Author: Tom Darby

It ain’t always sunshine and green pastures out here, though I wish it were. Sometimes, it’s just the wind rustling through an empty stall, and a quiet that settles heavily on your shoulders.

Yesterday was one of those days.

I’d been keeping a watchful eye on the two pregnant momma cows. We’d all been waiting—me, the dogs, the wind that came down off the ridge at night—for signs they were close.

And they were. Bellies low, bagged up, tails swishing more from nerves than flies.

It’s a hopeful kind of watching. You start thinking ahead.

Two calves, both heifers, maybe. That would mean growth. Not just more mouths to feed, but a promise. Especially for Jim.

Now, Jim’s not here in this story, but he’s a part of it all the same. He’s got pancreatic cancer. Keeps to his chores when he can, but lately it’s been more watching than doing.

Still, these cows—these babies—they were his hope. You know how some folks plant trees for a future they’ll never see? Jerry’s been breeding cattle. He was hoping these two heifers would one day help carry on his little herd long after he’s finished walkin’ the fields.

Yesterday, that hope got knocked clean out of the barn.

One of the calves was just too big. I had to pull it. I don’t know how long it’d been stuck, but it was long enough. Long enough to take a breath before ever drawing one. The baby was a beauty, too, with long legs and soft eyes. Would’ve made a fine cow.

I sat there a long while after, just brushing the hay off her and thinking too many thoughts all at once. That cow mama stood close by, nuzzling her baby like she was trying to wake her up. You never get used to that.

The second was stranger. No signs of struggle, no distress. Looked perfect. She’d been born sometime the day before, and I hadn’t noticed the cow missing from feed until last night. When I went looking, I found her standing alone, quiet, the calf at her feet.

Just gone. Dead and done before I ever had a chance to hope.

So now Jim’s back to square one. The mommas will need time to recover, and the rhythm of the farm stumbles just a bit. Folk forget that hope takes time to grow, and when it dies, it doesn’t vanish; it lies there in the straw and waits for you to acknowledge it.

Still, we carry on. That’s what you do out here. You let the dogs run ahead, you check the fences, you spread out hay like it’s the most normal thing in the world. And maybe tomorrow, you’ll see a new bud on a fencepost vine or catch the mommas sunbathing and chewing cud like nothing ever went wrong.

Farm life’s like that. It breaks your heart soft and slow, but it also hands it back to you stitched up with sunshine, coffee, and barn dust.

Anyway, that’s how yesterday went. Quiet. Heavy. Real.

I married my best friend. That’s not just a poetic turn of phrase or something I’d slap on a wooden sign in the living room next to a candle that smells like “Farmhouse Memories.” It’s the plain truth.

She’s the calm when the world’s storming outside. The safe place I run to when the day’s gone sideways. The one who knows how I take my coffee and what my silences mean. She’s not just my wife; she’s my compass, my anchor, and the only person alive who can make me feel like a twelve-year-old boy and an old fart at the same time.

Now, that said, I can’t find my handgun.

You’d think that would cause a man a fair amount of distress—and it does—but not for the usual reasons. It’s not like I’m worried it’s fallen into enemy hands or anything. It’s our house, not an action movie set. No, the problem is, I know I put it somewhere safe. That’s what I told myself. I distinctly remember thinking, “This is a smart place to put this.” Which is a phrase that should always set off alarm bells, because it usually means I’ll never see that object again unless I stumble upon it during spring cleaning five years from now.

Now I’m pacing the house like a dog who buried a bone and forgot which tree he picked.

Drawers. Closet shelves. That weird little nook behind the laundry soap.

The bottom of the sock drawer, where old Christmas cards and mystery keys live. I’ve even looked inside the pressure cooker for reasons I can’t fully explain.

Meanwhile, my wife’s sitting at the kitchen table, sipping her soda like a serene Buddha with good hair. She watches me without saying a word at first, letting me conduct my search with all the grace of a raccoon in a garage.

“You lose something?” she asks, finally.

“I’m just looking for…” I trail off. I can’t admit it. Not yet. “A thing.”

She raises an eyebrow. That’s all it takes. One perfectly arched eyebrow and I confess everything.

“My handgun,” I mumble.

Her eyes go wide for a second, and then the corners of her mouth do that dangerous little twitch. I know that one. That’s the beginning of the end.

She bites her lip, but it’s no use. She starts to laugh. The kind of laugh that starts small and then shakes her whole frame like a summer wind through the cottonwoods.

“In your ‘smart place,’ was it next to the peanut butter again?” she asks between giggles.

That’s not fair. That was one time.

Ten minutes later, she finds it. In the gun safe. Right where it should be.

“You locked it up, genius,” she says with a kiss on my cheek.

And just like that, I’m reminded of all the reasons I love her. She’s not just my heart—she’s my memory, my logic, and the person who knows me better than I know myself.

So yeah—happiness is being married to someone who is your best friend, your peace, your person, even if she does laugh at you when you can’t find your gun.

The water near the vile hole was thick and stale, with sulfurous salts. You didn’t drink it so much as you endured it, and if it touched raw skin too long, you’d find yourself blistered and burning by evening.

A man could die slower from that water than from a bullet, but just as sure. You learned not to wash in it, not to clean your gear, and Lord help the fool who tried to bathe.

They called it Bitter Hollow, though the name was kinder than the place deserved. The old station house squatted low and crooked against the edge of a wind-cut bluff, black with soot and sagging in on itself.

It had no roof worth mentioning, only beams charred by some half-hearted fire long forgotten. There were no chairs inside, and no one took notice. The floor was dust layered upon filth, and the smell clung to your boots long after you’d ridden a mile out.

Still, the Overland Trail passed through, and mail had to move, so the place remained, half-dead but stubborn as a mule with a broken leg.
Inside, smoke curled from a pit dug into the corner, the fire doing more to sting the eyes than warm the bones.

The walls, such as they were, stood open to the wind. A fella might think he’d find some relief in a breeze out here, but not these. These winds came daggered and wild, whistling down from the north like they were mad at the ground and determined to peel it clean.

The men stationed there were a sorry lot, God help ’em.

Most of them lounged like cattle in the shade, chewing nothing and staring nowhere. They weren’t drunk, but they looked it—slack-eyed, vacant, as if the land had burned out every thought they ever had.

In all my wandering, I’d seen miners ruined by quicksilver, mountain men lost in reverie from too long alone, but these boys were just blank. The desert had eaten ’em from the inside out.

All but one.

He lay near the broken door, stretched out on a bedroll that had gone too long without a shake. He was younger than the others, his face drawn tight with pain.

A horse had fallen on him weeks before, caved in his chest with the force of a rolling boulder. I could tell by the way he breathed—shallow, wheezing, like each pull of air was a debt he didn’t think he could repay.

The others ignored him. Not out of cruelty, I think, but because they’d already buried him in their minds.

When a man’s marked by death out here, folks quit looking at him. It’s easier that way.

I stepped in, said my how-do’s, but no one answered, but the wind and the wheeze of that boy dying, slow on the ground.

Sometimes the frontier broke a man with a bullet. Sometimes it broke him with loneliness.

But here at Bitter Hollow, it didn’t have to break you at all—you just had to stay awhile. And that was enough.

You never think to ask what comes after survival, and why would you? It was the job, the destination, and the goal.

It’s the first thing and the last thing you think about when things go sideways. You grip it with both hands, teeth clenched, holding on like you’re riding a greased pig through a thunderstorm, and if you’re lucky, you come out the other side a little wetter, a little bruised, but still on your feet.

What nobody tells you is that once you survive—once the storm passes, the threat moves on, or the doctor says you’re clear—you still have to figure out what to do next.

Nobody claps, and there are no parades. It’s just another quiet Wednesday and a pile of laundry.

I remember when I broke my back for a second time. I thought it was just a backache, the same one I had for the previous 20 years. So, I drank a shot of whiskey and lay on the couch watching reruns of “The Rockford Files.”

By the next morning, I couldn’t stand upright, and I was speaking in tongues—mostly curse words and prayers. My wife rushed me to the hospital.

They couldn’t do much for me unless I wanted to go under the knife and get metal rods inserted.

That was a nope, so they gave me pain meds and a muscle relaxant. I felt like I’d been hit by a semi when I woke up, but I was alive.

My family came to visit. I got cards with flowers on ‘em, and one from my Aunt Barbara that had a cartoon kidney saying, “I’m glad you didn’t croak!”—which, anatomically, didn’t make sense, but it’s the thought that counts.

Then the visitors stopped coming, the flowers wilted, and they sent me home with a paper bag full of pills and a warning not to lift anything heavier than a tennis shoe. And that’s it.

I sat in my recliner, marveling at how survival doesn’t come with instructions for what’s next. No one tells you that brushing your teeth becomes a philosophical exercise.

There’s a strange stillness to surviving. A silence that creeps with all the questions you didn’t have time to ask before, like now what?

It turns out, after your survival, you still need to take out the trash, feed the dogs, and return library books. Then people start expecting you to act normal again, like the whole “nearly being paralyzed” thing was just a hiccup, not a life-altering thunderclap that left you rearranging your thoughts.

But slowly—real slowly—you do begin to act normal again. You laugh at old jokes, crave pancakes at midnight, and go for walks and realize the trees are still out there doing their tree things, indifferent to your brush with mortality.

And that, I suppose, is the secret. Survival ain’t the end.

It’s the door you crawl through on your knees into a messy, wonderful, ordinary life. The kind where your neighbor still complains about your lawn, and the cat vomits on the rug, and someone leaves a pie on your porch just because.

After survival comes living, and if you’re lucky, you get to do the dishes standing at the kitchen sink while the coffee brews and the world goes on turning like it always has, and with you still in it.

I was standing in line at the post office the other day, which is where I seem to overhear the finest bits of accidental philosophy. That day’s prize came from a fella two folks ahead of me in line.

He was on the phone, loudly complaining about how “this country’s gone to hell” and how “nothing works anymore.” Judging by the fact that he was holding an Amazon return in one hand and a Starbucks cup in the other, I figured the apocalypse hadn’t quite finished the job.

Don’t get me wrong—I’ve done my fair share of grumbling. I’ve cussed out potholes, taxes, and every political ad that ever dared interrupt my westerns. But it’s always felt to me that complaining about your country while still enjoying all its perks is a bit like a teenager stomping around the house yelling “I hate it here!”—while still eating homemade lasagna, enjoying air conditioning, and using the Wi-Fi to post said complaints.

I said something like that to my son. He was about nineteen and opposed to optimism at the time.

“You don’t get it,” he said, rolling his eyes with such force I swear I heard them click. “You grew up in a different time.”

“Yes,” I replied, “a time when you had to get up to change the TV channel, and we only had three to choose from.”

That didn’t impress him much.

The truth is, this country isn’t perfect. It never has been.

We’ve had fights, failings, and frictions from the very beginning. But we’ve also had front porches, fireworks, and folks who bring casseroles when your life falls apart, and I figure that still counts for something.

Back when I was younger and louder, I remember mouthing off about America in front of my granddad. He was a man of few words and suspenders that looked like they’d seen some battles.

He looked at me and said, “Boy, this country gives you the right to say whatever you want. It doesn’t mean you’re always right, just that you’re allowed to be wrong out loud.”

He paused then, stirred his coffee, and added, “But try saying the same thing somewhere else, and they might not just argue with you—they might shoot you.”

That stuck.

Sometimes I think we confuse inconvenience with oppression. The internet lags for three seconds, and we act like we’re in the wilderness.

Someone disagrees with us online, and suddenly we’re victims of a grand conspiracy. But I’ve seen real hardship, and let me tell you—it doesn’t look like a slightly overcooked latte or a TSA line that moves too slow.

I still gripe about gas prices. But I also know I live in a place where I can write my thoughts, cast a vote, start a business, or take a nap under a tree without asking permission.

So yes, we fuss. We complain.

That’s part of being American, but let’s not forget that even when this country is getting overrun by teenagers slamming doors, it’s still our home. And despite all the noise, it’s a mighty good one.

Especially if there’s pie.

I don’t recall where I first heard it—maybe from old Mrs. Keating, who lived across the street and claimed she could read the weather in her corns—but she said, quite seriously, “Never look a chicken in the eye.”

Naturally, that stuck with me the way odd little sayings often do.

At the time, I was a boy spending the summer months running around all over the neighborhood, unsupervised. Seeing I was not indisposed, Mr. Champion hired me to do some chores around his backyard.

For a while, Mr. Champion kept a ragtag flock of chickens that tolerated him because he had the feed bucket. That, and he talked to them like they were poker buddies.

“Never look a chicken in the eye,” I repeated to myself one morning, shovel in hand, staring down the business end of a Rhode Island Red hen who’d taken offense to my presence in the coop. She stood there, puffed up like a Baptist preacher on tithing Sunday, eyeing me like she knew where I slept.

Now I’ve looked many creatures in the eye—dogs, cats, one very judgmental llama at the Sequoia petting zoo—but there’s something uniquely unsettling about the gaze of a chicken. It’s like they know too much.

Like they’ve been watching and taking notes. And this one? She was taking names.

At some point between thinking it and doing it, I forgot Mrs. Keating’s warning, and I stared right back.

That bird and I locked eyes, and the challenge was issued and accepted. I don’t remember what happened next exactly, just that there was a sudden flutter of wings, a squawk that might’ve been in Latin, and me flat on my back in the dirt with the chicken standing triumphant on my chest.

Mr. Champion stood nearby, sipping his coffee like this was Tuesday’s regular programming. “She warned ya,” he said, not clarifying whether he meant the chicken or Mrs. Keating.

From that day on, I made it a point to avoid eye contact with poultry. You might think that’s silly, and perhaps it is.

But I’ve never been tackled by a chicken since. I find if I keep my head down, toss the feed, and say “Morning, ladies” like I’m addressing royalty, I get by just fine.

That same summer, I also learned to watch out for roosters, never stand directly behind a horse with indigestion, and that if a barn cat brings you a gift, it’s best to act thankful—even if it’s missing a few essential parts.

But the chicken thing—that stuck with me longest. Because life has a way of reminding you not to mess with those who peck beneath their dignity.

I told this story once at a potluck, and some fellow laughed so hard he spilled peach cobbler all down his shirt. He said I was full of it, and chickens were harmless.

Last I heard, he was sprinting through a farm supply store parking lot, being pursued by a particularly aggressive Plymouth Rock named Gertrude. His wife told me.

So take it from me, passed down from Mrs. Keating to Mr. Champion to a boy who learned the hard way–never look a chicken in the eye. There are things in this world you can challenge—mountains, tax returns, maybe even your mother-in-law—but never chickens?

Chickens see straight through to your soul. And if they don’t like what they find, well, you’d best run faster than a Plymouth Rock with a grudge.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it over and over as long as someone’s willing to listen—or pretend to–learn to use AI before it learns to use you. But ever since I admitted I’ve been fiddling around with the stuff—just harmless dabbling, really—folks have acted like I kicked their dog or started speaking in tongues at the grocery store.

I don’t mean everyone, of course. Some of my friends are too polite to say what they’re thinking, which I appreciate.

Others, though, seem to have dropped off the face of the Earth. I’ll send a story their way—same warm tone, same crooked humor, same number of spelling errors—and hear nothing back.

Crickets. Not even a “nice try.”

Makes a fellow wonder if they’re upset with me or just scared.

I get it, sort of. AI’s new-ish, and folks fear what they don’t understand. It’s like when calculators first came out and teachers said, “You won’t always have a calculator in your pocket!”

Well, turns out we’d have the whole Library of Congress in there too, along with our grocery list, dating history, step count, and about 4,000 blurry photos of the dog.

Still, there’s something funny about the outrage. I recall when folks first found out their smartphones were listening in on them.

There was a brief storm of righteous indignation. People were ready to throw their phones in the river—or at least threaten to on Facebook.

“I don’t want the government spying on me!” they said, while scrolling through conspiracy videos on YouTube—owned by Google—on their Android phones—also owned by Google—while telling Alexa to dim the lights.

Then Edward Snowden, pale and serious, showed up spilling the beans on how the government was recording our keystrokes and listening to our calls. People swore they’d never be part of such nonsense.

But here we are—years later—arguing with strangers on smart devices, sharing our blood pressure data with apps, and letting a robot vacuum learn the layout of our homes. Voluntarily.

And yet, some folks are suspicious of me using AI. Not to deceive, not to replace, or shape their thoughts. I’ve always thought of AI like a workshop full of tools—sure, one of them might be a chainsaw, but most days I’m just reaching for a chisel and a good lamp.

The truth is, the stories still come from me. The warm memories, the stubborn opinions, the jokes that only land half the time—those are all mine.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is, we’ve already given so much of ourselves to the machines—we might as well get a little something back. Besides, if the robots are watching, maybe they’ll learn how to be a little more human.

Lord knows some of us could use a refresher course.

It was a good day on the farm; honestly, that means I only cursed once and nothing fell on me. That’s what passes for success out here, especially when helping a friend who’s under the weather.

Now, for months, I’ve been eyeing that old gate like it owed me money. Every time I passed through it, which was often, I’d mutter something about needing to widen it.

The thing was narrow enough to make a steer think twice, and with age, it had taken on the attitude of a mule—stubborn, sagging, and prone to complaining whenever I asked it to move. Well, today I finally got around to doing the job.

Got the gate enlarged and the fence tightened. There’s something mighty satisfying about pulling wire taut and hearing that low hum like a guitar string when you pluck it. Makes a fellow feel like he’s got some control over the world, even if it’s only a short stretch of pasture.

Once the gate got done and the fence was singing, I figured I’d check on the babies—by which I mean the lambs, not some unexpected chapter in my life. They were all tucked into the shade, looking as innocent and clueless as a group of toddlers who just pulled the stuffing out of the couch and are waiting to see what happens next.

The sheep pen had turned into a botanical experiment. Weeds tall enough to register to vote had sprouted in every corner, and it looked like they were planning a coup. So I went to work, pulling and yanking and tossing green invaders over the fence like a bouncer at a particularly unruly garden party.

Now here’s the thing: it was 90 degrees on the thermometer, but the humidity had other plans. That sort of thick, wet heat that makes your clothes stick and your thoughts melt.

The weather service reported that the “feels like” temperature was 100 degrees, but I found that to be generous. I’m pretty sure my brain was stewing in its juices.

After thirty minutes of pulling weeds, I was sweating worse than a pig. And I know that’s just a saying, but for once it was true—I looked over at the pigs, and those creatures had already claimed the pond.

They were all laid out like retirees at a Florida resort, just floating and grunting softly with the kind of peace you only earn when you’ve given up on doing anything useful. Meanwhile, I’m standing in the sun like a wilted gladiolus, wondering why humans haven’t evolved enough to grow mud coats.

So I did the only sensible thing. I dropped the gloves and retreated to the house in search of anything cold. I don’t remember exactly the name of the beer I guzzled—I just opened the fridge and pointed my face at it like a dog catching wind out the car window.

That’s farm life. You sweat, you swear a little, and you find joy in the sound of a fence wire singing in the sun, even if it ain’t your place.

I’ve sat down at the computer today for the first time since Monday. The chair feels as if it’s forgotten the shape of me. The screen blinks patiently, waiting for me to remember why I ever sat down in the first place.

Over the years, I’ve written several unpublished columns with Honey walking through, her pit bull smile, tail wagging, ears perked, always present. I thought about changing them, and have decided no, that it would be like editing out the warmth of a good memory.

Honey was part of the rhythm, part of the pauses and glances that made those tales come alive. Letting her stay just as she was, alive on the page, is a quiet kind of grace, my way of saying, you mattered here.

And she did. She still does.

Aside from that, it’s been a strange stretch of days, the kind where time doesn’t quite hold still, but it also doesn’t move forward like it ought to. If I’m honest, I feel like I’ve been walking through wet cement in bedroom slippers—still trying to get from here to there, but dragging a weight behind me that I didn’t know I’d picked up.

Honey, our blue-nose, gray Pit Bull left us on Wednesday morning. She was the size of a small bale of hay and heavier than a cement block, but somehow, her absence has left the house feeling like an empty barn after all the horses have gone.

It’s quiet now—too quiet–not just in sound, but in feeling.

I catch myself pausing at the refrigerator door, waiting to hear that telltale “ticka-tacka-tick” of her tappy-toes on the hardwood. It was automatic—open the fridge, and she’d come trotting in like she owned the joint, ready to collect her payment in the form of an ice cube.

And don’t think for a moment she didn’t train me on that trick. That was her thing, the ice cubes. It didn’t matter how small or how hot the day was, she’d gallop in with all the seriousness of a dog on a mission.

She passed on during what was already a tender time. My 65th birthday landed on Sunday. Sixty-five, which ought to feel like something grand, but instead arrived like a letter addressed to “Resident”—a little impersonal, maybe even unwelcome.

Before I could make peace with that number, I found out late the following morning that my stepsister, Amanda’s, husband had passed suddenly, a heart attack stealing him away in the dark. We were still stunned come Tuesday, and then the vet confirmed what we were afraid of—Honey’s heart was failing.

Right-sided congestive heart failure. That was the name for it. And yet, all I could think was, how could a heart so big ever fail?

Wednesday morning, 11:05, the vet administered the final kindness. A minute later, she was gone, and I found myself holding more tears than a dog.

You’d be amazed at how quiet that moment can be when a life slips out of a room. You’d think there’d be a noise, something sharp or soft—but no, just stillness.

Since then, Buddy—our other pup—has been looking for her. He checks the corners of rooms like a guard on patrol, stopping just long enough to listen.

But the ice cube brigade is down a soldier, and he knows it. He’s gone off his food and curled into himself on the couch, or stretched out on my bed like maybe that’s where her scent still lingers.

He’s grieving in his way, and I let him.

The heart has a way of holding sounds and smells in it, keeping them even after they’re gone. So now and then, I think I hear her coming. I don’t—at least not in the way I’d like—but some things echo longer than logic allows.

Grief, I’m learning yet again, is not always loud. Sometimes, it’s the silence that hurts the most.

Beneath the aging balconies of C Street, where the Comstock’s old grandeur now serves only the tourists, something darker has taken root—an underworld masquerading as entertainment, fueled by saffron, sex, and sacrilege.

It started with unusual whispers. Reports of late-night “ghost tours” extending well past 2 a.m., of abandoned buildings glowing with candlelight, and of a sudden uptick in sexually transmitted infections—syphilis and gonorrhea foremost among them—across three counties serviced by the Quad-Counties Health Division.

What tied the symptoms together, health workers quietly suggested, was an unusually high concentration of cases in and around town. What tied the people together was harder to say—until one former saloon girl turned bartender told me, “They don’t believe in disease. Just pleasure. And if you’re married, so what? They’ll swap partners like playing cards.”

Months of off-the-record interviews led me to a decaying structure tucked behind the C Street façades. From a nearby alley, I watched as cloaked figures slipped through a side entrance.

At the door, a hooded sentry challenged me. I gave the passphrase—learned from a frightened man who’d begged me not to write his name down.

Inside, masked sentinels questioned me at intervals, but bits of ritual knowledge got me through. Then I entered the room: a candlelit chamber centered on a black-draped altar, above which hung a crucifix so grotesquely altered it turned my stomach.

Several men and women gathered—some nude, others gowned, all altered by wine and pills. Several couples openly engaged in lewd acts while others cheered them on. I recognized more than one face behind the masks—shopkeepers, a councilman, even a school secretary.

The priest arrived clad in crimson robes, flanked by three acolytes with swinging censers. The liturgy he offered was a vile reversal of the Holy Mass—every gesture an insult, every prayer a mockery. As he spat on the bread and invoked Satan, a man, unfamiliar to me, stood abruptly.

“Stop this farce!” he thundered.

The room froze.

“Who are you to interrupt the sacrifice?” the priest barked.

“I’m a seeker of truth,” the man replied, stepping forward. “And I know exactly what this is—a fraud. Your entire ritual depends on Christ’s doctrine. You can’t create your own, so you steal and pervert His.”

The crowd murmured, some confused, others furious.

“If Satan were your true god,” the man continued, “you wouldn’t need to mock Christ. But you do—because without Him, this whole farce collapses.”

The priest clenched his fists. A few worshippers shouted. But none moved to stop him as he turned and walked out the same door he entered.

I left shortly after, heart pounding. Outside, the Nevada wind cut sharply, and the sky seemed darker than it had before.

I submitted this story to my editor the next morning, but it got declined without explanation. A week later, I lost my job with the paper.

They said I strayed from objectivity, but this wasn’t about my belief. It was about truth, and the truth is this: under the guise of tourism and ghost stories, a cult of moral rot has taken hold in this town, trading in sacred blasphemy, body fluids, and a spiritual hunger gone wrong.

Whether anyone listens or not, I don’t care, but I recorded it because someone has to.