The Backbone of the World (Trespass collection) by Stephen Graham Jones

Author:Stephen Graham Jones [Jones, Stephen Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2022-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

10.

Two days later, on the way into work, Millie stopped in the road and rolled her window down to see the dead horse on the side of the road.

It was the stout grey one with the game leg.

All the big rigs that blast through the reservation have those cowcatcher bumpers up front, and they don’t slow down for anything. Not even a horse that can’t get across the slick blacktop as fast as usual.

“I’m sorry,” Millie called out the window to the horse.

Instead of coming home for lunch like she usually did, she spent her whole hour doing internet research, clicking deeper and deeper into bulletin boards, and what they told her she needed was white gas.

Millie pulled up to the trailer at dusk with four jugs of it.

If these fumes were good enough for rattlesnake hunters in Texas, they would be good enough for a prison widow in Montana.

One with a boarder who Millie didn’t think was even really from Rosebud. Not inside, anyway.

Nothing was making sense.

Nothing had made sense since last summer, really.

In the last of the light, she saw that the holes were closer to the trailer now. It made her feel justified with extreme measures.

She squatted down to look under the porch, see if any prairie dogs had sneaked in. They hadn’t, but when she rotated on the balls of her feet, she could see right under the camper.

There was a mound there.

Millie watched it and watched it, then stood, went inside for a tuna fish sandwich with double mayonnaise.

Pouring concrete was probably better than gas fumes, she decided. But who would carry all those heavy bags? Where would she mix it? How many trips would it take in her car to get enough out here? If Arthur hadn’t burned his truck after washing it clean, it would probably just take one trip.

You can’t if your way through things, though, she knew.

She ate her sandwich at the kitchen table and watched dusk sift in over the holes.

The prairie dogs were poking up from their holes almost in a rhythm, like that carnival game with the moles, where you hit them with a club. They were poking up but never scurrying across to anywhere. That was probably why the hawks had died, Millie realized: they’d had to dive-bomb into the holes, which broke their wings.

And the ferret had just been a pet shop job, not a real wild predator. Of course it hadn’t made it even a single night on its own, without its habitat.

“Concrete next,” Millie told herself.

That was the ticket. After the prairie dogs stumbled up, groggy from the gas, she would pour concrete in, blocking their way. Then the hawks could come in, have a feast, finish this out for her.

So, this load of white gas, it would just be a test, Millie told herself. To see if she needed to make all those trips with her trunk weighed down with bags of ready-mix.

When she came out to carry the jugs over to the holes, though, Frog was already at her trunk.

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