“I’m gonna need him to tie the rope, Mason. Lest you wanna gimme a boost up there on yer shoulders.” E.V. giggled again while my dad grit his teeth and glared at me. I think he was actually jealous I was getting all the action. I could feel it over all that distance to the ground; how cut off he was. E.V. led the horse over to the sycamore and tossed the free end of the rope up to me. I caught the fuzzy tip of it on the first pitch. “Feed it through that tube and fix yourself a double half hitch,” he called up to me. “Do it slow and easy, now, so we don’t git him worried.” I followed his instructions and as I was cinching up the second loop I could see that gelding was getting himself ready for a real set-to. The muscles along his backbone rippled up like a bull snake and dark patches of sweat broke along his bowed neck. I could smell fear as strong as a dead rat in the feed bin. Fear both ways; animal and human. I could see that horse’s eyeball roll back and catch me perched above him. I could see everything turned around, from his perspective, and suddenly I realized I was going to be riding the knobby branch while he unleashed his fury and tried to pull the whole damn tree down on top of himself. “Now, you just hang tight to that branch, son, ’cause this bugger is about ready to come apart.” E.V.’s voice put the chill on me as I locked my arms and legs around the branch, monkey style. The gelding made one powerful, quick jerk, shaking his head like a lion, but the rubber tube snapped him right back to square one. The branch sprang a little, casting brown clusters of leaves down on my head. I blew sycamore dust out of my nose and watched the particles of it catch sunlight as they floated down to the horse’s devilish ears. “You just ride her out, son!” E.V. cackled. “You’re doin’ just fine!” His voice caught me in that limbo where you know there’s nothing on earth that can help you now; nothing can save you, you’re caught in the grips. My dad’s face was pure white but to this day I don’t know if it was me he was scared for or just the plain violence of the moment. The gelding snorted and pawed dirt, trying to figure out the rubber band effect of the inner tube. I thought for sure I heard a deep growl come out of him, more like the sound a bull can make when it’s cornered and got its blood up. Then I could see him fix his mind. A suicidal decision passed through him, right down the length of his spine as he stretched out and set all twelve hundred pounds of raw muscle against that gleaming white rope. It was a long, slow, suspended action as the inner tube pulled like taffy and turned from black to grayish blue. Little chips of rubber started to pop off it from the extreme tension and I watched them fly into the heat of the day as though I were sitting way outside any danger; as though I were watching gnats buzz the water from the bank of a river. The branch began to bow and creak beneath me and the whole world bent sideways for a long second. When it happened it was almost slow and lazy. My heart leveled out into simple waltz time as the branch heaved up in a long arc and I saw all four feet of that gelding come clear off the ground and the wide-open panic in that horse’s eye when he realized he was actually flying. His flat blazed face slammed square into the trunk of that granite sycamore and it sounded like somebody’d dropped a side of beef onto cold pavement. The branch kept throbbing for a while with me strangling it and staring straight down at the crumpled heap of the horse, flat out cold beneath me, blood rushing from both nostrils. The fat pink tongue dangled loose like a dead trout and the panicky voice of my dad was cutting through from another planet: “You kilt the son’bitch! Goddammit, E.V., you went and kilt him!” E.V. was already straddling the horse’s neck and working the rope free. He peeled the gelding’s eyelids back and spit on both eyeballs, then blew again, hard this time, in each ear. The horse gave a little twitch of his head and E.V. danced back away from him, giggling like a kid as he coiled up his powerful rope. “He ain’t dead, he’s just dreamin’,” E.V. chuckled. “Unhitch that rope up there, would ya, son? Pass it on down to me.” I did like E.V. said and watched my dad stagger toward his fallen horse and peer down at him for any sign of life.