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1.
At spring's end his wife vanished, taking their daughter with her, leaving Hargen alone to tend to the livestock and his addled son. By the middle of summer, he was drunk and outside stumbling through the barn, half-trying to close the mare into its stall, when his pocket flask slipped from his pocket. Sidling, he leaned to pick it up, felt the mare's hoof shiver past his palm, found himself thrown back into the dirt with a broken neck.
 All through the night he lay calling for his son, the mare calmer now and turning circles near him. His cries were feeble. He could not move his fingers or his legs or his body, could not gather his breath somehow.
The livestock snorted, rustling largely about the stalls. He could no longer hear the mare and did not know where it had gone. He was having some difficulty thinking. He listened to the barn door quire with the wind.
Rolling his eyes upward, he saw the slat-floor of the loft above him, cuts of hay tufting furiously through its cracks. To the other side, a portion of barn wall pricked with rusted nails and hooks: a shovel, a cracked harness, horseshoe, tongs.
He called for his son Brin again but knew he would not be heard above the wind. He could hear his own breath pushing hard and loud, and there were moths or mouths darkly blurring his vision. His forehead tingled, began to itch. He closed his eyes.
*
He opened them upon the clear midsummer light. The sun was cast all through the barn, shafts and floods of light pouring through the roof traps and the barn doors. He concentrated on trying to move his hand but his head admitted no commerce with his body. The stock was hungry and he could hear one or several animals kicking in their stalls. He watched the pull and shift of light, the cracks in the slats above him shot through with light at times, as if the hay were afire.
He felt near him the mare's vast body, heard the animal nicker, but could not capture it in his sight. His vision seemed papered over, a kind of translucent darkness, and he knew he was passing out. When he was alert and awake again, the character of the light had blued. He lay trying to gather his breath. The light thinned further, snuffed itself almost entirely out, though whether through a shift in the world or a decay of his vision alone, he could not say.
"Da?" he heard his addled son say.
The boy was moving sloppily, somewhere outside the barn.
"Here," he called. "Brin?"
"Da?" his son called. "Got some, got some din-din?"
"In the barn," Hargen said. "In here."
"Da?" his son called again, this time farther away. He could hear the boy crash through the bushes well beyond the barn and then cry out. He kept calling the boy's name until he didn't know if he was saying his son's name or merely dreaming it.
*
Above him, a face struck around the edges by sun, the loose hair flailing with light.
"Brin," Hargen said. "Help me."
"Got some, got some dinner?" Brin asked.
"Not yet," Hargen said. "I'm not so good. I got a broke neck, son."
"Broke?"
"Sure," said Hargen. "Broke. Go into town and get help."
"Got some, got some dinner?" Brin asked.
"Sure," said Hargen. "But it's in town. Go down and get one of them back up here."
The boy loomed above, said nothing.
"Fetch the sheriff," said Hargen.
"Sure, sure," said Brin. "Dinner."
"That's right," said Hargen. "Bring the sheriff back and we'll get you some dinner."
"That's right," said Brin. "Come on, Da," he said. "Da?"
Hargen lay looking at his son. The boy stayed crouched, unmoving, over him.
"Da?" the boy said.
"What," said Hargen.
"Da?" the boy said.
"What?" said Hargen.
He waited for the boy to speak. The boy did not. Hargen closed his eyes.
"Da?"
"Goddamit," said Hargen. "Go to town."
The boy stood and wandered off. A moment later he was back, lifting Hargen's limp arm and letting it fall again. Hargen watched the arm come up, feeling nothing. He felt his eyes roll back into his sockets, the image of his own dead arm and his son vanishing.
2.
Stomach tight and aching from not having eaten or some other mottled cause. No good for Da to lie there. Always coming to town with him before. Why not now?
Out into the light again, sunstruck through the eyes. Ouagh! Startled to hear a pig in his mouth. Back into the dark.
Cooler and darker. Da still lying there, no good about--
"Got some, got some din-din?" he shouted to his father.
All in dust, no word from him. Arms coming up, flopping down again.
Scaring him. Back--
Sun just struck across eyes, something gone hot. Ouagh! Pig's squeal. What are you, a pig? Da says. No, not him, just--
Pushed into the treeshadows.
Sun come forth dappled, fluttering upon the leaves. How many times I got to tell you to stay to the road? Reached for it. Light spattered off the leaves, onto the back of his hands. Was become him.
--pulled away--Oaugh!
--but, no, on the leaves after all.
Out to the road. Slash of sun across his eyes--
Treeshadows. Cool. Da not here but his voice--
Some miles or more then fallen in an arc down the trees and against the ground. Pig asqueal but not heard because of the leaves pressed up into his mouth. Don't matter much. Smell of ground, damp crawlspace under the house.
Where's the house?
Da, where was he?
Looked--
Maybe gone on to town without him and was already--
Dinner, he meant.
Stumbled up again and not in the road. Not so far in the trees either. Sun but shade too.
Where is Mamma?
"Mamma?" he yelled.
Dinner, he meant.
Who was it got dinner? Not Momma anymore. Tight and aching. Struck his belly with his fist.
Who was it got dinner? Pig getting the nerve again to talk.
Da?
Where was Da?
"Da?" he shouted.
No Da. Trees melted altogether away, fields not given to shade this time of year. Could be shot for trespassing. Whatever that--
Crouched in the last treeshadows, fields and town looming ahead. Trespassing. Looked around. Crouched wasn't so good after all. Get a move on, Brin. Hands up to cover his head so Da won't hit him. Get a move--
Blurching out of shadows and running as quick as could be towards the closest house, pig only squealing a little at first.
Da telling him from wherever he was hidden, No, Brin, get away--
On quicker again, asqueal louder, toward the first not-a-house building. Favorite: Candy store.
Dinner, he meant--the sheriff. Who was that? Who a sheriff was--
--word already going soft in his mouth and about to be forgotten.
Bang door open, push on through. Pig left outside. Aproned candyman, both hands on the counter, leaning.
"Hello, Brin," the man said. "You and your pa in town today?"
Didn't know what to say, nodded. Better when there was another person around. Easier to pay attention. Sometimes.
Behind him for his Da. Not there.
An array of glistening glass, candy coiled or lumped greasily inside.
Mouth gone all wet, pig gotten in the door and back in his mouth somehow and trying to squeal again. Held it back down for the sheriff's sake. Da had trained him right.
One eye goggling the apron-bound sheriff there leaning behind the counter, other going wherever it pleased: candy.
"Got some, got some dinner?" he asked.
"What? Where's your pa?" the other said. "Down to the feed store? He shouldn't be letting you in here alone."
Didn't know what to say, nodded. Better with another person around, long as that person didn't ask no questions. Kept swallowing his spit and holding his stomach and was polite.
"Got some, got some dinner?" he asked, a little louder.
"Candy?" asked the sheriff from behind his apron. "You want some candy?"
Sheriff peeling the glass off the top of a jar. Flash of light off it-- Ouagh! Sheriff in front of him, holding a piece of dark candy toward him--
"You okay?" he was asking.
Took the candy and forced it into his mouth. Slick and good on his tongue. Up between teeth, crunched it good.
"How's your father doing?" the sheriff asked.
Closed mouth, snappily. Something to be said to this, knew that much. His Pa? Knew what to--
"Broken," said Brin.
"What?"
"Not so good, not so good," said Brin.
"Still hurting, is he? It was a surprise to all of us when your mother left," he said. "Tell him I'll come out to see him some time. A visit's what he needs."
Glad to have remembered. A good day.
"Got some, got some dinner?"
"You want some more?" asked the sheriff. "You got any money?"
"Sure, sure," said Brin.
"I suspect you're hurting too. Not easy, losing a mother."
Jar to jar, no longer able to hold it in but his mouth watering out through his lips. Red ones he wanted, round red.
"Got to give me some money," the sheriff said.
"Sure, sure."
"You got to go ask your father for some money if you don't have none on you," he said.
"Sure, sure."
Red ones were the ones he wanted, round red. Blue as well, curled. Black ones like snake eyes. Don't go under there, snakes-- Some more, all different colors.
"Go on, now," said the sheriff. "Get back to your pa."
Green, slick curves and hissing. Just stay back and let Pa toss the snake up with the rake. Then dead, eyes black.
Pointed. Red.
"All right, what the hell."
Candies from all the different jars pointed to, poured into paper. Leaned forward toward the counter to see what--
"Here you go," said the sheriff, holding the sack out. "I'll put it to credit under your Pa's name. Go run him down now and tell him what's been done."
3.
There was a pallor to the whole world around him, a dimness too. The livestock, if there were any still in their stalls, were largely unheard, and there was a certain underwater distance for him in the sound of his own breathing. A notion of pain sprang vaguely at his neck and spread lower now, as if his spine was starting slowly to knit together again.
His head, he found when he opened his eyes again, had moved, perhaps nudged by the mare. He could see more of the loft, less of the barn wall.
He imagined himself lying still until his spine healed of its own accord. Then, paper-thin and stripped of all impurities, he would rise and stand, go about his chores.
There was a flash and flutter across his vision, as if of a bird. He could not say if it was real or imagined. Then a great roar and ascent of noise, one of the stalls splintering and perhaps going to bits just out of vision. He watched the hay in the loft descend in pale drifts, the whole barn rattling.
The noise went softer and softer. Eventually he lost it again all together.
*
"Da," his son was saying. "Got some, got some money?"
"Brin," he said. "Are they coming?"
"Sure, sure," said the boy.
Hargen licked his lips. He could hardly feel them anymore, sensed there than in the memory of his body below his neck.
"Who's coming for me?"
"Money," said the boy.
"What?"
"Money?" asked the boy, then lifted a crumpled paper bag into Hargen's vision.
"Are they coming now?" Hargen asked again.
"Sure, sure?" he said.
"Who's coming?"
The boy didn't respond.
"The sheriff?" asked Hargen. "Did you talk to the sheriff?"
The boy held the paper bag up, then stood and sidled out.
*
Brin left him alone for what seemed hours, then later reappeared, uttering the word money or sure, sure or something equally bereft of significance. After a while, Hargen stopped listening. He lay one night, perhaps more, his mouth gone dry. He was growing weak. He saw himself slowly dead, of thirst, starvation.
His son was over him, asway, then fled again. He reappeared with his face smeared with currant jelly, sparkling with bits of broken glass. He was smiling.
"You find some dinner?" Hargen croaked.
The boy just kept smiling.
*
There were times his mind was with him, times it was not. In his worst hours, he felt as if he had slipped into the near-impenetrable head of his addled son. He experienced a kinship and a likeness with the boy he could never have guessed at before.
He thought often to his wife and daughter. There came in unsaid moments a certain glory to the midsummer light. He lost himself in the shift of hay through the air. The grain of the wood rode above him, the pierced deck of a great, stranded ship. He wished to die like that, caught away in visible things.
He tried to get his son to release the livestock from their stalls, but the boy was either frightened or unable to understand. Besides, the animals had kicked their way free or lay down in their stalls and waited to die. In either case, he no longer heard them. He could not tell how much time was passing anymore, when they would come for him, if at all. His vision came and went, came again. Even in his best hours, he began to wish he were dead.
*
His son squatted above him, eyes open, hardly blinking. His face was pocked with scraps and bits of rotted fruit.
"When they coming?" Hargen croaked.
"Got some, got some din-din?" his son asked loudly.
"No," said Hargen. "...I..."
"Got some, got some din-din?"
"Where's the sheriff?"
The boy held up his palm, showing in the crease a wrinkled and dirtied scrap of white paper. Hargen kept his eyes open, staring at it. There was a certain vertigo to the irregular surface. He tried to make faces of the wrinkles.
"Just kill me," he said.
But his son was not there.
Around him, the dust slowly rotated in shafts of midsummer light, an ephemeral machinery. He blinked his eyes, squinched his cheeks. He imagined himself stretching his hands above his head, rising slowly, swaying. He saw himself walking out of the barn, sitting down to table, his wife and daughter beside him. It struck him as so real that when he stopped he was surprised to find himself still in the barn.
The light seemed to hesitate in place for hours, even days, then quickly spilled up the walls and into darkness. His wife and daughter were there, he felt, just shy of vision. Calling to them, he requested they kill him. He opened his eyes to find crows gathered in the rafters and loft, looking blankly down. Toadlike, they hopped along a cross-beam, heads drawn in.
"Got some, got some dinner?" his son asked.
"Brin," he said. "Kill me."
The boy tilted his head to one side, like a dog. Hargen turned his eyes back to the wall. He was having trouble keeping his eyes focused. "Go fetch the shovel," he whispered. "Come on, boy."
He tried to swallow, could not.
"It's on the wall," he said. "Go on."
His son's head, when he opened his eyes, was tilted the other direction.
"Go on," he said. "The shovel."
"Got some, got some din-din?"
"The shovel," he said. "Then dinner."
He watched the boy straighten, look confusedly about. He lost track of him for a while, then the boy was there above him, holding the shovel awkwardly by the blade, the pole bumping up against his face.
"Good boy," he said.
Then the boy was gone from Hargen's vision and Hargen was moaning out in despair, then suddenly the boy was back.
"Cut off my head," said Hargen. "With the shovel. Quick now."
"Got some--"
"Sure," said Hargen. "Cut it off and then dinner."
The boy spoke again, a muddle Hargen could make no sense of.
"Come on, now," he said. "It's easy. Press the blade down through my neck. I'm already broke. I'll come right apart."
His son stood bland faced a moment, then brought the shovel forward, dropping the bowl of it over Hargen's face.
"Good," Hargen said into the metal. "Almost. Pick it up and try again."
"Brin?" Hargen said.
"Brin?"
4.
No good for Da to lie there.
No Da--where was Da? Just a shovel.
"Da?" he called out.
Looked into the stalls and something lying there. Would not move either, just like his Da had been.
"Da?" he asked.
Didn't say nothing. Would not move either, just like a shovel. No good for Da to lie there.
The shovel, he meant.
They wan't no pig because the pig he had swallowed it. Just ignore the swine, son. What was a swine but something like a pig but not so bad and not stuck in his throat.
He had to turn--
He had to turn around again to see where the barn was. No clear notion of how he had got out--
Saw the house through open doors.
The midsummer sun misshapen like--
The pig trying to leap up his throat but he was keeping it down.
A good day.
Plants syrupy around the side of the house. Door missed somehow. Wipe your boots. I said, Wipe your goddam boots. Door, push in through it as if you don't even notice. Because you don't, truth be told.
"Da?" he called.
All over the floor. Keep your hands out of the pantry. Always stung good. Kept looking at his hands, waiting for them to start stinging. Where was Ma now?
Keep your hands, keep your--
Picked out the biggest jar, peaches floating inside. Pulled it--
--dropped from his hands, bounced--
Shattered into shards of light, piercing his eyes. Pig almost rushed back in again. Peaches awobble out across the floor.
Poorly crouched, began to eat.
*
More hours, more bottles. That shattering, and sometimes his mouth stinging after he ate some. Face casting. Stool streaked red. Mouth aflame, spit all foamed pink.
"Da?" he cried.
Fluid weeping from his hands. Fingers bloody and aglitter.
Could do what he--
Da's voice, Ma's voice, but no bodies along with it.
Didn't matter what he did.
Keep your hands--
Goes tipping off the counter, shattering--
Snuffling around the house, looking for a corner to crouch in.
*
Horse at the window, head bobbing.
Horse better than a pig but can't get the sound of it into his mouth through the glass.
Bobbing its head, mane quavering--
Can't stop looking.
Stepping slowly off the porch and stroking and getting up close. Open mouthed and taking a big bite, trying to cram the horse in.
Knocked and spun all over and the horse gone, hooves clobbering away.
Chews the little he got. All fur. Chews his tongue too. Tries to neigh, but don't come out. Didn't bite off enough horse.
*
Waited for the horse. Tapped the glass. Pig starting to speak again. Shattered a jar, ate, came back. Waited for the horse.
Door banging in its frame. A good day. Manage to push out. Sun cutting right into his eyes-- Ouagh! Covered them with his hand, groped about for somewhere steady and cool.
Pig--
Door wan't banging no more. Might as well not be there--
None so bright. Could take his hands off and find a little shade to crouch in.
Crouching when saw a flash and blur. Was the horse--
Men, he meant. Could see now. Haw!
Maybe he could take a bite out of--
More than one. He can't count. Not even to two. A bunch of them.
Then up right around him, thumbs in beltloops or gunbelts. All of them had thumbs, just like him. Tried it, but his pants had got to somewheres.
"Jesus, he's filthy," one of them said.
"Where's your Pa?" said another. "Quick now."
"Where's your pants?"
Too much all at once.
"Got some, got some dinner?" he asked.
Tight faces.
"Got some, got--"
--like a bird had flew hard against the side of his head. Whole of it spun sidewards, floorboards hitting his face. Don't know how where the bird come from. Pig asqueal again.
"Jesus, Karl, leave him be. He don't know better."
Hands on his arms, stood back up again. Something stroking him atop the head, maybe the same bird. Shook his head.
"Where's your Pa?" said one, face red. "Come on now."
Just the pig talking. Couldn't get a word out.
"Jesus Christ, looks like hell in there. Glass all over, rotted food too."
All talking, all at once. Just squinting against the light bouncing off the man's-- Don't ever touch it, Brin. It can kill you. Looked just like his Da's gun, all metally and aglim. Would not touch it. Why did this man have his Da's--
"Da?" he called out.
"He haen't in here."
"What you done to your Pa?" one of them was saying. Was ahead on his shint. Was shaking him.
Ouagh!
"Stop your squalling." Stop your squealing, swine--
All he wanted was some--
Dinner, he meant.
"Karl, go on out and check the barn. Verl, take a glance round the property."
Door banging again. Tried to get over through it for some dinner. Something don't--
"You're a squirmer, haen't you."
Tried to get his teeth into the hand, couldn't--
Stopped it. Tracing the shadow line with his toe. Birds too, and he called out to them.
"Da!" he called.
Tried to--
Was his stomach lurching and calling. No, you stay here with Mama. Followed the arm out to a face. Didn't recognize it.
"Ma?" he asked.
"I haen't your Mama, you goddam crazy bastard."
Was his stomach--
Tried to make the horse nicker out of his mouth. Only animal, a pig.
Some kind of flash over by the barn. Running: the horse--
Man, he meant.
Ran and come up on the porch too.
"He's there, all right. Dead, neck broke. There's a shovel on his face."
"On his face?"
"That's right."
"A what?"
"A shovel."
"What's it there for?"
"How the hell should I know?"
Leap out, take the man into his mouth.
Something was holding--
Tapping on his--
"You think this little shit killed him?"
"Ma?"
"Where's his Mama?"
"Nobody knows that."
"I wish he'd stop talking about her."
"Da?" Brin called.
"What we gone to do with him? Who's going to take him?"
"You think he killed him?"
"All I know is there's a dead man with a shovel over his face. He sure as hell didn't put the shovel there himself."
No horse. Just one of them slipping out his father's gun-- Was it his father's? Don't ever touch it. See here? It's a trigger. That's worst to touch--
Tried to say Da, come out half-pig, half-horse. Throat crammed full of animals.
Stay away from behind it as well, son. It can give a hell of a kick--
Fluid aweep from his fingers and--
"He don't have no relatives to take him?"
Then trying--
"Haen't none, now that his Mama's gone."
"What exactly are we supposed to do with him?"
"Be a mercy to kill him."
Something still holding him and--
Tried to go into the house.
Cooler and darker. Fallen in an arc but something holding.
"We always been a merciful bunch."
And drugged up again. One of them, several hands. One holding Da's gun by the trigger, all metal and glimmer, and waving it. Put it up right against his head. Don't ever touch it, Brin. It can--
Jerked back, pig out full and running greasy about his mouth.
"Hold still, boy. Over quick enough."
Reined the pig and--
stumbled a little--
then gone limp enough.
"That's better," one of them said. "Good enough anyway."
Then his Da's gun up near his face again, but not touching. Don't ever touch it-- But he wan't touching. Was a good boy, he was.
"Look away now."
But he had to look right at. Case it tried to touch him again.
"Tell him to stop looking at me, Karl."
"Just get it over."
Burst of sun inside his head. Dim world in an arc. Floor flashed up to meet him. Gone dim all over. Boots all about. Da.
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