Nebraska

into the burning open, swooping his arms up, crying for help, pitching rocks at its underbelly as it yaws and speeds away. He goes back to the elephant and eats with the jackals until his belly aches, and then he scoops up his possessions, wiping his mouth on the lettering of the silk coat. The Captain perceives a greater darkness and looks up at the sun. Only a slice of it is apparent as the moon nears eclipse.

His sign. The Captain looks for a parrot and sees one in a treetop to the west. He wrenches his way through weeds and high grass until he comes upon green water and a pole corral. He splashes deeply into the creek and then dips underwater to pass his hands over the shapes of pretty girls lolling among the carp and eels, crab traps of stones at their hips. The green water irons out over him, and then he bursts up from the bottom, blowing air, and raises up his sword. “Yes!” shouts Captain St. Jones.

Hush. There the giant is, sleeping, his huge back rounded, the great sword at his side, glinting silver light. The Corporal spies his worshiped coat, the powerful lettering, the green dragon and the golden torch of its breath. He slides into the creek from his island and swims across underwater, coming up with a gasp when he strokes into a holy girl and her leg oozes away.

And yet the Captain sleeps. The Corporal creeps up onto the hot sand and attempts to pick up the coat. He can't budge it—the weight is like an iron car, or as though the earth's gravity has been changed just for it. The Corporal slinks closer and clasps the great sword, then jumps up in the increasing darkness and hacks at the Captain's head, splitting it from crown to ear.

One roar of pain and the Corporal knows he has killed a giant bear. St. Jones is laughing at the Corporal's ignorance as he swaggers out of the jungle, the gold watch on his wrist, the expensive camera strapped around his neck. “Caught me sleeping, did you, boy? Only wish I got a snapshot of you to send it to your witch.” The Captain easily picks up the coat and painstakingly brushes away the sand. “And now you can give me the sword.”

“You'll kill me,” the Corporal says.

The Captain glimpses something on the island and snaps his fingers. “Quickly.”

And then there is night in the late afternoon. The moon overtakes the sun and all is still. Jungle animals cower, the green waters cease, and the Corporal swings the great sword overhead with a strength that is more than his own. He hears a wild howl as the blade cuts through jungle air, and then he hears the Captain scream with agony as his hot blood splashes over the Corporal, as the earth pounds with his great collapse.

And then light seeps down through the treetops and the witch is stooping over Captain St. Jones, unstrapping the camera, working the gold watch off his wrist, pressing her nose into the all-important red coat. Caws and screeches and yipes rise up from the island as she rapidly zips on the coat and pulls the corpse into green water that swallows up the Captain. His body grows black with eels.

The Corporal had expected a metamorphosis once the coat was put on, but the witch is no prettier, no more appealing, and just as poor as she's always been. She keeps patting the material and peering at herself in the water, so pleased with herself that she can pay little attention to the Corporal as he swims back to his island in a downpour.

The Corporal wears a green uniform and an eye patch when he appears on the opposite bank. The native people speak in whispers, and when the Corporal looks up, they hear the wopping noise and the high whine of an engine. The pretty girls are taken away and the witch doctor makes a ceremony of wiping off his paint. The Corporal sits there patiently, awaiting the helicopter's approach, the peace accords, another place.

True Romance

It was still night out and my husband was shaving at the kitchen sink so he could hear the morning farm report and I was peeling bacon into the skillet. I hardly slept a wink with Gina acting up, and that croupy cough of hers. I must've walked five miles. Half of Ivan's face was hanging in the circle mirror, the razor was scraping the soap from his cheek, and pigs weren't dollaring like they ought to. And that was when the phone rang and it was Annette, my very best friend, giving me the woeful news.

Ivan squeaked his thumb on the glass to spy the temperature—still cold—then wiped his face with a paper towel, staring at me with puzzlement as I made known my shock and surprise. I took the phone away from my ear and said, “Honey? Something's killed one of the cows!”

He rushed over to the phone and got to talking to Annette's husband, Slick. Slick saw it coming from work—Slick's mainly on night shift; the Caterpillar plant. Our section of the county is on a party line: the snoops were getting their usual earful. I turned out the fire under the skillet. His appetite would be spoiled. Ivan and Slick went over the same ground again; I poured coffee and sugar and stirred a spoon around in a cup, just as blue as I could be, and when Ivan hung up, I handed the cup to him.

He said, “I could almost understand it if they took the meat, but Slick says it looks like it was just plain ripped apart.”

I walked the telephone back to the living room and switched on every single light. Ivan wasn't saying anything. I opened my robe and gave Gina the left nipple, which wasn't so standing-out and sore, and I sat in the big chair under a shawl. I got the feeling that eyes were on me.

Ivan stood in the doorway in his underpants and Nebraska sweatshirt, looking just like he did in high school. I said, “I'm just sick about the cow.”

He said, “You pay your bills, you try and live simple, you pray to the Lord for guidance, but Satan can still find a loophole, can't he? He'll trip you up every time.”

“Just the idea of it is giving me the willies,” I said.

Ivan put his coffee cup on the floor and snapped on his gray coveralls. He sat against the high chair. “I guess I'll give the sheriff a call and then go look at the damage.”

“I want to go with you, okay?”

The man from the rendering plant swerved a winch truck up the pasture until the swinging chain cradle was over the cow. His tires skidded green swipes on grass that was otherwise white with frost. I scrunched up in the pickup with the heater going to beat the band and Gina asleep on the seat. Ivan slumped in the sheriff's car and swore out a complaint. The man from the rendering plant threw some hydraulic levers and the engine revved to unspool some cable, making the cradle clang against the bumper.

I'd never seen the fields so pretty in March. Every acre was green winter wheat or plowed earth or sandhills the color of camels. The lagoon was as black and sleek as a grand piano.

Gina squinched her face up and then discovered a knuckle to chew as the truck engine raced again; and when the renderer hoisted the cow up, a whole stream of stuff poured out of her and dumped on the ground like boots. I slaughtered one or two in my time. I could tell which organs were missing.

Ivan made his weary way up the hill on grass that was greasy with blood, then squatted to look at footprints that were all walked over by cattle. The man from the plant said something and Ivan said something back, calling him Dale, and then Ivan slammed the pickup door behind him. He wiped the fog from inside the windshield with his softball cap. “You didn't bring coffee, did you?”

I shook my head as he blew on his fingers. He asked, “What good are ya, then?” but he was smiling. He said, “I'm glad our insurance is paid up.”

“I'm just sick about it,” I said.

Ivan put the truck in gear and drove it past the feeding cattle, giving them a look-over. “I gotta get my sugar beets in.”

I thought: the cow's heart, and the female things.