He turned eighty this year, more or less. We never knew what to believe from a man who climbed the concrete stairs, knocked on our peeling front door, and introduced himself out of the blue: “My name’s Don Cooper, and I’d like to buy your barn.” Of course my parents sold it, along with ten of our fourteen acres, unused except by my sister and me and our friends -- all that space to explore and tell secrets could be put to better use. Don introduced me to horses, taught me at ten how to move without startling the huge creatures, approach quietly from the side, offer treats from a flat palm (the tickle of their whiskers and the soft leather of their lips much preferable to those square yellow teeth), keep one hand always in contact so they knew I was there. He taught me that size does not equal strength or smarts. Horses are dumb, he used to say, big and beautiful but dumb enough to eat or run until they die. A chestnut mare escaped the barn one fall and made herself sick by eating all the yellow apples she could reach before we found her, so maybe he was right. I never knew how much of what he said was true – whether he’d really been a cowboy, chased rattlesnakes in his Army jeep, raced horses in Florida, made and lost millions over the years. When I heard he’d died, I thought about his horses, and how maybe we’re just as dumb as they are – eating this life until it kills us, the sweet juice on our tongues, reaching up for one more apple, stretching out our necks for one more mile, regardless of the consequences, knowing only what we desire.

My father would stand in the kitchen and shoot BB’s in the direction of the dog when he barked too loud or too long. They’re only BB’s, he’d say, they won’t really hurt him. They fell harmlessly in the field behind the doghouse, decapitating weeds – Queen Anne’s Lace, wild alfalfa, the tall tufted grass my mother called Timothy. They lodged themselves in the grooved crumby bark of the oak tree, in the the white-painted wood of the doghouse, bleached and peeling. And some struck his dusty black fur, embedded themselves in the flesh of his flank or his shoulder, stinging like the worst hornet. One day, the dog must have turned his head and a tiny lead sphere struck his nose. I heard his yelp from upstairs but was afraid to ask what had happened. I remember that after that, both barking and shooting stopped. And later, when I sat in the yard and stroked his sun-warmed side, his damp black nose, I felt the places where my father’s anger had sunk like Braille, where the skin had grown over, learned to accept the metal.