Horse King
By Cynthia Van
We lived on old school rules: whoever kills the king becomes the king. Except, May Ngo didn’t want to be king. After she stabbed Zach the Second next to a 7-Eleven slushie machine, she said she didn’t mean to.
“Besides,” May said, “I’m not king until I put on his skull.”
Then, she looked at me and said, “Right?”
Yeah, I said, and she smiled like she’s not sure anymore. I guess what I know and what I don’t are the same.
For now, she’s got his 19-year-old skull swung over her shoulder like a satchel and says we should go visit his parents’ farm later.
--
You’ve got to be funny to be king. When Zach was king, he got what he wanted, which is to say, he hurt who he wanted, and didn’t even bother to tell a knock-knock joke after.
--
“Knock-knock,” said May.
I ducked under red and orange foliage and stared after her short, bleached hair. She wore a dark burn on her arm. Even from behind, she looked sullen.
“Who’s there?”
“No one.”
"No one who?”
May turned with a half-smile on her tan skin and didn’t speak.
“Oh,” I said. “I get it.”
Zach’s older sister, Jesse, has been crying on the back porch since he was stabbed. We’re both careful to avoid her even though it was just May who killed him. Everyone older than twenty lived on new school rules. Everyone took turns being king, making rules, but no one had to be funny about it. I don’t know what I’d prefer.
His horse was easy to find. Zach used to ride it to high school before he killed King Minh and dropped out. Minh liked wearing shock gloves, and his first rule was to shake his hand whenever you saw him. It lasted maybe two hours.
I sat next to Blue the horse even though Blue is white with brown spots. May undoes the scout’s knot between Zach’s eye sockets and holds his skull like a bowling ball. She tied it between Blue’s ears tight enough that he let out a soft neigh. Warm air rushed against my calves.
May’s had a crush on Jesse since we were twelve, and we used to visit every day back then. I pet Blue’s snout.
We realize too late that silence meant she stopped crying.
“Fucking run,” May hissed. She bolted off toward the woods where everything was autumn purple. I followed almost immediately. A hand snaked around my ankle and I heard my face squish against fallen figs.
“What the fuck,” Jesse said, “is that?”
“A present,” I squawked. A bruise on my leg pulsed in the shape of her hand. “From May.”
Zach and Jesse used to fight every day we visited.
--
“A horse can’t be king,” I tell her later. “You’ve got to be funny.”
--
I go back to the farm where I find Jesse holding the skull in her lap and speaking to it the way I remember she spoke to Zach after a fight.
“Where’s Blue?” I asked instead. Grief is strange on different faces.
She pointed inside the house. A present box labeled TO: MAY sat in the kitchen. It smelled like bleach and ammonia.
Jesse shut the Zach’s jaw with a click.
--
May tells everyone our new king is a horse at the harvest exchange.
“No one’s laughing,” someone says, “try again, king.”
I think of white bones. Jesse’s trading figs for eggs, and I look at her over baskets of persimmons.
“So, a bar walks into a guy,” she says. Laughter trickles through the square.
“No,” May says, “sorry. So, a bar runs into a guy. Now he’s dead because it crushed his skull. The end.”
There’s silence, so I say, “It’s funny because it’s not funny.”
--
So, a girl walks into a bar. Except the girl is May and the bar is a 7-Eleven. She sees Zach the Second, king of her small town, and asks for a joke. He says,
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Hot dog.
Hot dog, who?
And he shoves her into the hot dog machine. Sizzling rollers sting her arm, so she shoves him back. Except he slips on a slushie and snaps his neck.
--
May walks through town wearing a horse skull and says there is no more king as long as she’s king. I watch the sun behind her burn red.
At the farm, Jesse is talking to Zach, opening and closing his jaw.
THE END