Swimming with Horses

by Oakland Ross

  “The usual …?” she said.

  I stiffened at once. “The what …?”

  “You know — Turkish delight and a Tahiti Treat? That’s what you always get.”

  She’d noticed? Why had she noticed? I was tempted to select something different now, just to prove her wrong. But in the end I got the same things I always did. As it turned out, there was enough money left over to buy Charlotte a small brown paper bag of jujubes and a half-pint carton of chocolate milk.

  I slid the change into the pocket of my shorts and looked up. “Why are there two As in Odegaard?”

  Leslie frowned for a few moments, then brightened. “Why are there two Ls in Mitchell   ?”

  When I didn’t say anything, she tilted her head, and her glasses wobbled on her nose.

  “Well …?”

  Just then, we heard a huge roar outside, followed by an even louder metallic crash. The three of us hurried out onto the verandah. The disturbance had come from the direction of Weintrub’s Garage. Mrs. Barker had somehow managed to drive her car backward across the street before piling straight into another vehicle in Weintrub’s earthen parking lot. Steam sang from the radiator of the car she’d hit — the engine must have been running at the time — and the Peugeot’s wheels spun in the dirt, making a high-pitched whine. It seemed Mrs. Barker still had her foot pressed down on the accelerator. Mr. Weintrub hobbled out of the garage and managed to haul the woman from her car. At once, the whining stopped. Then he went back and switched off the ignition of the car she’d struck.

  We remained where we were, watching events unfold. It wasn’t long before Hilary showed up. I guess she must have been the only one home at the Barkers’ place when Mr. Weintrub trudged back into the garage and got on the phone. He was reporting what had happened, I guessed. Hilary arrived behind the wheel of Colonel Barker’s old pickup. It was clear that she had come to collect Mrs. Barker, who was pretty hysterical by now, not to mention drunk, but otherwise unhurt. Hilary climbed out of the truck. She was wearing blue jeans, a beige T-shirt, and a pair of cowboy boots. Her hair was tied back in a sort of bun. Mrs. Barker immediately started to shout at her.

  “Harlot! Slut! Home wrecker!”

  Hilary barely acknowledged the woman. Instead, she kept shifting her gaze to take in Bruce Gruber, who had shuffled out of the garage and now stood in the parking lot, chest thrust out, wiping his greasy hands on a towel. He kept trading glances with Hilary. Twice, he did something with his eyes, something I had never seen anyone do before — not a wink but a kind of wowing of the eyes. It was both subtle and brief, so brief as to be almost imperceptible, but I noticed it, and it struck me as something significant, like a new and important word in a foreign language I was just beginning to learn. I wasn’t completely sure what it meant, that expression, but I did not like it one bit. I wanted to get out of there.

  “Come on, Charlotte,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “What …? Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  And we left before Hilary could say anything to me. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to anyway. She was too busy making eyes at Bruce Gruber. She didn’t even look at me. It was as if I weren’t even there.

  For three days following that afternoon, Hilary failed to call. There was no explanation, nothing, just silence. It was only after those three days had crawled by that the telephone on our kitchen wall consented to ring. My mother summoned me down from my room and handed me the receiver. I recognized Hilary’s voice at once, and I felt a pressure building in my chest. I expected her to tell me why she hadn’t called. I expected her to suggest something to do with horses, about resuming our lessons. But she did neither. Instead, she asked if I wanted to see a movie that night at the Newburgh Drive-In, and I, idiot that I was, thought she was asking me out on a date. I already knew what movie was playing at the drive-in — Son of Flubber. It was a stupid children’s movie, but I didn’t care. I wanted to blurt out yes, but something held me back. I was supposed to be angry, because of Hilary’s failure to call.

  “Look,” she said. “I don’t have much time. Do you want to come?”

  “Yes,” I said. Weakling.

  After Hilary hung up, I replaced the receiver in its cradle. I turned to walk away and immediately felt a sense of weightlessness. Then my hands started to shake.

  “Who was that?” My mother was sorting laundry in the dining room. “Was that who I think it was?”

  “Hilary Anson,” I said. I shuffled out of the kitchen and slumped down in a chair at the dining table.

  “Hmm. I don’t think much of that. What did she want?”

  “To go to the movies.”

  “When? Not tonight?”

  “Yes. I think. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Oh, you weren’t?” My mother struck a paper match and lit a Matinée. She blew out the flame and took a puff of her cigarette. She looked at me, smoke fluttering out of her nostrils. “There will be how many of you going?”

  “I’m not sure.” Going, she had said, as opposed to not going. “I don’t know. A bunch.”

  “And who will be driving?”

  “Hilary. I guess.”

  “I don’t trust that girl. No one does.” She blew out a contrail of smoke. “Well, we’ll see.”

  I knew what that meant. It meant I could go. She even gave me some money to cover admission and snacks.

  Hilary showed up at eight o’clock that evening.

  “Don’t be late,” said my mother. She was the one in charge. It was my father’s bridge night — out playing bridge with the boys.

  “No worries,” said Hilary. “We’ll be back in a jiff.”

  She made a pantomime of clutching me by the scruff of my neck and marching me along the walkway. There was no one else in the car, a rental. Mrs. Barker’s Peugeot was down for repairs. Possibly Bruce Gruber was working on the car right at that moment. I didn’t really think about that. Nor did I pay much attention to the reddish bruise on Hilary’s cheek, the result of a scrape or something — or maybe someone had hit her. I should have asked her about that, but I didn’t. I was going out on a date with Hilary Anson; that was all I could think about. I decided — right then, right there — that this evening marked the moment in my life when I finally entered adulthood. I would no longer concern myself with childish things. I would set them aside.

  That was what I told myself, but I was to be badly disappointed. Instead of heading straight north along Sixth Line, the most direct route to Newburgh, Hilary turned left and drove into Hatton. She pulled up at Weintrub’s Garage, which was closed. At once, I felt a grim premonition — Bruce Gruber. I might have known he would be a part of this. And, sure enough, here he was, leaning against the side of his own car, a shiny black Ford Thunderbird that he’d bought second-hand and was fixing up, judging by its glossy new paint job and the custom wheel rims.

  I looked at Hilary. “What …?”

  “You’ll be my bodyguard tonight, hey,” she said. “I need reinforcements.” She rolled down her window, looked up at Bruce, and smiled, batting her eyes. “Howzit?”

  Bruce glared down at me. “What’s with the kid?”

  FIFTEEN

  Hilary

  South Africa, Winter 1962

  IT WAS WINTER IN NATAL, and Mrs. Anson was laid up with the flu. From her bed she wrote to Hilary at least three times a week, recounting a litany of woe. By now Hilary was toughing out the early winter in her new place of confinement, a boarding school in Jozi — a species of prison in its way. Here she plotted her escape. First she would break out of school, which would not be difficult at all. The problem lay in figuring out what to do next. Rescue Muletsi, yes. But how? There had to be a way. All day long she racked her brains for an answer, but she wasn’t coming up with much.

  Meanwhile, she read her mother’s letters, long, meticulous accounts of gossip and sorrow. It was winter now, Mrs. Anson wrote, and the days sloped past, unusually inclement, abnormally wet.
Miserable as it was, the unseasonable weather suited the mood at the Anson farm. To take his mind off his troubles, Hilary’s father spent much of his time these blustery days roaming his large estate on horseback. Hilary could easily imagine him galloping across the crests of hills, thrashing at things with a polo mallet while groaning in perpetual discomfort. She wondered whether the man would ever be able to look her straight in the eyes again, assuming he ever had.

  Only once had he even broached the subject of her disgrace, and that had been to reject her claims, the charges she had levelled against Jack — all lies, as far as her father was concerned. Likewise, he avoided speaking of the matter to anyone else. It was too painful to dwell on, finished and done. Instead, according to Hilary’s mother, he had returned with a vengeance to the labours he knew best, filling the long days with his professional dealings, his mining interests, and the strange vagaries of politics. When there was time to spare, he rode.

  Mrs. Anson wrote that the new horse he’d got, the stallion named South Wind, was a rare source of consolation, helping to take his mind off his family troubles — in other words, what his daughter had done. But this provisional peace was not to last. Instead, the phone rang — a telephone call from an old friend of his, now serving the republic as a judge in Pietermaritzburg. That call upended everything.

  Hilary’s mother related what little she knew. It had been late morning when the phone rang at the Ansons’ home. After fielding the call, one of the maids had been obliged to haul on a pair of tall rubber boots and stomp up into the wild meadows where her master was staggering about, on foot this time, destroying things with his cane, slashing at weeds and wildflowers, at errant blades of grass that had had the effrontery to grow too tall for his liking.

  “The telephone, baas,” she said.

  Without a word, Daniel Anson lumbered back down to the great house, where he thudded inside and wrenched the receiver from another servant. It may well have occurred to him to wonder, as he often did, just how many domestic workers he employed. No bloody idea. He could never keep track of the lot. Hilary’s mother listened in on the bedroom extension, as was her common practice. She shielded the mouthpiece with her hand.

  Hilary’s father stood in the vestibule downstairs and bellowed into the apparatus. “Go on. Speak, damn it.”

  It was Benjamin Greene on the line. Justice Benjamin Greene. Friend of his youth.

  “The boy is out of jail,” the judge said.

  “Boy …? What boy?”

  “The Dadla boy. The one that took a run at your stable manager.”

  “What? They let him go?”

  “No. He broke out, he and some other men.”

  “Broke out …?”

  “Yes. You know — escaped.”

  “You don’t say.” Hilary could picture her father worrying at his forehead with the heel of his free hand. “And this is of interest to me, why?”

  “Just thought you’d want to know, that’s all. Well, of course you would.”

  “Of course …?” She could almost hear Daniel Anson’s voice rising, his mood testy as ever. “Why of course? What are you insinuating, man?”

  “Forgive me,” said Justice Benjamin Greene. “I over-spoke. Please. My regards to your dear wife.”

  Hilary sat up on her bed at once, clutching the notepaper in both hands. She peered back down at the paper’s surface, scribbled with her mother’s faint and spidery script. She had to read the passage two more times to be certain she understood it right. Bloody frigging hell. All this time she had been tormenting herself, struggling to come up with some means of achieving this very result, and now it had happened without her having to lift a finger. Who could explain it? Still, there it was. Muletsi was free, whereabouts unknown.

  As for the phone call from Justice Greene, Hilary’s father didn’t even both to say thank you. He just slammed the receiver back into its cradle. Hilary could imagine what he was feeling — a need to sit down, all his bulk suddenly more than he could manage, sweat prickling at his brow, diverse organs churning in his gut. She could imagine what he was thinking. All of a sudden, it would seem to him as if no time had passed at all. It would seem as if he was only just now learning about his daughter and the kaffir boy, as raw as if he were hearing about it for the very first time — as raw and, to him, as odious.

  Not so for Hilary. To her, these were details — minutiae either observed or imagined but unimportant either way. Beside the point. The point was this: Muletsi had got out of jail. A day later she received a letter from Muletsi’s mother, imparting the very same news. Mrs. Dadla said she was reluctant to burden Hilary with troubles not her own, but felt she had no choice. Not to share would be worse. The next day, after emptying an emergency account that was kept in her name at First National Bank, Hilary boarded an airplane bound for Durban. When she got to Durban, she would take a taxi up to Mooi River. Her father would have to pay for that, too.

  SIXTEEN

  Sam

  Ontario, Summer 1963

  “WE’RE NOT GOIN’ TO the fuckin’ movies with him,” said Bruce, pointing at me. “I’m tellin’ yuh straight out.”

  But he was wrong about that. After a brief but heated discussion between Hilary and Bruce, the three of us wound up driving to Newburgh in Bruce Gruber’s car. We left Mrs. Barker’s rental in the parking lot beside the garage. Bruce was fuming mad — or not fuming, exactly. It was the colder kind of anger. The silent kind. He drove as though he were piloting a racing car. He kept his foot heavy on the gas, gunning the engine while overtaking slower vehicles. At every intersection, he squealed his tires, leaving dark skid marks on the pavement.

  A worthless runt — that was the way he saw me. And I was a runt, compared to him. He was eighteen years old, give or take, and had a large, slab-like frame. His hair was dark, oiled, and combed into an exaggerated duckbill at the front. His eyes were squinty and narrow, frequently bloodshot. When he wasn’t dressed in a mechanic’s coveralls, he generally wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt, usually with a package of cigarettes tucked into a roll in the right sleeve just below his shoulder. Export “A”s. He had a vocabulary of approximately twenty words, about half of which were variants of the verb to fuck.

  I settled myself against the door in the back seat and peered out the window at the green countryside streaming past. Compensating. That was the word. The guy felt embarrassed because he hadn’t stood up to Hilary, and now he was compensating by showing off at the wheel. Pretty soon, we would all be killed.

  “What’s the show?” Bruce said.

  We were about halfway to Newburgh. This was the first coherent phrase he’d uttered since we’d left Hatton.

  Hilary told him. Son of Flubber. She said she was sorry about that. It was the only film playing.

  “Whadayuh mean?” Bruce blasted the horn at an oncoming vehicle. He shook his fist at the driver as the two cars sailed past each other. “It’s suppose to be fuckin’ A. Even better than The Absent-Minded Professor.”

  “Well, it’s all there is. I don’t choose the films.”

  “Films …?” he said, as if this were a word from a foreign language.

  “Films. Movies.”

  “Fuck.”

  Things went downhill from there.

  At the drive-in, I offered to buy snacks and drinks for everyone, a sort of peace offering. But this turned out to be a mistake. Possibly, whatever I did would have been a mistake that night, but the food run did not go well. First, I didn’t have enough money, and so I had to hurry back to borrow some from Hilary. Next, when I again returned to the car — weighed down at last with hot dogs, french fries, and drinks of pop, all arranged on a cardboard tray — it turned out I’d mixed up the condiments.

  “I can’t fuckin’ stand relish,” said Bruce. “Makes me sick.” He opened the door and tried to scrape the offending substance away with his fingers. When that was done, he bit into the hot dog, which was cold by now. “Cold as ice. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
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  Even worse, I had got vinegar for the french fries instead of tomato ketchup. I thought everyone put vinegar on their french fries, everyone in the world. Bruce Gruber seemed to be an exception. He opened his door again and spat a mouthful of french-fried potato onto the gravel.

  “Eeee-yew. What the fuck was that?”

  After a while Bruce reached over and fumbled for something near Hilary’s feet. When he straightened back up, he was clutching a liquor bottle — Hiram Walker Special Old Rye. Rye is a poor man’s drink. I knew that much. My parents and almost all their friends drank Scotch. Bruce twisted off the cap.

  “Here,” he said to Hilary. He splashed a generous portion of rye into her paper cup and then poured some more into his own — quite a bit more. He glanced at me in the rear-view mirror and held up the bottle. “You …?”

  “Uh. Sure.” I reached forward with my cup, which was about two-thirds full of Mountain Dew. “Thanks.”

  Bruce tilted the bottle and laughed, shaking his head. “Little prick. A drinker. Hah.”

  “That’s enough,” said Hilary.

  “Don’t spill it, you retard.”

  The large paper cup was now full to the brim, and some of the liquid splattered onto the seat. I raised the cup to my lips and tried to slurp a little of its contents, careful so that no more would spill. It tasted awful. But I kept sipping from the cup all the same, and after a while it didn’t seem so bad. We stayed like that for a time, slurping our drinks and picking at what remained of our food, no one saying anything. The trailers were flashing on the huge screen.

  Soon Hilary began to laugh. “Do you know the word in Afrikaans for a liquor store?” she said, seemingly out of nowhere. I guess the rye made her think about alcohol in general.

  “Afri-cans?” said Bruce. “What the fuck is that?”

  “The language that Afrikaners speak. The Dutch people in South Africa. Where I’m from.” She laughed again. “Liquor store,” she repeated. “Do you know what the word is for liquor store in the language those people speak?”