He walked toward the barn, watching the sun just begin to smear the sky over the mountains. The black dogs came upon him and overpowered him halfway between the structures. That was his name for them: the sense that he was a worthless failure, that everything he touched turned to shit, that his presence hurt the two people he cared about the most, that everything he'd done had been a mistake, every decision wrong, and anybody who'd gone along with him had ended up dead.
The dogs came fast and hard. They got their teeth into him good, and in seconds, he was no longer in the barnyard under the mountains where a red sun was about to pull itself up and light the world with the hope of a new day, but in some other, dank, foul place, where his own failures seemed the most prominent land form and the only mercy was bourbon.
'Well, Mister, nice of you to join us,' called Julie.
He looked at his wife, at her smile, which continued to dazzle him if even now there seemed a layer of fear behind it. He had seen her first on a cellophane-wrapped photograph that a young man had carried in his boonie cap in Vietnam, and maybe he had fallen in love with her in that second. Or maybe he fell in love with her the second the young man died and she was the only part of him still alive. Still, it took long years, many of them soaked in bourbon, before he'd finally met her and, by the odd twists that his life seemed always to take, ended up being the lucky jerk she took as her second husband. Yet now .. . was it falling apart on him?
'Daddy, Daddy,' yelled Nikki, eight, running to meet him. She grabbed his blue-jeaned leg.
'Howdy, honey, how's my girl this morning?'
'Oh, Daddy, you know. We're going to ride up to Widow's Pass and watch the sun come across the valley.'
'We do that every morning. Maybe we ought to find a new place.'
'Honey,' said Julie.
'She loves that view.'
'I'm only saying,' Bob said, 'it might be nice to change. Forget it. It don't mean a thing.'
He had more edge in his voice than he'd meant.
Where had it come from? Julie shot him a hurt look at his harsh words, and he thought. Well, that's fine, I deserve that, and he had himself in control, everything was fine, he was fine, it was-'I do get tired of riding the same goddamn place every goddamn morning. You know, there are other places to ride.'
'All right, Bob,' she said.
'I mean, we can ride there, no problem. Is that where you want to ride, sweetie? If that's where you want to ride, that's fine.'
'I don't care. Daddy.'
'Good. That's where we'll ride.'
Who was talking? He was talking. Why was he so mad? Where was this coming from? What was going on?
But then he had himself back and he was fine again and it would be-'And why the hell is she riding English? You want her to be some fancy person? You want her to go to little shows where she wears some red jacket and helmet and jumps over fences and all the fags clap and the rich people come and drink champagne, and she learns her old man, who don't talk so good and swears a mite, he ain't up to them folks who ride English, he's just an old farm boy from shit-apple Arkansas? Is that what you want?'
He was yelling. It had come on so fast, so ugly, it had just blown in, a squall of killing anger. Why was he so mad these days? It made him sick.
'Bob,' his wife, Julie, said with slow, fake sweetness, 'I just want to widen her horizons. Open up some possibilities.'
'Daddy, I like English. It's more leg than stirrup, it doesn't hurt the horse.'
'Well, I don't know nothing about English. I'm just a cop's kid from Hick Town, Arkansas, and I didn't go to no college, I went into the Marine Corps. Nobody ever gave me nothing. When I see her riding like that--' He bellowed for a while, as Julie got smaller and smaller, and Nikki began to cry and his hip hurt and his head ached and finally Junior spooked.
'Oh, fuck it!' he said.
'What the hell difference does it make?' and stormed back to the house.
He'd left the TV on, and sat before it, nursing his fury, angered by the terrible unfairness of it all. Why couldn't he support his family? What could he have done different?
What could he do?
After a bit, he turned and watched the two of them ride out through the fence and head up toward Widow's Pass.
Good, that was fine. They could do that. He was better off alone. He knew where he wanted to go. He stood, raging with fury, and though it was early, turned and walked to the cellar door, went down into it. He'd meant to set up a shop here, where he could reload for next hunting season and work out some ideas he had for wildcat cartridges, new ways to get more pop out of some old standards. But somehow he'd never found the energy, he didn't know how long they'd be here, he didn't know if-He went instead to the workbench, where a previous occupant had left a set of old, rusty tools and nails and such, and reached around to grab what was stashed there.
It was a bottle, a pint of Jim Beam, subtly curved like a Claymore, with its black label and white printing.
The bottle had weight and solidarity to it--it felt serious, like a gun. He hefted it, went to the steps and sat down. The cellar smelled of damp and rot, for this was wet country, snowy in the winter and ripe for floods in the spring. He'd been so long in dry country, this all seemed new. Its smell was unpleasant: mildew, perpetual moisture.
