by Leif Enger
I went over next to last, just a single deputy behind. If you’ve never essayed a decline like that on the back of a horse I don’t know what to tell you. There’s a separation from ground and a hopeless union with the animal as down you go—can’t hear a thing but gravel clatter, absolutely can’t steer. The mare laid her ears back, splayed her front feet, set haunches to earth, and slid. Far below I could see Juval and the sheriff standing beside their mounts. Lonnie Ford was in front of me by some yards. His horse, a big-barreled Roman-nosed quarter, began to skid sideways. I saw it happen—hindquarters bearing right, hooves scrabbling, the horse seeking balance; then its wayward back legs struck a boulder and the horse went down. Mr. Ford was a man of size, but he just disappeared. The horse slid forward on its side, neck up, trying to rise. You’d have thought it would slow. It flipped once, hooves everyplace, then hit a steep drop and flipped again. All this time I was skidding along behind on the mare. At last the gradient eased and the down horse stopped. It lay in the path at an alien angle. My mare clattered to a halt beside it, the last deputy arriving behind me in a spray of broken stone.
“Where’s Ford?” the deputy said, swinging down.
We couldn’t see him. The way that horse had slid it wouldn’t have surprised me to have to gather Ford up a limb at a time. We did locate one spurred boot sticking out from under the horse. There was nothing in the boot but a sock.
The horse was in awful shape. After that second flip it couldn’t raise its head and lay trembling on the rubble. The others had joined us in mute shock except for Juval, who passed us at an angry trot, ordering, “Don’t you shoot that animal!” He headed back up the hill and stopped beside a ragged dirty clot mostly hidden by a dwarf pine. He didn’t immediately get off the horse but gazed down at the clot like you would at something loathsome.
That Lonnie Ford lived at all commends the resilient design of humans, the ribcage in particular. Ford’s ribcage, and it was a big one, was rolled over not once but twice by an entire American quarter horse, yet his organs remained whole. The rest of Ford was worse off. His arm lay twisted behind in such a way Sheriff Lanz diagnosed a broken collarbone. Over one shoulder a hole had been rubbed through jacket, shirt, and skin; he was down to muscle. His face on the same side was swelling purple as we watched. The only place on him that looked okay was his bare right foot. He was unconscious, which relieved us all.
The sheriff had done stints as an ambulance man and had a kit in his saddlebag. He worked on Ford where he lay, checking ribs, pasting up the shoulder, easing the arm out to the side. When with Juval’s help he realigned the collarbone, Ford woke a moment to thrash, then sank as though clubbed. The sheriff directed a jury-rigged stretcher of poles and tied coats. While they moved Ford to even ground Juval put a hand on my neck and steered me to a place some yards from the others.
He asked, “Did you misdirect me on purpose?”
When I didn’t answer immediately Juval said, “Son?”
His tone implied, if not gentleness, at least understanding.
“Yes—I did, sir.”
Juval cuffed the right side of my head so hard I spun to my knees. Next thing he gripped one shoulder and set me back on my feet, saying, “Listen to me now.” It was difficult, as a high tone occupied my right ear, but Juval earnestly told me five or six specific things he found discouraging about my character. If you don’t mind I’d rather not restate them, but they were by and large true, and seeing no advantage in disputing the more captious charges I agreed with them all, as the broken must. Concluding, he said, “You’re pretending, aren’t you? To have remorse.”
If not for the belt in the ear I’d have quickly reassured him my misery was authentic, but as I said, I wasn’t hearing well. I thought he was asking did I feel bad about the horse.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He cuffed me again, same ear, and walked back to the men while I knelt in the snow.
They made Lonnie Ford as snug as possible, carrying him into a short thicket and laying him on a bed of gathered juniper. Though unconscious, the rancher had begun to twitch and mutter. When Juval was satisfied Ford wouldn’t freeze solid he gathered the others, who checked cinches and spoke unhappily among themselves as they climbed aboard.
Only now did I see they were leaving me with Ford and going on to hunt Davy without me.
“Did you think we’d have you along all the way?” Juval asked. “We’d have stationed you back with a deputy anyway. Now you’ll just have to keep an eye on Ford.” The palomino wheeled about.
Lucky I was muzzy from being hit—more lucid, I might’ve wept for grief and outrage. As it was all I thought to do was yell, “What should I do if he wakes up?”
“Tell him a story,” Juval called back, his voice already reduced against the Badlands.
Looking back, though, it was better to be stuck with poor Lonnie Ford than be baby-sat by a deputy. It gave me work. It kept my mind from the aches in head and soul. Every time despair came courting, Mr. Ford would moan and thrash. I held his limbs when he dreamed and rebunched his juniper pillow. After a bit he started to shiver. His whole body seemed to contract and stiffen. It was spooky, a skeleton dance, and I wondered what it would be like if Mr. Ford died and I had to stay who knew how long beside his body. What if it got dark? What we wanted was a fire.
Which sent me back to the horse. I’d forgotten about him—the poor downed animal lying a few yards away. He was alive though resigned, the side of his belly rising and falling, nothing else moving but his eyes. I opened the accessible saddlebag, for he was lying upon the other, and took out a can of all-purpose oil, a heavy black pouch containing harness and leatherpunch and other tools more foreign, also a book called Old American Houses with a stained blue dust jacket. At bottom lay a small concave bottle of whiskey, wrapped against concussion in a chambray shirt. For whiskey or against whiskey, you had to admire that bottle. Battered down a hillside, bounced on by a horse—with its swaddling peeled away it lay like an amber ornament in my hand. The red paper seal was unbroken.
The horse sighed heavily. An animal that size gives off so much heat I’d snuggled against its belly. It seemed to like the company, and since Lonnie Ford wasn’t making any noise I stayed awhile. I knew the horse should’ve been shot after the fall. The only reason he wasn’t was our nearness to Davy’s cabin. Juval wanted to preserve surprise. I tried to brace up. To think of anything besides the likelihood of gunshots from the hills. We were awfully close—within a mile certainly—and the men had already been gone some time. Half an hour? How long could it take? I imagined Juval quietly issuing his orders, the men spreading out, staying low. Swede had told me how the James gang were ambushed in a farmhouse in exactly this way. My decision to tell Dad everything now lay revealed as foolishness. Swede was right. I was among the disgusting double-crossers of history. I was one of the crumbs. Cole Younger, you will recall, came out of that farmhouse with eleven gunshot wounds. I didn’t think Davy could survive eleven gunshot wounds. I hoped he’d come out with his hands up when offered the chance. I hoped Mr. Juval would give him the chance—I had doubts, despite his promise to Dad. I doubted lawmen in general. Cole Younger was sitting in a kitchen chair, Swede said, reading a newspaper, when so many rifles started popping the house shredded like papier-mâché. Among his other wounds were porcelain shards in arm and face; cup of coffee got shot right out of his hand.
Then I wondered what Davy would think, should he surrender, to see me there with Juval and the rest. Somehow this hadn’t entered my thinking till now, but it made up for lost time. In this picture I saw no forgiveness for myself—not from Davy, not from Swede, not from anyone but Dad, who was so forgiving it almost didn’t count.
It seemed necessary just then to touch base with the Lord. Shutting my eyes, I leaned into the horse. I prayed in words for a little while—for Davy, of course, and for Mr. Ford, whom I could hear making chewing sounds in his sleep, and for my own future, which seemed a boarded-up window—and
then language went away and I prayed in a soft high-pitched lament any human listener would’ve termed a whine. We serve a patient God. In the midst of this came the conviction I hadn’t prayed for Martin Andreeson. Nor thought of him since we set out. Nor Jape Waltzer, nor Sara, who were sharing in every way Davy’s hazardous morning. I’m afraid I discharged this duty quickly regarding Waltzer. Later I would wish I’d spent more on him particularly. Andreeson, whom I’d despised, now appeared to my mind as he might’ve to a worried brother. Talk about an unwelcome change. There in the cold, curled against Mr. Ford’s sighing horse, I repented of hatred in general and especially that cultivated against the putrid fed. A pain started up, as of live coals inside, and like that I knew where he was. Knew, with certainty, why he hadn’t come back out of the blizzard. I began to weep. Not only for Andreeson—weeping seems to accompany repentance most times. No wonder. Could you reach deep in yourself to locate that organ containing delusions about your general size in the world—could you lay hold of this and dredge it from your chest and look it over in daylight—well, it’s no wonder people would rather not. Tears seem a small enough thing. Thus I cried some, then remembered I still had to pray for Sara. It’s mysterious how comfort arrives; for this too should’ve been full of torment, given her imminent peril. Yet thinking of her calmed my shaken spirit. I imagined her walking with friends in a sunlit park in a small town. Laughing around a supper she had not cooked. I thought of her pleasure in knowing someone like Swede, for whom all the world was an epic poem. Delivered from Waltzer and his conjugal ambitions, who knew what goodness lay in store?
“Otter!” cried Lonnie Ford, in an arid voice.
I scrambled to him—he was twisting around, mashing down the junipers. When he saw me he relaxed, panting, and looked away.
“Aunt otter,” he said. His lips were parted and thick. Between them his tongue lay dry as a toad.
“Just a second.” I ran back to the horse and returned with the whiskey. He didn’t like the taste much, and it probably stung, but it restored his enunciation.
“I’m busted up,” he observed.
“Yes sir.”
“Where’d they all go?”
“After my brother,” I replied.
He shut his eyes at this, in resentment or resignation; he shut his mouth too and tried breathing through his nose, but it was blocked and made only the merest squeal.
“How long ago?”
“An hour maybe.”
“Give me more of that.”
He couldn’t use his hands. I had to pour the whiskey in his mouth by capfuls.
“Where’s Billy?” he asked, at length.
His horse.
“A little ways—that way. He can’t lift up his head, Mr. Ford.”
“They didn’t shoot him.”
“No sir.”
He lay thinking about this. “Those buggers.”
We sat in silence a long time. Remembering Juval’s advice I asked Mr. Ford if he’d like a story. He’d gone sullen and wouldn’t answer. It was hard to blame him. In the end I retrieved the book from his saddlebag, Old American Houses, and read aloud from a chapter describing the ruinous attempts of modern citizens to update architecture better left intact. In building for themselves, the book said, many a nineteenth-century workman had indeed built well enough for the ages. It was a pretty good book, I suspect, making the case for honor, but I didn’t get to read much, for soon Juval and the rest came trotting back in the blackest of moods. They’d come to the cabin, which lay open and empty with snow drifted in; they’d found no sign of any person save Andreeson, whose felt fedora sat in rumpled condition on the cold stove. In silence Juval presided over the further binding of Lonnie Ford and the construction of a travois by which he could be carried home; then we all mounted, Juval last. He shot the horse Billy through the head, and we got away from there.
The Red Farm
DAD MARRIED ROXANNA ON A WIND-BLASTED SATURDAY IN MARCH. WE WERE back in Roofing, Pastor Reach officiating—I wish I remembered more about it. There was a photographer, a young man with dark wavy hair and enormous energy, setting us here and there, craning through the viewfinder, then popping up to say something amusing. I have one of the photos before me now: Roxanna in lace looking lustrous as a bride ever did; Dad standing calm, his eyes enjoying the commotion; Swede laughing—that photographer was a funny fellow. At Roxanna’s elbow stands her father, Mr. Cawley, the theater operator. I remember thinking he seemed terribly cautious for someone in such a happy line of work. Perhaps he owned misgivings about his new son-in-law, an unemployed janitor nearly his own age. I’m in the photo also, looking like an old man. Swede, on a recent visit, saw the photo on my desk. “Look at you,” she said, “little Methuselah.” Indeed, she’d gotten tall as me. How could I not notice?
We came back to Roofing at the end of February, the ride into the Badlands with Juval having tipped my lungs into steep descent. I won’t describe the buried and airless place I seemed to visit. Truth is it’s mostly gone from memory, and with my blessing. I can tell you the doctor returned—Nickles—listened with alarm, and insisted on hospitalization, never mind the chance of flu. For a few days, perhaps a week, they braced me up with pillows and adrenaline, then Nickles released me to Dad, saying, You take this boy home.
By now there was no question of Roxanna’s not coming. By my release her animals were at a neighboring ranch, a classified ad was in the nearest weekly, and a sign saying CLOSED stood out by the gas pumps. We left before daylight next morning. I recall she betrayed no sadness in parting from the place. She got in the Plymouth, leaned back over the seat to plump blankets around Swede and me, then turned and flounced up beside Dad in a most girlish motion. It then occurred to me that this leaving—which to me ached with failure and despair—was for her the commencement of a gallant endeavor. Who isn’t scared by as whole a redirection as that on which she now embarked? Adhering to us must’ve seemed a risk demanding the deepest reserves of joy and strength. Indeed you’ll see shortly how deep hers reached. Glad though I was to have her along, it would be years before my gratitude approached anything like proportion. She settled into the freezing Plymouth, humming a dance tune called “Queen Anne’s Lace.” She opened a thermos of coffee, which steamed in the glow from the dash. She was all but our mother now. I shut my eyes and slept.
We came into Roofing midafternoon as school was letting out. We drove past in silence. Swede and I knew every one of those kids walking home or bunching up in front yards—knew their conversation without hearing it. We passed a parked bus and knew every kid in the windows; yet I slouched in the car, unwilling to be seen. Swede did the same. They all seemed so little changed.
The house was warm and clean, thanks to Dr. and Mrs. Nokes, whom Dad had telephoned long-distance the previous day. As it happened the Nokeses then boarded Roxanna for a short time—as I recall we were home one week before the wedding—by which time Mr. Cawley had made the anxious drive east and Pastor Reach had met Roxanna and been assured of Dad’s soundness of mind. I’ll keep it quick: After the nearly guestless ceremony, Swede and I also put in a few days at the Nokeses’—Swede writing some verse it embarrassed me to listen to, all about doves in the nest and moonbeams falling on shimmering wheatfields and similar matters, as though something had happened to her mind.
The morning of our return Dad, looking like a man fed on strawberries and cream, asked about my breathing.
“It’s okay.”
“Excellent,” he replied. “You’re in charge of cleaning up the Airstream.” Turned out he’d sold it to Dr. Nokes, before we ever left—how else could he have paid three months’ rent in advance?
“All right,” I said. “Can Swede help?”
“Nope, I need her inside.” Dad grinned. “Cheer up, Rube, we’re moving today.”
Abruptly we crated our possessions into a borrowed trailer and pulled them seven miles north to a red farm on a hilltop. Unemployed, Dad explained, he could no longer afford t
own rent. The farm had belonged to Pastor Reach’s great-aunt Myrtle, who, I remembered, reluctantly gave up her seat at the organ at the age of a hundred and two. Not from sickness, she just couldn’t hear. In deepest January she’d given a tea for some neighboring widows, picking them up in her pristine Fairlane and dropping them off again before dark; back home she washed the dishes, read the Bible, wrote in firm script four thank-you letters and a grocery list, and died in her sleep, an end so satisfying it seems displaced in our age. The farm went to Pastor, who’d offered it to us at preposterous rent, at least until Dad found work.
It was a lovely place, the red farm. So called because house, barn, roost, and granary had been painted brick red to the furthest reaches of local memory, the farm seemed a place of order and rest, as the homes of great-aunts often do. The little house crested a meadowed hill rimmed by maple and oak. The barn was tall, with the plain angled roof of barns built farther east; in fact the whole structure lists eastward more now than in 1963, but otherwise appears the same. In coming years the red farm would prove every bit the paradise of work and exploration you might expect, but when we moved in it was a place to rest and to wait.
