God Knows What Else

by Harry Hantel

Miles Harper walked under stringent darkness, barefoot on the dewy lawn. His family’s ranch, located just outside of Brenham, Texas was spread out before him in every direction as far as he could see, or rather where he might have seen, but his eyes failed to locate even his own body in the midnight setting. The only visibility was heavenward, where the stars clustered, sparkling raindrops on the violet feathers of a vast cosmic bird.

Miles carried a gun, a Springfield model 87A semi-automatic .22 rifle; the present that had marked his 16th birthday three months prior. The rifle was slung over his shoulder by a brown leather strap and monogrammed with his initials MBH in black sans serif lettering. In his right hand he carried a beer bottle, which he intermittently swigged as he moved. He paused his walk to wiggle his toes and grope for himself in the darkness. The dew on the grass lightly contacted his feet, while the condensation on the beer ran down his hand. He appreciated the symmetry of the two moistures on his skin.

The longhorn cows, of which his family kept seven, groaned distantly; beasts of burden sounding yoked even in their nocturnal freedom. Crickets screeched all around him. He heard the dogs in the relative warmth of the barn baying at the moon. All the while, Miles pursed his lips and resisted the urge to join the chorus.

It was fall. Fifty-five degrees or so, unseasonably cold for September. He wore a red flannel shirt and blue jeans. School would begin in a few days. Miles had worked all summer and had barely seen or heard from any of his classmates. He didn’t mind.

His father, Barrow Harper, was asleep back in the two-story house. Even as recently as two years prior, Miles’ insomniac wanderings would not have been sanctioned, but his father had relented. Various interrogations and two attempted whippings had convinced him sufficiently of the sincerity of his son’s affiiction. He had been at once relieved and disappointed to know that his son was medically rather than motivationally incompetent.

“You’re telling me the boy can’t sleep?” He had asked the doctor. “That’s right, sir.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

The doctor had frowned. Miles kept his eyes straight, looking above the doctor’s head at the clock. Miles stared at the hands, willing time to skip forward.

“Sir, his brain is too active. His neurons are firing at times when they’re not supposed to, which causes him to jolt awake in the middle of the night.”

Barrow glanced sideways at his son, sitting in an identical wooden chair. Miles looked almost exactly like Barrow had at the same age. “Well,” he rubbed his forehead, “what do we do about it?”

“I don’t like to prescribe sleeping pills for someone so young, so we’ll keep that in our back pocket. For now, we’ll start out with some holistic solutions.”

That’s how the conversation had ended. Holistic solutions meant things like vapo-rubs, white noise machines, dietary changes (less sugar, no caffeine), and more physical activity during the day. Although his insomnia had improved only marginally, there was no return to the doctor’s office for further treatment.

Their ‘compromise’ was more like surrender on Barrow’s part. He had fought in Vietnam. He knew how to give up against an enemy who could not be defeated. “If sleep is the cousin of death, well, maybe you’ll just live forever,” he had said to Miles on the porch one bright afternoon coming back from cutting the grass.

So his son was more often than not, awake, and when he was awake he was moving.

At that moment, Miles was not thinking about his father. Instead as he glanced skyward he thought of Lyla. She worked at the local bowling alley, Strike Force Lanes. She had blonde brown hair, which she kept braided behind her head. She favored monochrome rompers in colors that Miles later placed as cobalt and burgundy. She was two years older than Miles, a dropout, unlikely to ever leave this part of Texas for more than a week at a time.

Their interactions had been sparse and logistical. “How many games? Do you need to rent shoes? Nice weather we’re having” and other pleasantries that made Miles feel sick to his stomach with anxiety.

He imagined asking her out to dinner, or to a movie. He imagined her laughing and obscuring her mouth with the back of her hand. He imagined the imprint that the fabric of the rolling chair behind the cashier’s desk always left on the back of her pale thighs, a pink net of interlocking ovals and lines. He imagined bringing her to the ranch and seeing her glisten in the Texas heat and then huddling together when the sun went down. He could give her a tour of the place. If Miles could just talk to her, he could stop imagining.

He caught himself as he started to drift into more explicit and unrealistic reverie. He finished his beer. It was cheap and sour. He lobbed the brown bottle into the darkness, a silent grenade. He burped quietly to himself.

A cracking split the silence. It was metallic, but full, a thunderous grinding that lasted only a second. There was another burst, but then silence.

His vision of Lyla dissipated into the present darkness and Miles’ muscles tensed as he moved cautiously trying to locate the source of the sound. He heard his own choppy breathing. He waited. There was another groaning cow, but each groan was louder and more labored, tailing off into a whistling screech. He knew the sound of an animal in pain. His footsteps quickened and he made his way towards the perimeter of the property. It was emanating from the fence line, from the southwest corner.

As his body carried towards the sound, he started to consider what he would do when he got there. Yes, he was familiar with guns. He hunted. He shot for sport, but those times were planned, accounted for. When he got up in the morning on the day of a hunting trip, he did so with the prior knowledge that he was going to be taking life and firing bullets. This was more improvisational. Chaotic. Besides, shooting doves was not the same as shooting coyotes or God Knows What Else.

He approached the fence line and managed to make out the shape of a sprawled cow, lying against the fence, tangled in the barbed wire. One side of its face rested in the grass. The groaning was replaced by a gurgle. Miles knelt next to it and looked over its bulk. His feet squelched in a pool of blood. The blood ran slowly from a hole in its neck. He felt the flesh of its face scratched raw, soft and tender to the touch. It was male. One of its horns was snapped in half, but he could not locate the broken piece.

There was a crunching past the fence line. Miles scanned the darkness, but saw nothing. There was no one.

The cow shifted its weight slightly and whimpered a pitiful not-quite moo. He patted its head. He took deep breaths, fighting the urge to cry. He felt childish.

He stood, wiggling his toes in the bloody grass. He removed the hunting knife from his pocket. The bone handle was smooth and cool in his hand. There was something more respectful about doing it that way, before even considering how the gun might attract his haggard father’s attention.

The moonlight reflected off the cow’s one visible eye. It glimmered, a solitary jewel. He prayed.

The vein gave way to the knife with little resistance. The jugular emptied out onto his hands and wrists. The cow did not make a sound. Miles thought there was supposed to be a sound.

He looked out again past the fence line, searching. There were no eyes to meet, but he saw an outline against a tree. Rubbing his own eyes, he looked again. The outline was moving, changing. It was made of smoke or ink or tar. It was made of darkness. First it was a beast. Then it was a man. Then it was an idea.

There it was. God Knows What Else.

Miles took the rifle from his shoulder. He felt the tears run hot down his face. He felt the quickly drying blood on his hands and in between his toes. He pulled the bolt back. He took the safety off. He neglected to aim. He fired once, twice, three times, but there was no sound. He thought there was supposed to be a sound.

The smell was unbearable. His nostrils were inundated with miasmic scents of burning flesh and boiling earth. He fell to his knees.

Where was Lyla on a night like this? Was she sleeping calmly in her bed? Was she dreaming of Miles? Was she dreaming at all? Was she happy? Maybe she’d like to get dinner sometime.

Miles was slipping off some great ledge. The gentle void opened to accommodate him. His eyelashes fluttered softly like palm leaves and then…and then.

The next morning, Barrow Harper rose at 6 o’clock as he always did. He shaved and made himself black coffee for his walk around the property.

He found Miles in the southwest corner of the ranch. He was shoeless, soaked in blood, lying on top of the corpse of a cow, cradling his rifle like a child. It looked like a sacrifice.

The flies buzzed all around him, but Miles slept like a dead man, as soundly as he ever had in his entire life.