Twin windows for the others where Hugh is one room. He’s lager and beer and play, and I shift my glasses some skin, thumb and the finger for Hugh, or has he the sickness from the talk down that needs the heal, and then the window two’s Frau Ruby, and what, she cannot open his door or to have the knob crank, and I am to meet her there, outside Hugh’s, but I walk and forget and she’d say something send to my glasses, and now here’s she, her hand, his door, and then me too, our hands. She wishes for to bring him up and out, and I tell her none yet.
I’d unplug either and leave each to the world live, but the hardware, and Ruby would lose sight, and Hugh’s already gone some little soft brained; anyway, he is not among our flesh, no sooner back than elsewhere ridden on the thoroughbred’s foot, and he can the stirrups and steed the lonesome himself go do that he may game on nonetheless, or, Ruby, furthermore, Ruby, and she thumbs her window’s land many the marks she’d shoot him by, any glass hers, eye, two eyes shoot shoot. Let me draw my own horse, how the thrumming the network does, look, and so Ruby has her saddle also, but it’s one while and one while drawn later before we upright ditch for Hugh’s shape and the road ahead, and the four sides from the hallway outside his room fall to lend us hunt over the man’s fleeing.
She wills on first. We ride, and the brick town Braunfels he’s built, and he is most mouse small the leading through the sticks, the outback and limestone lean and hilly swerve and every frighten more our hee-haws, and Hugh could halt, or he smiths Ruby and I as deed under his stead, albeit I little mind the ownership. He can have the whole town and its land. I have the every door, and I give him food and water lots, my work. Maybe he’s for freedom; if he’d mind himself, then he would be farther from his room.
As such, say I even set aside the time between whiles whenever the game breaks, and the headless horses to field do, and I sew the mane and mane and then the eyes don’t blooper anymore, all for him, but my strength, Hugh’s winnow, so these glasses always snap besides and brittle however and thereon his fingers happy the found spring to make me work. Hugh will smile and talk after and have everybody worry as, and if we come over we must his house do everything the wishes his, or I am on the road, and I spur the horse jump some toothy maples by while he giggles and brooks my tease: my swerve about and right up to him, and my wave—the waving—that he should grow somewhere else not his room, but he yells, and he bucks head, and I feel it through. Yet where my skin smarts, still us astride, and my glasses slip one bit, and it harms me, the dizzy, and the two Hughs are here there, so he’s sat on the saddle as he’s sat behind the door me and Ruby stand. I know. He watches, Braunfels by, the windmills some the old whereon the wind earlier, some winds, and how my hair shifts, and we step either window, one, two eyes, horses the sprawl leap the heights, for the sun may overhead, and I know he will blind me.
I draw the moon highest then. “Come here. Hear me and Ruby out. You need to slow down.”
His back and Ruby’s whip. “Ich kann ihm ropen.”
She’s alone already and edges Hugh off the road, but he fares the house built his Braunfels, which the town would or would not have if he’d won or lost, and he’d ask where I live, what I once work’s done do, for our town is the crowd summer full, so think me by the pool and on not some horse but the lying doing. Hugh thinks me one liar greater than him. That when we are after the talk down and heal, and I help more and more, he is set uber-forgotten. No. I love him. I love then how I ride to the day’s end, and he screams high, the good feel from hunted Hugh that he will drop one fit sideways and bone crack himself if we even dust his shoulder; so there, wrap him shut rope Ruby, and put one gag between the lips. I goad my horse be the flight for him to see me and me, and let her rope, taut, lengthen some hoop for the ring about Hugh’s neck maybe, and she throws and grips brick by brick some wall drawn, the rope looser away behind and the opening none, and he forsakes us to his the footing farther, and the grit fly as Ruby halts and spins, and I call Hugh. “You need to open your door. Come and open this thing if you won’t come down.”
“Du kannst nich mi machen.”
“Ich denke, dass du musst.” Or, Braunfels, Braunfels, and through my say-so if I could loosen and fordo these glasses and bring his land back outside from its bottom make up. Thus Hugh’s hotfoot over another step, and he overleaps the stiles and hedges and the good I gave him, how the yard was and where the ground thenabouts would spot one neighbor’s home. I’d say never sell. I said the land still reaps for the Schumacher’s, yet the money from when sold did him here to the old folk’s home, the let go his kin, what’s showing, his mind: if he had enough or even more than more, he could buy and house greater the house and do the trading thing, so Hugh, some strongman then, but sometimes I do talk to his offspring or kin, Hugh, that everybody knows he needs help. “I think you should open this door.”
“Duh Boss thinkt. You bist n Shit.”
“Ruby has the rope ready.”
“She stands da und is das Hund.”
Her hoop the again wild wrath for his neck that maybe yet should now there put be and be no elsewhere longer, hear, hear, the whip crack do, but Hugh’s shoulders the freedom out, so she is wail and the sorrow thimble start then grow hateful, and him she would bless, and him she would dear blood greet anything his, swears Ruby, she would, yes. The land, he bricks the build higher the house where he had the highway even to the newest Buc-ees later, and call to mind the us when we’d sit but glee the afternoons some rest by, and the what’s-been from that time Hugh while owned; anyhow, if he does not rather the loss, he rather reckon how much could have helped, and then no more the me nibble, come, walk here, Hugh, albeit he says I snark, and why don’t I halt him over the network: the man muddle do hack now, so I won’t see from his eyes, and thereby the window is right from him to me, but not from me to him. He is man’s self and made his self good and cleansed however Hugh might. I have the door. I believe he always washes his belly first. “Open up. Look. Ruby’s outside, and she was worried. You can’t open up any?”
“No, nee.”
“Why not? Ruby’s sobbing.”
“She can feel sad. Y’all’re the two come find, and I wouldn’t dare if I was you and you me.” But I open my glasses and let him see from how I do every day, and even show when I wake and how I feed the yeast so dough and the bread feed him. Weekends I float about the halls and room and room and busybody wander reach, step by and for some gum, or the where’s-he chatter, where’s the man I saw morning happy, and I have to tell, somewhere, his room and never seen. Every day I do, and I show Hugh this that through my window, yet he hangs on the beginning: I am, and he still cannot abide why there is one moon above, and whenever it is so, I must ready his world for myself as some guest broke forth. I make the known done, and he ever does not rise, even, why? I am to the doorknob, the knock outside and by the threshold, my fingers the lip under.
He is rank horse, or he is man alone. Maybe he’d bathe if our water were right. We spit too much; I think whatever he does.
We are also outside his house, and there the Buc-ees, and over there his horse some smear meat drawn, puddle hooves and sinking between the brick leftover from Hugh’s did draw house, and the road do dwindle and become the land none the other but his and his. Here he opens the door, and Ruby must first, and I am walk go, and the light far out the land set. I blink and put the moon by, draw Hugh’s head bright.
“Knowst you was my Haus hat sold fih? I denk, dass das Haus hat gerisen mehr und mehr. And I found the land pretty and great. And I had one hatchback. Then one wagon. And each sat on the grass. Ich hab everything gehabt.”
“You would still have been here.” I stand him up, but I come about and am by him that he may not shift his eyes elsewhere, or so Hugh should stick, as the thoroughbred is the ground’s meal, and he has not eaten from my hand. “You would’ve needed the money always.”
“Du denkst ich bin doltish. Aber I know. I love myself. I kann myself feed.”
By the roof after this, and he stamps under the moon, his foot that hard lump and stomp, and I lead follow to the roof his toe and let the shroud fall where can darkness fill, the rest some spangle between gray and white spangle some shingles, and the woman, how she is the let-her-alone, and shouldn’t talk her up none yet. But soon, she will have the floor. She must, if not for the rope, then for the moon there and the man by, and his hands together steeple God’s House, the worship Hugh’s hasp that he may hallow us, as we are the hatred from so two; also, Hugh draws the house rumble such loam and mud might our hardship the up here stand, and our necks should break from the shaking, but it is not here so, and the glasses off, and the door still shut. He’s happy. He fathoms something else I cannot wish, and I put him back on. “We’ll bring down the door. We’ll open it.”
“Und die Frau denkt was?”
Ruby, the kneeling, the woman, and she can the axe bring that she has her glasses off and window gone, and then the strike arises some thump, and I tell Hugh ought to one spot, so we know where no harm goes, but the thumps are the loudest swing much the wood heave as she clutches the heft and throws again her weight to lean the door down many splinters more the each I could burn him one fire, house down, but he’d say I am not his friend. I stand away for Hugh’s life or what be. He should have eaten already, and he should have showered, and he should have the rights we give ourselves, and Ruby. I laugh. The threshold is by, yet the man cannot see us. He sees glasses, and I open his window while I walk through; nevertheless, I set myself aside and go alone, Ruby, and she, her thighs and hangs neck slump on the break now, time, and time alone and slump, lest she stand or the after other do, and he is before the town Braunfels. His house above floats splintered adrift, and from the moon’s edge some ladder enough unknown how deep to the neighboring star, and he will not climb but rather stare. We seat new thoroughbreds, and all which he does stare, and the moon shadows wax and sinks toward us that we length the north and the south even such any far and by, so I may wish to help him if I knew how to draw what he would have, and he rides about, about, and maybe the ladder might pull up, or maybe Hugh needs another way, yet he leaves everything as had been when we spoke mud fall, undone. “Why’re you this mad? Come home to me and Ruby. Wir lieben dich.”
He’d say, or he’d say this, and I can think it: “I lieb dich too,” or I hear him, and Hugh’s tongue mothers me, man, I could be his child, and I could be otherwise, some father, sister, brother, mother, god and goddess, and hear us when we talk. But Hugh spins his horse about and swifts the house’s splinters as rain, and the floating becomes the drop so the next must strongarm the anybody stood, and I steal his way, and we gang together the two horse boom hum wehee, yet while I by the by am sidle and him his hair reach, he does the switchback and offsets the earthy tug, and the zap from this way that is the fast forward I need to see whole Hugh, the wood, the glass, and the moon; besides, the thoroughbred’s hock has the worms I draw, and he cannot own his window forever. I will come one day. So now he’s tired, but his steed springs whenever Hugh sways bridle may, and the man uprights over the saddle unsteady, or he should dip and rear his back to where he does the light lade handfuls, or mothball my eyesight, sunny glimmer, and hence I am blind even if he is bedbound sat before me, and I have no more the glasses, as Ruby knows, and then I do again his world put on, and growth that are the worms his upending, the hocks bent underneath and each thigh to mingle-muddle mud and smear the ground fast, and he’s thrown those feet some under the rain splinter, and the house falling has the acre, so greater the land and the earth its start to stark and nakedness raw, all boards among the dark and drawn wreath over Hugh, prick. Somewhere between the woods does he draw the black haw and the toothy maple as shields; rather, the golden feather grass, which would not often be by his home, whishes, these weedy spindle slip- ups my last worms, and you can find the former two about the wet hills, and you can find the latter about the iron oak fields. It’s the way the game is how I upset him, and why she wouldn’t ride forth neither dewy nor dry or fight.
The thoroughbred clips him, the drawing through Hugh’s arm, and through his neck, and the horse, it’s stuck and twiddle floats and sticks him stood, and his will for house and land thin out such that the ur-weft upholds us, as when we started the game, said, yes, I am the other string, the other window, but I weave the rest us, and the man’s eyes are westward, for I slide Hugh’s iced shape home. My horse is good, no mane elsewhere, this Hugh’s cradle. I look after him. I told him to stand the land for as long as his health, yet he never eats; moreover, it is the whole earth he has heard, and everybody’s call, and everybody’s shtick the speed and wet sail, so even I would buy it. If I had the money, I would have bought his land up. Ruby was ready. I am still.
Dee Engan is a writer. Learn more at deeengan.com.