Specimen Song by Peter Bowen

Author:Peter Bowen [Bowen, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4675-7
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2012-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

WINTER.

Every twenty-five years or so, we get one of these, Du Pré thought. He was standing outside at high noon, in minus-forty cold, the sun pale, watching the column of smoke from his woodstove go straight up for many hundreds of feet.

Second time in my life I have seen sun dogs, Du Pré thought. The sun with its two outriders. The name is nice, sundogs, but they mean weather that kills.

Three of his cattle had died. Frozen, legs locked. They had been seeming just fine, but the black night took them. There was room with the other cattle in the loafing shed, but these chose to wander out to the farthest corner of the field and die on their feet.

Maybe by late March, they’d be thawed enough to skin.

Or maybe just get them into a truck and take them to the landfill.

The coyotes were feeding on the dead cattle a little. But the meat was frozen so hard, even they had trouble with it. Well, if this weather gives the coyotes trouble, it is bad, Du Pré thought, and I have to see if that old fart Benetsee is all right. I am sure that he is, but I have to go see.

He opened the door of his old cruiser. The metal scrawked and the hinges made a sound like fingernails on a blackboard.

Winter is always tough here, but then every once in a while you get one like this and it is an evil god.

One morning Du Pré had gone outdoors, and when he looked at a fencepost, a huge white owl had spread its wings in the pale sun. An Arctic owl, round of head, wings nearly six feet from tip to tip. Du Pré had seen them before, but not very often.

He turned the ignition key and the engine caught at once. He, like everyone else here, had a head-bolt heater plugged into the engine to keep it warm and some heat tape wrapped around the battery.

He set the heater on high and got back out; the exhaust was a needling icy stink in his nostrils. He unplugged the heater and hung the stiff extension cord on a post. He went back inside. No use in even trying to drive the car until it was good and warm. The tires would be frozen hard to the ground.

Du Pré listened to the radio. The schools were all closed. A family over by Harlowton had died when their trailer caught fire. Too many electric heaters on old wiring.

The telephone rang. Du Pré hesitated. Maybe I have already left, he thought.

He picked it up. Goddamned altar boy.

“Christ,” said Bart, sounding like he was in the other room, “it is tit cold out there.”

“It is that,” said Du Pré. “How is that D.C.?”

“Well, about zero,” said Bart. “But it’s that wet cold goes right through you.”

Du Pré thought about the ragged people sleeping outside in their little houses of cheap wine. Jesus.

“I will be out when this breaks,” said Bart. “I’m afraid the jet would swoop in for a landing and the wings would break off.

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