No moon.

The high plains of north-central Colorado indulged the passing of critters haunting the night with the singular purpose to fill their bellies, their craws. The jut of two and three-hundred foot-tall volcanic plugs spotting the plains here and there, rising as fingers pointing to some significance above, blackly witnessed the hoots and yips of the hunt below, the meanderings and scatterings of critters killing and those killed. The single screech or scream of those caught gave witness to the essential carnage.

An old cow had wandered purposefully from hay meadow to dense scrub. She had eased down onto her belly, raised her head, studied the night; felt the flow of her life drain, surging from the pulse of pain oozing from her legs and chest, smelled it as an odoriferous thing. Not a good thing or a bad thing. Mortality, a useless abstraction for a cow. She lowered her head, a weakness in her neck begging for release. If she remembered anything, it was that she birthed her children well, sustained them with her milk, watched them taken from her nurture too soon. Too soon. If she concluded anything at all, it was that she was ready to sleep. She had served her purpose. She closed her eyes, gave no thought to her vulnerability, the indignity of becoming only a meal for lesser critters intent on serving their purpose. Another abstraction.

Joe tied the rope to the ball hitch, looked back again at what lay behind. The old Hereford hadn’t dropped a calf in two springs. She’d been on the list for auction—ending up as some dog’s happy meal—when she got a notion to try to get to the other side of four strands of prickly wire, tore her legs and chest up good. Festered to the point she’d just gone off by herself into deep scrub and lay down, died. Chose her own way, Joe thought. Thought, too, there was something noble in such a thing. Even for a cow.

Joe fired-up the battered Dodge, put it in four-wheel and dragged the cow to where he and his brothers and his father before had dragged all the critters who’d died of one thing or another over the years. A depression up past the hay meadow, unseen from the road, where in time she’d leave nothing of herself but bones, dully white, mixed in with all the others. Coyotes, maggots, some bear maybe, goddamned ravens and crows, owls—all shameless in taking a piece of the rotting pie.

He drove across the hay meadow, felt the tug of the cow, an ungraceful slog over the dip of irrigation ditches that, in a few weeks, would carry water from Bear Creek to flood the meadow, to bring good harvest.

Joe stepped out of the Dodge, tipped his weathered, stained felt hat up a bit from his forehead, leaned against the side of the pickup, pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket, rolled earlier at the kitchen table. He cupped his hand over the flame from his daddy’s Zippo. Only thing he’d managed to take from his daddy’s paltry leavings, sorted through after the son-of-a-bitch had coughed up his lungs. Joe’s brothers, older and more conversant with the concept of lineage, had taken their privilege in grabbing what they wanted before Joe was left alone in the bedroom to sort through what was left. Thought it odd his brothers hadn’t coveted the lighter.

The forever wind huffed from the north and west, goosing a response from lodgepole pine, fir, spruce and newly budded aspens that surrounded the bone yard. Brought with it an odor of freshness, of spring, pine smell, the aroma of the land itself, of horse and cow shit.

Joe turned his head and, once again, studied the old cow. He’d known this cow. Passed into manhood knowing this cow. She’d dropped some fine calves, fat and sassy. But there was something else about her, something since he was eighteen that had caught his eye, his interest. She was independent, usually kept herself and her calves apart from the herd. Went her own way, he thought. She’d never bawl when they took her calves from her for branding and tagging, castrating if needed. She’d just stand off by herself, listen to her calf scream for her proximity, watch the process as though such a thing was an inevitability she could do nothing about.

Joe never had to check her ear tag to know who she was. She was known.

Joe finished his smoke, snubbed the thing out on the sole of his boot, breathed deep of the land, sighed, and turned to the cow.

After untying the rope he’d secured around the cow’s head and forelegs, he threw the rope in the back of the pickup, turned, stepped to her body, sat to his haunches, took off his glove. He placed his hand on her white face, gently stroked her. “You were a good ol’ cow,” he said. He pulled his hat back down on his forehead, stood up and drove the Dodge back to the home place.

“You get that cow up to the bone yard?” His brother, Gus, twenty-eight, now at the top of the familial male line, sipped coffee at the pine table centered in the kitchen. A new day began with the gathering for breakfast. The day would end with them sharing supper at the same table.

The kitchen was his mamma’s space. She’d put her touch to it through the years. Frilly red and blue curtains on the east and south windows, each panel tied in the middle with strips of fine lace. She’d had the boys paint the room yellow after her husband passed. “Make it brighter,” she’d told them. A red and white checkered cloth covered the table. Porcelain knickknacks, cows mostly, some horses, pigs, sat on the windowsills.

“Got ‘er up there yesterday.” Joe sat down at the table, let his mamma pour him a cup of coffee, laid out his cigarette papers and bag of tobacco. “Funny thing though, that old cow had no bloat. ‘Cept for where she’d tore herself up, wasn’t any death signs...maggots, stiffness. Looked as though nothin’ was chewin’ on ‘er either.” He licked the lengthwise end of a rolled smoke, gently sealed it.

Hank, Joe’s other brother, twenty-five and suffering an itch to leave ranching, go to Denver and do something not involving cow shit, came in from outside, sat down at the table. “You take care a that cow, Joe?”

“What we been talkin’ about.” Joe tipped a milk carton over his coffee.

“Joe says she showed no sign of bloat, nothin’ nibblin’ on ‘er either.” Gus sipped his coffee, smiled at Hank. “She’s been missin’ for a week.”

Hank winked at Gus. “Some kinda super cow, I guess. Whadaya think, Joe? Or maybe she was just so damned ornery in life that she just figured she’d play with us a bit; lay down and die, turn her meat sour so she wasn’t no good for nothin’...not even dog food.”

Joe fiddled with his coffee cup, looked at the tabletop. “She gave us some good calves, Hank. Not much else you could ask of a cow.”

“What cow you talkin’ about?” Mamma Klein bent to the stove, turned on a gas burner, scooted a skillet on top.

“That old purposeful cow we was gonna take to auction; the dried-up one,” Gus said.

Mamma Klein had also known this cow. The greater part of her life on the ranch, she had kept the ledgers, the histories of the cattle that had served to pay the mortgage, put food on their table, keep the electric flowing. She’d sit at a card table at branding time and note the ear tag numbers of the calves, trace the numbers back to the cows who’d dropped them, determine the fate of cows that hadn’t given birth for at least two seasons. “I know that cow. She was a loner. Had a distain for mixin’ with the herd. That the one?”

“That’s the one,” Joe said, raising his cup.

Mamma Klein broke eggs; let the innards slip into the skillet glazed with bacon grease. “That cow did well by us. Worth her weight.”

Hank smiled, traded a glance with Gus. “Worth her weight,” he said, smelling biscuits rising in the oven.

Joe and Hank worked fence, north of the home place, on the old Reineke spread that their daddy’d bought when the Reineke’s had given up the land for less constant toil with a promise of greater rewards. Reineke now pumped gas in Oak Creek. His wife tended bar, listened to old men trade lies over longnecks, their butts glued to cracked plastic stool cushions, elbows propped on the oak bartop, their palms framing cheeks thorny from the sprout of three or four days of growth, grit and oil soiled caps pushed up a bit as they stared in silence at satellite-fed ESPN.

“Don’t look too bad.” Hank grabbed a shovel from the bed of the Dodge, stepped to a failed post.

“Seen it worse.” Joe pulled pliers from his back pocket, yanked staples from the grayed pine as his brother loosened-up the soil around its base.

“Been wantin’ to tell you,” Hank said, pounding his boot soul on the edge of the shovel, “all that talk about that cow, the one you pulled up to the bone yard. Didn’t mean anything by it. Gus just gets me goin’, sometimes. Hard not to get all caught-up in his, oh, I guess you’d call it sarcasm. Just like daddy. A mean-spirited man.”

Joe held the top of the post, watched Hank get to the bottom of the thing, wedge his shovel against the rotted wood and work to pry it up. “Didn’t take offense.”

“Well,” Hank said, feeling the post give up its hold, “not that I give a shit about some old cow, but I do suppose that particular cow had somethin’ special about ‘er. Noticed it myself over the years. Gus... Well, Gus ain’t never looked at a cow other than somethin’ that lives for a while, gives-up some calves, dries up, and heads for the auction. But I grant you, that particular cow was notable in a way. Different.”

“Notable,” Joe said. Remembered the moment he’d spent with the cow, his hand against her face, the words he’d spoken.

The brothers worked the fence, stretching barbed wire taut, replacing grayed posts. They Goddamned the certainty that bull elk had trampled the fence, getting where they needed to go through the winter, from high meadow to low where the lure of hay spread for cattle was something known as a thing of sustenance. The fence, a momentary nuisance to a thousand pound ten, twelve-point bull, easily conquered with a lack of concern for men settled on the notion that a fence line was an intendment, an essential component of a Trinity encompassing fat calves, good harvest and the corral of cows destined for slaughter.

A week of work on the north fence done, served only to provide the necessity to work the east and the south fence line where hay meadows would soon be flooded. The imminent dropping of calves, too, defined the course of labor required of the brothers—an imperative taught by their daddy who’d inured each of them to the trudge of their days since they’d ceased suckling their mother’s tits.

Gus worked on the calving barn, replacing failed slats and plugging holes in the roof, told Hank and Joe to ride the high meadow to the south, check on the heifers, the two-year-olds who’d soon drop their first calves. “Ride that fence line, too,” he’d told them, knowing the hay meadow to the south would soon be flooded.

Joe and Hank saddled horses, felt the joy of the simple gift of such critters, nickering and shaking their heads, chewing the metal bits as an unsavory necessity, a prelude to get moving, to break the bounds of the stalls to which so much of their lives were confined.

Joe’d taken Rufus, a six-year-old sorrel gelding whose purpose it seemed was to object mightily to the presence of a rider making decisions as to his direction. Out of the barn, Rufus flapped his head, sidestepped, blew, farted, lowered then raised his head in an attempt to free himself from the pull of the reins. Joe gently slapped the gelding on the neck, spoke softly, leaned forward in the saddle, told the horse he was a good boy; that they were moving, would maybe run a little when they got to the meadow. Joe tightened his hold on the reins, as Rufus adjusted his spirit to accommodate the nuisance on his back.

Hank had taken a paint, a twelve-year-old mare, Lucille, who’d long ago come to an understanding of her place in the world. She watched Rufus gyrate through the motions of a less learned critter than herself. Then, as Joe managed control over the gelding and they began a slow walk up to the high scrub, she followed behind without Hank’s nudging. She’d been through this exercise before. She knew her place.

As they neared the bone yard, both horses stepped off the trail, intent on distancing themselves from a peculiarity they sensed as something wrong, something not usual amongst the detritus of death.

Joe and Hank reined the horses back on the trail, saw their withers spasm, shaking and raising their heads, neighing with discomfort.

“Well, goddamn, would you look at that.” Joe stopped Rufus. The horse turned his head away from the sight of the old cow, still not bloated, still not chewed-up.

“Jesus H.,” Hank said, noticing, too, that Lucille had again turned away from the sight.

Joe and Hank sat silently, staring at the cow.

“She been up here five, six days, Joe. What the hell...”

“Don’t know.” Joe worked to keep Rufus steady.

“Maybe we shoulda’ set her afire. Appears nature ain’t taking its way with her.”

Joe shook his head. “No. No need for that. Critters’ll get to her soon enough. Just leave her be.”

Hank smiled. “You say so. Kinda your cow, anyway. Come on, let’s get up the hill.”

Joe continued to stare for a moment, eased up on the reins. Rufus didn’t wait for any further guidance. The gelding lurched up the hill.

***

Full moon.

A lambent glow bathed mamma Klein’s kitchen, the porcelain critters on the windowsills, stoic, silent, provided a dulled hint of their vibrant colors—reds, blues, yellows. Joe sat at the table, saw no need for further illumination other than what seeped from the moon. He’d quietly slipped from his bed with a sense of something wrong, something that robbed restful sleep. He brewed coffee, sipped, folded his hands on the table, looked at them as if they’d provide some solace, some explanation for the wrongness of the night. He rolled a cigarette, lit it with his daddy’s Zippo, watched his exhale slink toward the east-facing window.

The fingers of volcanic plugs, pointing up, dotting the expanse of hay meadows, now, with the moon full, gave up shadows to the land below as momentary gifts, safe harbor for critters understanding the worth of remaining unseen by the winged hunters circling, ever circling above.

Dull gray to black, silent, five-hundred feet above, audacious puffs of cumuli eased across the stretch of high prairie. Settled a moment above the bone yard, above the Klein’s depository for dead critters left to the caprice of the elements, now only bare outlines of themselves, evidence only that they had once existed, alive upon the land. The clouds moved on, crept north, an unlikely passage given the blow of the forever wind in the opposite direction.

Joe stood up, stepped to the east-facing window, saw the black jut of Finger Rock three miles away. Saw, too, the moon shadows, eerie in a way. He sucked his smoke, sighed the result through his nose. Turned toward the south-facing window that opened up to the view of high scrub, the trail leading to the bone yard, the pine, fir and aspen showing shadows of their own substance.

Joe leaned closer to the window, looked up. Saw the gray-black presence of the promise of rain suspended above the incline, almost touching the tops of lodgepole pine. Thought it odd the northerly movement of the clouds defied the forever wind. The moon glow blinked; a few seconds of total darkness filled the kitchen as the clouds slipped even further north. Joe stepped back from the window, sat back down at the table, sucked on his smoke, wondered about the old cow, still pristine in the bone yard. He felt the wrongness of the night had passed. He lifted his cup from the saucer, snubbed out the glow of his cigarette upon the china plate, stood-up, carried both the cup and saucer to the sink, and rinsed them under the tap. He stepped quietly back to his bedroom where he eased back into sleep, comforted with an understanding that whatever it was that had called him from his bed had been assuaged. How? He didn’t know. But it had.

***

The Reineke spread, north of the home place, now part of the Klein’s 10,000 acres, gave witness to those who had come before the Reinekes. Near the Bear River, upon a small rise fifty yards from the flow of the water, a one-room shack snuggled in to the rise, grayed but sturdy, with walls of earth three feet up from the floor, with another three feet of pine logs above supporting the roof. The shack remained intact in spite of a century or more of the wear of seasons, the occasional flood of the river. Three windows, on the west, south and east walls, were undersized, tiny, utilitarian in a way only to allow sunshine entrance, to disallow the intrusion of the forever wind. The door to the structure remained intact—a door best suited to dwarfs, barely four feet to the vertical.

Joe, favoring Rufus—the gelding’s spirit a thing not so much a challenge, but a wonder—sat astride the sorrel, his legs straddling the horse’s barrel. Joe understood the spasm of the feisty gelding’s withers as the essential want of the critter’s nature to move, work itself to a sweat. Joe coaxed Rufus north, upon the yet-to-be flooded hay meadow.

Joe reined Rufus just short of the ancient home place of folks unknown, folks intent on making a go of it along the Bear River, folks content to live within the clutch of earthen walls, a ceiling of pine. He dismounted, tied off Rufus to a cottonwood, walked to the old home place of folks who’d left this simple testament that they were here, solidly here upon the land. As children, he and his brothers had played in and around the old shack, imagined it an impenetrable fortress against raids of Utes who’d once valued this land as theirs, given by Father Sky, Mother Earth.

Feeling a need he could not articulate in words, Joe walked the perimeter of the half-buried structure, stepped closer, stooped to look into the interior through a tiny window. Sunlight shone through the east-facing window, painting a square of brilliance on the floor. He stepped back, almost stumbled, stood for a moment trying to wrap his mind around what he’d just seen.

“No sir,” he said, shaking his head, once again walking around the structure, noting it was intact; the door stuck shut, the windows too small for anything except rodents or birds to pass through. He stopped his pace where he’d begun it.

He turned his head, saw Rufus munching new spring grass, turned side to side, saw the dot of black baldies in the distance, a Hereford here and there, a single Charolaise, a blond cow, large with calf, studied him from just yards away, focusing her stare as if asking a question of weighty import. He turned back to the window, stepped closer, again bent down, and peered in. “Christ A’mighty.” The purposeful cow lay there, her white head fully framed by the sunlight. Can’t be!

Joe stood-up, backed away, ran to Rufus, pulled the tie rope from the tree and mounted. He clicked his tongue against his cheek, gently slapped his heels against the horse’s barrel, stuck his hand atop his hat and pushed it down, secure on his head. They galloped south.

Joe slowed Rufus at the foot of the trail. The horse blew, snorted, shook its head. Nearing the bone yard, Joe expected the same reaction from Rufus as before, the same intent to shy from the place. But Rufus kept to the trail, seemed to calm himself as they got closer. Once there, Joe reined Rufus to the depression of land where decades of bones lay scattered by the critters that’d gnawed or picked the meat from them. He halted Rufus, held the reins in his left hand, dismounted, stared at the leavings of the dead. The old purposeful cow wasn’t there; could see that her bones, newly stripped, were not atop the others. Knew this revelation, whatever it was, would not be shared with his brothers, his mamma. This thing was his and his alone.

***

In time, Hank’s itch to get off the land came to pass. Gus and Joe bought out his share of the ranch. He headed for Denver, found little that was gold in the glitter, quickly burned through the cash he’d arrived with. Worked on cars, did some carpentry, plumbing. Aged himself into a life of lost dreams. Often thought about the land, the ranch. Married twice, divorced once. The other wife just left one day. Never returned to the little house crammed in with others in a neighborhood where land encompassed postage stamp front and back yards that bordered streets and alleys.

Mamma Klein died on a Sunday, in her kitchen, as she dusted her knick-knacks. Fell to the floor with the punch of a freight train that slammed the left side of her body. Gus and Joe buried her ashes next to their daddy’s in a high meadow surrounded by aspen.

Gus eventually married, had two children. Girls. Wondered why the Good Lord had done such a thing to him. The girls came to consider cows as shit machines, horses as oddities, lowered their eyes and giggled at the exposure of penises longer than their forearms. The girls came to value pom-poms and quarterbacks to the exclusion of the land and the critters upon it.

Gus was able to see his girls grow into adulthood. He wasn’t able to stop the clot of blood that slowly eased itself to his brain, toppling him to ground on another Sunday morning as he pulled a calf from a heifer that’d not yet quite got the hang of birthing.

***

Oak Creek is a lazy burg near Yampa, on the High Plains of north-central Colorado, a two-minute wide place in the road for those taking the scenic route to Steamboat Springs where million dollar condos house the seasonal influx of the affluent. Up a side road in Oak Creek is the old train depot, the first floor now a bar frequented by the locals, by the ranchers and workers in coal, by those servicing the needs of folks ensconced in the comfort of their wealth in Steamboat. The bar offers burgers and fries, other tasty fare, alcohol, cable-fed ESPN.

An old cowboy, a rancher, sits at the bar in the old depot, has pushed his sweat-soiled hat up on his head, leans over a longneck and smokes a hand-rolled cigarette lit with a gold-colored Zippo. His ass rests on cracked plastic, crisscrossed with gray duct tape. He’s book-ended by two others, gray-haired and stubbly from the lack of necessity to shave on a daily basis.

“Your heifers about reading to throw their calves?” one of the men says to the old cowboy.

“About to. Keepin’ an eye on ‘em.”

“You short-handed, now that Gus is gone?” The rumpled geezer on the other side of the man with the Zippo says. “I guess I could give you some time with them heifers.”

The cowboy draws on his cigarette, lets the smoke slide from his mouth and nose, puts the cigarette in the little brass ashtray. He tips his longneck to his lips. “Well,” he says, placing the bottle back on the bar, “I guess I got it covered. Got some hired help out there.”

The old cowboy and the two grizzled presences on either side of him watch the flash of ESPN, smoke their poison, tip their longnecks to their lips, consider their immediate future as a thing undefined, as a thing encompassing their slip-slide into an age where they each figure their worth as men upon the land is waning. Their memories encompass their youth, now lost to hired hands, young men, whose commitment to the land and the critters upon it pretty much paled to the worth of a paycheck.

Joe Klein, never married, never seeing the need for family other than what the land provided, sits alone in the kitchen, the home place that had once seen the chatter and nonsense of kin resolute in the singular urge to cement the glue that held them together—the land and everything upon it. Joe sips coffee, smokes his cigarette, wonders if his hired hands have taken his earlier direction to complete tasks he sees as essential. Hell, he thinks, they probably just wile the hours, not engaged by the urge to do right by the land, the critters. He glances at the delicate caricatures his mamma had placed on the kitchen’s windowsills, undusted, unmoved now for so many years. He stands up, puts his coffee cup in the sink, turns off the light, and walks down the hallway to his bedroom. He pulls off his clothes, tugs the bedclothes to his chest, stares at the night around him. He thinks it significant that he’s slept well, undisturbed for years...ever since that night he’d seen the black-billow of cloud creep north, not a drop of rain let loose as it passed; ever since that day he’d found that old cow in the ancient shack, still whole, undisturbed by the want of nature to disembody her.

Joe mounts the six-year-old purely black mare, a white blaze down her forehead stopping short of her muzzle. He’d named her Mary, simply Mary. She was a gentle soul, bought at auction a year before. She’d caught his eye with her own. Seemed to Joe she had seen something of his soul that day of the sale, something deeply personal that he’d never shared. But damned if that horse hadn’t seen into him, corralled amongst many, her black coat shining like silk, her eyes engaged with his own. He’d shaken his head and acknowledged her insight, acknowledged she’d probably outlive him, acknowledged the worth of taking her home.

“You know the way, Mary.” Joe barely reins the mare, the daily routine now known by the horse, their course set for the old Reineke spread, to the shack by the river.

Mary stops just short of the half-buried structure, lowers her head, begins to munch sprouts of hay. Joe dismounts, knowing there’s no need to tie off the mare, knowing she will stay close, come when she’s called.

Joe walks to within ten yards of the shack, sits down on the meadow grass, grabs a cigarette from his shirt pocket, lights up and huffs the smoke, turning his head to the brilliant blue above. He’d long ago stopped checking on the interior of the shack. It was always the same: the old cow still lay there, as if sleeping, unspoiled, not ruined by the ravages of nature. He’d ceased to wonder at the mystery of the thing. It was what it was. Hell, he was too damned old to ponder the meaning of it all.

After a half-hour or so, Joe whistles to Mary, waits for the mare to side-up to him. Ready to mount her, he turns back to the shack. Thinks a moment about what has just crossed his mind. He walks away from the mare, pulls his Zippo from his pocket, sits to his haunches in front of the tiny east-facing window, fingers the lighter, opening and closing the top with his thumb. “Yessir, you were a good old cow,” he says, staring at the lighter for a moment, thinking something of himself ought to be in there with her. He tosses the Zippo through the little window, into the blackness within. He mounts Mary, pats her softly on the neck, tells her nothing much of substance but the simple words of an old man who has come to value quiet conversations with horses. “You go where you want, Mary. Got nothin’ but time.” As they move on to wherever Mary has a mind to go, Joe looks back at the old homestead, sunk half-way in the earth, and, satisfied in accepting the notion that the Good Lord works in mysterious ways, he pulls his hat off, lets the forever wind cool his brow. Laughs at himself, says to Mary, “Good Lord had nothin’ to do with it.”

Joe props pillows against the headboard, raises himself, glances at his bedroom window, sees the moon is full, the glow framed as a picture. He reaches to the side table, rolls a cigarette, lights it with the plastic blue BIC he’d picked up at Reineke’s gas station. He huffs the smoke toward the window, watches it lose its substance, fan-out and fade to nothing. He smiles, sees the moon glow blink to black for an instant, then return; remembers another time, another cloud that had paled the moon. He caresses the thought carried at the back of his mind, within the center of his soul, a wish for the honor to lie next to that purposeful cow there at the edge of the meadow, there within the embrace of earthen walls.

***

An old cowboy’s bed is empty, the bedclothes still pulled up to the pillow, a Bic lighter, a bag of tobacco, rolling papers on the side table.

The first light of day turns the meadow golden, the forever wind has wound down to a kindly breeze, the rush of Bear Creek a melody to those men and critters who find it in themselves to listen, just listen. A purely black mare, a white blaze down her forehead, no tack, no saddle, munches hay stubble in the meadow near a grayed shack half buried in the earth. She has become a purposeful horse, has managed to free herself from a corral, pine poles rotted with age. If, at this moment, she remembers anything at all, it is that she had seen in the old man’s eyes a hunger for the perfection of the earth. If, at this moment, she concludes anything at all, it is that she has served her purpose, has known the portent of a dry cloud shoving against the constancy of the forever wind.

END