A short story
I have no memory of Max astride a horse but they say he used to take me up with him when I was very small. We shifted camp in the late summer, just a month after I was born. I have a picture in my mind of a black tent falling in upon itself. I hear the muffled clatter of the precious slender wooden poles as the women roll them inside the heavy woollen skins.
They are singing. Their piercing highland chant, carries on wind that rises from below us in the canyon. It is their repartee to the preceding verse, sung by the men, who are now tightening cinches and swinging up onto their mounts.
"Wake up right now, you lazy fuckers!" they wail in piercing harmony. "We are going through the passes and you'd better get your wits about you. The long mornings in the sack are over. See, we have put away those long hard tent poles that you brought to us. We have no time for your nonsense now."