Close Range: Wyoming Stories The Blood Bay by Annie Proulx

Some critics have taken the boot to this particular story from Annie Proulx and their arguments (academic of course), however, their lack of feeling astonishes me. Get over it! Regardless, this is one great piece of short story telling.  The Blood Bay is a wonderful story where the elements of the Gothic are weaved with realism set against a timeless landscape dripping with human desperation and apathy. What makes Proulx’s story so grimly wonderful? Her subject death and indifference. Proulx comic and wretched characters along with their disengaged and odious dialogue build a setting that fits the reader’s expectations of the narrative’s place and time. The thrust of this twitchy story projects the unyielding temperament of nature’s intolerance of the abstract and Proulx superbly demonstrates mankind’s stoicism and adherence of nature’s wrath.

The story’s beginning sets the tone by revealing to the lucky reader in no uncertain terms how it’s going to pan out, ‘The winter of 1886-87 was terrible. Every goddamn history of the high plains says so.’ (Great stuff). It evokes a sense of terror and the hellish madness of men and nature. The unknown narrator feels angry that they cannot get the idea through to you (the reader) that this particular winter was, ‘Bloody fucking cold’. The three men are moulded by the harshness of their prairie experiences. They work, live and play in the fierce environment of a big sky, ‘They were savvy and salty,’ and had, ‘Bristled chins.’ One can easily picture them sitting covered in their, ‘Blanket coats, woolly chaps [and] grease-wool scarves.’ They are tough nuts but their ambitions are held fast by their cheerless demeanour. The dead cowboy encapsulates the totality of their lives, ‘If you don’t learn out here you die.’ The vain Montana cowboy freezes to death because he bought fancy new boots instead of winter clothing. He paid the ultimate price. When he is found by the Box Spring Three the dead man is dissolving into the soil. He was, ‘Blue as whetstone and half buried in snow.’  The total disregard for the sacredness of the dead is shown when Dirt Sheets cuts Montana’s frozen feet off at the shins to claim the rotting cowboy’s new boots. It is indicative of men living under harsh conditions. Nevertheless, Dirt Sheets is the same freak that rides off to make sure he delivers a birthday message of to his dear mother. An excellent, enjoyable and worthwhile read.