» Fiction

Slowdeatha

Andrew Brininstool

I.

Rochelle Pickford had gone to El Paso for a lip injection, but the esthetician had been distracted and the Restylane meant for the organ tissue had instead gone into one of the veins. Rochelle’s lips bruised a deep blue-gray, as did most of her right cheek. She was a bad sight. There was nothing to be done about it except to put ice on the bruise and take Valtrex. She didn’t want to see anybody for a few days. But when the doorbell rang on a Friday afternoon and she peeked through the blinds and saw that it was her neighbor, a young man named Ryan, she answered anyway.

“Don’t look at me.”

He wasn’t. He had more pressing matters. He held a goat in his arms as though it were a child. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I have to go out of town. I wasn’t expecting this.” He wanted her to look after the goat. “It doesn’t need much. Just leave it in the backyard. I’ve got a stake and a leash. Put a bowl of water out. Don’t worry about feeding him. I won’t be gone long. Like I said, I’ve already fed Cline.”

Then he was gone, and Rochelle was holding the goat. It happened so fast.

She didn’t care for goats. She didn’t care for animals in general, but goats especially. Once, when she was young and visiting her uncle in Kansas, a billy goat had butted her in the ass, sending her flying a few feet across the backyard. It was humiliating and terrifying—the first truly frightening experience in her recollection. The adults all laughed as though they’d never seen such divine comedy before.

But Ryan was recently divorced, Rochelle knew. And he’d looked pained to leave Cline with her. Whatever had forced him to leave town must’ve been important. Rochelle still believed you could count on your neighbors.

Not that the goat didn’t spook her.

To take her mind off of it, she put on a lot of rouge and a wide pair of sunglasses and ran some errands. She dropped off drapes to be hemmed. She went over to the Steven’s Inn and found some of her friends drinking coffee in the restaurant.

“I look hideous.”

“Hush.”

“It’s karaoke at the lounge.”

“You know I can’t sing,” Rochelle said.

“None of us will be singing. We’ll be playing the slots.”

“I might stay home tonight.”

“Really, Roche. Your lips don’t look that awful.”

“It isn’t that. I’ve taken on a responsibility.”

Nobody asked for details.

“Dale might be there,” one of them said.

Rochelle was glad to be wearing sunglasses. She didn’t want to react. Dale Envers had been her crush forty years earlier. They were town rats in this sleepy mesa of the Chihuahuan plains. They’d had Honors English together, and Dale played baseball. He was smart and often told Rochelle she was smart, too. Smart enough to get into UNM, or maybe even St. John’s. Rochelle didn’t believe him, but Dale had been right about UNM. And she would have attended if, the summer beforehand, she hadn’t met Charlie Pickford, a Penn graduate who’d moved to the area as a geologist. He had been a fine man, and they’d had what Charlie’s snobby brother once called a “little life” together. It was a throwaway comment, but Charlie never spoke to his brother again. Funny. The comment never bothered Rochelle. What more was there to be had? They joined the country club, the Rotary, the Elks. At the time of Charlie’s death, they’d saved enough money to travel—something he had wanted in retirement. It was unfortunate they’d never made good on his dream, but Rochelle was ashamed to admit that the fact left her relieved. She never wanted to see the world. The world scared her.

◊

When she got home she watched Cline, out in the backyard. He’d found the stump of a pecan tree and was perched upon it, staring out onto the golf course. The tree had had anthracnose, and Charlie cut it down years ago. Now the goat was there.

◊

At 7:30 p.m., she decided to go to the Lodge. At 7:45, she decided against it. She drew a bath. Five minutes later she drained the bath and drove the short distance up to the hill where Lodge #1558 stood, the stucco repainted the white of a bleached bone.

She used to love coming here. Charlie would come home from work early and try on a new suit jacket and make them each a tipple while Rochelle did her makeup. Then, as Charlie pulled their car up the steep drive to the lodge, Rochelle would crane her neck to see which of her friends’ sedans were in the lot.

Now it was filled with dually pickups caked in dust. Their back windows had decals of derricks spewing oil. My Boyfriend Slings Pipe, some of them read. Or: Drill ‘er Deep Pull ‘er Wet. The newcomers filled the Lodge with cigar smoke. They wore jeans. They ordered beer and whiskey all night. Many of the fieldworkers had wives back home, but that didn’t seem to matter: little tarty things sat in their laps. As she entered the Lodge Rochelle heard somebody singing, “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” and the workers hooted and bayed. By the grace of god, the slot machines sat off away from the lounge in a converted coat closet.

It was so much more pleasant here. Here, the machines chirped and rang. They cast red and yellow lights along the ceiling and carpet. Rochelle’s favorite was called The Mystical Lamp. It was a five-reel game; when you hit it big a strange creature, a genie, rose from a cartoon lamp on the digital screen and congratulated you. It was nice to win, but the eyes of the genie flashed in an unsettling way.

Her friends were already at the machines.

“You made it.”

“I won’t be staying long. I’ve taken on a responsibility. You know my young neighbor? His name is Ryan. I’m caring for his goat while he is out of town.”

“Did you say a goat?”

“You should see how Ryan cares for it. It’s as though the goat were his own child.”

“That’s strange.”

Rochelle placed the first of her Elks coins inside The Mystical Lamp and pulled its lever. “People do all sorts of strange things when they’re going through something like a divorce.”

Someone out in the lounge was screaming a hideous song. Its chorus went: “Pooour some sugar on me!”

The Mystical Lamp lit up. It chimed and squealed, and the genie appeared. His wicked grin and eyes congratulated Rochelle before the machine spit out eight tokens.

“I didn’t mean strange to be bad. Remember when Charlie died and you spent so much time up in Santa Fe with that group of mystics?”

Rochelle said nothing.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, it’s okay. I think it’s just the medication I’m taking for these lips, is all.”

“They don’t look as awful as you think.”

◊

Her friends left around 9:00. Rochelle stayed behind. She was hopeful to see Dale, and at 9:15, he walked into the slot machine room.

Rochelle swiveled in her chair and acted as though she hadn’t noticed. When he finally said hello, Rochelle didn’t know what to say. “I’m up six dollars.”

“I just got back from Odessa,” he told her. “We had a court case this morning.”

“How did it go?”

He didn’t say anything. It was clear he’d been drinking on the drive home. Dale hadn’t, in the end, gone to UNM or St. John’s. Instead he went to a tiny college in Oregon, received a law degree, and disappeared for a while. When he finally came home, he was a changed man. That’s what everybody said. There were a lot of rumors about what had happened to him. He’d gone crazy, or he’d done too many drugs in South America. Rochelle didn’t care what people said. Dale Envers was the smartest man she’d ever known.

The genie’s eyes lit up. A chime belted. Elks coins fell onto the tray.

“Look at you,” Dale said.

“I’m lucky tonight.”

“You always have been.”

“I don’t know about that!”

Drinks at the Lodge came in small plastic cups. Dale ordered them both a drink, and he drank his fast. His hands and fingers were massive, and the skin on his knuckles was dry and cracked.

“Are you going to play?” Rochelle asked. “The machines are loose.”

Dale looked uncomfortable on the stool, like a circus animal. He crossed his big arms and peered into the lounge. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” he muttered.

“Dale? You know how I’m always getting into things? You won’t even imagine what I’ve signed myself up for this time. I’ve taken on a responsibility. Do you recall that young man who—”

“They’re changing everything, Rochelle.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look around. Do you remember how this place used to be?”

“Yes.”

“Now look.”

“I know. It breaks my heart. They used to require a jacket for the men, and for the ladies—”

“I don’t mean that. I mean they’re changing everything. The world is off-kilter. Do you know what these fracking bastards are doing in our town? Do you know what they’re doing?”

“You mean with the drilling.”

“I’m talking the very ground beneath us. They’re pumping water into the ground, fresh clean water that can never be used again. And we have a water restriction in place! We’re in a drought!” A morsel of spit clung to his lip. “And the sinkholes.” He paused. “They’re changing the very geography of this place. The entire goddamn earth, Rochelle.”

“Would you like another drink?”

“In Odessa,” he said to her, “there’s nothing but white trucks. For miles. Corporate white trucks. And meanwhile the water there is turning cancerous. It’s sulfatic. You can taste it. Children have learning disabilities. Slowdeatha, the residents are calling the town now. Their own town. They mean it as a joke. As in, they don’t really give a shit.”

He turned and looked at her as though for the first time. “Your lips.”

She blushed. “I know. They’re hideous.”

He kissed her, hard. Pain rose through her face and entered her right eye. She thought she was going to go blind. In fact, she did go blind. She heard him tell her he was sorry, but when she could finally see again, Dale Envers was gone. Rochelle collected her earnings from The Mystery Lamp and drove home.

◊

She couldn’t sleep after that. She ran cold water over her wrists. She poured a glass of wine but felt too dizzy to finish it.

She turned on her floodlight.

Cline was there, staring at the new light that’d come over him. He hadn’t moved from the pecan stump. He wore a strange grin. She didn’t know how goats slept. This one, apparently, didn’t. The only thing Rochelle knew about goats was that they ate everything. Was it true, or a myth? She decided to find out. She went to the pantry and grabbed a can of black beans. From the freezer she took out a carton of fish sticks. She went out onto the patio.

Cline didn’t move. He stared at her. She opened the can and dug her fingers in and pulled out a handful of beans and felt them in her palms, her fingers, before tossing them. They scattered in the dirt. The goat didn’t move. In the mornings, Rochelle often came out here to read the paper; the second fairway was just beyond her gate, and she’d wave at the golfers and take in all that green. But at nights, without light or trees the course gave way to a vast nothingness. The only light was on Cline. It was Rochelle and the goat and nothing around them.

The animal hopped down from the stump and inched forward and ate the beans. Rochelle was shocked. She tossed more. Cline ate them. She tossed the entire can into the yard. She expected Cline to eat the can, but he gave it a lazy look and flicked one of his ears at her. Rochelle tore open the box of fish sticks and scattered them throughout the yard. They were still frozen, but Cline followed their path, eating each one without trouble. Finally, he found the empty box. Rochelle watched Cline sniff at it.

“Eat this,” Rochelle said and pulled from her purse a few of her Elks coins. She approached the goat, holding her palm out. “Eat them,” she said.

Cline pulled one of the coins into his mouth. She felt the goat’s warm tongue on her palm. He chewed and swallowed.

“Good,” Rochelle said. “Yes, that’s right. Eat them all.”

The animal stared at her. He stopped and was quiet, and Rochelle stared at him and waited. “Come on,” she whispered.

The goat looked at her and screamed the scream of a child victim. The noise went out over the neighborhood, over the golf course, over the river. Rochelle rushed inside and turned off the lights.

◊

Sometimes she dreamt of the day, early in her marriage, when she’d asked Charlie just exactly it was he did for a living. In response, Charlie had taken her in their new car out along Highway 62 to the escarpment and led her up onto one of the shorter mesas. They stood in the dirt near a lechuguilla patch. “Look there,” he said and pointed south, toward the Guadalupe Mountains. “That was once a massive ocean reef.” Long before dinosaurs, he told her, there’d been a great big sea right here, right where they were standing. It’d been filled with sponges and algae, brachiopods, trilobites, single-celled fusulinids, and snails and fish so strange she could not even imagine they once called Earth their home. The seas dried, he said, and minerals preserved the dead. “And now,” Charlie told her, “we use them to live.”

◊

She woke late. Her lips throbbed. They felt as though they would burst. It took her a while to piece the previous evening together. She went out onto the patio and saw the coins, covered with mucous, in the yard. The goat was missing. He wasn’t anywhere. She worried that if Cline had gotten out onto the golf course, she’d have her membership revoked. She pictured him chewing up the fairways, eating the begonias near the clubhouse. She called. Nobody had seen him.

Rochelle didn’t wait to get dressed. Without makeup, in her pajamas, she took to driving around town. She drove up and down Canal Street, over to Halagueno Boulevard. She followed San Pedro Street as it snaked alongside the San Pedro arroyo. The wide creek used to run irrigation from the Pecos for cucumber and onion farms, but it’d been dried by the frackers. Now it held hillocks of box springs and shopping carts. Soon the houses grew smaller; the yards went from St. Augustine to lava rocks. She was in Alegre Vista, the bad part of town. Here the houses had ramps instead of steps. Here were cut-out-of-your-house obese people, hiding behind bedrooms with quilts for drapes.

“Cline!” she shouted from the window, driving slowly. “Cline!”

Some people looked at her. She knew what they were thinking. A woman with a battered face, looking for her husband.

She had no idea what to do. She knew nothing about goats. She knew nothing of their internal lives, their desires—what drove them to escape a backyard or what might drive them to return. She would have given up if she could think of a single thing to tell Ryan that would not break his heart.

Later in the afternoon, at a home in Alegre Vista, an unpainted wooden place that looked collaged together from parts of other, long-gone houses, she spotted a small herd of goats in the backyard.

“These are my goats,” the old man told her. She’d been out near the fence posts, eyeing the herd. The man must’ve seen her through his back window.

“I’m looking for one. His name is Cline. He’s black and brown, and he escaped my backyard early this morning or, who knows, perhaps last night.”

“Nope,” the old man said. “These are my goats.”

Rochelle didn’t move from the fence. She inspected every one of the goats in the herd. None of them appeared to be Cline.

“Get on out,” the old man told her.

She left and drove far out from the town, out along the highway and then down a county road of hardened chip seal. The road passed a mobile home park before flattening out along the plains of the desert. This used to be a ranch, owned by a wealthy family. Now there were warning signs everywhere—there were signs all over town. The road thinned to two lanes with no center stripe. The sun was big and white, and the sky looked anemic, as though it were an overexposed photograph.

She needed to collect herself. She needed to come up with something to tell Ryan. She understood now that in these years since Charlie’s death she had only been faking her way along, faking it every day: at the slots or at coffee, at church, in the produce aisle. Now with the lips. Now with Dale Envers.

Rochelle pulled over to compose herself. She put her hazards on and searched the console for tissues. She found some, wadded and coffee stained, and dried her eyes and cleared her nose. She told herself she was going to be okay, that she had, within her, a deep well of resource and strength. She took a few breaths before looking out to the north, out at a long dry stretch of nearly white desert pocked with creosote bushes and bright red budding ocotillo—a mile or two shy of a pump jack. Cline stood there alone, staring back at her.

She took her time. She laughed. She opened the door and stepped out onto the road. “Cline,” she said, and felt relief. “Cline!” she said and walked across the county road. Nobody was out here. The wind was still. Rochelle carefully pulled apart the barbed wire and let herself through, making sure her pajamas did not catch. “Let’s go home now,” she called out and smiled. Cline waited for her. He made a strange movement with his jaw, as though he knew what she was saying. As though he were agreeing with her. “I forgive you,” she said to him and slowly stepped toward him. Cline did not move. He whipped his tail and nodded again. “You’re a good boy,” she said, and, when she was near, slowly took him into her arms and embraced him the way she’d seen her neighbor embrace him. And had you been passing by, had you seen the hazards blinking on the sedan and slowed and looked off to the north for the car’s owner—had you looked in time—you’d have witnessed the world open wide and take inside itself a woman in her pajamas along with a small goat.

II.

On the evening Ryan and Kendra first pulled into town, a great dark plume of smoke seemed to rise from the ground and hover above Canal Street and darken out the neon signs of the motels and fast food restaurants. This cloud did tricks. It changed shapes, recategorizing itself from a blob into a taut arrow, a diamond, a V. “Look,” Ryan said. “Bats.” Kendra glanced at them for a moment before yawning and going back to her phone.

This was the detail TOWBoss had wanted men in their subreddit to find: the moment they knew they’d lost their wives. TOWBoss said it was often not a slap in the face or a tearful fight, but something more mundane. He told users to do something physically exerting and to take days, weeks even, to hone in on the moment that useless cunt ruined your life. He created a thread for responses: The Cunting of America.

Ryan found the group by accident. He’d Googled “signs of depression” and “divorce depression” and then “divorce guilty.” And he kept Googling until he found men who felt no guilt nor depression, but searing rage.

They railed against the Duluth Model, against vasectomies—what one Redditor called “self-cucking.” A theater in Michigan posted an Equal Pay Night, wherein men paid 25 percent extra for a ticket. The subreddit was outraged. They, along with a pickup artists’ subreddit, flooded the phone lines until the theater had to change numbers. They purchased an entire theater’s worth of tickets and believed the business would be dismayed when nobody showed up.

Initially, Ryan didn’t relate to most of the men going through divorce. A lot of them were wealthier than he was. Older, with children. But the rage was something he shared. He read the sub late at nights, after drinking. Some of the men spammed a college’s rape report form with dozens of false reports. Ryan didn’t partake, but he watched the post-act banter.

Kendra had left, just left, one day while he was at work. Her things were still in their house. The plan had been for her to become a veterinarian, but she’d failed a few courses and before long Ryan had a job offer far away from the Mid-Atlantic. The job paid well. He’d be working as an engineer for an oil concern. Kendra wouldn’t say yes or no. She lay in bed all day. This was an answer in itself. Finally, not knowing how to convince her, Ryan had purchased a goat at a market. Kendra still had not said yes, though when the time came she climbed into the car with the kid in her hands and told Ryan its name was Cline. He smiled, and they headed west. She left the goat at the house, too.

When she had finally called it was from a phone with an Annapolis area code. Annapolis was where she’d grown up. She had family there and old friends. And old boyfriends.

It wasn’t uncommon for Ryan to call her at night. Kendra would listen as he asked for a second try or pointed out her many flaws—it was her failure, not his, that’d led them out west—or accused her of cheating or asked if his cock wasn’t big enough, if he was too fat or not romantic enough. If she wanted to date a Black man, a Jew. And Kendra would listen patiently, not saying a word until he was done shouting and done crying. And finally she would say, ultimately, there wasn’t anything to say.

After hanging up, he’d hit the thread.

At work, when he caught himself looking at a female coworker and thinking slut or gash or cumwhore, he felt guilty only for a second before reminding himself of what TOWBoss had said: this was how Ryan had always really felt. This was Ryan finally being true to himself.

He’d never played youth sports. He hadn’t joined a fraternity in college. He’d spent his time alone and happy, he thought, and totally confused at this term he always heard, community, and why people put so much emphasis on it. But one night last week he found himself drunk on gin and weeping with joy for having found ToughToeNails3 and Raw_Hide_ and CraveMore, and TOWBoss, their fearless leader; and when TOWBoss posted about the retreat, Ryan was quick to say he’d be there and was there anything he could bring—anything at all.

◊

The retreat was held in the tall grass alongside the Rio Costilla, not far from the Colorado state line. There was an RV park and campground further to the south, near where the Mesa Stream and the Cordillera Ditch came together, but TOWBoss had told them no way was he paying the fees, and anyway, they were Free Men.

In the winters there were no streams at all, but it was late spring now, and the Rocky Mountain runoff had formed a fast-moving gulley ample with cutthroat trout.

As soon as Ryan arrived he realized he’d made a few miscalculations. He’d assumed the retreat was for getting wasted and talking about women and that the fishing was only a pretext. This was not the case. The men he saw were all in waders and very seriously going about fly-fishing the gulley. Their tents, nearly all of them military-grade canvas, were set up immaculately, taut as drums, not even flapping in the mountain wind. Ryan had stopped in Albuquerque on the way up and had purchased a little pup tent. His rod was all wrong: a spin fishing rig that’d cost him twenty-five dollars. He felt ridiculous unpacking his gear and ridiculous moreover when the other men looked back and spotted him but did nothing more than nod and return to the stream. The wind was coming off the mountains all wrong, forcing Ryan’s hat off his head and making him run beyond the parked SUVs to catch it; and he struggled with the tent poles—what maniac had designed this thing?—and out of embarrassment acted as though he were doing a high-concept comedy act about a man who could not put a tent together. The few men who looked on did not laugh. Ryan wanted to toss his gear in the Subaru and leave.

Finally, a squat man came to him and offered a hand. “TOWBoss,” he said. Ryan was taken back. TOWBoss had described his ex as being superhot but batshit. Ryan had figured TOWBoss to be a young and handsome devil. Instead, here stood a man in his fifties, graying, with a mustache.

“I’m Ryan.”

TOWBoss looked up from the tent poles and grimaced. “Yeah, we still go by our Reddit handles here. For the sake of maintaining anonymity.”

“Okay,” Ryan said. “So for the rest of the weekend, I’m still SamDongleson?”

TOWBoss nodded. “Over there is SemperFi4121, Luv_StuffNM, CarlosZeroShits, and SquirtMaster500.”

“Where is ToughToeNails3?” SamDongleson asked.

“Stuck in traffic outside Denver. He’ll be here.”

Soon TOWBoss had SamDongleson’s tent up. Looking it over, TOWBoss said, “I hope you have a zero-degree bag. It gets awful cold up here at nights.”

SamDongleson lied. He’d brought his duvet from home.

After TOWBoss introduced him to the clan, and the clan simply nodded, he asked SamDongleson if he had his tackle with him. Before he could answer, TOWBoss marched to SamDongleson’s campsite and returned with the rod. SamDongleson’s face went hot, but after an inspection, TOWBoss said, “Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t catch good fish with one of these. I had a rig like this as a boy. Held onto it through college. Best rod I ever had.”

He handed it to SamDongleson. The other men, each of whom had handmade and intricate flies attached to their vests or hats, quit casting. They waited. SamDongleson took the rod and cast the line out in a long, whispering arch. The line went on forever. It was a glorious cast, a strong and strange cast, and when it came back to him, a trout was on the end.

◊

It was true that the campsite turned cold when the sun went down, but SamDongleson didn’t mind it. His catch on the first try had become an instant legend among the men. Never mind that the fish was too small to keep. They kept it anyway. SemperFi4121 had smashed its head against a rock and handed the lifeless thing back to SamDongleson. “Take it home and have it mounted.”

SamDongleson laughed.

“I’m serious. This is a feat worth remembering.”

Now, at 8:00 in the evening, the men cooked beans and hamburgers and poured whiskey into cups with Diet Coke and talked about SamDongleson’s catch in a way that made his chest feel big. By 9:30, any trepidation SamDongleson first felt had melted away. The whiskey and the campfire made his face warm, and when he pulled his duvet from the Subaru and wrapped himself in it—and when the other subredditors let out a communal chortle loud enough to bounce along the arroyo—SamDongleson knew it was in good fun, that these men were rapidly becoming brothers to him. He was to become a reference point in their conversations for years. He pictured newcomers to the subreddit. Tell me the duvet story. Fill me in. And SemperFi4121 and Luv_StuffNM and CarlosZeroShits and SquirtMaster500 would let the little pups know just exactly what a classic moment they’d missed out on.

Something that struck him was how mild-mannered, even shy, the men were. If they bumped your elbow or knocked over your drink, they were quick with an apology. There was nothing of the anger SamDongleson had expected. If, initially, this had let him down, he soon came to appreciate it. The men finished their meals and tossed the paper plates and plastic forks into the fire and watched the fire change colors as it melted away the chemicals. They told jokes and farted. They stayed out of the deep waters that’d brought them all together—at least at first. It wasn’t until 11:00 that night, when CarlosZeroShits pulled out a joint and the men shared it, that the nature of the outing began to shift. SamDongleson hadn’t smoked pot since high school, and this stuff was a new strain from Colorado, and it sat with him weird, a little too powerful.

An older guy, redheaded except where the crown of his head poked through, steeple-steep and burned by the sun, said: “Sometimes, when I think about Helen, I remember that when I snored she had me sleep on the floor of the bedroom. She swore the flatness helped my snoring. She said I didn’t snore when I was down there.  I resented her for it. I felt like a dog or a slave or something. I’d lie there all night, just seething with anger. And then something funny happened. I came to enjoy the floor. I looked forward to it. In fact, I began fake snoring so that she could order me to the floor.” He paused, his hands folded in front of him. “Isn’t that sick?”

“Unless you’ve worked on it,” Luv_StuffNM.

“What does that mean?”

CarlosZeroShits said, “He means unless you’ve turned it into some kind of kink.”

“Oh, hell.”

“We aren’t here to kink-shame.”

The redhead went to retort, but instead he just let out a strange, nervous chuckle. The men were quiet. SamDongleson stared up at the stars.

Another man said, “I get to see my two kids every other weekend. I’ve come to dread those weekends. Marsha hasn’t moved in with another guy, but I’m gathering there’s one. And the reality is? I don’t care. At all. About her or about the guy. And I’m beginning to lose interest in my two children. One day they’ll be a new family, and I won’t be a part of that, and it used to keep me up at night but doesn’t bother me at all now.”

The conversation went on like this, but SamDongleson didn’t like it. The stories were lame. They were pathetic. Finally, they were clichéd, something he could have heard from any limp-wristed group therapy session in the basement of a church. He straightened himself and prepared to tell them about Kendra and the goat, but just as he began, one of the men said, “You hear that?”

“What?”

“Be quiet. Listen.”

They listened.

“Someone’s out there. Someone’s stalking us.”

The men looked at each other. TOWBoss stood and produced a buck knife from his boot. The other men followed his lead; SemperFi4121 had a little .22 pistol in his satchel, and he looked more than happy to brandish it. The men went down from the campsite into the arroyo and crept along the gulley, listening for something. TOWBoss raised his hand. The men waited. “Over there!” he said, and they followed him across the gulley, sprinting through the water and up and over the other bar. Then they were in dense juniper brush. They squatted and listened. SemperFi4121 pulled the action on the pistol. “I see it,” TOWBoss said, and a moment later he was screaming and running with his knife out. SemperFi4121 cracked the pistol twice in the air and followed him. None of the rest moved. When the pair returned, TOWBoss had an Allsup’s bag on the end of his knife. A small, wrinkled plastic bag. The men looked at each other and fell out laughing.

◊

SamDongleson woke up around 5:00 that morning, still drunk. The rest of the men were already at the fire, making coffee. He wrapped the duvet around himself and joined them, but before he could say anything a pair of headlights strafed the site. They disappeared, returned.

“Must be ToughToeNails3,” TOWBoss said.

But soon the lights were multicolored, red and blue, and a door opened. Soon somebody was shining a flashlight down onto them. It was a park ranger.

She was young and redheaded and wider than SamDongleson, with her brown pants pulled high above her midsection. They watched the ranger struggle down the rocky embankment and into the tall grass. She trained the flashlight on each of their faces.

“Y’all have a permit to be down here?”

None of them responded.

She looked at the Igloo where SamDongleson’s trout sat on ice. “What about a fishing permit?”

They were quiet.

The ranger responded to a call from her shoulder mic. Her breath was deep in the cold air. She looked at each of them again for a long while but didn’t move or say anything.

Ryan found himself saying, “You know, if we ran, who could you possibly catch?”

The ranger’s face went red. Or perhaps it was already red from the cold. It didn’t matter. The men giggled. The ranger pointed her flashlight square into his eyes. He knew he was smiling; he knew he was still drunk.

“I’ll be back,” she said, and left in the cruiser.

The group howled. They hugged Ryan.

Only TOWBoss kept his distance. Later he said, “She will be back, you know.”

“She won’t,” Ryan said. Ryan said he needed to take a leak, and he moved into a nearby thicket. The men were still laughing.

◊

His tent was the last one down. It was not yet noon but close, and only Ryan and TOWBoss were left at the campsite. TOWBoss poured more water onto the firepit, making certain the embers were dead. He looked for trash and placed it into a trash bag and then tightened, once more, the cables holding the kayaks to the roof of his car. Ryan ran his hand through his short beard and thought about telling TOWBoss about the goat, about Cline. But there wasn’t any point. It was a boring story, and Ryan had decided to get rid of the animal as soon as he got back to town.

He waved goodbye and left TOWBoss to finish packing. On the road leaving the Rio Costilla, Ryan felt freed from a burden. He was hungover but happy, and by the time he merged onto the highway, he sang along to “Ramblin’ Man” on the radio. He passed through Taos going too fast, and soon he was south of Santa Fe and its traffic and into the badlands along US Route 285.

He stopped for gas in Vaughn. A thunderstorm was threatening to the west, pulling itself together like the bunches of a skirt. A man, some kid, was wandering between the pumping stations smacked out of his gourd. Ryan offered him five dollars, but the kid grabbed him by the wrist and stared at him. “You’re a hollowed-out soul if I’ve seen one.” Then the kid ran away from him, looking terrified.

“What the fuck was that?” Ryan muttered. He got back in the car and turned on the radio. He let the tuner scan, hoping to hear something about the weather and what he could expect for the rest of the drive home. He heard a voice come through, far off, hardly intelligible from the static. He turned the dial and listened more intently. It was clear that the voice was in a language he did not understand, and he turned the radio off and drove for a while, preferring the silence.