The Jump-Off Creek by Molly Gloss

Author:Molly Gloss
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

20

It wasn’t as if it was a bad time of year for one of them to be laid up. They had turned out the cows and were at the point of making new fence, cutting brush. It wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait.

“I can get up on a horse,” Blue said, sullen, arguing with nobody. He got out of bed to piss and afterward went back to bed. He flopped around restlessly and sweated and swore and looked at Tim sidelong in embarrassment.

“You shuffle,” Tim said, and got out the deck of cards. They played monte, not speaking of anything except the cards. Blue lay on his side of the bed, propped up on an elbow and a pillow, wincing when he leaned out to play his cards.

“Christ, I can’t win,” he said, after the third hand, or the fourth. He pushed the cards together irritably. Tim looked away. He stood and rattled the stove until the fire caught. “I guess I’ll do a wash,” he said.

He heated water and went around piling up dirty clothes. Blue watched him without speaking. Tim did the wash slowly, systematically, in hot water and soap suds, with the big kettle set on the low bench. He gave over the wet things one after the other for Blue to do the wringing out, his own hand too bruised to squeeze anything. Then he went out and put the clothes to hang on the fence where it ran close behind the shed. He did that slowly too, smoothing the shirts and the socks with his fingers. The sun was out. The wet clothes, smelling of soap and water, steamed a little when he lifted them out of the tub.

He went inside again. The house was hot and damp. Blue slept on his belly with the blanket pushed off him so Tim could see the black tracks of the stitches in the yellow flesh. His face was slack, he breathed noisily through his nose.

Tim went out. He sat in the shed, rebraiding a rope until his hand started to hurt. Then he came in again, limping on his sore feet, nursing a sore mood. He lay down on his own bed. His feet hurt, and his hand, his face. He lay a while without sleeping. Then he sat up and got his Miller off the rack and put a handful of shells in his pocket. Blue kept sleeping. Tim went softly out and dragged his saddle from the shed and caught up the bay horse. The dogs wanted to come. He left them standing in the yard, looking after him sorrowfully.

He didn’t know what he meant to do. But he rode up toward Loeb’s place, carrying the Miller across his lap, resting his sore feet lightly in the stirrups. In the trees below the park he stopped and sat in the saddle looking up toward the little shack. There were a couple of horses there cropping the grass, one of them was the rib-thin pinto that belonged to Osgood.

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