In northwestern Woodson County, just south of the German-Russian settlement known as Nikkeltown, lies a pasture.
It looks like any other pasture, really, with dry, brittle grasses swaying slowly in the wind beneath a sprawling cloudless sky.
But this pasture has an incredible secret, and an equally terrible name — a name I will not write.
As I sat watching that sky, the moon grew brighter and brighter, turning my skin yellow-blue, yet on I watched, waiting for it to tell me what I should do, explain how to relate the story of its complex and subtle blackness.
For eight minutes and 46 seconds, I watched, as a thousand fireflies turned on their lights.
In the late nineteenth century, around 1890, there was a ranch to the north of this pasture at one time operated by J.D. Payne, who’d come from Texas and brought along several African-Americans in his service.
Among those cowboys were Jack Oliver and his half-brother whose name is lost to history, though it was said he was half Osage.
Both were outstanding ropers and riders, Jack especially.
After Payne sold his ranch, the Olivers moved into a small shack on the pasture in question, each day stumbling home exhausted and sore from hours of working cattle.
Or perhaps following a pint of whiskey.
At that time they had begun working for Jim Dye, whose land stretched clear into Greenwood County, and whose last name provides a clue to understanding the name I will not write.
It’s not a question of giving color to fabric, that name, of dying, but to death, to the underworld and underground, like the basement dug in that pasture for which I have searched and not yet found, that eludes me like some bashful wraith.
NOW Jack Oliver, by contrast, was anything but shy.
In life, he was a seasoned bronc rider and legendary tamer of outlaw horses.
Once, there was a ferocious stallion near Gridley, which someone brought to the Spade ranch to see if Jack might not meet his match . . . or his maker.
The horse was saddled with a halter and rope on him, but no bridle.
