Swimming with Horses

by Oakland Ross

  “Hey, easy. Easy, Della.”

  I slipped past her, drew back the bolt at her stall’s half-door, and pulled the door open. At once, she scrambled inside, but I could tell her movement was laboured, stiff. I looked down at my hand, and I saw blood.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Hilary

  South Africa, Winter 1962

  “BASUTOLAND,” SAID MRS. DADLA.

  Hilary looked up. “I’m sorry …?”

  The woman leaned closer. They had returned to her temporary home, and she looked slowly from side to side, as if to reassure herself that no one was listening. “Basutoland,” she repeated. It was the only word she said.

  Hilary knew what Basutoland was, a small territory perched high in the Drakensberg, a British protectorate enfolded on all sides by South Africa. She nodded at Mrs. Dadla, encouraging her to proceed. “Basutoland, yes — what of it?” But the woman simply adjusted the folds of her purple garment and said nothing more.

  Hilary took the older woman’s near silence as a sign of her discomfort, an indication that this discussion had reached its end. “I’ll come back,” she said. “Would that be all right? Tomorrow or the day after?”

  “Yes, daughter,” the woman replied. “You will be most welcome.”

  It wasn’t true. She would not be welcome at all. Muletsi’s vanishing act down by the soccer pitch had unnerved his mother badly. God knew what she meant by that cryptic, one-word message. Basutoland.

  Hilary said her goodbyes and then set out on her own through the slanting light of the early afternoon. The earth glowed red underfoot, and loose braids of smoke unravelled from an array of rusty stovepipe chimneys, melting into the blue depths overhead. The bleat of goats stuttered from somewhere not far off, carried on the cool breeze. Eventually, she reached her mother’s car. She climbed inside, turned the ignition, and let the motor idle for a time.

  She put back her head. Basutoland …? What did the woman mean? She reached up with one hand to massage her forehead, as if this would somehow help to order her thoughts — and maybe it did because the explanation hit her with the force of a revelation. One moment, bafflement. The next moment, she understood what the woman meant. She saw that it wasn’t enough for her merely to want to see Muletsi, to be on hand. What good was that? What good to him? What good to her? Had she travelled all the way from Joburg for that? A frigging social call? Well, it wouldn’t do. What Muletsi needed was help — concrete, actual help. And now she saw a way to provide it.

  She had half a mind to hurry back into the heart of Bruntville, find Mrs. Dadla, and tell her she understood — understood and agreed. But she could see that it would be better not to say anything now. First, she had to think this idea through. Already, she had a sense that her sudden revelation — Basutoland — was not quite as straightforward as it had seemed only a few moments earlier.

  She took a deep breath and gazed out through the windscreen. Clustered along the track in front of her, a flock of children had paused in their play or their errands, and now all were watching this white stranger in their midst. Several reached up with their long-fingered hands to shield their eyes from the sun — like a platoon of miniature soldiers coming to a desultory salute. An adult or two glanced over at the car, as well, just for a moment, then quickly looked away.

  Never mind. She had an idea, one that might — just might — enable Muletsi to go free. She jostled the gearshift into first and released the handbrake. Carefully, she manoeuvred the car along the dirt lane that wound ahead. She crept out of Bruntville, past the children, who parted like the sea, calling out and waving. She did not wave back, suddenly wishing to avoid drawing any additional attention to herself, to avoid that above all. She kept both her hands clamped to the wheel and did not wave at anyone — though God, in his infinite wisdom, must have known how much she wanted to.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sam

  Ontario, Summer 1963

  I SUSPECTED AT ONCE that Della had been shot. For one thing, she was trembling with pain and what must have been trauma. She certainly wouldn’t let me get anywhere near the wound, but I didn’t need to. I could tell just by looking. The injury looked the way I imagined a bullet wound would look — like a lot of blood.

  “You keep a watch on her,” I told Charlotte. “I’m going to call Dr. Feasby.”

  He was the local veterinarian and regularly came over to our place whenever Pablo or Della had some medical problem that required a vet’s attention. I ran from the barn and up across the lawn toward the house. Along the way, I practically ran smack into Hilary, who was striding in the opposite direction.

  “Della’s been shot,” I said.

  “She … what?”

  “Shot. I think. In the rump. I’m going to call the vet.”

  Hilary headed for the barn while I got on the phone. I spoke to Dr. Feasby’s wife, who said she would contact him on the two-way radio, tell him to drive straight over. A half hour later he turned up, wearing rubber boots, a pair of gigantic blue bib overalls, and a leather cowboy hat. It turned out I was right. Della had been shot. She’d been hit in the croup section of her hindquarters by what Dr. Feasby said was either a spent bullet or a ricochet. Luckily, it wasn’t as serious as I had thought. She’d suffered a fairly shallow flesh wound, he said, not overly dangerous, not something to get too worked up about.

  “Except that someone out there is taking potshots at horses.” Dr. Feasby chewed on a stick of hay. “We might want to get worked up about that. Any idea who might have done it?”

  I said no, none.

  By this time Hilary had driven off in Mrs. Barker’s rental car. I was pretty sure where she was going. She knew as well as I did who had shot Della. That idiot. First he’d stolen her gun — not to mention our tack — and now this. The theft was bad enough, but this was incomparably worse. What kind of person would shoot a horse? I pictured myself smiting Bruce Gruber’s head with a great thudding rock. That seemed like an appropriate response. Why I didn’t name him now, I couldn’t say. I was thinking of Hilary, I guess.

  As he treated Della’s injury, Dr. Feasby kept up a running commentary, explaining what he was doing. He first administered an anaesthetic — not as easy as it sounds — and then removed the bullet with a pair of forceps. That done, he washed the area with a saline solution. Next, he applied a disinfectant and a sealing gel to keep the injury clean. He said he would come back in a couple of days to stitch the wound closed, but for now it was probably better to let it drain.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the shell casing I had stuffed in there. “Look,” I said. “I found this.”

  “What …? Where …?” The vet plucked the casing from my hand and peered at it with one eye closed. “Where did you get this?”

  I shrugged. “On the ground. It was lying there. Someone shot out the tire on our car … just now. Maybe it was —”

  “The same idiot?” Dr. Feasby was still inspecting the casing. “I’d say that’s a good bet.” He looked at me, both eyes open now. “Can I hold on to this?”

  I shrugged again. “Sure. I guess.” I figured it couldn’t do any harm.

  As for Della, it wasn’t long before she settled down. Pretty soon, she seemed almost back to normal, gazing out at us with those deep liquid eyes that horses have. Every couple of minutes, she ducked her head down for a gulp of water from the galvanized pail in her stall. All her adventures that day — setting off from the quarry, finding her own route home, being shot along the way — she seemed to have put all of it out of her mind by now. Horses are like that. They don’t brood about the past, or not any more than they need to, not if they can avoid it.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Jack

  South Africa, Winter 1962

  JACK PUSHED HIS WALLET back into his hip pocket and marched out of the Mooi River feed store. He yelled at a pair of those bloody kaffirs to get a move on. They were loading burlap sacks of oats and bran into the bed of his Land Rover, but they were t
aking their own sweet time about it. Lazy so-and-sos. “Get on with it!” he shouted. “I haven’t got all the goddamn day.”

  “Yes, baas,” one of them said, and the other one nodded. Both of them were shirtless, coated in grain dust, with oat pellets scattered through their hair. They scuttled over to the ramp to lug another hundred-pound sack between them. “No,” said Jack. “Each. One to each. For Chrissake, get a move on.” He watched as they did as he said. Each of them heaved a sack, wrapped both arms around it, and staggered over to Jack’s old bus. They were getting a move on now; you’d bloody well better believe it.

  He turned to the side and spat. The truth was he was raw with anger, felt a raging in his gut. He knew the girl was back. Everyone knew about it, all over the farm. Hilary Anson — home from Jozi. Among the servants it had been the primary subject of discussion for a couple of days now. He knew the girl had driven off in her mother’s Vauxhall, too, and he had a fair-to-middling idea as to her destination. He hawked his gob and spat again. Fair-to-middling — hell. He knew exactly where she’d gone.

  It was sickening, was what it was. Unnatural. People have different coloured skin — and they have different noses and different kinds of hair and different ways of going about their business — for just one reason under God. It’s so you can effing well tell them apart. Simple as that. So that each can stick to his own. It enraged him that anyone could think otherwise. It made him sick. Physically ill. Case in point. He’d been up in Lourenço Marques one time. Twice, really. That was where a lot of white men went, South African men, up to Mozambique, where they had cheap black women you could buy with a mug of gruel. Do with them as you pleased. No laws to prevent such goings-on up there, under Portuguese command.

  He had seen it with his own eyes: big pink-fleshed, baldpated Boers slamming their beer flagons to the table and running their paws up those black women’s short, tight skirts. Then off they’d go, upstairs or outside, staggering and guffawing, with their spectacles all cockeyed and with beer stains on their paunchy shirts, a squaw under each arm. Three times, Jack had gone up there, to see for himself.

  Well, a man is a man.

  But this was different, this business with Hilly. She was a white girl, and she was his by rights. In a manner of speaking, she was. The more he thought about it, the more he regarded matters in this very light. He was the one that loved the girl, the only one that ever had. He’d taken care of her when care was the one thing she’d most required. Attended to her needs. Reassured her when she was forlorn. Damned well taught her to ride. Had he not?

  By Christ, he had. By Christ, he bloody well had.

  He told the two kaffirs to keep on working. He had some errands to run. He hitched up his trousers and headed around the back of the feed store and out onto Lawrence Road — a big wide street, wide enough to bring a team of twelve oxen around 180 degrees in one good swing, or so he had heard it said. When he reached the first corner, he veered left. He did indeed have some errands to run, among them a commission of a personal nature. He had it in mind to buy a present for Hilary Anson, damned if he did not. He would bestow her with something to take note of him by, a coming-home gift for the homecoming queen — a plant of some kind, a flowering plant. That would do the job.

  As for himself, he was going to buy a gun. A gun, you say? Why was that? Did he not have a firearm in his possession already?

  Well, yes — a rifle. He had himself a rifle all right, the one that Daniel Anson had supplied him with for use in emergencies or to put away another one of those big horses when they pulled up lame with a shattered fetlock or a tendon bowed past all hope of repair. But a rifle wasn’t quite the thing for the business he had in mind just now. Too hard to conceal, for starters.

  A gun was what was needed. A revolver, there you are. You hold a revolver in your hand, people take note. They listen to what you have to say. They don’t come crashing through the barn with a bridle and a big pelham bit swinging in their hand. That was as shameful a piece of low animal cowardice as he had ever seen. It didn’t bear repeating, and he had it in mind to ensure that such a thing would never be contemplated again.

  When he reached Henk Viljoen’s store — Viljoen and Son, Firearms and Munitions — he turned and marched inside. The bell rang, and he said, “Henk, how you keeping?”

  “Like a pig in muck.” Henk Viljoen peered over a pair of half-lenses that were balanced on his nose. “And how about yourself?”

  “Splendid. If I could only breathe.” He had a cold in the head.

  “Ah, that’s the winter for you. Be over soon. Be summer again soon, Jack.”

  “So they say.”

  “Now, what can I do you for?”

  “Well, I’m looking to buy myself a gun.”

  “Smart lad. You came to the right place.” Henk Viljoen laughed and patted his belly. “Now, would that be a revolver, Jack, or a semi-automatic? I’ve got a fine lot of new Browning pistols. Nine-millimetre jobs. But, then, it depends. What do you want it for?”

  “Just a little protection.” He nodded back over his shoulder, toward the broad main street. “These days, with the lot you’ve got out there, a man can’t be too careful.”

  “Ain’t it just so,” said Henk. “Now, would you like to look at one of those Brownings?”

  “Why not? A look won’t kill me — or anyone else, either.” He smiled, all innocent-like. “And maybe you could show me some of your revolvers, too. It was a revolver I carried in the war, a Webley top-break.”

  “Fine machine,” said Henk Viljoen. “Got none in stock at the moment. How about a Smith & Wesson? Could be you might like one of those.”

  “Could be.” He thrummed his fingers on the wooden counter, like a drum roll. “Could be I just might.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Sam

  Ontario, Summer 1963

  I WAS AT HOME, walking from the house down toward the barn, when I heard a car crunching up the gravel lane behind me. Two days had dragged past since Della had been shot. I turned around and saw Hilary at the wheel of Mrs. Barker’s rental. She pulled up beside me.

  “Howzit?” I said.

  She just shook her head, didn’t say a word. I waited as she killed the engine and climbed from the car. She looked awful, pale and washed out. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her hair maybe could have used a wash. A cut of some kind had slit the left side of her upper lip, as if someone had hit her there. Her black eye hadn’t fully healed yet.

  She saw me looking and shrugged. “Could be worse.”

  She wore blue jeans and a white cotton blouse, and now stepped around to the rear of the car. She popped open the trunk — “the boot,” as she would say — and lo and behold: my saddle and bridle.

  I looked at her. “Where did you find them?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “No, really.”

  “I’m serious, my boykie. Just be glad you got your gear back, hey.”

  “What about you? Did you get your stuff, too?”

  “I did.”

  “And your backpack?”

  She just shrugged. I wondered about the gun. What had happened to the gun? I didn’t say anything, though — not about that. I just wrinkled my forehead and looked at her and didn’t stop looking until finally she spoke.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I shrugged. “You don’t look very well.”

  She pulled her sunglasses down from her forehead so they covered her eyes. “Let’s make a deal, Sam. When the other person doesn’t look well, chances are that she doesn’t feel well — and the last thing she wants to hear is that she doesn’t look well. Got it?”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not ‘okay.’ It’s much more than that. Half the secret to a successful life is knowing when to shut up. All right?”

  “Oui.”

  “Good. How’s Della?”

  “Better, I think. It must have been a spent bullet that hit her. It just went in and stopped. There’s no infection. Dr. Feasby said
I can start riding again anytime. He told me …” I hesitated.

  “What?”

  “He told me there’s something weird about the bullet.”

  “Weird, how?”

  It turned out that our veterinarian knew quite a bit about guns — guns and munition. I started to tell her what Dr. Feasby had said to me just that morning when he’d come back to stitch Della’s wound.

  “He said the shell casing —”

  “The what casing?” said Hilary.

  “Shell,” I said. “The shell casing. I found it by the car — you know, after they shot out the tire.” I told her what a shell casing was, something that even I knew thanks to all those Perry Mason shows.

  She stared at me with a look she had, a skeptical look, so I told her I was just repeating what Dr. Feasby had said. He said that thanks to the shell casing he’d managed to calculate the bullet’s calibre — nine by eighteen. He had never encountered those dimensions before, so he’d looked them up and learned that this round was all but unique to a Russian-built pistol called a Makarov. It was the standard-issue weapon for Soviet police. Anytime it was found outside the Soviet Union, it was almost surely illegal. He wondered who in Kelso could possibly be in possession of such a gun — and why.

  Hilary didn’t say anything at first. Then she said, “I see.” She adjusted her sunglasses. “That’s interesting.”

  “Yeah. I thought so, too.” I looked at her kind of sideways. “Did he give it back?”

  Again, Hilary paused. She seemed to be weighing her options. “Not so far.”

  I nodded. “Hilary. Why do you have a gun?”

  “I don’t. Not now.”

  “Yeah, but still. Why do you?”

  “I already told you, hey. Protection.” It made her feel safe, she said. Now it was gone.

  “Okay.” I gazed back at the open trunk, at my bridle and saddle. They seemed to be in decent shape, none the worse for wear. I looked back at her. “Why did he do it? Shoot Della? Why would anyone do that?”