Winter In The Blood

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual assault.

Back at the farm, the narrator saddles up old Bird, the horse. Bird makes it difficult by moving around and holding a deep breath to keep the narrator from tightening the saddle. When the narrator finishes saddling the horse and mounts, Bird promptly attempts to buck him off, circling in the paddock, and the young calf flees ahead of him, crying for its mother in terror. Lame Bull opens the gate and Bird, the narrator, and a calf race through it. The narrator allows Bird to run wherever and as fast as he wants. Eventually, the horse calms down and the narrator steers him across an irrigation ditch and to a “log-and-mud shack set into the ground” (50). There they find a man, whom the narrator calls Yellow Calf.

The men converse and establish that they already know each other. Yellow Calf invites the narrator inside, at which point the narrator realizes that he is blind. They go into the shack and Yellow Calf pours them both a cup of coffee. The narrator observes that, despite his blindness, Yellow Calf moves confidently around his home.