I kicked a pail coming out and when I ran to the window my left leg gave way, banging me against the sink. The light was going. The snow was coming. It was coming almost even with the ground, my snow. Puffs were rising. Then, in a lull when the snow sank and it was light enough to see the snowbank shadows growing, I saw his back upon a horse. I saw the tail flick. And the snow came back. Great sheets flapped. He was gone.
3
Once, when dust rolled up from the road and the fields were high with heavy-handled wheat and the leaves of every tree were gray and curled up and hung head down, I went in the meadow with an old broom like a gun, where the dandelions had begun to seed and the low ground was cracked, and I flushed grasshoppers from the goldenrod in whirring clouds like quail and shot them down. I smelled wheat in the warm wind and every weed. I tasted dust in my mouth, and the house and barn and all the pails burned my eyes to look at. I rode the broom over the brown rocks. I hunted Horse Simon in the shade of a tree. I rode the broom over the brown meadow grass and with a fist like pistol butt and trigger shot the Indian on Horse Simon down. I rode across the dry plain. I rode into the dry creek. Dust rose up behind me. I went fast and shouted. The tractor was bright orange. It shimmered. Dust rolled behind it. I hid in the creek and followed as it came. I waited as its path curved toward me. I watched and waited. My eyes were tiny. I sprang out with a whoop and rode across the dry plain. My horse had a golden tail. Dust rolled up behind me. Pa was on the tractor in a broad-brimmed hat. With a fist like a pistol butt and trigger, going fast, I shot him down.
Pa would stop the tractor and get off and we’d walk across the creek to the little tree Simon stood his bowed head under. We’d sit by the tree and pa would pull a water bottle out from between its roots and drink. He’d swish it around in his mouth good before he swallowed. He’d wipe off the top and offer it to me. I’d take a pull like it was fiery and hand it back. Pa’d take another drink and sigh and get on up. Then he’d say: you feed the chickens like I told you? and I’d say I had, and then he’d say: how’s the hunting? and I’d say pretty good. He’d nod like he agreed and clap Simon on the behind and go on off, but he’d always say I’d best not play in the sun too long. I’d watch him go over the creek, waving his hat before his face before he put it on. Then I’d take a secret drink out of the bottle and wipe my lips and the lip of it. After that I’d go and let the ragweed brush against my knees, and then, sometimes, go home.
The fire had begun to feel warm. I rubbed my hands. I ate a stale biscuit.
Pa had taken the wagon to town. The sun was shining. Pa had gone to meet Big Hans at the station. There was snow around but mud was flowing and the fields had green in them again. Mud rode up on the wagon wheels. There was sweet air sometimes and the creek had water with the winter going. Through a crack in the privy door I saw him take the wagon to the train. I’d a habit, when I was twelve, of looking down. Something sparkled on the water. It was then I found the first one. The sun was shining. Mud was climbing the wagon wheels and pa was going to the train and down the tight creek snow was flowing. He had a ledge beneath the seat. You could reach right down. Already he had a knack for hiding. So I found it and poured it out in the hole. That was the last year we had the privy because when Big Hans came we tore it down.
I ate an apple I’d found. The skin was shriveled but the meat was sweet.
Big Hans was stronger than Simon, I thought. He let me help him with his chores, and we talked, and later he showed me some of the pictures in his magazines. See anything like that around here? he’d say, shaking his head. Only teats like that round here is on a cow. And he would tease, laughing while he spun the pages, giving me only a glimpse. Or he would come up and spank me on the rump. We tore the privy down together. Big Hans hated it. He said it was a dirty job fit only for soldiers. But I helped him a lot, he said. He told me that Jap girls had their slice on sideways and no hair. He promised to show me a picture of one of them and though I badgered him, he never did. We burned the boards in a big pile back of the barn and the flames were a deep orange like the sun going down and the smoke rolled darkly. It’s piss wet, Hans said. We stood by the fire and talked until it sank down and the stars were out and the coals glowed and he told me about the war in whispers and the firing of big guns.
Pa liked the summer. He wished it was summer all year long. He said once whiskey made it summer for him. But Hans liked the spring like me, though I liked summer too. Hans talked and showed me this and that. He measured his pecker once when he had a hard one. We watched how the larks ran across the weeds and winked with their tails taking off. We watched the brown spring water foam by the rocks in the creek, and heard Horse Simon blow and the pump squeak.
Then pa took a dislike to Hans and said I shouldn’t go with Hans so much. And then in the winter Hans took a dislike to pa as he almost had to, and Hans said fierce things to ma about pa’s drinking, and one day pa heard him. Pa was furious and terrible to ma all day. It was a night like this one. The wind was blowing hard and the snow was coming hard and I’d built a fire and was sitting by it, dreaming. Ma came and sat near me, and then pa came, burning inside himself, while Hans stayed in the kitchen. All I heard was the fire, and in the fire I saw ma’s sad quiet face the whole evening without turning, and I heard pa drinking, and nobody not even me said anything the whole long long evening. The next morning Hans went to wake pa and pa threw the pot and Hans got the ax and pa laughed fit to shake the house. It wasn’t long before Hans and I took to hating one another and hunting pa’s bottles alone.
The fire was burning down. There was some blue but mostly it was orange. For all Pedersen’s preparing like pa said he always did, he hadn’t got much wood in the house. It was good to be warm but I didn’t feel so set against the weather as I had been. I thought I’d like winter pretty well from now on. I sat as close as I could and stretched and yawned. Even if his cock was thicker… I was here and he was in the snow. I was satisfied.
He was in the wind now and in the cold now and sleepy now like me. His head was bent down low like the horse’s head must be and he was rocking in the saddle very tired of holding on and only rocking sleepy with his eyes shut and with snow on his heavy lids and on his lashes and snow in his hair and up his sleeves and down inside his collar and his boots. It was good I was glad he was there it wasn’t me was there sticking up bare in the wind on a horse like a stick with the horse most likely stopped by this time with his bowed head bent into the storm, and I wouldn’t like lying all by myself out there in the cold white dark, dying all alone out there, being buried out there while I was still trying to breathe, knowing I’d only come slowly to the surface in the spring and would soon be soft in the new sun and worried by curious dogs.
The horse must have stopped though he made the other one go on. Maybe he’d manage to drive this one too until it dropped, or he fell off, or something broke. He might make the next place. He just might. Carlson’s or Schmidt’s. He had once before though he never had a right or any chance to. Still he had. He was in the thick snow now. More was coming. More was blowing down. He was in it now and he could go on and he could come through it because he had before. Maybe he belonged in the snow. Maybe he lived there, like a fish does in a lake. Spring didn’t have anything like him. I surprised myself when I laughed the house was so empty and the wind so steady it didn’t count for noise.