176 The Meadow lady told her that Winslow was nearby and pissed. Jim could have told Karen that. He could have told her anything, because people hear what they want to hear. He used his foot to slide open the curtain covering the tiny window at the end of the bed, revealing a square of dark sky. No matter where he was, he was always looking at that same sky. It felt like he never really went anywhere. He sat up and saw his reflection in the dark window and thought about 2456, the steer he’d seen earlier in the day, the way he turned around at the end of the ramp and looked back at Jim. Maybe Jim didn’t understand any of it. Was the steer trying to tell him something? Had he been missing the signs all along? An idea floated up from the murky depths of his brain, a catfish coming up for air. He climbed into the cab and started the engine, feeling the hum and rumble in his bones. He smelled his breath. A slight whiff of alcohol, but he’d only had two whiskeys on a full meal. He felt sober and clear-headed, purposeful. Sometimes you had to muddle up your thinking with a couple of pops to let a thought get through. Twenty minutes later he could see the glow of the slaughterhouse on the horizon. He pulled the rig onto a side road near and hopped out of the cab, zipping up his coat and setting out across a choppy field toward the light and smell. Jim didn’t want to be seen and ducked as he got closer to the buildings, walking around to the back, where the corrals were. He hoped he wasn’t too late. The cattle were close together in one corner, and the way the mass shifted and undulated, it appeared to be a single, huge organism. Jim eased open a gate and walked into the mass, looking for 2456. It wasn’t easy because the mass of cattle stood with their heads hanging down, staring at the shit beneath their feet. It was how they were built: spines parallel to the ground and those thick, stiff necks, not made to turn toward the big black sky and find the Big Dipper, but built to look from the earth to the butt of their neighbor and back again. Jim
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