The Road Between

A Chung

Blackjack’s legs give out sometime around noon, when the sun is hot and high in the sky. His whole body dips when he hits the ground, graceful and bent-kneed, and the weight of him sends up a cloud of red dust that coats your throat, stings your eyes. You swing your leg over the saddle, land without making a sound. You assess the damage.

The rot’s creeping up his neck now, climbing towards his ears. His eyes are wide and glossy, and you can see yourself in them—see your own hurt reflected back at you in the twist of your mouth, the pinch between your brows. You take a deep breath and school your features; try to put on a brave face, for him.

“Hey, now.” When you reach down and pat his shoulder—right below the dull circle of teeth marks—his withers twitch. He’s plenty old, for a horse, but it doesn’t make this any easier. “You’re okay. I’m staying.”

The promises—the lies—come easier than you expect. Maybe it’s because you’ve always known this was going to happen, and maybe it’s because they weren’t lies, not before. The same words have tumbled out of your mouth a thousand times over, absentminded reassurances of: Easy, now and Whoa, there and You’re okay, you’re safe, you’re okay.

Blackjack snorts. He hasn’t blinked. You’re not sure when he stopped blinking, and you’re not sure if he will again. He’s got his legs folded underneath him, but every now and then he gives a lurch, like he’s trying to get up. You don’t want him to, because you know that when he does, his body won’t belong to him anymore.

Dead should stay dead. That’s the rule. Sometimes there’s a window before one or the other, and that’s when you need to act.

You check your revolver. Nowadays, you keep track of your ammunition like it’s your own name. But still, you check. And still—empty.

So you grab your knife instead. This, too, comes surprisingly easy. And it’s still easy when you drop to one knee, steady one hand against his muzzle, level the other at his head and point the blade towards his eye. He twitches. Your reflection is stony-faced, perfect in its resolve. Any hurt from before is gone, concealed by the darkness of his pupil. But then he blinks, just once, slow and even, and somehow, that does it.

Bullet to brain, torch to stump; dead stays dead stays dead.

Your palms are slick with sweat. You try to make yourself cold enough for the kill, to do what’s good for you and him, but the sun’s beating down on your neck, and it makes it hard to think about good. The desert air fills your nose, perfumed by earth and rot and damp, animal fear. Right now, all you can think about is how far he’s carried you—from Nevada to New Mexico, to the end of the world and beyond. In the end, the monsters were faster, but you both outran them for a long time.

The blade goes slack. You let your arm drop to your side, and you think: coward. It doesn’t escape you that most of this is your fault. In those seconds before the bite, you could’ve aimed better, shot faster, but you didn’t. Now he’s well on his way to becoming the one thing worse than dead, and you can’t even do this for him. Still: there’s a relief in knowing that some small part of you hasn’t relinquished its softness, even after all this, after everything.

You sheathe the knife. You say, “Easy,” when he tosses his head, and: “I’m sorry.” 

When you get up, you do it fast, because it’s the only way you can get yourself to leave. Blackjack stares unseeingly—twitches on the ground—doesn’t watch as you start to walk away, and you think about the miles and miles of desert ahead, the cracked ground and cold nights, the view between two pricked ears.

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