The Entire Sky by Joe Wilkins

The Entire Sky by Joe Wilkins

Author:Joe Wilkins [Wilkins, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2024-07-02T00:00:00+00:00


APRIL 1994

37

SLATS OF LIGHT FELL from chinkholes in the weathered boards. A yellowish gap shone between the overhanging roof and the side walls. And on the door, a glassed cut-out moon revealed a crescent of sky. Even if the outhouse didn’t exactly smell nice, Justin had smelled far worse where folks squatted in the park. Three long curlicue strips of flypaper hung from the ceiling—and a hairy-legged spider in the upper left corner was easily the size of his thumb. He glanced up now and again, thankful each time to find the spider as still as ever, right in the center of its web. He finished up and, like Mr. Bouchard showed him, shook a tin cup of white lime and ash down the hole against the worst of the smell. He made sure to latch the door when he left. It might have two holes, the old man said, but you don’t want to share with a badger or a coyote.

These past days on the old man’s ranch had been as enormous as the every-which-way blue of these prairie skies, almost blue and big enough for Justin to forget what he’d been running from. Almost. He came up the trail now as the sky deepened in color and edged toward evening. A wall of stony clouds assembled in the west.

Justin opened the camphouse door to the sizzle of grease and meat, the tang of pepper.

—Get washed up, Mr. Bouchard said without turning around. We’re about ready.

They sat up to a platter of potatoes fried in rounds and some kind of meat on the bone.

—Antelope chops, the old man said, forking a couple up, then tilting a tumble of spuds onto his plate. I don’t got much in the way of lunches, but there’s enough meat in the freezer for us to eat decent at dinner for a time yet.

Justin sawed at the meat and chewed a hunk. Peppery and earthy, it tasted sort of like sagebrush smelled. He finished off one chop and, like Mr. Bouchard was doing, picked up the bone and bit at the last of the meat. Then served himself another. More potatoes too.

—What’s antelope?

The old man chewed and wiped his fingers with a cloth napkin.

—You’ve seen them, likely. Look a bit like deer but white across their bellies and rumps. And horns instead of antlers, forked horns. The fastest thing out there on the prairie. Move like the wind.

Justin had seen them streaming up the hills east of the camphouse, though he hadn’t known what they were. Now he studied the bones on his plate, the shine of grease on his fingers.

—Did you, like, shoot this antelope? Are we eating something you shot?

Mr. Bouchard shook his head.

—Used to have to hunt just to keep food on the table, but I don’t so much anymore. My boy Dennis and a couple of his friends each got an antelope out here last fall. They gave us some of the meat. I’ve always liked it.

Justin stared at the slender bones on his plate, the puddle of clear grease and pinkish blood.



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