Free Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead

left-off and ongoing conversation. He told Robey his old wife had recently died and he was now sad in his heart and considered a lunatic by many in town and had nerve storms because he was alone and because he and his wife, he said, wanted to die together.
    â€œHer eyes were always the brightest,” he said.
    The old man still possessed his teeth, remarkable for one so elderly, but they seemed to protrude straight from his gums and closed in a beak that his thin lips rode. He paused to sneeze and when he opened the palm of his hand mucus webbed his fingers.
    â€œThose boys are quite exceptional in their stupidity,” he remarked, but Robey continued to make no response: no word, no nod, no shrug of his shoulders. Where they sat the stone was warm with captured sun and not uncomfortable. He did not mind the old man, and after a time in his presence the old man seemed calm and less agitated.
    â€œTheir time is coming soon enough,” the old man added, his words swashing in his beaked mouth, but still Robey made no response. He thought, Let the old man talk himself out.
    But the old man persevered in his one-sided conversation, prattling on and occasionally pausing to ask Robey if he was listening. He took Robey for a young soldier and so talked about having fought in Spain with Napoleon when he was in his youth. He claimed to have eaten dead horses to stay alive and one time to have actually eaten the forearm of a dead man. He told how he found it very sweet and for that reason had to swear it off because he feared he would get a taste for human flesh.
    â€œMore was not enough,” he said, and then he speculated on the hell he would surely go to after his death for eating human beings, as well as for other unnamed transgressions, and at this thought he laughed.
    From the barn door continued the hollow resounding of the thrown stones. From the inside came squeals of pigsand the fierce rustling of their bodies. One by one the snakes dropped their heads and their broken angular bodies hung limp. The boys carried on with pitching their stones, breaking the snakes’ bodies, until the cut bloodless pieces fell away and gathered on a bed of chaffy earth.
    â€œAre you listening to me?” the old man demanded.
    Robey took a deep breath to say he was.
    â€œYou have also done bad things,” the old man said. “Bad men can talk to each other. Bad men can understand the other. For thousands of years we have understood this, but that doesn’t change anything.”
    â€œNo,” Robey said, regretful at having spoken even as he spoke. “I haven’t,” he continued, and he knew the sound of his voice betrayed his words.
    â€œMaybe not yet,” the old man said. “But you will. You are experiencing one of life’s great lessons. Specifically which one, you do not know, but in time you will know.”
    IN ANOTHER TOWN was a baseball game and he had never seen such before so he stopped to watch. When he became noticed he moved on again, content with only the witless beeves and skulking dogs and mild cows watching his slow passage.
    He continued to think about what else the old man had said to him. The old man told how he was now worthless and no good to anyone anymore because he was filled with despair, and despair was useless in times such as these. He told him to remain angry, because anger was more useful than despair and would deliver him. But to despair would surely lead to failure and tragedy.
    They were the words of an insane, but he could not escapethem. They were committed to his mind and once learned he could not unlearn them. It was fate, he thought. Then he thought how people loved to talk so very much and even had a weakness to talk. He himself had done so and it made him laugh at how foolish his gliding mind. The bay shortened and tossed its head at his sudden outburst. He quieted the animal and let his hand to the long-barreled pistol he wore in his belt. It was an