The Fiction of Owen Thomas

Winchester County

A Short Story

Excerpt C

Tyler looked at Miss Kitty brushing the little brown foal in the hay of the barn and knew all of that was coming.  A real shoot-em-up.  He tried to let the show unfold and to enjoy it as though he did not know what was going to happen.  But he could not really see the show at all.  He could not see anything but the picture in his head of the spinning wheel and the three non-Palamentos and the smell of dust and pine and the dog that was really a boy, running and running and running.  And as the late summer air pressed up against the crankless window and the sour fumes rose from the bones and the gristle in paper bucket and as the Miss Kitty episode played on in the background of his mind, as though from very far away, and as the pistol disappeared beneath the goulash and as bad men fell from the rooftops and the treetops and out of the sky like rain, Tyler slowly began to understand what needed to be done about it all.