Bury Your Horses

by Dan Dowhal

  “The teacher knows we need you here today,” Tammy is telling an unhappy Vern. “We’ve talked with her about it a bunch of times.”

  “But I’m missing the lesson on fractions. It’s hard enough already to keep up with the other kids. You’re the one that told me how important it is for me to learn my ’rithmetic.”

  “Land’s sake, child, missing one day of classes ain’t gonna kill you. Most kids are just itching to skip school.”

  Shane takes this moment to interrupt. “Good morning, everyone.”

  “Ain’t nothing good about it,” Vern complains.

  Tammy swipes him across the back with a dish towel. “Don’t ever say that! Thank the good Lord you’re alive and got a roof over your head … got enough to eat.”

  “Er, speaking of enough to eat …” Shane interjects, as much to defuse some of the flak Vern’s taking as to get fed.

  “Just putting on a fresh pot of coffee. There’s oatmeal, if you want,” Tammy replies.

  “Well, maybe a small bowl. But a big mug of coffee for sure, when it’s ready.”

  “Well, don’t go expecting me to wait on you. Pot’s on the stove. Bowls are in the cupboard. Sugar’s in the pantry. Spoons are in the drawer.”

  “Listen, I couldn’t help overhearing when I came in … about Vern and school and whatnot. I don’t mind helping out around here today. Maybe that way you can spell the kid.”

  “With a busted-up arm?” inquires Tammy.

  “I still got one good right hand, and I’m pretty sure I can be as much help with one as Vern is with two.”

  The boy looks hopeful, but Tammy frowns. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s going to be a crazy busy day, and we won’t have time to be showing you the ropes. The boy already knows exactly what to do. Besides, it’s gone on eight o’clock, and the school bus has passed by, anyway. But it’s mighty kind of you to offer your services … I’m pretty sure we can find something for that one good right hand of yours to do. You’d best eat up, now. We’ll be starting work pretty soon.”

  Shane pours himself a cup of coffee, but hangs around the stove to watch Tammy at work. In profile, she’s like a different woman. Her nose is petite, and although it’s got a slight bump in the middle, there’s an alluring appeal to that. Her bottom lip has a cute little permanent pout. The more he looks, the more he enjoys the view.

  “Can I help with the dishes?” he offers.

  “Not unless you’re fixing to get that plaster wet.”

  “I could dry.”

  She considers that. “All right, give ’er a whirl. Dish towel’s hanging there.”

  Shane passes behind Tammy, taking care not to touch or brush up against her, and leans in to secretly take in her scent, which has a sweet natural muskiness to it.

  As he dries the dishes, he finds that his casted hand has limited grasp, so he switches to using it for towelling instead.

  “That’s supposed to be good for you,” he comments, when Tammy notes the change.

  “What is?”

  “Switching up hands … you know, doing things with your left hand you normally do with your right.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Yeah, something about carving new neural pathways in the brain. It’s one of the reasons people get feebleminded as they get older. Their brains are stuck in a rut.”

  “Well, too bad you didn’t break your other wrist, then. You’d get a heaping helping of new pathways that way.”

  Shane likes this wry sense of humour Tammy is revealing, and he smiles, careful to keep his lips pressed together so his missing teeth don’t show. That action reminds him that he will eventually need to call his dentist to order a replacement plate, but the phone number is lost along with all the others in his stolen cellphone.

  He’s starting to realize just how troublesome piecing his life back together will be — further complicated by the fact he has no actual home address. He ponders all the places he has lived over the past two decades and realizes there isn’t a single one he can call home.

  “You’re doing a great job,” Tammy says. “We’re almost done. You’ll make someone a fine wife some day,” she jokes.

  “Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt,” he replies. He wants her to know this about him — that he is not some shiftless drifter, that he is capable of commitment. Someone once saw enough in him to want to marry him and start building a life together, regardless of how it ended up.

  “You don’t say. Any kids?”

  “No. We tried, but —”

  “Oh,” is all she has to say. Eventually, she pulls the plug out of the sink and declares, “I reckon we best be joining the others.” The sudden end to their brief intimacy sours Shane’s mood. Still, as a final demonstration of goodwill, he hastens to wash out his coffee mug in the ebbing dishwater.

  Inside the front entrance of the stable, a crude plywood work platform has been set up on sawhorses. Tammy strolls up and instantly takes charge.

  “All right, let’s move ’em in,” she commands, like some Hollywood trail boss.

  Shane sits on the sidelines, clueless as to how to help. Only when he sees Vern struggling to reach over his head to bring down the top cage from the first stall does Shane sees an opportunity. He reaches for the cage, but freezes as the viper squirms and hisses. Its mouth opens impossibly wide, revealing an unsettlingly moist, pinkish maw and curved, needle-like fangs. He tells himself the reptile cannot possibly bite through the wires, even as some deeper instinct makes his body hair bristle. A tremor passes through him, like the cold kiss of a winter wind.

  His trance is broken when the cage starts teetering. Vern’s smaller fingers poke between the wires as the boy struggles to steady it. Shane grabs the top handle and, holding the crate well away from himself, easily hoists it down to the ground.

  Vern mutters a quick, “Much obliged,” and practically runs the cage over to the work platform that Tammy and Gracie are standing beside. The boy balances the crate on the edge and slides open the cage door. Gracie holds a rod with a semicircular bend at its end, and she pokes it inside to lift the rattler around its middle. Perfectly balanced, the snake is suspended, tense but helpless.

  Gracie hoists out the snake and dumps it onto the platform, where Tammy, wielding a short iron shaft with a T-shape at the end, presses down behind the rattlesnake’s diamond-shaped head, immobilizing the business end.

  Although he is at a safe distance, Shane’s heart beats fiercely as he watches Tammy coolly grab the snake just behind its head. As she picks up the rattler, Gracie comes in to hold up the tail and support some of the weight. The girl sees Shane watching, and with an impish grin, gives the snake’s rattle a shake, like it’s a child’s toy.

  Together, mother and daughter bring the rattlesnake to a large glass jar whose opening is covered by a thin sheet of clear plastic film. Tammy presses the viper hard near the edges of its mouth, and the jaws swing fully open. Then she jams the exposed fangs through the top of the plastic and squeezes again. There is an explosion of yellowish fluid; the venom drips down to collect at the bottom of the jar.

  The rattlesnake, thus milked, is dropped back onto the platform, then Gracie wrangles it back into its cage. Vern then takes away the coop and deposits it in a previously empty stall. As the boy approaches to fetch a new subject, Shane, having seen how the work flows, already has the next cage waiting. Vern offers up a big grin, nods, and carries off the snake to be milked.

  Maybelline and Yolanda enter the stable carrying plastic pails. In the coolness of the morning air, steam wafts from the containers, and when Shane peeks inside, he discovers that they contain freezer bags stuffed full of frozen mice defrosting in a bath of hot water.

  “You want to do the feeding?” Yolanda asks with a smirk.

  Although her mocking attitude irritates him, Shane is reluctant to take up the challenge. “That’s okay, I’ll just watch for a bit … you know, to see how it’s done.”

  Yolanda pic
ks out a mouse, opens the cage belonging to the rattler just milked, tosses in the rodent corpse, and slams the hatch shut.

  “There. Really complicated.”

  The snake slithers up to the dead mouse, its forked tongue flickering in the air. Then its mouth unhinges and spreads wide as it swallows the rodent whole, starting with the head. Shane feels a spasm of revulsion at the sight.

  “Buen apetito!” Yolanda says, like a proud chef. She hands Shane the freezer bag. “Here, you feed them. Maybelline and I have a mess of meat and hides to make.”

  Shane peers inside without enthusiasm. There is little consistency in the size or even type of dead animal inside. There are mostly common brown field mice mixed with white lab mice, but also numerous other small rodents he cannot identify.

  “Where do you get them all from?” he asks.

  “Some we catch, some we trade for,” Yolanda replies. “There’s an old fellow up in the hills who collects them for us. The rest we buy when we have to. Got a lot of nasty big mouths to feed, don’t we?” Yolanda and Maybelline head off toward one of the other stalls, chuckling between themselves as they go.

  Shane has little time to reflect, as Vern is back with a freshly milked rattlesnake, and the process continues non-stop. He and the boy develop a rhythm, with Shane hoisting out the next cage in line and positioning it in the aisle, then hastening back to feed each devenomized snake. He uses his casted hand to slide open the cage doors and his good one to speedily toss in each meal. Then he stacks the cage and repeats the process.

  After feeding a dozen rattlers, he feels himself relaxing around the reptiles. Not a single one has made so much as a casual lurch in his direction. They tend to be docile, either because they are dazed from the milking procedure, or because they are conditioned to await the arrival of their food. As Shane becomes used to them, he starts to appreciate other aspects of their appearance beyond the fearsome ones. The diamond pattern and the leathery texture of their skin are fascinating, as are their catlike eyes, which seem to miss nothing. By now, he is also starting to note the variation in their length and girth and adjust their meal selection accordingly. A few of the defrosted rodents are some kind of wild rat — at any rate, they are bigger and fatter than the mice — and he sets these aside to feed to the largest snakes.

  At one point he goes to receive a returning cage and looks up to see Tammy holding it.

  “Where are Yolanda and May?” she asks.

  “Took off as soon as they brought the mousesicles. Said they had other work to do.”

  “You been helping here the whole time, then?”

  “Sure have.”

  She smiles. “Yup, you’ll make someone a good wife someday.”

  “Is this what wives normally do in New Mexico?”

  “Mister, this ain’t what wives normally do anywhere.” She points down at the cage beside her. “Don’t bother feeding that one. He’s for butchering and tanning. Set him aside for the gals. We’re making good time. Let’s take a break, and I’ll go rustle us up some coffee.”

  Shane picks up the snake earmarked for slaughter and finds the other women in a rear stall set up as a reptilian butcher shop. A large wood block dominates the middle, where Yolanda is carving up fillets of meat, a picnic cooler beside her. Meanwhile, Maybelline is seated against the wall, and on her knees is a wooden pegboard onto which she is stretching a snakeskin.

  “Tammy said to bring you this one,” Shane says.

  “Put it on the table,” Yolanda commands.

  Shane complies, and watches as Yolanda pulls out a well-cared-for machete. Before proceeding, she reaches into her blouse, pulls out the death’s-head necklace he noted earlier, and delivers it a quick kiss. Then she dexterously flicks open the cage door, reaches inside with the flat of the machete to hoist out the snake by its midsection, plops the victim onto the block, and before the rattler can react, chops off its head.

  Both pieces of the serpent continue to thrash about. Yolanda holds down the head with the machete, grabs it from behind, and waves the halved snake, its face forward and mouth menacingly agape, at Shane.

  “Did you know a rattlesnake can still bite you after its head is cut off?” she tells him. He doesn’t know if this is true, but isn’t about to find out the hard way.

  “Stick it up your ass, then,” he retorts, and leaves the laughing women to their bloody work.

  Tammy returns with a Thermos, juice boxes for the kids, and a platter of snacks. She pours Shane a mug of coffee. He finds himself hoping she’ll sit beside him for a while, but she leaves to deliver refreshments to Yolanda and Maybelline. Shane sits sipping and munching, studying the two children.

  “I’m old enough to drink coffee if I want to, on account of I’m twelve years old now,” Vern informs Shane, catching his gaze. “But I prefer juice.”

  “Juice is better for you, anyway,” Shane replies.

  “How old are you?” asks Gracie.

  “I’m thirty-eight.”

  “You look a lot older.”

  “Thanks, that’s sweet of you to say so.”

  Gracie misses the sarcasm and smiles at Shane. “My birthday is May thirteenth. I’m a Taurus.”

  “Bull!”

  “No, it’s true.”

  “I meant that Taurus is the sign of the bull.”

  “Oh.” She thinks about that for a second and giggles. “You’re funny.”

  “So your birthday is coming up soon.”

  She nods enthusiastically. “I’m going to be eight.”

  “What do you do on your birthday? Do you have, like, a party, with balloons and cake and ice cream and stuff?”

  Gracie frowns. “I dunno.” She looks down in the dirt and won’t meet Shane’s eyes.

  Tammy comes crunching back down the corridor and instantly notices her daughter’s expression.

  “What’s going on?” she asks.

  “I was just asking about Gracie’s birthday.”

  “Well, plenty of time to talk about that later. Right now we got work to do. C’mon, you two, let’s get cracking. Vern, go fetch the next cage.”

  The children move to comply, but when Shane gets up to go with Vern, Tammy grabs his arm to hold him back.

  “Listen,” she says, lowering her voice, “I realize you didn’t know better, not having kids of your own and all, but I don’t want you filling their heads with any kind of crazy notions.”

  Shane has no idea exactly what he’s done wrong, but is irritated by her insinuation that he has no sense in these matters, just because he hasn’t fathered children. “We were talking, that’s all.”

  “It’s just we don’t make a big deal of birthdays around here. It’s tough enough makin’ ends meet as it is. We really don’t have money to spare on presents and parties and stuff.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know. Like I said, we were just shooting the breeze.”

  “Well, you’ll be gone tomorrow, free as that breeze, but we’re the ones that gotta stay behind and make do as best we can.”

  “Look, I said I was sorry. I’m going to go help Vern now, okay?”

  “Okay.” She looks like she wants to say something more, but bites back her words. Shane’s not sure whether she feels she went too far, or not far enough.

  With an extra helper, the rest of the morning goes smoothly. Except for yesterday’s injuries, Shane is in end-of-season shape, and does not find the work taxing. However, he can see young Vern start to fatigue, even with Shane there to hoist the cages. Intermittently the boy does something to earn a verbal rebuke from Tammy, and in one case gets smacked on the ass with the metal wrangling rod.

  “Lawd A’mighty, boy. If dumb was dirt, you’d cover about an acre,” she chides him. Shane can see why the boy prefers school.

  They break for a lunch of egg salad sandwiches and iced tea. Outside the stable, the sun shines brilliantly, and there is no wind to stir up dust, so he opts to take his meal in the fresh air. Despite Tammy’s admonishment about talking to
the children, he is glad when Vern follows and sits next to him.

  “Hard work, eh?” Shane comments. Vern just shrugs.

  “Say, Vern, last night you said something about the lights inside not working properly.”

  “Yeah, all the electricity inside the stable’s screwed up. It’s all old wiring from the 1920s, I think.”

  “Well, I know something about electricity. Me and my dad replaced all the old knob and tube wiring in our house when I was about your age. Actually, I’ve helped quite a few buddies wire cottages and houses over the years, too. Got a knack for it, if I do say so myself. How about you and me have a look after the milking?”

  “Well, I’m supposed to do my homework …” Vern starts, but then he breaks into a toothy grin. “But, yeah, we can do it when Aunt Tammy goes to ship off the juice. It’d be kinda nice to have lights and a working fridge in there again, not to mention proper heaters for the critters in winter.”

  Shane gives him a playful punch on the arm. “Well, I’m sure it’s something we men can figure out, eh?”

  EIGHT

  When, around midafternoon, Shane watches the final dead rodent being kneaded into a giant lump inside a rattlesnake’s body, he feels a swell of pride, both for his work contribution and for overcoming his revulsion toward the vipers. He stacks the last of the cages and wanders out to check on the rest of the team.

  Tammy is transferring the venom from the milking jar into a stainless-steel vessel that reminds Shane of a cocktail shaker. The day’s extraction takes up just half of the container, and the liquid’s yellowish colour gives it the appearance of a urine specimen.

  “Liquid gold,” he comments.

  “I wish. Used to sell to a bunch of different places and get top dollar for it, but now a big lab up in New York has pretty much cornered the market, and that ain’t been good for prices. Not to mention shipping costs … got to send it expedited air freight. But at least they’re still sticking to certified suppliers. If that ever changes, we’ll be shoot out of luck.”