The Watch

by Rick Bass

  Presently, Karen came back out with a small blue pistol, a .38, and she went down the steps and out to where he was standing, and she put it next to his head.

  “Let’s get in the truck,” she said.

  He knew where they were going.

  The river was about ten miles away, and they drove slowly. There was fog flowing across the low parts of the road and through the fields and meadows like smoke, coming from the woods, and he was thinking about how cold and hard the water would be when he finally hit.

  He felt as if he were already falling towards it, the way it had taken Henry forever to fall. But he didn’t say anything, and though it didn’t feel right, he wondered if perhaps it was this simple, as if this was what was owed after all.

  They drove on, past the blue fields and the great spills of fog. The roofs of the hay barns were bright silver polished tin, under the little moon and stars. There were small lakes, cattle stock tanks, and steam rose from them.

  They drove with the windows down; it was a hot night, full of flying bugs, and about two miles from the river, Karen told him to stop.

  He pulled off to the side of the road, and wondered what she was going to do with his body. A cattle egret flew by, ghostly white and large, flying slowly, and Sydney was amazed that he had never recognized their beauty before, though he had seen millions. It flew right across their windshield, from across the road, and it startled both of them.

  The radiator ticked.

  “You didn’t really push him off, did you?” Karen asked. She still had the pistol against his head, and had switched hands.

  Like frost burning off the grass in a bright morning sun, there was in his mind a sudden, sugary, watery feeling—like something dissolving. She was not going to kill him after all.

  “No,” he said.

  “But you could have saved him,” she said, for the thousandth time.

  “I could have reached out and grabbed him,” Sydney agreed. He was going to live. He was going to get to keep feeling things, was going to get to keep seeing things.

  He kept his hands in his lap, not wanting to alarm Karen, but his eyes moved all around as he looked for more egrets. He was eager to see another one.

  Karen watched him for a while, still holding the pistol against him, and then turned it around and looked at the open barrel of it, cross-eyed, and held it there, right in her face, for several seconds. Then she reached out and put it in the glove box.

  Sydney Bean was shuddering.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for not shooting yourself.”

  He put his head down on the steering wheel, in the moonlight, and shuddered again. There were crickets calling all around them. They sat like that for a long time, Sydney leaning against the wheel, and Karen sitting up straight, just looking out at the fields.

  Then the cattle began to move up the hill towards them, thinking that Karen’s old truck was the one that had come to feed them, and slowly, drifting up the hill from all over the fields, coming from out of the woods, and from their nearby resting spots on the sandbars along the little dry creek that ran down into the bayou—eventually, they all assembled around the truck, like schoolchildren.

  They stood there in the moonlight, some with white faces like skulls, all about the same size, and chewed grass and watched the truck. One, bolder than the rest—a yearling black Angus—moved in close, bumped the grill of the truck with his nose, playing, and then leapt back again, scattering some of the others.

  “How much would you say that one weighs?” Karen asked. “How much, Sydney?”

  They drove the last two miles to the river slowly. It was about four A.M. The yearling cow was bleating and trying to break free; Sydney had tied him up with his belt, and with jumper cables and shoelaces, and an old shirt. His lip was bloody from where the calf had butted him.

  But he had wrestled larger steers than that before.

  They parked at the old bridge, the one across which the trains still ran. Farther downriver, they could see an occasional car, two round spots of headlight moving slowly and steadily across the new bridge, so far above the river, going very slowly. Sydney put his shoulders under the calf’s belly and lifted it with his back and legs, and like a prisoner in the stock, he carried it out to the center of the bridge. Karen followed. It took about fifteen minutes to get there, and Sydney was trembling, dripping with sweat, when finally they gauged they had reached the middle. The deepest part.

  They sat there, soothing the frightened calf, stroking its ears, patting its flanks, and waited for the sun to come up. When it did, pale orange behind the great steaminess of the trees and river below—the fog from the river and trees a gunmetal gray, the whole world washed in gray flatness, except for the fruit of the sun—they untied the calf, and pushed him over.

  They watched him forever and forever, a black object and then a black spot against the great background of no-colored river, and then there was a tiny white splash, lost almost immediately in the river’s current. Logs, which looked like twigs from up on the bridge, swept across the spot. Everything headed south, moving south, and there were no eddies, no pauses.

  “I am halfway over him,” Karen said.

  And then, walking back, she said: “So that was really what it was like?”

  She had a good appetite, and they stopped at the Waffle House and ate eggs and pancakes, and had sausage and biscuits and bacon and orange juice. She excused herself to go to the restroom, and when she came back out, her face was washed, her hair brushed and clean-looking. Sydney paid for the meal, and when they stepped outside, the morning was growing hot.

  “I have to work today,” Karen said, when they got back to her house. “We have to go see about a mule.”

  “Me, too,” said Sydney. “I’ve got a stallion who thinks he’s a bad-ass.”

  She studied him for a second, and felt like telling him to be careful, but didn’t. Something was in her, a thing like hope stirring, and she felt guilty for it.

  Sydney whistled, driving home, and tapped his hands on the steering wheel, though the radio did not work.

  Dr. Lynly and Karen drove until the truck wouldn’t go any farther, bogged down in the clay, and then they got out and walked. It was cool beneath all the big trees, and the forest seemed to be trying to press in on them. Dr. Lynly carried his heavy bag, stopping and switching arms frequently. Buster trotted slightly ahead, between the two of them, looking left and right, and up the road, and even up into the tops of the trees.

  There was a sawmill, deep in the woods, where the delta’s farmland in the northern part of the county settled at the river and then went into dark mystery; hardwoods, and muddy roads, then no roads. The men at the sawmill used mules to drag their trees to the cutting. There had never been money for bulldozers, or even tractors. The woods were quiet, and foreboding; it seemed to be a place without sound or light.

  When they got near the sawmill, they could hear the sound of axes. Four men, shirtless, in muddy boots with the laces undone, were working on the biggest tree Karen had ever seen. It was a tree too big for chain saws. Had any of the men owned one, the tree would have ruined the saw.

  One of the men kept swinging at the tree: putting his back into it, with rhythmic, stroking cuts. The other three stepped back, hitched their pants, and wiped their faces with their forearms.

  The fourth man stopped cutting finally. There was no fat on him and he was pale, even standing in the beam of sunlight that was coming down through an opening in the trees—and he looked old; fifty, maybe, or sixty. Some of his fingers were missing.

  “The mule’ll be back in a minute,” he said. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “He’s gone to bring a load up out of the bottom.” He pointed with his ax, down into the swamp.

  “We’ll just wait,” said Dr. Lynly. He bent back and tried to look up at the top of the trees. “Y’all just go right ahead with your cutting.”

  But the pale muscled man was already swinging again, and the other thre
e, with another tug at their beltless pants, joined in: an odd, pausing drumbeat, as four successive whacks hit the tree; then four more again; and then, almost immediately, the cadence stretching out, growing irregular, as the older man chopped faster.

  All around them were the soft pittings, like hail, of tree chips, raining into the bushes. One of the chips hit Buster in the nose, and he rubbed it with his paw, and turned and looked up at Dr. Lynly.

  They heard the mule before they saw him: he was groaning, like a person. He was coming up the hill that led out of the swamp; he was coming towards them.

  They could see the tops of small trees and saplings shaking as he dragged his load through them. Then they could see the tops of his ears; then his huge head, and after that they saw his chest. Veins raced against the chestnut thickness of it.

  Then the tops of his legs.

  Then his knee. Karen stared at it and then she started to tremble. She sat down in the mud, and hugged herself—the men stopped swinging, for just a moment—and Dr. Lynly had to help her up.

  It was the mule’s right knee that was injured, and it had swollen to the size of a basketball. It buckled, with every step he took, pulling the sled up the slick and muddy hill, but he kept his footing and he did not stop. Flies buzzed around the knee, around the infections, where the loggers had pierced the skin with nails and the ends of their knives, trying to drain the pus. Dried blood ran down in streaks to the mule’s hoof, to the mud.

  The sawlogs on the back of the sled smelled good, fresh. They smelled like they were still alive.

  Dr. Lynly walked over to the mule and touched the knee. The mule closed his eyes and trembled slightly, as Karen had done, or even as if in ecstasy, at the chance to rest. The three younger men, plus the sledder, gathered around.

  “We can’t stop workin’ him,” the sledder said. “We can’t shoot him, either. We’ve got to keep him alive. He’s all we’ve got. If he dies, it’s us that’ll have to pull them logs up here.”

  A cedar moth, from the woods, passed over the mule’s ears, fluttering blindly. It rested on the mule’s forehead briefly, and then flew off. The mule did not open his eyes. Dr. Lynly frowned and rubbed his chin. Karen felt faint again, and leaned against the mule’s sweaty back to keep from falling.

  “You sure you’ve got to keep working him?” Dr. Lynly asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The pale logger was still swinging: tiny chips flying in batches.

  Dr. Lynly opened his bag. He took out a needle and rag, and a bottle of alcohol. He cleaned the mule’s infections. The mule drooled a little when the needle went in, but did not open his eyes. The needle was slender, and it bent and flexed, and slowly Dr. Lynly drained the fluid.

  Karen held onto the mule’s wet back and vomited into the mud: both her hands on the mule as if she were being arrested against the hood of a car, and her feet spread out wide. The men gripped their axes awkwardly.

  Dr. Lynly gave one of them a large plastic jug of pills.

  “These will kill his pain,” he said. “The knee will get big again, though. I’ll be back out, to drain it again.” He handed Karen a clean rag from his satchel, and led her away from the mule, away from the mess.

  One of the ax men carried their satchel all the way back to the truck. Dr. Lynly let Karen get up into the truck first, and then Buster; then the ax man rocked and shoved, pushing on the hood of the truck as the tires spun, and helped them back it out of the mud: their payment for healing the mule. A smell of burning rubber and smoke hung in the trees after they left.

  They didn’t talk much. Dr. Lynly was thinking about the pain killers: how for a moment, he had almost given the death pills instead.

  Karen was thinking how she would not let him pay her for that day’s work. Also she was thinking about Sydney Bean: she would sit on the porch with him again, and maybe drink a beer and watch the fields.

  He was sitting on the back porch, when she got in; he was on the wooden bench next to the hammock, and he had a tray set up for her with a pitcher of cold orange juice. There was froth in the pitcher, a light creamy foaminess from where he had been stirring it, and the ice cubes were circling around. Beads of condensation slid down the pitcher, rolling slowly, then quickly, like tears. She could feel her heart giving. The field was rich summer green, and then, past the field, the dark line of trees. A long string of cattle egrets flew past, headed down to their rookery in the swamp.

  Sydney poured her a small glass of orange juice. He had a metal pail of cold water and a clean washcloth. It was hot on the back porch, even for evening. He helped her get into the hammock; then he wrung the washcloth out and put it across her forehead, her eyes. Sydney smelled as if he had just gotten out of the shower, and he was wearing clean white duckcloth pants and a bright blue shirt.

  She felt dizzy, and leaned back in the hammock. The washcloth over her eyes felt so good. She sipped the orange juice, not looking at it, and licked the light foam of it from her lips. Owls were beginning to call, down in the swamp.

  She felt as if she were younger, going back to a place, some place she had not been in a long time but could remember fondly. It felt like she was in love. She knew that she could not be, but that was what it felt like.

  Sydney sat behind her and rubbed her temples.

  It grew dark, and the moon came up.

  “It was a rough day,” she said, around ten o’clock.

  But he just kept rubbing.

  Around eleven o’clock, she dozed off, and he woke her, helped her from the hammock, and led her inside, not turning on any lights, and helped her get in bed.

  Then he went back outside, locking the door behind him. He sat on the porch a little longer, watching the moon, so high above him, and then he drove home, slowly, cautiously, as ever. Accidents were everywhere; they could happen at any time, from any direction.

  Sydney moved carefully, and tried to look ahead and be ready for the next one.

  He really wanted her. He wanted her in his life. Sydney didn’t know if the guilt was there for that—the wanting—or because he was alive, still seeing things, still feeling. He wanted someone in his life, and it didn’t seem right to feel guilty about it. But he did.

  Sometimes, at night, he would hear the horses running, thundering across the hard summer-baked flatness of his pasture, running wild—and he would imagine they were laughing at him for wasting his time feeling guilty, but it was a feeling he could not shake, could not ride down, and his sleep was often poor and restless.

  Sydney often wondered if horses were even meant to be ridden at all.

  It was always such a struggle.

  The thing about the broncs, he realized—and he never realized it until they were rolling on top of him in the dust, or rubbing him off against a tree, or against the side of a barn, trying to break his leg—was that if the horses didn’t get broken, tamed, they’d get wilder. There was nothing as wild as a horse that had never been broken. It just got meaner, each day.

  So he held on. He bucked and spun and arched and twisted, shooting up and down with the mad horses’ leaps; and when the horse tried to hurt itself, by running straight into something—a fence, a bam, the lake—he stayed on.

  If there was, once in a blue moon, a horse not only stronger, but more stubborn than he, then he would have to destroy it.

  The cattle were easy to work with, they would do anything for food, and once one did it, they would all follow; but working with the horses made him think ahead, and sometimes he wondered, in streaks and bits of paranoia, if perhaps all the horses in the world did not have some battle against him, and were destined, all of them, to pass through his corrals, each one testing him before he was allowed to stop.

  Because like all bronc-busters, that was what Sydney someday allowed himself to consider and savor, in moments of rest: the day when he could stop. A run of successes. A string of wins so satisfying and continuous that it would seem—even though he would be sore, and tired—that a horse would
never beat him again, and he would be convinced of it, and then he could quit.

  Mornings in summers past, Henry used to come over, and sit on the railing and watch. He had been an elementary school teacher, and frail, almost anemic: but he had loved to watch Sydney Bean ride the horses. He taught only a few classes in the summers, and he would sip coffee and grade a few papers while Sydney and the horse fought out in the center.

  Sometimes Henry had set a broken bone for Sydney—Sydney had shown him how—and other times Sydney, if he was alone, would set his own bones, if he even bothered with them. Then he would wrap them up and keep riding. Dr. Lynly had set some of his bones, on the bad breaks.

  Sydney was feeling old, since Henry had drowned. Not so much in the mornings, when everything was new and cool, and had promise; but in the evenings, he could feel the crooked shapes of his bones, within him. He would drink beers, and watch his horses, and other people’s horses in his pasture, as they ran. The horses never seemed to feel old, not even in the evenings, and he was jealous of them, of their strength.

  He called Karen one weekend. “Come out and watch me break horses,” he said.

  He was feeling particularly sore and tired. For some reason he wanted her to see that he could always do it; that the horses were always broken. He wanted her to see what it looked like, and how it always turned out.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, after she had considered it. “I’m just so tired. ” It was a bad and crooked road, bumpy, from her house to his, and it took nearly an hour to drive it.

  “I’ll come get you ... ?” he said. He wanted to shake her. But he said nothing; he nodded, and then remembered he was on the phone and said, “I understand.”

  She did let him sit on the porch with her, whenever he drove over to her farm. She had to have someone.

  “Do you want to hit me?” he asked one evening, almost hopefully.

  But she just shook her head sadly.

  He saw that she was getting comfortable with her sorrow, was settling down into it, like an old way of life, and he wanted to shock her out of it, but felt paralyzed and mute, like the dumbest of animals.