Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

LATER he checked on the sheep and found them sleeping. The sight of them crushed together, a huddle of gray mounds in the darkness, angered him. He pounded on the side of the truck and shouted, “Wake up!”

Again, the echo.

“Fuck you!” he yelled to the other him.

It yelled back, “You will sleep if you kill those sheep!”

He thought, “Maybe it’s Jordan messing with me.”

The animals bounded to their feet and scrambled, some trying to escape by leaping up at the racks. Kill them? No way. What they needed was a shake-up. He jumped behind the wheel and tore down the road, bouncing the sheep around the bed. They screamed like teenagers on a roller coaster, slamming against the racks, sliding face-first into the rear window when he abruptly braked. The tub flew into their thin legs, bowling them over.

He had cooled off by the time he reached the main highway, the tires quieting to a soft thrum, the ride smooth. The cries of injured and rattled animals chased him down the road. After a mile or two, he was sobbing an apology into the rearview mirror. “It’s because I can’t sleep,” he told them. “It’s because no one can sleep.”

He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview. His jittery face, the heavy rings around his bloodshot eyes. He felt himself becoming one of the many sleepless he had encountered over the last few weeks. His outburst at the sleeping sheep was the most blatant symptom so far. He would be babbling incoherently soon, stumbling around the landscape. It was hard to say how long it would be, since he and Jordan had slept more than most, leveraging their drug stash. But rather than extend the timeline of demise, it seemed to now rush at him with a vengeance.

There was something in the road. A dark form darting from the shoulder.

He slammed on the brakes and the truck skidded and started to spin. The sheep hit the cab, a lumpy wave of heavy flesh. They moaned hoarsely. He peered into the darkness around the truck, but saw nothing.

AS the sun rose, he found himself driving through a vast prairie. He passed two abandoned checkpoints, where hulking military vehicles crowded the gravel median. He sped through, fearing they would confiscate his animals, but there were no personnel in sight. Far to his right, he could see the tawny pattern of a pronghorn herd, speckling the broad canvas of yellowing grass. It occurred to him that this would be a good place to let the sheep graze. He could see them for miles, should they wander off. But he would try to keep them close. They’d probably just stand around in a frightened cluster, chewing on the grass. That’s what sheep do, right?

The bed needed to be cleaned out, he knew. They were probably up to their ankles in shit by now. They are shit machines.

He drove on, hoping to see a pond or creek, looking for the ideal setting. Like a homesteader, he thought. Looking for a place to put down my roots.

But the land offered no ideal spot for settlement. He decided to pull off and drive the truck onto the prairie itself, away from the highway. It was a bumpy ride but he did it very slowly. Still, the sheep complained. He winced every time the truck was rocked by the terrain and shouted an apology through the back window. “Sorry, guys! Hang in there. Just a little bit more and we’ll park.”

He kept his word, pulling to a stop at the peak of a gentle rise. It was early morning and the truck cast a long shadow. He could see the low blue wall of craggy mountains in the side mirror, far to the north. Ahead, the prairie extended to the horizon. Fat clouds floated overhead and their shadows were like dark shifting continents on the flat parchment map of land. He stepped out onto the withering grass and stood blinking in his built-in rubber boots. The air was still and cool, carrying a hint of fall—the end of the summer without sleep. Maybe winter will freeze it out, he thought distractedly. He thought it again. Maybe winter will freeze it out.

Time to let them out.

He went to the tailgate and peered in. The animals were in bad shape. Roughed up and battered, more tightly huddled than before. In fact, he could now see, they were transformed. The many traumas of the road had caused them to collide and fuse together—a broad-backed woolly spider, conjoined torsos with many legs and heads, rib cages interlaced, spines intertwined. Some noses were bloodied, some eyes swollen shut. A few legs protruded unnaturally from the cluster. He was horrified at the sight of them as he lifted out the rear racks, then dropped the gate and backed away. My sheep, he thought tearfully. My ruined sheep!

The hatchet, he thought. I can separate them.

The sheep came forward, a globbed-together mass rushing out of the truck in a stampeding clatter, their stiltlike hooves hammering through the layer of dung. They dropped to the ground, grunting on impact, then ran off—a small, low-flying cloud. He started after them, calling, “You’ll die out here! Surviving won’t be allowed out here!”

His echo shouted back, “See, dickhead? Now you have nothing to offer! Catch them!”

It was impossible to run in the waders. They were too heavy and stiff to allow his legs to really churn. It was like running through tar. His movements were further slowed by the dry weave of grass that clung to his ankles. A hundred yards or so into the landscape, he fell to his knees, chest heaving. The sheep ran on, down into the basin of the plain, toward the faraway antelope. He watched them go, grasping at his hair. His face warped. His sheep gone.

They were swallowed by distance. He watched the place where they disappeared, waiting for them to reemerge.

The sun moved over him. The day passed.

At one point he yelled up at the sky, “God damn it!”

“I’m watching you,” his echo said. “I never sleep. My eye is always wide open.”

“So?”

“So I know.”

Eventually he stood. It was nearly dark again. His legs were sore from kneeling. He studied the distance for the sheep, but they had disappeared long ago. So he stood as the sun dropped toward the edge of the world, warming one side of his face with an orange light.

When he went to close the gate of the truck, he found that they hadn’t all abandoned him. There was one left, lying on its side on the floor. Its body was heaving, and when he leaned in, causing the bed to dip, the animal looked up at him. Two trickles of blood ran from its nose. “My sheep,” he said. “You are my sheep. My last sheep you are just one. The only sheep of the sheep of mine.”

FORTY miles down the road, he passed a sign for a rest stop. This was funny to him. He laughed hysterically, his spittle flecking the windshield. Rest! So ha-ha-ha! He called the sign to the attention of his sheep, though it lay curled below his limited sight line in the back of the truck. “It doesn’t happen anymore for us humans,” he tried to explain over his shoulder, his laughter dissolving into a dry coughing fit. The sight of so many vehicles gleaming in the parking lot surprised him. Maybe they really were, he thought. Maybe it was where rest was really happening of all places on the planet.

He took the rest stop exit and rolled into the heart of an insomniac carnival. The scene was charged with manic energy: cars, trucks, and buses crowded tightly together, people roaming among the picnic areas and restroom structures, shouting, gesticulating insanely. Intoxicated by exhaustion or maybe something else: there were many semi trucks in the crammed lot that had clearly been looted, and at least one bore the logo of a beer manufacturer. Wide-open trailer doors revealed empty cargo holds, the ground littered with loose pallets and flattened cardboard. Colorful shreds of product packaging tumbled by, carried along by a steady wind. All of it the larval stages of a landfill.