The first thing he noticed was the cow’s left ear was missing and the next thing he noticed was her left eye was gone. She wasn’t breathing.

JR moved forward slowly and began to circle the heifer. When he rounded her far side, he stopped once more and then squatted, reaching for the ground to steady himself. A rectangular swatch of hide had been sheared from her back. By a scalpel, looked like. Or a box cutter. He got to his feet and studied the bare earth beneath the tree. He’d had coyotes pull down calves over the years—yearlings, mostly—but there were no coyote tracks in the dirt, no tracks of any kind, not even the cow’s.

He heard the truck door slam and turned to see Mary Louise walking around the vehicle’s front end.

“Don’t come up here!” he called.

She stopped and stood there with her eyebrows arched. He asked her to get back in the pickup and Mary Louise said, “Did she fall?”

“Momma,” he said, “get back in the truck for me.” But his wife only crossed her arms.

JR glanced back at the heifer. Flies crawled across her flank and stifle. Flies swarmed around her parted lips. A breeze stirred the leaves overhead and there was the tang of urine in the air. He looked at the tree line across the pasture, then at the road that wound up toward the house. Cicadas buzzed from the buffalo grass. Birds called from the oaks. He started for the pickup, staggering slightly, frightened in a way he didn’t understand.

JR is barely clinging on to his money-losing family ranch in mid-70s Oklahoma. His wife is desperate to move into town. Oil companies are making offers for the property, as is a wealthy Native American neighbor. And he and the sympathetic local sheriff can make no progress figuring out who or what has begun mutilating his cattle.

Author Aaron Gwyn is one of the most interesting literary follows on Twitter and, given his advocacy for Southern gothic stories, I brought to this tale an anticipation that the killings might well be supernatural or alien. But JR never seems to consider the possibility. Instead, he descends into paranoia. And the way Mr. Gwyn maintains a sense of dread throughout makes this an understandable enough reaction.

The denoument is unexpected and hardly seems likely to be the end of JR’s story, but it is consistent with the previously stoical type of man portrayed here.

(Reviewed:06-Sep-25)

Grade: (A-) Orrin C. Judd

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Aaron Gwyn Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Aaron Gwyn
    -TWITTER: @AmericanGwyn
    -INSTAGRAM: americangwyn
    -AUTHOR SITE: Aaron Gwyn
    -SUBSTACK: The Night Does Not End (Aaron Gwyn)
    -SUBSTACK: Blood Meridian (Aaron Gwyn)
    -Faculty Page: Aaron Gwyn Associate Professor, Department of English (UNC Charlotte)
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Aaron Gwyn (Europa Editions)
    -PUBLICIST PAGE: Aaron Gwyn (RCW)
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Aaron Gwyn (Hachette Book Group)
    -ENTRY: Gwyn, Aaron 1972- (Encyclopedia.com)
    -INDEX: Aaron Gwyn (Real Clear Books)
    -INDEX: Aaron Gwyn (Fantastic Fiction)
    -INDEX: Aaron Gwyn (The Missouri Review)
    -INDEX: Aaron Gwyn (Virginia Quarterly Review)
    -INDEX: Aaron Gwyn (GoodReads)
    -INDEX: Aaron Gwyn (Glimmer Train)
    -INDEX: Aaron Gwyn (Electric Lit)
    -INDEX: Aaron Gwyn (The Spectator)
    -PODCAST INDEX: #AaronGwyn (Listen Notes)
    -
    -VIDEO INDEX: “aaron gwyn” (YouTube)
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    -
    -SHORT STORY: The Cattleman (Aaron Gwyn, 8/11/25, Electric Lit)
    -ESSAY: Two Masters: When I was nine, I was a child preacher. (Aaron Gwyn, Oct 15, 2024, Cluny Journal)
    -SHORT STORY: Dead Right There (Aaron Gwyn, Winter 2015, VQR)
    -SHORT STORY: It May Be Forever (Aaron Gwyn, 12/18/23, The Missouri Review)
    -ESSAY: Cormac McCarthy's Gnostic Conservatism: The Cosmic Politics of Cormac McCarthy (Aaron Gwyn, Nov 23, 2024, The Night Does Not End)
    -TRIBUTE: Cormac McCarthy is gone — but his works remain brilliantly alive: He leaves a literary legacy unlike any writer in my lifetime (Aaron Gwyn, June 13, 2023, The Spectator)
    -ESSAY: Blood Meridian is Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece: It may be the Great American Novel critics have searched for (Aaron Gwyn, July 17, 2023, The Spectator)
    -ESSAY: Oppenheimer’s passenger: Christopher Nolan and Cormac McCarthy’s fissile Westerns (Aaron Gwyn, July 23, 2023, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: The new Elon Musk biography lacks a clear vision: The best chapters of Walter Isaacson’s book recount last year’s Twitter takeover (Aaron Gwyn, September 14, 2023, The Spectator)
    -ESSAY: The great Marty Stuart, possessor of one of popular music’s legendary guitars: He stands five-foot-seven in his stocking feet, but with Clarence White’s Telecaster slung around his neck, he looks ten feet tall (Aaron Gwyn, October 20, 2023, The Spectator)
    -SHORT STORY: Lavinia's Son Considers His Place Setting (Aaron Gwyn, Hobart)
    -SHORT STORY: Closing Time at the Diamond Cabaret (Aaron Gwyn, Hobart)
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    -
    -FILM REVIEW: Killers of the Flower Moon captures the singular sensation of outside-ness: The movie is a hallucinatory masterpiece (Aaron Gwyn, October 24, 2023, The Spectator)
    -FILM REVIEW: Dune: Part Two and Paul’s struggle: The young Atreides is horrified by what becoming the Fremen messiah will mean (Aaron Gwyn, March 3, 2024, The Spectator)
    -BOOK LIST: Aaron Gwyn Book Recommendations & Book Mentions (Tertulia)
    -
    -INTERVIEW: 10 Questions with Aaron Gwyn (Keith Rawson, 5/20/14, LitReactor)
    -INTERVIEW: On Horseback in Afghanistan: PW Talks with Aaron Gwyn (William D. Bushnell, Feb 07, 2014, Publishers Weekly)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview with Aaron Gwyn (NC Writers‘ Network, June 9, 2008)
    -INTERVIEW: “Pain can recalibrate your life.”: an Interview with Aaron Gwyn (Kyle Minor, July 14th, 2014, Believer)
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    -
    -PODCAST INDEX: “aaron gwyn” (Apple Podcasts)
    -PODCAST: No Country for Old Men: With Special Guest Ben Avery (Aaron Gwyn, Mar 15, 2025, The Night Does Not End)
    -PODCAST: Cormac McCarthy - Rumors & Ghosts (Pt. I) w/Aaron Gwyn (Art of Darkness, Aug 13, 2024)
    -PODCAST: Cormac McCarthy: Rumors & Ghosts (Pt. II) (Art of Darkness, Aug 13, 2024)
    -PODCAST: Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" w/ Aaron Gwyn (Sacred and Profane Love, 5/24/24)
    -PODCAST: Aaron Gwyn’s “All God’s Children” Explores the Paradoxes of the early American frontier, a Place of Enormous Liberty and Terrible Bondage (Charlotte Readers’ Podcast, February 16, 2021)
    -PODCAST: Episode 282 — Aaron Gwyn (Other Ppl with Brad Listi, 6/01/14)
    -PODCAST: DARK ROOM: BLOOD MERIDIAN w/Aaron Gwyn (Art of Darkness, Jul 18, 2023)
    -PODCAST: #EuropaBookClub: Aaron Gwyn and Nick Arvin in conversation about ALL GOD’S CHILDREN (Europa Editions, Nov 24, 2020)
    -PODCAST: AOT #434: Aaron Gwyn Podcasts Wynne’s War (Authors Online Tour, July 21, 2014)
    -PODCAST: The Back of the Book: A Legion of Horribles; or Cormac McCarthy, The Cannibal Owl, and the Art of Fiction (#10) (Ricochet Superfeed, Feb. 8, 2025)
    -PODCAST: Ernest Hemingway: Out Too Far w/ Aaron Gwyn (Art of Darkness, Feb. 26, 2023)
    -PODCAST: 192. Aaron Gwyn on the Vanishing White Male Writer (Smoke 'em If You Got 'em)
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    -REVIEW ARCHIVE : Aaron Gwyn (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of The Cannibal Owl by Aaron Gwyn (Alida Becker, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Cannibal Owl (Talking Big)
    -REVIEW: of The Cannibal Owl (Ryan Prado, Foreword Reviews)
    -REVIEW: Frontier Demons: A Review of Aaron Gwyn’s “The Cannibal Owl” (Thomas Philbrick, 6/22/25, Voegelin Views)
    -REVIEW: of The Cannibal Owl (Holly Smith, Washington Independent Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: Frontier Fiction at Its Best: a review of The Cannibal Owl (Daniel Cowper, University Bookman)
    -REVIEW: American Mythos: Why the West Still Beckons The Cost of Vengeance: Reviewing Aaron Gwyn’s ‘The Cannibal Owl’ and Derrick G. Jeter’s ‘Blood Touching Blood’ (Joel J Miller, Jul 30, 2025, Miller’s Book Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of The Cannibal Owl (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Wynne’s War by Aaron Gwyn (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of Wynne's War (Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of The World Beneath by Aaron Gwyn (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of The World Beneath (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of Thye World Beneath (Salvatore Pane, BOMB)
    -REVIEW: of All God’s Children by Aaron Gwyn (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of All God’s Children (Dan Cryer, Minnesota Star Tribune)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Dog on the Cross: Stories by Aaron Gwyn (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Dog on the Cross (Boston Globe)
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