Bull Head (9 page)

“She's a beauty.” Fred kicked his truck door shut. “And she's all yours.”

Fred handed Maurice a bank draft for $67,500.47 and a bag of Oreo cookies to celebrate their latest run at the cattle auction.

Maurice turned away, took a deep breath, and examined the cheque carefully. He held it up in the sunlight, squinting before he stuffed it in his overalls and gave his brother the cookies. Harold tore open the package, split one in half, and scraped the cream off each piece with his front teeth. Maurice shuddered at the sound and eyed the truck. Neither of them had driven a vehicle other than their tractor. Their ranch was blessed with streams and wooded groves and some of the valley's best grass for livestock; horses got them everywhere they needed to go.

“Best if you take her back with you.” Harold's teeth were blackened with bits of cookie. “If it's got tits or wheels, she'll give us trouble. No use for her here.”

Maurice booted the ground, stole peeks at himself in the reflection from the truck's window. White wisps of hair poked out from beneath his baseball cap, faded brown with stitching across the front that read
Never Trust a Man Who Doesn't Drink
, an ironic gift from Fred since Maurice never touched the stuff. Now that they had a generator, costs would shoot up. No telling how high if they used the truck. It didn't feel right. Little leaks
sink great ships—that was Harold's philosophy.

“What do you say, Maurice?” Fred said. “Give that horse of yours a rest. Test it for a few weeks, see how it works for you.”

Maurice took a deep breath of the cool air coming down off the mountain. He felt Harold's eyes survey him and nodded to Fred. Harold shook his head.

“Did you want me to deposit that cheque, or are you aiming to hold onto it for a rainy day?” Fred laughed.

Maurice pulled the money from his overalls and handed it to Fred. He stood silently with Harold as they watched Fred's truck recede on the dirt road in the distance, a trail of dust behind him.

Maurice glanced toward the cabin. Harold wouldn't be awake for another hour, when Maurice got the stove fired up. His heart pounded in his chest, echoed in his ears. He slid his finger-tip along the weathered paint on the truck's hood. Shivers shot through his arms. He grew bolder and ran his palm along the cold metal, traced the words with his calloused fingers: H-A-R-V-E-S-T-E-R, in large letters;
International
, like handwriting. He steered his hand along the curve of the wheel well that was gently sloped toward the headlights, grazed the silver circles that surrounded them clockwise and then counterclockwise, and stroked the metal grill quickly across the slats, strumming a steel song before he climbed inside and closed the door. Fred had left the keys in the ignition, but Maurice didn't touch them. He checked the rearview. Dissolved starlight. Beaver tail still. Pewter bowl sky. He took off his ball cap, licked his fingers, slicked back his hair, tucked a few strands behind his ears before he put his hat
back on. A bit late to worry about appearances.

Maurice held the steering wheel and leaned back. Beyond the dashboard, Bull Head Mountain soared. He squirmed himself comfortable and turned the radio dial, dropped his right hand to his thigh. That didn't feel right, so he gripped the steering wheel with both hands and then dropped his left hand to his thigh. That didn't feel right either. He turned the window lever, lowered the window, and propped his left arm up. A breeze blew in, filled the truck with a brisk flush of damp air. His horse snorted; the cabin door opened. Maurice rolled up the window, slipped out of the truck, snapped the door closed, and hurried to his horse.

Harold stood in front of the cabin. “You're awake awful early.”

“Couldn't sleep.” Maurice stroked his horse's leg.

“You forgot to make a fire. Again.”

Maurice looked up. Harold had a stare that could drop a grizzly.

Harold nodded toward the truck. “She's a goddamn eyesore.”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so, do you?”

Maurice felt Harold's gaze burn into him. He looked down at his own boots and was confused to see that he was wearing one gumboot and one work boot.

“Fifty-percent chance of rain today, eh... boss?”

Maurice flinched at the way Harold paused before he called him boss, the tone he used when he tried to get Maurice to talk.

“Don't you be getting crazy on me, old man.”

“I'm sane as they come. We both know that.”

“Do we?” Harold chuckled. “You're so wound up, couldn't pull a pin out of your ass with that tractor.”

“Maybe you should talk less and get that generator fired up. I'm needing some coffee.”

“Damn thing makes a racket. Costs too much to run. Maybe you should just fix us a fire so I can brew the coffee.”

“I'll get right on that, boss.” Maurice tipped his hat to his brother.

The brothers saddled their horses and crossed the trampled grass where their stock had fed during the summer. They climbed a rocky hummock and descended to the tall grass of the winter range. There were several sections of fence to run, and time was tight before the wind would carry snow down the mountain and blanket the landscape. They dug out the ground with sharp picks and used the blunt backs of axes to pound fence posts into the chunky, unforgiving ground. Both brothers tested each post with a firm shake and piled up rocks and dirt at the base before they moved on to the next. Harold slathered roofing tar on top of the exposed end of the post, a trick he learned from their father, to waterproof the ends. Once the fence posts were set, they strung barbed wire from post to post and stretched the wire with an old clamp they had used for years, hooked the end to a come-along, and pushed open the jaws. Maurice laid the wire in the open groove, and Harold pulled on the hook to close the mouth of it, ratcheting the come-along until the wire was tight. Occasionally he let out a low chuckle, as though in conversation. Maurice looked up to see what he laughed at, but Harold's eyes never strayed from the wire.

By late morning, their wrists were sore and the sun was high
and cold, so they broke for coffee. They held the cups close to their faces; the dry tufts of grass whispered all about them. Harold squatted and picked up a sun-bleached horse skull in the sagebrush. He held it in front of his face and whinnied at Maurice. “Help, I'm dying.”

“You keep horsing around like that and we won't get any work done.” Maurice pulled the skull away from Harold.

“Where's your sense of humour gone to, boss? 'Member that hired hand we had last year? You put a dead mouse between two slices of bread. Had a sense of humour then.”

Maurice contemplated the skull, turned it in his hands. Frail and brittle. Rows of tombstone teeth, loose and rattling in their plots. Dirt trickled out of the empty eyes. He loved in horses what he loved in the land, muscular and flawed, graceful yet brutal. The grass thrashed softly. The hired hand didn't trust the brothers after the mouse sandwich. Maurice and Harold had warned him about the electrified fence meant to ward off bears, but he threw himself at it to see if it worked. Maurice found the man on his knees beside the fence grabbing his head with both hands, complaining of a headache.

“That hired hand weren't right, and your horse's knee ain't right,” Harold said. “The lump is growing bigger.”

“I heard you the first time.” Maurice set the skull down in the grass.

In the cabin, under the harsh glow of a bare light bulb, Maurice flipped through a tattered copy of
Mule Deer.
Harold braided rawhide, hummed to himself, stopped and started the same
indecipherable tune in the same place, as though he couldn't remember the next note, as though he were doing it intentionally. The generator groaned against a moonless sky, the window-pane rattled. Maurice tossed the magazine on the dirt floor, put on his cap.

“Where you headed, boss?”

“Checking the horses. Worked them hard today.”

“We just fed them an hour ago.”

Maurice grunted and turned toward the door.

“You mean your horse?” Harold lifted his head from the strands of rawhide he weaved.

Maurice faced him. “She's got three strong legs. She'll be fine.”

“Make yourself useful. Turn off that racket when you come back in. Damn thing whines like a dog in heat.”

A cold wind scrubbed the dark night clear. Stars flickered dimly like small tears in the vast black fabric of the world above. Maurice strode past his horse toward the truck, opened the cab door, and climbed in. He jumped back, startled. The horse skull stared at him from the passenger seat. He shook his head and let out a low chuckle. Stark light slanted out of the cabin's window behind him. The generator clattered on. He touched the pedals with his gumboot. First the gas, then the brake. Then he pushed in the clutch, released it, held the gearshift on the steering column. Opened and closed the glove box. Slid open the ashtray. Empty. Pushed it back in. He leaned back against the seat and shut his eyes, tried to piece together the dream from the previous night, the same dream he'd been having since Fred stopped by. Something about a field strewn with boulders. His hobbled horse galloped through the tall grass, dodged rocks, her silver mane
flowed and flapped like flags. It was always too dark to see in the dreams and everywhere he tried to look, boulders closed in around him. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that the boulders had turned into trucks, their menacing grills growling as they bore down on him. He had awoken himself shouting after his horse as she ran and faded in the distance. Across the room, Harold was staring at him.

Maurice got out of the truck, trudged to the generator, and turned it off. His ears still buzzed as he caressed his horse's razor-ous flanks. Her bump felt hot and knobby. He resisted the urge to squeeze it, petted her neck and shoulder until her breath settled into a slow rhythm.