The Half-Skinned Steer Summary

Mero gets a call from a relative he has never met, informing him that his brother, Rollo, has died. As Mero begins to drive cross country, from his home in Massachusetts, he recalls his childhood on the family ranch in Wyoming. Mero recalls how he and Rollo felt their father had betrayed the ranch by taking a job as a postal worker. He also recalls the time they took an anthropologist up to the caves where they had discovered Indian drawings and artifacts. What Mero recalls the most, however, is the story his father's girlfriend told him and Rollo once about a rancher who had a plate in his head that caused him to be forgetful. One day this man was skinning a steer. The man drained the steer of blood, cut out its tongue, and had it half-skinned...