The Hills of Custer County

Photo by Dylan Krause

The faucet handle squeaked. As it turned, cold water flowed out and circled the rusted drain. An old man looked up into the mirror. Years of indifference left it covered in specks of toothpaste, facial hair, and other unidentifiable substances. “Helen?” he shouted over his shoulder toward the open door. He looked into the darkness expectantly. A cacophony of nothingness echoed back through the doorframe.  “Shit.” He looked down and sighed as he put an unsteady hand over his eyes. Seconds of penitence passed before he shut off the water and opened the drawer containing his electric razor. For the last six years of her life, she had risen every morning and helped him shave. His hands now incapable of completing this task. Hands that used to stack hay and rope steers, mend fence and break horses, raise children and right wrongs. Hands that had delivered calves, colts, pups and babies into this existence. Hands that had killed Viet Cong, coyotes, whitetails, turkeys, quail, and when necessary, the suffering old cow or gelding with a broken leg. Hands that were rough when required and gentle when needed. Hands that had once held the world together for all that surrounded him. When these hands failed, she stood there by his side to help pick up the slack. But now it had been four years without her.

The electric razor trembled with the sixteenth-note regularity of a metronome as he lifted it to his cheek. His daughter had bought him one with a skin guard to keep him from cutting himself but it in preventing the wounds, it left a stubble, like a combine through a wheat field.

Deep fissures cut by wind, sun, and time showed between his eyes and across his forehead as he concentrated on the mirror. He focused. The liver-spotted hands continued to rattle as the blade moved across his face and lips. The harder he tried to steady the blade, the worse it shook. Then it slipped out of his grasp and crashed onto the counter. 

He just stood there and watched it buzzing, the head making a slow arc across the Formica. He couldn’t even shave himself anymore. Someday he wouldn’t be able to get around. Someday they would put him in a home. Someday a young Mexican woman who barely spoke English would have to give him sponge baths, bring him three meals a day, turn him so he didn’t get bed sores, change his bedpan, and clean out his catheter while he lay there alone. Gunsmoke would be playing on the twelve-inch TV while he waited for it all to be over. 

A scattering of shaved gray stubble danced around to the vibration and screamed of his inadequacy. “Fuck it, that’ll have to be good enough.” Then he looked up at the ceiling. “And you cain’t scold me about cursin’ anymore.” 

He walked into the closet and pulled down a red pressed pearl snap shirt and starched jeans. “I should at least try to look somewhat presentable.” He got dressed, struggling with the snaps, buttons and zippers. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled on a pair of worn Muck boots and tucked his jeans inside the neoprene. “That’ll work.” After a few seconds the old man eased himself up with a grunt and a sigh, then walked back to the closet. He returned carrying a shotgun and a box of shells.

He laid the Browning Superposed on the bed next to the box of #8’s. The shotgun had belonged to his grandfather; it was the man’s favorite actually. It wasn’t dressed in engraving or upgraded European wood, just plain walnut and blue steel, a working man’s shotgun. Made in Belgium, 1936, it was built with a level of craftsmanship that doesn’t exist today. Well, it can still be found, but back then quality was the standard rather than the exception and it was accessible to the common man.  

He could smell the cold steel and gun oil.  One of his favorite smells. The first time he remembered smelling the scent he had been eight years old. Sitting in his grandfather’s lap on the living room sofa, his grandfather pulled the shotgun from its leather case and let him hold it. The boy asked with all the seriousness of a puritan if he could shoot it. His grandfather laughed from his belly “That’ll put you right on yer tail!” he exclaimed. “Maybe when ya get a little lead in yer drawers ya can.” 

His grandfather laid the shotgun on the shag carpet next to the sofa and picked up another leather case. From it, he pulled out a single shot .410 and handed it to the boy. “This one ya could probly handle,” he said.

As he held the .410, his grandfather told the boy that he was big enough to start bird hunting. The hunting of winged creatures stood right alongside the son of God in the grandfather’s pantheon of convictions. The boy lit up with joy and excitement as he looked over the beaten and scarred shotgun in his hands. He was already proficient with the bolt action .22 he had been given the year before. Squirrels feared him the boy claimed, and he said that every squirrel in the county probably knew his name. This probably wasn’t far from the truth, his mother made squirrel and dumplings on a regular basis. 

The old man continued to stare at the Browning lying on the bed. He picked it up, broke it open, and held it at waist level as he looked at it. Shaking fingers ran over the grain in the buttstock. The checkering on the forend and grip was worn smooth from a couple of lifetimes of use. He had hunted with the gun for nearly thirty years, his grandfather some fifty before him. The stories you could tell, he thought. He turned it over and looked at a deep scratch on the right side of the buttstock. On a cold January morning in ‘98 he had used it to bust ice, a half-inch thick, to retrieve a mallard that had fallen some hundred yards away. It took him so long that he ended up killing a limit before he made it back to the decoys.

He remembered the piece of the rib that a gunsmith had straightened after he dropped it in on a rock while turkey hunting in ’01. There was still a bright mar where the metal had struck the stone. The bluing at the end of the barrels was worn off to a silver sheen where he and his grandfather had held onto the gun when it was broken over their shoulders. He thought of the miles this gun had seen while trailing bird dogs through the forgotten spaces of this country. 

Running his hands over the wood pulled more memory from the grain. When he was twelve years old, he followed his grandfather and a pair of Pointers named Princess and Tucker through the hills of Custer County. By then he had upgraded to the 20-gauge pump. They had already killed several birds from the three coveys they had found that morning. But a heavy rain blew in and forced them back to the truck. 

The heater felt good on his cold fingers. The steam billowed out of his grandfather’s battered green thermos as he poured out two cups of coffee. The Browning leaned right next to his Winchester on the bench seat between them. They listened to the likes of Bob Wills, Hank Williams, and Marty Robbins. The rain battered the hood. It was about noon by the time it let up. They stepped out of the truck, stretched, opened the dog box, and prepared to go. As they looked out across the country, beams of sunlight were shooting straight down through the clouds. Like dozens of golden towers, the cylinders of light spread out across the hills seemingly into eternity.

“That there’s the light of heaven, shinin’ down here to remind us of the glory to come.” The boy stood in awe. Years later in Vietnam, he would give up the notions of heaven and hell, good and evil, but he sure did believe it as a kid.

“Look right over there son,” his grandfather said, pointing to a glowing sand plum thicket three hundred yards away. “We’re gonna go kill some birds right in that thicket, the Lord wills it.” And sure enough, Princess locked up on the edge of the brush with Tucker backing her. There was a covey right where he said they’d be.

He looked up at the clock on the wall. He had been looking at the shotgun for over two hours. Might as well get on with this thing. He walked back to the closet and grabbed his faded chore coat and the soft leather case that belonged to the shotgun. 

…

A weathered old rancher held the binoculars to his eyes, looking out across the snow-covered topography. It was one of those bitter cold mornings that you get in mid-January. He was focused on a particular patch of brush far in the distance. The diesel engine of the feed truck idled as they sat parked at the gate. The dash read eleven degrees. 

“Coyote?” The passenger, his oldest son, asked.

 “Nope, looks like a bobcat.” 

“No shit,” the son said with a tone of bewilderment. “What’s he doin’ just standin’ out there.”

“Looks like he’s eatin’ or just sniffin’ on somethin’.”

A pause. “Hmm, I wonder what. We don’t have anything in that pasture right now. Maybe a rabbit or somethin’?”

“Hard to say, it’s damn near half a mile away so I cain’t really tell.” He lowered the binoculars and stroked his mustache as he looked out the windshield. “Wanna go take a look? I mean, what else do we have to do today?”

“What else do we have to do today?” The son responded with satirical disgust. “Well, I’ve gotta bust ice in the East Mexico, Crenshaw, Horse Trap, and probly down on Oak Creek, not to mention feed in all of ‘em, and we still gotta bring a couple round bales out to the Dead Indian place.” 

“Oh come on. That old road’ll take us right down there to it, won’t have to walk more than a hundred yards. Come on, it’ll take five minutes.”

“…for I know the joys and discomforts of an agricultural life…” The son said, quoting the FFA creed.

“That’s the spirit!” The rancher said with a chuckle.

“Just don’t get this thing stuck like you did last year, Mom won’t let ya hear the end of it.” 

“But I’m a professional now.” He said jokingly with an air of inflated confidence.

The son opened the door and stepped out into the snow. “All to see what a fuckin’ bobcat is eatin’.” He said to himself, smiling and shaking his head. 

….

The air was silent with eight inches of fresh snow. You could look out across that landscape and pretend that the world didn’t even exist. Standing in the middle of it made you feel insignificant but like some lower god with dominion at the same time. You wanted the lifelessness. You wanted the emptiness. You wanted silence. You wanted to stand there and hear your heart pulsing in your ears. You wanted your toes and fingers to become numb from the exposure. You wanted the sun to bounce off that white blanket and blind you. You wanted to shiver and then tense all of your muscles to fight it off. You wanted your throat to burn as the temperature tried to crystalize all of the moist tissue between your teeth and the bottom of your lungs. You wanted your breath to escape and billow out onto the plains like some steam engine of old. You wanted to feel these things because you wanted to feel alive. If only to remind yourself of the most visceral parts of being. If only to ease yourself closer to the cliff. If only for one last time. 

This is how the old man felt as he stood on top of a hill next to a small sand plum thicket. He looked out and could see no life before him. No bobwhites whistled, no coyotes howled, no cattle bawled, no turkeys yelped. The wind didn’t blow and the grass didn’t sway. Nothing moved and nothing made a sound. He was alone in the world that he had created and that’s how he hoped that it would be. No distractions and no excuses. He looked up at the sky and watched the vapor leave his lungs. He watched it rise straight up like chimney smoke. He floated up with it and looked down on his earthly form. He looked to his right and to his left as he rose higher. The hills began to flatten. He saw his old Ford parked on the side of the road growing smaller and smaller. Now he looked at the horizon to the west and could see the hills and the mesas rolling into forever. He could see the Washita River, that macabre ribbon where Custer first licked his lips to taste the warm metallic blood of natives, snaking its way through the bleached country. From high above he watched the winter sun slowly sink behind the edge of the world, a dusty velvet curtain on everything he had ever known. 

He sat on his knees in the snow, thicket to his back, and faced out towards the hills of Custer County. The Browning leaned on the branches behind him. He was happy to have carried in this place one more time. From the right pocket of his chore coat, his shaking hand removed a frozen quail, the last one he had ever killed nearly a decade earlier. He had kept it in the deep freeze all this time for reasons that were unclear even to him. He laid it on a red bandana that was spread on top of the snow. From his left pocket, he reached past his headlamp and pulled out an old leather collar with a brass tag that had his grandfather’s name and phone number pressed into it. He placed it next to the quail. He took off his right glove and reached into his chest pocket and from it produced a pair of wedding rings and situated them in the middle of the collar.  He leaned back on his heels and gazed out towards the horizon. 

It was no longer a landscape of fear, but one of remembrance. Recognition that these hills shaped him, molded him with strong hands into a vessel that was nearly empty but held enough for another day. A group of songbirds rose in silent unison from the thicket behind him as he uttered a prayer to the god of the plains. They fluttered over the rise and settled in another bunch of sand plums as the land faded to red, then gray, then black.