"The Cycle Repeats"

The man took advantage of the fact that before the mating season of the sheep went to the nearby pasture to buy a few improved Merino breeding sheep, and since the nearby pasture was eighteen miles away, he took advantage of the twilight to go into the deep forest alone at a forked medio tree, only to find out...........

Sam was a rancher who was ready to buy a few improved Merino breeding sheep from the near-Pullman Ranch before the flock mating season, which was a fairly important business trip, and chapman Ranch was almost a town in terms of numbers and size, Sam decided to dress up decently, and he decided to learn to dress up as a city man.

The wife shook leisurely in her chair, pinched the page she had just seen with her fingers, turned her head, and smiled wryly to find the damage Sam had done to his appearance in order to "dress up."

"Well, Sam, if I had to say it," she said in a long tone, "you don't look like a free and independent shepherd in Texas, but like a countryman in a comic strip."

Sam awkwardly stepped into the saddle.

"It's you who's ashamed," he said angrily, "and you don't take care of men's clothes, you always sit and read low-level boring novels." "Oh, you shut me up and leave," said the wife, pulling on the arm of her chair, "you always talk nonsense for me to read." I've done enough work; I can read books whenever I want, and you can't control them. I stay in this kind of desolate mountain and wild place, I can't see anything, I can't hear anything, what pastime can I have without reading a book? Listen to your nagging? You complain and complain all day, and I have a cocoon in my ears. Go, Sam, don't bother me. ”

Sam angrily left the ranch.

By noon Sam had left the road at a forked maki tree and headed along the Quintanilla Ditch. It's a narrow river valley, and the thick, fist-curling muck grass resembles a thick carpet of green

He climbed a mountain of knotted cacti and mistletoe, pebbles. He paused for a moment at the top of the hill and glanced at the surrounding landscape for the last time, for from here he had to choose the path among the thorns and bushes of quercus, cacti, and medley trees, and could not see twenty yards in any direction, and could only judge the path by the instincts of the inhabitants of the steppe, by the occasional distant hill, by a cluster of trees of peculiar shape, or by the position of the sun in the sky.

After about two hours, he found himself lost, a little flustered, trying to find a familiar place as soon as possible, for a cattle herder or shepherd, a day or a night is no big deal. This happens a lot. It's nothing more than missing a meal or two and sleeping comfortably on a saddle blanket on the soft maki grass. But Sam's situation was different. He had never been in a situation where he had not spent the night on the ranch. Martha was afraid of this place—she was afraid of Mexicans, she was afraid of snakes, she was afraid of jaguars, she was afraid of sheep. So he never left her alone at home.

Sam felt the truth of the matter getting serious. There was now no hill for them to climb to observe the terrain. Although I saw a few, the trees were so entangled that even rabbits could not drill through. They were in the thickest mess of trees in the Frio Valley. For a cattle herder or shepherd, a day or night of road is no big deal. This happens a lot. It's nothing more than missing a meal or two and sleeping comfortably on a saddle blanket on the soft maki grass. But Sam's situation was different. He had never been in a situation where he had not spent the night on the ranch. The wife was afraid of this place—she was afraid of the Mexicans, she was afraid of the snakes, she was afraid of the jaguar, she was afraid of the sheep. So he never left her alone at home.

By the time Sam sensed the seriousness of the matter, it was about four o'clock in the afternoon. He was sweating and weak, not because of the heat or fatigue, but because of anxiety.

Sam felt deep guilty. He remembered the grumpy words he had said to his wife, and his throat felt panicked. Living in such a ghostly place, even without his evil words, was hard enough for her. He cursed himself fiercely, remembering that he had always ridiculed her and said that he had laughed at her for the sake of her reading, and his face was suddenly redder with shame than the summer sunset.

Recalling his first meeting with his wife and all that had happened in the past, he said to himself, "If I ever say another unpleasant word to that little woman," Sam said to himself, "or praise her hobbies again, I should let the Bobcat tear me to pieces." ”

He fantasized that when he returned home, he would write to the Garcia-Jones Firm, which bought the wool from his ranch and supplied his daily necessities, and asked them to bring a large box of novels and readings to Martha. The situation will improve. He considered whether to buy a small piano and put it in a room on the ranch, so that they would not go outside for entertainment in the future.

Man-made things travel in a straight line. Natural things move along the circumference. The upright man is more of a man-made product than the sleek diplomat. People who get lost in the snow keep spinning in circles until they are exhausted and fall to the ground, as evidenced by their footprints. And people who roam the realms of philosophy and other ideas tend to go back and forth and end up at the beginning.

Just when Sam was full of remorse and determined to make up for it, his Horse took a breath of air, slowed down triumphantly, and stopped trotting hard, at which point Sam objected, "this is not okay." I know you're tired, but we've got to go on.

The horse snorted in protest, as if to say, "We're so close, why are you kicking me?" Reluctantly, it trotted up, rounded a black mistletoe tree, stopped, and refused to go any further. Sam saw that ten yards away was the back door of his house, and the reins in his hand fell. The wife sat calmly in a rocking chair in front of the door, resting her feet on the steps, looking leisurely and self-satisfied. The son sat on the ground playing with a pair of spurs, looked up at his father, and then continued to turn the gears on the spurs, singing nursery rhymes in his mouth. The wife turned lazily over her head on the back of the rocking chair and looked at the man and the horse who had returned, expressionless. She had a book in her lap and her fingers between the pages she had just seen.

Sam shook his head like a freshly awakened man and slowly dismounted. He licked the charred lips with his tongue. "You're still sitting," he said, "reading that kind of low-level boring novel." Sam went around in circles and returned to his old ways.

——————

This story comes from Ou. Henry's short story "The Cycle Begins"

Just like our annual New Year's resolutions, the cycle repeats.