Coffee spurted from her cup as it shattered on the floor. She blinked and refocused on a long burst of crimson snow, the drops winding toward the trees. Cupping her coffee to her chest, she stood at the window and looked toward the pasture. It was how she felt after Jim finally passed, after his suffering ended. As she poured her Maxwell House, she tried to remember that old saying, the one about the calm after the storm. On the way home, snowflakes melted on the hood of the John Deere like broken promises.Ĭecelia rose the next morning to blinding sunshine and chirping birds. Jim always said diesel fuel needed to heat up. She held in the clutch, turned the key part-way, and counted to ten. Outside Cecilia heaved herself up on her tractor - the only vehicle that started that morning. She recalled those times in high school - how he scrambled across the room to pick up her fallen books, how he followed her home from school, ducking behind trees, how all four of Jim’s truck’s tires mysteriously flattened on the day after the engagement announcement.īob dashed to hold the door as she exited. “But it would sure simplify things.”Ĭecilia turned down Bob’s offer to carry her small bag. “I don’t know what I want anymore,” she paused. He brushed a chunk of waxy hair from behind his glasses. “You really want them horses dead?” Bob asked. She’d pay at the end of the month like Jim always did. It seemed easy enough with all the help she was promised, but where were they now? She grabbed Oreos for herself, carrots for the horses. Six months had passed since her husband Jim had died of lung cancer, and her final promise to him was to care for his horses. “I’m just tired.” Cecilia stopped to read labels, finger produce, consider cookies. Gotta clean it up.” She reached for a can of baked beans. “Fifty pounds of manure a day.” Cecilia’s snow pants swished as she roamed the canned vegetable aisle. Cecilia caught a whiff of his stale wool sweater as she walked by. “Don’t mess with Texas,” Bob whispered in a fake Southern accent.

He called her “Ce.” Others followed.Ĭecilia studied a bag of potato chips on an endcap. “You want them horses dead, Ce?” It’d been so many years since she was called “Ce.” She remembered how one day in the school cafeteria he told his jock friends that the name “Cecilia” was too long, too many syllables, not economical. In the seven years since the accident, she’d only ever heard him ask, “Paper or plastic?” But this day he spoke. “It’ll all be better when the horses are dead.” Cecilia shook off the cold.īagger Bob stood stiff at the end of the checkout lane, enveloped in an incense fog. His abrupt staccato pronunciation always startled Cecilia. Klein?” said Atul as he reached to lower the volume of a Bollywood soundtrack. The Midwest hadn’t seen a winter storm like this in sixty years. Cecilia stomped the snow off her boots, slapped it from the shoulders of her Carhartts. Butlerville had changed forever when the folks from India bought the store, bringing their culture and samosas and Chicken Tikka. When the Horses are Dead by Nancy ParshallĪ waft of Nag Champa incense met Cecilia at the door of AJ’s Market.

Nag champa pronunciation