Free Song of Oestend by Marie Sexton Page A

took his sketchpad and his penknife and pencils, and he walked. He
    went past the empty house with its sagging boards and vacant eyes. He walked out into the SONG OF OESTEND
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    long grass of the prairie until he found a place where he could sit. He had a view of the cattle grazing in the field, lazy and stupid and yet serene at the same time. A big bull stood near the fence, staring at absolutely nothing.
    Aren sharpened his pencil and he started to draw.
    His art took him away, as it so often did. He lost all sense of space and time. He barely noticed the soreness in his backside from sitting on the ground, or the pain in his shoulder from his hunched position. He knew only shapes and lines, reflections and light. It was a calm place inside him that occupied him, yet left some remote corner of his mind free and clear to think of other things. Today, he thought only of the sun and the grass and how surprisingly good it felt to be there. He had worried he wouldn’t fit in here, and maybe he didn’t, but he found it suited him all the same.
    He didn’t see or hear Deacon approaching. It wasn’t until he sat down next to Aren in the grass that he noticed him at all. Aren looked over at him in surprise.
    Deacon didn’t look at him. He didn’t say anything, either. He sat there, his knees up and his forearms draped over them, staring out into the field, and Aren waited, wondering what in the world was on the man’s mind.
    Deacon finally looked over at him and he seemed startled to find Aren watching him.
    “Am I bothering you?” he asked.
    “Not at all,” Aren said. “I missed you at breakfast.”
    Deacon shrugged uncomfortably, obviously disconcerted by such a frank statement. He
    looked down at Aren’s sketchpad. “What’re you drawing?”
    Aren hesitated, afraid Deacon would make fun of him for his art as he had the first day they’d met, back in Milton, but he saw no mockery in his eyes. Only friendly curiosity.
    He held his sketchbook out and Deacon took it.
    He didn’t say anything for the longest time. He looked at the drawing, then up at the bull in the field, then down again at the drawing. He seemed puzzled. “I don’t get it,” he said at last. “I can see it’s the bull, but it’s not the same at all.”
    Aren’s heart fell at the words. “I guess it’s not very good,” he said, reaching to take the pad back.
    Deacon pulled it out of his reach, still looking at it. “That ain’t what I said. It’s just…” he looked up at the bull again, then down at the sketchpad, his brows furrowed as he tried to SONG OF OESTEND
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    find the words. “When I look at your picture, he looks… Well, I guess he looks strong. And proud. He looks special, like he’s something way more than all the other cattle.” He looked back up at the bull standing in the grass, lazily chewing his cud. “But he’s just a bull,” he said, pointing out at him. “Nothing special at all.”
    It was such awkward praise, and yet Aren found himself smiling. He felt something
    inside him swell with pride. “That means I did it right,” he said.
    He reached for the pad again, and this time Deacon let him take it. The big cowboy sat staring at the ground, nervously tugging at the grass. “I don’t want you to be mad at me about the house,” he said at last, his voice quieter than before.
    That surprised Aren. It hadn’t occurred to him Deacon would care how he felt. “I’m not mad. But I do wish you’d reconsider.”
    “It ain’t safe.”
    “Olsa said it could be made safe…”
    Deacon was already shaking his head, and Aren let his words trail away. “Folk tales,”
    Deacon said. “Nothing more than that. Olsa’s stories won’t do nothing against the dark.”
    Aren looked back out over the field, and the cattle grazing there. He wasn’t sure what else to say. He was glad Deacon wanted to make peace, but he wished there was some chance of changing his mind.
    “Is it so bad out