The Horse Whisperer

by Nicholas Evans

  “Every moment.”

  “That pair of golden eagles? Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what we are. Now. That’s what we are.”

  He nodded. Their eyes locked into each other, unsmiling now, in a growing preoccupied urgency, until at last she saw the flicker in his face and felt him quiver and then the spurt and flood of him within her. And she arched herself into him and at the same time felt in her loins a shocking, protracted imploding of flesh that rushed to her core then jolted and spread in waves to the furthest corners of her being, bearing him there with it, until he filled every place within her and they were one and indistinguishable.

  THIRTY-TWO

  HE WOKE WITH THE DAWN AND FELT AT ONCE THE SLEEPING warmth of her beside him. She lay along his body, nestled in the shelter of his arm. He could feel her breath on his skin and the soft rise and fall of her breasts against him. Her right leg was tucked over his. He could feel the gentle prickle of her belly on his thigh. The palm of her right hand lay on his chest above his heart.

  It was that clarifying hour when normally men left and women wanted them to stay. He’d known it many times himself, the urge to slip away like a thief with the dawn. It seemed prompted not so much by guilt as by fear, fear that the comfort or companionship that women seemed often to want, after a night spent more carnally, was somehow too committing. Maybe there was some primordial force at work. You sowed your seed and got the hell out.

  If so, this morning, Tom felt not a trace of it.

  He lay quite still so as not to wake her. And it occurred to him that maybe he was afraid to. Never in the night, not once in the long hours of their tireless hunger, had she shown any sign of regret. But he knew that with the dawn would come, if not regret, some colder new perspective. And so he lay in the unfolding light and treasured the slack and guiltless warmth of her beneath his arm.

  He slept again and woke the second time to the sound of a car. Annie had turned over and he lay now with his front molded to the contours of her back, his face tucked into the scented nape of her neck. As he eased himself away from her, she murmured though didn’t wake and he slipped from the bed and silently gathered his clothes.

  It was Smoky. He’d pulled up beside their two cars and was inspecting Tom’s hat, which had stood all night on the hood of the Chevy. The worry on his face changed to a grin of relief when he heard the clack of the screen door and saw Tom heading out toward him.

  “Hiya, Smoke.”

  “Thought you was upped and gone down to Sheridan.”

  “Yeah. There was a change of plan. Sorry, I meant to call you.” He’d called the man with the colts from a gas station in Lovell to say sorry he couldn’t make it, but had clean forgotten about Smoky.

  Smoky handed him his hat. It was damp from the dew.

  “Thought for a minute there you’d been kidnapped by aliens or somethin’.” He looked at Annie’s car. Tom could see he was trying to figure things out.

  “Annie and Grace didn’t go back east then?”

  “Well, Grace did, but her mother couldn’t get a flight. She’s staying over till the weekend when Grace gets back.”

  “Right.” Smoky nodded slowly but Tom could see he wasn’t altogether sure what was going on. Tom glanced at the Chevy’s open door and remembered the lights must have been on all night too.

  “Had some trouble last night with the battery here,” he said. “Maybe you could help me give it a jump?”

  It didn’t explain a whole lot but it did the trick, for the prospect of a task seemed to drive all lingering doubt from Smoky’s face.

  “Sure,” he said. “I got some leads in the truck.”

  Annie opened her eyes and took only a moment to remember where she was. She turned over, expecting to see him and felt a small leap of panic on finding herself alone. Then she heard voices and the slam of a car door outside and felt a larger leap. She sat up and swung her legs out from the tangle of sheets. She stood and walked to the window and, as she did so, had to stem the moist run of him between her legs. She felt a bruised aching there that was also somehow delicious.

  Through a narrow gap in the drapes she saw Smoky’s truck pulling away from the barn and Tom waving after him. Then he turned and headed back to the house. She knew he wouldn’t see her if he looked up and, watching him, she wondered how the night might have changed them both. What now might he think of her, having seen her so wanton and shameless? What now did she think of him?

  He squinted up at the sky where already the clouds were burning off. The dogs came bounding around his legs and he ruffled their heads and spoke to them as he walked and Annie knew that, for her at least, nothing had changed.

  She showered in his little bathroom, waiting to be seized by guilt or remorse, but neither came, only trepidation at what he might be feeling. She found the sight of his few simple toilet things beside the basin oddly touching. She used his toothbrush. There was a big blue toweling bathrobe slung by the door and she put it on, wrapping herself in the smell of him, and went back into his room.

  He’d opened the drapes and was looking out of the window when she came in. He heard her and turned and she recalled him doing the same that day in Choteau when he’d come to the house to give her his verdict on Pilgrim. There were two cups steaming on the table beside him. She could see the apprehension in his smile.

  “I made some coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  She went over and took the cup, casing it in her hands. Alone together in the big empty room, they seemed suddenly formal, like strangers arrived too early at a party. He nodded at the robe.

  “It suits you.” She smiled and sipped the coffee. It was black and strong and very hot. “There’s a better bathroom along the way there if you—”

  “Yours is just fine.”

  “That was Smoky dropped by. I forgot to call him.”

  There was silence. Somewhere down by the creek a horse whinnied. He looked so worried, she was suddenly afraid he was going to say sorry, it was all a mistake and could they just forget it ever happened.

  “Annie?”

  “What?”

  He swallowed. “I just wanted to say, that whatever you feel, whatever you think or want to do, it’s okay.”

  “And what do you feel?”

  He said simply, “That I love you.” Then he smiled and gave a little shrug that almost broke her heart. “That’s all.”

  She put her cup down on the table and went to him and they clung to each other as if the world were already bent on their division. She covered his lowered face with kisses.

  They had four days before Grace and the Bookers returned, four days and four nights. One protracted moment along the trail of nows. And that was all she would live and breathe and think of, Annie resolved, nothing beyond nor nothing past. And whatever came to pass, whatever brutal reckonings were forced upon them, this moment would be there, indelibly written in their heads and hearts forever.

  They made love again while the sun eased over the corner of the house and angled knowingly in upon them. And afterward, cradled in his arms, she told him what she wanted. That the two of them should ride again to the high pastures where first they had kissed and where now they might be alone together, with nothing but the mountains and the sky to judge them.

  They forded the creek a little before noon.

  While Tom had saddled the horses and loaded a packhorse with all they might need, Annie had driven back up to the creek house to change and get her things. They would both bring food. Though she didn’t say and he didn’t ask, he knew she would also have called her husband in New York to lay some pretext for her coming absence. He’d done the same with Smoky, who was getting a little dazed with all these changes of plan.

  “Going up to check oil the cattle, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “On your own or . . .?”

  “No, Annie’s coming too.”

  “Oh. Right.” There was a pause and Tom
could hear two and two coalescing in Smoky’s mind.

  “I’d appreciate it, Smoke, if you kept it to yourself.”

  “Oh sure, Tom. You bet.”

  He said he’d drop by as previously planned to see to the horses. Tom knew he could be trusted on both issues.

  Before leaving, Tom went down to the corrals and put Pilgrim into the field with some of the younger horses he’d started to get along with. Normally Pilgrim would go running off with them right away, but today he stood by the gate and watched Tom walk back to where he’d left the saddled horses.

  Tom was going to ride the same mare he’d taken on the cattle drive, the strawberry roan. As he rode up toward the creek house, leading Rimrock and the little paint packhorse behind him, he looked back and noticed Pilgrim was still standing alone by the gate, watching him go. It was almost as if the horse knew something in their lives had changed.

  Tom waited with the horses on the track below the creek house and watched Annie come in long strides down the slope toward him.

  The grass in the meadow beyond the ford had grown lush and long. Soon the contractors would be here for haymaking. It slushed against the legs of the horses as Tom and Annie rode through it side by side, with no other sound but the rhythmic creak of their saddles.

  For a long time neither of them seemed to feel the need to talk. She asked no questions now about the land through which they passed. And it seemed to Tom that this was not because at last she knew the names of things, but rather that their names no longer mattered. It only mattered that they were.

  They stopped in the heat of the midafternoon and watered the horses at the same pool as before. They ate a simple meal she had brought, of crusted bread and cheese and oranges. She peeled hers deftly in one unbroken curl and laughed when he tried to do the same and failed.

  They crossed the plateau where the flowers had begun to fade and this time rode together to the crest of the ridge beyond. They startled no deer but saw instead, maybe a half-mile on toward the mountains, a small band of mustangs. Tom signed to Annie to stop. They were downwind and the mustangs hadn’t yet sensed them. It was a family band of seven mares, five of them with foals. There were also a couple of colts, too young yet to have been driven away. The band stallion Tom had never seen before.

  “What a beautiful animal,” Annie said.

  “Yeah.”

  He was magnificent. Deep-chested and strong in the quarters, he weighed maybe more than a thousand pounds. His coat was a perfect white. The reason he hadn’t yet seen Tom and Annie was that he was too busy seeing off a more pressing intruder. A young stallion, a bay, was making a bid for the mares.

  “Things get kind of heated this time of year,” Tom said quietly. “It’s the mating season and this young fella thinks it’s time he had a go. He’ll have been trailing this band for days, probably with a few other young studs.” Tom craned in the saddle to peer around. “Yep, there they are.” He pointed them out to Annie. There were nine or ten of them another half-mile or so to the south.

  “That’s what they call a bachelor band. They spend their time hanging out, you know, getting drunk, bragging to each other, carving their names on trees, till they’re big enough to go steal some other guy’s mares.”

  “Oh. I see.” Her tone made him realize what he’dsaid. She was giving him a look but he didn’t return it. He knew exactly what the corners of her mouth would be doing and the knowing of it pleased him.

  “That’s right.” He kept his eyes firmly on the mustangs.

  The two stallions were standing nose to nose, while the mares and foals and the challenger’s distant friends looked on. Then suddenly both stallions exploded, tossing their heads and squealing. This was when the weaker one would normally concede. But the bay didn’t. He reared up and screamed and the white stallion reared too, but higher, and thrashed at him with his hooves. Even from here you could see the white of their bared teeth and hear the thwack as their kicks struck home. Then, within moments, it was over and the bay scuttled off defeated. The white stallion watched him go. Then, with a glance at Tom and Annie, he ushered his family away.

  Tom felt her eyes on him again. He shrugged and gave her a grin.

  “You win some, you lose some.”

  “Will the other one be back?”

  “Oh yes. He’s gonna have to spend some more time at the gym, but he’ll be back.”

  They built a fire by the stream, just next to the place where they had kissed. They buried potatoes as before in its embers and while these cooked, they made a bed, laying their bedrolls side by side with the saddles for a headboard then zipping their two single sleeping bags together. An inquisitive huddle of heifers stood with lowered heads on the other bank to watch.

  When the potatoes were done, they ate them with sausage fried in an old iron pan and some eggs Annie thought would never survive the journey. They mopped the dark yolks from their plates with the rest of the bread. The sky had clouded over. They washed their plates in the moonless stream and laid them on the grass to dry. Then they took off their clothes and, with the flicker of the fire on their skin, made love.

  There was a gravity to their union which seemed to Annie somehow to befit the place. It was as though they’d come to dignify the promise here witnessed.

  Later, Tom sat propped against his saddle and she lay folded in his arms with her back and head against his chest. The air had grown much colder. Somewhere high on the mountain above them there was the yip and wail of what he told her were coyotes. He draped a blanket over his shoulders and drew it around them, cocooning her against the night and all encroachment. Nothing, Annie thought, nothing in that other world can touch us here.

  For many hours, staring into the fire, they talked about their lives. She told him about her father and all the exotic places where they’d lived before he died. She told him about meeting Robert and how he’d seemed so clever and dependable, so grown up and yet so sensitive. And he was still all of those things, a fine, fine man. Their marriage had been good, still was, in many ways. But looking back now, she realized that what she’d wanted from him was actually what she’d lost in her father: stability, security and unquestioning love. These Robert had given her spontaneously and without condition. What she had given him in return was loyalty.

  “I don’t mean by that I don’t love him,” she said. “I do. I really do. It’s just that it’s a love that feels more like, I don’t know. Like gratitude or something.”

  “For his loving you.”

  “Yes. And Grace. It sounds awful doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  She asked him if it was like that with Rachel and he said no, it was different. And Annie listened in silence while he told her the story. She conjured life in her mind from the photograph she’d seen in Tom’s room, the beautiful face with its dark eyes and glossy tumble of hair. The smile was hard to reconcile with the sorrow Tom now spoke of.

  It was not the woman but the child in her arms that had moved Annie most. It gave her a pang of what, at the time, she refused to acknowledge as jealousy. It was the same feeling she’d had when she saw Tom’s and Rachel’s initials in the concrete of the well. Oddly, the other photograph, of the grown Hal, gave full mitigation. Though he was dark like his mother, his eyes were Tom’s. Even frozen in time, they disarmed all animosity.

  “Do you ever see her?” Annie asked when he’d finished.

  “Not for some years. We talk on the phone now and then, about Hal mostly.”

  “I saw the picture in your room. He’s beautiful.”

  She could hear Tom smile behind her head. “Yeah, he is.” There was a silence. A branch, white-crusted with ash, collapsed in the fire, hoisting a flurry of orange sparks into the night.

  He asked, “Did you want more children?”

  “Oh yes. We tried. But I could never hold on to them. In the end we just, gave up. More than anything, I wanted it for Grace. A brother or a sister for Grace.”

  They fell silent agai
n and Annie knew, or thought she knew, what he was thinking. But it was a thought too sorrowful, even on this outside rim of world, for either one of them to utter.

  The coyotes kept up their chorus all night. They mated for life, he told her, and were so devoted that if ever one were caught in a trap, the other would bring it food.

  For two days they rode the bluffs and gullies of the high front. Sometimes they would leave the horses and go on foot. They saw elk and bear and once Tom thought he saw, watching from a high crag, a wolf. It turned and went before he could be sure and he didn’t mention it to Annie in case it worried her.

  They came across hidden valleys filled with beargrass and glacier lily and waded up to their knees through meadows turned to lakes of brilliant blue with lupine.

  The first night it rained and he pitched the little tent he’d brought in a flat green field, strewn all about with the bleached poles of fallen aspen. They got soaked to the skin and sat huddled together, shivering and laughing in the mouth of the tent with blankets over their shoulders. They sipped scalding coffee from blackened tin mugs while outside the horses grazed unbothered, the rain sleeking off their backs. Annie watched them, her wet face and neck lit from below by the oil lamp and he thought he’d never seen, nor ever would he see, any living creature so beautiful.

  That night, while she slept in his arms, he lay listening to the drumming of the rain on the tent roof and tried to do what she’d told him they must, not to think beyond the moment, just to live it. But he couldn’t.

  The following day was clear and hot. They found a pool, fed by a narrow twist of waterfall. Annie said she wanted to swim and he laughed and said he was too old and the water way too cold. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer, so under the dubious gaze of the horses, they stripped and leapt in. The water was so icy it made them shriek and they had to scramble right out and stood hugging each other, bare-assed and blue, jabbering like a couple of loopy kids.

  That night the sky shimmered green and blue and red with aurora borealis. Annie had never seen it before and he had never seen it so clear and so bright. It rippled and spread in a vast luminous arch, trailing folded striations of color in its wake. He saw its crenelate reflection in her eyes as they made love.