“Look at that,” said the boy called Kit, pointing to a shadow moving under the persimmon trees down near the beachgrass. “Is that a horse?”
“Ain’t no horses on the island,” Boyd said, without taking his pale blue eyes off his bobber. Beyond the marsh clouds towered high in the afternoon sky.
“There’s horses everywhere,” said the one they called Cochran. His voiced scraped like tin. He was thin as bones, wiry and sunburnt, too many teeth and his hair a wild mat of sticky straw.
“Not on the island,” Boyd said.
“We rode them horses at Trader Lee’s.”
“That was on the other side of the bridge. And those were ponies.”
“They could’ve grown up and swum the inlet.”
“They weren’t baby horses. They were ponies. That’s as big as they get.”
“Or walked over the bridge,” Cochran said.
“It’s too big to be anything else,” Kit said, still pointing.
“Maybe it’s a bear,” Cochran said.
Boyd sniffed and laughed, and then Cochran laughed too.
As they watched, a limb above the shadow bent and then snapped, dry leaves falling. A moment later a tawny head appeared, spindly forelegs found their way out of the rooted earth and onto the sandy flats.
“That’s somebody’s mule,” Kit said.
The mule stepped out of the woods, grinding the fruit in its back and forth jaw. It moved slowly on thickened wooden legs, its slack rubber spine slung between stone hips and shoulders. They could see red clay dried to its flanks and flecked across its face and back. The strands of its tail were thick and stiff with dried mud. It wore a blanket and a worn leather saddle. The butt of a rifle was poised erect from a black scabbard.
They stood beside their fishing poles, watching silently. The mule snuffled in the beachgrass until it found another persimmon, raised itself and chewed lazily, juice hanging from its jaw. The boys waited for another figure to follow the mule out of the trees. No one came.
“Hey,” Kit called, making Cochran jump. There was no answer from the woods. Kit called again, louder.
“Let’s go,” Boyd said. Cochran hesitated, then followed Boyd and Kit as they tromped over the hard sand, quick at first and then slower as they got closer. The mule turned its head toward them.
“That’s a deer gun,” Cochran said.
“Somebody’ll come,” Kit said, looking into the blackness of the woods. “Any minute. That’s somebody’s mule.”
The mule smelled of persimmon and saltwater and shit. Blue bottle flies nagged at its nostrils, at its belly, at its rump. The flesh of its shoulder quivered like water in wind as Boyd extended his arm to pet it. The mule hesitated momentarily its chewing and one wet eye followed the boy’s hand, but the head did not move.
“He’s hot,” Boyd said. He stroked the mule’s muzzle. The eyelids lowered, childlike lashes fluttering, and the animal breathed deeply.
Kit stood next to Boyd, inspecting the saddle. “I bet he’s tired,” he said.
Cochran stayed back, his swollen eyes squinting at the sun, waving flies away with one dirty hand. “It’s fat,” he said.
“Somebody’ll come for him soon,” Kit said. He called again into the woods.
“I don’t know,” Boyd said. “I think he’s on his own. All that mud on him. He’s hungry. Thirsty, too, I bet.”
“There’s all that water,” Cochran said.
“He can’t drink salt.”
“Would if he was really thirsty,” Cochran said. He walked behind the mule, his arms held out as if he might trip and fall. On the opposite side a canvas bag hung loose from the pommel. The clasp was torn away, and the bag was empty. The mule snorted when Cochran pulled at the bag.
“Careful,” Boyd said. “He’s not used to you.”
“It’s not used to you either.”
“He’s just not used to you,” Boyd said.
“There’s no brand on it.”
“They don’t do that here,” Boyd said. “It’s not like in the movies. They just work them.”
“It’s somebody’s mule,” Kit said. “Somebody’ll come for it. It’s not ours.” He watched as Cochran completed his circle around the mule, walking awkwardly in the deep sand. Boyd stood with the animal, his back to Cochran as if he weren’t there.
“What about that rifle?”
“Don’t touch it,” Kit said.
“Why’d somebody leave it?” Cochran stepped closer to the mule. “Looks all dried out and rusty.”
Kit came closer. “Yeah, why didn’t he take his rifle when he got down?” He followed Cochran’s footsteps around the mule. “Nothing else on it.” He stopped next to Boyd and rubbed the mule’s neck. “What about that rifle?”
“It’s an old 94,” Boyd said. “Maybe from the war.”
“He would’ve taken it with him,” Kit said. “If he could.”
“Probably,” Boyd said.
“‘Cept he didn’t,” Cochran said. He reached for the rifle.
“Leave it,” Boyd said. Cochran stopped with one hand on the stock.
“What? I just want to see.”
“If he comes back and you’re messing with his gun, there’ll be hell to pay,” Kit said.
“Not if I have the gun.”
“Just leave it,” Boyd said. He pushed Cochran with one firm hand. Not hard. Just enough to make him step back. Cochran cussed and laughed and walked back to the fishing spot.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
The afternoon was hot, and the fish did not bite. They dozed on the hard sand near the water, bobbers unmoving in the neap tide, the sun floating in and out of grey clouds. Near the distant shore a low-slung oyster buy-boat lay at anchor. The mule stood at the water’s edge as if waiting to cross, flicking its ears and mud-caked tail at flies.
“It must’ve run off,” Kit said. “Nobody’s coming for it ‘cause it run off and they can’t find it.”
“Got off to piss and the mule ran away,” Cochran said. He laughed and looked to see if the others would laugh.
“We could take him back,” Kit said. “Easy enough to follow his track back.”
“I’m not going through that jungle,” Cochran said. “It’s all sumac and swamp. You seen all that mud on it. There ain’t no path. It just wandered through the jungle.”
“If they’re coming, they’re coming,” Boyd said. “If they don’t come after a while, he’ll turn around and head home.”
Cochran stood up and stretched. Boyd and Kit remained on their backs, eyes closed, hands folded on their chests.
The mule half opened its eyes to watch as Cochran came to it. The boy stood next to the animal for a moment, waving away flies. The Winchester hung loose in the leather scabbard. He reached for it with both hands.
He had the front sight just clear of the scabbard when he heard Boyd call his name and felt the impact of the mule’s hind leg. He fell hard on his back. The rifle barrel hit him across the cheek. The mule snorted, stepped away and stood sideways to the boy.
There was a dull pain in his hip as he struggled to his feet. He gripped the gun at his side and pointed it at the mule. He squeezed the trigger. There was no sound.
Cochran heard the others holler his name. He put the stock against his shoulder and stroked the action. The mule turned its head.
The report was solid and thick and left Cochran momentarily deaf in his right ear. Birds flushed from the woods, and the mule stumbled screaming into the shallow water, its hip torn open and glistening wet.
Boyd was on Cochran before he heard him coming. He tore the gun from Cochran’s hands and threw him backward to the ground.
“The bitch kicked me,” Cochran said.
“That’s somebody’s mule,” Kit said. He stood between the others and the trees, his wide eyes running back and forth over the forest’s growing shadow. A thunderhead grew blue and black in the distance.
“We said to stay away from him,” Boyd said. He towered over Cochran, holding the Winchester with both hands.
“Somebody’s going to come now for sure,” Kit said. “They’d of heard that and they’ll come running.”
The mule was breathing heavy, and slime fell from its lips. It hobbled farther from them, the water up almost to its ribs, the bloody wound black with flies.
“Hell with it,” Cochran said. “Bitch kicked me.”
“He missed you,” Kit said. “Just shoved you with his leg. Hoof’d hit you, you wouldn’t be able to walk.”
“You shouldn’t’a done it,” Boyd said. “Should’a left him alone like we told you.”
The mule huffed as it sunk deeper until they could see only its head, surrounded by a slick of its own sweat and blood, the flies pestering in and out of its eyes and ears.
“Somebody’s gonna come for him,” Kit said. “That’s somebody’s mule.”
The animal’s face went under the surface and then up again, spray flying from the wide nostrils, teeth bared, purple tongue lapping as if to drink the inlet away. There was a moan, almost human, overwhelmed by fear and sadness, and then the mule’s head slipped beneath the saltwater. The boys watched, waiting, as if the submerged mule would rise and walk again.
Behind them the storm clouds moved closer, reached higher, to block out the sun.
“What’d it do that for?” Cochran asked. “Dumb bitch couldn’t get out of the water? Just drowned itself?”
Boyd looked at the rifle in his hands as if seeing it for the first time. He felt the letters carved into the steel barrel burning themselves into his flesh. He swung his arm as hard as he could, hurling the gun into the rising water.
“I would’a taken it,” Cochran said.
“We gotta get outta here,” Kit said. “That was somebody’s.”
An icy wind swept out of the woods, chasing the boys as they ran for their poles and their gear, away from the inlet and up the hill. The beach behind them grew darker yet, stung by hail and branches wrenched down from withered trees. They shook in the cabin all that night, the storm crashing against the windows, pounding at the door and bellowing their names across an endless sea.