Swimming with Horses

by Oakland Ross

  “Now, turn left. Ninety degrees.”

  “What …? How?”

  “Just do it. Don’t think about it. Do it. Della’s just waiting for you to tell her what to do. You should see her right now — her ears and her neck. She’s arching her neck. Sure sign. She’s just waiting for you to give her a hint. Now turn left.”

  I tried. I really did. “This is crazy,” I said. “I don’t know how.”

  “Yes, you do. Use your pelvis. Use your legs.”

  “But I don’t have any reins.”

  “You don’t need them. I’m telling you. Just shift your pelvis. Shift your weight, just the way you would if you did have reins.”

  “But I don’t.”

  “Exactly. That’s the whole point.”

  “But I can’t see anything. This is crazy.”

  “No, it isn’t. You can do it. Don’t think about it. Just feel it. Left. Turn left.”

  It was like some kind of magic. Without thinking, just relying on I don’t know what, I shifted my pelvis so that the pressure of my weight changed. I altered the direction of my body, if only slightly. Everything happened at the same time in a single coordinated movement. And Della turned left. I wanted to open my eyes, to see, but I fought down that urge.

  “Okay,” said Hilary. “That’s great. Now straighten out. Let her know what you want. She’ll do it. You both will.”

  And it worked. It actually worked.

  THIRTEEN

  Hilary

  South Africa, Winter 1962

  HILARY STOOD AT THE entrance to the stables, afraid to step inside. She’d just caught sight of Jack. He was standing in the dim light of the grooming bay, running his hands up and down his leather apron. She didn’t think that he had seen her, not yet. Already two weeks had passed since she’d told Muletsi about the Canadian named Quinton Vasco. During that time, and for some unknown reason, Jack had pretty much curtailed his former wanderings. These days he stalked the barn from dawn till dusk, which meant that Hilary had little choice but to keep away. That was exactly what she’d done, until now.

  Now she meant to have it out, put an end to all this once and for all. She’d told Muletsi what she intended to do, and he’d said to be very careful. There was no telling how Jack might react this time. Muletsi said he’d be somewhere nearby. He’d keep close. Just in case.

  Now, only a few steps shy of the stable entrance, Hilary felt her legs grow heavy, or so it seemed to her. She sensed a tautness in her throat, found it difficult to swallow. Nerves, of course. She’d already rehearsed the words she meant to say, a dozen times at least, but she knew Jack. She knew enough to be afraid of him if he turned mean. She took a breath and stepped into the grooming bay.

  He looked up, not at all surprised to see her — just the opposite, in fact. His expression seemed to suggest that he’d been standing there with nothing else to do, just waiting for her to show.

  “Hil.”

  She didn’t bother to correct him. Not Hil. Hilary. She didn’t even bother to say his name. Instead, she launched straight in, said what she’d said that time before, the same hollow words — but words just the same, words that could not have been pleasing to him.

  “It’s over. D’you hear? Over.”

  She told herself she meant it this time, and, even if Jack did not believe her, he must have foreseen trouble ahead, on account of her even saying these words. They showed she had a will of her own, a will that clashed with his. No good could come of that, not in the gospel according to Jack.

  When she’d said what she’d come to say, she stopped, uncertain what else to do. At first he said nothing, just let his silence do the work, let it weigh upon her shoulders like a physical thing, like some lifeless animal abandoned there. He held a curry comb in his right hand and now patted it against his leather apron, setting off a swirl of blond dust. After a time he leaned to his left and spat, wincing as he did so. Still he said not a word.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m serious.”

  He nodded, but not in a way that signalled agreement. Truth was, it likely didn’t matter to Jack whether she was serious or not. His worriment would lie elsewhere, with this challenge to his rule. He would not be pleased about that. After all, a man can tolerate only so much resistance before he is obliged to act; it was Jack himself who’d taught her so.

  She crossed her arms, trembling a little. Deep down, she had always been afraid of him. She was afraid of him now, afraid of what he might do. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

  Jack shrugged, grimaced, and finally he did speak, though it didn’t amount to much.

  “Nothing to say.”

  Because this was not the time for words: his instincts would tell him that. A curtain seemed to lift, and it seemed she was having some species of revelation. She found that she could tell what Jack was thinking, just by observing him, something she’d rarely managed to do before. It was as if she could read his mind, predict what he would say even before he said it. It was as if they both were characters in some weird, real-life comic book, with thought balloons that appeared beside a person’s head.

  Words were no use anymore: that was what he would be thinking now. He’d said all the words there were to say, so now he’d have to try a different route. He would need to come up with some explanation, some credible tale, something about a horse shying at an antelope, letting out with a buck. The girl had been thrown, and here was the result. Something along those lines. He’d have to ensure she backed him up, and he must have known she would. Fear alone would take care of that. He set the curry comb down in the equipment box. His right hand was already clenched in a fist, and she steeled herself for the coming blow. She could almost feel the impact of his bare knuckles against her own flesh and bone, but it never came.

  “Don’t do it, man.”

  Jack didn’t look up to see whose voice it was. Didn’t have to. Deep voice. Man’s voice. He knew at once. At first he seemed almost amused. His eyebrows went up in mock surprise. “Why, if it isn’t my old pal Berkeley Hunt. Mr. Berkeley Hunt himself. Well, well.” He kept looking at her, though — at her and at no one and nothing else. “Who’s this, then? Your new protector?”

  She still had her arms raised, to defend herself. She’d been that sure he’d meant to hit her, bring down a rain of blows. But he’d lowered his fists by now, so she let her arms fall. Meanwhile, Jack ignored Muletsi — she could tell — shutting him out like he wasn’t even there, kept his gaze fixed on her. He was angry, no question about that, and now, finally, his anger seemed to loosen his tongue. “I’ve been missing something here, have I? You and the kaffir gone sweet on each other, have you? Well —”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Just you shut up and go or —”

  “Or what? You’ll tell your old dad? No, I don’t think so. I’ve heard that one before. But I don’t think it’s something you’d be willing to —”

  “I’m warning you. Leave her alone, man. Just leave this place. Leave this place now.”

  Jack Tanner put a hand to his forehead and let out a low, theatrical sigh that was like a succession of words. Here was something new — a kaffir boy issuing instructions to a white man. Jack sniggered aloud and reached toward Hilary with both his hands, gripped her shoulders, and sought to hold her still. She stiffened and arched her back. He let his right hand slide downward till it clutched her left breast through the woollen jumper she wore. He smiled at her, as if he couldn’t be held responsible for any of this, for any of what was happening now. She turned away, twisted her shoulders, fought to break free of his grip, something that seemed to thrill him all the more. “Why you little —”

  “I said now. Let her go now. I won’t say it again.”

  Jack just rolled his eyes, as if to say, Well, this is quite enough of that. He let his right hand drop from her breast, but still he gripped her shoulder with his other hand. She managed to pull loose and slide away from his grasp. Now Jack turned to have a look at Muletsi, who sto
od at the gate between the stables proper and the grooming bay, his large shape hard to discern in the gloomy light. Jack reached out with his right arm and pointed with his index finger, dead centre, at Muletsi’s forehead. He raised his thumb and drew back his third finger as if he were squeezing a trigger. He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “You,” he said. “You shut your bloody gob or I’ll have your neck.”

  And what happened next, well, she herself could barely believe it. She doubted Jack could believe it either. Without warning, Muletsi took a run at him, swinging a bridle with a big pelham bit. That was what caught Jack on the side of the head, drew blood and broke bone at the first impact, stunned him for a time, long enough for Muletsi to drop the bridle and get in a flurry of blows all over — face, chest, belly.

  Before Jack could recover his balance, get his feet set, it was already too late. She knew what he must have been thinking as he felt his legs give way. This never would have happened if he’d had time to prepare. Never in a dozen lifetimes. Never in a thousand years.

  Or so Jack might have said, if he’d been of a mind to speak, or if he hadn’t blacked out.

  As for Muletsi, he kicked the bridle away as if it were a noxious thing. He took one look at her, turned, and hurried out of the barn, moving at a brisk walk that soon turned into a run. She could tell how shocked he was. He hadn’t intended this — but, oh Lord, how he hated Jack Tanner. Meanwhile, Jack was out cold. She did what she could with the blood that was all over the man, the blood and the snot and the drool.

  Even after Jack came to, his mind was a blur. Still, even in that foggy state, he must have known that he’d been bested by a good-for-nothing kaffir, as he would put it. That would rankle in his gut, torment him forever — or at least until he’d settled scores. It was lucky for him he hadn’t been killed.

  Later the ambulance came, and they took him to the clinic in Mooi River and then to the hospital in Pietermaritzburg, where the doctors had to perform reconstructive surgery on one side of his face. More than two weeks passed before he returned to the farm, mean-tempered and bitter as piss. He tottered about the grooming bay and the corridors that ran between the stalls, swearing to himself, cursing the stable hands, and throwing things at the walls.

  She knew what he wanted — wanted more than anything else on earth. He wanted to exact revenge on his own terms, which was the way things were usually done after a white man and an African came to blows. But by then it was too late. The authorities had already intervened. It was assault, they said — assault with a deadly weapon. Granted, it hadn’t been a knife that Muletsi had wielded, much less a gun. It had been an expensive leather bridle with a disciplinary bit. But, still, you could kill a man with less. And that was just for starters.

  The police made straight for Bruntville, and they found Muletsi there. Straightaway, they clamped him in jail. Next, the chief had his plainclothes men pay another visit to the township to ransack Muletsi’s house — really, his mother’s house. What did they find? Whatever they wanted. There could never have been any doubt about that. In this case, they found incriminating documents by the score. It seemed Muletsi was a member of a banned organization after all, a subversive. More charges were laid against him, political charges. Agitation. Sedition.

  But what were most damning of all were the indictments that never got put down in writing, the ones that got hushed up by her father, who had his ways — the morality accusations that Jack lodged against Muletsi. Rape. Miscegenation. Carnal knowledge of a minor.

  As for Hilary, she was deemed to have been hysterical the whole bloody time. Teenage delirium — that explained why she made all sorts of outlandish charges against Jack Tanner, why she said so many hideous things. He was the one all along, she said. He’d done this, done that. It hadn’t been Muletsi at all. She ranted and stormed.

  But Jack denied every word, never raising his voice, used logic and lies to dismantle the truth. His version was that he’d come upon the two of them together, Muletsi and the girl, and the black devil had attacked him then, with no warning whatsoever — the shock of being discovered. This was what Jack told her father, apologizing after almost every word, as if it had partly been his fault. Ag, but the man was slick. In the end, he was believed. It was a white man’s word against a black man’s, and there was never any contest in that.

  As for Hilary, nothing she had said seemed to count for anything at all — the ravings of a girl, out of control, teenage hormones. Her own father failed to credit her words, and what her mother said or thought didn’t come into the picture. In the end, Daniel Anson disbelieved his own kith and kin, put his faith in his cockney stable manager instead. And so it was that Jack came out on top, despite the beating he’d suffered. Still, he didn’t gloat. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? He was far too smart for that.

  As for Muletsi, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to a prison cell in Pietermaritzburg, there to live out his punishment at hard labour, in durance vile. And Hilary? She was bundled off to a girls’ academy in Johannesburg. As far as she could tell, her father never wanted to see her again. He didn’t say so, didn’t have to. She could sense it in his tone when he said how very disappointed he was in her.

  Disappointed! Dear Lord, it was vastly worse than that. Disgusted — that was what he meant. He could no longer bear having her near, and Johannesburg was a good long trek away. He must have calculated it would be difficult for her to get into more trouble up there, especially under the watchful gaze of Colin and Trevor, his two sterling sons — all of which just went to show how little he knew of his one and only daughter. He had something wrong in his head if he thought that a little obstacle like geographical distance would put things right or that she would carry out a single, solitary task that anyone else wanted her to perform as long as Muletsi Dadla remained in jail. Did he not understand that? When it came to his daughter, did he not comprehend the first and simplest thing? Jesus frigging Christ. Frigging bloody hell.

  PART TWO

  FOURTEEN

  Sam

  Ontario, Summer 1963

  ENTER BRUCE GRUBER.

  I knew him well. I had known him for years. After all, he had bullied me for what seemed like ages when we’d both attended primary school in Hatton. He had needed roughly twelve years to complete those eight grades, and he spent much of that time preying upon the smaller or younger kids, including me. When he finally bottomed out and abandoned school completely, he went to work as an apprentice mechanic at Weintrub’s Garage. Now and again he got into trouble with the law. It was small-time stuff, from what I understood — issuing threats, minor theft, resisting arrest, that kind of thing. But it gained him a reputation.

  Probably Hilary knew this. I imagine Bruce’s prior record figured prominently in her calculations. It must have done. How else can you explain her attachment to the guy? What on earth did she see in him? It baffled me from the start. As it happened, I was on hand the first time Hilary met Bruce. That meeting took place on what I recall as a cloudy afternoon, following two straight days of rain, a rarity during that sun-coddled summer. When the downpour finally let up, Charlotte and I both rode our bikes into Hatton. I meant to buy a Big Turk chocolate bar and a Tahiti Treat at Odegaards’ General Store, as was my custom, and Charlotte insisted on coming along for the ride. I told her I had only a few dollars to my name, but she said it didn’t matter.

  “You don’t want anything?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Some jujubes? If there’s any money left? I don’t have any money.”

  “You never do.”

  “It’s because I’m a girl.”

  Fifteen minutes later we wheeled our bikes onto the verandah at Odegaards’ store.

  “Why’s it spelled Odegaards?” Charlotte shoved her right foot down onto her bike’s kickstand. “You know, with two As?”

  “Nobody knows.” I let my bike topple onto the concrete walkway. The kickstand was broken. “Maybe it’s a mistake.”

  “Weird. We
e-urd.” She skipped ahead several steps, like a cantering pony. “Look. It’s Mrs. Barker’s car. What’s she doing here?”

  Mrs. Barker’s green-and-white Peugeot — green body, white roof — was parked alongside the store’s long verandah, adjacent to a series of rectangular wooden pillars, the beige paint peeling away. The car’s engine was still running.

  “She’s buying something,” I said. “It’s a store. What do you think?”

  “This world is making me crazy. That’s what I think. Cray-ay-zee!”

  Charlotte pushed the door open, the bell jingled, and she marched inside. I followed. Right away, I saw Mrs. Barker. She was standing at the counter, with her back to the entrance. She was wearing a white blouse and a pair of emerald trousers. What are they called, the short ones? Capri pants? I think that’s the name. I wondered whether she had dressed to match the colour scheme of her car. Leslie, the Odegaards’ daughter, was waiting on the other side of the counter. She had her hand pressed against a book she’d been reading, holding it open at a certain page. At the peal of the bell, she looked up. She was wearing those heavy glasses she always wore, with lenses like bottle bottoms. I think she was borderline blind.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi-ho,” said Charlotte. “Hello there, Mrs. Barker. What’s cookin’?”

  “Hello, children.” Mrs. Barker looked back at Leslie and waved impatiently. “Oh — why not make it Du Maurier? I’ll have a pack of Du Maurier. King size.”

  Almost at once, I realized the woman was drunk — drunk again. There was something not quite right about the way she steadied herself against the counter to keep from swaying. She had to work at it just a little bit too hard. She was having trouble with her money, too, fumbling with the bills. But she managed to pay for her cigarettes, and she hurried out of the store.

  Charlotte and Leslie began chattering to each other; they were pals at school. Meanwhile, I wandered over to the candy counter, where the chocolate bars were displayed. Leslie looked up. She had her dark-brown hair knotted in a ponytail, which was a switch. She mostly wore braids.