Bull Head Read online

  “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.

  For the next three weeks the brothers fenced the winter range with quiet resolve, a seasonal race against the inevitability of winter. Wind raged across the hardscrabble land, shook clumps of skeletal sagebrush, whipped dirt into malevolent swirls that scuttled upward into black funnels boring into the sky. Fresh snow crawled down the peaks each day, caked the treetops like lime dust. Coyotes slunk beneath the fences the brothers had built, and whitetails hopped over them with ease. The brothers ran fence to keep out neighbouring livestock, to warn away the hobby farms that would inevitably appear as the land around theirs was sold off in small parcels. Harold hummed and chuckled while he worked. Maurice was grateful for the wind, for the way it carried Harold’s sounds away from him. His horse had grown thinner and he watched her chew on parched grass, legs quivering, the bump on her foreleg like a clump of briar below the knee.

  Maurice limped her back toward the cabin, the faint light from the windows hove into view. After he fed and brushed her, the horse stood with her leg cocked. He sat in the truck for a few minutes, marvelled at the buttons and dials, traced the slope of the dash before heading into the cabin for the night.

  Both brothers huddled around the stove; the wind rattled the cabin, and when Maurice leaned away from the stove to pick up a magazine, he felt a cold draught on his neck. He pretended to read the magazine, but watched Harold push a small patch of cloth soaked in solvent down the throat of the rifle. Harold removed it, brushed the gun out with a damp copper brush, swabbed out the chamber with tissue paper, held the rifle up in the light, and squinted into the barrel. Maurice knew Harold wouldn’t clean out the bolt lug recess, like he would himself. Harold would polish the wooden stock with oil and varnish because he liked to keep it smooth. Maurice turned back to his magazine.

  “Head or heart?” Harold pointed the rifle at him.

  “Put that thing down. She’s old, is all.”

  “She’s no use.”

  “Put it down.” Maurice rolled up the magazine and clenched it.

  “Our time is coming soon enough.” Harold lowered the gun, hummed to himself in a low drone. He stood and put the rifle on the rack.

  “You want me to take you around back when you’re of no use?” Maurice said.

  “Wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  “Maybe that time is now.” Maurice unlatched the stove door and watched the faint coals pulse. He tossed the magazine on the fire and fanned it to life with his palm. The pages curled and twisted in the draught and burned orange and blue. “Fred should be coming around any day now to pick up the truck and generator. We can go back to living in the dark ages. Happy?”

  “I’m getting tired of your talk. It’s hurting my ears.” Harold’s voice rose above the generator. “If you don’t do something about that horse, I will.”

  “You don’t know squat about her.” Maurice got up to leave.

  “I know she’s got three legs, and if God meant for horses to have three legs, He wouldn’t have given them four. Christ, you’ve lost your horse sense.”

  “She’s got no quit in her. Maybe she prefers having three legs—ever consider that?” Maurice slammed the door shut. As he walked toward the truck, he heard Harold shouting inside the cabin.

  Maurice woke with a start and tried to remember his dream, but Harold’s breath whistled in a steady stream of snores. He crept out of his sleeping bag, dressed in the dark, pulled down the 12-gauge, and grabbed two boxes of shells. He listened for Harold’s next breath, took a step toward him, but stopped when Harold resumed snoring. Maurice shut the door behind him.

  The horse shifted her weight and shook her head as Maurice stroked her long velvety nose. He caressed her for a long time, murmured softly, her skin warm and solid against his palm. He ran his hand along her ribs; her flanks poked out, the skin draped off her bones. The tumour below her knee was hard; she snapped her head back when he touched it. He kissed the stripe on her nose. She blinked at him.

  Maurice opened the truck door, climbed inside. Sleet blew in from the north. He shook his head and sat for a while, fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, then climbed out and walked back toward the horse. The rifle hung cold and heavy in his hands. She wouldn’t make it through the winter. Harold had told him so; Maurice knew it himself. The sleet thickened into swabs like cotton.

  The generator loomed dark in the truck bed, drag marks in the dirt partly covered in snow. Maurice tightened his grip on the gun, listened to the swish of his horse’s tail. “We’re gonna need all the luck there is.” He rubbed her nose, swept off the snowflakes. His chest tightened.

  Her damp eyes were dark, placid pools of obsidian. He leaned his forehead against her, his eyelashes brushed against the musk of her face, her breath sweet and warm. A magpie squawked and startled him, and his horse jerked her head away. He continued to pet her. She calmed and rested her head in his hand. “This life’s hell on all of us.”

  He heard Harold’s voice behind him. “Don’t miss.”

  Maurice turned around. He shifted the 12-gauge in his hand, raised the rifle, and trained it on his brother. Harold took his hands out of his pockets, held them out to the side. Wiry, meager body, clothes loose on him, his hands dangled like two prehistoric clubs pulling down on his lanky arms. Gaunt face, pale and crisscrossed with deep lines, his eyes dull blue. He looked frail, as if the wind would kno
ck the whistle out of him.

  “I never miss. You should know that by now.”

  Harold nodded, his head heavy in the crosshairs. Maurice steadied his finger on the trigger, wiped his eye against his shoulder, and retrained the rifle.

  His first shot shattered the windshield; the sound tore open the morning. The second shot blew a hole in the grill. He re-loaded and emptied again into the body of the truck, shooting and re-loading and shooting from different angles. The rifle felt hot and light in his hands. Gaping holes of metal smoked on the truck. Tires hissed until they were flat and useless, the life drained out of them.

  “Christ, you gave me one helluva scare.” Harold held out his hand, nodded toward the generator. “That one’s mine.”

  Maurice studied his brother and handed him the rifle. “Don’t miss.”

  Harold nodded.

  “I’ll get the fire started, one stick at a time.” Maurice turned toward his horse. She stood on three legs, shifted anxiously, snapped her head back and forth. The creek beds cutting through their property had shrunk beneath a thin sheet of ice, cracked clay along their dried banks, the fields stubbled and coarse. It wasn’t her time, not yet, but when it came, it would be ruthless and unforgiving. The gun blasts boomed out behind Maurice as he headed toward their cabin, rough-hewn logs notched and fashioned together, trembling beneath a merciless snowfall.

  CUTBLOCK

  THEY COME WITH the rest of the treeplanters like a caravan of gypsies borne on a skiff, bobbing on the swells of the inlet across the black chop in an early-morning rain. The boat rocks and pitches on whitecaps as deadheads drift past. They grip the hard wooden benches inside while they play cards and tune their guitars. A lone boy sits outside the cockpit, leans against the gunwale with the woman’s dog, tears apart garbage bags to wrap the wet animal that lays at his feet trembling in the cold.

  “That boy really likes your dog,” her girlfriend says.

  “He’s just trying to get laid,” the woman says.

  They pass under lush blankets of forests and chug alongside a sandy beach with a broken dock before coming into sight of a new dock where pickup trucks sit silent in the blue light under a mountainside of Douglas fir. Beyond the trucks, a cutblock, inhospitable save for the gleaming white Quonset near the tree line. The woman sees a man get out of a truck and slam the cab roof with his palm, roll a Drum in one hand, and light it as the boat docks.

  They disembark one by one. The woman and her girlfriend hang onto the metal railings, their gumboots slip in the slick. Water roils through the grates below, a cauldron of something terrible that makes them nauseous.

  The man finishes his cigarette and points toward a truck. “That’s it, ladies, keep moving, we’re in business now. Arm’s length. Let’s get those boxes unloaded real quick. Stop your whining, it’s all in the tree price. Daisy chain.” His voice trails off and rises toward the treetops.

  The boy stands further down the line and passes waxy tree boxes off the boat, on the dock, up over the metal bridge onto the waiting truck beds. Boxes stamped with Trees for Tomorrow. Forests for the Future. Keep Cool. The irony lost on the jaded crew but not on both women who, in the first week of February, had begged their way onto the job and whose limbs now ached like branches burdened with the weight of an early spring snowfall. Trucks loaded, they walk up the road, shovels slung across backs hung with planting bags and knapsacks. Their boots crunch on gravel as if they are marching on brittle bones.

  The rain does not let up. Torrents of water cut through the mud around the women’s camp, and the tents that have no tarp, like theirs, or are set on low ground, like theirs, are soaked through.

  A windstorm slants in rain hard off the inlet, stings their faces. During lulls, orcas swim in pods and follow the crew’s skiff to work across the briny waters of the channel from camp. Both women lean into the sleet, plant balsam and fir and yellow cedar seedlings, comfort themselves that at least they’ll be in camp soon, dry and warm. But the wind howls, and when they return to the cutblock, the trees and ground glitter with a dusting of sugary snow. The women’s tent hangs high in a tree at the edge of the cutblock, flapping like a damp prayer flag, clothes scattered on the forest floor as if they’ve been hauled out of some great washing bucket, waiting to be pinned up on a clothesline.

  “Merry Christmas,” the woman laughs, marching toward the Quonset.

  Her girlfriend follows, shaking her head. “We didn’t know how good we had it before.”

  “We were living off pogie.”

  “Yeah, but we were living. This is hell.”

  “It’s snowing in March. What’s the big deal? It’s not going to last.”

  “You always think there’s greener pastures.”

  “There are.”

  Dinner consists of overcooked vegetables and thick tofu slabs drenched in teriyaki sauce to disguise the taste of absolutely nothing. Outside of the Quonset, wind and rain belts the canvas, but the women are dry and after a second cup of cheap brandy, warm. They relax, their worlds open once again after deciding to bolt camp at the end of the shift; they talk about what they will do with their new freedom. Soon the brandy is killed and someone breaks out the beer. They play cards. Someone passes a joint. Someone strums and hums to a guitar. A naked man dances around the woodstove, his dreadlocks swaying in his eyes like thick twigs.

  The woman sits close to the boy. He smiles beneath shaggy hair that hangs over his eyes. She keeps her leg against his so she can feel his warmth through her jeans, while her girlfriend sits on the other side of him, drinking faster than the woman has seen her drink before. Another joint makes the rounds. More beer. The music gets under her skin, spreads through her, loosens her limbs. After another spliff, she finds herself dancing close with her girlfriend, looking over her shoulder at the boy who smiles at them.

  “Two more sleeps,” her girlfriend says. “And we’re out of here. No prisoners.”

  The woman laughs and breaks away, pulls the boy toward them by his hand, and the three of them dance together, the boy in the middle.

  “What’s your name?” The woman hears herself giggle. She hears herself ask, “Where you from?” Her girlfriend flings her arms around the woman’s neck and kisses her while grinding herself into the boy, but he never replies. He smiles and waits as the three of them dance. The woman kisses her girlfriend deeply over the boy’s shoulder. His breath rises and falls in her ear; she kisses her girlfriend again. Her girlfriend pushes the boy away and holds onto the woman, whispers, “Don’t do this to me, not after the winter we’ve had.”

  The woman hears herself laugh, “You’re the one who’s wasted.”

  The girlfriend shakes her head, veers away like a marionette, and throws up in the corner. She slurs, “G’night,” and staggers out of the Quonset.

  “She all right?” The boy leans on the edge of a table, grinning.

  The woman loves the way he moves, like someone at ease with who he is, and she wants to feel that, too. She pulls him toward her, tugs fiercely on the belt loops of his well-worn jeans. They go outside and walk to the edge of the block to the tree line. The storm has broken, and the thin veil of snow is gone, the sky clear and littered with stars like broken glass sparkling on pavement. The trees dark and tall and fragrant.

  “It’s as if they’re scratching the sky,” he says. “No, it’s as if they’re holding it up.”

  She tilts her head back and watches the stars, leans into him for balance. “A poet. I should have known.”

  He smiles. “You ever wonder, what if this is it, what if all you need you have right now instead of thinking that what you need is someone or somewhere or sometime else?”

  She feels dizzy looking at the stars and focuses on the trees instead. He’s right, they did look like they were holding up the sky. She leans into him again. “For a quiet guy, you sure talk a lot.”

  The woman’s tent remains clinging to the branches, high up a tree. She sleeps in the boy’s tent with her dog; the
boy insists on sleeping on the front seat of his pickup truck, parked nearby. Her girlfriend sleeps alone on a bench in the Quonset. At the end of the shift, as they load the boat for the ride out, the woman tells her girlfriend she wants to stay for another shift.

  “He’s not the answer,” her girlfriend says.

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re just another distraction. Put a dog in the Taj Mahal, and it’s still a dog.”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “He’s gonna mess you up. It’s all over your face.”

  The woman stares at herself in the side mirror of the crew truck. Her perpetual grin, strange shiny eyes, pigtails poking out the sides of her toque. “He’s different.”

  “Like hell he is. You’ll spend another winter recovering from this one. Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

  After they disembark from the boat, the girlfriend hitches a ride into town with some of the others from camp. The woman and the boy drive in his truck, speed down the dark highway, pass loaded logging trucks, the yellow centre line unfurling like an umbilical cord on their left. She sits close against the boy, her hand in his thick hair, tugging it. She sees the broken crayons on the dashboard, the dirty handprints on the windows, the toy race car on the floor. And she’s sure that if she opens the glove box, she’ll see a whole lot more.

  For two days in the Reel Inn, the boy and the woman keep the shades drawn, drop ecstasy, drink cheap red wine by the litre, and eat greasy take-out from the Copper River Convenience. Welfare kids run around in the gravel lot, chase each other with water pistols and knock on their door. Fishermen push off in the early dark hours for steelhead.