“If you fuckin’ kick it, it’ll move.”

    Al lifts his head to observe the spot where the grass tickles the purple night sky. He’d put a blade between his fingers and make a kazoo if Dolly were here. “I knew I should’ve hid
the beer.”

    “What’s that s’posed to mean?” Sweat drips into Randy’s mouth, his drawl thick in the breeze that dusts the two men in molecules of manure, though neither of them notice.

    “Nothing.”

    “Don’t nothin’ me or I’ll nothin’ your sorry ass.”

    “That don’t even make sense.” Al figures his tone is best left at a mutter. Never angry,

don’t get angry, the world don’t care for anger too kindly, especially when it comes from some farmer in Buzzkill, Nebraska. He shuffles around the carcass and takes note of the flies that have already nested into the horse’s eyelids. Barely been dead two hours. Nature doesn’t do funerals. Al appreciates that.

    Randy kicks the animal’s belly, shoves his foot right into the ribs and yells.

    “Quiet now. Dolly and the rest are asleep.” Al breathes in the manure and horse­flies, finds his center in a field full of half-dead grass and a whole-dead horse.

    Randy steps into the corpse and bears down with his full weight, as if trying to roll it over like a stuck tire. “Move.” He groans and lets out a heavy breath. “Dumb animal. Dead
and dumb.”

    “We could tie it to the tractor, drag it behind the shed.”

    Randy isn’t listening. Air squeaks in and out of his parted lips, attracting flies. He drags a thick tongue from one corner of his mouth to the other. “What if, what if!”

    “What if what, Randy?”

    “Huh?”

    “Help me hitch it to the tractor.”

    Randy nods, his eyes glazed, eyelids sinking. He brings up a grimy hand and rubs at his slick brow. He glances back as the two men plod along. “Looks drunk.”
    “Hm?”

    “The horse.” Randy’s hand tumbles out in a gesture toward the horse, beside which is an empty can of beer.

    Al nearly laughs. “Yeah.”

    “What’re you gonna tell her?”

    The wind tears a rift between them, whispers ideas in Al’s ears: Tell her the horse is in a

better place. Tell her God took him. Tell her Daddy’s sorry. “I dunno.”

    “Well, you better figure that out.” Randy wobbles ahead, picks up the rope and lopes over

to the horse.

    Al starts up the tractor and cruises. “She’ll get over it.”

    Randy huffs, thick fingers knotting the coarse rope around the gaskins. “Just gotta tie his knees to make him go. Fall onto his face.”

    “Sure. Trip anybody and they’ll fall to prayer.”

    “I ain’t prayin’.”

    “Why would you?”

    “That’s what I’m sayin’.” He spits, baptizing the horse into its second life.

    Each with a rope in hand, the men tie the stallion to the back of the tractor. Al climbs up

and drives ahead, slower than slow, trying to ignore the rasp to his rear, the sound of an albatross carving a ravine through green earth. He shivers in the breeze, leading a parade of the dead and dying.