There is a hand over the tailgate. The tailgate drops. Saul rolls out. There is weeping ongoing on the hill. Saul cups his hands to call. Ella speaks out the window, the mealy words of married people. The boy will marry too someday. A big wedding with ribbons and cake. Saul goes in the house and comes out of the house with the shotgun. The truck’s engine turns over. The brake lights flicker. The gate swings open and closed again. The truck accelerates toward the main road. Dust swirls. They’ll be back soon. The note on the counter says as much. The woman stands at the barn. A horse whinnies, a cock crows, a cow lows in the misery of a too-full milk sack. The boy slides down the conveyor, meets himself on stone porch steps. The woman watches him sit. She’d thought she was totally alone. This is the biggest mistake humans make. Animals never make it. The Rodeo Kid is disappointed in the Dead Woman, frankly.

She staggers to the well, the chickens follow. She kneels, sets the stick-with-nail down by the wellhead, pumps and pumps. She drinks from the tin cup, spits, flings the cup, lowers her mouth direct to the spigot. She drops her pants and washes though the boy is staring. He is eating a green apple. There’s a whole bag of them in the kitchen. Saul’s note is in his hand. The Rodeo Kid crumples it and stuffs the torn paper in his mouth, swallows the note with a bite of apple. She grins at his joke, so the boy guesses the Dead Woman is feeling more like herself. She’s not angry yet. She understands the world has left her.

She retrieves the stick with the nail. She approaches the Rodeo Kid, stick dangling from two fingers. She’s limping, maybe not dead but suddenly old. He finishes his apple. Her eyes ask him if it was good. Yes, his eyes say. The apple was juicy and the skin had tiny white spots, promising crispness and freshness, though it was no doubt imported from the southern hemisphere. There will be no crisp apples in the north for months. The woman stands before him in the dirt. Her right eye is swollen shut. The stick is in her right hand. The boy tosses the apple core at a flowerpot, making a dull ring.