Those nights the cowboy’s body wouldn’t hand him sleep. It wanted more than what it had.
Those days the cowboy rode drag at the herd’s noisy backside, breathing the dust and the stink. He’d prod the sick, the weak, the scared. More than once while doing so he tumbled from his saddle into shitpies.
Then their night arrived: Boot Slaw stopped his pacing at the cowboy. He loomed like a landscape, too big to remember right.
The hand came down.
The cowboy felt it clap into his heels. Boot Slaw waited, high and broad, grinning. Everybody watched. The cowboy accepted the challenge with a wild surprise tackle—endless acres had opened inside him, unplowed, aflame—and his ferocity was such that he toppled Boot Slaw at first go, slamming him flat into a stack of gear.
But not at second, third, or seventh go, as every night that last week on the job they crashed snarling into brushpiles and pot-racks, tripping over their reclining fellows who hee-hawed and yahooed from the holes in their fire-slashed faces. When he got his grip, which he always did, Boot Slaw flapped the cowboy around like a hide he’d cut himself.
Between rounds Boot Slaw sang the songs of his old country and shadowboxed in stances no one had ever seen.
Between rounds the cowboy found his arms and legs, even when he lost, which was every go but the first.
Afternoon in New Mexico
The cowboy trudged the road into the afternoon. He’d trudged this road twice before on his way to Bad Man McWhorter’s to trade his gear and two guitars for the one sad purse of cash he’d brought back to his woman, the woman he right now walked away from. Although he didn’t carry anything this time, he didn’t feel unburdened—the sun had been doubling him all day, adding arms to his arms and legs to his legs, the limbs rooting in and rising from his back in a doughy sprouting. It was as though he’d been forced to bed himself and lay together afterwards, awake.
He figured if he’d only feel this way from here on out he wouldn’t be any good to a woman or a horse or a man like Bad Man McWhorter again, and so what.
What good was being any good?
Boot Slaw’s answer, he imagined, would be to pretend to take a swing at him.
The cowboy reached Bad Man McWhorter’s stretch of fence. He set doubled hands on a post alive with painted grasshoppers. Every one of them leaped. There grazed the horse that was once his horse, at home with other horses that once were other men’s horses. More awful yet was what rose behind them: the stables, the barn, the house, all newly stained. They had the look of having always been there.
The cowboy’s head doubled.
The cowboy’s heart doubled.
The more of him there was the more he felt he could take. He hugged his shoulders with his arms and his shoulders with his arms. With both heads he looked at the mountains. Seen this way they were one thing with one side, the mountains’ side. Mountains knew how to make up their minds.
Right then Bad Man McWhorter loped into view from the awful stables, slow as smoke. He whistled all the horses back. The horse that was once the cowboy’s trotted, each leg doing something different, independent but unified, balanced in one body.
The cowboy recalled when he and the woman he walked away from had last ridden that horse together. This hurt more than recalling when he and the woman had met in town, by the trough. He wiped both his sweaty brows.
When Bad Man McWhorter reappeared it was to lean on the rifle that was once the cowboy’s rifle. He stood many yards away but his face flew red and warty, a bloated flag. He thumbed at himself.
The cowboy’s arms helped his arms heft himselves onto the fence, where his legs wrapped legs to sit tight. His hearts hammered hearts.
Bad Man McWhorter laughed, a grainy cackle. Behind him his three daughters stepped out of the awful barn. They were lean and muddy with animals’ faces. They held big tools. Bad Man McWhorter jigged around the rifle, wheezing, jubilant. His wife pushed through the back door of the awful house, her apron brushed with blood and flour. Unlike the awful stables, barn, and house, she had the look of having had it worse than this.
The cowboy’s heads shook yes to her.
She stood as still as a split rock.
The cowboy’s heads traded glances: one hopeful, one hopeless.
Bad Man McWhorter stopped jigging. He’d seen his women.
Then the women went away.
The cowboy fell off the fence and into himself, road-side.
Cowgirl
Cowgirl, born of a beef cow, lands with a squelch in the mud. Fall is beaming, bright, a small cold sunrise. She steams.
The cow cowgirl is born of moos, saying: Ours?
Cowgirl, facedown, does not turn over.
Other beef cows look.
Cowgirl is a human person female girl. Not a baby, not a child, not a grown-up. Naked.
The cow cowgirl is born of bends to sniff her.
Ours?
Cowgirl turns onto her back. She clears the mud from her face.
The cow cowgirl is born of is afraid.
Cowgirl is afraid, and then she isn’t. She sits up. The cow licks her hard. Against each lick, cowgirl feels herself, her hot skin and blood, her muscles and bones, her packed-tight inner organs. At her center twists a need to move. She isn’t sure if she should speak.
The cow licks cowgirl’s mouth.
You are not my mother, says cowgirl.
The cow moos. Her udder sags, swollen rich.
Cowgirl rolls away, in the mud and feed and shit, layering herself, making a stinking hide. It spreads in smears and lumps. It crusts in the early light.
The sun, done rising, retires its red and golden banners.
Cowgirl stands. Flies outline her. The farm’s low buildings stamp clear shadows. She walks to the fence. It’s wooden, slatted, pricked with shot. She touches it, amazed.
Don’t, says a young man.
The young man has the face of a woman. He’s standing in a shed, holding a loop of calving chains. He’s embarrassed.
Cowgirl is embarrassed, and then she isn’t. She squats. She pisses and shits.
The young man tries to look like he knows what to say to that and is just about to say it.
Cowgirl stoop-steps between the fence and crosses a country road and walks into a field of tall green crops. Their shade is cold and deep, near-night. Their low leaves brush her in dew. She comes to a trampled place where slashed light enters. She stands in a slice of it. Through her mud-hide, she feels her hands and face, her neck, her trunk and torso, her privates, her legs and feet—a springiness, a scrappiness—she feels joy, and then she doesn’t. The light she stands in dims and slants. Do her feelings come from the inside, then move out, or do they come from the outside, then move in? An answer, she guesses, will help her know what to do and say, when she should be what to who. The light sharpens. She’s thirsty, hungry. She walks the field of tall green crops until it breaks into a field of short green crops, almost short enough to see over, which she walks until it ends in a sloppy garden. Small plants bulge red, green, and purple vegetables. She eats them. She folds wet leaves and drinks in sips. She walks the garden until it ends in a driveway to a farmhouse.
The driveway is lined with tables stacked in decorations, appliances, tools, toys. Items too big for the tables lean against them.
She touches a bicycle, amazed.
Wait, say two old men.
The two old men sit at the driveway’s end in lawn chairs, dented cashboxes in their laps. Both are alarmed.
Cowgirl is alarmed, and then she mounts the bicycle.
The two old men look at her like she can’t know what she’s doing.
Her fingers link into the handles’ grooves. She can know how to ride, she feels, or she can not know how to ride. She can sit straight and grip right or she can tilt too far and topple. She knows who she should be to this bicycle. Her butt fits the seat.
Come here, say the two old men.
She pushes off—she rides down the driv
eway to a country road, the one she crossed before, and takes it, biking between fields and farms and homes. The breeze she makes by moving laps at her. Her mud-hide dries and flakes. Thrilled, she passes fields of farms like the farm she left, their tagged cows standing and sitting and chewing, and she passes fields of crops like the fields she walked, their long rows ripening or withering, and she passes fields of homes, their doors and windows shut. The country road curves downhill and past a big wooden sign and into the main street of a small town.
A group of middle-aged men stand around their trucks at a gas station, smoking. The young man with the face of a woman is there, perched on a tractor, sighing and shaking his head. From his shoulder hangs the loop of calving chains.
Cowgirl brakes in the street. It’s noon already, shadows skinny under everything.
The young man gasps.
Look at that, say the middle-aged men.
The middle-aged men are interested.
Cowgirl is interested, then alarmed, then embarrassed. Then none of it.
The middle-aged men put out their cigarettes and spit out their chew. They approach. They move slowly, smiling big.
Where’s your mother? say the middle-aged men. Who’s your father?
The young man with the face of a woman waves, trying to look like he knows what he means by it. The calving chains slide off with a jingle and a crash.
Cowgirl shifts from the seat to put her feet on the pavement. She feels bad for the young man. He can’t seem to speak. He touches his chest with one hand, and then the other, but he doesn’t know where to go from there.
She looks at her hands on the bicycle’s handlebars. She feels bad for herself.
Cars have stopped in the street, both lanes backed up.
The middle-aged men come close. They smell like the insides of places.
You are not my fathers, says cowgirl.
She pedals away. The middle-aged men rush to their trucks, and the young man scoops up the chains and boards his tractor, and together they roar into the road, engines ripping, tires barking, and cowgirl, pursued, turns down a side street, across a sidewalk, over a driveway, through a yard, and onto a path between two houses, where she stops beneath windows she’s too short to see into. In one house, a big-sounding man laughs alone, laughing himself to more laughter, bumping through a maze of it. Cowgirl wheels her arms and laughs, but it doesn’t bring her anywhere, it’s only practice. In the other house, a different voice: a big-sounding woman talks to herself, and at the same time, to someone else. She’s asking questions. The questions are advice. Cowgirl moves along, half-riding, barely pedaling. She talks to herself, and at the same time, to someone else, saying, Do I come from myself? Do I come from outside myself? Do I need to know? Do I need new questions? and this isn’t practice, this is a maze—rows and shadows, corners and voices—How can I know where to go from here?—the wind—and she’s biking fast, she’s biking hard, she gasps—she slams into a bench and flips over it and lands in grass on her back.
She’s in a weedy park. A nearby group of boys is throwing a football, not really trying to catch it. They’re looking to bang each other around. They stop.
They say, You’re weird.
She sits up.
You don’t look right, one says.
What happened to your wiener, says the one with the football, pointing at her crotch.
Girls don’t have them, stupid.
I’m insulting her, stupid.
Cowgirl stands. She says, Don’t.
One of them shoves her and she shoves back, and another shoves her from behind and she falls, and they take her bicycle and dash off laughing and hooting and yelling, except for one. He asks if he can help her.
Wait, she says.
She gets up on her own. She looks at her body.
He is enchanted.
Cowgirl is enchanted, and then she isn’t.
I want to give you something, he says.
He jiggles out of his sweatshirt and his sweatpants. They’ll fit, he says, handing them over, happy in his undershirt, in his underpants.
She puts them on. They don’t fit. They smell like the space she stood in between houses.
The boy is looking at her. He’s seeing time, time together, his time and her time, the two of them in every place he knows. He’s hoping that she’ll start looking at him in the same way.
She sees this. Come here, she says.
He can’t seem to find himself.
Look at that, she says.
He’s blinking and swallowing and shaking.
She touches his hand. His whole body quivers, tightens.
Where is your mother, she says.
Cleaning houses. She cleans houses.
Who is your father?
Marge. I mean Frank! Frank.
She isn’t looking at him how he’s looking at her. He’s disappointed, she notices, but hopeful.
She smiles big.
He smiles big and sweats.
You don’t look right, she says.
The boy points at a worn-out house on the other side of the park, prepares to say something, and is hit in the back of the head with a football—his glasses jump off his face, he stumbles to one knee.
The boys cheer from the street. They chant a nickname: girlie man, girlie man, girlie man!
I have to go, the boy says to cowgirl, crying.
Cowgirl skips across the park, around a corner, and up a hill. Bright leaves swish underfoot. It’s late afternoon. Between low shadows shoot copper-golden corridors. She jumps in and out of their light. She scratches mud from her face and she shakes mud from her hair, twirling in a shower of clumps and crumbs. She’ll go where she goes! She puts her hands in the sweatshirt’s front pocket and finds an action figure, a squinting cowboy. Its hat is fused to its head. She flicks at the hat-head seam and walks between two slanted gates and into a graveyard. Headstones lean in rows, like houses, like crops. She slaps a few with the action figure, an attempt to unhat or unsquint it. Two bicycles are stacked against a tree. The tree is tall, a burst of red leaves, a burst of black roots. She peeks around its trunk.
Two teen boys slouch near a bush, drinking whiskey from a water bottle.
She can tell them what to do, she thinks, and they will do it. They can carry chains. They can stand at fences and sit in chairs. They can wait, and stare, and move in groups, and drive trucks and tractors, and hit boys in the head with the things they’re playing with, and take away whatever it is that the girls they meet are using to get to places.
Imagining this, cowgirl is disappointed. But hopeful.
One of the teen boys is impatient, the other bored.
Cowgirl, impatient, bored, leans out of her hiding spot. The teen boys see her but pretend they don’t. She edges closer, behind a memorial sculpture, a chalice on a pedestal. The chalice is big enough to serve her in.
The impatient teen boy says, Why does it take girls so long to get anywhere!
They want to look good, says the bored one.
They already usually do!
Cowgirl climbs the sculpture. She hunkers in the chalice.
Although the teen boys gesture like the middle-aged men from the gas station, their voices squeak closer to those of the boys from the park. They drink from the bottle, pretending not to grimace, and they talk sex, pretending to have talked sex with people who’ve had it. They discuss where dicks can be put. They discuss where they’ve seen dicks put on the internet. The impatient one waves a condom.
She’s been around, he says, putting it back in his wallet.
The bored one shrugs. He rolls a cigarette on a tabled headstone.
Cowgirl stands, revealed. You’re weird! she says.
The teen boys discuss vaginas and buttholes and breasts.
Cowgirl grips the rim of the chalice. She’s blinking and swallowing and shaking. She wants to force the teen boys to stop pretending that she isn’t there, and then she doesn’t. But this “doesn’t” isn’t like the
other doesn’ts—it isn’t the easy opposite of “does.” It’s just as loaded with longing.
The afternoon lengthens, dulls.
Two teen girls arrive. One has a paper bag, the other a sparkly purse. Both wear makeup. Their faces float and glow.
Who the fuck are you? says the one with the bag.
The one with the purse says, Are you lost?
The teen boys pretend they’ve just seen cowgirl.
She seems all right, says one.
Whatever, says the other. Sit.
The teen girl with the bag sits. She crinkles it open and passes out hamburgers. She gulps whiskey, glaring at cowgirl. She’s angry and confused.
Cowgirl is angry and confused.
The teen girl with the purse approaches the sculpture’s pedestal and looks up at cowgirl. She’s concerned.
Cowgirl is concerned and angry and confused.
The concerned teen girl says, Where are you from?
Where is she from from? says the angry and confused teen girl.
The bored teen boy, still chewing, unwraps another hamburger. He makes an indifferent mumble.
Oh please, like it doesn’t matter, says the angry and confused teen girl. She’s probably from some fucked-up country.
Are you okay? says the concerned teen girl.
Cowgirl says, I want to give you something.
The concerned teen girl winces out a smile.
In the smile, cowgirl sees time, time together, her time and the teen girl’s time, the two of them on farms and in fields, taking roads and streets and alleys, finding bicycles and riding them, finding boys and shoving them, skipping and twirling and practice-laughing and putting advice-questions to girls in chalices in graveyards.
Cowgirl sees the concerned teen girl seeing that she’s seeing this.
The concerned teen girl is sad.
By the bush, the bored teen boy kisses the angry and confused teen girl. They grab at each other’s crotches. They roll out of sight.
Cowgirl offers the squinting action figure.
The impatient teen boy touches the sad teen girl’s shoulder. She’s crying.
It’s okay, he says, but it comes out sounding like, Is this important?
She needs help! We have to help her!
Big Lonesome Page 6