SONS OF PERDITION, KY

Ian Hall

The dog was long dead, but its eyes still looked
owlish at me. Puddled there

in cartoon red, beetles spelunked across it, the color
& character of tobacco drool. Midwinter, I was thicketed

in severe material, hardly able to articulate
my arms & legs. But Toy had stripped down

to suet, trying to haggle it
alive. Swivelnecked, face flushed carbide, he made urgent

sounds at me. It didn’t matter. Words could be spoken
loud as you pleased but the wind

was a felon, pocketed them. I went & hunkered over him. Effort
& wispy genetics had tonsured his hair. Only three past

the hour of thin meridian, & already the light
was pigeoning away. A chloroformed scene. Above, buzzards

saddled the day’s last vividry, the clouds
novicely crocheted. Toy’s head

was sumped down in his collar
turtlewise. Whoever owns up to this

is galactically fucked. His voice was like rustling
through tissue paper. I could see February

sharding all over him, his shoulders
funnel-caked. Another bluster & his crouch gave out

& he was on his ass in the snow & froth, severed
umbilicus.

. . .

I know it was one of those lard-asses from up Hemp Patch, Toy said. They’re still 
sore about them chickenfights. He was overtop the firepit. In it he flinted

a wagging bouquet of flame. They did it sure. He rose, yawned boomingly. I’m pure
tired. The night was cornmeal-bright—the air so edged 

& blatant it felt star-whetted. Hillsides ablotch with winter. I wish I was drunker
than a warlord, Toy said. I imagined him that next day—under

employed, feudally minded—ribbiting mufflerless into the chokehold
of this holler, then another. Asking the incontinent & ankle-braceleted who 

made a pancake outta my dog? Getting back a faceful of moldy dunnos, screen doors guillotining shut. Fall had been a page

out of the almanac—vines & stalks so expectant the harvest had to be
C-sectioned off them. A beef or so was tattooed

to death by lightning, but all
in all a bumper yield. Fieldwork was regular. Now what was he to do: go guileless

into the sphincter of a mountain & bully ore? Live like a varmint on the corn
dole? I didn’t begrudge him his miniature narcissisms, a martyred dog. Of course

he spied conspiracy everywhichway, thirsted to get the narrative
by its nape & thump free some sense. So in wooden competence I passed

that night, month, decade nodding with him. Why keep tab? I knew that next day
the sun would still trek the sky at its dauntless putter, a sclerotic man

on his Rascal Scooter. I knew the firmament would still wad up ashen
as an old deed at 4pm. Me & Toy, what use did we have

for calendered time?

Ian Hall was born & reared in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky. His work is featured in Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, Southeast Review, & elsewhere.