C4 antho - Chamber Four

Black Night Ranch ~193~
James Carl was a big man. Notoriously big. He was so
big that when people saw him for the first time, they’d say
out loud, “Goddamn, that is a big man.” When he walked his
steps were so far apart his gait looked like slow motion to
Billy. His fists were as wide as Billy’s head, and he could lift
four sheep at once when their wool was thick. And since Dog,
the only sheep dog on the Black Night Ranch, couldn’t herd,
protect, or do anything else that a sheep dog was supposed to
do, that’s how they often had to move them. By hand, five at
a time. Billy’s one to James Carl’s four. It took a long time to
move the animals like that, but usually, even if Dog was
around, he spent more time scattering the sheep than anything
else. Billy wasn’t crazy about Dog. Sometimes when
James Carl left the front door of the house open, Dog nosed
his way into bed with Billy. Billy slept heavy and never noticed
until he either woke up with the mutt or else itching
from the dirty black hairs, cockleburs, or ticks the animal left
behind. Even thinking of Dog made Billy itchy.
Billy opened the gate at the end of the pen furthest from
James Carl. To the sheep the opening must have looked like
an entrance to hell because the front lines facing the gate
were impenetrable. They weren’t going. James Carl kicked
and pushed from his end, but the gray mass absorbed him
like a pond takes a pebble. Finally, letting out a series of
spooky high-pitched yelps, the big man grabbed a lamb and
threw him over the top of the horde. It was a half-eared lamb
they called Sonny, who had only been on the ground a little
over a month.
James Carl, who called every dog he ever owned Dog,
named all his sheep. Few had simple names like Sonny did.
Most were called things like That Bitch Ewe Who Almost
Killed Me, The Lamb Who Got Tangled in the Fence That
Time, or Billy’s favorite, The Ram with One Nut. Sonny was
named after James Carl’s father, Sonny, who, a few years