On Swift Horses

by Shannon Pufahl

  He remembers the night in Las Vegas, early on, when he climbed to the roof of Binion’s and looked out across the desert and watched the fraying bomb. He had felt free then because he had been free of his brother’s vigilance. He wonders if his brother has also looked out across this river and this bit of sky and felt free. If beyond them both was a future they could share in this way. Past the bluff and the river, the horizon lifts from the earth in a band of yellow light. Julius thinks of Muriel’s secret and wonders if Lee knows all of it now, if they are together or if Muriel is somewhere else. He thinks she must be somewhere else. He imagines her walking into the Chester Hotel and why she might want to go to a place like that and how she’d heard of it. He thinks of what she must have seen there, and what she must have understood to leave a note for him, and how fearless she must be. She had been so lucky but she had not been content to keep only what was hers, the money and the house in Kansas. She had wanted to give something to Lee, even if it was not the truth. And though Julius had stolen from her it was she who wanted his forgiveness and then she wrote his name and made the absolution he could not make for himself, and this might be the only way love ever is. Love might be made of things that couldn’t happen or things no one knows or intends.

  The train to Barstow leaves at six-fifteen and it must be nearing that now. The road running into town is several miles away and he has not slept in two days. From above, the aurulent horse sways against the breeze. He flattens his jeans and pulls the boots back over them, then climbs down from the unfinished house. He steps onto the split-rail and hauls over and the horse whinnies back against the opposite side. He drops the top rail and kicks away the bottom, making an opening wide enough to pass through. In the trailer he finds a bag of grain and a pail of apples and he slits the bag open and tucks in his shirt and drops apples through the collar and against his chest so they are held on the inside. He approaches the horse and speaks to her. She is pressed against the fence and her eyes are fiery, but she does not move away. For many long minutes he stands talking to her and stroking her poll and muzzle. When he feels she has calmed and deferred, he brings one foot to the rail and plants a hand on her wither and jumps, but the bag of grain strikes her neck. She throws him and he lands painfully on his bad ribs. She steps marginally back, and the ground drifts up in dust and splinters. Half the apples have smashed and spilled, but Julius holds the horse’s gaze and says to her, “I don’t aim to be no thief this time and if you’d just wait there, girl, you’ll see.” And miraculously she does.

  He catches his breath and approaches her again. She nickers sideways, but he touches her gently and she lets him. Then again he plants his hand and gets one foot on the fence. She lurches sideways, but he has her by the mane now and she doesn’t run. He leaps off the fence and throws out his other leg. He gets over, but too far, and he slides off the horse’s fat bow and has to wrap his arms around her neck. She bolts then, out of the enclosure and into the yard, and Julius leans forward and whispers nonsense until she slows. At the road the gravel dust lifts and enters the faint light and he raises the bag and tosses forward a handful of grain and the horse trots toward it and leans and eats it. A hundred yards onto the road, he reaches into his wet and stinking shirt and takes an apple and tosses this too.

  They ride several miles this way while the sun draws up, on the old county road. On either side the houses are half-finished or without walls or already inhabited. They make swift time. Soon the road gives out to a housing development empty of people and trees, the streets gridded straight as a clock. The change in scenery makes the horse hesitate and Julius leans to calm her. He sits up. To his right, another mile away, the new interstate runs east–west. He nudges the horse forward. She cringes against him and wants to turn back, so he digs a heel into the soft space between her hip and her stomach. He grinds his heel there but she will go no further. He thinks she must be thirsty. He is thirsty. He leans forward against her and scoops his cheek against her neck and calls her honey. Then he dismounts.

  He takes the horse by the bridle and she turns without resistance and he leads her down the road and back toward the river and into a copse of trees. He dumps the last of the grain and the split apples and she leans happily for them. She lifts her head and chews and nudges him and pulls back her black lips and he cups her snout and thanks her. Inside the trees she is the color of wheat caught in an afternoon rainshower. He looks up and down the riverbank and sees no danger so he turns away and walks back to the road and when he’s walked a few hundred yards he turns back to look at her. She is still chewing with her fine head raised into the morning breeze. She moves slowly among the apples and from where he stands she looks like a sawhorse spread too wide. Her baseball ankles crease and drop; she moves slowly but with great purpose and he admits to himself that she is old, that she was old before he’d ever hauled her toward the sea.

  Then he walks the last mile to the freeway, as quickly as his ribs will let him. He stands at the frontage road and cups his knees and catches his breath and then he rights himself and looks around. The sun has risen and the day is hot and cloudless and already there are lines of cars headed west and he remembers it is Sunday. The windows of the slow-moving cars are filled with hatless men and women fanning themselves and little children in their church lace.

  Julius looks at the sun in the sky and gauges the hour. The ride has bought him time. He thinks of the Squaw and the Aces High and he sees Henry there and tastes beer and cigar smoke and the desiccant wind of that place. He walks to the off-ramp headed back into the city and puts out his thumb. A dozen cars pass him until one pulls over and he looks in at the family with their brown eyes and their pleasure and he wonders how long their pleasure can last in this reckless century and if he can share it. The man asks him where he wants to go. Julius tells him, and when the driver nods he folds through the door and sits heavily against the seat next to the lovely children. The car pulls away, back out toward the bay and then up the coastal rise, heading through the park toward downtown. They are well into daylight now, the cars leaving contrails behind their fins in the white summer daylight, lit by brakelights and the white sun, so that driving through the city feels like floating, the sea in haze to the west and to the south the mortared bay, the cars in orbit around the open rim of the world.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my parents, Eric and Theresa, for giving me freedom and respect, and genuine love; my sister, Valerie, for completing my world; and Shay O’Brien, for sheltering me and for making my life more beautiful than I ever dreamed.

  This book exists because it was supported by very fine people. My thanks to Eavan Boland, Tobias Wolff, Adam Johnson, my wonderful fellow Stegners, and the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. Special thanks to Elizabeth Tallent, who read every word and at each turn enlarged my sense of the possible. Much gratitude to Helen Garnons-Williams, and everyone at Fourth Estate, for their enthusiasm and care. The amazing people at Riverhead brought this book to life—and created a beautiful object. For all his gambling insights, my thanks to the remarkable James Jorasch. The genius Cal Morgan and incomparable Joy Harris have been this book’s brilliant stewards. Thank you.

  Finally, I have been taught, from earliest memory, by women of indefatigable will. My deepest thanks to my many teachers, who brighten their great profession with diligence, wisdom, and dignity.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Shannon Pufahl grew up in rural Kansas. She teaches at Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow in fiction. Her essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review and elsewhere, on topics ranging from John Brown and the antebellum Midwest, to personal memoir. She lives in the Bay Area with her wife and their dog.

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