BACCHUS

Water falling too softly to bounce off of anything but itself, as it gathered across the ground, milk against the shores of brown sugar islands in a bowl of cream of wheat, soaking down and further down, the turf getting heavy.

One raised hoof, pinned against the frame of the stall door, stuck and immovable, hand around the hock like two fingers on the bone of an upright lamb chop.

Two shoulders went hard against an iron bar, and the bar against the leg, heaving till a crack let the great, black mass of body heavier than body shift enough for that last hoof to fly free and lie even more still, legs in the same plane now, nestled against that turf, splayed in mid-gate, and one wandering wild eye at an angle more upside down than a cat sleeping

And a backhoe shouldn’t have been rolling up through that muck if it wanted to get back out that night but Greg Abreu thought he deserved to settle into the ground in a dug-out bed to keep the morning sun from ever reflecting in that frightened eye, and the chain pulled him out from the stall.

He’s sleeping? . . . Yes, Bacchus is sleeping . . .And he’s not waking up? . . .No, he’s not waking up . . . He’s really sleeping a lot? . . .Yes, he’s really sleeping a lot . . .And he’s not waking up? . . . No. He isn’t . . . .When is he coming back?  He’s here.  He’s ded? . . . Yes. Ded.

Mounded up on the sides, and patted down with the smooth side of the big toothed shovel, big yellow arm tapping up and down more delicately than patty cake and Bob’s thumb and finger caressing that big shape and smoothing it over, and the wildflowers below and now new ones above . . .

And one day that mound dropped down just a little bit, like cool air over a soufflé, and settled back down below the lip of the pan . . .Spirit flying.

 

--- CHS