Free Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead Page B

doors and windows.
    He set a pot of coffee to boil and fried the last of his bacon in a tin pan. He made a thin dough of water and salted cornmeal and set that to bake in the open fire on the blade of a broken hoe. He thought how he’d boil his coffee and scumble his biscuit into it. That would taste fine and feel good in his mouth and warm his throat down into his belly. His hunger grew and as the food heated he fixed his gaze on the porcelain-faced doll he’d propped at the fireside. Absentmindedly, he rubbed his scalp where the healing skin felt as if pulled by tiny paws. He fit the doll’s leg to her hip and it matched.
    He wanted to feel the hatred that possessed him when he dragged himself off the ground that was drenched with his blood. He wanted the anger the old man told him he musthave to survive. He wanted it lodged inside him like an iron spike, but tonight it wasn’t there. Tonight he was too tired to hate and hoped in the morning when he was rested he would hate again.
    â€œWhat do you have to say?” he asked the porcelain-faced doll, and when there was no reply he whispered the word “nothing.”
    When the coffee was boiled he poured half a cup into the drippings and could not wait, but was so hungry he burned his fingers and mouth. He slid the cake off the hoe into the gravy and ate the slurry with his fingers. He scraped the sides and the rapidly cooling bottom of the pan with the backs of his fingers and licked them clean and wiped at his mouth and then licked the back of his hand and then it was over. He knew enough to know he’d eaten like a ravenous dog and how disapproving his mother would be if she had witnessed such and how nice it would be to someday again not eat like that.
    â€œSoon,” he sighed, and sat close by the fire, exhausted for how voracious his hunger had made him and still amazed at how quickly the food had disappeared. He knew he should climb the stairs to sleep, or crawl under the floor, or go outside and sleep with the horse. He could not help but mistrust the dead calm stillness of this night’s windless turn.
    But his belly was full and he was tired and wanted to sleep and for so long now he had been vigilant. He closed his eyes and bars of fire darted across his eyelids. Sleep came and overwhelmed him as if a slowly crushing weight, though he fought it the best he could. Its strong hand brought ache and defeat and then relief, and when he knew he could not hold it off any longer he finally collapsed beneath it.
    When he lurched forward he saw the fire in the hearth had died and gone to the an orange glow of mere embers. The porcelain-faced doll was slumped beside the fire as if she too had been asleep. He righted her and as he stood to stretch his aching body, he concentrated on the faint sound that had awakened him. A muscle in his stomach began to flutter. Then he heard the sound coming from outside the stone walls. It was a man goading an ox, and then came the scrape of a travois on the hard ground and then a woman’s voice, thin and plaintive, complaining how difficult her situation. He kicked at the fire and stamped out the sparks. He gathered his kit as quickly as he could and as they were almost in the yard, he could do no other than climb the charred stringers and escape to the second floor.

6
    A T THE TOP of the stairwell, the roof was open to the sky and the weakened and ravaged second floor was cast in the shadows of the stone-built gable walls. Up there the night was not so dark under the sky, and from where he stood in the gable shadows he could see an ambling gaunted ox approaching the house. There was a man and a girl attendant. They were walking beside the ox, and riding on the jouncing travois was a woman. She was large and rode as if in repose, but when the ox stopped she slowly climbed erect and clasping her hands under her belly she lifted its weight as if she were lifting herself. The girl hastened to help the woman