Big Lonesome Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  * * *

  OLD WEST

  Big Lonesome Beginnings

  Horseman Cowboy

  Thataway

  Cowboy Good Stuff’s Four True Loves

  Mutt-Face

  Five Episodes of White-Hat Black-Hat

  Fourteen Cowboys by the Fire

  * * *

  NEW WEST

  Big Lonesome Middles

  Cowgirl

  A Mother Buries a Gun in the Desert Again

  Immigrants

  Small Boy

  Driving in the Early Dark, Ted Falls Asleep

  Drunk in Texas, Two New Friends Talked Horses

  Snake Canyon

  * * *

  POST-WEST

  Big Lonesome Endings

  The Veteran

  It Meant There Would Be More

  One of the Days I Nearly Died

  We Try to Find the Spring in Spring Rock Park in Western Springs, Illinois

  Western Avenue

  Dead Dogs

  Life Story

  Company

  Father’s Day

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Scapellato

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Scapellato, Joseph, date, author.

  Title: Big Lonesome / Joseph Scapellato.

  Description: Boston : Mariner Books, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016029360 (print) | LCCN 2016034756 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544769809 (paperback) | ISBN 9780544770546 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: West (U.S.)—Fiction. | Middle West—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Short Stories (single author). | FICTION / General. | FICTION / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.C2666 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3619.C2666 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029360

  Cover design by Mark R. Robinson

  Cover illustrations © CSA Images/Printstock Collection

  The following stories first appeared elsewhere, in slightly different form: “Company” in No Tokens; “Horseman Cowboy” in North American Review; “Snake Canyon” in Third Coast; “We Try to Find the Spring in Spring Rock Park in Western Springs, Illinois” in Hayden’s Ferry Review Online; “Big Lonesome Endings” (published in sequenced shorts as “The Train to Pennsylvania,” “Pennsylvania,” “The Woods,” “The Cave,” and “The Words”) in Unsaid 7; “Small Boy” in New Ohio Review; “One of the Days I Nearly Died” in Green Mountains Review Online; “The Veteran” in PANK 10; “Western Avenue” in Curbside Splendor; “It Meant There Would Be More” in LUMINA; “Fourteen Cowboys by the Fire” in Necessary Fiction; “Drunk in Texas, Two New Friends Talked Horses” in Pebble Lake Review; “Thataway” (published as “Brown Boy”) in Puerto del Sol; “Big Lonesome Middles” (published in sequenced shorts as “Morning in New Mexico,” “Mornings in New Mexico,” “Texas in Texas,” and “Afternoon in New Mexico”) in Unsaid 6; “Immigrants” in > kill author 16; “Driving in the Early Dark, Ted Falls Asleep” in The Collagist; “Life Story” in Kenyon Review Online; “Father’s Day” in Post Road; “Big Lonesome Beginnings” (published in sequenced shorts as “One Night Near Texas” and “Many Nights Near Texas”) in Unsaid 5; “Cowboy Good Stuff’s Four True Loves” in The Collagist; and “Mutt-Face” (published as “Mutt-Face Meets Himself”) in Gulf Coast.

  for my family, my friends,

  and Dustyn

  Life is bad. You’re lucky when it goes good.

  —Schoolteacher Frank

  Shoot the boot!

  —Cowgirl Margie

  — OLD WEST —

  Big Lonesome

  Beginnings

  One Night Near Texas

  The cowboy sat up and shuddered. Again she wasn’t with him, his tent bigger and brighter than that room. In here his body felt unhelpful. He shook his boots from the ground and pulled them on. He stepped out.

  His fellow cowboys, their tents, the fire, the herd—all slumping at the bottom of the bowl of night. The way-off mountains wiped out. Burned Down Dan, who never had a tent, just a guitar, slept drunk before the fire, his guitar tucked like a tied-up bedroll between his blistered arms and chin.

  The cowboy stared at that guitar, at the fire’s hard flicker in its polish, and wondered why he’d woken up. He wondered why he was here instead of with her in that room. The air smelled enough like rain to make him think it might, but the sky wasn’t having it.

  He stole Burned Down Dan’s guitar from Burned Down Dan’s arms.

  He crouched inside his tent and taught himself to play.

  His fingers stumbled. The tent around him sucked smaller.

  Many Nights Near Texas

  He played. Even when he didn’t, he did. His playing wasn’t only in his head. His playing was all over.

  When he played outside himself, with fingers and strings and frets, he made it sound like there were four guitars showing up inside the one, and all four were loners, loners yoked into a team, a team that listened to itself and got on well with other folks and animals and any kind of nighttime sky.

  His fellow cowboys stayed awake to listen on account of how sleeping meant missing out on what his music had them feeling. They never said much, just sat there on their bedrolls trying not to look too lonesome, their faces crossed with firelight, their jaws working jerky and tobacco and fingernails and knives. Who knew what was worked in their hearts.

  Something, because the cowboy’s playing never failed to magnetize: men and women alike would bend, favoring his direction, and when he stopped, they wouldn’t be sneaky about it, they’d sidle right over and find reasons to touch his body—slaps on the back and slugs to the arm, handshakes, hugs, kisses. Always friendly.

  What he found curious about all of this was this: when they touched him after an evening of playing, he couldn’t feel their bodies. It was like his skin was double-thick, deadened, and asleep. He couldn’t feel anything except an aching to be feeling his music touching him.

  He knew his music would never be a body but he played it nonetheless.

  Horseman Cowboy

  Called, horseman cowboy clops over to old man foreman like he isn’t.

  Old man foreman, the range boss, dying for days on a dirty blanket, he squints way up at horseman cowboy, saying, “Horseman cowboy, don’t none of us know just how you came to be, where or what you from. All we know is what you know. All man, all horse. Oats and beef, hay and steaks, mares and whores. The range, the range, the range, but always bumping plumb into a border.”

  Horseman cowboy, ten feet tall from hoof to head, big chin set and big arms crossed, he looks way out westward over blistered land, saying, “Sure is so.”

  “Top cutter, pegger, roper,” says old man foreman, “no saddle and no spurs and no bridle needed, clear-footed, with bottom. Every day we say it: you your own mount.”

  The other ranch hands, hats off, young and sun-crusted, flanking old man foreman, they nod like they’re at church and sorry.

  Old man foreman rolly-eyes how he rolly-eyes when he’s talking scripture.

  “Your face, your chest, your arms,” he shouts, “they nailed to the center of a compass the points of which are white man, black man, brown man, red man!
Your withers, your back, your croup, they nailed to the center of a compass the points of which are saddlebred, quarter, appaloosa, mustang!”

  One by one the ranch hands drop their eyes to their boots in shamed awe.

  Horseman cowboy, iron-shoed and woolen-shirted, bearded, the skin of his man-body sunned, the coat of his horse-body coarse, he looks way out eastward over scabby land, saying, “So?”

  “The men,” says old man foreman, wringing the dirtiest ends of the dirty blanket, “my men, me, us, we look to you and can’t be other than sure you’re so. To see you with so much already, and so done with it? It makes a man feel small and foul inside. It makes a man grip to things he ain’t so sure he believes, to believe in the gripping, the gripping-to.”

  Horseman cowboy says, “I’m a-going.”

  “What all’s wrong with you is you can’t see what all’s right with you,” says old man foreman.

  Horseman cowboy drill-pisses into the dry grass.

  The ranch hands watch the golden frothing in a state of holy wonder.

  Old man foreman flings a canteen, screaming, “Catch some up, boys, and quick—it just might save my dying life!”

  Horseman cowboy rears and goes.

  Horseman cowboy fucks a horse, a donkey, a mule—he kick-smashes trees and boulders and hills—he bellows black rage to a moonless star-pricked sky—

  Educated circus man, fat and wily, cane-waving, strolling through the stinking air of his biggest big-top tent, he says to horseman cowboy in a brightly painted voice, “Homo Equinus Gladitorius! The Four-Footed Bridge Between Barbarism and Civilization, Between Bestial Animal Appetite and Elevated Human Refinement! Behold: the Celebrated Incelibate Centaur!”

  Horseman cowboy stands still, his big face blank.

  Educated circus man presents to horseman cowboy a copper-painted tin helmet, a copper-painted tin breastplate, and a copper-painted tin spear. He smiles a smile that says more than the crooked mouth that makes it.

  The other circus acts—acrobats and animal tamers, sword swallowers and fire-eaters, dwarves and giants, freaks of a physical, foreign, and manufactured nature—they to-and-fro with costumes and props and makeup, acting as if they aren’t studying horseman cowboy.

  Horseman cowboy crushes the copper-painted tin helmet and shreds the copper-painted tin breastplate and hurls the copper-painted tin spear through the way-up billowing big-top tent roof. He says, “My hat.”

  With his cane, educated circus man hands horseman cowboy his cowboy hat.

  Horseman cowboy eats his cowboy hat.

  The circus acts stop to-and-froing. They suppress grins and cheers.

  Horseman cowboy horseshits on the packed dirt.

  Educated circus man cane-pokes the horseshit into a pickling jar. “Will our Celebrated Incelibate Centaur Master One of the Two Worlds He Canters Into? or, Impossibly, Both? or, Tragicomically, Neither?”

  Horseman cowboy rears and goes.

  Horseman cowboy fucks a wolf, a cougar, a bear—he kick-smashes shacks and sheds and fences—he bellows black sorrow to a sky slashed by a bladed moon—

  Refined reformer woman, principled and accomplished, scalpel-faced, sitting in the sitting room of her sober mansion, she says to horseman cowboy in a letter-to-the-editor voice, “Taught, you shall teach the multitude of needy others. Your instruction shall be deep in understanding, owing to your innate and, in this instance, invaluable familiarity with the lay of the swamp of savagery. You shall stand outside this savagery and speak to those who sludge about inside it, nose-deep in ignorance: Indians, immigrants, criminals, lunatics, degenerates, perverts, Catholics. With you present in our Homes and Institutions, with the Lord in you, using you as He has used chosen others, we might together and in humility hasten the Coming of the Kingdom of God to this nation.”

  Horseman cowboy, horse-sitting, drinks his hot tea in one gulp.

  The other reformer women, also refined, sit in a pious circle of chairs. They nod at their leader’s speech, but inwardly repeat silent prayers to protect themselves from the feelings that shudder through their bodies as they smell horseman cowboy’s manly horse-musk, his horsey man-musk.

  Refined reformer woman tilts her teacup. It’s empty. “All are incomplete before the Lord,” she says. “This path will lead you into completion.”

  Horseman cowboy stands. His horse-sized man-dick waggles.

  Refined reformer woman sighs a sigh that isn’t saying if it’s made of mostly pity or disgust. “It is plain to see that what you would appear to be when in the public eye differs, woefully, from what you are when you are alone, shackled simply to yourself.”

  Horseman cowboy stares at her. His stare is long and shallow.

  “Or is the matter much worse, and worsening?” says refined reformer woman, curious but unconcerned.

  Horseman cowboy bobs his head politely, saying, “Ma’am.”

  One by one the other reformer women pale, praying for horseman cowboy to go and stay at once, to be nearby but distant, to return only to depart only to return only to depart, forever.

  Horseman cowboy rears and goes.

  Horseman cowboy fucks a woman, a woman, a woman—he kick-smashes haystacks and wells and barns—he bellows black longing to a sky swollen with a half-moon’s glowing ache—

  Willful farm girl, strong and season-wise, wide-handed, milking a spooked cow in the dark warmth of the barn, she says to horseman cowboy in a master-to-apprentice voice, “I done told you. We stake our acres way out, in the Territory. Away from Ma and Pa, my brothers and sisters and uncles and cousins. We raise up our home. We start our family.”

  The other spooked cows shuffle in their stalls, lowing.

  Horseman cowboy stands at the barn door. His stare is short and deep. The barn door is creaking closed behind him.

  Willful farm girl says, “I seen both sides of you, how each throws mud on the other. It’s a devil’s trick. When you make that you can’t be but one way, it ain’t even near right, it’s just it’s what you’re choosing.”

  Horseman cowboy turns himself around.

  Willful farm girl slams the milk bucket. “I done killed chickens and roosters and cows and horses and buried little brothers and big sisters and should it come to it I will bury the baby you’re leaving me with. I will not weep until you go.”

  Horseman cowboy goes.

  Horseman cowboy fucks a pile of pitchforks, hoes, and scythes—he kick-smashes railroad ties and switching stations and bridge pillars—he bellows black loathing to a sky sick with the shine of a nearly full moon—

  Young railroad baron, handsome, clean, smelling of shoeshine and fruit, touring his company’s track as its lengths are laid by his company’s laborers, he says to horseman cowboy in a voice tucked between shares of stock and bills of sale, “All are yoked to labor. You, like me, are made to labor more mightily than others. Find with me the task that suits your size. Labor mightily for me, for Progress, so that lesser others might ride upon what we lay to greatness.”

  The laborers, men of as many colors as tongues, hammer and haul and grunt. They see but don’t acknowledge horseman cowboy. They labor. They lose fingers, hands, and limbs.

  Young railroad baron offers horseman cowboy a bottle of sherry.

  Horseman cowboy drinks it all and eats the bottle. He says, “Ain’t nothing can make them who ain’t great great.”

  Young railroad baron claps horseman cowboy on the horse-haunches and laughs the laugh that is slipped between bribes. “We are alike; we see that what we say and what we believe must be different—different but partnered, harnessed. All you lack is the proper yoke. Allow me to yoke you.”

  Horseman cowboy eats young railroad baron.

  The laborers labor.

  Horseman cowboy fucks a nest of snakes, a family of alligators, a beached riverboat—he kick-smashes boardwalks and docks and wharves—he bellows black hatred to a sky saddled with a full moon’s wide and crushing weight—

  One-eyed one-eared wha
ling captain, crunchy-faced, incredulous, standing on the deck of a great ship, looks down at the dock at horseman cowboy and shouts in a shouting-through-sea-swells voice, “A steed a Mate on a ship! On a ship, a steed a Mate—why, who has heard of it, seen of it, met with it? Me, I have heard and seen and met with many a thing I never once thought to in the hold and on deck, by the flicker of the binnacle, in the watery wasteland’s blinding noontime light, on eerie shores shaped by agents neither natural nor unnatural—but aye, call me Sicilian if it be so, never once a steed a Mate on a ship.”

  The other mates, on board, in drink and song and smoke, they cackle and curse with relish.

  Horseman cowboy’s stare is up-front and orders-ready.

  One-eyed one-eared whaling captain knock-knocks the railing. “Blast my blood! Have you lately bathed in the harbor, or is that a bilge-load of sweat I see upon your face and shoulders?”

  A plank cracks beneath one of horseman cowboy’s hooves. He shifts, clopping.

  One-eyed one-eared whaling captain says, “Do you swim, now?”

  Horseman cowboy says, “If it ain’t deep.”

  Horseman cowboy fucks a road, an avenue, a boulevard—he kick-smashes cobblestones and hitching posts and gas lamps—he bellows black fear to a sky made panicked by the waning moon—

  Weary foreign mesmerist, consumptive and tubercular, bloated, stuffed into the lone chair at the lone table in his smoky salon, he says to horseman cowboy in a voice burdened by decades of belief, “In you, in me, in all: Vital Magnetic Fluid. What is for health? What is for ill? What is for to go from one to the other? Vital Magnetic Fluid. Vital Magnetic Fluid. Vital Magnetic Fluid.”

  Horseman cowboy, horse-sitting, blinks at the wall. His stare is limp and thin.