The Rancher When he rises from his naugahyde recliner to shake your hand, he cups his fingers behind his ear to catch your name. He grips your hand to see if you're man enough to date his daughter, and though you're barely man enough, you've got the strength to pass his test. You meet his eyes that know exactly how to judge a lamb or yearling's face and what he sees in yours he doesn't trust. How could he? When his daughter's dressed and wearing make-up, he calls her cheap, a floozie. His wife's her pimp. He's not bad, his daughter tells you. We're all women in this house, that's hard on him, and Mom's such a bitch. When he's drunk, he comes into her room with what she calls his badger's muzzle and sniffs her neck and shoulders. But what's worse, she tells you, is when she comes home from her dates and if he's still awake, he lifts her dress or puts his hand inside her Levis. And so each time you came to pick her up, he looked at you as both the one who'd save his daughter and use her. He told you once, She lies, don't trust her, and then, as if to prove it, he led you to the service porch, where a freezer, as large as a grave casing, paralleled his beat-up truck. He propped the freezer open with a piece of 2x4, high enough so that the light inside illuminated rows and stacks of plastic bags, clear, the contents blurred with ice. Each one contained what looked to you like scallops, though larger. He reached inside and knocked a bag loose with his fist, then picked it up and said, She'll do to you what I did to sheep to get these, then threw the bag back in, closed the lid, slapped you on the ass and squeezed you, hard. You felt the badger's muzzle then, prickly and wiry, his cheek like a shaved pelt, and then heard what he said, a whisper, You tell me what it's like with her and I'll be glad to listen. -- Michael Collier