{"id":19170,"date":"2024-10-16T19:35:45","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T00:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=19170"},"modified":"2024-11-01T21:10:47","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T02:10:47","slug":"three-eyed-calf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/19170","title":{"rendered":"Three-Eyed Calf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Bill,<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This city has been good to me. Imagine rooms of girls like me drinking beer and dancing. Imagine girls in boy clothes. It\u2019s real normal to them here. I wanted you to know there\u2019s a world where I can be safe.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, I wanted to say I remember the day I came home with my shirt bloody and I flashed you my missing tooth. You didn\u2019t say anything. You didn\u2019t have the words. You drew me a bath and looked away until my body was beneath the suds. You found my hand under the water. I didn\u2019t know where to start, and even now, I still don\u2019t.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I know you probably went back to kissing beautiful girls when you left me. Real girls, pretty ones, with long hair. I know, also, that none of them could ever be to you what I was. I know you wouldn\u2019t let them touch you in the way I did.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not even what I wanted to say either. I really only wanted to say be careful with<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

yourself.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been saying our names. From Georgie to Georgia and Bill to William. I like to imagine us together as kids, two little people growing up together. I should\u2019ve kept the baby, Bill. We could have loved the kid. We could have confused everybody. I\u2019m sorry I was so upset about it. Maybe you were always right about miracles.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I hope this is still your address, just as much as I hope it isn\u2019t. I should\u2019ve said the words then, so that you\u2019d never have to read all the things I had to say tonight. But I couldn\u2019t. So I\u2019m writing you a letter.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It had been a too-cold spring when they found the three-eyed calf slickened by mud in the field one glassy gray morning, convinced he wouldn\u2019t make it. Had the white eye of death, as they called it, just a round milky center to his gleaming black irises. His mother, who had calved quickly in the night, seemed unconcerned, and was stamping her hoofprints into the ground a few yards away from her rheumy-eyed son. They brought it into the barn and carried over the hoses and twenty-year-old farmhand Bill Harding stood there, pouring hot water all over it, while the farm owner\u2019s wife Lucille rubbed the calf\u2019s chest, stimulating its quiet lungs. It started writhing so hard they couldn\u2019t tell if it was coming or going, limbs contracting as the blood flowed back into them, and suddenly he was up and shivering and had life in him, and Bill filled a sled with straw and lifted him up into it, keeping the calf on his chest with his head upright so he could breathe easier, when he finally saw the eye.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The third eye was in the center of the calf\u2019s forehead, and it had lids and thick wet lashes and moved as if it was blinking, although Bill imagined it couldn\u2019t be functional. He held the baby upright for a little while longer, gazing into its three deep eyes \u2013\u2013 then laid its head on the straw and went to find the mother, to give her calcium and convince her to bring the calf her milk.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They called the vet in later that day, who said it could live the life of any other normal calf on the farm, the same as any animal destined for slaughter.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That was Bill Harding\u2019s last day at Dry Valley Ranch. He took off in his pickup truck and decided he was going to Montana. The clouds, low and ponderous with their weight, grazed at the tops of the Beartooth Mountains behind the dirty windshield.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgie had been working at a bar just north of Big Sky called the Broken Spoke. For the past year she was settling into something that she only recently realized was really her life and not just an assembly of morning cigarettes and some empty kegs that needed filling and a few new skiers frequenting the bar just for the season. The same sad old singers would play on Friday nights sometimes, fingering the same desperate chords on their guitars, and during a particularly bad rendition of Piano Man, Georgie arrived at the haunting understanding that this was the way it would be, forever.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent weeks, Georgie had been trying to get rid of a piano with no keys. The staff used to put their bus tubs in it at the back of the restaurant, but even its wooden frame had started falling away, rendering it even more useless than it already was, unable to support either a song or its structure. All the bussers figured they\u2019d throw it out, but Georgie, after seeing the piano at the edge of the street, dragged it back inside, saying someone could put some plants on here or use it as a liquor cabinet and it\u2019d look real nice, it just could use some staining, is all.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a Wednesday, still early, when Bill came in, raucous and low-smelling like earth and cigarettes, with shining goldendark eyes and a pink nose soft like veal. He was unshaven in a boy\u2019s way, not a man\u2019s. His shirt, stretched wide by the broad line of his chest, still wasn\u2019t dry from the wetness of the calf\u2019s sturdy head with three eyes inside it when he sat down and ordered a Pabst Blue Ribbon on draft. The Grizzlies were on the television, playing just a little bit too loudly against the silence. His eyes barely flicked over Georgie, whose boyish knees were exposed, long and flexing like a racehorse\u2019s as she walked over to the other side of the vast bar.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgie, her hands still sticky with sliced lime, poured the beer slowly and reverently as she peered over the counter towards him. She figured he was a cowhand, likely just passing through, but it wasn\u2019t quite summer yet \u2013\u2013 a little too early in the season to be herding. He smelled like animal and wet earth and she found herself interested in why. The spout started stuttering as she imagined the keyless piano sitting in the corner of his apartment, sparsely occupied by a bottle of light rum, a dark one, maybe a Jack Daniels and a cinnamon whiskey, a potted plant from his mother or someone. She imagined the keyless piano darkened by three coats of red oak stain.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat brings you to Big Sky?\u201d she asked, sliding the glass towards Bill. He looked up from his pile of dimes and saw Georgie\u2019s bright and flushed face cocked behind the counter. Her hair was cut short, didn\u2019t even graze the nape of her neck, and he was surprised to hear the light lilt of a woman\u2019s voice from her. He wasn\u2019t used to looking at girls when he could see the shape of their head and wasn\u2019t sure where to put his eyes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLooking for a job, maybe,\u201d Bill replied in his slow drawl, sliding his clattering coins across the counter. \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are you coming from?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was a ranch hand down in Wyoming.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy\u2019d you leave?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWeird story,\u201d he said, shaking his head, and told Georgie about the calf and the mud and the little third eye, peeking up from the middle of its forehead. \u201cAnd they just said, well, as good as any to be slaughtered. You know, in India or somewhere an animal like that\u2019d be worth something.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we\u2019re not in India or somewhere.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just saying. It\u2019s a miracle. It\u2019s gotta be.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s what I always thought about miracles,\u201d Georgie said, planting both her hands on the bar and leaning over as if indulging in a secret. \u201cIt\u2019s a real crazy coincidence that we all stopped hearing about miracles right when the video camera came around.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt meant something to me,\u201d Bill said, bristling. Georgie stopped.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSay,\u201d she said. \u201cYou in the market for a piano?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t play much music.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s got no keys. You wanna see?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill, in the back of the restaurant with his hands on his hips, examined the piano. He struck it on its side and listened. \u201cLooks like good bones. Just needs a fresh stain.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgie smiled.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was unquestionable that there had always been something wrong about Georgie. There was a sense that she had too much understanding inside her, that the world was somehow both much stranger and more comprehensible through her eyes. Farm life was tough and unforgiving and necessary and no one knew that better than Georgie, who started killing chickens with the axe at seven; who also frequently made a habit of saving monarchs from the heat with a dish of sugar water.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgie was born as Georgia and grew up in a small town in Tennessee and she hated both of these things. When she came home at twenty-something years old with her hair mowed short to her scalp, her father gave her a look like she was one of those chickens left to bleed<\/span> and she left for the sprawling West and hadn\u2019t been back since.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill frequented the Broken Spoke for the rest of the week, often sitting for hours at the end of the bar and only leaving for a smoke or a piss. Georgie would ask if he had any luck finding a job, he\u2019d shake his head, she\u2019d send a beer his way. He got along with her regulars, mostly lonely old men with heavy mustaches desperate to impart life lessons upon a guy who hadn\u2019t ruined things for himself yet, and he got along with Georgie.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the start of the next week it started storming, a thick, springtime storm. She awoke to rain trickling through the gutters that lined her apartment building and dragged herself to work through the moaning thunder to find Bill lipping a cigarette beneath the awning in front of the entrance, his pickup truck the only car in the gravel lot. As she approached the door, fumbling with her keys, he tossed a nod in her direction.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou spend all night here, Bill?\u201d she asked.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWasn\u2019t planning on it,\u201d he sighed. \u201cMy truck won\u2019t start.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBattery dead?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot sure,\u201d he shrugged. \u201cNever had much luck with machines.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgie hopped in the driver\u2019s side of Bill\u2019s pickup truck and tried to revive the engine to no avail. He stood outside grinding gravel beneath the worn underside of his boot. She looked around inside and noticed the backseat was piled high with clothing, a cooler shoved between two seats, tools and flashlights strewn around on top.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo luck,\u201d she said, climbing out. \u201cI can call a tow company for you, we\u2019ve got a phone inside. You got a place to stay?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBack of the truck works well enough.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She sucked air in through her teeth and parked her hands on her hips. Bill looked small and wet in his thin flannel and she felt some sort of affection for him, the kind you might feel for a batch of kittens left in a box on the side of the road. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what. I\u2019ll tow your truck back to my place and you can stay there till you get things in order.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to do that,\u201d he said, waving his hand.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know, but I want to,\u201d she said. \u201cA kid like you deserves a better start around here.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t be any sort of burden, I promise,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll get a job soon. And I\u2019ll fix up that piano for you or something.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The rain was still coming down and running into their eyes and darkening both of their hair and Georgie sent Bill inside to dry himself off while she lit up a cigarette of her own, decided she didn\u2019t want it, stamped it out.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill said he would stay at Georgie\u2019s until he could find work, of which there was theoretically no shortage. He was used to kicking around. Had worked a lot of going-nowhere gigs. The rodeo didn\u2019t pay well if the cowboy wasn\u2019t good but Bill was quick and light, littler than the bulldoggers, and he could stick himself on a bronc bareback and mark the horse out every time. He made a little bit of money that way but nearly threw his back out a couple of times. Still, eventually he had to turn to ranch work, steadier but for low pay and long hours and a heavy reliance on the ebbing seasons.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He had left his fair share of farms \u2013\u2013 end of the season, bad pay, tough boss, old ranchers who were dumber than he was \u2013\u2013 but this time it felt different. He couldn\u2019t get the calf out of his head. He stuck around and directed his gaze towards Georgie\u2019s keyless piano. A relentless focus began taking shape.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her apartment was small but full of light and hissed with every gust of wind that leaked through the rubber linings around the windows, out of which you could see an endless stretch of sloping bone-white mountain. The piano occupied a prime plot of land at the center of the living room, edging itself between the couch and small rattan dining table. Georgie did not lend herself to caring much about decor, but she did keep a small collection of animal skulls she had found and they lined the windowsills precariously. The farmhand\u2019s ripe and wild and musky smell began to saturate the apartment. Georgie concluded from the blonde hairs of his forearms that he was dark with sun but light underneath, and she often thought of his bowed frame with birdish wrists, his long fingers stained with paint and rough with nicks<\/span>,<\/span> working away at the piano while she was at the Broken Spoke, doing her own dirty work.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One night Georgie came home to a plate of pulled chicken and fragrant red rice left for her in the fridge by Bill, who was passed out and covered in sawdust on the couch, his half-eaten plate on his lap, and she laid him down and took off his mud-crusted boots and covered him with a blanket and finished her food and his, and then realized he had already washed the dishes she expected to be waiting for her in the sink.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou off work tonight?\u201d he asked the next morning. Georgie was brushing her teeth, the sun already coming in high and strong through the window, both of them up later than usual, as he leaned up against the door frame of the bathroom with crossed ankles. They channeled looks at each other through the mirror. It was a weekend and she had been given the night off in favor of a former bartender back in town looking for a few extra hours. She didn\u2019t mind, and figured she could use some time to herself.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYep,\u201d she confirmed around the frothing toothpaste.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, I\u2019m starting to think I might go get a job herding,\u201d Bill said. \u201cI\u2019m getting cooped up around here.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, do what you want, Bill,\u201d Georgie said, spitting. \u201cI will say Big Sky\u2019s a fine enough place to live as any, but it\u2019s none of my business either way.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill was unsure what he had expected her to say. He pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and ambled over to the piano and settled into a day that was already gnawing at him. Georgie flicked off the bathroom lights and Bill muscled a sour look off his face as her boots tapped a path past him and out the door.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill worked until the sun settled itself down behind the mountains and he poured himself a few drinks with a biting and ugly taste before Georgie came back from the bars late that night leaking the smell of alcohol, her button-down shirt in disarray, her cheeks ruddy and shining like her split knuckles. Bill, who had been drifting along on Jack Daniels for the last few hours, grabbed her neatly and tightly and they kissed one another desperately and for a moment there was no boy and no girl, until suddenly there was, and it hurt her and in the dark she saw nothing but his silver-filled tooth reflecting from the wet depths of his mouth and she thought there really is no hope anymore is there.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill finally finished the piano just before they crossed over the crest of summer. He took Georgie\u2019s animal skull collection from the windowsills and cleaned them up a little bit with peroxide so they\u2019d gleam a little whiter and he put them where the keys would be, like some sort of museum display, and then revealed it to her after a short Thursday shift.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe you did it,\u201d she said, shining. \u201cI was telling everyone. Just a nice varnish and it\u2019d look good as new. Hell, it looks better than new.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She dragged him outside and tucked knight\u2019s-spur stolen from the neighbor\u2019s yard behind his ears, then hers, and brought him out dancing at a nearby bar in Park County, where they had to take down three drinks each and a cigarette with the bartender before they could get their feet moving, and they fell over each other tangled in laughter.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He abandoned the notion of herding and found a job with a wheat and cattle farmer a little ways away. After discovering his broken pickup wasn\u2019t salvageable and would only get him a little bit of money for parts, he saved his what he could in an empty coffee tin and after a while bought a beat-up truck from Georgie\u2019s neighbor with a shot transmission that he worked on fixing. Work was long and hard and he\u2019d bury himself underneath the truck afterward and emerge blackened with oil. They continued having quiet and confusing sex and rarely talked about it. Georgie always kept her shirt on. On some strange nights they would lay facing each other in Georgie\u2019s narrow bed, their stomachs nearly touching, on the verge of yielding in a way they both knew neither could.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Working at the bar had always been hard but recently it had been harder. Georgie was never rich but now money was tight and running short of enough. She started getting into quick and dirty fights. With the way she looked the cops weren\u2019t quite so nice with her. Bill figured what had happened when she would come back the next morning, her belt gone, with a lip swollen and one black eye shining behind her eyelashes, so bright they were nearly white. He started sitting with her at work sometimes when it would get late, as a beacon or reminder at the end of the bar, sucking away at orange wedges and cigarettes while she wiped gummed-up beer from every surface. They had a drink or two together afterward and if the place was empty he\u2019d play \u201cA Boy Named Sue\u201d on the jukebox to make Georgie laugh. If he was too wrung out from the farm to come and visit, he\u2019d take a burning cold shower and go to bed and save all the hot water for her. Despite the impossible kindness she was facing she had the sense that something terrible might catch up to her soon and she tried hard to ignore it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The night it happened was whitehot and redolent of summer and neither of them had been drinking save for a few sips of a sweet port wine. They bought the softest pears they could find and ate them with their hands, letting the juice leak. It was late and they could hear the neighbor\u2019s dog barking roughly and the wind howling high and fierce, and they both ended up inside one another, somehow.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As she tried to sleep she imagined the piano, imagined it with no keys. Imagined the whole thing falling away.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgie was a few weeks late and had managed to forbid herself from thinking about it. She kept smoking cigarettes and finished every night with a short malt whiskey. She kept on taking punches. There was a catalogue of things she knew she wasn\u2019t supposed to do. Smoke, drink alcohol or coffee, ride a bucking horse, take a hot bath. She resented the imagined loss along with whatever hypothetical creature was taking it away from her. But she felt something inherent shifting deep inside and had started to pray, and although she didn\u2019t believe in miracles, she asked for one.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill walked in on her late one night with her hands clasped, kneeling humbly in front of the assembly of animal bones on the piano. He came up behind her and touched the dip on the back of her head where skull turns to neck.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t know you prayed, darling,\u201d he said. His drawl dropped long and leisurely. He never called her darling and her throat choked up thinking about it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t usually,\u201d said Georgie.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s on your mind?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJust thinking.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They dipped into silence. Bill rubbed her short hair with his long fingers and she heard the blood rumble beneath her ears. \u201cSometimes I still pray for that calf,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope they don\u2019t kill and eat him like the rest.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re gonna kill that baby, Bill.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know he\u2019s got a good few years until then.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got no chance,\u201d said Georgie, willing the tears not to come. \u201cHe never had a<\/span> chance at all.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGeorgie,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ve gotta tell me what\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She looked at him and he suddenly knew and then they both knew what each other would do and it hurt so much that Georgie went to her bedroom and Bill slept in the bed of his truck with a blanket, staring at a sky too crowded with stars. When he woke up at the ridge of the balmy morning it smelled like horsemint and he climbed out of the truck and Georgie was standing there with a cup of coffee, putting her stance in one hip.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGeorgie, I\u2019ll marry you,\u201d he said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBill, don\u2019t,\u201d she said, and his heart scattered throughout his chest.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI will. I\u2019ll get a real job. I don\u2019t care what people will think. I\u2019ll do right by you, and by the baby, I swear.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m getting rid of it,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then I\u2019m leaving.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill, planted in the earth like a gaunt sapling, looked at the glaze on top of her empty eyes and knew there was nothing he could do to pull her back out, and he thought of how if only loving someone was as easy as bringing a white-eyed calf home from death.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She meant it when she said she was leaving, which he knew because she always meant everything she said. She told Bill he could keep the apartment as long as he made rent on time because she was friends with the landlord and she was a real nice lady, and she just asked for a little bit of money from him for her furniture and her abortion and took barely a suitcase full of things because she really never had that much stuff to begin with, and just like that, cleanly and formally, Georgie rambled off the long road into Billings.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill stayed in Big Sky. He kept his farm job. Slaughter became easier. He went to the Broken Spoke and came home with dim and slippery whiskey memories. The bed was open but he kept sleeping on the couch anyway because in the mornings for a few seconds it felt like Georgie might still be there, about to leave her room and mumble a greeting to him before she fried them up some eggs with toast and a pat of butter. But there was no Georgie and even less of a baby. One morning it all became too much and he crushed all of Georgie\u2019s animal skulls with a hammer and kicked the keyless piano to bits. It broke quite easily and he thought the bones weren\u2019t that good, at the end of the day. He was surprised it hadn\u2019t fallen apart sooner, something waiting permission to crumple in on itself.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Right after, he climbed in his pickup truck and hit the dashboard so hard he heard something rattle loose within the truck and within himself and he cried a heaving wet sob for the first time since he found out the three-eyed calf was destined for slaughter. As he started driving he felt the throaty bellowing engine guiding him back to Dry Valley Ranch.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That was Bill Harding\u2019s last day in Big Sky, Montana. The mountains fell quietly out of his sight in the filmy rearview mirror.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The road was long and empty and he felt a cavernous ache within him. He stopped at a truck stop and let a man suck him off through a glory hole and felt a round hard pit sinking in his stomach. He thought of Georgie\u2019s short hair cropped close to her scalp and the soft boyish fur on her legs and the nothingness baby that was no longer growing inside her and he thought of how he loved them both so much he could hardly stand it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill saw Lucille, the farmer\u2019s wife, out near the chicken coop scattering feed as he eased his truck into a hard patch of the field. The farm was teeming with a verdant gust of life, seeping from every formerly sun-sucked crust of dirt, as the summer had been kind and even the hobby garden that Lucille kept for the purposes of making fresh basil pesto and filling vases with gaillardias was overflowing out of its bed. Against the backdrop of sprawling grasses, Bill picked out the cows and their long-limbed calves spreading across the pasture like spilled water. He felt the weight of the money in his pocket, from every dollar he earned from the farm work to every penny he found between the couch cushions in his and Georgie\u2019s apartment.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lucille\u2019s husband, Tom, ambled over, holding up his hat against the swarming brightness of the sun. \u201cBill,\u201d he said, his mouth crowded with tobacco, \u201cHow you been?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSir,\u201d Bill greeted him with a nod. \u201cBeen doing some farm work out in Montana.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat brings you back this way?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWas wondering if you still had that three-eyed calf around.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tom let out a chuckle. \u201cWish we did. You thought that thing\u2019d be worth a pretty penny, didn\u2019t you?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t mind my asking, what happened to him?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDied a few weeks later. We found him out in the field, bloated badly. Keeled over with grass still in his mouth,\u201d the farmer said, hacking dark spit onto the ground.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill was silent. He heard the chickens chattering between each other.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSad,\u201d he continued, shaking his head. \u201cAnd after all of that, huh? Something must\u2019ve really wanted him gone.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe never really stood a chance, I guess,\u201d said Bill.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNah, he didn\u2019t,\u201d Tom said. \u201cBut you still like to hope for things like that.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The money burned against Bill\u2019s thigh and he imagined the three-eyed calf rotting in the pasture and thought of his own long and big life ahead of him, rolling out like the peaks and saddles of the dusky purple Rockies, and supposed it was for the best.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Olivia Bell<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Bill,\u00a0 This city has been good to me. Imagine rooms of girls like me drinking beer and dancing. Imagine girls in boy clothes. It\u2019s real normal to them here. I wanted you to know there\u2019s a world where I can be safe.\u00a0 Anyway, I wanted to say I remember the day I came home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[82,1],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-4Zc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19170"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19291,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19170\/revisions\/19291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}