“There’s a gate, too,” Delores said. “Sweet. Spammy sweet.”
She pulled carefully onto the shoulder, which was wide enough to get us entirely off the road. The meadows went on in either direction as far as we could see. Here and there the landowner had left a tree, but mostly the land threw up grass.
I hopped out as soon as the truck switched off and opened the trailer. Speed stepped a few times in place, nervous at the smell of other horses. I made a quiet humming sound, as I usually did around horses, and I edged in and unbuckled his halter leads. Delores opened the pasture gate as I backed him down. He had crapped a couple times and the trailer floor was messy.
“You’ve got some friends,” I said to Speed, turning him to the pasture gate.
“You don’t think they’ll challenge him, do you?” Delores asked. “The males, I mean.”
“No, I don’t think so. He’s too old. No one will take him as a threat.”
“Let’s hope not.”
She swung the gate back. I let Speed go through. He walked ahead, stiff from all the confinement. A horse in the pack whinnied, but I couldn’t tell which one. Delores closed the gate, and we put our elbows on it.
“ ‘He is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him: he is indeed a horse; and all other jades you may call beasts,’ ” I quoted, watching Speed pick his way into the meadow.
“Oh, geez, Hattie, don’t start with all that.”
“It’s the only horse quote I know.”
“Where’s it from again?”
“Shakespeare. I forget which play. I learned it in fifth grade. I used to look up horse quotes. I thought it made horses sound cool.”
“And made you sound like a dork.”
“I’m starving.”
We didn’t move away, though. We watched Speed bury his nose in the grass. Mist drifted over him in pale puffs, and sometimes he disappeared in the dimness, and other times he reappeared, a dark horse shape moving gently over the flat ground.
WHILE I CHANGED THE LICENSE PLATES BACK TO NEW Hampshire tags, Delores dug around in the truck and came up with peanut butter sandwiches. Just peanut butter on the heels of our last loaf of bread. She mixed up cherry water and found half a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. We ate on the tailgate of the truck. The weather began to clear, but it was still misty and cool, and we both wore barn coats and baseball hats. Enough moonlight fell through the clouds so that we didn’t need headlamps.
“You ever wonder,” I asked her, chomping down on three Doritos at once, “how we got here? I mean, do you think we were destined to end up in Austin, Minnesota, or wherever we are, or that this was all by our choice and it’s just a random set of circumstances?”
“If this is fate, it sucks,” Delores said.
“What, you don’t like being here?”
Delores looked around.
“Actually, I do,” she said. “As long as some hillbilly Bob doesn’t come along and drag us out of the truck tonight. It’s pretty here.”
“I don’t think anyone’s around,” I said. “Besides, we’ve got a can of pepper spray.”
“I think,” Delores said, stuffing the last of her sandwich into her mouth and talking around it, “that maybe we’re living in Speed’s fate. Like maybe he’s pulling us along. Who knows? And maybe we were Roman gladiators ten lives ago and Speed was the Emperor Augustus or something.”
“You are weird,” I said.
“I’m going to check on Speed. You finish the excellent meal I made you. Why didn’t we buy SPAM for sandwiches?”
She grabbed her headlamp and pushed through the gate. As soon as it clicked, she seemed to disappear. I ate the rest of my sandwich and all of the remaining Doritos, but it felt strange sitting alone in the darkness. I stood and brushed the crumbs off my lap. I started to call Delores’s name, but that seemed wimpy. I crumpled up the Doritos bag and stuffed it into the old bread sack. I wiped my mouth and had a last drink of cherry water. A chill made me shudder a little, and I grabbed my headlamp and headed for the gate. Before I reached it, I saw Delores riding up on the other side of the fence. She rode a horse, but it wasn’t Speed.
“Thoroughbreds, Hattie,” she whispered loudly. “This one let me right up on her.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Come on. We could ride any one we like. I think they’re racehorses.”
I pushed through the gate. Delores sat astride a beautiful bay mare with a white blaze on its forehead. Being around Speed so much, I had nearly forgotten what a horse could be. Delores had her hands dug into the horse’s mane. She looked wild and happy.
“Speed’s fine,” she said. “I saw him out by the other horses. Come on. Jump up on one, and we’ll ride like Sioux warriors.”
I felt my heart go up as it always did when I was about to ride. I jogged beside Delores as she trotted the horse back to the pack. It was hard to make out the horses’ individual shapes until I was nearly up to them. But I saw the one I wanted almost at once. It was a big white male, thicker than the others through the withers, with a soft, gentle face. I stepped between a couple horses and moved closer. He let me pet him without a problem. Delores kept her horse on the outside of the small herd.
“You taking that white one?” she said in a stage whisper.
“I hope so.”
“Hop up. Can you get on him?”
“I’m trying,” I said.
“Giddyup, girl. Come on.”
I pushed my body close, grabbed a hank of his mane, and jumped. He shied a step or two back, but I had a hold on him and let him carry me for a second. When he steadied, I dropped again, bounced, and chucked my body up over his back. He put his head down to keep eating. I swung my leg around and grabbed his mane on either side of his neck.
“Come on, boy,” I said, and got his head up out of the grass.
Then I kicked him a little and goosed him forward. He went without any difficulty. I kicked him again, and he moved better, nearly trotting until I pulled him up beside Delores’s bay. It felt amazing to have a horse under me and the night clearing off.
“Now, this is more like it,” Delores said.
“I’ll follow,” I said.
“Easy does it,” she said, and pulled her bay toward the center of the meadow.
She walked at first. I had a little trouble figuring out how to go bareback, although it wasn’t the first time I’d ridden that way. But the white horse was new to me, and I didn’t want to spook him or let him get away with being stupid. I stayed firm on him, riding him with my hips and legs, while his head stroked up and down between my hands. “Good boy, good boy,” I whispered. I concentrated so hard on getting my rhythm with him that I didn’t notice the moonlight at first. It came out low and haunted, stretched across the hillside, and I saw Delores kick her horse into a trot. My horse surged right after the bay, and we caught up to her in no time. We cantered a little, and the moon blazed on Delores uphill from me, and my heart filled. I started tearing, not sure why, but horses did that to me and I didn’t question it. It had something to do with the moonlight, the mist rising off the meadow, the clouds pushing east along the horizon. But it also had something to do with Delores and me, about a yearning we both had, a feeling that time might run out on us somehow and we wouldn’t know it had until it was too late.
Then we galloped.
“All other jades you may call beasts,” I whispered, and leaned down to stay close to the white horse’s neck.
The horses felt full of the whole thing, too. I knew it. They ran straight ahead, ears back, their long pulling gaits pegged to a Thoroughbred’s stride. They threw their hind legs through their front legs, their big haunches yanking and shoving, their mouths and necks starting to sweat. I gripped harder. Up ahead of me Delores let out a war whoop,and then we crested a hill I hadn’t even noticed, and headed down. I smelled a river somewhere, or at least water, and the drops from my
horse came up in white dots around me, the hooves casting spray from the wet grass, and when I checked Delores, she appeared to be running on a lake top, a girl on a fairy horse sprinting across fresh water. As I looked, Delores let go of the bay’s mane and sat straight up, riding only with her legs and hips, her arms out as if to fly. She tilted her head back, too, and she looked so perfect doing it that I didn’t dare try to copy her. This was something only for her, something I could only witness, and she galloped down that hill with her soul somewhere up in the sky above her. We both knew it, and we never had to mention it.
THE HORSES STOPPED NEAR A TREE LINE WHERE I GUESSED a river or stream ran. A few stars came out ahead of us, and by seeing them I knew the weather had broken for the time being. Still, the air hit cold and clean along my chest, but down under my seat, and along my legs—any place I touched against the white horse—warmth passed to me. The horses breathed hard. Delores had returned her hands to the horse’s mane, and she breathed as deeply as the horse did. I laughed, but it wasn’t a loud, funny laugh. It felt almost like a cough.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I’ve never ridden a finer horse.”
“Faster, anyway. Speed’s still the finest horse.”
“You’re a beautiful rider, Delores,” I said.
“You, too.”
“We are Sioux,” I said.
“We are Sioux,” she answered.
Then we did something we hadn’t done in a long while. We lay backward along the horses’ spines, our heels up on either side of the horses’ necks. It’s a tricky thing to do, a move that can easily backfire, but we’d done it a lot the previous summer for a string of days. We’d taken Speed to the Chalk Stream every day, and one of the other horses, too, and we’d lounged on the horses’ backs, watching the blue summer sky pass, the shade running like dark cats across our skin. That’s what we did for a while in the field outside of Austin, Minnesota. We didn’t speak for a long time. It was enough to have horses under us, their hay smell and sweat mixing in the September winds, and the sound, now and then, of water running over stones.
“Stars are coming out,” Delores said when we had cooled and the horses had started to nose the grass.
“I love horses,” I said.
“I know you do, Hattie.”
“You know I love Speed, don’t you?”
“Sure,” she said.
“I want him to have some sort of great day,” I said. “That sounds stupid, I know.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she said, then changed the subject a little. “Are the stars spinning above you?”
“Yes. Like a big tube and the horse is at the bottom.”
“I don’t care what happens. They can arrest me, and I’m still glad we came. I am. I bet Speed feels that way, too.”
“I feel a little lost, though,” I said.
“Whoa!” Delores said. “I almost fell. We’re all lost, Hattie, one way or another. This old guy I met once said the trick of life is to stop thinking it’s about sitting on a train until the next stop.”
“What is it, then?”
“Who knows? But if you keep expecting the next station to appear and all lights to be on, you’re probably going to be disappointed. I think that was his point. You might ride for days on the train and not see anything. And other times you’d make three stops in an hour. He said the trick is to learn to ride the train.”
“He sounds like a dope,” I said, and started to laugh.
Delores laughed, too.
“I’m cold,” she said. “Let’s go.”
We walked the horses back up the hill and slid off them when we came close to the herd. We spent a few minutes with Speed. He looked old and tired beside the younger horses, but he didn’t want for anything. He had plenty of grass and some good company. It occurred to me, and maybe to Delores, too, that we could drive away and leave him right where he stood. It was possible no one would notice him for a week or more, and when they did, he would be their horse. He could stay with the small herd, or maybe someone would bring him into a warm barn for the winter. But maybe what we wanted for him was something without fences.
We didn’t talk about it. We went back to the truck and climbed in and ran the engine for a few minutes to take the chill off. Then we fluffed out the sleeping bags and lay down feet to head on the bench seat. I told Delores her feet smelled like coffee cans, and she pushed them into my face a little, but it wasn’t that kind of mood. Frost came in and covered the windshield, and before she fell asleep, Delores made sure we had the pepper spray ready. I put it on the dashboard near me. We didn’t tell any scary stories that night, and we didn’t talk for more than a minute. Cold wrapped around the truck, and sometime during the night I heard sleet tick off the cab roof and the hiss of wind throwing it against the trees.
Chapter 6
WE WOKE TO WHITE FIELDS.
“I’m freezing,” Delores said first thing when she felt me moving.
I couldn’t see her. She had the sleeping bag over her head.
“Start the engine a little,” I said. “I’m going to check on Speed. It snowed.”
“Did not,” she said, sitting up and looking around. She looked sleepy and confused.
“Holy moley,” she said, sliding back under the sleeping bags. “Let’s keep sleeping.”
“Get the truck running. I’m starving for real.”
She didn’t budge. I punched her hip a little with my hand,but she didn’t move. So I made an annoying squeaking sound I knew she hated, until she finally shoved up and jumbled the sleeping bags toward me.
“You are such a brat,” she said.
“I’m cold and I’m hungry,” I said. “Now get moving.”
I pushed out of the truck and nearly fell. Ice coated the road. I heard the truck clatter a little, then turn on. The horses looked up, their ears twitching to check us out. I opened the gate and stepped through.
I saw him right away.
A stone rolled through my guts, and I opened my mouth to try for air.
“No, no, no,” I said, and I ran.
The closest horses to the gate spread at my approach, spooked by my sliding, spastic run. I fell once onto a knee and shot back up. I yelled for Delores but doubted she heard me. I yelled again anyway, because Speed lay on the ground, his body a black line in a white field, the snow and sleet covering him.
“No, no,” I said, and slid down on my knees next to his head.
I knew better than to put my arms around his neck so suddenly, and he jerked up, frightened, his cheek slamming into my nose. A bright light cracked in my skull, and Speed waved his hooves against the ground. I fell backward, stupefied, and the pain of his thick head hitting me climbed down into my neck, then my shoulders, and would have kept going if a bright red stream of blood hadn’t suddenly spouted onto my coat.
“Easy,” I said, but whether I was talking to him or myself, I couldn’t say.
I sawed the back of my hand across my face, and it came away bloody. I arched my head out like a chicken pecking, trying to keep the blood off my coat, at the same time trying to see what had happened to Speed. He looked horrible, glazed with ice and suffering. Steam came off his body. I reached out my hand and put it on his head. Ice shucked under my fingers when I ran my hand down his neck. He had moved just enough at my hug to show me a snow horse, a shadow of his shape blocking out the snow.
I ran back to the truck.
“Delores!” I yelled, and she finally came out, stepping out of the driver’s side and looking over the roof at me. I watched her take in the blood, her face puzzled. Then she leaned a little to her left and saw past me to Speed.
“Are you kidding me?” she said, her voice rising.
“He’s down,” I said.
“Did he get you with a hoof?”
“No, he lifted his head into mine. He’s alive.”
“Let me get something. Hold on.”
She brought out a pap
er bag and hurried around the truck. She crumpled it and handed it to me.
“Just hold this against your nose for a second,” she said. “I don’t have anything else right now. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”
“Fill a plastic bag with snow,” I said, my voice high and tight and nasal.
She nodded. She zipped back around the truck and dug inside until she came up with an olive plastic grocery bag. She held it open and brushed snow and sleet off the hood and roof. I stood still and pressed the paper bag against my nose, trying not to notice if the blood came faster or slower. I glanced down once and saw bloodstains all over the front of my jacket and down on my jeans.
“Here you go,” she said, coming around.
I started to reach for the bag, but then a wing beat of nausea hit me and I held up a finger to her. I stepped a couple paces away and vomited. It killed my nose to vomit. Delores came over and held my hair back. I vomited twice before I could straighten up. My ribs scraped against something that must have been skin or muscle.
“Are you okay?” Delores said, giving me the bag.
I nodded. The ice didn’t feel like anything on my nose.
“We’ve got to get your head tilted back,” she said. “You’re still gushing.”
“It’ll be all right,” I said, tasting ropes of blood spooling down my throat.
“Maybe, maybe not,” she said, trying to see past my hand and the bag of ice. “We may have to have you looked at.”
“It’s just a bloody nose,” I said. “What about Speed?”
“Let me take a look,” she said. “You get in the truck and warm up.”
“I’m coming with you,” I said.
She didn’t try to argue. I held the bag against my nose and walked with her over to the gate. The horses didn’t scatter this time. They milled away, curious and interested, their profiles to us sometimes as if ready to run. Delores made a little “shoo, shoo, shoo” sound that kept them pushing away. Ice still tried to trip me up, and once I had to stop and let my feet slide me a little downhill. The pin oak near the gate looked glassy and cold.
Finding Somewhere Page 8
