The Horse Whisperer

by Nicholas Evans

  They’d finished eating, a simple meal cooked on the fire, of beans, chops and salty bacon with jacket potatoes baked in the embers. It had tasted wonderful. Now, while Frank saw to the fire, Tom went to get water from the stream across the meadow so they could make coffee. Diane was joining in the riddle game now. Everyone assumed Annie knew the answer and though she’d forgotten it, she was happy to keep quiet, lean back against her saddle and observe.

  They’d reached this place just before nine when the last of the sun was fading from the far-off plains. The final pass had been steep, with the mountains tilting over their heads like cathedral walls. At last they’d followed the cattle through an ancient gateway of rock and seen the pasture open up before them.

  The grass was thick and dark in the evening light and because spring, Annie supposed, came later here, there were fewer flowers yet among it. Above, only the highest peak remained and its angle had rolled to give a glimpse of a western slope where a sliver of snow glowed golden pink in the long-gone sun.

  The pasture was encircled by forest and on one side, where the ground was slightly raised, stood a small log cabin with a simple pen for the horses. The stream looped in and out of the trees along the other side and it was here first that they’d all gone to let the horses drink beside the jostling cattle. Tom had warned them that it could freeze up here at night and that they should bring warm clothes. But the air had stayed balmy.

  “Howya doing there, Annie?” Frank had stacked the fire and was settling himself beside her. She could see Tom materializing from the darkness beyond where now and then the invisible cattle called.

  “Frank, apart from my aching butt, I’m doing just great.”

  He laughed. It wasn’t just her butt. Her calves ached too and the insides of her thighs were so sore she winced every time she moved. Grace had lately ridden less even than she had, but when Annie had asked her earlier if she was sore too, she said she was fine and, no, the leg didn’t hurt at all. Annie didn’t believe a word of it but left it at that.

  “Remember those Swiss folk last year Tom?”

  Tom was pouring water into the coffeepot. He laughed and said yeah, he did, then set the pot on the fire and sat back beside Diane to listen.

  Frank said he and Tom had been driving through the Pryor Mountains and found their road blocked by a herd of cattle. Behind them came these cowboys, all dressed to the nines in fancy new gear.

  “One of them had on a pair of hand-tooled chaps must have set him back a thousand bucks. Funny thing was, they weren’t riding, they were all walking, leading their horses behind them and they looked real miserable. Anyway, me and Tom wind down the window and ask is everything okay and they don’t understand a word we’re saying.”

  Annie watched Tom across the corner of the fire. He was watching his brother and smiling his easy smile. He seemed to sense her gaze, for his eyes moved from Frank to her and in them there was no surprise, only a calm so knowing it faltered her heart. She held his look for as long as she dared, then smiled and turned again to Frank.

  “We don’t understand a word they’re saying neither, so we just wave and let them go by. Then up the road we find this old guy dozing behind the wheel of a brand-new Winnebago, top of the range. And he lifts his hat and I know the guy. It’s Lonnie Harper, has a big spread over that way but never could run it to save his life. Anyway, we say howdy and ask is that-his herd back there and he says, yeah, it sure is and the cowboys are from Switzerland, all over here on vacation.

  “Said he’d set himself up as a dude ranch and these folks were paying him thousands of bucks to come and do what he used to have to pay hands to do. We said why’re they walking? And he laughed and said that was the best part, ’cause after one day they all got too saddle-sore to ride, so there wasn’t even no wear on the horses.”

  “Way to go,” Diane said.

  “Yep. These poor Swiss fellas get to sleep on the ground and cook their own beans on the fire while he sleeps in the Winnie, watches TV and eats like a king.”

  When the water boiled, Tom made coffee. The twins were through with riddles and Craig asked Frank to show Grace his match trick.

  “Oh no,” Diane groaned. “Here we go.”

  Frank took two matches from the box he kept in his vest pocket and placed one on the upturned palm of his right hand. Then, with a serious face, he leaned over and rubbed the head of the other match in Grace’s hair. She laughed, a little uncertainly.

  “You do physics and all that stuff at school Grace, I guess.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well then, you’ll know about static electricity and all. That’s all this really is. I’m just kinda charging up here.”

  “Oh yeah,” Scott said sarcastically. Joe promptly shushed him. Holding the charged match between finger and thumb with his left hand, Frank now drew it slowly up the palm of his right hand so that its head approached the head of the first match. As soon as they touched there was a loud snap and the first match jumped clean off his hand. Grace shrieked in surprise and everyone laughed.

  She made him do it again and again and then had a go herself and, of course, it didn’t work. Frank shook his head theatrically, as if baffled why it didn’t. The kids were loving it. Diane, who must have seen it a hundred times, gave Annie a tired, indulgent smile.

  The two women were getting on well, better than ever, Annie believed, though only yesterday she’d been aware of a coolness no doubt caused by Annie changing her mind at the last minute about coming on the cattle drive. Riding together today, they’d talked easily about all sorts of things. But still, somewhere beneath Diane’s friendliness, Annie sensed a wariness that was less than dislike yet more than mistrust. More than anything, she noticed the way Diane watched her when she was around Tom. It was this that had led Annie, against all desire, to decline Tom’s invitation this afternoon to ride with him to the top of the ridge.

  “What d’you reckon Tom?” Frank said. “Try some water?”

  “Reckon so, brother.” A dutiful conspirator, he passed Frank the can he’d filled from the stream and Frank told Grace to roll up her sleeves and immerse both arms up to the elbows. Grace was giggling so much she poured half of it down her shirt.

  “Kind of gets the charge going, you know?”

  Ten minutes later, none the wiser and much the wetter, Grace gave up. During that time both Tom and Joe successfully made the match jump and Annie had a go but couldn’t make it move. The twins couldn’t do it either. Diane confided to Annie that the first time Frank tried it on her, he’d got her sitting fully clothed in a cattle trough.

  Then Scott asked Tom to do his rope trick.

  “It ain’t a trick,” Joe said.

  “Is too.”

  “It ain’t, is it Tom?”

  Tom smiled. “Well, it kind of depends what you mean by trick.” He pulled something from the pocket of his jeans. It was a simple piece of gray cord about two feet long. He tied the ends together to make a loop. “Okay,” he said. “This one’s for Annie.” He got up and came toward her.

  “Not if it involves pain or death,” Annie said.

  “Ma’am, you won’t feel a thing.”

  He knelt down beside her and asked her to hold up the first finger of her right hand. She did and he put the loop over it then told her to watch carefully. Holding the other end of the loop taut with his left hand, he drew one side of the cord over the other with the middle finger of his right hand. Then he rolled the hand over so it was under the loop, then back over it again and put the same finger tip to tip with Annie’s.

  It seemed now that the loop circled their touching fingertips and that it could only be removed if the touch were broken. Tom paused and she looked up at him. He smiled and the nearness of his clear blue eyes almost overwhelmed her. “Look,” he said softly. And she looked down again at their touching fingers and gently he pulled the cord and it slipped away and was free, still knotted and without ever breaking their touch.

  He showed
her a few more times and then Annie tried and Grace tried and the twins tried and none of them could do it. Joe was the only one who could, though Annie could see from his grin that Frank also knew how. Whether Diane knew too it was hard to tell, for all she did was sip her coffee and watch with a sort of half-amused detachment.

  When everyone was through trying, Tom stood up and wound the loop around his fingers to make a neat coil of it. He handed it to Annie.

  “Is this a gift?” she said as she took it.

  “Nope,” he said. “Just till you get the hang of it.”

  She woke and for a moment had no idea what she was looking at. Then she remembered where she was and realized she was staring at the moon. It seemed close enough for her to reach out and place her fingers in its craters. She turned her head and saw Grace’s sleeping face beside her. Frank had offered them the cabin, which normally they only used if it was raining. Annie was tempted but Grace had insisted they sleep outside with the others. Annie could see them lying in their sleeping bags beside the dimming glow of the fire.

  She felt thirsty and so alert it was hopeless to try again for sleep. She sat up and looked around. She couldn’t see the water can and would be sure to wake the others in the search. Across the meadow the black shapes of the cattle cast shadows yet blacker on the pale moonlit grass. She slipped her legs quietly from the sleeping bag and felt again the havoc done to her muscles by the riding. They’d slept in their clothes, only taking off their boots and socks. Annie was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She stood up and set off barefoot toward the stream.

  The dew-drenched grass felt cool and thrilling on her feet, though she took care where she placed them for fear of stepping in something less romantic. Somewhere high among the trees an owl was calling and she wondered if it was this or the moon or plain habit that had woken her. The cattle lifted their heads to look as she passed among them and she whispered a greeting, then felt foolish for doing so.

  The grass on the near bank of the stream was churned by the cattle’s hooves. The water moved slow and silent, its glass surface reflecting only the black of the forest beyond. Annie walked upstream and found a place where the flow divided smoothly around an island tree. With two long steps she reached the far side and walked downstream again to a tapered overhang of bank where she could kneel to drink.

  Viewed from here, the water now reflected only sky. And so perfect was the moon that Annie hesitated to disturb it. The shock of the water, when at last she did, made her gasp. It was colder than ice, as if it flowed from the ancient glacial heart of the mountain. Annie cupped it in ghost-pale hands and bathed her face. Then she cupped some more and drank.

  She saw him first in the water when he loomed across the reflected moon that had so transfixed her gaze she’d lost all sense of time. It didn’t startle her. Even before she looked up she knew it was him.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  The other bank where he stood was higher and she had to squint up at him against the moon. She could read the concern on his face. She smiled.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I woke up and saw you weren’t there.”

  “I was just thirsty.”

  “The bacon.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Does the water taste as good as that glass of rain the other night?”

  “Almost. Try it.”

  He looked down at the water and saw it would be easier to reach from where she was.

  “Mind if I come over? I’m disturbing you.”

  Annie almost laughed. “Oh no you’re not. Be my guest.”

  He walked to the island tree and crossed and Annie watched and knew that more was being crossed than water. He smiled as he came close and when he reached her he knelt beside her and without a word cupped his hand to the water and drank. Some slipped between his fingers, quickening the moonlight in silver trickles.

  It seemed to Annie, and would always seem, that in what followed there was no element of choice. Some things simply were and could not be rendered otherwise. She trembled now at its doing and would tremble later at the thought of it, though never once with regret.

  He finished drinking and turned to her and as he was about to brush the water from his face, she reached out and did it for him. She felt the cold of the water on the back of her fingers and might have taken it as rejection and removed her hand had she not then felt through it the confirming warmth of his flesh. And with this touch, the world went still.

  His eyes had only the unifying pale of the moon. Clarified of color, they seemed to have some limitless depth into which she now traveled with wonder but quite without misgiving. He gently raised his hand to the hand she yet held to his cheek. And he took it and turned it and pressed her palm to his lips, as if sealing some long-awaited welcome.

  Annie watched him and took a long quiver of breath. Then she reached out with her other hand and ran it across the side of his face, from his harsh unshaven cheek to the softness of his hair. She felt his hand brush the underside of her arm and stroke her face as she had stroked his. At his touch she closed her eyes and blindly let his fingers trace a delicate path from her temples to the corners of her mouth. When his fingers reached her lips she parted them and let him tenderly explore their rim.

  She dared not open her eyes for fear she might see in his some reticence or doubt or even pity. But when she looked, she found only calm and certainty and a need as legible as her own. He put his hands to her elbows and smoothed them up inside the sleeves of her T-shirt to hold her upper arms. Annie felt her skin contract. She had both her hands in his hair now and she gently drew his head toward her and felt an equal pressure on her arms.

  In the instant before their mouths touched, Annie had a sudden urge to say she was sorry, that he should please forgive her, this wasn’t what she’d meant to do. He must have seen the thought take shape in her eyes, for before she could utter it he shushed her softly with but the smallest moving of his lips.

  When they kissed, it seemed to Annie she was coming home. That somehow she had always known the taste and the feel of him. And though she almost quaked at the touch of his body against her, she could not tell at what precise point her own skin ended and his began.

  How long they kissed, Tom could only guess from his own changed shadow on her face when they stopped and moved apart a little to look at each other. She gave him a sad smile then looked up at the moon in its new place and trapped pieces of it in her eyes. He could still taste the sweet wetness of her glistening mouth and feel the warmth of her breath on his face. He ran his hands down her bare arms and felt her shiver.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve never known a June night so warm up here.”

  She looked down then took one of his hands in both of hers and cradled it palm upward in her lap, tracing the calluses with her fingers.

  “Your skin’s so hard.”

  “Uh-huh. It’s a sorry hand for sure.”

  “No it’s not. Can you feel me touching it?”

  “Oh yes.”

  She didn’t look up. Through the dark arch made by her falling hair he saw a tear run on her cheek.

  “Annie?”

  She shook her head and still didn’t look at him. He took hold of her hands.

  “Annie, it’s okay. Really, it’s okay.”

  “I know it is. It’s just that, it’s so okay I don’t know how to handle it.”

  “We’re just two people, that’s all.”

  She nodded. “Who met too late.”

  She looked at him at last and smiled and wiped her eyes. Tom smiled back but didn’t answer. If what she said was true he didn’t want to endorse it. Instead, he told her what his brother had said on a night much the same yet under a thinner moon so many years ago. How Frank had wished that now could last forever and how their father had said forever was but a trail of nows and the best a man could do was live each one fully in its turn.

  Her eyes never left him
while he spoke and when he’d finished she stayed silent so that suddenly he worried she might have taken his words amiss and seen in them some self-serving incitement. Behind them in the pines, the owl began to call again and was answered now, far across the meadow, by another.

  Annie leaned forward and found his mouth again and he felt in her an urgency that wasn’t there before. He tasted the salt of her tears in the corner of her lips, that place he’d yearned so long to touch and never dreamed he’d kiss. And as he held her and moved his hands on her and felt the press of her breasts against him, he thought not that this was wrong but only concern that she might come to feel it so. But if this were wrong, then what in the whole of life was right?

  At last she broke away and leaned back from him, breathing hard, as if daunted by her own hunger and where it would surely lead.

  “I’d better go back,” she said.

  “You’d better.”

  She kissed him gently once more, then laid her head on his shoulder so that he couldn’t see her face. He brushed his lips on her neck and breathed the warm smell of her as if to store it, perhaps forever.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “What for?”

  “For what you’ve done for all of us,”

  “I’ve done nothing.”

  “Oh Tom, you know what you’ve done.”

  She disengaged herself and stood in front of him with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. She smiled down at him and stroked his hair and he took her hand and kissed it. Then she left him and walked to the island tree and crossed the stream.

  Once only did she turn to look at him, though with the moon behind her, what look it was he could but guess. He watched her white shirt go back across the meadow, its shadow trailing footprints in the gray of the dew, while the cattle glided about her, black and silent as ships.

  The last glow had gone from the fire by the time she got back. Diane stirred but only in sleep, Annie thought. She quietly slipped her wet feet back into her sleeping bag. The owls soon ceased their calling and the only sound was Frank’s soft snoring. Later, when the moon had gone, she heard Tom come back and didn’t dare look. She lay for a long time looking at the reasserted stars, thinking of him and what he must be thinking of her. It was that hour when routine doubt would settle heavily upon her and Annie waited to feel shame at what she’d just done. But it never came.