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Intro
Mero Corn takes pride in the fact that he “never” returned to visit his family after leaving his home in Wyoming decades earlier. One day, however, he is “summoned” back to Wyoming by Louise Corn, his brother Rollo’s daughter-in-law, who tells him over the phone that Rollo has passed away. Louise informs Mero that an emu attacked and killed Rollo on the family’s ranch, which currently operates as a tourist destination called “Down Under Wyoming.” Mero decides to return home for the first time in sixty years.
During the drive back to the ranch, Mero recalls formative scenes from his childhood. He describes how it was “impossible” to “run cows” on the ranch, as it was a hostile landscape; he also recalls how his father, whom he refers to as the old man, defected from the cattleman lifestyle to become a mailman. Additionally, he reminisces about his father’s girlfriend, comparing her to a horse with sexualized, graphic language. Mero remembers how the girlfriend’s flirtations with both Rollo and his father “charged” the family with “intensity of purpose” and added tension to an otherwise tedious existence. One of the girlfriend’s stories, an ominous tale about a man named Tin Head, is a key memory from Mero’s childhood.
Mero recounts various fragments from the girlfriend’s story of Tin Head as he continues his trip. In the tale, Tin Head and his family were particularly unlucky: his chickens would turn mysteriously blue, and his cattle were often born mutated. At the time, the girlfriend’s story resulted in a sexual yet terrifying dream for Mero; he remembers how, upon waking, he realized his life could continue monotonously “like this for some time.” This realization, combined with Mero’s desire for a girlfriend “of his own,” prompts him to leave home and make a new life.
As Mero reminisces about the past, he starts disengaging from the present. When he is pulled over by a cop, for example, he momentarily forgets why he is traveling home. Mero then relates another formative moment in his youth: his sexual awakening. He recalls how an anthropologist showed him cliff paintings, and how he mistook an image of female genitalia for a horseshoe.
After recounting this memory, Mero gets into a multi-car crash; he then buys a secondhand car and continues his drive homeward. He drives through Cheyenne “for the second time in sixty years,” and recalls how, when he first left home, he stopped at a restaurant to order a bloody steak. The gory meal repulsed him, however, and he converted to vegetarianism. Mero considers this the path of a “cattleman gone wrong,” and is proud of his decision to distance himself from his family’s traditions.
Continuing with the theme of gruesome imagery, Mero recounts the next part of Tin Head’s story. In the tale, Tin Head selects a steer to butcher “every year” to help feed his family “all winter long.” One year, however, Tin Head leaves the steer “half-skinned” and bloodied on the ground; he forgets to finish the work, as he is absentmindedly distracted by his wife’s call to dinner.
Mero then interrupts the story to describe the natural landscape of Wyoming, noting how the blinding snow and whipping wind rises and stops, and the road clears in front of him. As he drives onward, he mentally recalls the shape of his family’s ranch, and reminisces about the “intimate fences” he had constructed in his youth. The storm begins to surge again, and Mero focuses on “keeping to the road,” affirming that he has not “forgotten how to drive a winter mountain.” He claims that the road is “achingly familiar” even in the snow, and recalls the neighboring ranches with fondness. Despite Mero’s confidence in his directions, however, he misses the turnoff to his family’s ranch. One of his car’s tires then gets stuck in the snow; he gets out of the car, hoping he can extricate it.
The tale of Tin Head resumes. Mero’s father’s girlfriend describes how Tin Head emerges from his home after dinner to look for the half-skinned steer and is surprised to see it is gone. Suddenly, Tin Head notices movement in the distance, and realizes it is the steer, which is still alive. Tin Head sees the hate in the steer’s eyes, and realizes that he and his family are cursed to suffer for cruelly injuring the steer.
Tin Head’s story concludes, and Mero is still stuck in the snowstorm. He looks through his car’s window and realizes that he left the keys in the ignition. He decides to break one of the windows to retrieve them. He then places the car’s floor mats under the tire to lend it traction, and gets into his battered car to start the engine. The mats barely help, and the tires spin uselessly in the snow before giving out entirely.
Mero gets out of the inoperative car to finish the journey on foot. He acknowledges that he will likely die in the storm, and claims that this is a “relief.” Mero trudges through the snow, marveling at the “violent country,” and realizes that one cow has broken away from its herd to follow him. He turns to look at the animal and recognizes it as the half-skinned steer, whose “red eye had been watching for him all this time.”
