Something's Gotta Burn

Dr. Bill Perry drives a truck not his, pulling a trailer with no working lights, hauling a spooked green-broke mare with only seventeen rides to her name. His companions-- the night and the white noise of KCGY. Flip phone dead. Checkbook might support a couple more bounces, but the cash is gone. A smattering of yellow legal pads and prescription pill bottles covers the dash, fogging the windows. September can be a cruel siren. Outside, the banshee howl of a Wyoming hurricane beats against the truck. Encapsulated against this frozen gale, Dr. Perry ventures forth as if a pilgrim or astronaut plunging deeper into a hostile world that actively rejects invasive species.

And the northern Laramie Plains is such a world, riddled with the bones of failed homesteads. A high altitude plateau ringed by mountains, she hoards her own weather system and doesn't allow for marketable crops, save cattle. It is a desolate, isolated place, cut off and indignantly resilient. Few can live here: Indians finding refuge from whites to the south and more dominant tribes to the north; wild white men carving out their own piece of the high plains; outlaws lying low after heists; then, finally, families to claim 160 acres worth of the American dream. The handful of ranches now stubbornly residing here were built on the struggles, successes, and failures of those early homesteaders. The families who survived each new winter were able to cannibalize the homesteads of those who were unable to hang on, cobbling together a community of hardened cattlemen: resilient, stubborn, tough, and protective of their own.

Such is the land into which Dr. William Perry escapes. His presence unknown but unwelcome all the same. With the road disappearing in a maelstrom of snow, he has already become lost twice, once jack-knifing the trailer on a hairpin turn lost in the wind. What little wits the mare had left was gone as she slammed into the center barrier on impact. Regardless, the truck still drives and the mare hasn't tumbled out the back. He continues on into the storm.

The Marshall feeds into Mule Creek Road. Bill is close to the private land he wishes to trespass and trample upon, maybe leave a few gates and doors upon along his path. For decades, the cattle industry formed two branches, sometimes distinct, sometimes fluid: those with land and those without. Bill, an established large animal vet, was in the landless camp, married into a family with forty-five sections, three hundred head, three houses, on two separate plots of land. He grew up with a father also void of land, who spent his life expertly managing the herds of other people, on land not his own. Bill grew to resent the landed rancher, partly out of legitimate reasons, mostly because he was spiteful of those who were born into it while he grew up with the skills but not the money to have his own. It made it even worse to be married to the rancher's daughter. He was there. He helped. But it would never be HIS ranch. Like the prince married to a queen, he could only hope to see his offspring rise to prominence and legal ownership. That bitterness could be suppressed but not expunged. Goddammit, he is going where he pleased. Fuck the White Man and his papers, Wild Indians aren't stopped by barbed wire. Bill will go where he goes, estranged in-laws be goddamned, and the pigheaded uppity republican ranchers be goddamned double.

The Mule Creek Road passes through many ranches, some of them embedded since the olden-days, some owned as a hobby or tax shelter by men rarely seen on their own land. But these weren't of Bill's concern and were left none the worse for wear except for maybe a lit cigarette or a broken bottle. His destination is known. The terminus of the public road. His father-in-law's hunting camp and the rough country beyond. A treasure trove of place names and a veritable preserve of a stoic and stubborn Western wilderness: Ram Lamb Rock, Badger Creek, Dead Man's Meadow.

Headlights expose a heavy iron gate, the end of the road, the end of the world, maybe. A hand-painted sign: Dead End Do Not Trespass. Bill sits and ruminates, thinking of The Code he was raised on that he would break tonight. A sigh of acceptance to ill thoughts as he gets out and fumbles with the heavy chain holding tight the gate to a weathered gnarly post. He yanks, jerks, pulls, swears, kicks. No lock, it just won't open. Just one more failure to put on his tab. He looks in the bed of the pickup and pulls out a thirty-pound tamping bar. The bar crashes against the forty-year-old sign, turning it to splinters. He is winded, and looks for a smaller tool to undo a section of the barb-wire fence. A hammer. He digs the claw between the wire and corner post. Pulling, wrenching, bending the wire back and forth, forth and back, turning beat red and singing expletives while he works. The top wire breaks off, then another, then another.

“Take that you dirty rotten cunt,” he says through grinding teeth.

He opens the trailer. The mare backs up as far as the laws of physics allow, whipping her head as if a cottonmouth was underfoot. The reins have slipped off the saddle horn, entangling her front legs. “Ohh, easy girl, eaasy,” he soothes. Her bobs get shallower and stops altogether. Her eyes narrow. She steps out of the trailer, thankful to be out in the open. He leads her to the cab and ties the reins to the open door. He gathers his assorted notepads and stuffs them into the saddle bag. He swings up into the saddle, as natural to him as it would be for a Mongol, despite all the broken bones and busted joints. The truck is abandoned, a sacrifice to the gusting wind.

Bill trots towards the opening in the fence, using the moonlight to guide his way. For the mare, every shadow is a predator coiled and ready to bite into her windpipe. Bill squeezes with his heels and goads his reluctant mare through the gap. She stumbles on the bottom wire that Bill missed and frantically tries to get her footing. She crow hops and throws her head. Bill swears and pulls her head around and puts her into a spin. She spins until she forgets her former fear and submits to the rider's will.

They trot uphill to the hunting house. Serene and empty. He hops off and leads her into the yard. The black quarter horse begins to graze on the dead and dying weeds, forgetting her earlier panic. Bill heads for the porch-- locked. He goes to the propane grill for the spare key-- gone. Another betrayal. How dare they move the spare? Another slight. How dare they not trust me? He kicks the door. And kicks and kicks, splitting the paint. He balls up his palpation hand and crashes it through the door's slat window. Jagged glass tears into his wrist.

“Gotdammit, muther,” Bill moans as blood trickles down the door. He sucks in air and stifles a screech. Men don't screech and he'd be goddamned if he gave that door the pleasure. He fingers “Fuck You” on the door with his blood, and leads his skitterish black mare out of the yard.

They walk for a while along a two-lane road, used to move haying machinery in the summer and ATVs in the fall. He had traveled this road many times. Horseback to move the steers, on a tractor to mow the meadows for winter feed. Even with all the anguish and rage, he still holds a sliver of pride and belonging for better years gone by.

Bill squeezes her belly and she responds with a canter. They head to the high meadow. Puffs of steam come out of horse and rider. Even in the gusts of snow, Bill can see Dead Man feed into Manse Creek. They are black against the moonlight. A beautiful sight, no matter how mad you are. He looks to the sky. In jest. In want. He isn't sure. The mare's ears twinge and twist, pin back, and perk up, like antennas trying to pick up a signal. She knows predators operate at night, and she suspects every shadow.

The winds die, leaving flakes of snow to flutter down to earth unmolested. The banshee's thirst abated, it seems. The mare calms enough to try and graze on the dying grass while they walk. Bill yanks her head up. She snorts. They come to another fence, another reminder. He dismounts and takes his claw hammer to another post, another barrier to his confrontation with God. The work is ironic yet fitting. He helped tend this fence. He put up this wire. It should be him to tear it down.

The mare grazes for the twenty minutes it takes Bill to get through the wire. She responds well enough to Bill grabbing the reins and pulling himself up into the saddle. With a full belly, she is less anxious, less alert. They leave serene meadow for tall sage. They move along a game trail. Brush scrapes against Bill's stirrups. The irrigation ditch looms ahead. The final obstacle. Too deep to drop into and damn near too wide to jump. Damn near means full steam ahead to Bill. He cajoles the jittery novice to jump the divide. She stamps and titters on the edge and tries to turn away. Bill swears. His mount balks and drops her ass, trying to back away from perceived danger. A test of will lasts many moments before Bill turns her away from the ditch. She trots away triumphant before suddenly being turned back and kicked into a run. Bill smacks her ass with a rein and comes at the ditch at a run. She tries to hold back at the last moment, throwing Bill's crotch into the saddle horn, before her momentum makes the jump inevitable. Not so wide after all.

They calm a bit for the exertion, and Bill's sudden blunt force gut ache. They slow to a walk. She tries to graze as they move along, and this time Bill doesn't bother correcting it. A flash of white bolts across their path. The mare whinnies and snorts while bounding sideways. Bill is caught unawares and is thrown hard to the dirt. His ribs crash against a rock. Floating ribs now float a little more than is advised. He fights for air and digs into the dirt. His lungs re-inflate and he lets out a labored gasp.

A little luck, the mare hasn't run off, preferring the devil she knows--. He leads her to the creek, not bothering to get back on. They walk slow, some for the pain but mostly because Bill fears what comes next. He can hear the creek running. They come to the crossing where Dead Man pays its water tribute to Manse Creek. Bill wraps the reins into the willows haphazardly. He is focused on the sky, the cloud drifting across the face of the moon.

He sheds his sweat-stained cowboy hat and drops it on the sandbar. Looking down, he thinks of his father: a World War II vet, life-long cowboy, leading member of the Stock Growers Association, a county commissioner. Respected by all, or if not, respected by those who count. Dead at sixty from mesothelioma, his death sentence in the form of a navy ship full of asbestos forty years prior. Bill stepped into big shoes, or boots. He took on his father's burden while carrying his own. The weight broke him. He couldn't pinpoint when the final straw had dropped on that poor dromedary’s back, but it had happened, to be sure.

He unties and opens the empty pouch of his saddle bag, the other being full of his papers. He takes off his heavy winter coat, his wool vest. His flamboyant shirt twenty years out of style comes off too. He stamps away the snow to leave a dry spot and takes off his boots (not his). The holely socks go, and the jeans, and finally his underwear, the same clothes worn for a week or more. The smaller garments go in the bag while the rest is piled up on the saddle. The mare is indifferent.

The snow gets heavier. The creek has a paper-thin sheet of ice as cover against the wind. Bill tosses heavy rocks to break up the ice. His breathing is labored, skin prickles and reddens with the wet and the cold. He looks again to the sky. To the Maker he hates. The One who took his Dad but spares drunkards and dipshits. He looks on in defiance to that Thing, that Real Mysterious Thing or magical children's fairy tale that never cut him any breaks. That Bearded-Man-In-The-Sky who has a hard on for Bill for no particular reason but to enjoy his mortal failures and suffering. Like Adam, he is naked before a God he was warned as a whelp not to test. Unlike Adam, he is not ashamed of his nakedness. No, it is God who should look on him and feel shame. His scars are laid bare, exhibit A in the court of creation.

“Here I am, you Bastard!” His voice carries against the surrounding hills and bounds back in mockery. “We'll do this shit your way, you Sonofabitch,” he yells as he throws his arms skyward.

He cries. Loud sobs men can only let out when miles from another human being. His eyes clamp shut and he prays for the first time in a decade. I'll get as wet as you please. I'll make the cross and say the words I know. Just take this fuckin pain away.

He jumps into the crossing, heart stutters and pores close. It shocks his system though it's only two feet deep. He drops to his knees and starts to shake. “For God n Jesus anda Holy Ghost,” he stutters as he dunks his head under. He comes up with a splash and flails and fumbles to get underfoot.

“Cocksucker! Goddamned cold stupid sonofabitch,” he gutters through clenched teeth. The mare spooks and whips her head back. The reins untangle from the willows and the mare runs off in terror, saddle bags and clothing left in her wake. Bill runs after her, hooks a branch and falls flat, dick in the dirt.

“Run you cunty nigger whore! I catch up to you and you're fucking dead you rotten cantankerous bitch!

“Dead!”

Bill was only ever really alive when he was fighting mad. The hate and shock warm him a great deal. Only when the mare disappears into the blizzard does Bill feel cold. A cold so deep he has no memory to compare it to. He finds one boot- the other getting kicked into the creek-, his jeans, heavy coat, and vest. Most important, the mare managed to shrug off the saddle bags. The papers inside are priceless, irreplaceable. He forgets about the socks and underwear. He wraps the vest around his foot and cinches it in place with his belt.

Bill is quite a sight. In a strange way, he is thankful for the anonymity of the dark, even if it takes his life. He trudges on, resolute, injured and frozen. His teeth gnash and chatter. God has fucked me for the last time.

Hypothermia sets in. Bill straggles on in a stupor. Directionless. He moves deeper into Dead Man's Meadow, only because it is easier going with the summer-mowed grass. He moves up a rise and hears a voice. Shadows and the wind playing tricks. A zephyr howling through the brush. He shakes his head and focuses on the rocky outcropping at the apex of the meadow.

A man.

“Hallo.”

“H-hey,” Bill responds. He is stupefied but knows he is fighting against time and losing. He quickens the pace, moving into the stranger’s impromptu campsite. He takes stock of the man and his kit. Younger with a wiry build, a beard suited to the coming season. No tent. Small pack.

“I’m building a fire,” the stranger says with a carefree smile, “Or tying to, at least,”

“Oh, g-good,” Bill chatters.

The stranger’s checkered wool hat with ear flaps looks mighty warm. So does his Carhartt coveralls. But the gloves, the gloves were like water to a dying man in the desert. Bill could no longer feel his hands or his vest-covered foot. But no articles of clothing are offered, and none asked for.

“N-name is B-b-bill.”

“Jesse,” the stranger pulls off his glove and offers his hand. Bill accepts.

“Hot hell, Bill, if that ain’t a cold hand! Here, where are my manners.” Bill needs help putting on the gloves. He can’t feel but for his eyes to guide the fingers. Jesse continues his work.

“Y-you hunting? The-the landowner would h-have yer hide for that.”

“No, it ain’t time for that yet. Just scouting, you might say,” Jesse’s amiable reply.

“W-well he’ll still h-have yer hide, not the-the type t-ta take trespass l-lightly.”

“I’ll meet with Walter soon enough; don’t concern yourself, friend.” Jesse breaks the dead branches into more manageable pieces. Clumps of wet yellowed hay are stacked close by, in need of fire. “I harvested a dead cedar. Should catch easy enough. But I have nothin’ in the way of kindling. Do you have somethin’ to burn?”

“N-n-no,” Bill replied, “Just my papers.” He clutches his satchel tight to his chest, rocking back and forth on his seat of granite.

Jesse stops, smiles. “What’s in there, Bill, the Magna Carta? Ha, if I haven’t heard everything,” Jesse says, shaking his head. “Are those papers of yours worth dying for, freezing to death for?”

Bill looks at the leather flap, a pale grey in the moonlight. Inside is everything. Every slight, every wrong, every plan: A letter to the three banks that closed his accounts and didn’t back his bounced checks; a letter to his wife explaining his innocent employment of multiple young female assistants on long road trips; rejected letters to the editor; another to Taylor Haynes’ campaign manager offering his services to get a black man elected amongst a state of racists in exchange for becoming a state veterinarian; a letter to one of his lawyers he is threatening to sue; a list of chores for his adult children to complete for his next money-making scheme; a letter to his father-in-law including a bill for thirty years of consultation fees; a rambling hate-filled letter to his former helper, a man who attempted suicide after not being paid by Bill for services rendered; a detailed list of funds owed him by two separate secretaries who embezzled from his veterinary business; a love letter to his therapist, complimenting her perky tits; letters to the governors of Wyoming and South Dakota respectively, whistleblowing his poor treatment in their behavioral health facilities; a rough draft for an ad, in which Bill is running for county sheriff; a letter to Vladimir Putin offering to be the head veterinarian in their booming feedlot enterprise; a rambling apology to his niece, explaining he has no idea why she is mad; a love letter to a married woman in Montana; a complaint to the CEO of Sharis, demanding that the Laramie manager be fired; a master list of everyone that ever fucked him- ranchers, assistants, politicians, bankers, bureaucrats, bartenders and waitresses. All with doodles and notes along the borders of the yellow legal paper: ‘I am a sex god’; ‘I’m not manic’; ‘No one knows what it’s like to live inside a fragile mind.’

Jesse props up all the cedar into a miniature teepee. He adds sagebrush underneath. He pauses, stands, then goes still, gazes at the moon. Whether he is pondering life’s mysteries or just giving his knees a rest, Bill doesn’t know. Jesse turns his head, looks Bill over, and looks once again towards the sky.

“Bill, something’s gotta burn.”

Bill drops his head. Everything is in that pouch. All he has been through. All he has left in the world is written on a yellow pad bought with pocket change. He grinds his teeth. Nostrils flare as he clenches his fist.

“I can’t. M-my life is in here. They fuckin’ che-cheated me. It’s all h-here. All of it. Every sa-sonofabitch. Every n-nasty cunt! I’ll b-be goddamned if I give that up.” He clutches the leather tighter. “Goddammed,” he whispers to himself.

“I hope not, Bill.”

He looks at the stack of wood. He can’t look at Jesse, but can feel Jesse looking at him, through him, even.

“Let it go. Give them to me and I’ll get you warm.” He outstretched a hand.

They hold silent, at an impasse. And that silence brings the biting cold back to Bill’s reality.

He shakes, blood retreating from the extremities. He is pale, life going out of his eyes. “Fine, take the fuckin’ thing. Won’t matter anyway.” He drops the saddle bag in the dirt. Indifferent.

Jesse opens the flap and whistles. A veritable treasure of kindling. He pulls out two fists-full of paper and stuffs them under the brush and branches. He leaves one paper stuck out, rolled and twisted. Rummages through his pack. “Damn this bag.”

“Damn, damn,” Jesse says.

“What?”

“Do you have a lighter?”

“S-seriously? Wha-what if I didn’t come, come along?”

“Well, I guess we were both fortunate to cross paths. Equal partners in surviving the night. So do you?”

Bill has stopped shivering. His feet don’t feel cold anymore; they don’t feel like anything. He pulls off a glove, leans back, and wedges his hand into his coat pocket. He curls his fingers around his lighter, at least he senses he is doing so, and pulls it out. It drops to the ground. He kicks it for good measure.

“Perfect,” says Jesse. Then he kneels, placing his back to the wind, shielding the paper. He pauses. A grin forms.

“What?!” Bill says.

“It’s just a beautiful irony. All these painful reminders of the past. And the past is everything, is all that happened before right now. And this past that you carry with you all gets burned away by your own lighter. Warms the body…” he looks up, “Maybe even warms the soul.” Jesse looks at Bill again. “But it ain’t Sunday and this ain’t a chapel, at least in the Puritan sense,” Jesse chuckles and winks.

A flick and the twisted paper lights. Jesse runs the flame along the perimeter of the stack. The papers catch hold of flame and a mini inferno erupts. Whatever regret or sadness Bill has leaves like the ash remains of his testimonies, drifting into the darkness. The warmth invigorates. The heat. The heat is overwhelming. A wondrous gift. Bill pulls off his boot and undoes the belt that holds his vest moccasin. He holds his feet to the fire, as close as he dares, and feels the sweet pain of blood rushing back to his toes.

They sit in silence, listening to the pop and flicker of the fire. Bill’s torn Achilles tendon ceases to ache. The metal plate in his forearm isn’t cold anymore. His ribs, broken in horse wrecks and car crashes, no longer creak. The clouds over his eyes dissipate, like the fog with the rising of the sun. And his head. His head forgets. Forgets all that has brought about his pain. He stretches out his legs and lies back, clasping his hands together behind his head. A wholesome smile greets the flame, one not seen in many years.

“Rest easy, Bill. I’ll keep watch.”

“That’s fine, just fine.”

Bill’s family have no problem finding his trail. From the tire tracks off each side of the road to the chewed up earth at the hairpin junction where he jack-knifed. The truck and trailer abandoned at the iron gate. His saddled mare pacing nervously in an abandoned garden, half-wild with fear. They go to the house, hoping he is sleeping one off. They see the bloody message and follow his tracks up to the high meadow. From up there they glass the hay meadows below, the ones fed by Manse and Dead Man Creeks. They see unnatural colors amongst the rocks and splotches of white in a radiating out into Dead Man’s meadow. A man.

They follow through the gap in the fence, over the dry irrigation ditch, and up to the rocky rise. Loose papers and notebooks are scattered hither and thither. Bill is there, barefoot. At his feet what could pass as the germinations of a camp fire- wood wet and unlit.

He is smiling,

gazing skyward with placid blue eyes.