It was not a dream I had of my father next, but more like a memory, a daydream some might call it. I cannot call it a clean memory because it was from my very young days. There’s no way on this earth that a man can remember such a thing with such a clarity. I know my mind has played tricks on me just as yours has surely done to you.

“You see that white line, boy?” Pa says. He has a shoeing nail clinched between his lips but his words are clear. It is evening and the dust of Pa’s old farm is settling into some clouds lit orange by the old sun off in the distance.

“Yes, Pa,” I say. “I can see it.”

He curls the horse’s foot up further, pins it on top of his knee. “Outside that, she can’t feel a thing.” He points to a white strip that separates the outer edge of the hoof from yellow-white middle. “Inside that, it’s all pain.” He lets the hammer fall from between his shoulder and his neck and it drops in his hand. There is no doubt. It is a perfect landing in the soft of his palm. He says, “The trick is to take a pitcher of something in your head and to remember it for when it counts.”

He lines up the horseshoe and drives the first nail in with one whack. There is no hesitation and no fear on his part. I see from the corner of my eye the horse turn to look at a noise out there in the distance. The horse feels no pain.

He drives the other four nails in the same way, all in one whack. He never measures twice. He never hesitates.

“What did you learn, boy?” Pa says as he lets the hoof drop back to the ground. On the new shoe, the horse takes a step forward and a step back, testing the new feeling.

“How to shoe a horse, Pa.”

“And what else?”

“There’s no magic for getting things done,” I say. I say this because I know he will like it. It is one of the few ways I can get him to smile.

He smiles.

“That’s right, boy,” he says. He pats the horse on the hindquarter and it trots away. That was the last shoe to be done this day. I know what my father will do now. It was the reason for my answer as much as to get him to smile.

Pa says, “Ain’t no magic coming to save you none around here. No hocus pocus. No wizards. You hear what I’m saying to you?”

“I do.”

“You ain’t heard the half of it. You remember what I tole you, boy?”

“Something about wizards and preachers, Pa. I remember you said something about them.”

“Damn right, boy. No one’s going to save you. Their religion, the holy men’s, that too is hocus pocus. Seen a lot of men go down right after getting blessed by a preacher else reading from the good book. Nothing’s going to save you in this world except for two things.”

“Which ones is that, Pa?”

“Damn it, boy. I’m asking you.”

“Brute force, Pa.”

“Half right, boy,” he says, “cause you half answered.” He pulls his red bandana from his back pocket and takes off his hat and wipes at his brow. There is a smudge of dirt left behind that disappears when he puts the hat back on. “What’s the other’n?”

“The Winchester, Pa.”

“Damn right,” he says again. And when he opens his mouth next, it is what I’ve been waiting for all day. Maybe all week. Maybe all my life just to hear a few times. “You damn right it is the Winchester, son.” Just that last word was all I ever needed. Just for him to call me that again. Instead of boy.

He grabs me by the shoulder and guides me back to the house for supper, holding my shoulder in place so that I won’t take a wrong step. “The Winchester? I’ve seen many a man saved by that.”