Pushcart 2026 L: Clint Bentley, “Cairn” from The Iowa Review #54.1

James Perkins had just killed his goats. Forty-seven in all. But for the two bulls, every one had been born right there on his property, and even though he was a rancher and they were stock, he loved them – as he would later tell me – as much as anyone loves their pet. The day I met him he was digging a hole in his pasture to bury them. I had gone to his property to interview him for an article in the local paper in Brennan, Texas: The Brennan Eagle. More of a community bulletin really, but my life had quite derailed by that point and so I took what I could get. This story made itself known to me in a series of revelations, a process of “Oh, that’s interesting” moments that took it from a nice read to something quite wonderful, something I admired, a story I would have wanted to be capable of writing, if I were a fiction writer. At its most fundamental level, it’s a redemption story: a failed New York writer, as well as failed drug rehab patient, stumbles around (“I don’t even…