by Ian Stansel
Lena listened for more, but nothing came. Finally the connection was lost and she closed her phone and stepped carefully down from the boulder.
When she got back to Rain and the horses she said, “It’s time to part ways, Rain. You’ve been better company than I deserve, but you need to head home now. Loop on back to that town we saw a bit ago. Call the house and get a hold of Riley. He’s getting the trailer ready. He’ll pick you up. It’ll take him a good few hours and I’ll be well on my way. You’re a good friend, but you’ve got to go now.”
Rain watched Lena, and the two women held each other’s gaze for several long moments before Rain said, “Okay.”
Lena said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah, okay.”
The exchange was far simpler than Lena had expected. She’d anticipated resistance, talk of loyalty, duty, sisterly solidarity. She had to admit that, in some ways, she’d wanted something of a protest, for Rain to argue with her like she had the day before. But now the girl casually handed Pepper’s reins over to Lena. They each mounted and Lena turned in the saddle, said, “You’ve got the number at the house.”
“Of course,” Rain said.
“I appreciate your friendship, Rain. I really do. More than I can say.”
Rain said, “Me too,” in a quick tone Lena could not quite read, but then the girl offered a small, sad smile. Lena’s heart sank at the prospect of never seeing this girl again, for of course this was a possibility, no matter how successful Lena had been in pushing this scenario from her consciousness. The surety that had consumed her in the initial chapters of this ghastly quest had waned over the course of the hours and days and countless miles they’d ridden, leaving room for doubt to encroach and pollute her resolve. Yet she rode away and rode on. She did not look behind her to see her young friend turn a corner, out of sight. Rather, she focused herself forward, listening for the sound of sirens, footsteps, traffic, waves. She felt like an animal, alert to both predators and prey. It was a terrible, terrible feeling.
More than an hour had passed when she heard a whinny issue from someplace behind her on the trail. She stopped a moment, listened, but heard nothing else. Pepper snorted and Lena jumped at the sound. She stroked his neck, letting the warmth of his body travel up into her hand. She felt him breathing under her, and the expanding and contracting of his colossal lungs was as calming as a sedative. She had just about convinced herself that she’d imagined the noise when she heard it again. She took up the reins, pressed Pepper on into a trot and then into a careful canter across the rough terrain. If there was someone behind her, she wanted to add some distance. She took her horse through an opening in the thicket on the right, leaning down to clear the branches. They ascended a shallow incline, weaving through the arbor, until Lena thought she would be out of sight of anyone passing. There she dismounted and let Pepper tear at the low foliage. For twenty minutes Lena sat at a narrow aperture through which she could see the trail. Finally a figure passed. Rain. Lena felt herself saturated with anger and relief and gratitude. She knew that Rain was coming back to help, that she had never intended to leave, and that that was why it had been such a simple task to get rid of her. Lena wanted the girl gone, safe. She wanted to finish this mission alone. But she also wanted companionship, someone to distract her from the horrible grief that had saturated her entire being. She knew she could not have both.
She scoped a path through the woods above the trail where she could follow and watch, hoping to keep an eye on Rain and at the same time hoping Rain would see that Lena was no longer in front of her, give up, and head back to that town where Riley could retrieve her. Steering Pepper around the trees and brambles, she lost the trail often but was able to catch up with it enough to keep tabs on her ward. Soon, though, the makeshift pathway became impenetrable—farther up the hill looked even worse—and Lena was forced to backtrack and descend to the trail. She prayed for a straightaway stretch where she might catch a glimpse of Rain, but on these winding, undulating paths, a direct way would not come.
Fifteen
The woman’s name was Stephanie Coats. He met her at a tasting in Sausalito and they got to talking over a passable Sonoma Merlot. She came out to the stable the next week and he gave her a lesson, her first time on a horse. Silas liked her so he put her on Disco, who took her around the ring at an easy, loping walk and then, after a couple loops, at a slow trot.
“When you’re ready I want you to lift your hands up off the saddle,” Silas instructed as he turned gradually in place in the center of the arena. “Just hang on to the reins like I showed you. Get your hands like you’re holding two mugs. Now let that bounce under your seat stand you up in the stirrups a bit. And then down again. That’s it. That’s posting. You go with her stride, don’t fight against it. There you go. Up and down, up and down. Simple.”
“I’m really high up,” Stephanie said with a breath of nervous laughter.
“She’s a big girl, but she won’t let you fall. Trust her. She knows you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Stephanie shot Silas a sideways look, a little go-fuck-yourself squint.
“Eyes front, woman,” Silas said.
A few days later they went out to Point Reyes for dinner, ate oysters and pork belly, drank a bottle of Zinfandel, then wandered the dunes until dark. Riding didn’t seem to thrill her, and Silas was surprised that this indifference to the sport he’d devoted his life to made him all the more attracted to her. She listened to his horse stories, both recent and long past, not because she cared so much about the dangers and pleasures of riding or about the intricate politics of the equestrian world but because—Silas thought—she liked him too. Stephanie was funny. Good-looking and smart and funny. He’d been with countless women, and few had made him feel so comfortable. Faint praise, perhaps, but he was getting older, and “comfortable” no longer felt like a betrayal of his principles. Were anger and ambition the virtues he’d always held them to be? Stephanie was a good woman who liked to smile. She enjoyed wine and sex. She didn’t ruminate on her past—not out loud, anyway—and seemed to look forward to the morning. Silas admired her.
He could not sleep, though, the nights Stephanie stayed over. He figured he was too old to learn to sleep with someone in his bed, too old not to be disturbed by the heat and movement of another body. Plus, it was a damn small bed in that old trailer. Still, he enjoyed having her there—not just for the sex, which was slow and long and undeniably good, but also for the company. He might have been too old to learn to slumber with an arm flung across his chest, but he was also too old to happily accept night after night of solitude. Television bored him and he rarely turned his on. Books put him to sleep even when he wasn’t tired. A game of solitaire was too sad to even contemplate. Used to be he went out to a bar, but even that had become a dreary endeavor. The crowds annoyed and even intimidated him. All that conspicuous youth on display. So most nights he found himself sitting in a chair outside the Airstream. He would build a fire in the pit out front and drink wine while looking over his land and stable. Often, when he was nearing the bottom of the first bottle, he would amble over to the barn, stroll the aisles, say hello to the horses. He’d stand in the middle of it all and inhale deeply, taking in the dust and odors of manure and alfalfa, that sweet cocktail that had been triggering his synapses like a drug since he was born.
On perhaps their sixth or seventh evening together, Stephanie and Silas left the wine bar early, before the crowds, barely past eight, and she followed him back to the stable, into his trailer, as had become their habit. After another hour of sipping, they made love in a tender fashion. In the middle of the act, Silas found himself thinking something that surprised him: he might marry this woman.
After, Stephanie got up from bed, seemingly unbothered by her nakedness, and said, “You need a drink, cowboy?”
Silas nodded and she poured the rest of a bottle into the glasses they’d been using a half hour before. Then, in a sudden, alarmed movement, she dro
pped to the floor. “There’s someone outside,” she whispered, crouched beneath the window. “There’s someone out there,” she said again.
The words sent a shot of adrenaline through Silas. “Probably a boarder checking on their horse,” he said.
“Right outside,” Stephanie said, still hushed. “Sitting in one of your chairs.”
Silas got up slowly, peered out from there in the bed, but he could not get an angle. He pulled on his boxers, slipped a T-shirt over his head, and moved slowly to the window. From there he saw, indeed, a figure set down in one of his Adirondack chairs. He couldn’t see a face, but there was no mistaking the outline of the Stetson atop the man’s head. Stephanie looked up from her spot beneath the window. Silas went back to the bed and retrieved her clothes. “Here,” he said as quietly as he could without whispering. He wouldn’t be made to whisper in his own house. While she got dressed, Silas took down his gun from the closet.
“Oh my God,” Stephanie said.
“It’s all right,” he said.
He opened the door, waited a beat, eyes on the unmoving figure, then said, “What do you want, Frank?”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Frank said. “I didn’t know you’d have company.”
“You come peeping?”
“I caught a bit of her in the window, I’m afraid. Turned away as fast as I could. Please apologize to her if I gave her a fright.” He still hadn’t looked at Silas, still had his eyes on the stable grounds.
“What are you doing here?”
“Wondering if we might talk.”
Silas went in and let the door shut. Back in the trailer, Stephanie was dressed. “Who is that?” she whispered.
“Nobody,” Silas said. “But I got to deal with it. Mind if we say good night?”
“Silas, this doesn’t seem right.”
A good woman. If Silas hadn’t understood that before, he did then. He assured her that nothing was the matter. Then he put on his jeans and tossed on a white button-down. While Stephanie busied herself slipping on her shoes, Silas fingered the gun safety, made sure it was in place, then tucked the pistol into the back of his jeans. He wasn’t coming empty-handed to any brotherly dialogue. He held the door open for Stephanie and walked between her and the spot where Frank still sat. At her car, she got in and Silas leaned down to the open window. “Call me later,” she said.
Silas couldn’t help but grin, even with the long shadow of his brother looming. She went off down the dirt drive, leaving a gritty mist in the lights of the stable and paddocks. Silas transferred the gun to the front of his pants and left his shirt untucked and hanging at his sides.
When Silas got back to the trailer, Frank said, “It’s good to see you, brother.”
“I doubt that.”
“Well,” Frank said.
The night had turned cold with a heavy wetness hanging in its air. “You staying long?” Silas said.
“I don’t know,” Frank said. “I guess it depends on a whole lot of things.”
“I’m asking ’cause if you are, I’ll put a fire up.”
Frank nodded and put out an open hand, palm up, to say, Go on, then.
Silas tossed a few logs atop one another, jammed some kindling beneath the mess, and lit them. The flame went out and he blew it back to life twice before it finally took. Kneeling there in the cracked earth, he felt embarrassed by how sloppily the fire caught. Then he felt angry at Frank for being there to bring this emotion to the surface and he felt disgust with himself for being so susceptible to his brother’s gaze. After all these years.
Silas stood and for a moment let his body accept the heat of the fire.
Frank said, “Drink?”
“What is this, Frank?”
“This is nice out here. This spread.” Frank turned in his chair and motioned to the hills beyond the creek. “All that yours too?”
“You know it is.” He went inside and brought out a bottle of cab and two stout, stemless glasses. Poured each a good amount.
“She something special, that woman?”
“Goddamn it, Frank, you and I ain’t friends.”
Frank nodded in agreement. “Just brothers,” he said. He took a drink. “I’m unarmed,” he said. “In case you want to take your balls out of harm’s way.”
Silas removed the gun, sat down, and set the weapon on the arm of the chair, pointed in Frank’s direction. “Better?” he said.
Frank started to say something, then paused and lifted his back off the chair and sat again. “That’s maybe just what I came to talk to you about.”
“What’s that?”
Frank drained his glass and held the empty out. Silas watched him a beat, then took the bottle from where he’d set it in the dirt, filled his brother’s glass. Frank took a drink and pulled a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket. He lit it with a Zippo and took a short drag.
“You still doing that?”
“Don’t matter,” Frank said, exhaling. In the faint light of the trailer window, smoke rose from his brother’s mouth and disappeared in the night.
“What don’t matter?”
Frank cleared his throat and took another drag. “I got it,” he said. “I got it like Daddy had it. Lungs corrupted all to hell.”
Silas felt his own lungs contract. “Fuck you,” he said. “You come around here looking for sympathy. After all you done to me.”
“You done some doing yourself.”
“Go home to your wife if you want someone to cry for you.”
“Lena doesn’t know,” Frank said. “Nobody knows except you.”
Silas took a drink. His brother was watching the stable. Silas tried to figure this all out, what Frank was up to. “So why are you telling me?” he said.
“Do you remember Daddy going through it?”
“’Course I do.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Who would.”
“Goddamn mess,” Frank said. “Was all I could do to force myself to go up there to see him every few days. See him wasting away. Toward the end, I couldn’t go up at all. Just stopped. That was a weakness on my part. But goddamn if this disease isn’t the mother bitch of them all.”
“That was a long time ago. They got new treatments probably.”
“They got fuck-all,” Frank said. He took a drink. “Anyway, it’s too far along. They’re giving me six, seven months. They say it’s a ten percent chance I’ll be here a year from now.”
“Fuck do they know,” Silas said.
“Enough,” Frank said. “I feel it. It’s this strange sensation, like I’m never alone. At home. Driving in the truck, no one else with me, no one on the road, there’s something there. Only thing I can come up with is it’s death bearing down.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Frank,” Silas said, purposefully cold.
“No, you aren’t,” Frank said. “That’s the whole point. You’ve been wanting to do me in for decades now. I know that because I been thinking the same about you. Why do you think I shot you?”
“You finally dropping that bullshit about the gun going off?”
“You know that gun didn’t fire on its own. Shit.”
Anger flooded through Silas. How had he been roped into having this conversation—any conversation—with this man? It was as if each second he remained in that chair he was betraying himself.
“So how about it, brother?”
“How about what?” Silas nearly shouted.
“How about you finally do it.”
At these words, Silas leaped from his seat, the glass of wine dropping from his hand and breaking on the hard dirt. His heart rattled in his chest. He raised the pistol and pointed it at Frank.
“Not now,” Frank said calmly.
“Why the fuck not?” Silas challenged.
“Still some things I want to do.”
“Like what?”
“See my son, my grandkids. Make love to my wife a couple more times.”
Silas steadied his br
eathing and lowered the gun. “You’re full of shit. This is some kind of trap.”
“You think I’m trying to trick you into shooting me?”
“This is some kind of entrapment.”
“I assure you it isn’t.”
“You want me to, what, kill you?”
“I already told you, I don’t want to go through what Daddy went through. I don’t want Lena taking care of me while I become more and more useless. Shitting myself. Puking all over the goddamn place. Moaning in pain. Then one day maybe she walks in and I don’t know who the hell she is. Who my boy is. Or his kids. That’s not going to happen. We left Lena holding the bag with Daddy. That was enough.”
Frank leaned forward and snuffed his cigarette out on the bottom of his boot. He remained bent over in that chair for a good few seconds. Silas could see his brother struggling for breath.
“I don’t give a shit how you do it,” Frank said, “though I’d prefer quick and painless.”
“After which I get sent to jail for the rest of my life.”
Frank sat erect. “You’re smart. You can think up some way to get away with it, can’t you?”
“I never heard you call me smart before, Frank. Lots of other things, but never smart.”
Frank took a drink.
“Why don’t you just do it yourself?” Silas said.
“And leave my wife and kid to deal with that for the rest of their lives, asking, Why, why, why? Anyway, I don’t think I could. I don’t have that in me. Plus I figure this is a way to finally make us square, you and I.”
“That’s some fucked-up logic.”
“We got a fucked-up relationship, Silas, or didn’t you notice.”
“You put that moldy feed up in my loft?”
Frank laughed. “All those years ago? Goddamn right I did. I’m also the one who got you audited that one time. One phone call. You didn’t know that, did you?” Frank drank the last of his wine and held the glass out. Silas refilled it, then drank from the bottle. Frank said, “You put those blister beetles in our grain?”
“I’m not saying word one about that or anything else,” Silas said.
