Short-a-Day: Jesmyn Ward's "Cattle Haul"
Originally published in A Public Space, No. 5, 2008. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 90.An ambitious and tragic slice-of-life debut from Ms. Ward, who uses the in media res action of Reese's cattle drive -- a rushed, forty-eight hour blitz of a drive from Louisiana to Texas with a bed full of cows -- to expand upon the solitary, deadening life of a trucker, and to show us what circumstances would put such a y…