“I didn’t say he didn’t like me. I said he wasn’t a boyfriend.”
“You’re blushing,” she said, and I was.
“Just don’t be a jerk,” I said.
“You should run down the hill and leap into his arms. That would be romantic.”
“I stink of peanut butter,” I said.
“Punch and Hattie up in a tree …”
I whacked her with my shoulder to make her stop. We watched Punch jump out of the truck. An old man with bright white hair climbed out the other side. He waved as if we knew him. I waved back. The old man walked slumped over, the hinge of his belt cranked too tight. He exchanged a word or two with Punch by the truck’s nose, then put his hand on Punch’s shoulder and went toward the house. Punch turned toward us and headed up the hill.
PUNCH KISSED ME ON THE CHEEK, SWEET AND NICE. HE smelled like horses and straw. He tipped his hat at Delores. Delores smiled. She liked cowboy manners.
“Pretty up here,” Punch said, looking around. “You guys all set up?”
“Yes,” I said. “We’re going to see how Speed does.”
“I brought Woody out. The rodeo vet. He had to come out this way to talk to Fry anyway, and he said he’d take a look at your horse.”
Something flip-flopped in my stomach.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I also brought some horses, in case we wanted to take a ride. All three of us. Delores, you interested?”
“I’d love to go for a ride,” she said.
She spun the loaf of bread closed and knotted a bread tie over it.
“Here he comes,” Punch said, watching the old man start up the hill.
Woody had to be seventy. He moved with difficulty, but he didn’t baby himself. He walked straight up the hill without stopping, his left arm swinging more freely than his right. Maybe a stroke, I thought. His skin, when he got closer, appeared spotted and thin, as if it had worn away in years of weather. His eyes, too, shone red and watery. Any wind at all lifted his hair, which was as thin and fine as milkweed.
I went over and collected Speed and walked him to meet Woody.
“Woody,” Punch said, “these are the girls I told you about. That’s Delores and this is Hattie.”
“From New Hampshire, eh? Well, that’s fine.”
He didn’t shake our hands, but he nodded to us. The bend in his waist kept his eyes low, as if he spent his entire life searching for something he couldn’t quite find on the ground in front of him. I walked Speed over to him. Woody lifted his head and inspected him.
“He’s a long way from home,” Woody said, putting his hand on Speed’s forehead. “Aren’t you, boy?”
He patted Speed’s forehead and then stopped and tried to see Speed’s eyes. Speed shook his head. Then Woody walked slowly around Speed, his eyes taking notes. He let his hand trail down Speed’s side.
“Walk him in a circle for me, would you, dear?” he asked me.
I did what he asked. Speed obliged me. We walked in a ten-foot circle. When we came back, Woody nodded at me.
“So is he your horse?” Woody asked. “Or do you both own him?”
“We both own him,” I said.
“He owns himself,” Delores said.
Woody glanced at her. Mostly he looked at the horse.
“And your idea is to pasture him out here for the winter with Fry’s herd?” asked Woody.
I nodded.
“Well, it’s anyone’s guess, of course, how he’ll fare,” Woody said, his hair lifting in the breeze. “Hard to say. I can tell you he’s old, but you know that. I suppose the best thing you can do is let him roam around a little and see what happens. He might surprise you. On the other hand, he might find it too much.”
“You don’t think he’s suffering?” Delores asked.
I looked at her.
“No, I don’t think so,” Woody answered. “Give him a day or two to get acclimated and see how he responds. Punch here will pull his shoes. He’s got the tools in the truck. Give him plenty of water. The winter might be too much for him, but you never know. And Fry’s humane about his decisions. He won’t let him suffer if it turns bad.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He stepped past Speed’s head and he took my hand. He squeezed. His eyes got wetter, and he nodded.
“We love them so,” he said.
I put my free arm around Speed and buried my face in his neck. Woody wiggled my hand just a little, then let it drop and headed back down the hill.
WE FOLLOWED PUNCH WESTWARD, STAYING ON THE RIDGE, the day slowing to afternoon and evening. A cooler wind had picked up and blew from miles of plains. We spotted the wild horses twice. Each time they scattered and swirled, not far, and the males on point scuffed and postured and bluffed. Punch rode easily, his long frame cocked in the saddle. Delores, to her credit, didn’t pretend to be a third wheel on a date. She liked riding too much to allow a little romance to interfere with her pleasure. Sometimes she trotted ahead. She sat pretty on a horse. Punch, I imagined, had wondered if we could ride as well as we seemed to think we could, and I felt like we had given a fair accounting of ourselves.
It was a perfect day. The clouds continued to ride and sail, and the sky remained blue and quiet. My horse, a small sorrel named Taffy, possessed a sweet disposition. She preferred the rear, and I didn’t goad her forward. We rode in silence most of the way, because a lot of talking seems silly on a horse sometimes. After about an hour we let them drink in the stream that ran through the property. We dismounted and stood listening to water going over stones. The horses drank with their tunnel tongues, and you could see the water hit their bellies.
“We’re going to Boston next spring,” Punch said. “The rodeo, I mean. That’s not too far from New Hampshire, is it?”
“Almost neighbors,” Delores said. “Hattie can get to Boston no sweat.”
“I’d like to see New Hampshire,” Punch said. “You make it sound pretty nice.”
Afterward we climbed back up and raced a little. We didn’t go flat out, just sort of cantered, but Taffy buzzed right along, and Spook, Delores’s horse, stayed beside her. Arthur, Punch’s horse, seemed a little clumsy beside them, but his gait ate ground and he bounced along. We had made it about halfway back when the sun threw our shadows ahead of us. I’m not sure what the others felt, but the moment seemed kind of special, like we were chasing our own ghosts. Our silhouettes danced ahead, and we connected at the horse’s hooves, each step mirroring the other in shadow, our bodies elongated and mythic, our shadow horses running ahead of us.
When we crested the last hill, I saw Speed. He stood behind the tent, his head down. He wasn’t eating. Mist covered him, and it took me a moment to distinguish him, to be sure he hadn’t become a wraith. I let out a shout, and I galloped right at him, and Punch caught my notion and did the same, and so did Delores. We thundered down at him, crazy horses, shadow horses, and for an instant Speed lifted his head and came alive. He snorted and took two steps off as we got closer. He is indeed a horse, I thought. I whooped again, and Punch swung his hat around. Delores stood high in her stirrups.
I wanted Speed to run once, just once, to head off free for the first time in his life. For an instant he looked like he might do it. His posture grew and he shook his head, but as quickly as it had come, it left him. We rode up to him, slamming down to a stop, and he took the wind of our charge and shrank back to being an old horse. Our shadows ran over him, and then the mist caught them and turned them quiet and silver.
Chapter 9
“SOME PEOPLE TRY TO MAKE CHILI AS HOT AS PAINT thinner,” Fry said, his good hand stirring a large vat of chili, a beer open in front of him. He stood in a surprisingly clean kitchen in front of a Viking six-burner stove, a blue cook’s apron knotted around his neck. He liked to cook, obviously. The wall nearest the window contained more than a hundred cookbooks, most of them with exotic titles you didn’t see on a typical cook’s shelf. How to Cook, Clean, and Reuse a Steer. Small Bird Recipes.
Crawly Things: The Preparation of Least Meat. A rack of cooking utensils, all gleaming, hung above the stove. Despite his infirmity, Fry moved around the kitchen gracefully, his good hand reaching accurately for anything he required. He looked at home, and the chili smelled out of this world.
Fry had come up to our campsite to invite us in after we returned from the ride. Punch had taken Woody back to the rodeo with the horses, promising to return in the morning. He also told us that Fry’s chili was famous in that part of Minnesota, and that despite Fry’s gruff manner, he possessed a generous, open heart. So when we showed up at his door, hungry and looking to be out of the wind that had started blowing at sunset, we weren’t sure what to expect. Fry invited us in to sit at a kitchen bar and watch him prepare his famous chili. He said he had started cooking the chili a day and a half before and it was our good fortune that we showed up when we did.
“My uncle Willy makes it hot,” Delores said, sitting on a stool and watching him cook, an orange soda open in front of her. “You wouldn’t believe it. He calls it five-alarm and makes you sign a release before you eat it.”
“Now, no disrespect to your uncle, but that’s just the wrong idea,” Fry said. “You might as well stick your tongue out and sprinkle chili powder on it. A good chili has to have self-awareness. It has to be content to be what it is, at the same time yearning to be more.”
“Come off it,” Delores said.
Fry smiled. He seemed to appreciate Delores’s blunt manner. It felt as though they had known each other longer than half an afternoon. Delores liked kidding him.
“Do you get cell phone reception here?” I asked. “I probably should call home.”
Fry looked up from his stirring.
“Strange thing is, we do. And I have satellite, too. A guy explained to me that cell phone signals jump around. You might have to walk up the hill a little, and sometimes you need to wait until full nightfall, but you can usually get it.”
“I’ll try it now,” I said, “if there’s time.”
“Well, this will be ready in about fifteen minutes. I have some corn bread in the oven, too. The timing should be about right,” Fry said. “Delores, you mind helping me set the table? We’ll just eat right here at the bar.”
Delores hopped off her stool. I slipped into my barn jacket and stepped outside. The sun had dipped down behind the small rise, and cold air flowed from the west. A few stars had stuttered out of the last sunlight and blinked, slow and steady, as they gained strength. I stayed in the porch light until I dialed. When I heard the phone ringing, I walked up toward our campsite, keeping the phone to my ear. My mom picked up on the third ring.
“Hattie,” she said.
“Hello, Mom,” I said.
“Now where are you? I’ve been worried sick.”
“We’re in Minnesota. We’re actually turning around in the next day or so.”
“Delores, too?” she asked.
I heard my mom turn a faucet on, then turn it off.
“No, she’s going out to Oregon to try things with her dad for a while. That’s the plan right now.”
“Well, okay. That’s probably for the best. And what about the trailer? She’s taking that with her?”
“Yes. I’ll grab a bus in Blue Earth. That’s in Minnesota, right where we are.”
“And Speed’s going to stay there?”
I couldn’t answer. I felt my throat close and my eyes get wet, and my chest felt like someone stood on it.
“What is it, honey?” my mom asked after a second or two. “Is Speed okay?”
“Yes,” I said, starting to cry. “I just worry I was selfish to bring him. Maybe I made him suffer more than he needed to and it’s my fault if he did. He’s not doing great, and I don’t think anyone except me thinks he has a prayer of making it through the winter. I just saw it all wrong.”
My mom took a deep breath.
“Loving an animal is never wrong, Hattie,” she said quietly. “I’m proud of you.”
I started crying harder.
“I am,” she said softly. “You tried something brave and courageous, and maybe it won’t work out quite the way you wanted, but things have a way of curving away from us. You loved that horse. I ran into Mrs. Ferguson at the Stop and Shop the other day … and she was so concerned for you and Speed. She said every horsewoman has a one, a horse that gets into her heart and stays there to her last day. She said she had a horse named Ali Baba when she was about your age, and she loved that horse more than anything. So she understands, Hattie, and I do, too. Don’t take it out on yourself. You did what you thought was best.”
I couldn’t speak. I felt my heart breaking.
“Is he actually failing?” Mom asked after some more time had passed.
“No,” I managed. “Not entirely.”
“Where there’s life, there’s hope, Hattie,” she said. “Remember that.”
“I will.”
“And tell me you’re safe.”
“I am, Mom. Delores, too. We’re going to probably wait here another day and see if Speed can adjust. We’ll walk him down to the herd and see what happens.”
“Herd?”
“This man named Fry has a wild horse ranch here. He lets them run free. That was our idea for Speed all along.”
“Well, see?” Mom said. “You never know. Miracles happen, Hattie. You’re giving Speed a chance, at least.”
Neither one of us spoke. Delores came out of the door and called me to dinner. I yelled back that I’d be right there.
“You do me a favor and give Delores a great big hug for me,” my mother said. “She’s one of my girls, too. You tell her I’ll miss her.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“I’m proud of you. You remember that.”
“Thank you, Mom,” I said. “I’ll call when I find out my connections and the schedule and everything. It will probably take a couple days to get home.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” she said. “You come home to me safe and sound. I love you.”
“Love you,” I said, and closed the phone.
IT WAS LATE WHEN THE HORSES CAME.
I felt them first deep down in my spine, the thud of their hooves like the child’s game of tapping your friend’s back while she tries to speak or sing a silly song. Then for a second the sound disappeared and I woke, or I dreamed, and a minute later, an hour later, the horses reappeared. They came up the hill, their hooves pounding, and I remembered stories I had heard about buffalo shaking the earth when they passed, of miles of black, hairy beasts, and the Sioux and the Crow riding their horses into the stream of buffalo and shooting arrows point-blank into their skulls and necks. Then the animals would fall, another thud, a longer one with a dirty skid, but now, in the night, it was the horses I heard, their hooves like something pounding to be let inside. I felt Delores’s hand come onto my shoulder, and she whispered, “Do you hear them?”
The question meant nothing. Sounds and shaking gobbled it up, and Delores slid out of the tent, me right behind, and we stood to find the horses running past. Horses everywhere, horses spooked, horses mad with the autumn night, the chilly stars, the blasting wind that came and turned my feet to ice. Delores grabbed my hand and pulled me next to the trees so I wouldn’t be trampled. She let out a wild yell,and I yelled with her, my heart going up and feeling crazy, because we were inside the herd. I smelled horse. Horse created the wind. Horse created the dirt and the stringy flicks of moisture that coated the grass. Horse pounded the hill until it shook and relented.
Delores rocked back and screamed her heart out, and I did, too, and the horses flashed by, white eyes wild and searching, legs prancing and reaching to keep steady on the terrain. “Go, go, go, go,” I whispered at the tail end of my shout. And this was why I loved horses. This was why horses were indeed horses and all other jades mere beasts. I bent back and tucked behind the tree, and the horses split around us like water breaking over rock. Delores slipped out her hand from behind the tree, and it took
me a second to understand, but then I did. I put my arm out, too, and a second later a horse ran by and shoved my hand hard back at me, then another, my hand sometimes touching cheek, or flank, or tail. I kept my arm slack so that nothing would catch or pull, but instead I was a turnstile feeling the horses pass, not one but twenty, not an individual horse, but all horses. Crazy thoughts spilled through my head, and before I could do anything about them, the horses disappeared. They sucked air after them, left dust, and it took us a second to comprehend what had happened. I turned to Delores and she turned to me, and we hugged without saying a word. We hugged long and hard. And we both knew what it was about. We both knew this was the end of something, and the beginning, and that horses were mixed up in it in ways we’d never be able to explain. I felt her crying, and I cried, too, and then we both saw how nutty it all was and we started to laugh. I felt her body shake and she felt mine, and we pushed away, grinning, and I couldn’t help myself. Who would ever be inside a horse herd if not us, and when would we ever be again, and I was still laughing when Delores reached out and yanked me against her again.
“Speed’s gone,” she whispered into my ear. “He’s a horse.”
WE CHECKED.
We checked everywhere we could think of, each second’s passing providing us with an insane, mad hope.
Speed was gone. He had vanished.
We looked a long time, calling to each other whenever we separated, but we turned up nothing. Afterward we fixed the camp. The horses had trampled things, but the truck and trailer had prevented them from getting too close. A V of horse prints went around our gear and narrowed out below it.
“Fry should have told us they could come up this way,” Delores said. But she didn’t seem angry, and neither was I. But truthfully, we could have been injured.
When we bedded down again, it was nearly morning. Delores had trouble settling. She fluffed half a dozen times the backpack that served as a pillow, her body spinning to find a comfortable spot. Each time she moved, she hit the tent walls and made the sleeping mats whistle.
“Do you think he ran?” I asked, wishing I had seen it, wishing I could know for sure.
Finding Somewhere Page 13
