The Coldest Night Read Free Page B

before sitting down. Then he loosed the bale on the white glass jar and slid open the top. He went inside with the tweezers and came out with a bee in their gentle pinch.
    “How bad is it?” Henry said.
    “What?”
    “The pain.”
    “You won’t know until it happens to you.”
    Walter held the bee’s abdomen to his bony knee. His eye flashed brightly and his nostrils widened. “Oh,” he said with each pull of the barb. “Oh.” His face reddened, his leg shook, his forehead broke with sweat. “Oh,” he said, releasing the bee. “Oh,” he said, closing his eyes and letting his head go back.
    After a brief time, he discarded the bee and went into the jar for another. He gritted his teeth and administered to his other knee, receiving the venom as if a secret current of life. His shoulders drooped and he breathed slowly, carefully.
    They sat for another spell, the stables silent, Walter in his skivvies, his trousers stacked at his shoe tops and Henry straddling a chair.
    When Walter looked up again his face was red and drenched with sweat and he was laughing.
    “What’s so funny?” Henry said.
    “You know what they said? It is shrapnel rising to the surface. After all these years, little pieces less the size of needles floating around inside my legs.”
    Walter closed his eyes again. He swabbed at the wetness with his shirt cuff and breathed until the rasp in his throat softened.
    He rested again and then he reached for his trousers pooled at his ankles and in a single motion he stood and pulled them up.
    “You’re not the kind to leave someone in the lurch,” he said.
    Walter nodded to the bottle and Henry poured him half a mug.
    “Good idea,” Walter said, and with trembling red fingers he lifted the mug and took a drink. He packed another chaw and fed it into his mouth.
    “I will now see the Gaylen horse,” Walter said.
    Henry fetched the wheelbarrow. He tipped it forward and Walter settled into its barrel, his legs dangling over the front. Henry levered the handles and when he did he made a groaning sound.
    “How much you weigh these days?” Henry said.
    “A hunnerd and sixty pound.”
    “That all?” Henry said, wheeling him to the door.
    “Not a ounce more.”
    “Then you must sit pretty heavy.”
    The sound of Walter’s laughter, coarse and harsh, brought the horses from their feed and water. They stood at their stall doors where they curved their necks and shook their heads. They stepped in place, nickering and whinnying, anticipating Walter’s arrival.

Chapter 3
    T HE GAYLEN HORSE MOVED up slope with increasing confidence and speed, exercising the strength in her hindquarters. Henry thought how when he reached ridgeline he could ride this horse from the face of the land and into the sky and to the sliver of the pale moon just hung.
    The world was black and blue with the silver light of the stars come down to earth and silent except for the leather creak, the shake of the horse, the muffled rattle and stretch of tack, the lunging breaths, as they made the ridgeline and traversed the darkling landscape. There was the smell of pine and cold and horse and the wax smell of Henry’s leather boots.
    For three nights he’d ridden the horse on this mountain trail. They traveled to the edge of the forest, the swart green pines a wall into the night. Up here he felt by particle and thread the fluence that rode the cold air.
    All day long he’d been at the stable when he should have been in school. The two-storied brick building was a place of half-rolled shades and smudged blackboards, the Encyclopaedia Britannica kept under lock and key. He actually liked school and he did well. He especially liked playing baseball, but knew he wouldn’t be going back again. He knew it was just killing time until he’d be leaving for Chicago, Detroit, Gary: stockyards, car factories, steel mills.
    He fished a Lucky Strike from his breast pocket. The cherry ember hissed and crackled. To the west were the