2.

I roll one last joint with whatever we have left, and tuck it behind my ear. Will leads the way into the black night, over the fence and crick into the rotting in-and-out barn in the east pasture. Inside, we use cellphone light to find the ladder to the hayloft, its bottom three rungs worn narrow from the teeth of horses long dead. Him first, me second, we climb up the ladder. Once on the loft floor, we make our way to the faint black on black outline of the square hayloft window. Feet dangling, this is were we smoke and try to remember the names of all the horses we loved as kids.

Will seems to think there was a Buckeye, but I have no recollection of him. The weed does little to clear the thick fog that sits between me and clear memories. We both remember Irish, who was chased into a tree by a stray dog and went blind from the impact. Will doesn’t remember Molly until I tell the story about how she died—breaking a leg beyond repair stepping in a gopher hole, and how our grandfather called some distant cousin we didn’t know to come shoot her with a shotgun, point blank, right were she had that little pink spot where the halter had worn off her hair. Will still doesn’t remember, even when I tell him how grandpap had to rent a small backhoe, probably from the same distant cousin with the shotgun, so he could dig a hole and bury her illegally without having to fill out paperwork and take her to be cremated or turned into glue.

We climb down the ladder and I take him to the mound near the corner of the crick and fence.

I always wondered why the grass grew taller here, he says. 

You remember Molly now, I ask.

He shakes his head, but it is too dark to see if it is a yes or no.