They’d all driven to church in two cars and it was clear at once, to Tom at least, that something had changed between Annie and Grace. There was a stillness there. He noticed how when Annie spoke Grace now looked her in the eyes and how, after they’d parked the cars, the two of them linked arms and walked together all the way to the church.
There wasn’t room for them all in one row, so Annie and Grace had sat a row in front where a shaft of sun angled down from a window, trapping slow convections of dust. Tom could see the other churchfolk looking at the newcomers, the women as much as the men. And he found his own eyes kept returning to the nape of Annie’s neck when she stood to sing or tilted her head in prayer.
Back at the Double Divide later, Grace had ridden Gonzo again, only this time in the big arena with everyone watching. She walked him awhile then, when Tom told her to, took him up to a trot. She was a little tight at the start, but once she relaxed and found the feel, Tom could see how sweetly she rode. He told her a couple of things about the way she was using her leg and when it all clicked, he said to go ahead and move on up to a lope.
“A lope!”
“Why not?”
So she did and it was fine and as she opened her hips and moved with the motion he saw the grin break out on her face.
“Shouldn’t she be wearing a hat?” Annie had asked him quietly. She meant one of those safety helmets people wore in England and back east and he’d said well no, not unless she was planning on falling off. He knew he should have taken it more seriously, but Annie seemed to trust him and left it at that.
Grace slowed in perfect balance and brought Gonzo to an easy stop before them and everyone clapped and cheered. The little horse looked like he’d won the Kentucky Derby. And Grace’s smile was wide and clear as a morning sky.
After the vet had left, Tom showered, put on a clean shirt and set off through the rain for Hank’s place. It was coming down so thick, the old Chevy’s wipers all but gave in and Tom had to peer with his nose to the glass to negotiate a way through the flooded craters of the old gravel road. There were so many cars when he got there that he had to park right out on the driveway and if he hadn’t worn his slicker he’d have been soaked by the time he got to the barn.
As soon as he walked in, Hank saw him and came over with a beer. Tom laughed at the T-shirt and even as he took off his slicker, realized he was already scanning the faces for Annie. The barn was large but still too small for all the folk packed into it. There was country music playing, almost drowned by the sound of talk and laughter. People were still eating. Every now and then the wind would drive a cloud of smoke from the barbecue in through the open doors. Mostly people ate standing up because the tables hauled in from outside were still wet.
While he chatted with Hank and a couple of other guys, Tom let his eyes travel the room. One of the empty stalls on the far side had been turned into a bar and he could see Frank helping out behind it. Some of the older kids, including Grace and Joe, were gathered around the sound system, going through the box of tapes and groaning at the embarrassing prospect of their parents trying to dance to the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. Nearby Diane was telling the twins for the last time to quit throwing food or she’d take them right home. There were many faces Tom knew and many who greeted him. But there was only one he was looking for and at last he saw her.
She stood in the far corner with an empty glass in her hand, talking with Smoky who’d come up from New Mexico where he’d been working since Tom’s last clinic. It was Smoky who seemed to be doing most of the talking. Every so often Annie glanced around the room and Tom wondered if she was looking for anyone in particular and if so, whether it might be him. Then he told himself not to be such a damn fool and went and got himself some food.
Smoky knew who Annie was as soon as they were introduced. “You’re the one done call him when we were doing the Marin County clinic!” he said. Annie smiled.
“That’s right.”
“Hell, I remember him calling me when he came back from New York saying there was no way he was going to work with that horse. Now here y’all are.”
“He changed his mind.”
“Ma’am, he sure must of. Ain’t never seen Tom do something he didn’t want.”
Annie asked him questions about his work with Tom and what went on at the clinics and it was clear from the way he spoke that Smoky worshiped the ground Tom walked. He said there were quite a few people now doing clinics and things but not one of them was in the same league, or even close. He told her about things he’d seen Tom do, horses he’d helped that most folk would have taken out and shot.
“When he lays his hands on them you can see all the trouble just kind of fall out of them.”
Annie said he hadn’t done this yet with Pilgrim and Smoky said that must be because the horse wasn’t yet ready.
“It sounds like magic,” she said.
“No ma’am. It’s more than magic. Magic’s just tricks.”
Whatever it was, Annie had felt it. She’d felt it when she watched Tom work, when she rode with him. In truth, she felt it almost every moment she was with him.
It was this that she had contemplated yesterday morning when she woke with Grace still sleeping beside her and saw the dawn spilling in through the faded drapes that now hung unmoving. For a long time she’d lain quite still, cradled in the calm of her daughter’s breathing. Once, from a distant dream, Grace murmured something that Annie labored in vain to decipher.
It was then she’d noticed, among the pile of books and magazines beside the bed, the copy of Pilgrim’s Progress Liz Hammond’s cousins had given her. She hadn’t opened it nor had she any idea that Grace had brought it in here. Annie slipped quietly from the bed and took it to the chair by the window where there was just enough light to read.
She remembered listening wide-eyed to the story as a child, captivated on a simple literal level by the story of little Christian’s heroic journey to the Celestial City. Reading it now, the allegory seemed obvious and clumsy. But there was a passage near the end that made her pause.
Now I saw in my dream that by this time the pilgrims were got over the Enchanted Ground and entering into the country of Beulah, whose air was very sweet and pleasant; the way lying directly through it, they solaced themselves there for a season. Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth and heard the voice of the turtle in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day; wherefore this was beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death and also out of the reach of Giant Despair; neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting Castle. Here they were within sight of the City they were going to, also here met some of the inhabitants thereof. For in this land the Shining Ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of Heaven.
Annie read the passage three times and read no farther. It was this that had led her to call Diane to ask if she and Grace could come to church. However, the urge—so wildly out of character that it made even Annie laugh—had little, if anything, to do with religion. It had to do with Tom Booker.
Annie knew that somehow he had set the scene for what had happened. He had unlocked a door through which she and Grace had found each other. “Don’t let her turn you away,” he’d told her. And she hadn’t. Now she simply wanted to give thanks, but in a ritualized way that wouldn’t embarrass anyone. Grace had teased her when she told her, asking how many centuries it was since she’d last seen the inside of a church. But she said it with affection and was plainly happy to come along.
Annie’s head refocused on the party. Smoky didn’t seem to have noticed her drifting. He was in the middle of some long, involved story about the man who owned the ranch he was working at down in New Mexico. While Annie listened she went back to doing what she’d spent most of the evening doing, looking out for Tom. Maybe he wasn’t coming after all.
Hank and the other men cleared the tables out into the rain again and the dancing began. The m
usic was louder now and still country so that, led by the most streetwise among them, the kids could keep up their groaning, no doubt secretly relieved at not having to dance themselves. Laughing at your parents was a whole lot more fun than having them laugh at you. One or two of the older girls had broken ranks and were dancing and the sight suddenly had Annie worried. Stupidly, until now, it hadn’t occurred to her that seeing others dance might upset Grace. She made an excuse to Smoky and went to find her.
Grace was sitting by the stalls with Joe. They saw Annie coming and Grace whispered something to him that made him grin. It was gone from his face by the time Annie got there. He stood up to greet her.
“Ma’am, would you like to dance?”
Grace burst out laughing and Annie gave her a suspicious glance.
“This is entirely unprompted of course,” she said.
“Of course ma’am.”
“And not, by any remote chance, a dare?”
“Mom! That’s so rude!” Grace said. “What a terrible thing to suggest!” Joe kept a perfect straight face.
“No ma’am. Absolutely not.”
Annie looked again at Grace who now read her mind.
“Mom, if you think I’m going to dance with him to this music, forget it.”
“Then thank you Joe. I’d be delighted.”
So they danced. And Joe danced well and even though the other kids hooted, he didn’t turn a hair. It was while they were dancing that she saw Tom. He was watching her from the bar and waved and the sight of him gave her such a teenage thrill that at once she felt embarrassed because maybe it showed.
When the music stopped Joe gave a courteous bow and escorted her back to Grace who hadn’t stopped laughing. Annie felt a touch on her shoulder and turned. It was Hank. He wanted the next dance and wouldn’t take no for an answer. By the time they’d finished he had Annie laughing so much her sides ached. But there was no respite. Frank was next, then Smoky.
As she danced, she looked over and saw Grace and Joe were now doing a jokey kind of dance with the twins and some other kids, jokey enough anyway to allow Grace and Joe the illusion that they weren’t really dancing with each other.
She watched Tom dance with Darlene, then Diane, then more closely with some pretty, younger woman Annie didn’t know and didn’t much want to know. Perhaps it was some girlfriend she hadn’t heard about. And every time the music stopped, Annie looked for him and wondered why he didn’t come and ask her to dance.
He saw her making her way across to the bar after she’d danced with Smoky and as soon as he could do so politely he thanked his partner and followed. It was the third time he’d tried to reach her but someone always got there first.
He weaved his way behind her through the hot crowd and saw her wipe the sweat from her brow with both hands, back through her hair, just as she’d done when he met her out running. There was a dark patch on her back where the fabric of her dress had grown wet and clung to her skin. As he got near he could smell her perfume mixed with another more subtle and potent that was all her own.
Frank was back serving behind the bar and he saw Annie and asked her over other people’s heads what she wanted. She asked him for a glass of water. Frank said sorry there wasn’t any, only Dr Peppers. He handed her one and she thanked him and turned and Tom was standing right there in front of her.
“Hi!” she said.
“Hi. So Annie Graves likes to dance.”
“As a matter of fact I can’t stand it. It’s just that here no one gives you the choice.”
He laughed and decided therefore that he wouldn’t ask her, though he’d looked forward to it all evening. Someone pushed between them, cutting them off from each other for a moment. The music had started up again so they had to shout to make each other hear.
“You obviously do,” she said.
“What?”
“Like to dance. I saw you.”
“I guess. But I saw you too and I reckon you like it more than you say.”
“Oh, you know, sometimes. When I’m in the mood.”
“You want some water?”
“I would die for water.”
Tom called to Frank for a clean glass and handed back the Dr Peppers. Then he put a hand lightly on Annie’s back to steer her through the crowd and felt the warmth of her body through the damp dress.
“Come on.”
He found a path for them among all the people and all she could think of was the feel of his hand on her back, just below her shoulder blades and the clasp of her bra.
As they skirted the dance floor, she chided herself for telling him she didn’t like to dance, for otherwise he’d surely have asked and there was nothing she wanted more.
The great barn doors stood open and the disco lights lit the rain outside like a bead curtain of ever-changing color. There was no longer any wind but the rain fell so hard it made a breeze of its own and others had gathered in the doorway for the cool Annie now felt on her face.
They stopped and stood together on the brink of shelter and peered out through the rain whose roar made distant the music behind them. No longer was there reason for his hand to be on her back and though she hoped he wouldn’t, he took it away. Across the yard she could just make out the lights of the house like a lost ship where she assumed they were headed for her drink of water.
“We’ll get drenched,” she said. “I’m not that desperate.”
“I thought you said you’d die for water?”
“Yes, but not in it. Though they say drowning’s the best way to go. I always thought, how on earth do they know that?”
He laughed. “You sure do a lot of thinking don’t you?”
“Yep, always fizzing away up there. Can’t stop it.”
“Kind of gets in the way sometimes, don’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Like now.” He saw she didn’t understand. He pointed toward the house. “Here we are, looking out through the rain and you’re thinking, too bad, no water.”
Annie gave him a wry look and took the glass from his hand. “Kind of a forest-and-trees situation, you mean.”
He shrugged and smiled and she reached out into the night with the glass. The pricking of the rain on her bare arm was startling, almost painful. The roar of its falling excluded all but the two of them. And while the glass filled they held each other’s eyes in a communion of which humor was only the surface. It took less time than it seemed or than either seemed to want.
Annie offered it first to him, but he just shook his head and kept watching her. She watched him back over the rim of the glass as she drank. And the water tasted cool and pure and so purely of nothing that it made her want to cry.
TWENTY-SIX
GRACE COULD TELL SOMETHING WAS GOING ON AS SOON as she climbed into the Chevy beside him. The smile gave it away, like a kid who’d hidden the candy jar. She swung the door shut and Tom pulled away from the hack of the creek house and headed down toward the corrals. She’d only just got back from her morning session with Terri in Choteau and was still eating a sandwich.
“What is it?” she said.
“What’s what?”
She narrowed her eyes at him but he was all innocence.
“Well, for a start, you’re early.”
“I am?” He shook his wristwatch. “Darn thing.”
She saw it was a lost cause and sat back to finish her sandwich. Tom gave her that funny smile again and kept driving.
The second clue was the rope he picked up from the barn before they, went down to Pilgrim’s corral. It was much shorter than the one he used as a lasso and of a narrower gauge, plied in an intricate crisscross of purple and green.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a rope. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“I meant, what is it for?”
“Well, Grace, there’s no end of things a hand could do with a rope like this.”
“Like swing from trees, tie yourself up . . .”
“Yep, that kind of t
hing.”
When they got to the corral Grace leaned on the rail where she usually did and Tom went in with the rope. Away in the far corner, as usual too, Pilgrim started snorting and trotting to and fro as if marking out some futile last resort. His tail, ears and the muscles on his sides seemed wired to a convulsive current. He watched Tom every step of the way.
But Tom didn’t look at him. As he walked, he was doing something with the rope, though what, because his back was to her, Grace couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, he went on with it after he stopped in the center of the corral and still he didn’t look up.
Grace could see Pilgrim was as intrigued as she was. He’d stopped his pacing and now stood watching. And though every so often he tossed his head and pawed the ground, his ears reached out at Tom as if pulled by elastic. Grace moved slowly along the rails to get a better angle on what Tom was doing. She didn’t have to go far because Tom turned toward her so that his shoulder masked what he was doing from Pilgrim. But all Grace could see was that he seemed to be tying the rope into a series of knots. Briefly, he looked up and smiled at her from under the brim of his hat.
“Kinda curious, ain’t he?”
Grace looked at Pilgrim. He was more than curious. And now that he couldn’t see what Tom was doing, he did what Grace had done and took a few small steps to get a better look. Tom heard him and at the same time moved a couple of steps farther away, turning too, so that now he had his back to the horse. Pilgrim stood awhile and looked off to one side, taking stock. Then he looked at Tom again and took a few more tentative steps toward him. And Tom heard him again and moved off so the space between them stayed almost but not quite the same.
Grace could see he’d finished tying the knots, but he went on pulling them and working at them and suddenly she saw what it was he’d made. It was a simple halter. She couldn’t believe it.
“Are you going to try and get that on him?”
The Horse Whisperer Page 26
