Summer Herd: A Short Story

Written by MADELINE MUSCHALIK

Moody Magazine Creative Writing Competition Winning Entry

THE NEVER-ENDING BLANKET of blue sky left Thomas feeling content, for the first time in a while, on his drive from the airport. As their rickety farm truck jostled from side to side along the dirt road, his dad pointed across the wide expanse of the plain where a herd of shaggy bison grazed.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” his dad grinned and tipped his felt hat further over his eyes against the sun.

Beautiful couldn’t even begin to describe Thomas’s surroundings. This morning he had left the monstrous steel of New York City, and now felt like he was in an ancient world that didn’t abide by government or law. The West.

Thomas nodded in response to the statement, but other than that the two were silent for the remainder of the drive. This was how their relationship had always been. He recalled nights spent around the family dinner table, his mother trying to get a word out of both father and son.

Something flashed across his peripheral vision, and Thomas turned to spot two bald eagles in flight, their enormous wings gliding in the wind. His dad was like these majestic creatures in many ways, unable to be chained by anything or anyone. Maybe this was what had led to his parent’s fiery divorce. His born and raised New Yorker mother never fully able to shackle his dad to stability.

They puttered up the steep incline of a wooded hill, past an ice-gray pond that reflected the firs, and emerged in an open valley. An enormous carved post in the fence welcomed them to Double Y Ranch. They parked the car next to a pair of dark, planked houses. One had a sprawling front porch, and the other a large stone campfire on the side of it.

As soon as his dad took the keys out of the ignition, Thomas’s new stepmom, Isadora, leaped from the porch to the side of the truck, calling,

“George, Thomas!”

His dad opened the truck door and wrapped Isadora in a hug while Thomas retrieved his

duffel from the muck-encrusted truck bed. Although he had met Isadora once before, at the wedding last summer in his dad’s Wyoming hometown, he was thrown off to see the two beside each other. The way they interacted reminded him of early memories as a toddler when his parents were still in love, taking him to the park and adopting Tate, their golden retriever.

“How do you like Montana?” Isadora took her warm hazel eyes away from George to Thomas.

“It’s beautiful,” he stuttered, cursing himself for his inability to put the vivid scenery into more distinctive words.

Montana Plains

Photographed by Madeline Muschalik

Isadora laughed at his expression and helped him hoist the duffel up the steep porch steps. Soon, Thomas was wrapped in a wool quilt in the small, but cozy room that was his until college resumed in the fall. His comfort made him forget his dad’s cold shoulder and the guilt that had started to set in about choosing Montana with his dad over New York with his mom for the summer. As he drifted off for a nap, the brief thought that he sort-of preferred her nagging to dad’s silence fluttered by, but it was too late now.

***

THOMAS WOKE UP HOURS LATER to the sound of a melodic male singing voice echoing across the valley. He dug through the chest of drawers he’d unpacked into and found a beige pullover. His mom had excitedly gifted it to him last Christmas, some brand from a fancy department store he could care less about.

The house was pitch black, and the worn floorboards creaked under him. Through an open window, he saw the light of a fire next to the opposite house.

Outside, the stars spilled across the sky like freckles on skin. He followed the singing voice to the crackling outdoor hearth where a fellowship of familiar faces sat listening to Lincoln, Isadora’s brother, strum his guitar and sing,

“They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound. But I am still around. I’ll always be around and around and around and around and around and around.”

He sat next to Jessa, Lincoln’s daughter, and his step-cousin, who he had enjoyed hanging out with at the wedding last year, while all the adults fraternized.

“You slept for a long time.” She greeted him in her typical, casual manner.

“Long day of travel. Did I miss dinner?”

“Yes, but there are some sausages out here to roast.” She rolled up a sleeve and handed him some supplies.

Jessa prided herself on eccentric outfits. At the wedding, she had worn a blood-red velvet suit that reminded Thomas of a vampire. Tonight, she wore a black and yellow vintage Wrangler button-down with a pair of flare jeans, soiled from a day of riding. A crimson bird feather was tucked under the twine of her black cowboy hat.

“How was your first year of college?” Jessa watched as the meat cooked over the fire.

“It was…a transition.” He decided to be honest. Around most of his mother’s friends his answer was always a standard, “good,” but he had never been lonelier in truth. He’d struggled to find the “college community” glorified in movies, books, and his mother’s stories. His dad was in Montana with his new wife, his mom filling all her time with various social events and vacations to get her mind off his dad, and the one loyal companion he could always count on buried in the woods upstate. All that remained was a clay imprint of Tate’s paw on Thomas’s nightstand that they had created when the vet first diagnosed him with the cancer.

Lincoln stopped singing mid-lyric, and the chatter halted.

“What is it, Dad?” Jessa snapped up from stoking the fire.

Lincoln held up a hand as if urging everyone to quiet down, even though no one was making a sound or so much as shifting on their seat.

The fire popped, radiant sparks flying, and smoke curling up to the sky. In the distance, through the murky night, Thomas could hear the panicked whinnying of horses.

“Mountain lion,” Jessa said under her breath. She looked with raised eyebrows at her dad who had already darted up and was racing toward the house.

“What’s he doing?” Thomas whispered.

“Going to get the gun,” Jessa replied before standing and following Lincoln’s path. His dad stood from Isadora’s side, and Thomas made a motion to follow.

“Stay here,” George commanded, without a look in his direction. Thomas had never seen his dad hold a gun in his life and wondered how he would be any more help.

“Your dad’s a stubborn creature,” Isadora observed. Only the two of them remained at the once-lively scene. Thomas winced as he heard cabin doors slam, amidst cursing, then three sets of heavy boots running on the gravel toward the frightened horses.

“Yeah.” Thomas agreed. Sometimes he wondered about his father’s relationship with his stepmother. The way he treated her with more respect and attention than he’d ever seen with his mom. He wondered if George always acted this way in the early stages of a relationship and grew more distant over time. Or perhaps Isadora and his new life in Montana had changed his dad for the better. Though, as of now, Thomas didn’t see any evidence of that. “I can see you’re about as talkative as he is,” Isadora laughed.

“Sorry. I guess I’m just tired from all the traveling.” Thomas racked his brain for something to discuss with her, but he didn’t know Isadora well. His dad and she had met the spring of last year after the divorce finalized and George moved out west. All Thomas knew was that the two crossed paths while vacationing with friends from high school to celebrate the annulment. Five months later, they were married.

***

THE NEXT MORNING, Thomas was greeted with a stack of lemon blueberry pancakes that brought him right back to Sundays in elementary school at their old Manhattan apartment. He followed his dad and Isadora out to the horse corral, where four saddled horses were roped against part of the fence.

“What happened with the mountain lion?” he asked Jessa when she appeared from behind a shed leading a gray speckled stallion with a frayed rope.

“Think we scared him off. But he’ll be back.” She squinted against the sun and adjusted her hat. Today’s outfit was another rodeo-esque getup.

“Would your dad have shot it if given the chance?”

Jessa stopped in her tracks and scoffed. “Would yours?”

Without waiting for an answer, she handed him the rope and walked over to where the adults stood. Thomas leaned against the horse, who snorted and pushed his head against his shoulder with a gentle tap. He rubbed his fingers against the velvet-soft skin of the horse’s nose.

Jessa walked back leading a jet-black mare. “You’re on Landlocked. I’m on Sentinel.” She pointed to each horse. “Your dad wants to ride fast so he says we’ll go in separate groups.”

“Oh.” Thomas continued to stroke the smooth skin. Another chance to bond with his father missed. Did he even have room for Thomas in this new cowboy lifestyle?

In the time they had ascended the horses, Jessa from the ground and Thomas from the mounting block, Lincoln, Isadora, and George were riding off into the distance. Thomas tried to ignore the sinking feeling deep in his blood by looking out at the looming mountains and rolling, fat clouds.

“Ready?” Jessa asked him once he had adjusted himself in the saddle and doubled over the reins. They were off on their journey.

The horses trotted through the tall grass while a fluffy, white coyote pup followed them, making Jessa laugh. The wild canine had a cute face that looked so different from the newspaper pictures he’d seen of ugly, ragged coyotes appearing on the outskirts of New York from the forest preserves.

They moved their horses into a fast lope to get away, their hooves crushing through the wild sage field, creating a fragrant perfume that permeated the summer morning.

Eventually, they arrived back at the edge of the valley and into the cover of the forest. They rode for another hour, the overwhelming landscape and horse’s heavy breathing filling in any need for idle conversation.

“See that tree?” Jessa pointed at a tall fir with wide gashes and carvings strewn over the trunk. “Those are bear scratches.”

They followed the path until Thomas could hear the roaring power of the nearby river.

“We’ll take a break at the intersection of the Clearwater and Blackfoot.”

Thomas and Jessa tied the horses to two sturdy trees with simple but strong knots so they wouldn’t escape and hiked a few paces down to the riverbed. They crunched along the rainbow-colored rocks until they found a dry spot to sit down.

“They did good,” Thomas noted, thinking of the sweat glistening off of Landlocked and Sentinel’s muscled bodies.

“They’re athletes. Bred for this kind of work. They don’t know any different.”

“How old are they?” The horses ran through the fields and forests like children. Then again, so had Tate and he was fifteen when he passed.

“Not sure” Jessa shrugged. “Most of them were here before I was born.”

Thomas looked out to the river. A doe and her spotted fawn were crossing the shallow rapids further upstream from them. Jessa began picking up flat rocks and trying to skip them downstream.

“You know, they say this intersection of the river causes animals to live longer. We have some horses here that are older than any I’ve heard of.”

“Like how old?” Thomas wasn’t sure if she was messing with him.

Jessa shrugged. “Probably an old wives’ tale. The Montana air’s just good for them.”

“I’d give anything for a magical river like that. My dog died less than a year ago.” Tate was the only one who ever fully understood Thomas. How it felt to be alone, carted back and forth from one home to the next. If he told his parents he had felt close to his dog in a way he’d never feel with them, they’d think he was crazy. Now all he had was himself.

“My dog was killed by a mountain lion when I was young. That’s why my dad hates them. And they’re dangerous around horses.”

“I’m sorry.” He wondered if Jessa had felt the sheer pain he had.

“It was a long time ago.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get over my dog’s passing.”

“As they say, time heals most things. Besides, they really are just old fleabags when you think about it.”

“My dog felt like a sibling. I don’t think I’ll ever feel more devastated by anyone’s death.”

Jessa looked away from the river and over to him. “That’s why I like riding. When I’m out in nature, away from any civilization, I feel like she’s still with me.”

“I can see that.” Every time he’d seen an animal, or particularly intricate tree that morning, Thomas’s thoughts had turned to his deceased pet. “If that mountain lion hadn’t killed her, I wonder how long she would have lived?

“I imagine the oldest dog ever. She used to love to swim in this river.”

Still, Thomas couldn’t tell if this was her typical playfulness or if this tiny part of the Montana wilderness really did have extraordinary powers.

After resting for a while longer, they led the horses down to the river for a drink.

“You ready to cross?” Jessa smiled once they were both back up in the saddles.

“Here? Now?” Thomas felt himself missing the solidity of the earth below.

“Don’t worry, these horses cross all the time. And they know how to swim if anything bad happens.” Without waiting for another response, she began to lead Sentinel through the bubbling water. Landlocked followed close behind.

The horses’ shoes made pleasant clip-clop sounds on the rocks as they trudged through the depths. Eventually, Thomas had to lift up his boots from the stirrups and place his feet high on either side of the horse’s flanks so that the freezing water didn’t touch him.

They reached the muddy edge of the other riverbank. Sentinel moved to begin climbing toward the tree line again, but Jessa pulled back on the reins and frowned down at the mud.

Thomas was about to ask her what was wrong when he spotted animal tracks along the riverbank leading back toward the direction of the ranch. The mud formed a paw print with four teardrop shaped toes. The imprint reminded Thomas of the memento of Tate on his bedside table back in New York.

“That’s a mountain lion,” Jessa informed him when she noticed he had spotted the trail too. “See the lack of claw indentations? If it were a dog or coyote, they’d show up. That’s how you can tell.” Jessa began leading Sentinel back through the river in the direction they’d come from.

“What are you doing?” Thomas called after her, pulling at the leather bridle to lead Landlocked after her.

“I could see those tracks from where we sat, and I wanted to be sure that my suspicions weren’t true.”

They looped back on a path along the river, passing a fisherman on a raft with two alert Labradors starting with intent faces at the steeds.

After continuing loping and trotting intervals for the next few minutes, Jessa and Thomas climbed the steep path toward the valley. The horses, sensing proximity to home—and lunch— picked up the pace.

A shriek sounded above the pair, and Thomas looked up to the verdant tree line and spotted a red-tailed hawk diving through the air.

“That’s my hawk!” Jessa pointed to her hat. “A feather fell out of his tail here last summer.”

Thomas opened his mouth to reply when a booming shot rang through the air. A flock of small songbirds the hawk was after sprang off the low-lying branches in response. Jessa and Thomas both looked at each other, eyes wide. As if reading each other’s thoughts, they brought Landlocked and Sentinel into a lope and sped back toward the ranch, kicking up a cloud of thick dust on the side of the mountain as they went.

The horses saw the corral on the horizon line and kicked into a gallop. The hoofbeats reverberated through Thomas’s ears, over and over. They blocked out the sound of loud voices, and he couldn’t tell who they belonged to and if they were happy or mad.

As they neared the corral, sweat-drenched from the noon sun and a hard ride, Jessa pulled back on the reins, and Thomas followed. He spotted the three other horses tied to the post, and Isadora, Lincoln, and George huddled in a circle. As they slowly neared, he realized they were standing over a carcass. Isadora and Lincoln turned to watch them trot in.

His dad dragged the bloodied body of a mountain lion across the dirt. The tawny pelt reminded Thomas of Tate’s fur. A memory of stroking his dog’s coat the day they took him to the vet one final time surfaced as his dad looked up and spotted that his son had returned from the ride.