I awoke from a dream this morning. Shaking the night from my head, this is what I was left with.

I was a rancher. Behind me the biggest blue sky painted with gentle waves of white.  The red rocks in the distance seemed to reach up with clinched fists to stretch this surreal sky back to the earth. It was then that I noticed the sickening odor emanating from below me.
A dead cow lay near my feet. Or what remained of her. She was badly decomposed. Barely recognizable. No more than a few jutting bones holding up dirty white flaps of skin. Pools of green water had collected in the gaps, where the gnats flew and danced.

The dark, smell was overpowering, like white hot death and trash. The odor alone conjured thoughts of a collective mortality.

There was a line of five cowboys on the other side of the fence between me and the cow. One had his foot up resting on the stretched barbed wire. Couple of dusty old pick-up trucks just behind them. And past the trucks, only the vastness of this skewed, strange landscape.

I needed to drag her to a hole about 10 feet away to bury the remains.
The cowboys offered no help, only watched from the safety of the fence.

As I pulled the flesh much of the green water rolled off to reveal her black and white skin, which began to tear. The sound of ripping wet canvas.
I looked up and made eye contact with the cowboy on the right. Maybe he was a friend? Could he help me put her away?
He shook his head no without saying a word. Took a drag on his smoke.

I went about my task knowing that I had tried this before. It was coming back to me. Why had I been so unsuccessful in the past? Just drag her to the hole, and shovel some dirt in.
So I began to pull even harder and whether the slight down slope in the rock or the momentum, she moved easily this time. Once she was in place, sweaty and tired, I began to cover her with soil. There was a comforting feeling watching her disappear one pile of dirt at a time. Each penetration of the shovel into the earth revealed the clash of metal on stone.

I stopped to catch my breath, put a foot on the shovel and leaned on the pole. Sweat burned my eyes.  I heard a vulture call in the distance, and the heat was stifling.
Memories were flooding back to me. Was she the same, or had I gone through the motions so often that I was confusing the moments?

I could remember lying in bed at the ranch house listening to her moan and wail. But I had buried her. She was gone now. How many times had I covered her with rocks and dirt before, only to find her corpse outside of her hole again?
The cowboys looked on with their concrete stare.
I resumed my labor. The pebbles bouncing off of flesh and bone sounded like a tom drum. My arms burned. My back ached.
And before long, or maybe centuries later, the task was complete.

I began the long walk home.  My boots at once, dusty and bloody. The sky distorted and on fire from sunset. I was a little sad but I knew that each time I had to bury her that it got a little easier.
The spell broken, worn down through repetition.

I paused, and as I removed my revolver from it’s snug holster, I could see the reflection of the vultures circling overhead in the polished barrel. The wind whipped up, and a lizard ran across my boot. I began to smile and continued my walk.