The Horse Whisperer

by Nicholas Evans

  It wasn’t that she doubted for one moment his love. How could she? There was just something about him, some sad foreshadowing that was almost fatalistic. She had seen it today, in his desperate intent that she should understand what he had done to Pilgrim.

  There was a brief flooding of light now at the end of the passageway to the barn. He stopped and scanned for her in the darkness. She stepped toward him and at the sound he saw her and came to meet her. Annie ran the last few separating steps as if suddenly he might be snatched away. She felt in his embrace the same shuddering release of what all evening she had tried herself to contain. Their breathing was as one, their mouths, their blood as if pulsed through interlacing veins by the same heart.

  When at last she could speak, she stood in the safety of his arms and told him that she was going to leave Robert. She spoke with such calm as she could muster, her cheek pressed to his chest, fearful perhaps of what she might see in his eyes were she to look. She said she knew how terrible the pain would be for all of them. Unlike the pain of losing Tom however, it was a pain she could at least imagine.

  He listened in silence, holding her to him and stroking her face and hair. But when she had finished, still he didn’t speak and Annie felt the first cold finger of dread steal upon her. She lifted her head, daring at last to look at him, and saw he was too filled with emotion yet to speak. He looked away across the pool. Outside the music thumped on. He looked back at her and gave a small shake of his head.

  “Oh Annie.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I can. I’ll go back and tell him.”

  “And Grace? You think you can tell Grace?”

  She peered at him, searching his eyes. Why was he doing this? She’d hoped for validation and he’d proffered only doubt, thrusting at her immediately the one issue she’d dared not confront. And now Annie realized that in her deliberation she’d resorted to that old selfshielding habit of hers and rationalized it: of course children were upset by these things, she’d told herself, it was inevitable; but if it was done in a civilized, sensitive way there need be no lasting trauma; neither parent was lost, only some obsolete geography. In theory Annie knew this to be so; more than that, the divorces of several friends had proven it possible. Applied here and now, to them and Grace, it was of course nonsense.

  He said, “After what she’s suffered—”

  “You think I don’t know!”

  “Of course you do. What I was going to say is that because of that, because you know, you’ll never let yourself do this, even if now you think you can.”

  She felt tears coming and knew she couldn’t stop them.

  “I have no choice.” It was uttered in a small cry that echoed around the bare walls like a lament.

  He said, “That’s what you said about Pilgrim, but you were wrong.”

  “The only other choice is losing you!” He nodded. “That’s not a choice, can’t you see? Could you choose to lose me?”

  “No,” he said simply. “But I don’t have to.”

  “Remember what you said about Pilgrim? You said he went to the brink and saw what was beyond and then chose to accept it.”

  “But if what you see there is pain and suffering, then only a fool would choose to accept it.”

  “But for us it wouldn’t be pain and suffering.”

  He shook his head. Annie felt a rush of anger now. At him for uttering what she knew in her heart to be right and at herself for the sobs now racking her body.

  “You don’t want me,” she said and hated herself at once for her maudlin self-pity, then even more for the triumph she felt as his’ eyes welled with tears.

  “Oh Annie. You’ll never know how much I want you.”

  She cried in his arms and lost all sense of time and place. She told him she couldn’t live without him and saw no portent when he told her this was true for him but not for her. He said that in time she would assess these days not with regret but as some gift of nature that had left all their lives the better.

  When she could cry no more, she washed her face in the cool water of the pool and he found a towel and helped her mop the mascara that had swum from her eyes. They waited, saying little more, while the blotching faded from her cheeks. Then separately, when all seemed safe, they left.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ANNIE FELT LIKE SOME, MUDBOUND CREATURE VIEWING the world from the bottom of a pond. It was the first time she had taken a sleeping pill in months. They were the ones airline pilots were rumored to use, which was supposed to make you confident about the pills, not doubtful of the pilots. It was true that in the past, when she’d taken them regularly, the after-effects seemed minimal. This morning they lay draped over her brain like a thick, dulling blanket she was powerless to shrug, though sufficiently translucent for her to remember why she’d taken the pill and be grateful that she had.

  Grace had come up to her soon after she and Tom came out of the barn and said bluntly that she wanted to go. She looked pale and troubled, but when Annie asked what was wrong she said nothing was, she was just tired. She didn’t seem to want to look her in the eyes. On the way back up to the creek house, after they’d said their good-nights, Annie tried to chat about the party but barely got a sentence in reply. She asked her again if she was alright and Grace said she felt tired and a little sick.

  “From the punch?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many glasses did you have?”

  “I don’t know! It’s no big deal, don’t go on about it.”

  She went straight up to bed and when Annie went in to kiss her good-night she just muttered and stayed facing the wall. Just as she used to when they first got here. Annie had gone straight to her sleeping pills.

  She reached for her watch now and had to force her muffled brain to focus on it. It was coming up to eight o’clock. She remembered Frank, as they left last night, asking if they’d be coming to church this morning and because it seemed appropriate, somehow punishingly final, she’d said yes. She hauled her reluctant body out of bed and along to the bathroom. Grace’s door was slightly ajar. Annie decided to have a bath, then take in a glass of juice and wake her.

  She lay in the steaming water and tried to hold on to the last lacing of the sleeping pill. Through it she could feel already a cold geometry of pain configuring within her. These are the shapes which now inhabit you, she told herself, and to whose points and lines and angles you must become accustomed.

  She dressed and went to the kitchen to get Grace’s juice. It was eight-thirty. Since her drowsiness had gone she’d sought distraction in compiling mental lists of what needed to be done on this last day at the Double Divide. They had to pack; clean the house up; get the oil and tires checked; get some food and drink for the journey; settle up with the Bookers . . .

  As she came to the top of the stairs, she saw Grace’s door hadn’t moved. She tapped on it as she went in. The drapes were still closed and she went across and drew them a little apart. It was a beautiful morning.

  Then she turned to the bed and saw it was empty.

  It was Joe who first discovered Pilgrim was missing too. By then they’d searched every cobwebbed corner of every outbuilding on the ranch and found no trace of her. They split up and combed both sides of the creek, the twins hollering her name over and over and getting no reply but birdsong. Then Joe came yelling from down by the corrals, saying the horse was gone and they all ran to the barn and found the saddle and bridle were gone too.

  “She’ll be okay,” Diane said. “She’s just taken him for a ride somewhere.” Tom saw the fear in Annie’s eyes. They both already knew it was something more.

  “She done anything like this before?” he said.

  “Never.”

  “How was she when she went to bed?”

  “Quiet. She said she felt a little sick. Something seemed to have upset her.”

  Annie looked so scared and frail, Tom wanted to hold her and
comfort her, which would have looked only natural, but under Diane’s gaze he didn’t dare and it was Frank who did it instead.

  “Diane’s right,” Frank said. “She’ll be okay.”

  Annie was still looking at Tom. “Is Pilgrim safe enough for her to take out? She’s only ridden him the once.”

  “He’ll be alright,” Tom said. It wasn’t quite a lie; the real issue was whether Grace would be. And that depended on the state she was in. “I’ll go with Frank and we’ll see if we can find her.”

  Joe said he wanted to come too but Tom told him no and sent him off with the twins to get Rimrock and their dad’s horse ready while he and Frank went to change out of their church clothes.

  Tom was first out. Annie left Diane in the kitchen and followed him out over the porch to walk beside him to the barn. They only had the time it took to get there for the two of them to talk.

  “I think Grace knows.” She spoke low, looking straight ahead. She was trying hard to keep control. Tom nodded gravely.

  “I reckon so.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t ever be sorry Annie. Ever.”

  That was all they said, because Frank came running up alongside and the three of them walked in silence to the rail by the barn where Joe had the horses waiting.

  “There’s his tracks,” Joe called. He pointed at their clear outline in the dust. Pilgrim’s shoes were different from those of every other shod horse on the ranch. There was no doubt the prints were his.

  Tom looked back just the once as he and Frank loped up the track toward the ford, but Annie was no longer there. Diane must have taken her inside. Only the kids still stood there watching. He gave them a wave.

  It wasn’t till she found the matches in her pocket that Grace had the idea. She’d put them there after practicing the trick with her father at the airport while they waited for her flight to be called.

  She didn’t know how long they’d ridden. The sun was high so it must be some hours. She rode like a madwoman, consciously so, wholeheartedly, embracing madness and urging its return in Pilgrim. He’d sensed it and ran and ran all morning, mouth a foam, like a witch’s nag. She felt that if she asked he would even fly.

  At first she’d had no plan, only a blind, destructive rage whose purpose and direction were not yet set and might be turned as easily on others as herself. Saddling him and shushing him in the gathering light of the corral, all she knew was that somehow she would punish them. She would make them sorry for what they’d done. Only when she reached the meadows and galloped and felt the cold air in her eyes did she start to cry. Then the tears took over and streamed and she leaned forward over Pilgrim’s ears and sobbed out loud.

  Now, as he stood drinking at the plateau pool, she felt her fury not lessen but distill. She slicked his sweating neck with her hand and saw again in her head those two guilty figures slinking one by one from the dark of the barn, like dogs from a butcher’s yard, thinking themselves unseen and unsuspected. And then her mother, with her makeup smeared by lust and still flushed from it, sitting there calmly at the wheel of the car and asking, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, why she felt sick.

  And how could Tom do this? Her Tom. After all that caring and kindness, this was what he was really like. It had all been an act, a clever excuse for the two of them to hide behind. It was only a week, a week for Godsake, since he’d stood chatting and laughing with her dad. It was sick. Adults were sick. And everyone knew about it, everyone. Diane had said so. Like a bitch in heat, she said. It was sick, it was all so sick.

  Grace looked over the plateau and beyond the ridge to where the first pass curved up like a scar into the mountains. Up there, in the cabin where they’d all had such fun together on the cattle drive, up there, that’s where they’d done it. Soiling, spoiling the place. And then her mother lying like that. Making out she was going there all alone to “get her head together.” Jesus.

  Well, she’d show them. She had the matches and she’d show them. It would go up like paper. And they would find her charred black bones in the ashes and then they’d feel sorry. Oh yes, then they’d feel sorry.

  It was hard to know how much of a start she had on them. Tom knew a young guy on the reservation who could look at a track and tell you how old it was, near as damn it, to the minute. Frank knew more than most about such things because of his hunting, a lot more than Tom, but still not enough to know how far ahead she was. What they could tell however, was that she was riding the horse as hard as hell and that if she kept it up he’d soon be on his knees.

  It seemed pretty clear she was heading for the summer pastures, even before they found his hoofmarks in the caked mud at the lip of the pool. From riding out with Joe, she knew the lower parts of the ranch pretty well, but the only time she’d been up here was on the cattle drive. If she wanted a bolt hole, the only place she’d know to head for was the cabin. That is, if she could remember the way when she got up into the passes. After two more weeks of summer, the place would look different. Even without the whirlwind that—judging by her progress—was going on in her head, she could easily get lost.

  Frank got down from his horse to take a closer look at the prints at the water’s edge. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. Tom got down too and held the horses so they wouldn’t spoil what evidence there was in the mud.

  “What do you reckon?”

  “I don’t know. It’s kind of crusted already but with a sun this hot that don’t say too much. A half-hour, maybe more.”

  They let the horses drink and stood mopping their brows and looking out across the plateau.

  Frank said, “Thought we might get a sight of her from here.”

  “Me too.”

  Neither spoke for a while, just listened to the lap of the horses drinking.

  “Tom?” Tom turned to look at him and saw his brother shift and smile uneasily. “This is none of my business, but last night, Diane . . . well, you know she’d had a drink or two and, anyway, we was in the kitchen and she was going on about how you and Annie were, well . . . Like I say, it’s none of our business.”

  “It’s okay, go on.”

  “Well. She said one, or two things, and anyway, Grace came in, and I’m not sure, but I think maybe she heard.”

  Tom nodded. Frank asked him if that’s what was going on here and Tom told him he reckoned so. They looked at each other and some refraction of the pain in Tom’s heart must have shown in his eyes.

  Frank said, “In pretty deep, huh?”

  “About as deep as it gets.”

  They said no more, merely turned the horses from the water and set off across the plateau.

  So Grace knew, though how she knew he didn’t care. It was as he’d feared, even before Annie had voiced the fear this morning. When they were leaving the party last night he’d asked Grace if she’d had a good time and she’d barely looked at him, just nodded and forced a token smile. What pain she must be in to have gone off like this, Tom thought. Pain of his making. And he took it inside him and embraced it in his own.

  At the crest of the ridge they expected again to see her but didn’t. Her tracks, where they could see them, showed only a slight slackening of pace. Only once had she stopped, some fifty yards from the mouth of the pass. It looked as if she’d pulled Pilgrim up short then walked him in a small circle, as if she was deciding or looking at something. Then she’d gone on again at a lope.

  Frank reined to a halt just where the land began to tilt sharply upward between the pines. He pointed at the ground for Tom to look.

  “What do you make of that?”

  There were not one set of hoofmarks now but many, though you could read Pilgrim’s clearly among them because of his shoes. It was impossible to tell whose were the fresher.

  “Must be some of old Granola’s mustangs,” Frank said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Ain’t never seen ‘em this far up before. You?”

  “N
ope.”

  They heard it as soon as they reached the bend about halfway up the pass and they stopped to listen. There was a deep rumble which at first Tom took to be a slide of rocks somewhere up in the trees. Then they heard a high-pitched clamor of screams and knew it was horses.

  They rode, fast but cautious, to the top of the pass, expecting any moment to come face to face with a stampede of mustangs. But aside from their upward tracks, there was no sign of them. It was hard to tell how many there were. Maybe a dozen, Tom thought.

  At its highest point, the pass forked like a pair of tight pants into two diverging trails. To get to the high pastures you had to go right. They stopped again and studied the ground. It was so churned with hooves in all directions, you could neither pick Pilgrim’s among them nor know which way he or any other horse had gone.

  The brothers split up, Tom taking the right and Frank the lower one left. About twenty yards up, Tom found Pilgrim’s prints. But they were heading down, not up. A little farther up was another great churning of earth and he was about to inspect it when he heard Frank call out.

  When he reined up next to him Frank told him to listen. For a few moments there was nothing. Then Tom heard it too, another frenzied call of horses.

  “Where does this trail go?”

  “I don’t know. Ain’t never been down here.”

  Tom put his heels into Rimrock and launched him into a gallop.

  The trail went up then down then up again. It was winding and narrow and the trees crowded so close on either side that they seemed to be whipping back the other way with a motion all their own. Here and there one had fallen across the trail. Some they could duck and others jump. Rimrock never faltered but measured his stride and cleared them all without brushing a branch.

  After maybe half a mile the ground fell away again then opened up under a steep, rock-strewn slope into which the trail had etched itself in a long upward crescent. Below it, the ground fell sheer, many hundreds of feet, to a dark netherworld of pine and rock.