PLACES TO BE

There are zones within Wyoming’s midsection where the sky is too slippery for satellites to hold steady, and even the most detailed surveyors made errors which were copied from one cartographer to another. While driving across those moonscapes of green and gold, there are no other cars to pass, and the only roadsigns around are placed for those who already know where they are. Many remote places are thought of as ‘nowhere’ poetically, but it is a true state of being that can be achieved when there’s no place else to go.

I’d found myself here several times in life, usually while carrying everything I owned, though this time, the roads didn’t lead through Gillette as I’d expected, and folded my trajectory until there was only a single notch of gasoline left. I’d grown too comfortable with my remoteness from humanity, and that remoteness had welcomed me in kind. Without access to any signals to guide me back on my intended path, I chose instead to pass through a ranch’s gate, seeking directions. There, a portly man in denim overalls with paisley stitching, white of beard with rosy skin, was tending to a handful of odd cattle near his poorly-painted cottage.

“If you’re wonderin’ where you is, you’re not far off a place called Recluse, which isn’t that close from or that far to from anything else around here.” The rancher’s voice was dry with dust and tobacco, words only recognizable as English because of the relatively quiet surroundings. “You’re not here about my critters, I take it?”

I hadn’t paid too much attention to the herd nearby, but as my eyes at last focused on them, I couldn’t discern what type of bovine they were. A blanket of yak-like golden wool covered their front halves entirely, obscuring the lumps of heads that hung lower than those of buffalo. Their hind quarters looked nude and lean in comparison, coated in thin, velvety fur. The largest beast was taller at the shoulders than either of us, the smallest, only waist-high. They were remarkably silent, motionless beyond the perturbations of wind. “No. Should I be?”

“Well, they’re the only ones of their kind. These are catoblepases, you see. They won’t let me have more than twelve, but these days I’m havin' trouble gettin’ 'em to even make me a tenth with each other. Beginnin' to think they resent me.” He wheezed as he laughed to himself, putting his hand on the largest’s muscular front leg for support. “I probably deserve it. I have to cut out their eyeballs so they don’t petrify nobody, but sometimes they manage to grow ‘em back, believe it or not. Have to keep checking under that mane, just in case. Wish I could grow myself some new ones just like 'em, these days.”

“Petrify, as in, they can turn people to stone?" I wondered whether it was isolation or dementia, but relented from asking. "You’re telling me that’s possible?”

“So I’ve been told, so I’ve been told. You get one of ‘em mad enough, they’ll raise their head and all that curtain falls back, and you’ll see the ugliest damn animal’s face as the last thing you’ll ever see. I’ve never seen it myself before, of course, but the man who left them to me told me thusly, and when the inspectors come through, they make sure I’ve done the cuttin' as well. They—” another wheezing laugh caught him, followed by a smoker's cough. “They don’t want 'em to go extinct, but they don’t want nobody to know they exist, either.” He eyed me closer. “It’s not that bad a thing, though, nobody knowing you exist. A simple but important life, knowing something just so that someone does.”

“I can imagine it’s lonely.” I’d begun to feel I’d overstayed my welcome already.

After a moment of silence between us, he gestured the way I'd arrived. “Once you get back out the gate, take the next four lefts, and you’ll be back headed where you’re headed. You don’t gotta go, though. These critters is yours and this house is yours, if you’ll have ‘em. They’re easy, mostly take care of themselves, if you can stomach takin’ a knife to ‘em now and again, that is.” He looked up toward the uninterrupted blue. “I’m at the end of my teeth, and when I’m out, someone’s got to take over. Government might just shoot ‘em all, I reckon, if nobody’s watching, and that'd be a shame. Besides, you’ve already got everything you have, don’t you?”

I thought about it. I really did.