Free Hunts in Dreams by Tom Drury

and necks. Charles went out of his way to show them the way that things should be done, demonstrating how the release of the thumb lock made the steel tape race back into its housing, and how when a frame was square, the measurements on the diagonal were exactly the same. When the measurements differed, though, he seemed uncertain what to do about it. Lyris chewed the skin on the side of a fingernail, thinking that big things they had no clue about were happening somewhere else in the world.
    Eventually they got the planks sawed and laid out over backing frames with X-shaped crosspieces to keep them “on the square.” Then it was time to nail, which came as a relief, because they could all take equal part, slugging away, with little precision required. Planks gapped in places, and the ends were not always even, but Charles said they could caulk the gaps and saw the ends back at home, where he had a chalk line somewhere. Each door was too heavy for all three of them to lift, but somehow not too heavy for Charles alone to lift. He put them into the back of his pickup, and they rode home, where they tore down the old doors and set about hanging the new ones. Charles screwed the straps of the old hinges into place. The doors opened and closed better than Lyris expected, and looked all right, except that one door was green, the other blue and red. That could be fixed with the painting, which would wait for another day.
    In the afternoon they went to an auction house called the Palace to find a goat for sale. This was a big square building of whitewashed brick flanked on either side by open-sided sheds and alleys of matted straw. Cows lowed in the sheds, and Micah ran toward the noise. He stopped short, however, before a large circle of dark and shining blood on the straw. When Lyris and Charles caught up, they discussed what might have occasioned the spilling of the blood and why it had happened right here, but none of them could get a mental picture of the violence.
    â€œMy uncle one time got a calf to raise and slaughter,” said Charles. “He was going to make himself into a gentleman farmer. He’d read all about it, but it wasn’t in him, you know? The seasons passed, and the calf got bigger, and when it came time to kill the thing, he couldn’t do it. They had that cow until it died of old age. It would follow my uncle around and come when called. When it died, they dug a big hole out back of the house and buried it there.”
    â€œAppalling,” said Lyris.
    They walked down the aisle between the pens. The cows moved slowly, as if embarrassed about their great size. The hogs lay splayed out on their sides, oblivious.
    â€œThey look hot,” said Lyris.
    â€œA pig will look hot in any weather,” said Charles. “They’re just hot-looking.”
    â€œWhere are the goats?” said Micah.
    â€œI’m wondering the same.”
    Flies buzzed the blinking eyes of a pink sow with black spots. “What if God is some kind of livestock?” said Lyris. “People will have a lot of explaining to do.”
    â€œThey have that no matter what God is,” said Charles.
    â€œOr a lobster,” said Micah. “How would you like to be a lobster and get boiled alive in a big pot?”
    â€œI wouldn’t go for that,” said Charles.
    â€œI seen it on TV.”
    â€œAlive? Hard to believe.”
    â€œOh, it’s true,” said Lyris.
    â€œWhat do you eat of a lobster, anyway?” said Charles. “Doesn’t seem like there’d be a lot of meat on them.”
    â€œThey’re crustaceans,” said Micah.
    â€œWell, I wouldn’t eat a lobster if you paid me,” said Charles. “And I wouldn’t eat rabbit, although many do.”
    â€œThere’s a goat,” said Micah. He was looking into someone’s yard, where an animal slept in the grass beneath a tree.
    â€œHell, that’s a dog,” said Charles.
    Lyris