mused. Now only meters away, the cowboy was about to turn away when the longhorn suddenly swiveled its huge head until one large eye looked directly at him. He stopped his horse and looked carefully back at it, returning its level, cavernous gaze. It was utterly quiet. The dust had settled. Heat waves rose from the dirt. And then it leapt, scrabbling at the dry, loose ground, until its hooves finally found purchase and propelled the longhorn away from Billy’s stare. With a shout of surprise, the cowboy spurred his horse into motion, and taking lasso in hand, he gave chase, from noon until the sun began to set. But when at last the cowboy’s lasso met its mark, the longhorn went wild, bucking and flinging its horns in every which direction. Billy’s horse reared back in fear, and he fell to the ground hard, landing on a rock that took away a large chunk of his arm, carving a deep valley down his bicep. He ignored the pain and reached for his pistol but found that the horse had kicked it away in the panicked fray.
Silently, he mounted his horse and spurred it back home. His family would be saved by the death of the long-suffering longhorn, but he vowed never to take on another job of cattle roundup again. The wound in his arm will heal and scab over, but the scar will remain to remind him of the suffering he saw in the longhorn, a pain that paralleled his own. The next morning, at the crack of dawn, he returned to the boss and asked him where he should transport the herd of longhorns for the day and requested the new schedule for the year. It was his job, after all. The sun has risen up once again from under the weight of the world, and so would he. His grandchildren stared at him blankly after he fell into silence. “How could you go back, Grandad? Didn’t you already think to yourself that you had enough, that you couldn’t stand seeing the eyes of the other longhorns stare into your soul? Didn’t you feel bad that you went back to see the other cattle afterwards?” Nina asked.
Quickly, he unsheathed his knife and lunged towards the bull. In the moment between sinking the blade into the animal’s side and the bull falling into unconsciousness, he looked directly into its eyes once again. Where he expected to see defiance he instead found deep pain. Looking closer, he realized the animal’s hide bore old and fresh whip wounds, other injuries from various weapons. Suddenly, Billy kneeled down and leaned close to the animal. He saw that the longhorn had died, succumbing to its pain, as pain and guilt now took over Billy. Clutching his bleeding wound, Billy retrieved his hat from the ground and placed it over the longhorn’s eye, an eye that now stared unseeing toward the red sunset sky setting upon the horizon—a sun with seemingly no strength to ever rise again.
“No,” he answered simply. “Sometimes, things that are disappointing or sad will happen, but we have to carry on because other things are no less important because of what has happened.” The children looked at him forlornly. As his grandchildren left, he gazed out of the window, appearing to think deeply about the story and message he has had just told. “Whew, I’m starting to run out of credible stories to tell the kids. It’s just getting harder and harder to impress them nowadays,” he complained, watching a large tree branch crash to the ground with a crack. “Ah, I’ll have to clear the branches from the yard again. That tree is such an eyesore!,” he said to himself. “I really should have gotten it cut down when I fell out of it that time and it got me this awful scrape. Now that would truly be a worthy sacrifice for a greater cause.” Blue Review Vol. XXVIII
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