The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair

Gaining the Door

The horses huddled together against the icy northern wind. Their exhalations condensed and rose in clouds, drifted away. Cody Wilson circled the corral and studied them. The horses were exhausted and winter was on.

“That’s right, Jake,” the aging Wilson said to his hand. “Gotta unshoe ’em and turn ’em out. That way they won’t be petty and nasty come spring. Petty and nasty. That’s how exposure to man will make a beast.”

Jake nodded, having heard it all before, and followed Wilson through the gate. He held the sorrel while Wilson pried his shoes off.

“So, you didn’t tell me how your wife’s leg is,” Wilson said.

“Fine.”

“She at home?”

“Came home the same day.”

“Hunh.” He stood and tossed the sorrel’s fourth shoe to the corner of the pen. “Grab the grey.”

Jake caught the young gelding.

Wilson bent down to work. “I remember when they’d keep you in the hospital for days for that sort of thing.”

“Same day,” Jake said.

“Hunh.”

They finished with the horses. Jake opened the gate. Wilson hung on the fence and watched them trot away.

“Well, there they go,” Jake said, loading his cheek with tobacco.

“There they go.”

The night rolled in colder and noiseless, with off and on flurries of snow. Wilson built a fire and sat in front of it. It felt good to be in out of the wind. He thought about the world outside. He thought he might never go to town again, or anywhere. He’d turn himself out, cut himself loose, rustle for sustenance and not grow fat. He might just sit where he was by his fire until there was no heat left, just a matterless flame.

He thought about songs that he had come to know in his life; he had never set out to learn them. He hummed and whistled a few while the fire made his feet hot. He recalled poems he’d read, but could not remember the words, only how they had made him feel. This seemed right, to remember just the feelings conjured.

Christmas was drawing near, but he refused to think of it. It was just another day. A day that would come and go as always, see him alone and leave him so.

He drank some whiskey and it warmed his gut. He cursed his house for being a magnet for cold winds. He cursed his wife for having found death before him. His children for having grown up and away. And he cursed himself for being an ornery son of a bitch, a man who had driven his family like stock and finally away. He’d have to turn himself out, he reasoned, and he laughed, thinking he was the man to whom he’d been too long exposed.

He got up, tied his boots, and bundled up in his down-filled parka, a gift from his children. Damned if he knew how a man was supposed to get any work done wrapped up like a fat snowman. He opened the door to find a steady snow falling.

The wind pressed against his back as he walked toward the road. He found himself desperately accepting the push of cold air. He tried to occupy himself by looking back on the year. Prices had been good, handsome even. But soon all thinking was gone. He walked, numb to all things, inside and out. He walked the six miles to town.

He stepped into the tavern and stomped the snow off his boots and some feeling into his legs. “I’m here,” he said, “and I walked and I’m on the prod.” He fell into a chair at a table near the door.

“What’ll it be, Cody?” the bartender asked.

“Whiskey.”

Wilson’s face burned as it thawed. His feet were heavy and numb. He sucked down one shot and nursed his way through another.

Two men came in, one tall, the other medium with a game leg.

“What’re you doing out, Wilson?” asked the tall man.

“I’m turned out.”

The lame man coughed into his fist as he slid onto a stool at the bar. “Didn’t see your truck outside,” he said.

“Walked,” Wilson said, and he stood to find his legs, swayed a bit as if with a breeze. The men watched him negotiate his coat and mittens.

“Gonna walk home?” the lame man asked.

Wilson studied the man’s face and offered a reluctant smile. “No, just walkin.”‘

“We’ll drive you,” said the tall man.

But there was fight in Wilson’s eyes. He gained the door. He didn’t look back.

Against a dense night, he inhaled all the frozen air he could. He kissed the wet, parted lips of his wife’s memory. He sang softly to himself a song which once he had sung to his children. It had helped them find sleep.