Black Angus by Newton Thornburg

was for you tonight, with your barefoot slut.”
    Blanchard said nothing after that. There did not seem to beanything left to say. He thought of telling her what had happened to Shea, but he imagined the story would only have moved her to scorn and laughter, giving her yet another reason why he should follow her back to “civilization.” Finally he just turned from her and walked out of the room, slowly, feeling drunk with exhaustion and shock. He made it to the bottom of the stairs and went over to the davenport, where Whit lay asleep on his side, in the fetal position, with his mouth open slightly and a frown stitched between his closed and fluttering eyes. Blanchard wondered what the boy was dreaming of, what relentless anxiety pursued him even now, in the middle of the night.
    Moving quietly, he went on through the kitchen and out the back way, into the cool Ozark night, into air that felt like the touch of a baby’s lips compared to the brutal punch of mid-day, the mailed fist of ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit at ninety percent humidity. Unlike most of the ranchers in the area, he did not have an automatic dusk-to-dawn polelight, for he hated the bluish, sepulchral pall they cast on the night. So when the moon was up, as now, he was able to move across his farmyard without artificial light. But even that pleasure could not lift the sudden weight of fear he felt. It struck him that Susan’s decision was but an appropriate end for the whole long lousy day, beginning with the bull breaking out and continuing through the afternoon of backbreaking work and the ruckus at the Sweet Creek followed by the new problems Ronda presented him at her trailer and then the incredible scene outside, Shea almost getting killed by Jiggs and his bunch of rednecks. All of it made Blanchard feel oddly vulnerable, like a child or a woman. Suddenly life seemed beyond his power of control.
    It was the best time of the year for the cattle, with the grass plentiful and rich and the nights mild, so the stalls in the barn were empty except for old straw and dung. Blanchard was notsure where he was headed, probably to that point at the far side of the main corral where he could lean back against the fence and smoke a cigarette and view his land gently falling away toward the huge pond he and Clarence had made two years before, and which, when the moon was right, would shine in the darkness like a great silver tray. Often in the hot summer nights he would see the cattle standing in it, cooling themselves. Why this view, day or night, gave him such pleasure he was not sure, except that it was almost a paradigm of that dream which had nurtured him through his deskbound days, all the monkeyhouse meetings when he had chattered away as mindlessly as everyone else. What he had craved then, he knew now, was silence and substance. That was all he had wanted, just a measure of peace and quiet and the feeling that he was doing man’s work, honest labor. The ranch had given him that. It had given him back his manhood. And now Susan somehow thought he could give all that up like a piece of real estate and follow her back to Saint Louis, castrated, ready for silliness and noise. Well, she was wrong. That much he knew. He would not go gentle into that good night.
    As he was walking past the corral he heard the bull before he saw him, the soft roar of his breathing coming from the other side of the fence. Moving close, Blanchard was surprised to see the animal standing alone inside the corral, the same place where it had been trapped that morning and had wound up with a headgate locked on its neck. But now, in the darkness, not a trace of that humiliation showed. If anything the bull looked to Blanchard more handsome than ever, more the King of Beasts than any mangy cat ever was.
    Leaning over the top of the corral, Blanchard spoke to him—“Bull, hey bull!”—but the animal did not move or respond in any way, just stood there,