By the time Merle had gotten around to chronicling his exploits, the type of exploits that only sad men seemed to have, his guest was ready to leave.

You know about blowjob mints, right?

His guest looked at him. What?

Blowjob mints.

They were sitting in rocking chairs on the front stoop. Merle’s house was situated on a hill, the center of a cul-de-sac. The view offered little more than clapboard homes with dark windows and a stretch of telephone lines. It was very late and dark birds circled above them in long loops. Maybe there’s a dead cat around, he thought.

They make the chick’s mouth all wet, Merle said.

They increase saliva production.

Oh yeah. Yeah they do.

Well no. I don’t know about them. Well. Now I do.

Yeah.

I’m guessing you do?

Do you even have to fucking ask? Jesus.

They met at a trade show in Dallas four years earlier, back when Merle was still married. The guest himself was dating another woman at the time, and it was great fun when they discovered their respective women shared the same first name.

You hear anything from Mona these days? Merle asked.

No. Not in a while.

Merle nodded and looked up at the circling birds. He had gotten a lot of mileage out of two Mona’s in the mix, but as fate would have it, he’d have to bond some other way.

She was a nice piece of ass, he said.

The guest nodded. Then he looked at his watch.

Hey, Merle said, the hell you doing?

Bud.

Don’t bud me. Merle leaned over to the cooler beside him, his shirt riding up as did so, and he grabbed another beer from the ice and chucked it over. His guest accepted it without comment.

I didn’t want to tell you this, Merle said, in case you’d feel differently about me as a person. But I’m glad she’s gone. Mine, I mean.

Really?

Brother, you got no idea.

Merle was the older one. Nearly fifty now, with a bald head and a chubby face. He wasn’t particularly overweight, but everything about him was large. When he wasn’t wearing a suit, he usually wore a shirt with faded lettering that in some way related to sea bass or fishing as a whole. As it turns out, Merle wanted people to know he liked to fish, even though he hadn’t been out on the boat in a few years.

But it was with his gift of the gab that he’d excelled in sales. It had been his ability to keep his finger on the pulse of every conversation. But that was slipping.

She was a nut, he continued. But I won’t lie. She gave some mean head. I never gave her the mints though. I found out about those puppies after.

Merle leaned back and held the neck of the beer bottle to his lips. He blew into it and then laughed at himself. He took a sip and looked out at the street and his smile fell away.

As the guest came to the end of his third beer, he checked his watch again. It’s gettin’ to be that time, Merle.

Time to be a-goin is what he says. But he’s a man devoid of prospects.

Mostly.

You got a hot date?

Hardly.

What’s her name?

Who cares.

Merle cackled and said, Then sit your ass down a little longer.

So he did, and he took another beer while he was at it. The night ahead seemed to grow out from him. The dark that laid out over everything enticed him. He wanted off the porch so he could be free with the night. Out from under this porch lamp.

Merle seemed to drift in and out and his beer, his fifth, was cradled loosely in his arms.

Merle.

Yup.

Are you doing okay?

Watcha mean?

You know.

Merle took a sip. Lemme tell you something.

Merle leaned close. He leaned over to meet him. Then he said, I fucked that little chick who works the counter down at Sal’s.

The guest searched his memory for a moment and drew her out. She was a very young girl who worked at their local pizzeria. He thought she might’ve been related to someone there, maybe even Sal. She had braces and she was very short.

Merle.

Hold on. I just eye-fucked the shit out of her first. Several times. I went in every single fucking day for about six days to give her the eyes. I have never eaten pizza as consistently as I did those stretch of days. My acid reflux was so bad it almost blew my back out. Anyways, on the last day she followed me outside and asked me for a cigarette.

And then what happened?

Well, the logical next step. I provided her with said cigarette.

How old is she?

I don’t exactly know.

Merle.

Eighteen.

He looked at his friend, at his sad eyes and the overdrawn smile beneath them. Merle, he said.

She fucked me more than I fucked her, truth be told. She came over the next night too. Hell, only reason she ain’t sucking me off right now is because you’re here.

How nice of you, the guest thought.

Merle talked some more about body of the girl. He talked about it like it actually happened. He talked about it like he didn’t have a daughter of his own.

His little girl was gone from his life the moment Mona, his Mona, filed the papers about seven months prior. Since then he’d grown pale, and his eyes glassed the world like they were drunk, even when he wasn’t. He swiped at his nose a lot. Everything about him was labored. This was Merle now.

Merle, he said.

Yeah buddy.

Are you okay?

Buddy. Top of the fucking world, he yelled. His voice echoed throughout the neighborhood. Then he looked out at the lawn before them, the deflated Easter bunny, the dead flowers, the weeds. A dog barked somewhere.

Top of the world, he said quietly.

His guest got up to leave.

See you next week, Merle said. I’ll have a whole other conquest to tell you about.

He raised a hand and left him alone on the porch. Looking up from the street, the night birds circled on.

When he got home seven minutes later he fell into bed next to Mona.

Roused from sleep she asked, How is he?

Top of the fuckin’ world, he responded.

Share

Where’ve you been?

Out.

Out where?

Out.

Stay out next time.

Yeah. Yeah, maybe I will.

The days of the woman Henrietta were soft and shapeless, very much like the overhead lights she walked under. Here and there someone brushed her. It was just a curtain from a nearby window. It was summer. This was her thought. And it was in this condition that she walked the world, and it was in this world that she spent the entirety of her meager wages on groceries. She loaded up the back of her station wagon two days before Christmas in 1997.

—O—

She leaned against the car in the fading afternoon. The slush washed lot was near deserted and vehicle trails with small runs of mucky water lapped together like the markings of an olden sigil. She smoked. Her hands were cold, so she kept them in her pockets and with her teeth she bit down on the nub and smoked with her lips.

The car wouldn’t start. She kept trying. She opened the hood, not really knowing what she’d accomplish. She slammed it shut and walked back into the store to see if anybody could help.

She walked out five minutes later with an older employee. The rear wheels of her car were spinning in place and kicking everything up in long arcs before the tires found traction. The station wagon chugged across the lot, the radio blaring. Henrietta ran after it screaming obscenities. The car turned onto the main road before vanishing entirely.

Henrietta had to fuck,

Gave her father forty sucks.

Once he saw what she had done,

He told her that he loved her, hun.

Now that’s a tough break, the man said.

Henrietta said nothing. She was standing in a crater of icy water.

These kids, the man said.

She said nothing.

Ma’am? Ma’am, we can call the police.

Henrietta kept her back to him and watched the dead road. He came up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She growled and slapped his hand away. She began running.

Loony bitch, he said.

—O—

She was tracking the wagon by the slush trails, of which there were many. Motorists gawked from their windows. She mostly ignored them. She was used to being ignored. A woman in her thirties, worn and wasted, thin and pale, with stringlike whisky brown hair, wearing a thin coat and wet sneakers.

Fuckin’ Christ. I need this chance.

Henrietta.

Mom. Listen to me. I’m nothing like you.

Henrietta.

They’re my babies for fuckin’ sake. I won’t hurt my babies. You know that. Myself, maybe. But never my babies. Do you believe me?

Henrietta.

Momma. Do you believe me?

Yes.

Okay. Fuck.

But what good does that do?

The last dwindles of light were near gone. She had walked a mile or more. When she heard cars behind her she’d step off from the road proper and watch the trail it made as it passed, so as not to get it confused with the trail she was following. As if the trail she was following was correct. As if there was a chance. And as if this was not simply delaying the inevitable closing of her world by way of legal ordinance. She knew that out in this world there was a man, and this man was looking over papers, and one of those papers would have her name on it, and the man in question would be ignorant of the gravity of her situation, therefore the gravity of all things. She quickened. As if the man might know. As if this snowrun world was not an open-air asylum in which she was the committed, and all others walking it were the caretakers. Those who treat the death of souls with gloved hands and faces blank and eyes cast behind.

—O—

It was full dark. She’d stopped, not necessarily to rest, but because she’d just blanked. She’d stopped on phantom feet.

The dark deadwood glittered with light. Red and blue. The cruiser came from behind and she could judge by the delicate sound of the blacktop that it was slowing. When it arrived, the window rolled down and an officer leaned over. He was a nice looking young man.

Ma’am? You okay?

I’m okay.

I’m Deputy Tatum. Got a call that a lady was walking in the dark.

Okay.

You’re a lady and you’re walking in the dark.

She said nothing. She just kept walking as the cruiser rolled beside her.

Where are you headed?

Home.

Where’s that?

She intended to sprint but she stumbled almost at once and rolled into the ditch. The frosted twigs licked her face and the sound of the cruiser door swinging open and stopping short on its check thundered out in the dark. She groped to her feet and scattered up the incline and beyond the trees with bits of snow clung to her hair and wetting fast on her neck.

She’d ran what seemed a reasonable distance and took cover behind a tree cleaved down the center and then she looked through the great split in the direction of the road. She breathed little stabs. Beyond the limbs the flashing lights filled the dark air and a small white beam scanned around in quick strokes. The officer had never entered the woods and was observing from the roadside. After a few minutes his beam went out. So did the cruiser lights.

In most cases I would say a lot of things to you. I try to say useful things when I can. When I think they’ll be heard. However, I don’t think I’ll bother saying them to you, Mrs.—

Your honor, please.

What was that?

I didn’t do anything. I’m not a bad woman.

Those are two separate things.

Huh?

Linked things. But two different things. I never said you were a bad woman.

I’m not.

Good.

Am I going to jail?

Miss, this is just a preliminary meeting.

What the fuck does that mean? Why the fuck do all you people just talk around me and not to me?

Okay, we’re done. I’m going to find probable cause to go ahead with your case.

How old’s your son? I’ll show him how good a woman I am.

Get her out of here. I don’t have a son. Mark, get her out already.

In the fields there was nothing. No sound but the crunch of frosted grass beneath her feet. Naked trees on all sides with their limbs twisted and posed like false humans, and everything else around so dark to human eyes. The windlicks went at her blood scabs. She clenched her thin coat tight over her chest and buried her chin. Henrietta walked. Sensations suspended. She felt high. This is what it always felt like.

Some yards down, a light shone in the field. She drew closer. A pickup truck with a small trailer hitched to the back. It had a little yellow porch light.

She mounted the metal steps and observed a welcome mat. Don’t know until you knock, it read. So she knocked.

The door opened and a flush of heat escaped the trailer and Henrietta moaned as it whipped her.

—O—

She was rolled in a thick quilt on a mattress that stood not a foot from the floor. The walls were paneled with faux wood. Across from her was a small desk with a swivel chair and a few lines of bookshelves nailed into the wall above. History, essays, philosophy. Her gaze was crowded by the old woman who sat down in the swivel chair with a steaming cup of tea.

Are you sure you don’t want any?

Henrietta nodded.

Just let me know if you change your mind, she said. The woman drew the mug to her lips and sipped. She was probably in her fifties, with extremely long white hair and a single braid favoring the left. Her face was well wrinkled and her chapped lips were large and she held good white teeth behind them. Despite the heat she wore a heavy sweater. Henrietta was beginning to sweat.

How’s your face?

Fine.

You know, when I was a little girl, the woman said, I realized my life was going to be difficult. Very difficult. I always knew that about myself. And here I am.

How?

How am I here?

How did you know?

Just by knowing. Honey, there’s a certain level of awareness that can only be met with internal resistance. Our brains just won’t let us be happy. We can be so stinking smart that we find ourselves too aware of why we shouldn’t be happy. Our brains mess things up.

So you’re saying you’re smart?

Yes.

And that smart people fuck themselves up because why the fuck not?

More or less.

I never knew my life was gonna be this hard.

But you’re not dumb.

I’m fucking retarded. I’m a dumb bitch right here.

The woman chuckled. Are you really?

No. I’m not dumb. I just do dumb things.

Exactly, she said. I also do dumb things. I just never stop. This whole room is the end of a long line of dumb, completely irrational things. Take a good look around. Dumb Central.

Not knowing what to say, Henrietta rolled over on her back. She threw back the quilt and began to slip out from her pants. She lifted her back from the mattress and propped herself up with her shoulders and neck while she guided the pants down past her thighs. The old woman watched.

Getting a whole eye-load, lady?

She smiled. What’s your name?

Henrietta.

Henrietta. Do you know what that means?

No. But I bet you do.

It means home ruler. Or mistress of the home. Or something similar.

Really? It means stupid whore where I come from.

Oh, honey.

I’m not anyone’s honey.

I bet that’s true.

Fuck you lady.

Okay. Okay, Henrietta.

She threw her pants on the floor and spread her bare legs. Thighs pale and marked with past decisions and spots of discoloration. A long tattoo of a snail creeped up her ankle. She laced her fingers behind her head and rocked her bare knees around. I just know you love this, she said.

The woman said nothing. Henrietta heard her sip the tea.

A few moments of silence. Then: Why are you out here? Henrietta asked.

Why are you out here?

I’m looking for my car.

A field without a speck of concrete is probably not a good place to look for a car.

The frickin’ sarcasm.

I didn’t use sarcasm once.

Okay.

Don’t consider me insulted. But you’re awfully rude, Henrietta.

Okay.

Considering.

Considering what?

Nothing. You can take your shirt off too if you want.

I bet.

It gets very warm in here.

I bet. Let’s see what type of rotten melons you got under that sweater.

If you saw what I had under here, Henrietta, I’d have to lock you out in the snow.

The old woman stood up and washed her teacup in the little sink. When she came back, Henrietta had already removed her shirt and was laying on her back with closed eyes. After some time she opened her right eye and observed the old woman sitting in the chair as before, a book in her hands.

Honestly, I never had a chance, she said.

The woman looked up from the book. Did you say something?

Oh, fuck yourself.

Sorry. Do you have children, Henrietta?

Yeah. I got two babies.

Really?

Not actual babies. Nine and six.

Boys? Girls?

Both girls.

Attached?

Henrietta chuckled. I can’t get em’ off me.

I mean, are you attached?

Oh. No.

So where are they now?

They’re at home.

Why aren’t you there?

Because some nigger stole my car.

Henrietta.

Faggot. Retard. I don’t know. What do you fucking care?

You’re in my bed.

Bet that wets your snatch. She looked over at the woman. I’m serious, she said. I’ve seen you looking at me. You’ve been looking at me the whole time.

This room is maybe sixty square feet. There isn’t much to look at, honey.

Oh come on. I’ve seen you licking your lips. Come on. Are you attached? Huh?

No, she said. Not anymore.

Do you got kids?

No. Not anymore.

Henrietta caught her tongue in her teeth and rolled back over to look at the ceiling. You married? Before?

Yes.

What was he like?

Nice.

And then what happened?

I fell in love.

And then what happened?

The old woman said nothing. Then she said, Henrietta? Are your children home alone?

Yep.

Are they safe?

They know what to do.

They’ll lock the door?

Always.

The wind picked up and the trailer rocked gently. The glasses and mugs in the corner kitchen clattered in their holders. Henrietta’s eyes were closed. But she felt the woman over her.

You’ll stay tonight?

I don’t think I have a choice.

You can call the police.

Like I said, I don’t have a choice.

Henrietta, I’m not so bad.

—O—

They slept side by side under the quilt. The woman rolled around freely, small in her oversized gown, but Henrietta maintained an erect posture and was acutely aware of the woman. Her defiance and reckless nature took a downturn when skin on skin was possible. At some point in the night, Henrietta slipped from under the quilt and opened the trailer door. The yellow light on the porch lit the steps but nothing more. The night was colder than ever and was dead and beautiful in its deafness. She shut the door and immediately felt hot again. She watched the sleeping woman. Just a faint outline. A slight rise with her breaths, like a mute ocean in its tides. Henrietta liked this trailer and its contents. She liked that her name meant something in another place, at another time, to another people. She couldn’t help but smile.

She crawled back in bed. Before long the nameless old woman rolled onto her back and finally seeming to acknowledge the heat, lifted the quilt off them both. She ran her fingers through her long hair and let it fan out behind her head. They lay there on the narrow mattress facing each other with closed eyes. Neither were asleep. It was very warm. It was as if their voices hung and drifted in the air.

A hand slowly rising, like an earthless wave, Henrietta’s fingers found the old woman’s arm. She flinched when in the shapeless dark the old woman’s sharp nails found her thigh. Their noses touched.

Unsure of the motions, or the motives, the women lay clasped together, sweaty skin scenting out, their breathing in line with one another. In the total dark of this little room situated on a frosted plain, they both cried into each other. Then, after some time, they stopped.

—O—

When Henrietta woke, the old woman was gone.

She was dried with sweat and was sore all over. Draping herself with nothing but her coat, she opened the door. The field was frosty and it sparkled under the sun. The world was quiet and in the distance a hummingbird pecked long at a tree. She sat on the stoop and looked over the scratches on her arm. She traced them with her own finger. Her bare breasts hung from the opening of her coat and she studied the veins. A branch fell somewhere. It wasn’t long before she realized the pickup was detached and gone. The truck trails ran clear across the field and out of sight. The old woman had left her no note, but it seemed logical to Henrietta that she would return at some point.

Henrietta dressed herself and waited on the bed. She felt jilted.

I’m sorry momma.

That’s okay.

I thought you’d hate me.

Why would momma-bear hate you?

Momma?

Yes?

You don’t hate me?

Silly damn question.

Momma?

Yes.

You aren’t gonna leave?

No. Why ya think that?

I don’t know.

I’m stronger than daddy.

Oh.

Do you believe me?

Sure.

I just don’t know why he had to leave.

Momma?

She rose from the bed and struck out into the snow with cold wells for eyes. In their night throes she’d called the old woman several different names. In return, she had swallowed Henrietta’s ear.

You’re just like her. Just like her.

—O—

She laughed to herself when she came across the station wagon still loaded with the groceries.

It was in a rural neighborhood with houses separated by trees. The station wagon was parked in the narrow driveway, with a red minivan parked behind it. It was early yet and the houses all around seemed quiet. Henrietta stood across the street watching. After a few minutes she walked to the car and tried the handle but found it to be locked. Through the back windshield she could see the brown paper bags torn and tossed about. Fruit and other things lay on the floor. She rounded the house and came to the backyard. It seemed dark inside. The door was unlocked.

It was silent in the home. She crept her way to the kitchen and found a key bowl with only one key resting in it, presumably for the minivan. On the mantlepiece was a framed photo of a family of three. Two parents and a teenage son. The living room was filled with empty pizza boxes and chip bags. Otherwise, the place seemed to be in order. Henrietta assumed the parents might be away. At that moment she heard the snore from upstairs. She grabbed a kitchen blade from the knife block and set about walking the stairs as silently as possible.

The boy’s door was cracked and she pushed it open all the way. The young man slept shirtless under his blanket. His face was covered with acne. Shaggy hair that obscured his eyes.

Henrietta leaned down beside him and pointed the tip of the blade directly to his throat and said, Don’t move. I’ll kill you.

The boy’s eyes flicked open and he moved.

Don’t move, she shouted.

It took the kid a moment to realize the blade was there. He was breathing heavily. The dry drool on his lips parted like split glue. He might’ve been caught in a dream.

Where are your parents? Where are the keys? Where are the fucking keys? When Henrietta wasn’t speaking, she was dabbing her lips with her tongue.

What?

So help me god. You want me to suck you off? I’ll cut your fucking balls off and suck em’ in front of you. Come on, man. Where are the fucking keys? You know who I am.

Fingers trembling, the boy pointed at his desk in the corner. Henrietta stole a quick glance and saw the keyring there. She could’ve just taken it while he slept. Now she could not.

Get it, she said. She stood up but held the blade at attention. He rose. Skinny, but very tall. Much taller than her. Go get it, she said again. He walked, stumbled, to the desk and grabbed the keyring.

He turned back to look at her. Drop— Drop the knife, he said.

Drop the keys you little cunt.

He did. Right in the middle of his feet.

Kick them over.

He did. She nodded. Take a good look around, she said, just know all of this shit is luck. You’re not shit. Turn around.

He did. When she stepped forward and bent down for the keys he whipped around and sprung himself on her.

She was slammed into a closet door, his hand around her throat and his other hand at her wrist, pushing it against the wall and squeezing hard. He called her a bitch. Then a whore. He palmed her face and slammed her head into the closet door until it swung inwards and they both fell into the dark and landed a mound of dirty shirts. Upon landing, her wrist was freed and she slashed his cheek.

He screamed and she pushed past him in a fast crawl and threw herself out into the hallway and sat up with her back to the wall. She was breathing heavily and grabbing at her reddened throat when he burst forth from the closet coughing and choking and grabbing his blankets and dabbing his bloody face. The keyring lay on the floor between the doorway and him. The face of the boy was covered by his blanket and his whimpers were muffled within it. Henrietta crawled over and snatched the key. Like a feral dog, the boy whipped his mauled face at her and growled.

She stumbled to her feet and ran. He caught her by her hair on the stairs and she slashed at his body and on the last slash the blade stuck. He screamed again and they both fell down the curved steps and landed hard and the knife clattered into the kitchen and settled on the tiles.

She rolled over and looked at him. He hardly looked alive but he was. The blade had stuck him somewhere in the chest during the fall and he was bleeding badly. Blood was running through the gaps between the floor tiles. She still had the keys in her hand and against all ache she stood up, snatched the bloody knife, and ran out the front door.

She realized she’d forgotten the van keys.

For fuck’s sake, she yelled.

She got in the frigid station wagon and tossed the knife to the floor. She started the engine and reversed. Her trunk collided with the nose of the minivan and the alarm blared. She slammed the pedal to the floor as smoke rose from the tires and they squealed. She pounded the wheel with her fist screaming come on, come on. Slowly, the van worked back out into the street. She cut the wheel and sideswiped the van backing out and then she gunned it down the twisting streets. The van alarm continued to sound out as neighbors emerged from their homes to investigate.

—O—

She stopped at a payphone and rubbed her neck while it rang. She only just then realized how bloody her hand was. She caught her reflection in the glass. She looked like she’d just killed someone.

Momma?

Be home soon, baby. Hey. You hear me?

The line was dead. She slammed it on the receiver, but it didn’t catch. She walked away and let the phone dangle.

She began to drive home. In the excitement of her flight she had neglected to look at the gas gauge. When the vehicle began to sputter, she pulled to the side and rolled out dry a few hundred feet from a gas station. She sat now in the guzzled vehicle in the utter silence of December and she was dead tired. Her body was broken from the fight and she was only now feeling it, like she had been trespassing in some other person but had since returned. Her hair fell over her shoulder and across her breasts and the tips were touched with blood. The sign for the gas station loomed in the frosted air ahead.

Henri? Where are you?

I’m here.

What’re you doing under there? Come on. Get up. Now what are you doing?

I don’t know.

Henri.

Henri, do you go down there often? Okay. Okay. Come here.

Daddy?

Yes, baby?

Why doesn’t momma like you?

She likes me. I think.

No she doesn’t.

No. I guess not.

Why?

I think she gets upset by how close we are. We’re very close, you know.

Honestly Henri, I never had a chance. But you do. She likes you.

I don’t know.

What’s not to like?

She plunged forward and gnawed on the steering wheel. She chewed on it for a few minutes. She licked her spit with a long slash of her tongue and then kissed the horn and clutched that wheel like it might’ve been her. As the car grew colder, she leaned back and took a deep breath. The bloody knife was still on the floor on the passenger side. She grabbed it. Then she set out walking in the snow towards the gas station.

It was Christmas Eve, 1997, and Henrietta was still trying to get home.

I don’t love formal book reviews. I prefer comments or loose suggestions. Like a Goodreads rating coupled with one or two dudes on Youtube briefly talking about it. That’s what I usually look for.

But I need to talk about Lonesome Dove a bit.

Do I think Lonesome Dove is a bad book? Depends on the day. I’d say it’s 75% eh, 5% bad, and 20% great.

Firstly, I’m going to talk a bit about why I don’t care too much for it, and I’ll be sure to only include minor spoilers. Beyond that, I’m going to talk about the glazing of books, and how the meta element of that affects my review, and likely the review everybody else might give.

A Poke Of Greatness.

Lonesome Dove is a western novel written by Larry McMurtry. It follows two retired Texas Rangers, Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae, as they lead a crew of misfits on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. At this point in history, Montana is still a bit iffy, with limited civilization and roving bands of Indians that may or may not be “whipped.”

This is a long book. My edition ran about 860 pages. It’s an epic novel that doesn’t give into genre tropes, for the most part. It’s presented as an ensemble drama, with a whole bunch of different characters with layered relationships and personalities. It sports some witty dialogue that can be both humorous and poignant. It truly has all the makings of a great American novel.

Where does it go wrong?

If I were to oversimplify my critiques, I’d say that Lonesome Dove is a book that introduces a lot of interesting characters, basically forgets about half them for five hundred pages, and then uses most of them as cannon fodder towards the end.

It’s a good 400 page novel stretched to almost 900 pages.

The book kicks off in the dusty Texas town of Lonesome Dove, where it introduces us to the rangers and their acquaintances. Like I said at the top, it creates a complex web of relationships, conflicting worldviews, and mismatched personalities. The first 200 pages are largely great, if not a bit indulgent. McMurtry does a whole lot of telling AND showing. Meaning he’ll spend entire pages talking about a character’s temperament/typical behavior before then demonstrating that temperament/typical behavior immediately in a scene. And he keeps doing it over and over for every single character, multiple times over, through the entirety of this long novel.

These are when the first cracks started to show for me. Even if you’re not a big fan of the “show, don’t tell” school of writing, this is quite excessive. He’ll often interrupt a piece of dialogue and go on a multi-page tangent about something entirely unrelated, or something you can easily pick up on by just watching the story unfold. This is annoying on its own, but the issue compounds over the course of the novel and becomes really unbearable for me.

But this prose critique is minor compared to the real problem: The length.

Oh, I hear it already.

You got a shitty attention span, bro.

This isn’t TikTok.

Put your phone away, fuck-face.

Dudes, I get it. Some books are long. As I type this, I’m staring at my copy of East of Eden, a book I absolutely adore, as does the internet. I read most of Lonesome Dove in 50-100 page chunks. My attention span, however fried by my iPhone, is not the issue here.

Now, there’s a reason why so many prolific novels are less than 400 pages.

• Blood Meridian

• The Sun Also Rises

• Wise Blood

• Stoner

• Train Dreams

• The Bluest Eye

• Of Mice and Men

These authors know how to communicate powerful things in a succinct manner. Whether they are aware of it or not, they respect the reader’s time. Even East of Eden, which is pretty long, wastes almost no time in its telling.

Larry McMurtry does not respect your time with this one.

This problem doesn’t really become clear until we start Part Two, which happens a little over 200 pages in. Part One establishes many interesting characters and sets up a lot of stuff for them. Exciting!

Guess what? You’ll have to wait a while.

Part Two sees our team of ragtags on the road and it becomes clear over the next few hundred pages that McMurtry has no idea what to do with these characters. Take Newt, a young orphan taken in by the rangers. He’s a bright-eyed, likable kid. He dreams of impressing Captain Call and proving himself as a cowboy. Solid start.

For next few hundred pages all Newt will do is encounter a minor issue with the herd, and then figure it out fairly easily, or be saved by someone else, but never face any meaningful consequences. This is all Newt does the entire book until the last chunk, with the exception of one dramatic scene around the middle of the book that I won’t spoil here, but those who have read the book will surely know what I’m talking about.

Newt is clearly set up to be one of the more critical characters, which makes the very obvious “let’s shuffle him away for 500 pages until he’s ready for his big moment” approach kinda frustrating.

This is what I mean when I say McMurtry forgets about the characters. They’re still there, they still have dialogue, some of them even have a few scenes from their POV. But overall, most of the characters, including Newt, serve as elevated set dressing. Their tiny dramas are incredibly meaningless, repetitive, and you can skip dozens of pages of this book and not miss anything. Unless it involves Augustus. But we’ll get to that later.

Even Woodrow Call, who is such an interesting character, does NOTHING this entire book. He’s stoic, hard boiled, and gloomy. This is so well contrasted with Augustus, who serves as the chatterbox and philosopher of the Hat Creek Outfit. Without spoiling, Call is given an incredibly interesting setup, and then McMurtry puts the breaks on him for most of the novel. It’s only in the last couple hundred pages of the novel that Call’s drama is finally given attention. You could’ve cut him out of 70% of this book and virtually nothing would change.

I won’t get too deep into other characters for purposes of time and potential spoilers, but most of the characters in this book are useless.

Unless, your name is Augustus McCrae.

Gus is fantastic. He is clearly who the novel is built around. Every scene is better if he appears in it and the only good pinch points (narrative beats used to maintain tension, explore character, or raise/remind of stakes) in the middle of this novel revolve around him. His section dealing with Lorena Wood and Blue Duck is great, but even that is intercut with all the other boring, useless, court jester type of characters who mainly exist to trade of funny bits of dialogue around the cattle camp.

Part Three is a lot stronger overall, and that’s because a lot of the things set up in the beginning FINALLY start to be paid off. It also focuses heavily on Gus, and his story is very satisfying. At the end, Call becomes damn fascinating as well, but again, it’s the last stretch of this incredibly long novel.

There are a few other grips I have. Part Two introduces a handful of new characters that are genuinely bad. I don’t mean interesting-but-underutilized. I mean bad. They also get an oddly disproportionate amount of page time compared to some of the other characters even though they have extremely little impact on the rest of the story. They are circumstantially important at best. It boggles my mind that McMurtry included these people and focused on them so heavily. This group of idiots is what I was referring to when I said 5% of the novel is bad.

When it comes down to it, Lonesome Dove probably should’ve been about 400 pages. The clear problem is that McMurtry created interesting characters, but he just didn’t have enough of those pinch points to sustain them across an almost thousand page affair. A good editor, or a more conscious writer, would recognize that the middle needs to be cut down significantly, so the characters can all move and the story can maintain momentum. But it just doesn’t happen here and I don’t know why.

A lot of books have saggy middles, but when your middle is around 400 pages, jeez. Are you trying to kill me?

Glazing

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

It is no secret that this book is almost universally loved. I can see the surface level appeal. Augustus is super entertaining and his conversations with Call are great. Most of the dialogue is pretty sharp. The premise itself sounds interesting and westerns have this tendency to just be badass.

But is there really more to it than that? This thing has so many problems when you strip that surface layer away.

Some books catch, some don’t. Some books catch big, some catch small. Catching happens independently of quality.

So I wonder, do some books that are only decent get highly recommended by a few readers, and other people feel they don’t want to miss out on how “special” it is, so they begin to glaze it, and then that catches on and turns into worldwide circle jerk of epic, literary proportions???

Maybe.

Now, I am not trying to say that the only reason people like Lonesome Dove is because a lot of other people like it, but I can’t help but notice that this book seems to do a ton of things that modern readers, even ones who mainly read 20th century stuff, don’t really like.

Lonesome Dove is extremely tedious and meandering, its plot relies on an obscene amount of coincidences, it presents pretty unimpressive nature prose for a book that takes place almost totally outside during cross country travels, and it delivers endless exposition and constantly insults your intelligence by assuming you forgot that Dish really wants to fuck Lorena.

Seriously, Dish does nothing in this book but desire Lorena. And McMurtry reminds you that he’s obsessed with Lorena about 127 times throughout the 860 page novel. He does nothing important, but you can be sure we’re gonna have several pages devoted to him!

The whole thing seems off.

People adore Stoner by John Williams. I really like it, but not as much as most people. But I can see why people give it five stars. I just can’t see it with this one.

Now, how does the mass glazing of this book relate to my own thoughts?

I wasn’t just looking forward to Lonesome Dove, I was fucking gassed for it. Ask anybody in my personal life. I got this edition off Amazon and was telling EVERYONE about how excited I was to read it.

And I didn’t like it. And I realized I didn’t like less than halfway through.

Did my incredibly high expectations for Lonesome Dove lead me to such great disappointment that it then caused me to come away with a more negative perspective than if I had read it without any foreknowledge of it?

I’m not sure, because I think if I had never heard of Lonesome Dove, I’m not sure I would’ve finished Lonesome Dove.

I seldom quit on books. I’ve only done it a handful of times in my life. Most recently, I tried to read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and I gave up on it at around 200 pages. Unlike Lonesome Dove, The Corrections (forgive my mini-review) doesn’t have many redeeming qualities in its opening. Boring and cringy caricatures as characters, a draggy pace, and pretentious prose that reads like, “I’m gonna say something super basic, but try and sound super smart, because I’m writing about AMERICA.” The Corrections is close to 600 pages and I just wasn’t willing to read through that slop.

Lonesome Dove is a better novel overall, probably, but I was also was feeling incredibly fatigued around the 400 mark. I was able to correctly diagnose the book’s problems in the middle of it and predict that this book would be mostly meaningless until the last stretch before becoming suddenly interesting again. That’s exactly what happened.

I think back to when I was at that mark in mid-June. The ONLY reason I continued was the incredible popularity of the book. I felt I owed it to myself.

But isn’t that fucking stupid?

There are so many books out there and so little time to read them. I can’t be suffering through 860 page novels I don’t like. I don’t think anybody should do that. I think people should be proud of their preferences and not give into mob pressure. Don’t be an asshole, but feel free to dump a popular book if it doesn’t work for you at all.

Again, I know I’m in the minority. I’m not trying to suggest there’s this mass pysop going on around this book. However, I am confident that there’s a chunk of people out there who don’t like this book all that much, but don't say that out loud here on Substack because they don’t want to get shit on by the online book community.

We need to normalize negative reviews for popular books, because you might just learn something about them that you wouldn’t have normally in all this glaze culture.

I really wanted to love it, but even ol’ Gus couldn’t save this one.

It was a caged elevator with a folding gate. Through the links he watched the floors pass. The rumbling ascent jiggled his eyes in his sockets and he grew sick. It was a nice building, but an old and noisy one.

Winter. His long coat was wet at the hem and the newly melted snow dripped and puddled about his boots. When the elevator stopped at his floor he stared blankly through the gate and into the hall. Nobody called for the elevator. He stayed for several minutes. The puddle rolled forth under the gate and dripped down into the shaft.

The kitchen lights were off but a faint glow breached from the hall. On the counter was an open bottle of wine. He sighed and dropped his keys in the bowl. He knew he’d been heard. As he reached down to unlace his boots a sharp pain lit up his back. After rubbing his back he sat on the floor and crossed his leg over his knee and unlaced the boots that way.

She was sitting curled up on the couch with an open book resting on her knees and a glass of wine on the table next to her. She looked up at him. Hey, she said. Pasta in the fridge.

I’m fine. Thanks.

She waited. He walked forward and kissed her and then sat down next to her. They were both in their late thirties and had known each other their whole lives.

Long day?

Yeah, he said.

Buncha bullshit?

Some of that. Yeah.

How’s mom?

Fine.

Really?

No. Not at all.

She nodded and returned to her book.

They sat in the supposed silence. As was his normal, he fixated on the little things. The building talked. He heard every sound that sounded and he had come to the conclusion that all things sounded for him. The world that swam his head had been emptied as of late. All that remained were the sounds. Echoing crashes that signal out like buoys in a dark ocean, ones with no meaning or moorings. He was in the ocean and so was she. They swam together amidst the buoys and the waves and if there was any land to find, they would not find it.

He grabbed the TV remote.

I think the outlet blew, she said.

When?

This morning.

Why didn’t you call me?

You were going to fix the thing?

No. But I woulda called somebody else. The building guys or something. People like to watch TV at the end of the day, no?

I was content, she said. Then she opened her mouth to say something else but her lips fell closed as quick as they opened. She returned her gaze to the book.

Say it.

What?

Say it.

Let’s not.

I agree. Let’s frickin’ not.

He rose and went to the bedroom. Alone in the living room she closed the book and set it aside and took the wine glass by the stem. She stared at her reflection in the dark of the TV screen.

I was thinking you could renew the lease. With me on it.

Really?

Yes.

You’re ready for that kind of step?

I’ve always been ready, big boy.

Wow.

Come on. Let’s not deprive ourselves.

She came in some time later and laid on her side facing him. The room was dark save the light from the window, of the streetlights below catching the snow flurries as they licked the glass and collected on the outside ledges.

Are you okay?

Yes, he said.

She reached out a hand and rubbed at his chest. Mom doesn’t need to be fine with it, she said.

I know.

It would be convenient, but it isn‘t required. I mean, it was a long shot. How could we expect it?

You’re right.

I’ll stop calling her mom.

Okay.

She twisted a strand of his chest hair. I’m sorry for what I said.

What you didn’t say.

Yes, that.

I know. It’s okay.

I love you.

He scratched his nose. I love you too.

She cuddled close to him and laid her head on his chest. It’s been almost six months, she said.

Indeed it has.

We’re just getting started.

Hm?

She stroked his cheek with her finger. Ran her nail under his lip. I’m making French toast tomorrow, she said.

Great.

They lay in silence.

Why don’t you ever call me baby? she asked.

Don’t I?

No.

Oh.

Silence again.

Well, she said, it’s just food for thought.

Okay. Baby.

In the dark, her lips stretched apart and revealed her teeth. She nibbled at his ear and whispered to him.

Aren’t you sweet?

Well, here we are.

After some late nights and a little bit of keyboard grease, I now have (at the time of writing) a trio of short stories here on Substack. During the writing process of this first batch, I was both elated and terrified.

I wasn’t sure how they’d be received. Would people even like this stuff?

Well, ahead of publication I sent out some drafts to close friends to get their thoughts. For all feedback I received on the stories, both positive and negative, only one aspect of the stories had a universal mention:

“No quotation marks, eh?”

And I realized something. I realized that people actually care about this type of thing. So let me back up a bit here and explain myself.

Full transparency: Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author by a significant margin. Moreover, I believe he is the most gifted wordsmith I’ve ever come across. I’m happy to see that this is a commonly held opinion, but it does come with some baggage. Mainly people telling me that I only refuse quotation marks in my own fiction because I’m trying to imitate McCarthy.

This is only partially true. Let’s back up a little more.

I read The Road when I was about fifteen, and what I knew about art and storytelling as a whole was completely flipped on its head.

There’s a ton to talk about in relation to popping your McCarthy cherry, but we’ll save that for another day. Let’s focus on the quotation marks. In an interview, McCarthy said this:

"There's no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean, if you write properly you shouldn't have to punctuate."

This of course applies to punctuation in general, but we’re going to focus on quotation marks today. And yes, I did use quotation marks on that quote from McCarthy and the irony is not lost on me. I’m slightly more grammatical when working with nonfiction. Only slightly. I’m mostly a mess.

I found the lack of quotation marks in The Road to be odd. I was a casual reader as a kid and while I enjoyed to read more than others, I didn’t usually go out of my way to read stuff not assigned in school. But still, I had a foundation of what fiction was supposed to look like on the page. And my first foray into McCarthy was anything but.

Truthfully, I had never been so immersed in my life.

The reason I emphasize my introduction to McCarthy is because fifteen is a relatively young age to start reading his work. That odd, quotation exempt style made its mark on me early, and it was compounded further over the years by going through his entire catalog more than once. To use a line from Blood Meridian, I, “bled it of strangeness.”

While I wouldn’t say I choose to not use quotation marks in order to mimic Cormac McCarthy, I can’t deny that my early exposure and subsequent adoration of him likely influenced my fiction as a whole. Call it a happy accident.

But with that being said, let me give you the three conscious reasons as to why I shy away from quotation marks in fiction. They start out dumb but get less dumb as they go on.

I hate writing them

It’s really a testament to my laziness how willing I am to forgo one of the most well established writing rules just to ensure I don’t have to press the Shift key on my MacBook. Seriously. It’s actually a miracle that I’m able to write stories at all with this lack of motivation.

I feel silly trying to justify this, but I’ll try.

I tend to write a lot of back and forth dialogue. This is usually toned down from what you all see in my published work. I tend to write much more chatty characters in my rough drafts and distill down from there. Trust me, I’d normally have to hit that Shift key a lot.

It’s stupid, I know. but I just don’t like the annoyance of it. I simply cannot be bothered.

Onward.

I hate reading bookish books

This one is a bit of a slippery slope.

Imagine being immersed in a book and in the middle of the elegant prose the author DECIDES TO TYPE EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS AND REALLY EMPHASIZE THIS SENTENCE!!!!!!!!!!

Gross.

Or imagine that the author constantly uses parenthetical insertions (they might be doing this because they’re struggling to find a way to convey all the necessary information into a single sentence, and rather than craft a beautiful sentence that accounts for everything, they opt for this) in the middle of a sentence. Like, forget this sentence for a second and take a detour down to this sentence (sometimes for half a page) and then come back to the original sentence.

Yikes

Now, a lot of authors I love do this. Lots of my favorite books have these pet peeves of mine. And I’m sure plenty of you are reading this and are still wondering what my beef is.

This is a me problem. I’m willing to accept that. My immersion can be broken easily, and seeing devices like this very often can take me out of a book. They remind me that I’m reading a book.

Now, do quotation marks alone destroy my immersion? No. But I like the beauty of a very clean page with minimal punctuation marks and a very cool mood-temperature. For instance, even though I’m focusing on quotation marks, you’ll notice that my work seldom contains things like exclamation points or even semicolons. On final revisions I usually delete 40% of the commas. I’d like the sentences to be unobstructed and declarative. I don’t want the ideas presented in a text to stagger its way forward. People can read a sentence for more than two seconds at a time. Commas should be there for emotional reasons, not logical ones.

I’ve never been formally diagnosed with any type of attention related disability. All I can tell you is that a former therapist said I should probably get tested, whatever that means. But I can’t deny that I struggle to keep my attention on any one thing. My ability to focus wanes with each passing year. Basically, the most trivial things can take me out of a book, and a page filled with grammar vomit can really bother me.

It’s totally a me thing, and I don’t begrudge anybody who loves this type of stuff in what they read. It just doesn’t work for me.

And in the natural of order things, I like to write the way I like to read.

I love the focus it brings

This is probably the closest I’ll be to revealing my alter ego, Snob Cooper.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with quotation marks, but I really enjoy how removing them requires a closer reading of the text.

I think in our addled minds it’s really easy to skim pages, but that gets harder to do if there’s character dialogue in the middle of a paragraph and you completely miss it because you weren’t flagged down by punctuation.

I like that.

Not too long ago I was browsing Reddit and I stumbled across a thread with people talking about lack of quotation marks and how they feel about them. And it was pretty damn feisty. So much passion over such tiny squiggles.

I don’t want to sound like I’m calling anyone out, but it really sounded like the users who were passionately against removing quotation marks were just struggling to read the material, and they felt insecure, so therefore anybody who likes this quotation free material is actually a pretentious scumbag. This is common in talks around McCarthy. People try to read something like Blood Meridian and claim the reason they struggled with it was the lack of quotation marks when, more often than not, they just had trouble with the elevated prose and keeping track of the story itself with its epic themes. That’s understandable, but just admit it. There’s no shame in that.

On the other hand, you have The Road. Translation: The easiest McCarthy novel.

Despite the ease of it, people make these same complaints against it. This book really only has two characters for about 95% of the story. One is the father and the other is his son. The dialogue lines are almost always broken apart from the narration. There’s a ton of white space on the page. It’s incredibly clear. It’s pretty much impossible to not know who is talking. If you can’t keep track of two characters, one who is almost always asking questions, and one who is almost always answering questions, you have some comprehension issues.

That does not mean you are a bad person. It does not mean you are a dumb person either. But it means you’re not as competent of a reader as you think you are.

I’m sorry. Snob Cooper apologizes.

The lack of quotation marks is often a scapegoat for those who don’t want to admit that they struggled with the book as whole. Such is McCarthy.

One comment I read said something very close to what I’ve said here about enjoying the closer engagement that this approach brings. And a reply said something like, “Wow. That’s really fucking ableist telling people they need to ‘pay more attention’ to the text.”

Oh yes, insisting people should attempt to comprehend what they read. The abject horror!

I never understood people when they say they get incredibly hung up on who is talking without quotation marks.

Am I the only one who sees the issue there? Let me try to illustrate my point:

He opened the door and greeted her.

“How are you?”

“I’m drunk,” she replied.

“You drove here?”

“Of course. I didn’t walk.”

“You’re insane.”

“I know.”

Versus:

He opened the door and greeted her.

How are you?

I’m drunk, she replied.

You drove here?

Of course. I didn’t walk.

You’re insane.

I know.

Did the lack of quotation marks actually change your comprehension of who was speaking? Of course it didn’t, that’s what dialogue tags and context clues are for.

Snob Cooper! After him! Burn him with “torches.”

In Summary

Look, I understand that most people just prefer to have the marks there for one reason or another. Likely familiarity. That’s fine. About 99% of the fiction we read has them.

That’d be like me freaking out over a virus with a 99% survival rate!

Ahem.

I just never understood the vicious reactions people have to it. And while I did just write a whole reflection about my reasons, I still don’t think that I, or any other writer, should feel obligated to defend themselves. We aren’t copycats for adopting a stylistic tendency.

Hell, generations of authors were heavily influenced after Hemingway demonstrated incredibly economical prose in The Sun Also Rises. Prose that was absolutely dripping with juicy subtext. I’m sure we can all agree that this widely adopted shift from maximalism towards minimalism is far more consequential than removing some non-essential squiggly lines from the page, no?

I’ve only read a handful of authors outside of McCarthy who refrain from using quotation marks. I’ve had zero trouble with them. I don’t know how popular of a thing this is in contemporary literature and I will concede that there are probably writers out there who do it badly. Ones who present weak character voice or odd formatting that makes it genuinely difficult to understand if this is someone talking or not.

But that’s just bad writing. It’s not because of the quotation mark thing.

Truthfully, I thought trying to plot my reasons out would be both a good thought experiment for myself but also a potentially informative piece for you, the reader, to understand why some writers like myself really enjoy this approach. Of course, I am not the authority on this, and my reasons are not universal, but it’s one perspective nonetheless.

I have a lot of trouble with my born-in-the-late-nineties brain. I lose interest in things quickly, I have trouble paying attention to stuff, and I also don’t have a great memory either. Yet everything I do with writing, specifically removing quotation marks, is me fighting my own flaws. I rebel against myself.

I could try to intellectualize it and say that removing the damn quotes is actually this grandiose bullshit that only a select few could truly understand, but I’d rather be honest and just call it for what it is.

I’m kinda flawed. And I just push right on past it. And it makes my stuff weird.

In closing, please remember that some people do things differently than you, and that’s okay. You can tastefully voice your critiques. Just don’t turn into an asshole and present yourself as the authority on literature norms.

Even the Bible is debated.

And Oxford has their own comma.

They sat at the little table in the kitchen under the bare bulb that dangled from a hole in the ceiling.

Mack, the nine year old, sat across from him wearing a potato sack over his head with rough cut eye holes. Connor watched him play with his action figure while he turned over a large rock in his hands. Oddly circular.

He don’t have an arm. What happened to his arm?

He lost it.

How?

He got it shot off in Iraq, he said. Mack always struggled to say words like Iraq.

Did he?

Yeah.

Why?

Because it’s cool.

Yeah.

Their father walked in. He was a massively tall man recently roused from sleep and his bare body was flabby and sunburnt.

What am I looking at? He said.

Connor got a rock, Mack said.

Did he now?

We went lookin’ for rocks. Right, Connor? Looking for rocks.

We did.

The father looked down at Connor. You climb the fence for that?

Yessir. We can’t pull em’ outta the ground in the yard. No good rocks.

Right, Mack said. Ain’t no good rocks in our yard. But our yard is fine. It’s okay for other things.

His father looked at Mack, then at Connor. His lip curled up and showed his stained teeth in a lopsided smile. Get out of here, he said.

Nobody moved. His angry smile dropped away. No, I’m serious. Get out of here for a while.

He left for the living room. The springs in the couch busted and the TV flipped on.

Mack sat there with his hands in his lap.

You go on and play with that, Connor said. Don’t pay no attention.

—O—

The road stretched onwards like a thin line penciled in over a wide sheet of rocky desert. Power lines ran on both sides of the road. Exposed cable in their tattered shielding. Crows perched atop the splintered poles like judges who observed the goings ons with indifferent glances. This was the stretch where Connor took the dirt bike.

He accelerated to the max and the wind whipped his bare face. He screamed into it. The tears were swept away from his eyes so quickly that he could deny they ever existed. He didn’t notice the trooper until the lights flashed. He slowed the bike down and pulled off to the side. He waited there in the rising dust.

The trooper was a hispanic man wearing a brown uniform that was stained heavily in the pits. He walked with a wide gait and wore large aviators. All Connor could see was his own face, distorted and colored like a rainbow.

What do you think?

I think you pulled me over.

Very good. The trooper spat into the dirt. Wanna take a guess as to why?

I’d imagine there’s more than one reason.

Then you’re bound to get one right. At least.

He waited a moment. I’m too damn handsome, he said, without any discernible inflection.

The trooper pulled off his aviators with both hands and squinted his eyes. I’d suggest you keep riding without a helmet, he said. On the off chance that when you crash a rock knocks some sense into that pig ass head of yours. But as it is, I can’t make that suggestion. I can only implore you otherwise.

I’m getting deployed.

Yeah? When?

Soon.

How old are you?

Nineteen.

And where are you reporting to?

I don’t remember.

They said nothing for a long time.

Am I getting a ticket?

Yes you are, the trooper said. Now, which one should we start with?

—O—

At night the windows were left open. The curtains fluttered inward with the wind. He sat on the couch looking straight through the TV. He placed his hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat. It felt normal to him. It angered him. People are dying, he thought. Did his murmur matter so much?

The door to Mack’s room was cracked open. The boy lay in his bed, faced away. On his nightstand the sack sat shapeless and hollow. He picked up the sack and his brother rolled over.

His eyes were still closed but the placement of them was offset. His lip was curled up wildly and his bare teeth shown like little yellow daggers. His face was an utter travesty of humanity and would forever garner distant sympathy.

—O—

The wind came on heavy and it roused the dust from the ground and sent it forward in rolling whips. There was no light on this road save the starlight from the well peppered sky. He stood there in that scene, idling under the power lines with the bike parked under him and the engine off.

The still world around him used to reign peace in his irregular heart, but he did not feel the peace this night. He could feel nothing in his bones and his head was much too busy. All he could feel was his hands and the texture of the rock. All he could see was the low hanging power lines that ran down the road. The sack narrowed his sight.

Then a pair of headlights came into view quite far ahead. Like a shooting star that blinked into the world without warning.

He snatched the sack from his head and opened it and dropped the rock inside. Wielding it from the end he swung the package around in wide circles. If there was someone there to see him, they would see him. The stars would make it so. But they’d likely not look long. A young man twirling a heavy sack in the night like a tongueless busker in the midst of a thing words could not describe.

The brights of the oncoming car lit everything as he drove out into the road to meet it.

It happened quickly.

He was mostly blinded, but with a well placed underhanded swing he let the sack loose and it decimated the windshield. He lost control of the bike and spilled out into the road.

The sound of the car wrecking boomed through the earth. Connor was unable to see it as he lay on his back looking at the stars.

—O—

He was hot from the cuts. The wetness of his wounds trickled down his body. He rose on phantom legs and stood trembling in the cool night.

The car was overturned off the road and its taillights were diffused amidst a cloud of smoke and dust. The headlights were still on and the beams jetted out into the vast dark and landed nowhere. He stood listening and heard nothing save the still running radio. A man speaking. A song playing. He limped to the shattered windshield and looked in.

She was inverted and loosely held by her seatbelt. Formerly blonde. The falling tangles of blood soaked hair were stuck with pieces of brain. Her arms dangled like that of a theme park rider. The bloody crater in her forehead sparkled with glass. He tilted his head to gain a better view at the long shard that had skewered her lower lip and tongue. Its serrated tip glistened in the dark hole of her mouth. Her eyes were missing.

He went back to the bike and stood it up. He wasn’t going very fast so the damage to it seemed more superficial. He would look it over more in the morning. He drove off. The wind was cold against his exposed blood and the cuts stung greatly and he thought that felt nice. The music faded from his ears as he withdrew from the scene entirely.

About an hour later the car was still unfounded. The battery died and the headlights died with them.

I’ll risk saying something a bit controversial about this Elon situation, because every other note I’ve seen on Substack the past couple days has been about this. And almost all of them suck.

I don’t care for Elon, but I don’t hate him either. I feel that he is, like many extremely wealthy people, a disconnected weirdo. He says a lot of things in the public sphere that I don’t agree with.

Elon Musk has also never broken into my house and taken money out of my wallet. He hasn’t done that to anybody on this platform, so far as I know. Now, if you have a general morale principle that people just shouldn’t be rich, I suppose that’s fair, but I feel it isn’t applied evenly.

Look at your bookshelves.

Mileage may vary depending on what you read, but I’m willing to bet a lot of us have books on our shelves from authors who are, or were, incredibly rich. Sure, probably not Bezos level and definitely not Elon level, but still incredibly wealthy.

• Stephen King - 400 to 500 million

• James Patterson - 800 million

• JK Rowling - 1 billion

Now a lot of people hate JK Rowling, but not because she’s wealthy. That’s a post for another day. But this list is just the top of the top. There are tons of other authors with net worths in the low millions, and relatively speaking, they barely employ anyone. The main people they (indirectly) employ are folks who work at big publishers to edit, market, and distribute their books. There are roughly 20,000 people working for the “big five” publishers globally. That’s a whole lot of money involved for a relatively small amount of people. That would seem immoral, eh?

I don’t think so. But that’s the point.

It’s my view that a lot of people in the writing/reading community seem to ignore that unpleasant truth. Call it a double standard. They will ostracize a rich CEO who runs a large corporation that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs and provides products and services to millions of other people, but celebrate when Sarah J. Mass sits at her desk and writes fantasy books and establishes a net worth of over 20 million dollars through her sales.

Because Sarah J. Mass is an Artist.

I remember a few years back when Bernie Sanders, a self described Democratic Socialist, got really skittish trying to defend his own net worth. He wrote two books that shot him into millionaire status. He was pressed about how he can square this off with his political views and said,

“I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire too.”

Sanders owns a townhouse in DC, and two homes in Vermont, one of them being a lake-house, and spends most of his career taking shots at wealthy CEO’s whenever he can. But nah, he wrote a book, so he’s allowed to be rich.

You see how stupid this is?

Let me just clarify, I am not in any way taking shots at King, Patterson, Rowling, Mass, or any author who has made a boatload of money off their writing. Half of you here on Substack have paid options.

I think it’s absolutely fantastic that a writer can sit down and pour their soul into their work, and possibly get wealthy doing so. It’s a perfectly moral thing, and it’s also extremely capitalist. I know Capitalism is a bad word to some, but I think that’s awfully silly when we reap the benefits of it every single day and actively encourage its existence through our own buying habits.

A lot of people disassociate and alter their perspectives when it comes to dealing with art and the artists. We seem to look at authors and forget that while they are clearly passionate about their work, it still is a capitalist endeavor. They create a product, a publisher publishes the product, and they both make money from the proceeds of said product that, let’s face it, you don’t actually need.

I love Stephen King, but if I’m hungry, I can’t eat my copy of The Shining.

So what am I ultimately saying here?

On the face of it, I’m not too concerned about Elon being a trillionaire or Bezos being a billionaire. Nor am I concerned about Stephen King, an author I really enjoy, being a millionaire. I’m not even concerned about Bernie Sanders being one, even if that irks me a bit. I’m more concerned about the inability of the general public to be able to see the similarities between the two groups.

I think Kevin O’Leary and this recent data center stuff is nuts, and he deserves all the flak he’s getting. That’s a fine bit of criticism. The point is that the criticism is not just simply blasting him because of his net worth, but rather, blasting the actions he’s taking. There is a key difference.

I highly encourage you all to not fall into the “Rich = Evil” mentality. There are good critiques to be made against Elon and Bezos, I’ve made some myself. The problem is that almost nobody on Substack seems to be doing that. The platform is filled with incredibly lazy attacks that don’t hold up to the most basic pushback. They’ll focus on the personal enrichment of these folks but completely ignore the value they provide. Because when value is provided, personal enrichment is almost always included.

Most writer types don’t want to acknowledge that their shit stinks too, it seems.

Be measured and be thoughtful about your criticism towards anybody. Come with receipts. Do not fall victim to these empty platitudes you see all over Substack about (blank) people being evil because they have too much of this or not enough of that. Ask questions, understand what you are talking about. Don’t be keyboard dumb.

It’s childish, unbecoming, devoid of critical thought, and insanely hypocritical when your bookshelf is likely stacked with millionaires.

It appeared as a dark blot against the sun. Gradually, it took shape. A wagon hauling cargo.

Outside the stores, a small group of men leaned against the wooden posts to watch the arrival. A piece of straw dangled from the teeth of one youngster, who squinted his eyes. The straw fell from his gaped mouth and settled between his feet.

They all stole away to report the wagon to anybody who’d listen.

The raised walkways were soon flooded with men and women and the planks bowed under the weight. A brave few ventured from the shade of the overhangs and stepped into the sun-bathed street to look.

Oh hell, one said.

Where’s my gun, another said.

A woman screamed.

Then they got the sheriff.

—O—

Sheriff Lawrence Buckler, a grizzled man of fifty-odd years, shouldered through the crowd. He’d already drew his Colt, and he was thumbing the hammer back when he stepped into the street. The walkways on either side were as filled as he’d ever seen them, and coming to a stop was a small wagon driven by an old woman dressed in pelts. He blinked his crusted lids.

Above, a swarm of flies circled. For the wagon this old woman drove was stitched with the rotting corpses of four men.

—O—

I’m just a stoppin’ off for a sipsy. Honest injun, sheriff.

She sat up straight with a sincere expression, the roused dust hanging in the air about her. Buckler stepped closer to examine the wagon.

The corpses had been rigged with ropes. Three of them gawked at the sky. The worst rotted one was also the heaviest, and despite his holdings he was slumped forward, the rope taught against his bloated belly. His dangling arms were badly feasted upon.

They were in simple burial clothes. The one closest to the front seemed most recently deceased. A young man with soulless eyes upturned and his tongue loose in the small of his mouth.

In the silence, the flies hummed, but they did not at any point draw closer to the wagon.

Buckler holstered his pistol. Ma’am, he said, in an unsure voice. Well, ma’am. I fear I have a few questions to ask you.

Ye can ask.

Ma’am. Do you know what today is?

March the seventeenth. And I reckon it’s either seventy-four or seventy-five.

Seventy-five.

What the hell, someone screamed. This was a followed by several declarations made by the crowd. None stepped forward, however, and before long they were quiet again.

Ma’am, are you aware that you are not traveling alone in that there wagon? And I’m not speaking of the horses.

Yes. I am awares.

The sheriff walked forward pinching his nose and looked over the dead boy’s shoulder. The bed of the wagon contained nothing more than a chest and a few sacks. He looked up at the old woman and set his fingers into his pocket.

Might you step on down so we can talk? We can talk in my office. Got coffee on.

Be proud to. She bundled the reins.

Could you park it there behind the jail?

Whereabouts?

He pointed. Way down there, he said.

—O—

It was a small brick building with two empty holding cells. Buckler sat behind his desk. The old woman sat opposite, appearing very small in her hide dress and cupping a tin mug with both hands.

Deputy Elias Morton, a pasty-faced youth, sat in the windowsill with a rifle in his hands. The glass behind him was filthy and spread with the foggy shadows of peepers.

How is that? Buckler asked her.

She took a fine sip. Warm and good. I thank ye, she said.

Very welcome. Might I ask for your name?

Ye may. My name is Margot Brown.

Well, Miss Brown, how did you come to be… He stopped, unsure if this woman was aware of her own situation. Though for her feeble stature and weathered face, she seemed to have all her faculties about her.

Deputy Morton spoke for him: How in all cold fuckin’ hell ya come riding up with that massacre travelin’ at your back?

Buckler eyed the boy.

I see what this is about now, she said.

Oh, Buckler said, returning his attention. Do you?

Yes.

What is this about?

It’s about my company.

Yes. Your company. He waited a moment. You are aware that they’re dead then?

Yes, sheriff. I am awares of that. She took a long sip.

Ma’am. I cannot allow this.

Allow what?

Frankly, I have no idea.

There was silence.

Did you kill those men? He asked.

What type of monstrous thing do ye think I am, young man?

I haven’t made any determinations in any direction, ma’am. Truthfully, I’m vexed at the sight of this. I just feel I oughta be doing something regarding it. People here are very upset. Very frightened.

Who the hell are the dead men strapped to your wagon, Morton asked, and how did they come to die?

She looked over at him. I’d like for ye to speak to me no more.

Let’s keep it funny, Buckler offered.

Oh, it’s fuckin’ funny, Morton said. Right fuckin’ hoot.

Elias. Why don’t you go watch the wagon.

The deputy shot him a look. Are you absolutely sure you’d rather me out there than in here?

I am absolutely sure that I need all my powers of comprehension available for speaking with Miss Brown here. Yes, Elias. Get out.

The youth plopped his boots on the floor. He held the rifle in one hand and opened the door with the other. Back the hell up, he yelled as he pushed himself outside and shut the door.

Without any request, Buckler rose and poured Margot Brown more coffee.

—O—

I lost Herb first, she said. He always had troubles with the cough.

It came on that quickly?

Yes. Feared it could be spread. Which it was. Even with that, I still slept beside him even knowin’ I was a-likely to wake up and find him dead.

Is that what happened, Miss Brown?

Breakfast.

Pardon?

It happened at breakfast.

I see.

Just slid down off the chair. Middle of breakfast. Damn it.

He averted his eyes. The sight of her had begun to strain him. I’m sorry, he said. What else?

With stonewall composure, Margot Brown recounted the deaths of her three sons. Within a month, she’d lost them all, all of them from the same sickness that seemed not to afflict her. Blessing or a curse, she said. My speculation don’t change a thing about it.

She then told him that she decided not to bury her last son once he passed. This was Henry, the one hanging closest to the front. She dug the rest of them up and spent days rigging the wagon. She was helpless in those mountains and decided that she could not die on purpose, nor could she stay in that house, nor could she stand to be too far away from the graves of her loved ones.

So you took em’ with you, he said.

She nodded.

They were silent for a long time. Ma’am, he said. I can’t.

Ye can’t what?

There are a whole lot of problems here.

She said nothing.

Lot of problems, he said. Then he went quiet.

In the subsequent silence, she dozed.

Oh, I’m sorry, she said, springing awake. I’m needin’ rest before I get movin’ on.

Moving on to where, ma’am?

Movin’ on to the moon. Movin’ away from the sunrise, always. I don’t look in on em’ no more.

Why not?

What the hell do I need a damn sunrise for? What the hell did the daytime do for me and mine?

He sat back in his chair and in the silence that followed, considered his legal duties and obligations. Of all the things he’d seen, one could find something of a logical course of action, even among the gray and illogical. There was one here, but it felt wrong.

His life from here on out would be split in two. The days before Margot Brown and the days after Margot Brown.

I have some money, she said. And I’d prefer to sleep in a real bed till nightfall. Do ye reckon they’d let me take a room at the hotel?

Ma’am, he said, leaning forward. I’ll pay for that room myself.

—O—

The rest of the afternoon consisted of Deputy Elias Morton standing guard by the wagon and Sheriff Lawrence Buckler occupying the hotel as some form of deterrent. John Walsh, the hotel owner, eyed him from the front desk, and shook his head every now and then.

Buckler sat in the dining room with his legs crossed and his hat hanging from the tip of his boot, a glass of cloudy water in his hand and a small cigar in his mouth. From the window he could see the wagon parked off the street beside the jail and Morton trouncing around it with his rifle. The boy muttered to himself and kicked the dirt here and there.

Above the wagon, the swarm of flies bounded soundlessly, and Buckler never thought of a good reason as to why those pests respected the corpses. Not in the rest of his years.

—O—

Under the pale light of a full moon, Margot Brown grabbed the reins and pulled into the street. Buckler and Morton stood shoulder to shoulder watching her grow smaller against the blue lighted country ahead, until she was nothing more than a distant shadow bumbling over the plain.

Ain’t goin’ over well, sheriff. Ain’t goin’ over at all. Poor John’ll be washing the sheets till Sunday. Hell, he’s goin’ burn the sheets and chuck the fuckin’ frame and probably light the place on fire—

Elias, Buckler said. Enjoy the breeze.

Morton was silent for a moment. He felt no breeze. Oh, he said, I’ve seen some things, sheriff. Seen some things in my time.

Your time.

Yeah. But this don’t figure for me at all.

It don’t figure to you because you don’t know how to just shut your damn mouth.

Morton looked at Buckler, who didn’t acknowledge him.

Well, Morton said, it still don’t figure to me.

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Somewhere in Texas - 1980

The dark clouds drifted by like transient figures without definition, their edges sprayed silver by the moon. Below, a stretch of field with straw colored grass and blue flowers. A dirt road cut straight through. The silence was broken by a lone engine as a pair of headlights swept across the field. A white Cadillac shot by.

Franks drove with one hand out the window and the other holding a cigarette. He cradled the wheel between his thighs.

The windows of the old ranch house were dark, and a brick built funeral home stood across the way. The latter was marked only with a weathered sign hung from a wooden post. It swayed gently in the wind.

He parked in the middle of the lot and killed the engine. In the total dark he kept smoking, and on each pull the cherry flamed like an old heartbeat.

He stepped out of the car wearing an old brown suit and carrying a leather briefcase. He stomped out the bud and walked through the hanging dust to the porch. A set of wind chimes dangled from the overhang. The metal sleeves were long removed, leaving nothing but bare wire that hung without resonance. Furnished by the window was an old rocker, and it maintained a delicate motion, as if someone had just risen from it.

In the tattered screen door an envelope was clipped in a long slash. He snatched it out and read the note inside.

You goddamn fool, he said.

He ascended the steps of the funeral home across the way and jammed his key into the old lock.

His brother had left a few lamps on here and there suggesting a direction. He turned left instead, walking the old place in total darkness. The main parlor had large windows that ran the length of the south wall, lending some pale light. There were sixteen chairs in that room, all in short rows with an aisle in between. As he sat down in the middle row, the thin legs of the chair splintered loudly in the stillness. The empty catafalque loomed at the head of the room. The long black bundle of cloth spilt onto the floor. An empty easel beside it. He sat for a while. He was an older man and had come to like the quiet.

He went into his brother’s office. By the light of a small lamp he could see two files on the desk. He thumbed through them.

Hm, he said.

Flipped a page.

Hm, he said again.

—O—

In the house, Jed stirred. The window was open and he made out the flowing curtains to be an apparition. He whispered a name but the shape was already gone. He rose from bed and went to the window. The Cadillac was there, and across the way he could see the little window in his office, the yellow light of the desk lamp, and the shadow moving around in there.

He sat on the still and thought of cigarettes.

—O—

Franks danced his fingers across the basement door. As he did always. He thought about leaving. As he did always. Then he opened the door.

A dry chill set on his bones. The tile floor shrieked under his heels. In his hand, a cheap flashlight that cast a thin blue beam. Putting his ear to the door, he could hear them. He pushed through the doors and trained the light over the coolers.

He saw a leg first.

It was lying on the ground. Naked and contorted, ribs expanding and shrinking. Something else moaned in the corner. He swung the beam over and saw another one in similar condition, albeit standing, stiff-like, with its head cocked to the side. It faced nothing in particular.

Franks tapped the flashlight on a metal cart and the moaning stopped. Gentlemen, he said. Upstairs. First door on your left. At your convenience.

He flicked the flashlight off. The doors opened and closed.

In the dark, when Franks’ footfalls ceased, the one in the corner slid its heel across the tile.

—O—

Jed had the pack in his hands now. He turned it over and read the back, read the warnings. Read it again. The delicate snoring of his wife filled the room. She was good, he thought. She had asked a few questions, judged little, and only harbored practical reservations. And reservations were fine. If she had none, then Jed would likely have a few for her.

—O—

Franks sat at the desk and flipped through Jed’s weekly planner. Activities so routine that owning a planner was more of a formality. It seemed to him careless. Ironically, caring was a thing that Jed did a lot of. The world was occupied by many Jeds but built and maintained solely by Franks, or people like Franks. The note had bothered him.

You think this is a charity, Franks said to the empty room.

He replied to himself in his own head: Yes, barring the strangeness, this is not dissimilar to a charity.

The first sounds of it echoed through the hall twenty minutes later. Franks had left the door wide open and he watched from his chair. He set the planner down and took up one of the files. When he looked back up, the darkness of it was crowding the door.

Come in, he said.

He read the autopsy report while the thing milled about the room. When he looked back up, he was greeted by a ghastly white penis dangling about the desk. In the small light of the lamp, the tall cadaver’s face was concealed in darkness.

Sit down or just step back, please.

It moved like a jointless doll.

Can you sit?

Gradually, it raised a long arm and threw for the chair. It missed.

That’s quite all right.

It slid in front of the chair.

Really, it’s fine.

It groaned, then fell into the chair with legs jetted out. The long arms dangled down nearly to the floor.

Franks could see him now in the light. He was a very tall, ghoulish looking boy. His bare chest veinless, with a blistered patch of skin above the navel. The face was long and burdened with shadows. The eyes, two glassy shields sheltering two distant planets. A line of white dribble streaming through a gap in his dagger teeth. It ran down his chin. His hairless chin.

Franks played with a pen he’d found in his breast pocket. Mr. Hollis?

Eyes moved.

How’s that other feller doing?

Nothing.

Alright then, he said. He casted one of the files into the wastebasket beside the desk, set the pen down and laced his fingers together. We can make this quick. Doesn’t pay otherwise.

Hollis accessed this conversation through his cool eyes. The face was too blank to bear witness.

Mr. Hollis, Franks said. I talk to people for a living. Usually about bad things. My brother works down in the basement. He works on bodies. You’re a body. Occasionally he shoots them up with a serum of sorts. Serum is the right word, I guess. I never really understood the damned thing. You with me thus far?

The neck tightened. Something of a nod. A micro gesture.

He gave you shot one of two, Franks continued. Meaning there’s another dose. That’s the one that really works. That’s the one that really brings your ass back. So, let’s go ahead and take a look at that chalky ass of yours.

He flipped the file open. Lacey Hollis, he read aloud. Aged nineteen. Cause of death is a single gunshot wound to the chest causing penetrating cardiac injury and exsanguination. That’s just coroner talk for blood loss. Anyhow, manner of death is considered a homicide. Officially. He looked up. Does that about match your recollection, Mr. Hollis?

It looked back at him. Eyes narrowing, lips trembling, thumbs jabbing.

Do you even know it’s there? Right there. Down. Look down.

Hollis lowered his eyes. A rattle escaped his throat. The right arm shot out without warning and he wailed in retarded agony as his elbow snapped home and his hand landed over the wound.

Moments passed. When the sounds ceased, Franks continued.

You’re a good physical candidate. Making it up the stairs is half the battle. And you’re even verbal. But let me be clear, even when this thing works, and that prospect itself is a shotgun affair, the quality of life isn’t all what it might be cracked up to be. Your organs’ll be all shot, you’ll shit yourself, you’ll puke up. You’ll get sick real easy. You won’t sleep well. You’ll be weak. You’ll wake nightly to find whatever bed you’re sleepin’ in is a rushing shit river. And when you walk, you’ll be walking in Hell. But the good news is that Hell is right here on Earth. So, maybe that’s a trade-off, eh?

Hollis traced the bubbled skin with his long finger.

Well, Mr. Lacey Hollis. Franks closed the folder. I regret to inform you that I will be ramming your moon caked ass back up in that refrigerator.

—O—

Jed drew deep on the cigarette and he blew the smoke out the window. The light across the way was still on. On the next draw, he coughed and hushed it in his palm. He looked back into his darkened bedroom at where the mantlepiece would be. His cat eyes couldn’t pick it up in the dark, but in his mind he summoned the mantlepiece and its picture-frames. Old photos, mainly. There was a big one with him, with mom and dad. His brother was in it too, the only one not smiling. It was taken just outside. Forty-seven. The funeral parlor was framed behind them. His father sported a pair of singed eyebrows and taped glasses. A half-spent cigarette hung from his smiling lips.

Jed thought of his father and smiled.

—O—

I want you to understand something, Mr. Hollis. It might be a comfort to you.

He spoke above the violent retchings from the mouth of Hollis.

There is no god, Franks said. Therefore, no life beyond. I meant it when I said Hell was here on Earth. Heaven is just walking around with a relatively clean conscience. And who the hell is doin’ that? Mr. Hollis? Hawk it. Jesus boy. He smacked his palm on the desk.

When that serum runs out of you, he continued, you’ll drift back into whatever it is you just came down from. It’ll be better for you. Better for us, too.

Franks referred back to the file. Hollis was seizing violently in the chair.

The man who shot you was the father of your girlfriend, Mr. Hollis. Don’t you remember her? Bella Rhea, sixteen. Do you remember what you did to her? Do you remember stoving her head in on her front porch? Why did you run away if you loved her so damn much? Why’d you do it when her old man was home?

It continued in its way.

You’re a stupid kid, Lacey Hollis, and you were very upset about the abortion. But two wrongs don’t make a right. You ever hear that before? Two wrongs— Jesus, what do you care? My own brother doesn’t have a clue either. Oh, calm down.

Hollis spilled to the floor. His writhing movements slowed and turned to breathless weeping. Franks rounded the desk. It stared at his shoes.

It’s over, Mr. Hollis. I’m sorry that my brother made it go longer than necessary.

A lie.

And I’m getting very tired.

Truth.

He knelt beside it. Okay son, he said. Up and at em!

He gripped Hollis by the ankle and dragged him across the floor. Hollis wailed all the way as they went out into the hall. With sudden strength, Hollis gripped the door frame. Franks cursed at him and yanked him harder but the cadaver held tight. Franks stepped over and clawed the bony fingers off the frame and Hollis bit at his ankle.

You fuck.

Franks kicked Hollis straight in his jaw. It surely broke.

Hollis lay on his back now, his chin misaligned, frothing ungodly fluids from the mouth.

Oh, you stupid son of a bitch, Franks said. He looked longer at the thing. The misery. Slowly, Franks began to smile.

The night is long, young man. And I don’t sleep for shit anyhow.

—O—

Jed had been resting his head against the window frame. Three cigarette buds were pitched into the grass below the window.

He raised his lids just enough to see the office light flick off. A minute later, Franks was descending the steps alone. A spark of light, and he was smoking.

Jed rubbed his eyes with one hand and pounded the wall, softly, with the other. With a sharp breath he shut the window and fell flat into the bed. She stirred beside him and said something, but he rubbed her face with his thumbs and after some time she halted her inquiry. His heaviness going, he waited for the sputtering start of the Cadillac. He might’ve dreamed over it. Thoughts of the roving fields. Floating, he was.

What did you say? She asked. Who you sayin’ sorry to?

—O—

Franks walked into the diner with red eyes and windswept hair. The place was empty save for David Cornell, an old timer who sat in a booth by the window in his hunting gear, holding a cup of coffee and balancing a rifle between his thighs. Cornell took a look at him.

Judge, he said.

Mornin’.

You look like the cat if he never’n got dragged in.

You look like you got something down south.

Cornell looked down at the rifle and then back at Franks. I believe I do, he said. And she ain’t never once told me no.

Well.

Cornell returned to his coffee.

Franks walked to the counter and took a stool. The kitchen doors opened. Denise, the only waitress, came out and put her hands on her hips.

Judge Franks. What the hell’ve you been getting up to?

Hi, young lady.

Usual?

He nodded.

Her eyes trailed him as she walked back into the kitchen. She came back a few moments later with tablets in her hand.

You shouldn’t have, he said.

I don’t know what they got you doing. Every time you come in here I damn near faint in solidarity.

I’ve waited a long time for a woman to tell me that.

She laughed.

—O—

Forking the last of his grits, he was caught in a thought. One that involved his place in the vast nothingness he called life, measured against the vapid doctrines of his own code, and how none of it made a lick of sense when he stopped to think about it.

Denise propped her elbows on the counter. Your daddy a judge too?

No.

Really?

My father was a medical doctor, actually.

Really?

He was a bit of a crackpot, if you don’t mind me saying, Judge.

Franks didn’t look back at Cornell, who rose and slung the rifle over his shoulder. I do remember some things about him, Cornell said. Or maybe they were things I’d gone and read. Funny things. Aw hell. It’s not that big of a deal in the face of the new world revolution we got goin’. Boys playin’ with other boys, by god. Not much of a big deal at all, actually. In fact—

He talked for a few minutes. When it became clear that nobody was listening, he stopped talking and dropped a few bills on the table. Happy hunting, he said. The doors slapped shut behind him.

That there is a man confident in his place in Heaven, Franks said.

I’m sorry.

That’s alright. Franks slid his mug over. No firearms in Heaven, I’d hope.

I’d hope. Judge, what did he all mean?

About?

Your father.

People wrote some things about him. Interested people.

Why? What type of things?

The steam rose and split over his nose. My father, he said, was concerned with things that nobody oughta be so concerned with.

Such as?

He raised his eyes.

Other people’s damn sob stories.

—O—

The dog barked early.

Jed got up from the table and leaned over his wife’s shoulder to look out the window. She covered her mouth. Then she yelled at him. He threw the drapes closed and rushed to the door. The children jumped to join him, but not before she barreled them down.

Outside, Jed rounded the house, bare feet in the dirt, and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. Over in the field, a naked man was limping among the bluebonnets. He watched on as the figure was swallowed by the trees.

Jed put his hands on his hips and tried to reason where the man might end up, and what might happen next.