A Good Horse

By Jennifer Laxton

We sustained on a knife of a cliff, verdant pasture enough. A greenhouse and chicken coop, roughly hewn. Two shotguns. Our lonesome escape from the “Cataclysm sent down from God, plaguing the Earth,” when I turned four. That’s what Dad told me.

He’d say, “Remember, we are each other’s e-ve-ry-thang.”

But yesterday, the day I met my 16th year, he said, “Time for you to give back the name ‘daughter’ and take the name ‘wife.’”

Squinting into crystal skies above the bloody hole where his turgid body tumbled, I wished that I hadn’t shot Caesar, too.

Caesar was a good horse.