The Dadlands Saloon by Jonathan Twingley

Author:Jonathan Twingley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Hubert passed what was left of the cigarette back to me across the fire. I leaned back and took the little sliver to my mouth and smoked and inhaled, holding it in intuitively, as Hubert had, closing my eyes and smiling. All the rational questions I’d been asking Hubert earlier came to my mind, paused there, and then just floated away, up toward Orion. I kept my eyes closed and tasted that rich, musty smoke—I’d never tasted a cigarette like the one Hubert had rolled that night—and there were sounds above me in the trees, but they were sounds beyond me and the trees. It was dark and quiet and I’d never been so comfortable as I was just then, across from Hubert there on the ground, in some sort of timeless reverie.

I opened my eyes, curled up by the fire pit. There was still a warmth coming from the embers, and it was incredibly silent—and black-dark—and I was all alone. Hubert was asleep in his pickup truck camper, but he must’ve put a blanket over me there by the fire because I was covered up and felt safe and secure. I’d woken up, but I hadn’t moved—I’d only opened my eyes, too warm and cozy to move at all—and there in the dead silence I heard very slight rustlings and deep-breathing noises, the sounds of very large lungs breathing in and breathing back out again. I lifted my head up slowly and saw the shadows of a herd of creatures—buffalo—slowly testing the air as they moved through Hubert’s campsite, out on some sort of night patrol. I laid my head back down, terrified, but at total peace, too, like it was all just a dream. A casual misstep by one of those multi-tonned beasts would’ve popped my skull like a grape, but I didn’t worry or even think about anything like that at the time. A massive bull buffalo stepped up to me there, lying like a fetus underneath the colorful blanket by the dead fire, lowered his head and sniffed me with a gigantic SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSNIIFFFFF. He raised up his majestic head and grunted and stepped over me casually, probably thinking to himself It’s just a man! and passed on with his herd as they moved through Cottonwood Campground.

In the moonlight I watched those massive and ancient creatures of the prairie lumber across the blacktop road that ran through the park, fade a little, and then disappear altogether into the hills.

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