C4 antho - Chamber Four

Dragon ~159~
pitched askew by prairie wind, fenced country headstones
sticking up like bad teeth. Wyatt passes a corral of tiny burros
huddled beneath the sunburst vanes of a gray wooden
windmill, among them a forlorn zebra, chilled and mystified,
half a globe gone from the Serengeti.
* * * *
Wyatt had found himself baffled by how marriage had
transformed his life. He’d quit pounding nails, hired a crew
and advertised himself as a contractor. Simms became “that
goddamn buddy of yours.” Dawnell took a job in town,
worked late keeping Wyatt’s books.
When the time had come for Dawnell to deliver Amy, she
cramped and cursed for 16 hours. Wyatt held the baby first,
marveling at her downy lightness, the way her gray skin filled
with pink before his eyes. “That’s it for me,” Dawnell
groaned. “You’re doing the next one.”
At Dawnell’s insistence, he had a vasectomy. A year later,
in the throes of intimacy, he agreed to have it reversed. On
the evening after the second operation, alone in the bathroom,
he dabbed at his twice-bruised scrotum with a chilling
washcloth and taped gauze alongside each testicle. He hobbled
to the bedside, rolled in gingerly, and rested his head in
his hand, tracing the curve of Dawnell’s hip with his fingertips.
Even in sleep, she recoiled from his touch.
In time, Wyatt learned to cook and clean with inept fervor,
changed messy diapers, memorized toddler doggerel
featuring brown bears and velveteen rabbits. But after
Simms left town to find work, Wyatt’s drinking hit high gear.
He held boozy poker games in the work shed with Dawnell’s
brother Coyd and anyone else who’d show up. An all-night
game brought an end to that. Sneaking into the house, he