Mark Spragg: Bone Fire

He unholstered his revolver, releasing the cylinder and turning the barrel up, the cartridges falling onto the palm of his hand. The doctor-his name was Scott-had said it was a pulmonary embolism that killed the old man. It happened at dawn. Probably during one of the nightmares he’d begun having. The lungs fill with blood, maybe you cough in your sleep, thrash once or twice, and you’re gone. Just that fast. Dr. Scott said if he had ALS it’s how he’d want to go, but he hadn’t been the one to clean up the mess. He thumbed the cartridges back into their chambers, all six of them, and snapped the cylinder home.

He didn’t ease the door shut when he got out of the car but slammed it hard, flushing a party of gray jays from the apple tree in front of the house. A single horse was circling the corral, neighing.

Inside the barn it was just as the girl had said it would be. No hoofstrikes or the odors of clover or timothy or animal dung, only the scratching of packrats in the loft, the light falling in dust-filled shafts from the row of windows under the eaves. Stereos, televisions, computers and firearms stacked carelessly against the walls as high as a man could lift. The stalls overflowing with cameras, VCRs, DVD players, antique furnishings, saddles, chain saws, power tools, wrench sets, table saws, joiners, a planer and drill press. He didn’t bother to part the sheets of milky plastic hanging from the rafters above the last stall. He knew what he’d find in there, his eyes already watering from the bite of ammonia, the mix of cooked chemicals.

“That you, old buddy?”

He turned to the granary door. He could feel the weak sunlight on his shoulders, on the back of his neck. It felt like a caress. “Right here,” he called.

There was Brady’s distinct laughter behind the door. “You want a beer?”

He slid his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Still the taste of blood. “I’m all right.” He gripped the revolver, holding it at his waist as he stepped through the door. He felt relaxed, fluid, just a boy coming to see his friend.

“Well, look at you,” Brady said. “Wyatt Earp-looking son of a bitch that you are.” He was sitting across the room in a cushioned chair, with a floor lamp by his side, books stacked around the base. A hooked rug in front of the chair. A card table crowded with rows of bound bills, tens and twenties and fifties. “I’ve been waiting all day for this.”

He bent over the arm of the chair and pulled a beer out of the cooler. The ice shifted. He offered the can and Crane shook his head. A pistol lay across Brady’s thighs. “Suit yourself.” A vein was pulsing in his pale neck, sweat dripping from his nose. “This is it? Just you?” He sipped the beer, wiped his mouth. “I was hoping for a SWAT team.”

On the walls were framed photographs of their families mounted and moving cows. He and Brady at a branding, in a snowdrift with their schoolbooks.

“Remember when we tried to drop a new engine in that old DeSoto?” Brady asked.

“Greased lightning.”

“That was us. Good times.”

Crane nodded, and Brady was on his feet with the pistol snatched up off his lap, the muzzle blast knocking Crane back a step. He stood blinking, his hearing mostly gone, his head filled with a high-pitched shrieking. He turned and saw the hole where the bullet had struck the wall, and when he turned back he could see the spiral of rifling in the bore, the barrel level with his face. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said.

Brady swung the pistol just inches to the side and it bucked again in his hand, the concussion again like a blow. He could smell the burning gunpowder and thought blood might be running from his ears, his skull and shoulders now vibrating.

“Anything you say can and will-”

Brady fired once more, just over the top of Crane’s head, his hand trembling. “Can’t you just fucking do this?” He was pleading. “Pretend I’m on fire.” His voice cracked. “Pretend I’m screaming so loud you can feel it in your teeth.”

Crane slapped him in the temple with his service revolver and Brady’s head snapped to the side but he didn’t go down. He just smiled like that’s what he’d needed all along, the blood sheeting the side of his head, as smooth and bright as new paint.

Crane leaned forward, lifting the pistol from Brady’s hand, and cuffed him. He didn’t struggle being led from the barn and folded into the backseat of the cruiser. He just bled.

GRIFF CAME OUT in stocking feet, cotton pajama bottoms and a T-shirt a size too large, found where she’d left her boots on the porch, and sat on the top step to pull them on, watching the moon rise. When it cleared the horizon she started across the workyard staring into the sky, understanding she wouldn’t see the stars this clear and sharp for some time. Her arms prickled and she drew them back through the armholes, hugging herself inside the shirt.

When she ducked between the corral rails Royal nickered softly, his voice deeper than the others, a dozen of them milling around or standing in their sleep. She could just distinguish where he stood by the water trough, the night settled darker on his body, and when she got closer the outline of his head came clear in the moonlight, his ears pricked. The gate stood open. They’d come in from the pastureland to drink, perhaps finding some comfort in the shadows of the barn. A horse snorted, the stamp of a hoof reverberating in the ground. Another coughed.

She circled his neck with her arms, water dripping from his muzzle back into the trough, rippling the moon’s reflection. He nickered again, and this time it tickled her cheek.

He followed her to the barn. They all came, thinking of grain, but she latched the door behind her and stepped out through the tackshed holding a bridle against her side. They edged away, cautious as deer, and she wondered if it was the leather they smelled or if something had changed in her posture, revealing she wasn’t just another animal sharing the night but a woman wanting something from them. Only Royal did not care. He stepped to her and lowered his head.

She looped the reins around his neck, offering the bit and slipping the headstall over his ears. She buckled the throatlatch, turning to grip a handful of the dark mane at his withers, and swung onto his back. He stood straighter, the night changed for both of them.

The others moved away, coyly at first, then out through the gate at a run with her and Royal among them, the rhythm of their hooves striking the earth in a tremendous, continuous roar, the bunch of them moving at once together and apart, much as clouds shift. They swept down and across the creek, the surface breaking up in thin sheets that fell back into her chest and face, making her gasp. Once through the cottonwood and into the pasture, they separated and slowed, only she and Royal maintaining the pace.

He crossed the irrigation ditch that bordered the sage in a single jump and worked upward along the fall line, warming between her legs. She lay against his neck, a breast on either side of his neck, his body straining beneath her, lunging, and at the crest of the ridge she reined him in. They turned, looking back at the moonstruck valley below them, its long shadows falling westward. There was no wind, only the sound of their breathing. They seemed to be floating, as we float in our dreams.

She stood in the hallway outside his room, listening to the ticking of the old windup clock he preferred. “Are you asleep?” she whispered.

“I thought I was.” There was the rustling of bed linen. “I’m not sure I can always tell the difference anymore.”

She skirted the foot of the bed and stretched out on top of the covers beside him, the ticking even louder now.