The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

by Jenny Wingfield

  “We didn’t get it,” Grandma Calla said. “That horse got us. And not for long. Soon as we find out who it belongs to, we’ll have to give it back.” Her mouth went tight and bitter when she said that last part.

  “Give it back to whoever did that to it?” Swan crackled angrily.

  Sheriff Meeks said, “A man’s property is a man’s property. The law don’t say how a man can use what’s his.”

  Which just flattened Swan. For a second. Then her eyes started snapping, and she threw her arms out like she was being crucified. “Well, if you’re not going to do anything about it,” she hollered at the top of her lungs, “what the hell are you doing here?” She had forgotten about not cussing in front of any grown-up except Uncle Toy.

  Sheriff Meeks looked at her for a second, real steady, trying to make her cringe. He just didn’t know Swan.

  “I’m here because your uncle called me,” he answered, finally. And then he asked Calla, “You reckon there’s any chance that kid’ll ever grow into her mouth?”

  Early didn’t stay long. He’d promised to meet Bud Jenkins in town at the café at eight o’clock, and it was already going on seven. Counting that it took nearly half an hour to get there, that didn’t leave him much time for being early. Before he left, though, he wrote down a description of the horse and promised to get the word out that it had been found.

  Noble and Bienville had come outside by now and were petting the horse with syrupy fingers. Snowman didn’t mind. Of course, the kids didn’t know that his name was Snowman. They were fighting over what to call him. Grandma Calla resolved the matter by informing them that they were not going to keep the horse, but if they did, it was going to be her horse, it was her garden the thing had torn up, after all, and nobody who didn’t act right and help with the chores was ever going to get to ride it. Plus, as long as it stayed on the premises, its name would be John.

  “John?” Bienville yelped.

  “Whoever heard of a horse named John?” Noble complained loudly.

  Grandma Calla didn’t feel she owed them an explanation, she could name her horse anything she pleased, but she told Willadee in private that she’d caught herself a couple of times lately saying her husband’s name when nobody was around. Now if anyone caught her doing it, she could pretend she was thinking out loud about the horse.

  Blade was fear-struck by what he had done and what his daddy would do when he found out. It wasn’t a matter of if. Blade knew that, as surely as he knew that his arms and legs were getting scratched bloody by all the blackberry vines and saw briers that kept snaring his arms and legs.

  About the time Toy Moses was returning from taking Bootsie Phillips home, Blade was crawling back through his own bedroom window, unaware that he was leaving smears of blood on the sill. The house was dark and quiet, not a sound anywhere except for Blue sucking his thumb in his sleep. Blade hated sleeping in the same bed with his little brother, mainly because Blue always let loose with the waterworks sometime in the wee hours, but also because of that sucking sound.

  Blade slid into bed, staying as far away as possible from his brother and the puddle collected by the rubber sheet that protected the mattress but not the little boys who slept on it. The pee was cold, and smelled foul, and seeped into his sleepers, making them cling wetly to his skin, but that wasn’t why he was shivering.

  At precisely 5:30 in the morning, Ras Ballenger headed out to his barn to feed the livestock and discovered that Odell Pritchett’s horse was missing. Seeing that gate standing open sent shock waves up and down his spine. Having a horse stolen is bad enough when it belongs to you, and its hide is not laid open in a dozen places. But when it’s someone else’s animal, and you’re going to have to explain to its owner how it came to be missing, and (once it’s found) how it came to be in that condition, that complicates matters considerably.

  What Ras couldn’t figure out, though, was how anybody got on the place and took the gelding without his dogs letting him know about it. Those dogs didn’t go up to strangers with their tails wagging—and nobody was allowed to come around here enough to be anything but a stranger.

  Snowman hadn’t managed to let himself out of the lot, that much was for sure. The gate had been fastened with a chain that was looped around the gatepost, with the two ends held together by a clasp that only fingers could open. A smart horse can lift a chain off a hook, but it can’t undo a clasp.

  So someone had done this. The question was who. It couldn’t have been Odell Pritchett. Odell wasn’t the type to come in the dark of night—why should he, it was his horse, he could come for it in broad daylight. And even if he had been the one, he’d have come in a truck, pulling a trailer, both of which are noisy. Granted, he could have parked out on the road, and walked in, and led his horse out. But there again—why hadn’t the dogs done their job?

  Ras dragged his eyes away from that gate and the lot that didn’t have a horse inside, and he turned around and stared for a moment at his house.

  Geraldine always got up even earlier than Ras did. One thing he could not abide was a lazy woman. When she heard his boots scraping on the porch, her stomach clenched up a little, because he’d be wanting his breakfast on the table when he walked in the door, and she was just now starting the bacon. Since when did he get the feeding done in less than five minutes?

  You could always feel him coming into a room, because the air changed to fit his mood. When he was boiling mad, you felt the heat, and even when he was just normal (at least for him), you could feel the tension popping all around. Right now, though, the air felt flat and dead. Which hardly ever happened.

  Geraldine cut her eyes at Ras as he sauntered in, but he never glanced her way. He was getting himself a mug of coffee, which also hardly ever happened. A man breaks his back to provide for his family, he likes his coffee poured and handed to him. She’d heard him say that enough times to know it by heart.

  Geraldine’s insides started doing somersaults. She was used to her husband stomping around ranting and raving. But the way he was now, all easy and calm—that, she wasn’t used to.

  “You’re awful quiet,” she said. She didn’t mean to speak first, but she couldn’t stand the strain.

  Ras sat down at the table and blew on his coffee, gazing at her over the rim of the mug. His eyes looked almost gentle.

  “So are you,” he said back. Sounding sly. “You was last night, anyways.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending. Somehow she had done something wrong, and she had no idea what it was.

  “I don’t remember bein’ quiet last night.”

  “Well you sure was. Like a little mouse, you was quiet.” He skimmed his fingertips over the tabletop, like a little mouse, running silently in one direction. Skimmed them back the other way. Zig-zag, zig-zag. Back and forth. That was one busy little mouse.

  Geraldine tried to remember being quiet the night before. Had Ras spoken to her and she hadn’t answered? Had she walked past him without speaking when he expected to be spoken to?

  The bacon was about to scorch, so she turned it over and pressed the pieces down flat with the spatula.

  “Well,” she said, “I reckon I was quiet while I was asleep.”

  Ras smiled. Smiled. Like she had just said the magic words.

  “Seems to me you got that wrong. You was quiet while I was asleep.”

  She frowned. This whole thing had a bad feeling. Whatever quicksand she had fallen into, there wouldn’t be any getting out of it now. You fall into quicksand and you do nothing, you go under. You try to get out, you go under faster.

  “I don’t know what on earth you’re talkin’ about,” she flared. Might as well go under fast, and get it over with.

  Ras said, “Maybe you was sleepwalkin’. Sometimes folks do things when they’re sleepwalkin’ that they regret when they wake up.”

  Geraldine wagged her head side to side, the picture of confusion.

  “If I’ve ever in my life walked in my sleep, I don’t k
now about it.” She meant to sound emphatic, but the words had a tentative tone. As if she couldn’t really be sure.

  Ras played his tongue around the inside of his mouth, poking at his cheek, making a lump on the outside that pooched out and wiggled. Geraldine felt a crazy urge to laugh. She didn’t, though. The way Ras was looking at her—like she was a mouse all right, and he was a cat, about to pounce—laughing probably wouldn’t be the smartest thing she could do.

  She took a paper sack out of the cabinet under the sink and laid it on a plate. That was to absorb the grease from the bacon as she transferred it from the skillet to the plate.

  “All right,” she said. “What’d I do?”

  “You don’t remember.”

  “I remember goin’ to bed.”

  “You don’t remember gittin’ up.”

  She sighed. This was getting old. “I just got up twenty minutes ago. Sure I remember gittin’ up.” She brought the plate over and set it down on the table. “Now are you goin’ to tell me what I did?”

  “No—you are gonna tell me.” He helped himself to a slice of bacon and munched on it thoughtfully, smiling again. “And since I don’t have a horse to train, I’ve got all day.”

  Chapter 18

  In Blade’s dreams, he was running along the edge of the creek that led from his daddy’s farm to the back side of the Moses place, and the briers along the path kept reaching for him—grabbing hold of his ankles and growing fast as lightning, right up his legs. He could feel them latching on with those fishhook thorns, and he wanted to get still, so the fishhooks would stop biting in deeper. But he couldn’t stop, because there was a chicken hawk flying overhead—a great big chicken hawk, he’d never seen one so huge—and it was going to get him if he slowed down even a little, probably would get him no matter how fast he ran.

  Blade had never felt so small. He must be no more than the size of a rabbit.

  The chicken hawk swooped down, talons stretched out like long, curved knives. Blade didn’t want to look up. Couldn’t keep from looking up. And when he looked, he saw the chicken hawk’s face. Saw it plain and clear, and wished he hadn’t.

  It was his daddy.

  Blade screamed, but there was no sound, just suffocating silence. He tried harder and harder, screaming from his guts, from his toes. Helpless, hopeless, exploding inside, noiselessly; rabbits can’t scream.

  The chicken hawk laughed. Raw, acid laughter. Then it dove lower, and Blade screamed again, and this time there was sound. Sound all around, shredding the air.

  Blade was jarred awake and sat up with a start. Heart thudding. So relieved he could cry because the dream was over—until he realized that it wasn’t over after all, it was just beginning.

  Blue had waked up, too, and was lying there snuffling, clutching the pee-stained covers. Blade told him to hush and crept out of bed.

  The screaming, which had been coming from the kitchen, stopped abruptly. The next sound was even worse.

  Ras had Geraldine by the neck and was bending her backward over the sink, with her face under the tap. She was struggling and gurgling. Swallowing water, and sucking it into her lungs, and trying to talk, and just gurgling.

  Ras jerked her upright and leaned back out of the way while she hacked and heaved and spewed.

  “How’s your memory?” Ras asked.

  She coughed explosively. Shook her head.

  “The horse,” Ras said patiently. “What did you do with the horse?”

  Blade had come into the room by now, and his legs buckled. This was about Snowman! He’d thought that he was the one who would be in danger. It had never once dawned on him that anyone else might catch the blame.

  Geraldine had recovered enough that she was trying to wrench away from Ras. Trying to pry his fingers off her neck. Which just made Ras squeeze tighter.

  “—didn’t touch—horse,” Geraldine croaked.

  Ras shook her, hard.

  “Didn’t touch him, but you opened the gate and let him out, didn’t you?”

  Geraldine’s face was bloodred from all the coughing and wheezing she’d been doing. Her nose was running, too.

  “I didn’t—” she started.

  Ras forced her back over the sink and held her head under the tap, like before. She whipped her head side to side, but it didn’t help. She still had to breathe, and the water was still running into her mouth and nose. She started gurgling again.

  “Stupid sow,” Ras snarled. “I never seen such a stupid sow.”

  Blade couldn’t let his daddy kill his mama, and it looked as if that was about to happen. So he grabbed his daddy’s coffee mug off the table and slung it across the room. It hit Ras in the back, right between the shoulder blades.

  Ras turned loose of Geraldine and whirled around, but Blade Ballenger was gone.

  Grandma Calla made what she’d said stick. Nobody could go near her horse unless they’d been behaving right and helping with the chores. Swan and Noble and Bienville were so nice to each other and everybody else all day that Willadee started leaning over and sniffing them when they went past. She said any mama knows her own offspring by smell, even if they get to acting too strange to be recognizable any other way.

  And work? Those children worked. They swept the porch, and weeded the flower beds, and picked a bushel of crowder peas, all by eleven-thirty. After that, the boys washed the grungy old gas pumps with soap and water and polished them up to a fare-thee-well, while Swan used vinegar and newspaper to clean every glass surface in Calla’s store. It got so shiny around there that the customers started shading their eyes against the glare when they got out of their cars.

  Every once in a while the kids would go up to Grandma Calla, and gaze at her adoringly, and tell her she was the dearest old person in the world and they were so glad to be her grandchildren. Grandma Calla would shake her head and tell them that she didn’t know whose grandchildren they were, but she was sure glad they’d stopped by to help out with things.

  By midafternoon, Willadee decided that the kids had been good long enough. It was beginning to sap her energy, watching them zip around so fast. Calla admitted that she’d been feeling right dizzy herself, plus she’d already gotten more work out of them than she’d ever dreamed was in there.

  The kids were set free, but Grandma Calla warned them again to stay away from her horse. She knew how kids can’t resist the urge to climb up on anything that’s taller than them, especially if it has a mane and a tail.

  “Just think how you would feel if you was in the same shape as John,” she said. “How would you like it if a bunch of young’uns got up on your back and set right square on your sore places?”

  Bienville pointed out to her that they could never be in the same shape as John, they had two legs each, and he had four.

  Grandma Calla didn’t appreciate the logic. “Well, you better be thankful that’s not the only difference,” she said. “That horse has took a drubbing.”

  She didn’t add (as she ordinarily would) that they could all get drubbings, too, if they didn’t straighten up and fly right. They had already straightened up, they were flying like swallows, and besides, she didn’t feel like making threatening noises that day. Something about looking at that horse, at those marks someone had laid on him, laid something bare inside her soul. This John was doing something the other John had stopped doing long before he took it in his head to kill himself. This John was bringing out the tenderness in Calla Moses.

  It was Noble who persuaded Grandma Calla to let them take John along with them to the Badlands. Since they’d be tracking Outlaws through Unforgiving Terrain, they’d be traveling on foot anyway. When terrain is unforgiving, you have to squat down every once in a while and squench up your eyes real narrow, and study the ground to see whether the rocks have been disturbed, or if a bootheel has left an impression in the dust. You might also see where somebody has hawked a loogie, which is a sure sign of Outlaws. A lot of Outlaws have rattling coughs. Anyway, you can’t do a
good job of tracking if you’re forever getting on and off a horse. It takes the starch out of you and slows you down.

  Calla didn’t see what the harm could be in letting the kids take the horse on an adventure, as long as all they did was lead him, but she said she’d better not find out they’d been on his back.

  Leading him was all they planned to do, they promised. It was all they were gonna do, they swore.

  “And we’d never break our word to a sweet little old thing like you,” Swan vowed passionately.

  Calla had never been called “old” so many times in one day, and she hadn’t been “little” in so long she couldn’t remember, but she let Swan’s comment go. The sooner the kids were off in the Badlands looking for Outlaws and loogies, the sooner she could sit down and think about how quiet it was.

  Ras Ballenger didn’t have to wonder how that mug came to hit him between the shoulder blades. He went tearing through the house, heading straight for the boys’ room.

  Blue was sitting up in bed squalling, but for once, Ras didn’t pay him any mind. He marched over to the open window and raked his eyes across the yard. There was no sign of Blade. It was when Ras leaned against the windowsill to think what to do next that he noticed the rusty smears of dried blood on the woodwork. He licked a finger and rubbed it across one of the stains, and the color came off on his skin.

  “I should’ve chunked that boy to the dogs the day he was born,” Ras said.

  Ras wondered how Blade had gotten cut up when he was doing his dirty work last night. Maybe he took the horse out on the road to let it go and he fell on the gravel and scraped the hide off his arms and legs. Or maybe he ran into something he couldn’t see in the dark.