He
sits in a chair and does not move for a long time. He thinks he
should do something, take some action, but he doesn't know what.
Nothing seems worth the effort. He leans his head back to rest
against the wall, stretches out his legs and is still again. The way he
sits he seems a part of something else, one side of a mountain perhaps,
the way it slopes down to flat land. This year the crops burned
up, livestock died. The ground is cracked and dry. The
little girl is sick. The wife hardly speaks and lies down each
night beside the sick child. The farmer walks out to look at the
sky, hands at his sides, followed by a skinny dog. It is nearly
dark. The moon rises making a shadowy light on the trail. A man
on horseback dressed in black is coming down the trail, the man from
the medicine show, bringing his bottles down from the mountain.
Bottles of pure water. With each careful step of the pony the
bottles in the saddlebags clink together. The man is singing
quietly to himself.
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