Jude often thought of who his mother could have been—a young teenager forced, by another’s hand or circumstance, to give him away, perhaps—but he never dwelled on her much, not with the horses needing to be taken in and fed and washed and taken out again. A foal had been born just the night before, under what the bossman called the harvest moon, and it was Jude’s job to watch over it at night because its mother had rejected it and it was a thin, sickly creature with legs that buckled under its pathetic weight.

Jude’s aunt—the only lick of family he could ever claim, though she was his father’s brother’s wife, so she could not be called blood—had once told him stories about his mother, a woman with hair like … and eyes like … and a voice as soft as … He once knew them well, could put a kind of picture to the woman who was named after a girl in an English poet’s ballad, but when his aunt died and he was subsequently shipped away to the middle of the country for work, he forgot them as quickly as he had acquired them. His days had no space for daydreaming, no time for idle contemplation, only hard labor and that was all he knew for as long as he could remember.

The foal survived its first night with its long face pillowed upon Jude’s lap. It was a filly, the first to come from her mother after she had birthed a herd of colts, each spirited and high-strung thing bred for the races. They were beautiful, lithe creatures whose breath after a training session reminded Jude of the rush of a locomotive. He had assisted in each one of their births, often sitting up with the mare into the little hours of the morning, occasionally having to reach into her tense body to ease the delivery of a breeched foal. And when the wiry creature, warm and slick from its first home, would kick itself up on its legs, Jude would sniff real hard to keep himself from crying.

This filly was nothing like her thoroughbred brothers—she was too skinny, had failed to stand for hours after birth, and could not locate her mother’s udder. The bossman stood with his hands on his hips and shook his head at her like she was at fault for being born wrong. He spat into the bloodied hay and consoled himself in the company of his thoroughbreds, a descendance of winners.

She would last through the week, Jude told himself, she would last through autumn and winter, too. He would rear this one as he had done with her brothers. He promised he would see her to the races.

Not even fit for meat, the bossman said, as though that had ever been an option, as though they were in need of food. Jude simply kept his head lowered and went on sweeping through the stables. When he arrived at the filly’s, he murmured to her some encouraging words, as though they would help her grow more muscle and strengthen her failing bones.

*

The bossman refused to name the filly. She was not good enough for the races, for sustenance, for a name. But everything had a name, Jude thought, even the smallest creatures that crawled beneath his boots, even the plants and things he saw in the bossman’s library. Entire volumes full of illustrations on mushrooms and insects from countries Jude would never lay his eyes upon. Even Jude himself had been deemed worthy enough to be named by his mother. The only other Jude he knew was Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes, and he figured that was who he had been named after. The church in town had a statue of him. He attended service every Sunday not out of duty or faith, but because he liked to hear the singing. He liked it when the whole congregation stood up and raised their voices to song. He did not think he was much good, had never been told if he had a knack for singing, not like John the farmhand whose voice was real low like the bellow of a bull but all the more sweeter. He sang about drowned girls and heartsick cowboys and things like that. They were songs fit to sing in front of a fire, beneath a crowd of stars. John never sang in the daytime. He only whistled.

By the end of autumn, the moon turned the color of chicken blood and Jude could see minute improvements in the filly, things that should have given the bossman hope yet did nothing but displease him. These milestones should’ve been reached weeks ago. The filly should’ve been frolicking about in the field with her mother, but she was still in the stables, growing slowly, slowly. Jude would gaze down at the little diamond between her eyes and whisper, come on, girl, come on, not knowing what it was he was asking of her, but needing her to do it, to make the big man with mutton legs for arms to regard her and say yes.

*

Jude watched the thoroughbreds gallop past him at the speed of things you’ll miss if you blink. He felt the rumbling of their hooves in his chest, could taste the bitter dust that caked the corners of his eyes, and saw the first flakes of snow float down. They did not stick to the ground that afternoon. The sky was like a silver dollar until nightfall, when the snow finally did stay where it fell and piled up. Jude blanketed the horses one by one as he had been taught, ensuring they stayed warm while his fingertips numbed. When he reached the filly’s stable, he stopped, finding her curled up in the warmest corner, her face drooping like a dozing child’s. He suddenly remembered being a boy on the train that would bear him to this ranch, his eyelids closing and his head resting against the shoulder of some elderly passenger who had been kind enough to allow it.

Girl, girl? he called to the little thing. Months had passed since he had sat with her all night on her first night of life and still, she had no name. No one would ever name her. All that time had passed just for her to die. When John the farmhand eventually came to take her body away, she was slotted into an empty sack of feed. It was a course shroud and the sight of her little hoof poking out of it sent a jolt through Jude’s body. And that’s when the bossman nodded, relieved that this creature had finally done something to please him.