On Swift Horses. Shannon Pufahl

       The meadows

      Henry in the hem of neon between the alley and the street. At night in the dim light of the peek, hair and eyes so dark they disappear, so that Julius sees only the bright buttons of Henry’s shirt and a flash of fingernail as he approaches the place where the catwalks cross. Henry in the morning at the Squaw Motel, curled inside the weather of some dream, Julius awake and watching him, knowing he must leave soon before daylight finds them together. Some nights a tenderness so great there is no way to touch Henry softly enough, other nights coarse and silent and sleepless.

      Each morning Julius leaves the room with a telling joy he must tamp before the day begins. Once outside the room and through the lines of parked cars he turns onto Second Street and walks along the treeless grid of empty lots, taking the long way downtown. He feels wonderfully alone. That is what love feels like to him. As if finally he’s touching the very outside of himself, pressed against the limits of his body, singular, replete. The early dawn milled down to the low horizon is a blasted white; years from now, whenever he thinks of that view or sees it again, he will be rushed back to this moment in his life, and forever it will feel like love to him, that kind of bright sky.

      Their affair stretches through the end of the spring and then the monsoon season. At night, the peek cools so fast that the chill sometimes catches them in shirtsleeves, skin pricked against it. Then the bitter summer comes, and they walk between the glass windows barefoot, their hair drenched with sweat. One night, early in July, Julius stands at the window watching a man below win every other hand of blackjack, sometimes losing two in a row but rarely. He watches the man a long time. As he watches, he tries to find the one piece that gives the pattern away. There is always one thing that people fail to conceal. He’s seen a man rise from the table after a profitable night only to see him again an hour later splitting chips with the dealer. He’s seen men lean back in their chairs and reveal aces tucked into their belts. Once, two cowboys—so fresh from the train they sat at twenty-one with their duffels under their feet—played for an hour before Julius saw the thing he needed: not the pattern of their cheat but the interruption in it, one cowboy marking wrong and busting his friend, who snaked his eyes so briefly at the first man that Julius knew exactly the game they were running.