Donald Mace Williams

WOLFE

Tha com of more under misthleoþum
Grendel gongan, Godes yrre bær.
—Beowulf
(Then came from the moor under the mist-cliffs
Grendel stalking, God’s ire he bore.)

When he arrived at the cave or den, the hunter took a short
candle in one hand, his six-shooter in the other, wiggled into the
den, and shot … by the reflection of the light in her eyes.
—J. Evetts Haley, The XIT Ranch of Texas

Fat Herefords grazed on rich brown grass.
Tom Rogers watched three winters pass,
Then, all his ranch paid off, designed
A bunkhouse, biggest of its kind
In that wide stretch of Caprock lands,
To house the army of top hands
That rising markets and good rain
Forced and allowed him to maintain.
At night sometimes a cowboy sang
Briefly to a guitar’s soft twang
While others talked, wrote letters home,
Or stared into brown-bottle foam.
Rogers, white-haired as washed gyp rock,
Stood winding Cyclops, the tall clock,
One night and heard the sleepy sound
Of song across the strip of ground
Between the bunkhouse and the house.
He smiled and dropped his hand. Near Taos,
At night, pensive and wandering out
From camp, a young surveyor-scout,
He had heard singing just that thin
Rise from the pueblo. Go on in,
A voice kept saying, but he stood,
One arm hooked round a cottonwood
For strength until, ashamed, he whirled
And strode back to the measured world.
Strange, how that wild sound in the night
Had drawn him, who was hired to sight
Down lines that tamed. So now, he thought,
Winding until the spring came taut,
This clock, this house, these wide fenced plains,
These little towns prove up our pains.
He went to bed, blew out the light
On the nightstand, said a good night
To Elsa, and dropped off to sleep
Hearing a last faint twang.

                                                      From deep
In the fierce breaks came a reply,
A drawn-out keening, pitched as high
And savage as if cowboy songs,
To strange, sharp ears, summed up all wrongs
Done to the wilderness by men,
Fences, and cows. With bared teeth then,
Ears back, the apparition skulked
Across the ridges toward the bulked,
Repulsive forms of house and shed,
Till now not neared. The next dawn’s red
Revealed a redder scene. The pen
Where calving heifers were brought in
In case of need lay strewn and gory,
Each throat and belly slashed, a story
Of rage, not hunger; nothing gone
But one calf ’s liver. His face drawn,
Rogers bent close to find a track
In the hard dirt. Then he drew back,
Aghast. Though it was mild and fair,
He would always thereafter swear
There hung above that broad paw print
With two deep claw holes a mere hint,
The sheerest wisp, of steam. He stood
Silent. When finally he could,
He said, “Well, I guess we all know
What done this. No plain lobo, though.
I’ve seen a few. They never killed
More than to get their belly filled.
This one’s a devil. Look at that.”
He toed a carcass. Where the fat
And lean had been flensed, red and white,
From a front leg, a second bite
Had crushed the bone above the knee.
By ones and twos men leaned to see
With open mouths. A clean, dark hole
At one side punched clear through the bole.
“That’s no tooth, it’s a railroad spike,”
One cowboy breathed. Or else it’s like,
Tom Rogers thought, a steel-tipped arrow
Such as once pierced him, bone and marrow,
Mid-calf when, riding in advance
Of wagons on the trail to Grants,
Attacked, he turned and in the mud
Escaped with one boot full of blood.
At least the Indians had a cause,
He thought. This thing came from the draws
To kill and waste, no more. He spat
And said, “I’ll get hitched up.” At that,
Two cowboys jumped to do the chore
While from the pile by the back door
Others, jaws set, began to carry
Cottonwood logs onto the prairie
Where horses dragged the grim night’s dead
Like travois to their fiery bed.
Rogers, with hands in pockets, stood
And said, “That barbecue smells good.”
But the half-smile he struggled for
Turned on him like a scimitar
And cowboys, sensing, kept their eyes
Down and said nothing. By sunrise
Of the next day the word was out
By mouth and telegraph about
The beast that crept out of the dark
And slaughtered like a land-bound shark,
Evil, bloodthirsty, monstrous. Soon
The story was that the full moon
Caused that four-legged beast to rise
On two feet and with bloodshot eyes
To roam the plains in search of prey
Like some cursed half-man. In one day
Three of Rogers’ good cowboys quit,
No cowards but not blessed with wit
To fathom the unknown, and more
Kept glancing at the bunkhouse door
At night as if, next time, the thing
Might burst inside. “Hey, man, don’t sing,”
One said as a guitar came out.
There did seem, thinking back, no doubt
That music must have been what stirred
The anger out there. Some had heard
The answer. They agreed the sound
Came after Ashley’s fingers found
The highest note of that night’s strumming.
“Play it again you know what’s coming,”

…

(Purchase Rattle #30 to read the rest of the poem.)

–from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
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