Yonder Mountain: An Ozarks Anthology

C. D. Albin

C. D. Albin C. D. Albin was born on April 9, 1961, in West Plains, Missouri. He is currently professor of English at Missouri State University in West Plains, where he edits Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies. His stories, poems, and reviews have appeared in a number of publications, including Arkansas Review, Big Muddy, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Natural Bridge, and Red Rock Review. qQ Four Fine Horses I never thought I’d set foot on this property again, but here I am at the back of the crowd in my father’s sale barn, watching Trent Tilson show a good Foxtrotter mare. He rides her bareback so we’ll see how bridlewise she is, and her colt trails at her heels like a hound. The mare ribbons around the ring in a gliding gait bred here in the Ozarks, and Trent sits her so well I can’t spot daylight between his tailbone and her spine. There’s no bounce, no movement in him at all. Off to the side Trent’s father, Paul, is working hard. “You’ll not see a gentler mare all day,” he calls into the microphone. “You can saddle her right out of the pasture. Plus that pretty colt. Two for the price of one.” I watch Paul’s eyes rake the crowd. He has a solid bid but he looks insulted, thinks the mare’s worth more. “Come on now,” he shouts, his microphone booming like something dropped from the sky. “Look how smooth she is. Trent’s gone to sleep up there.” Trent cracks a little grin, letting us know he heard the joke. Then his face goes stony again. 1 To my left, an old man has been sitting cross-armed all morning, but now he gives one hand a flick, not much more than a tremor. Paul nods and his voice changes from pleading to pleased. The bid rises another ten dollars, stays there for several more minutes. Gradually the crowd and colt swing in a circle behind him. I listen to the steady drumming of hooves. Finally he drops his hand. “She’s sold,” he intones, and the crowd sighs. In the center of the ring the mare slows to a walk. Trent goes loose of limb, his heels dangling below her girth. Beside me, the old man re-balances a Tindle feed cap, reaches inside his windbreaker for a tiny notepad. He scribbles something in a dull hand, then gets up and goes. The next thing he writes will be a check to my father. S I hardly knew the place this morning. It was never what you’d associate with some of those Thoroughbred operations in Kentucky—clean white fences, pastures cropped as close as fairways—but it looks pretty good for an Arkansas hill farm, which is all it was twenty years ago when Mom and I left. I spent four summers with my father after that, but one day when I was fourteen I told him I was through. He could’ve made me stay, we both knew that, but all he did was nod his head. From what I could see driving in, the woods have been cleared, and there are three barns now. One of them, the sale barn, stretches across a good part of the south ridge, and where the hill levels out there’s a long flat field with just a few oaks and cedars. People use that field to park, and I saw plates this morning from all over—Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas. I saw the sign too, the big blue one above the entrance to the sale barn that read Cecil Ryan Stables. It slowed me down for a step or two, and I didn’t know why until I remembered the other sign, the handlettered one he supposedly nailed to the rack of his pickup the week I was born. That one read Ryan & Son: Registered Quarter Horses. I guess I came this morning because of Trent, who’s trying to pass my Comp course at the college. The kid’s pretty much a lost soul with a pen in his hand, no confidence that he has anything to say or any way to say it. A couple of weeks ago I hauled him into my 2 C. D. Albin office and set a full cup of coffee in front of him. It was black and...