go inside and clean up just yet, Wendell let down the LUV’s tailgate, and they sat there swinging their legs and sipping their drinks. Wendell leaned back on his elbows, the better to reckon the sky. He tipped the Budweiser to his lips for the last swallow and stowed the empty in the five-gallon bucket of cans and bottles behind the wheel well, then lay down in the truck bed and laced his fingers behind his head.
—It’s a sight. A pure sight.
Rowdy scooted up into the bed and lay down so he was shoulder to shoulder with Wendell. Looking over to see how it was done, he laced his fingers behind his head like his uncle, and he, too, commenced staring at the sky. The high, horsetail clouds.
They lay there like that a long time, with the steel ridges of the truck bed cold and hard beneath their bones, the tatting of cloud and light brilliant above them, and all about the sounds of the dry washes and yellow hills, the mountains nigh on winter—susurrus of wind and sere grass, tick of dry needles, hacks and warbles of magpies and larks. They might’ve even slept for a time. Wendell wasn’t sure. Some span of minutes later he opened his eyes to find the sky, of course, and the light, and his boy, Rowdy, right beside him.
He leaned up on one elbow, put his hand on the boy’s chest.
—I wonder if we ought to have a fire. What d’you say? That girl’s coming out again today. Maddy. The one who brought you the penguin book. Once it starts getting dark, it’ll be cold, and I was thinking it might be nice to have a fire.
Rowdy blinked and sat up. Then hopped down from the truck bed.
Wendell sat all the way up just in time to see the boy disappearing into the near woods, gathering sticks as he went.
—I guess that’s a yes.
He smiled and stretched and got down himself. From the shed he fished out the lawn chairs and opened them up around the fire ring, then rolled a stump over, figuring Rowdy would like that better than a chair. There’d been a woodstove in his grandfather’s house, though it hadn’t ever been used as far back as Wendell could remember, and there was still half a cord or better of cedar and pine stacked on the porch, near where Wendell kept the bones he’d scrounged as a boy. He hauled over a couple of armfuls of wood, the logs light and dry, absent the blue stains and squiggling trails beetles cut into the wood. Everything you’d fell now would be stained and chewed, and there were more beetles every summer, it seemed, and they started chewing earlier in the spring and stayed longer into the fall. From any Bull Mountain ridge these days you could see forests shot through with orange-needled, beetle-killed pines. In a strong wind you could hear them shatter, like a dry sneeze. How old was this good wood in his arms? And who had cut it? And where in the mountains had it come from? How grand all those years ago were the trees as they stood on the ridges? Wendell dropped the load and brushed the wood dust and bark from his chest and arms. He thought for a moment of the lines he’d had at the end of the play as Macbeth’s messenger, long after Banquo has been killed: As I did stand my watch upon the hill, / I looked toward Birnam, and anon, methought, / The wood began to move. It was moving now. Falling down around them.
Wendell knelt to stack the haphazard pile. Hearing something behind him, he looked over his shoulder, expecting to see Rowdy. Instead, a long cloud of dust rose from the road. There she is, he thought, and smiled. He made for the trailer, where he washed his hands and face and neck and changed into a nicer pair of jeans and a clean shirt. He’d have liked to shower, but a clean shirt would have to do. Although the back of his leg was tight where he’d been kicked, the rest of him felt light and strong. Jittery but good. Air funneled in and out of his lungs. He pushed open the trailer door.
And there was Maddy, all right, standing in the space between her car and the open driver-side door, her hair as long and dark as he’d remembered. The sky spread an ocean of light above, and the wind carried notes of salt sage and pine. What confused him, though, was that Maddy had her back to him and was watching two pickups—a diesel and an S-10—pull in right behind her.
Verl
21?
Not even that much below freezing. And still so cold. Goddamn. How I would like a fire. I cannot have a fire. They are after me. Here is what I do. I dig down as deep as I can which is not too deep for soon there are roots and rocks but no matter I burrow in there like an old bear and heap sand and leaves and needles over me. It helps. Some. The rocks are hard beneath me and give me back some portion of my heat. I only wish against the wind. The trees in this dry country are scrawny as mutt dogs and the night wind scrapes along the top of me like a dull knife down my bones.
I am sorry to go on like this. I should not complain. It is my own goddamn doing. I should have brung more clothes. More food. Should not have shot that deer. Should not have done so many things.
I took this wolf tooth like it mattered.
Later
I think now we would get along. The wolf and me. It would be nice to hear her howl at a fat moon when I too am holed up beneath the moon. My belly howling.
Later
Her tooth at my throat. The lengths of her claws.
Gillian
SHE DREAMED THAT NIGHT THEY WERE IN TEXAS HIKING
THE CHISOS, SHE and Kevin, the south-rim trail, moving from high desert ever higher into subalpine forest and from there into alpine meadow, until they arrived at the rim, with a view a hundred miles or more south across the badlands of Mexico. When they could, they hiked side by side, holding hands, touching shoulders. Other times he took the lead. Or she did. They both knew the way, both loved this trail in the Big Bend, the many delights and surprises of the red desert land.
Though, as happens in dreams, the familiar route became ever more sinuous, dark, twisted. Suddenly she was on her knees, crawling through juniper and desert willow. They needed to fill their canteens and she was sure this was the way to the creek. But when they got there, the creek was dry, a chalky track of dirt and gravel, and the boy, Rowdy Burns, was sitting there in the gravel. The only thing to do was pick him up. He didn’t weigh a thing. In fact she felt lighter as she hiked back up the trail, as if with the boy in her arms she might leap off from any rocky promontory and fly.
We’ve got to help him, she said.
Kevin shook his head. His jaw was gone where it had been shot off.
Oh, Kevin, she said, I forgot. I’m sorry. Here, I’ll put him down right here. Someone will come along.
Kevin shrugged and buckled. She reached for him just as he collapsed and disintegrated in the wind. The silty ash of him spilled through her fingers. She rubbed the dust of him across her face, ground it down into her eyes. Now she didn’t know where Rowdy had gone. Hiking back the way they’d come, down the rim, she could see farther than she’d ever seen, for miles, right through spars and washes, right into the hearts of red-tailed deer and lizards, and she saw now someone hiking with Rowdy, reaching out to take his hand. Someone tall, willowy.
