Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Gideon stroked Marcus’s neck thoughtfully. He had always been very fond of the stallion—he’d wanted, a year ago, to buy him from Nicholas—and now it seemed to him that the horse was somewhat taller, and more muscular in the flanks, than Gideon remembered. A comely golden chestnut with a large asymmetrical star on his forehead, and three of his legs white past the knee. Marcus shivered beneath Gideon’s hand and turned to nuzzle him. But Gideon knew he must be careful.

  Backing away he said, with a ritual salute of farewell: “Maybe you’ll want to sell him, when the race is over.” And smiled to show that his words were meant in jest.

  Nicholas snorted with laughter. His gray eyes caught Gideon’s, and crinkled with excessive mirth. “Maybe you won’t be able to afford him,” he half-shouted.

  And so the friends parted. And so, in that way, with Nicholas’s familiar face somewhat distorted, and his hand raised in a playful warning fist that mocked Gideon’s own gesture of farewell, Gideon would remember Nicholas. . . .

  THE HORSES WERE saddled. “Bring out your horses!” rang through the warm air. During the brief parade to the post spectators began to shout “Jupiter to win!” or “Marcus to win!” or (perhaps because the odds were so attractive) “Angel to win!” The sky was still clear. The early mild breeze had died away. People stood, and strained to see Gideon Bellefleur on his gigantic ivory-white stallion, and Nicholas Fuhr on his brown-bronze stallion; and the slender dapple-gray mare ridden by a boy who looked no older than eighteen, and who smiled nervously at the crowd’s roaring; and the other horses—each of them quivering with energy. One minute to the start of the race. Thirty seconds. And the drum tapped. And Leah, seated between the twins and grandmother Cornelia in the Bellefleur box (for Della, of course, had refused to come, she had stared for a long painful moment at Leah and said harshly, I know something of what you’ve done, Leah, you and Hiram, and that poor fool Gideon as well, I know what you’ve done and I know what you deserve), her arms folded tightly on her belly, watched impassively as Marcus, on the rail, shot forward at once. But then Marcus was quick, Marcus had always been quick. Close behind him was the gray mare, in a strategic position; and then Jupiter; and the others.

  Leah watched, expressionless. She remained seated while the others leapt to their feet. Marcus, and Angel . . . and Jupiter (who looked, in the hallucinatory brightness of the track, beneath his rider’s considerable weight, by far the oldest of the horses) . . . and, close behind Jupiter, gaining on him, a red bay whose very dark mane and tail flew wildly, and whose impatient rider, crouched unnaturally forward in his saddle, beat at him lightly and rapidly with his whip.

  For the first mile Marcus remained in the lead, and the graceful little mare seemed at any moment to be preparing to overtake him, and Jupiter and the red bay contested each other for third place, and the others trailed behind; and the shouting of the spectators died down, only to rise again, with a sound of hysteria. Leah half-closed her eyes. And there she saw the Bellefleur horse, her horse, and her husband, flying into the lead, silky mane and tail rippling in the bright air. We cannot lose, she thought calmly. The child in the womb had assured her. Had allowed her to see into the future; to know. We cannot lose, she instructed herself. The future has already occurred.

  She opened her eyes, dazed, to the crowd’s tumult, and saw that now the red bay was in third place, and the great white horse, obviously straining, was in fourth place . . . and the feisty little mare had overtaken Marcus himself. (Jupiter, of course, had stamina. Could outlast the others. But Marcus too was a strong horse, and had never run so well as today, hurtling from the post into first place like that—what thoughts must be flooding Nicholas’s mind! It was not possible that he should even wish to outrun Gideon.) The twins were standing on their seats, even Cornelia was standing, muttering to herself. Ewan’s children fairly bawled. Come on! Come on! Come on! Leah winced—whether from the noise or a sudden tinge of pain in her belly—and thought, the Bellefleurs must have dignity, everyone will be watching. But even grandfather Noel was shouting and waving his fists. His old man’s puckered face was flushed, wormlike veins stood out on his forehead, he had never looked so furious in Leah’s memory. The stylish white linen suit the family had talked him into wearing, with its polka-dot vest, and the matching tie, now hung rumpled on him as if, in the span of these very few minutes, he had sweated away a number of pounds. We cannot lose, Leah wanted to assure him, so you must take care—you must not strain yourself—your son cannot disappoint you.

  As they swung into the near turn for the final mile Jupiter made his move. As Leah had known he would. Jupiter, Gideon, the Bellefleurs, Leah, the child-to-be-born. Spectators began to scream. The mare had kept her lead heroically, and from time to time the boy glanced over his shoulder to see how close Marcus was—and he was very close—and the mare was lightly whipped so that she might spurt forward. The red bay in third place. Jupiter maneuvering to get around him. Gideon crouched low over the stallion’s magnificent neck and had no need to use his crop. Leah stared, stared, at the horses’ pounding hooves. So very many of them. Flying manes, tails, flying legs, such superb beasts, it hardly mattered which of them won, they were all superb, all beautiful. But Gideon must win. Jupiter must win. An aureole about them, shimmering light, moisture, infinitesimal rainbows caught within it, despite their speed. The white rail. Infinite white rail. The white stallion, which seemed now enormous: even its shadow, flying along the track, was gigantic. Leah swallowed, tasting dust. The air was very dusty. Her eyes were pulled upward and she saw that the sky had turned dark. Quite suddenly it had turned dark. From behind one immense swollen purplish-black cloud a tiny white sun peeked, as if in jest.

  And then the whirlwind. The dust spiral. Suddenly, on the track, in the homestretch. Dancing forward to meet the horses. It must have been ten or twelve feet in height. Undulating. Snaking. Yet it appeared to be in no hurry. Yet it did dance swiftly forward. . . . Now Jupiter was rapidly gaining, Jupiter had stolen the rail on the turn, the red bay was suddenly dropping behind, exhausted, no matter that its impatient rider had begun to beat a tattoo on him; and it did seem—or might the queer brightness of the air, that single shaft of piercing white light, have distorted everything?—that Jupiter and his rider were not only accelerating their speed but gaining in size, so that even sturdy Marcus looked like a pony, nobly and futilely galloping through the dust? Leah’s lips parted. She might have been about to cry out. Not to her husband but to Nicholas. Nicholas on the golden chestnut, straining forward, his head already dipping oddly; Nicholas whom she loved; whom she loved as a brother; as her husband’s dear friend; as a man she might possibly have . . . in another lifetime . . . if . . . Now the mare, distressed by the whirlwind, had begun to falter, had already lost her stride. The whirlwind moved most gracefully toward her. At her. Into her. Blinded, she shook her head; she must have whinnied in terror; and swung suddenly sideways, toward the rail; and crashed into it; and horse and rider fell. The crowd was screaming. Leah realized she had pressed her hands against her ears. Her lips were dry, coated with dust. Her eyes watered. Dazed, she glanced around to see that the air was filled with dust. It was dust. The tiny white sun illuminated each of the dust motes as they knocked about like fireflies or Ping Pong balls, gaily, giddily. Christabel had begun to cough. Grandmother Cornelia was breathing in shuddering gasps through a white lace handkerchief. Ah, what is happening! Is this what must happen! Leah thought, rising slowly to her feet, blinking her great burning eyes rapidly.

  The race was nearly over. Spectators were coughing, and shouting, and waving their arms frantically. In the homestretch Nicholas, his head bowed, one gloved hand rubbing at his eyes, began to shout at Marcus, and then to use his whip. But the horse was exhausted, and the whirlwind now danced close about him as if teasing him; and Jupiter was rapidly gaining, running as if he had awakened from a dream, untroubled by the whirlwind and the dust that now blanketed the track in all directions. Leah’s cheeks were streake
d with tears. Jupiter would push into the lead. Jupiter would win. . . . But Nicholas used his whip harder, as if suddenly desperate, and Marcus, though beginning to stagger, tried to thrust himself forward by great springs from his hindquarters; despite the taunting dust spiral he managed for a moment to actually quicken his pace, with a frantic spring—and another!—as his golden-bronze sides heaved, slick with sweat, and his eyes rolled white and foam flew from his gaping mouth. Jupiter, now beside him, showed no sign of fatigue, nor did he appear to notice the dust spiral, which had grown now to a height of perhaps fifteen feet, and was dancing along with the horses to the finish line. Leah, standing, her feet far apart in order to balance her weight, found that she was gripping the railing with both hands, and that her knuckles had gone dead-white, the bones showing through the skin. Gideon, she prayed. Nicholas. It was the case that the albino horse was considerably larger than the chestnut. As he began to pull past Marcus, his extraordinarily dark shadow flying along beneath and beside him, the smaller horse began to tremble quite visibly. Nicholas’s hand rubbed at his eyes. Horse and rider screamed as a dust tentacle leapt out at them suddenly, plunging into the horse’s eyes, writhing snakelike about his legs. Marcus swerved to the side, and Gideon with great skill reined Jupiter clear, and then, quite suddenly, Marcus tripped—fell—pitched forward—threw his rider over his head and onto the track—and Jupiter pounded past without an instant’s hesitation.

  SO GIDEON BELLEFLEUR on his ivory-white stallion Jupiter won the Powhatassie race. And won (it was rumored throughout the region) a considerable amount of money. For the Bellefleurs, being Bellefleurs, and addicted to gambling, had wagered heavily on the race; it was whispered that they had made innumerable bets, under fictitious names, and that they cleared, on that remarkable day, a small fortune—though of course no one in the family would ever speak of such things. If a neighbor, meeting Noel Bellefleur in town, or riding his own, rather rangy stallion Fremont along the road, called out to him—You folks did pretty well the other day, eh?—Noel might affect a look of frowning bewilderment, and mutter something about the purse—that it would keep the horses in oats for another season, and his sons in whiskey.

  Gideon was rumored to have offered the entire purse, $20,000, to the Fuhr family. But of course the Fuhrs refused it—for why should they accept Bellefleur money, and under such circumstances? I don’t want it, I don’t deserve it, it’s a bitter thing, Gideon said tonelessly, but why should the Fuhrs listen? Why even should the Bellefleurs listen? At the wake Nicholas’s father turned away from Gideon though he knew very well—he must have known—that Gideon had had nothing to do, really, with his son’s death. (Marcus had died at once, of a broken neck; but Nicholas had died after a day and a night of agony, his chest massively crushed, each of his arms and legs broken. . . . The mare Angel was dead as well: she had been so cruelly injured, her owner had had no choice but to shoot her between the eyes. But her rider, though badly hurt, and possibly crippled for life, was fortunately in no danger of dying.)

  Gideon had had nothing to do with Nicholas’s death, but the Fuhrs did not want to see him again, or even to hear his name. They did not want Bellefleur pity or Bellefleur tears, or, at the funeral home, lavish floral displays—lilies, white iris—sent by the Bellefleurs. Of course Gideon had not caused the accident, of course he could not be reasonably blamed, and even the most bitterly distraught of the Fuhrs knew it—surely everyone knew it!—but still they did not want to hear his protestations, his grief, they did not want to see his tear-reddened eyes or smell his whiskey-sweet breath.

  And they certainly did not want his money.

  Nocturne

  When, after more than ten months in the womb, and after a seventy-two-hour labor of such violent pain and remorseless, convulsive heaving, that Leah, stoic throughout the pregnancy, and unwilling to speak aloud of her dread, was reduced to a thrashing screaming animal whose cries rang out, through the opened windows, to permeate the darkness, and were said to be heard across the lake (so that there was, for Gideon, nowhere to hide, and not even a drunken stupor could save him)—when, after the ordeal of a labor so colossal that there would never be, for Leah, words to contain it (and it was her private theory that the labor itself hadn’t begun that oppressively hot August evening after dinner when most of the family were down at the lake, and only the grim-faced silent Della, in her tiresome mourning, attended her; it had really begun that Sunday at Powhatassie, after the finish of the race, after Nicholas was carried on a stretcher off the track—not known yet to be so irreparably injured, but unconscious nevertheless, and bleeding—and she was stricken by a lightning-bolt of pain intense enough to darken her vision, as if not only her eyes but her entire body, her entire vision, had gone blind), and in her incoherent bawling she cried out not only for her mother to help her, and for poor Gideon (whom she had banished days earlier from her bedside—she couldn’t bear, she claimed, to witness his hapless suffering, since her own was terrible enough: “Get away! Get out of here! I can’t stand it! I won’t have you here! You’re really a coward, you’re really a baby yourself, go on out of here, go play poker with your friends, go get drunk, you love to get drunk, you’ve been drunk for the past month! Go away from my bedside, go on out of here!” she cried, her broad face streaked with perspiration that seemed already to have worn little rivulets into her flesh, no matter how often Della or Cornelia wiped it away), but God Himself, in Whom she had never believed: God Whom she had, even as a small girl, cheerfully mocked (at times even to her mother’s face, for it was always a delight to upset Della); when after the stench of blood in the room, and the first sight of the infant’s head between Leah’s smeared thighs, caused not only aunt Veronica to fall down in a dead faint but Dr. Jensen himself (and Jensen had been so marvelous when the twins were born, talking to Leah constantly, even, at the crucial moment, pressing on her abdomen and breathing with her, sharply and deeply and rhythmically, with her, as if his lungs had the power to inform hers—as in fact they did: the birth, after a ten-hours’ labor, had gone miraculously well)—when all this had transpired, and Leah’s poor wracked body was free of whatever had inhabited it, Cornelia spoke first, saying, “It should be suffocated at once,” and great-grandmother Elvira said, “It could be taken away—taken to Nautauga Falls—left on the doorstep of an orphanage—” and Della, having elbowed the other women aside, ignoring her daughter’s wailing (for Leah, in her delirium, wanted the creature), said simply: “I’ll take care of it. I know what to do.”

  IF LEAH WAS a lush, plump, darkly red multifoliate rose, spoiled by years of careful nurturing in fertile, manure-rich soil, then Garnet Hecht was a straggly wild rose, one of those stunted, anemic, but still pretty blossoms whose petals are, almost at once, blown; such wild roses are usually white, or pale pink, and their pistils are frail and powdery as a moth’s wings; even their thorns are meekly dull beneath one’s exploratory thumb.

  Still, Gideon thought, running, Garnet’s tiny hand grasped hard in his (how light it was!—her bones were as thin as a sparrow’s), still, such roses are pretty once you actually examine them.

  “Gideon, oh, stop—Gideon, please—Gideon—”

  But she could not catch her breath, he pulled her along so quickly, through the woods beside the lake, late at night, only the three-quarter moon (which was the color of curdled milk, angrily glaring) and a scattering of stars as witnesses. They were running together through the pine woods just to the north of the manor; underfoot were needles upon which their feet slipped, and Garnet cried out in breathless alarm. “Oh, Gideon, please—I didn’t mean—I’m so afraid—Gideon—”

  The pine trees were perfectly straight. Perfectly black, in silhouette. Ahead was the uncanny dark of Lake Noir, in which the moon—even this bright, pulsating moon—was reflected only dimly; and no stars were reflected at all.

  Behind them, far behind them, a woman’s wail arose; and Gideon ran faster. He was panting hard. He was wordless. Poor Garnet staggered a
fter him, her thin arm outstretched, her childlike hand grasped tightly in his, sobbing, not daring to slacken her pace.

  “Oh, but Gideon—I didn’t mean—please—”

  It was Della Pym who had sent Garnet to Gideon, with something to eat—cold sliced turkey, and ham, and half a loaf of that thick whole-wheat bread he loved, and some date-nut bread as well—for after Leah’s labor began he had gone upstairs to the third floor, over into the east wing, where he had been sleeping, off and on, since the Powhatassie race, with only a bottle of bourbon to keep him company, and his Springfield rifle (with which, from the window, he shot hawks and crows out of the sky—or had been shooting them before the wise birds learned to avoid that wing of the house). He had been sleeping on the floor, on a filthy old carpet, in his clothes, and his mother claimed—not quite truthfully—that he hadn’t washed or shaved or rinsed his mouth since Nicholas’s funeral. If Leah would not comfort him (and she would not, his weakness disgusted and frightened her), why then he would allow no one to comfort him, let them rap on the door, or pound, let them murmur his name or pronounce it, as Noel did, sharply and briskly—Gideon, what the hell are you doing to yourself! Gideon, open this door at once!