Annie Proulx

Wyoming Stories

Close Range

Sarah Christine Gill

So what, Rollo had said to the old man's girlfriend, what about that Mr. Tin Head? Looking at her, not just her face, but up and down, eyes moving over her like an iron over a shirt and the old man in his mailman's sweater and lopsided hat tasting his Everclear and not noticing or not caring, getting up every now and then to lurch onto the porch and water the weeds. When he left the room the tension ebbed and they were only ordinary people to whom nothing happened. Rollo looked away from the woman, leaned down to scratch the dog's ears, saying, Snarleyow Snapper, and the woman brought a dish to the sink and ran water on it, yawning. When the old man came back to his chair, the Everclear like sweet oil in his glass, glances resharpened and inflections of voice again carried complex messages. 

On the main road his tire tracks showed as a faint pattern in the pearly apricot light from the risen moon, winking behind roiling clouds of snow. His blurred shadow strengthened whenever the wind eased. Then the violent country showed itself, the cliffs rearing at the moon, the snow smoking off the prairie like steam, the white flank of the ranch slashed with fence cuts, the sage- brush glittering and along the creek black tangles of willow bunched like dead hair. There were cattle in the field beside the road, their plumed breaths catching the moony glow like comic strip dialogue balloons.

He pulled back onto the empty road. There were a few ranch lights miles away, the black sky against the black terrain drawing them into the hem of the starry curtain. As he drove toward the clangor and flash of the noon arena he considered the old saddle bronc rider rubbing leather for thirty-seven years, Leecil riding off into the mosquito-clouded Canadian sunset, the ranch hand bent over a calf, slitting the scrotal sac. The course of life's events seemed slower than the knife but not less thorough. 

YOU STAND THERE, BRACED. CLOUD SHADOWS RACE OVER the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild countryindigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that can- not be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut. 

What the wife thought when she saw the sod hut, ten by four- teen, roofed with planks and more dirt thrown on top, one window and a warped door, can be guessed at but not known. There were two pole beds with belly wool mattresses. The five boys slept in one and in the other Ice quickly begot on Naomi another and another kid as fast as the woman could stand to make them. Jaxon's most vivid memory of her was watching her pour boiling water on the rattlesnakes he and his brothers caught with loops of barbwire, smiling to see them writhe. By 1913, ridden hard and put away dirty, looking for relief, she went off with a cook-pan tinker and left Ice the nine boys Jaxon, the twins Ideal and Pet, Kemmy, Marion, Byron, Varn, Ritter and Bliss. They all lived except Byron who was bitten by a mosquito and died of encephalitis. Boys were mnoney in the bank in that country and Ice brought them up to fill his labor needs. They got ropes for Christmas, a handshake each birthday and damn a cake. 

You ever see a house burning up in the night, way to hell and gone out there on the plains? Nothing but blackness and your headlights cutting a little wedge into it, could be the middle of the ocean for all you can see. And in that big dark a crown of flame the size of your thumbnail trembles. You'll drive for an hour seeing it until it burns out or you do, until you pull off the road to close your eyes or look up at sky punched with bullet holes. And you might think about the people in the burning house, see then trying for the stairs, but mostly you don't give a damn. They are too far away, like every- thing else.

Oh my god, you’re just never ready for these sentences. 

There was nothing wrong, but after a year Renti had packed a bag, told him she would be back in a few weeks. She was going to Wyoming to see her sister. The next night she had suffered a terrible dream in which she stood a Chihuahua in a pot of boil- ing broth and when she ladled the broth into her bowl the burned animal spoke humbly, asking if it might be taken to the doctor, perhaps in the afternoon if she had time.

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