Swimming with Horses

by Oakland Ross

  He was waiting for her in the arrivals area after her plane touched down in Toronto.

  “Hip, hip!” he said before rounding up a porter to deal with her bags. He led her out to the parking lot, where his Cadillac Eldorado awaited. “To horse!”

  She wondered why he spoke with an English accent. Wasn’t she supposed to be in Canada? Did they not have an accent of their own in this country, hey? Well, it didn’t matter. She was here now, and she had a plan to carry out. Lord, did she ever.

  Three months spiralled by, and then it was done.

  On that final evening — the night that turned out to be her last in Canada — she drove to the outdoor bioscope with that boy, Sam Mitchell, the one who’d been her loyal friend all that summer long. They paid their admission at the entrance and drove on in, an outing that would establish an alibi. It was just the two of them this time, Hilary Anson and Sam Mitchell.

  Her treat.

  FORTY-NINE

  Sam

  Ontario, Summer 1963

  HILARY SWITCHED ON THE right-turn signal, slowed down, and peeled off the highway toward the entrance to the Newburgh Drive-In. I was in the passenger seat. At the ticket gate, she rolled down her window.

  “Two,” she said to the girl in the booth.

  The girl was plump with a round face, her lips a thick smudge of ruby-red lipstick. She was chewing bubble gum, making a little popping sound each time the inflated membrane burst.

  “Two …? ” the girl said, laying stress on the word, as if there were some discrepancy between that number and the quantity of people in the car.

  “Yes,” said Hilary, just as emphatically. “That’s right. Two.” She turned to me. “Sam, sit up. Let the nice lady see you.”

  I did as she said, as always.

  “See …?” said Hilary. “Two of us. See?”

  “Hold your horses. I heard you the first time. No need to make a capital case.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “What …?”

  “Your name. Mine’s Hilary Anson. This here’s Sam Mitchell. What’s yours, hey?”

  “Bonnie.”

  “Bonnie what?”

  “Just Bonnie.”

  “All right then, ‘Just Bonnie.’ Two tickets, please.”

  In due course, the tickets appeared, and Hilary handed over way too much money.

  “Keep the change,” she said.

  “What …? This is too —”

  “Never mind. I’m feeling generous, that’s all.”

  “Fine. Thanks.” The ticket clerk rolled her eyes, shrugged. She popped another bubble of gum and snatched the membrane back into her mouth with her tongue before returning her attention to her magazine, devoted to celebrities in Hollywood.

  “Pleasure,” said Hilary. She pronounced it plezha, something like that. “Well, bye.” She waited for a response. “I said goodbye, hey.”

  Only now did the girl at last look up and fix her gaze on Hilary directly, eye to eye. She glanced at me. Then she delved back into her magazine. “Fine,” she said. “Bye. Happy now?”

  “You see?” Hilary made a face. “Was that so difficult?”

  But the girl did not respond.

  Hilary eased the car into the large outdoor theatre with its rows of individual parking bays, each equipped with a wired speaker mounted on a metal post. After manoeuvring into a space at the back, near a smattering of other cars, Hilary announced that she craved a cheeseburger. With chips.

  “Fries,” I said. There was a ringing in my head that wouldn’t go away.

  “Hey …?”

  “We say fries. French fries, really.”

  “Oh, right. Actually, I knew that.”

  We both trudged across the lot toward the snack bar. There, Hilary got into a strange discussion with one of the servers, having to do with the proper way to order french-fried potatoes. Was it acceptable, Hilary wondered, to say “chips”? The server had his hair in a net and didn’t seem to have any idea what she was getting at. He asked Hilary if she wanted chips. He pointed along the counter to a display of foil packages containing Humpty Dumpty potato chips.

  “No, not crisps,” she said. “Chips.”

  Finally, it got sorted out, and we both carried our purchases back to the car.

  When I look back on that evening now, I have the clear impression that Hilary was trying to draw attention to herself and to me, to ensure that we both were noticed and, I suppose, remembered. I didn’t really dwell on it at the time. It seemed puzzling; that was all. I didn’t figure it out until later, when it ceased to seem puzzling at all.

  Besides, I had other matters on my mind. Just that morning, I had retrieved the pair of eyeglasses, the ones Hilary and I had found down in the quarry. I already had a suspicion about whose they were, but I asked Charlotte all the same. She and Leslie were school chums, after all.

  “Where did you get those?” she said. “They’re Leslie’s.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course. D’you think I’m a total idiot? Where did you get them?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Later, I rode my bike into Hatton to turn in Leslie’s glasses at the store. I’d expected to find her at the counter, where she seemed to have spent most of her time that summer, but there was no sign of her. Instead, her father was alone in the store, tottering back and forth on his game leg, occasionally pausing to straighten a box or jar that seemed out of alignment. I doubt he was more than forty years old, and yet he walked with a limp. Something to do with the war.

  I offered him the glasses. “They’re Leslie’s, I think.”

  He didn’t take them, or not at once. Instead, he stared at my outstretched hand for what seemed a very long time, saying nothing but clearly upset. Then he took the glasses from me. He proceeded to turn them over and over in his hands, as if to be sure they really were what they seemed. I noticed the knuckles of both his hands were abraded and raw, the skin broken in places. I wondered about that. I wondered if he had been hitting someone or something. I wondered if he had been hitting Davey.

  “I found them in the quarry,” I said, meaning the glasses. I started to explain what had happened down there, what I had seen and heard, but I could tell this was not welcome information. I was thinking that one of the voices I’d heard that night had belonged to Davey. Her own brother. I was pretty sure of it. I was thinking that such a thing could not possibly happen, not in this world or in any other. And yet it seemed it had.

  After a while, Mr. Odegaard spoke. “You’re the singer?” he said. “The singer on the horse?”

  I guessed he meant the South African songs I had belted out that night. Someone must have told him about that — Leslie, maybe, or else Davey. That had been dumb, my singing those songs, but at the time it had been all I could think of. And maybe it had helped. At least, it had stopped whatever had been going on, and that was something.

  “Well …?  ” he said.

  “Yes.” My throat was dry, and it was hard to swallow. “That was me.” After a pause, I said, “I hope Leslie’s okay.”

  Again, he looked down at his daughter’s eyeglasses, and now he shrugged. He said he hoped so, too. He said that time would tell. I remember he was wearing a brown windbreaker, even though it was still summer. He slipped those glasses into the side pocket of his jacket.

  “Thank you,” he said. He hesitated, and then he did something completely unexpected. He reached out with his injured right hand and took mine in his. He shook my hand. “Thank you,” he said again. “It was brave, what you did.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that, but it didn’t hurt too much to hear him say it. I didn’t know what else to say, so I just said thank you. I told him again that I hoped Leslie would be all right. Then I turned and left the store and rode away on my bike.

  Now, at the Newburgh Drive-In, Hilary rolled down her window and reached for the speaker, suspending the device on the half-open pane. She turned the sound level down, c
utting off a bunch of advertising prattle about the food and drinks available at the snack bar. I had thought she might have a broken nose, from the blows she’d taken from Quinton Vasco that night in the quarry, but her nose seemed to be okay. She had another black eye, though. Probably, the punch was responsible for that, the punch or the kick.

  “Do you want to listen?” She turned and looked at me. “I don’t, really. I just want to watch.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Whatever you like.”

  Actually, I did want to listen. The feature film was The Pink Panther, starring Peter Sellers. It was supposed to be hilarious. Maybe it would take my mind off all the stuff that was whirling around in my head. But, as usual, I went along with Hilary. For a while we just slumped there in silence, staring up at the giant screen. Before too long it began to rain — just drizzle at first. Then it started raining harder, and finally it began to pour. You couldn’t make out much of anything on the movie screen, just an assortment of human faces, all seeming to melt in the glaze of water slithering down the windshield. Hilary switched on the wipers. A few minutes later she turned them off. Right away, the glass was transformed into a slurry of hazy celluloid images and splattering rain. She ground out a cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Come over here.”

  “What …?”

  “You heard me. Come here.”

  “Okay.” I shifted my weight to be closer to her. “Like this?”

  “More or less.”

  She ran a hand through my hair, and my scalp tingled at the sleekness of her touch. A cold pulse rippled up my spine.

  “Remember that day?” she said. “That time in the sugar bush? You were looking at my breasts.”

  “I … what?   ”

  “I saw you. I’m right, am I not?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. But the words were barely audible, even to me. I tried again. “Yes.”

  “Wasn’t that nice?”

  “I … I mean —”

  “You mean it wasn’t nice?” She stroked my hair again. “How can you say that?”

  I stammered something, some words. I didn’t even know what they were.

  “Do you want to see again?”

  I closed my eyes, not quite believing what I was hearing. I opened my eyes again. “Yes.”

  “Here.” She reached up and undid a button of her blouse, then another. “Here. You can look. Just look. That’s all.”

  I was shivering all over, every part of my body, my hands, everything.

  She removed her blouse, one sleeve first, then the other. Next, she reached behind her back, shifted her shoulders to the side, and the white fabric of her brassiere fell loose, tumbling from her breasts. She slipped off the straps.

  I felt a buzzing in my head, as if I were dizzy, as if I were about to faint.

  “Do you like them?”

  I couldn’t speak. My head felt as though it were trying to spin through space, as though it might snap free of my neck at any instant and simply hurtle away, never to be seen again. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t stop staring at her breasts. At first, I couldn’t. Then something made me look up, and I saw that she was crying. She was actually crying. Even in the dim light, I could make out the glow of the tears sliding down her cheeks, and then I realized that I was crying, too.

  “I’m evil,” she said.

  I swallowed. “No, you’re not.”

  “I am. I swear I am.”

  “Maybe you’re just upset.”

  She shook her head, gave a bitter laugh. “I’m what …? What did you say?”

  “You’re upset?”

  “Upset, am I? Is that what I am? Upset? What makes you say that?”

  I shrugged.

  She nodded, as if my shrug had some kind of deep meaning. She was practically sobbing now.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You’re sorry …? Why?”

  “I just am. For everything.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  I said, “Maybe you should … I don’t know. Maybe put your …”

  “My clothes? Put my clothes back on?” She sniffled, half laugh, half sob. “It’s true. You’re right. I should.” She struggled with her brassiere but finally managed to put it right. She slid her arms into the sleeves of her blouse, first one then the other, and refastened the buttons. “There. Is that better?”

  “I’m not sure.” I put a hand to my brow, checking for dampness, which there was. I swept some of it away and shook my head. “I think I’m too young for this.”

  “I think I am, too. I think we all are.” She tried to wipe her tears away with the heels of her palms. “As for you, my boykie, I think you’re wise beyond your years.”

  “That’s not true at all. I’m average.”

  “No, Sam. You’re not. Average is the one thing you most certainly are not. If you remember anything I’ve ever said to you, please remember that.”

  “Okay.” I said nothing for a while. Then I said, “Do you think we could watch the movie? I mean, just, you know, as friends?”

  “Yebo,” she said. “I think we could do that.”

  She reached over and switched on the ignition. Then she turned on the windshield wipers. The rain had slowed, and now you could see.

  “Here,” she said. “Come over here. It’s okay. I won’t bite.”

  I did as she said. I settled myself against her side.

  “Volume …?” I said.

  “Oh, right.”

  She raised the volume, and then she put her right arm around my shoulders, and I rested my head on her chest. We both stayed like that, both of us watching Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther on the huge outdoor screen, in the rain. After that night at the Newburgh Drive-In, I would never see Hilary Anson again.

  As for Quinton Vasco, they found his body the next day.

  PART FOUR

  FIFTY

  Sam

  Ontario, 1963–1990

  RIGHT FROM THE OUTSET, the police fixed their attention on Bruce Gruber. That was no surprise. He’d had run-ins with the law before. Besides, it turned out that there’d been a series of unexplained incidents in Kelso that summer — livestock being shot while grazing. Bruce was already under suspicion on that account, thanks to one or two eyewitness reports. I already knew that he, or Edwin or Davey, was responsible for the bullet that hit my horse.

  The police obtained a warrant to search the Grubers’ home on a tumbledown farm a mile or so outside Hatton. Bruce was still living with his parents at the time. The search turned up an unlicensed Makarov pistol along with a box of cartridges that matched the rounds used to kill Quinton Vasco. The weapon itself was smeared with Bruce’s fingerprints. Not only that, but he also confessed to the crime, and nothing would make him recant. He said he had stolen the gun and shells from Hilary Anson and had shot Quinton Vasco out of jealousy, pure and simple. He was guilty, he said — and that was that.

  As for Hilary, she was gone. Colonel Barker drove her to the Malton airport just outside Toronto only a day after our outing at the Newburgh Drive-In. She must have known she would be leaving the next day, yet she said nothing. She left no message or, anyway, not for me. She simply stepped aboard an airplane and vanished. No phone call. No letter. At first I thought I would go out of my mind, and maybe I did. It was around then, after all, that I started to have these panic spells of mine. Anxiety attacks, I guess you’d call them — something I had never suffered from before. For a time my mother drove me down to Toronto once a week so that I could talk to a man there, a therapist, who taught me some calming techniques. Eventually, they seemed to help.

  Still, after Hilary nothing was the same. I’m not saying it has been so terrible, my life. Just different, I guess. No Hilary, hey. I liken the experience to the lives that I imagine anosmics must lead. Anosmics: people who lack a sense of smell. It wouldn’t be so horrible to be anosmic. You could still see beauty, hear music, touch skin. But something would be lost, something you woul
d miss.

  The provincial championships went on as scheduled that year, and our team won the preliminary division, no thanks to me. I scraped through the three days of competition without being eliminated — and without saying a word more than necessary to Edwin Duval — and then my score was dropped, in keeping with the formula in use at the time. As the two leading riders on the winning team, Edwin and Janet went on to compete in the national finals, held that year in Alberta. I seem to recall they did pretty well.

  Not long after that Bruce Gruber was convicted of Quinton Vasco’s murder, just as everyone had expected. I learned he was just seventeen years old, and that came as a surprise; he looked older. On account of his age, he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, the maximum allowed for a minor. Around this time the Odegaards sold their store and moved away. Before long the Duvals moved away, too. Rumours circulated for a while — something about a rape, possibly involving the Odegaard girl — and then died down. This was the way scandals were dealt with in Kelso in those days. You went someplace else, and in time things blew over. You hoped they did.

  As for those two massive cannons that Hilary and I had discovered, hidden away deep in the Quinton Vasco lands — that part of the story was eventually cleared up, too. Quinton Vasco was a sort of renegade inventor, with a specialty in ballistics and a penchant for right-wing politics. Eventually, the Toronto Star conducted a big investigation of the man’s operations. His original plan had been to establish a testing site in Kelso for a long-range weapon he had designed, a howitzer called the GC-45, which meant “Gun, Canada, 45-calibre.” The two cannons Hilary and I had stumbled upon were prototypes for the device, which was being developed under contract to the South African government. The project was delayed following Quinton Vasco’s death, but it did not stop. Years later, during the 1970s and 1980s, the GC-45 would prove to be an especially deadly part of Pretoria’s arsenal in its long war against Cuban and government forces in Angola. You can look it up. It’s all part of the public record now.

  Meanwhile, Quinton Vasco’s company — known as the Space Research Corporation — relocated its testing operations to a huge tract of land sprawling across the international border between Quebec and Vermont. Around the same time Vasco’s properties in Kelso were sold off for potential development as housing estates. Probably, that had been Plan B all along. In the end, the man’s death made little difference. The weapons project went ahead just the same. But who could have known that then?