Elko, Nevada

(Thunderbird Motel) Drag my saddle in and prop it up on the wine-stained carpet. Slight smell of pizza puke coming from the curtains but too tired to care. Crash, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Stare at the perfect acorn oak-leaf pattern carved swirling into the bullhide skirts by gnarly Mexican hands. Always brings some sense of order. Riding the Great Basin for days now, following Jones. Always following Jones. Some grand far-flung plan of his to trap mustangs in canyons. So far all we've seen is their dust. Wiped out. Sore and raw through the knees. Toilet in here keeps moaning and whining like some distant ambulance that will never arrive at the scene of destruction. Forlorn. Flip on CNN just to pretend I'm still in the world. More lies about the war. More exploding roadside goat carcasses. More bodies piling up. I've seen this before. Right next door the casino keeps ringing like churches gone wild. Clanging and churning away. Circus music. What am I hearing? What am I seeing from this far edge of the bed? Talons, nicotine-stained fingertips digging quarters out of plastic cups. Oxygen running through green tubes, up the noses of the dead, the already dead. Righteousness ringing its head off. Jackpots of stone. Saddle-soap my tack. That's it. A job. Give me a job. Glycerine and water. Sip Jack. Tomorrow we're supposed to meet up with some rancher named Valmy, west of the Rubies. Unload a Gooseneck jammed with pipe corral. Panels. Chains and stakes. Rawhide hobbles. Nylon rope. I'm just not sure about Jones. This whole scheme of his. Whether he's still got his wits about him. Never was a real market for these in-bred mongrels. Why mess with them at all when you could start with a real horse. Quarter horse or at least a grade. Then you've got all that hauling out to California. Halter-breaking. Round-pen time. Blindfolds. Scotch hobbles. Sacking them out. Throwing them down. Canvas tarps. Why go through all the torment? Hospitalization. What's the point? Eighty bucks a head? You've got more diesel in them than that. This room's forty-something right off the top. What's he thinking? Something romantic maybe. The Misfits. Days gone by? Give me a break. I asked him about it this morning over black coffee. Just faced him up with it. Asked him what's the story? Why persist? You know what he comes up with? Some crazy-ass limerick ditty that he spouts through this raw hangover twinkle of the eye. Goes like this: There once was a cautious old man

who never romped or played

he never smoked

he never drank

he never had a mate

So when finally he passed away

his insurance was flat denied

for since he never had seemed to live

they claimed he'd never died

Jones cackles till his coughing fit starts up again then hauls his huge frame off the stool and hitches up his Wranglers. His Spanish-rowel spurs and jingle-bobs make their little music as he ambles toward the open door. This time of year the Great Basin air has the smell of high dryness, close to starched shirts. He pauses at the threshold to light a cigarette and blows smoke out across the Humboldt. "Looks like a good morning for it," he proclaims with his back flat to me. "Meet you down at the pens," and he strides off with the Lucky jutting out his jaw. Who am I to refuse?

Llanos

Incredible these pictures of smoke and fire and meat and men sitting around squinting into the gleaming pit drinking heavy stuff red sticks spitting at their tall tales some true enough some dumb cracked guitars smells of horse and calves bawling their heads off for mama behind mesquite pens and one poor fool has actually brought his cell phone all the way out here and calls his hooker in Ft. Worth through digital hopeless roaming against the long splash of stars and yapping dogs in Llanos beyond belief.

Faith, South Dakota (Interstate 25) On a hot blue day I'm heading out to Faith where the great saddle horses originate. I'm going to get me one. A buttermilk dun with a quarter-moon brand on his cheek. I've seen him in my dreams. That's right. I've seen him from far away. I'm going to bring him back home and ride him down to get the mail. And when they ask me where he's from, I'll say I bought him out in Faith on a hot blue day.

Reason

I'm not talking to you about horses anymore. You understand absolutely nothing about horses and I'm not talking to you about them.

Then don't.

I won't. I should have known better than to bring them up at all.

I just don't understand why you would need to get another one when you've got a whole pasture full already.

I don't need a reason to need another one.

Apparently not.

Why would I need a reason?

I have no clue.

I just like having them around.

So why don't you get another one then?

I will.

Good.

I don't need a damn reason.

horses racing men

mummies on the mend

what's all this gauze bandaging

unraveled down the stairs

has something come apart

in here

something without end

Man O'War

Man O'War died with an enormous erection that wouldn't go down. It's true. It's well documented. Ask anyone over at the Jot 'Em Down store. After repeated heart attacks at the age of thirty and servicing hundreds of mares, he finally succumbed. But his member remained permanently stiff. His member remembered. Obviously, there were no women present at his modest funeral just on the outskirts of Lexington. A black canvas sheet was draped ceremoniously over the rude appendage. Apparently two or three gentlemen in bowlers found it somewhat offensive, but they couldn't deny his great preponderance.

"Shoe"

William Shoemaker weighed barely a pound when he was born, in an adobe shack south of El Paso. He was hardly breathing as his grandmother gently cradled him in one hand. She put young William in a shoe box then lit the woodstove. She dropped the heavy oven door and placed the shoe box with little Willie in it, there to warm. It was in that shoe box that Willie came back to life and went on to win eight thousand, eight hundred and thirty-three races.

Lightning Man

Met a man in Montana who was struck by lightning right on the top of his head. On the crown. He showed me the scar. It was deep brown, the color of fried beef liver; about the size of a quarter with a little black dot in the center. He had a whole article written up about him in a fish and game magazine and, for weeks, scientists from the university visited his hospital bedside because, I guess, there aren't that many survivors of lightning strikes direct to the head like that. This man was a fishing guide up in the Absaroka mountain range and had taken a group of Japanese tourists out for trout when the sky turned suddenly black and began to crackle with yellow splinters. From long experience in the high country he knew full well to get the hell out of the water in conditions like that and told the tourists to break down their fancy titanium fishing rods and pack them away. As they were trekking out single file across an open field, this guide was in the lead and, being the tallest, the lightning sought him out. A human lightning rod. Later, when they interviewed the foreign fishermen, they all said the guide's whole body lit up with a blue halo as though he were about to be lifted off to heaven. When the lightning escaped the guide's ankle and grounded out, it then traveled down the entire line of Japanese tourists, knocking them all flat, one by one, like bowling pins. They said it happened so fast they didn't know what hit them. There they were, laid out in a line in an open field at the foot of the mountains, thousands of miles from their homeland, next to an American fishing guide with smoke pouring out the top of his head.

These days now, the Lightning Man spends all his time sitting at a workbench in front of a window that looks out on those very same Absaroka mountains. He creates authentic-looking arrowheads with elk-bone tips, turkey feathers, and Osage shafts. He says he's able to stay focused on the work for maybe an hour at a time but that they haven't yet invented a painkiller that can touch the agony that runs like fiery gravity down through his legs.

Somebody told me once the Greeks had invented a magic elixir for chasing away the memory of all suffering and grief.