The horse lay in the dirt beside the barn with his eyes and mouth open, his neck reaching out and his long brown stomach crosshatched with yellow twine. From the fence, though, the two boys could still see the dark bloody insides of him through the ragged gap of hide because Dick Sherman and their father hadn’t been able to close the cut completely. There was too much of it. It was like a hole in the ground when so much earth has been opened that you can’t put all the dirt back in place again. Some of it still shows; the scar is still there. So the two boys could still see into Elko, and even what was no longer visible before them was still there in memory for recollection at night whether they wanted to recall any of it ever again.
But it was late morning now, approaching noon. The two men had risen from their work, stiff and sweaty, and had gone to the horse tank in the corner of the corral to wash their hands and arms under the spill of cold wellwater that ran through a cast-iron pipe from the windmill. Then Dick Sherman cleaned his knife and their father washed the tree trimmer. Finally both men stooped under the trickle of cold water, scrubbed their faces, drank and stood up again, dripping water down their necks, and wiped their mouths and eyes across their sleeves.
Then their father said: It must be getting time to eat. You better let me buy you lunch at the café, Dick.
Sure, Dick Sherman said. I’d like to. But I can’t. I promised my boy I’d take him chub fishing over in Chief Creek.
I didn’t think you were old enough to have a boy to fish with.
I’m not. But he thinks he wants to try it. When I was leaving this morning he said I’d never get back in time. Then Sherman paused, thinking. I am pretty young though, Tom.
Course you are, Guthrie said. We all are.
Then they walked out of the corral and Dick Sherman started his pickup and drove home. The two boys got down from the fence and stood beside their father. He put his hands on their brown heads, dry and hot from the sun, and studied their faces. The boys weren’t so pale now. He brushed the hair back off their foreheads.
I’ve got one more thing to do, he said. Then we’re finished with this. Can you stand it?
What is it? Ike said.
I’ve got to drag him out into the pasture. We can’t leave him here.
I guess so, Ike said.
You can open the gates for me.
All right.
Open that corral gate first. And Bobby.
Yes.
You watch Easter. Don’t let her get out while the gate’s open. Keep her back.
So Guthrie backed his pickup into the corral, and while he was hooking a log chain around Elko’s neck Ike closed the gate and then both boys got up into the back of the pickup and watched over the tailgate. When the pickup moved, Elko swung around and followed headfirst, dragging heavily across the dirt, the dirt pushing up in front of him a little and the dust rising to hang momentarily in the bright air, the horse still coming behind them, his legs loose and bumping, bouncing some when they hit something, and on around the barn toward the pasture, leaving behind them a wide dirt-scraped trail on the ground. For fifty yards or more Easter followed, trotting and interested, then she stopped and dropped her head and bucked and stood still, watching the pickup and Elko disappear. They pulled him across that first small pasture north of the barn. At the gate to the big pasture to the west, Guthrie stopped while Ike jumped down and opened the gate for the pickup to go through.
You can leave it open, Guthrie said. We’re coming right back.
Ike got back into the pickup and they went on. The horse was dirty now, dust-coated. The twine at his stomach had broken in one place and they could see a dirty ropelike piece of him trailing out behind as they moved out across the pasture and sagebrush, and then the piece caught on something and was torn away.
Their father drove the pickup down into the gravel wash at the far side of the pasture and stopped. He got out and unhooked the chain from Elko’s neck. They were finished now.
One of you boys want to drive back? he said.
They shook their heads.
No? You can take turns.
They were still looking at the horse.
Why don’t you get up front with me anyway?
We’ll stay back here, Ike said.
What?
We want to stay back here.