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11 K a t h l e e n W i n t e r Longhorn at the Car Wash Outside a mini-mart, beside a cavernous car wash he stands while three men direct fierce spray at the speckled plains of his flanks. I’m looking down from a bus full of women, here to see the famous Lost Maples with Mother, fallen into her golden years. Long as a 60’s Buick, the steer rearranges his weight as a puddle deepens on asphalt, reddened with caliche the men take out of his hide. The younger farmworker wears a white t-shirt, tired boots like the others, but he stares at the bus as if its tinted interior’s filled with treasure. Another guy yanks the rope so the man with the hose gets an angle on the animal’s head. The steer shudders as water hits his nose, his eyes. Horns stretch miles to each side, to fields dwarfing this small-town Valero, sharp tips lifted in October air. It seems too ordinary, the garrulous grandmothers, city visitors, all wearing dresses and poised to judge foliage, then eat broiled chicken at the newest French restaurant in the Hill Country, brown men outside taxed with shifting elements of flesh and water, the steer taller at the shoulder than any of his handlers, an enigmatic property, speaking his own tongue to no one. ...

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