The Fish

By Steve Adams

Come daybreak, Ida knew what they’d find — Jake standing over 120 of his cattle he’d managed to pen and shoot, one by one. She knew full well that he’d lost his mind and she’d never have him back. She knew that she was now a widow.

Her porch light showed two cows that had escaped, standing in the black morning near the ranchhouse and looking out towards Jake’s hissing kerosene lantern, the only other light for five miles. She clicked off her light and sat in her porch rocker.

She’d called the sheriff, but by the time he got there Jake was two-thirds finished and they couldn’t see him in the dark and “besides,” as the sheriff said, “they’re his cows anyway. No point in pushing a man into taking a shot at you.” So he parked his patrol car up the dirt road and decided to wait for daylight.

A gunshot sounded from the corral and echoed off a mountain bluff a mile away. In the silence that followed, Ida heard the sheriff’s radio crackle once, and then his voice calm and quiet, saying he’d presently be bringing Jake in. There was a garbled and mechanical reply, then the radio was turned off. The only indication of the sheriff in the darkness was the red pinpoint of his cigarette where he stood waiting outside his car. “He’ll simmer down,” he’d told her, “after he finishes.”