The Half-Skinned Steer

The Half-Skinned Steer Summary | Detailed Summary

Half-Skinned Steer is about a man in his eighties, Mero, who struggles with his past when he is forced to revisit his childhood home in Wyoming after his brother passes away. The story's narration moves between past and present. The protagonist compares his present life to a story he remembers hearing from his father's girlfriend while he lived on the ranch. He describes himself in his youth as a hustler. Mero grew up on a ranch on the south hinge of Big Horns. He left the ranch in 1936, went to war and married three times after retuning from war got. He made money in boilers, by cleaning air ducts and through smart investments. When he retired, Mero went into local politics and managed to run his term and exit without scandal. He never returned to Wyoming to visit his father or his brother Rollo. He knew they were bankrupt and ruined and had no urgency to see this for himself.

One day, when Mero still lived on the ranch, his father decided that Wyoming was too tough to run cows. The countryside carried the burden of mountain lions, sinkholes, high winds and soil that wouldn't grow hay. Mero's father opted out of this work and took a job delivering mail. He looked guilty when he put bills into neighbours mailboxes and wasn't well suited to this either. Their father's mail job left Mero and Rollo to take care of the ranch. Their breeding herd was down in numbers and the price of a cow had decreased but the two brothers kept on. They hoped that their father would move to the nearby city, Ten Sleep, with his girlfriend, leaving them the ranch and an opportunity to turn things around.

Sixty years after leaving the ranch, Mero lives as a vegetarian in Woolfoot, Massachusetts. One morning, Mero gets a phone call from a woman named Louise. She explains that she is Tick Corn's wife. Tick is Rollo's son. The woman tells Mero that Rollo has passed away. An angry Emu killed him, although he was already ill from colon cancer. She tells Mero that Rollo still owned the half the ranch, and she and Tick had been running it for the past ten years. She tells him that Rollo sold the ranch to the Girl Scouts years ago, but after a mountain lion dragged off one of the scouts, the Scouts sold the ranch to the neighbouring Banner Ranch. The Banner Ranch sold it to an Australian businessman who renamed it "Wyoming Down Under" and set it up as a tourist ranch. However, living away from the ranch and having bad luck with managers caused problems for the businessman, and he sold half the ranch back to Rollo. She tells Mero that Rollo had wanted to call his brother but never got around to it. When he died, Tick looked up Mero's number on the computer. Mero tells Louise he will come to the ranch for the funeral. He doesn't like to fly and will drive. It's a four-day drive through the winter weather, and he will arrive on Saturday. Louise is surprised at this because of his age. Mero is older than Rollo. Mero intends to drive his Cadillac. He always drives a Cadillac.

In the story' first flashback, Mero recalls his ill-tempered, drunk father and his father's trashy girlfriend. He cannot remember the girlfriend's name, but he recalls her bulging horse-like eyes, wiry neck veins, and bloody fingers from her nail-biting habit. She was a heavy smoker and a storyteller. Her tales were always about hardships and mayhem. Mero's brother Rollo ogled her, likely because no other women were around. Mero partly left to find a woman of his own. He recalls a story that she had told them just before Mero left the ranch when he was twenty-three and Rollo was twenty. Mero recalls his father this day, with his gangster face, his crushed rodeo nose, stub ear, scar-crossed eyebrows and his curled hat brim. His father has been dead fifty years. He had been buried in his mailman sweater. The day that the girlfriend shares the story of "Tin Head," Mero's father sits at the table, getting drunk on Everclear with a peeled willow stick in it to add bitterness. The girlfriend begins her story. Tin Head lived near Dubious on a small ranch with some horses and cows when her father was a young boy. He had a wife and children. The odd thing about him was that he had a metal plate in his head from an incident when he fell down cement stairs. Things always went wrong on Tin Head's ranch. His chickens changed colour to an odd blue shade. The cows were born with three legs. His kids were born piebald. His wife always cried for blue dishes. Tin Head was a lazy man. He never finished what he started.

The narrator reveals the flashback piece by piece. In present day, as Mero drives toward the funeral on the interstate, he recalls having nightmares the night that he heard the "Tin Head" story. He woke up in a sweat the morning after hearing the tale. He was thinking about how their bad luck with the cows on the ranch could go on forever. He wondered what his chances might be in another state. That morning, Mero decided to leave the ranch for good. As the years passed, Mero always wondered whether Rollo stole his father's girlfriend. Mero is making good time on the highway, but a cop pulls him over and gives him a speeding ticket.

Mero recalls that his interest in women began at age eleven or twelve, a few days after he showed an archaeologist around the Wyoming mountains where the rocks had red and black native drawings. The archaeologist pointed out different images in the drawings to young Mero, including bison skulls, mountain sheep, a dragonfly and a vulva. Mero didn't know what a vulva is. He looked it up in a dictionary at school and was embarrassed when he read the description. The image was burned in him, peaking a new interest in the opposite sex.

By Thursday night, Mero's travels place him on the outskirts of Des Moines. He stays the night in a cinder block motel room. Mero sets the alarm, but his own breathing wakes him at 5:15 a.m. It's a cold morning. Light slants down into the room as Mero makes instant coffee in the bathroom. He gets into his Cadillac and leaves, but he misses the westbound ramp. He thinks that he spots the motel he just came from, but it's a different motel with a similar sign. He veers for another interstate ramp and collides with a truck. A stretch limo hits him from behind, and the limo is rear-ended by another vehicle. At the point of impact, Mero's airbag hits him in the face, causing tiny drops of blood to spot his shirt. He watches his car be towed away after the accident,. Mero takes a taxi to a car dealership and buys a black Cadillac similar to his but a few years older. Mero buys cars like cigarettes. He doesn't care that the used car is inferior. He would buy another on the trip home.

A full moon rises a half hour past Kearney, Nebraska. Mero feels his swollen nose and tender chin from the accident. Mero pulls into a motel. He drinks whiskey with hot tap water before bed to help him sleep. He hadn't eaten all day. He hates road food. Mero dreamt of the ranch house that night. In his dream, all the furniture had been removed. Troops in dirty white uniforms fight in the yard. Guns break the window glass and force the floorboards apart. Below the floor he sees galvanized tubs filled with dark, coagulated fluid. Mero wakes the next morning. It's Saturday, and he has four hundred miles left to go. He eats the road food he despises. He crosses the state line and heads for Cheyenne for the first time in sixty years. He knows the place well despite all the changes. He travels through a familiar railroad town, parks in front of a phone booth and calls Louise to say he is running late. Mero is calm at his age. He has lost his young man's anger. He had always told his wives how hard it was to leave the ranch the day he hit the road. Now, thirty miles outside of Cheyenne, Mero sees the first sign for the "Down Under Ranch." The sign warns that the ranch will not be reopened until May 31.

In the story's next flashback, Rollo asks his father's girlfriend to continue explaining what happened to Tin Head. His drunk father leaves the room. Tension breaks when he leaves a room. The sons become ordinary people to whom nothing ever happened. The girlfriend washes a dish in the sink, waiting for Rollo and Mero's father to return before she continues her story. The father comes back and sits down, and she picks up the story where she left off. Every year, Tin Head butchered one of his steers and the family would live off the steer all winter. One day out by the barn, Tin Head hit one of his steers with an axe, tied its back legs and hoisted the steer up. He put a tub under the steer to catch the blood and began to bleed out the steer. Once he felt that it had bled out enough, he started skinning, beginning with the head. Tin Head didn't cut off the steer's head, but he did cut out the tongue. He continued skinning, peeling the hide back. When it was time to start siding, which was the tougher part, Tin Head started thinking about dinner. Tin Head left the half-skinned steer on the ground and went inside to eat dinner. He ate chicken and dumplings made from one of his blue chickens.

In the present, Mero is driving through a winter storm, barely able to see out his car window. He knows the ranch is near. He remembers the shape of the ranch and how it looked. He recalls how he and Rollo shot two mountain lions the winter before Mero left. As night arrives, the snow causes Mero to drive with caution. He has not forgotten how to drive in the mountains in winter, but he begins to sweat anxiously as the wind rocks his car. The altitude makes him dizzy. He has twelve miles before he will reach Ten Sleep. Twenty miles away from the ranch, Mero sees another sign for the Wyoming Down Under. Everything beyond his headlights is blurred, but the road seems familiar to him. It has the same shape and sentinel rocks as it did in his youth. The place possesses an eerie, dream-like quality.

Mero, driving on an unmarked road through the darkness, spots the gate to the neighbouring Banner Ranch. The gate is undamaged by the weather. He doesn't see a turnoff to the ranch. He watches for familiar spots. Mero backtracks, but he can't see the Banner Ranch gate. His tire rolls over a boulder and sinks into a hole. He spins his tires but is stuck. He decides to sit there until light, and then he will walk to the Banner place and ask for coffee. He figures he is about three miles from the gate, and it's another ten miles from the gate to the ranch house. It will be a difficult walk in the winter cold. Mero will be patient. He decides to run the car in intervals to keep warm. He falls asleep for half an hour and wakes up shivering and cramped. He turns on the car lights and gets out. He examines the tire and sees he needs three flat rocks to hoist up the car. He walks through the snow to find the rocks.

The tale of Tin Head is resolved in the story's final flashback. After dinner, Tin Head took a nap and then went outside to finish skinning the steer, but the steer was gone. Only the tongue and tub of blood remained on the ground. He first thought that someone stole the steer. He looked around for footprints but there were none. He saw something walking stiffly and slowly in the distance. He saw that it was the half raw steer walking with the bunched hide dangling from its body. The steer made no sound as it stopped and looked at Tin Head. Red eyes glared at Tin Head with pure hate. Tin Head knew that he would pay for this. His family and generations after would all pay for his deed. He imagined that even his house would blow away or burn up in payment for his evil.

In the present, Mero tries to find his way around. He knows he is on the ranch. He can feel it. He thinks he may be at a lower ranch entrance. He finds the rocks he seeks and sees something moving beyond the barbwire in the distance. He grasps at the door handle to his car but it's locked. He sees his keys inside the ignition. He picks up a rock, smashes the window and reaches for the keys. After, he notices that the passenger side was not locked and wonders why he struggled to reach for the keys instead of unlocking the driver side door. Mero is dizzy from thirst and hunger. He has eaten only once in the past two days. He puts his car into reverse and slowly turns on the gas. The car steadies into the track, but the tires slip and spin in the deep snow. Mero spins the tires until they smoke. The rear wheel of the car spins sideways into a two-foot ditch and the engine dies. Mero thinks that maybe he can make the walk to the Banner Ranch. Perhaps another driver will see him walking. He is hopeful.

Mero's tire track show a faint pattern in the snow on the main road. He looks out over the county under the moonlight. He sees the cliffs, the snow rising off the prairies, the glittering sagebrushes and a tangle of black willows at the creek that bunch like dead hair. He walks past the cattle field beside the road. His shoes are filled with snow, and he is walking against the wind. Mero's eyes begin to tear. He notices one of the cows from the herd inside the fence is keeping pace with him. Mero walks slower, and the animal slows down. Mero stops, and the animal stops and looks at him. In the wintry light Mero looks at the cow in disbelief. It seems that the half-skinned steer's red eye had been watching him all this time.