by Joe Henry
Something had turned in him that he could not have identified even if he had been conscious of it, some change or shift that he wasn’t even aware of, some unnamed alteration that turned something in his soul so he was never again to see with the same eyes nor feel with the same hands. A shift of such infinitesimal subtlety and yet of such absolute thoroughness that he would bear its cast for as long as he took in the light, for as long as he processed the cold.
He was still a boy, in a man’s body perhaps, but still a boy when he promised Mrs. Bowman to return in the storm. But that instant of rage and grief when he knelt and sprang forward instead of back—to somehow save himself by leaping at the thing that could destroy him rather than trying to avoid it—then he became no longer the boy who said he would return if the storm got too bad but instead something even previous to the boy, something grown from the boy both forward in vision and back. Not back to what is lost to time because nothing is ever lost, but back toward the source, back to the very wellspring where earth and breath divide, this the clay and the stone and this the breath and the blood and no wiseman to determine that one or the other is more or less. And all of it, broken and whole, unspeakable sorrow. All of it, sundered and joined, unspeakable joy.
When he crouched under the horse’s leg whose hoof like fate’s perfect cudgel would break him and leave him in the long snowy night freezing all previous sense and will and even right being, when instead of flinging himself away to avoid the rock the hammer of the next hoof and like the beast even lacking the choice to do so and leapt forward embracing the thing that would dash the breath out of him, that instinct that acts even before the mind can choose would determine the whole rest of his life. Where something even deeper than the marrow knows that the cost of avoiding what one fears is even greater than the actual object of that fear and so the fear itself is even more corrosive even more destructive than all the frightening potential of the thing that arouses it.
Luke leaned even lower, resting his chest on the crest of Lefty’s neck, the frozen hair of the horse’s mane both harsh and comforting against his lips and his arms encircling that broad flat muscle to either side so his hands which were warm at last lay against the horse’s throat. The reiving indefatigable cold and yet the strong slow throb of the horse’s pulse and against it small though insistent too like a tiny quiet thread alongside the wonderful drumming torrent his own heartbeat lesser and greater and yet still of the heart. And yet still of the heart.
with grateful acknowledgment
Milton M. Adess
Chip Ridky, D.V.M.
Dan Lott
Eleanor Jackson
Kate Medina
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOE HENRY received his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, but he attributes much of his learning to his many years as a laborer, rancher and professional athlete. A renowned lyricist, he has had his words performed on more than a hundred recordings by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra and John Denver to Garth Brooks and Rascal Flatts. In addition to his many music awards, Henry also received a National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation “for the celebration of the natural world in his work” and the Colorado Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. This is his first work of fiction.