by Alex Cord
They slept in the lingering vapors of amorous twinings till Jesse woke in the still dark with that awful sense of dread. Tomorrow morning, he would drive her to the airport and when he got back to the ranch, she would not be there. She felt him shift and turned her sleepy face. “I didn’t hear the rooster,” She whispered.
“He hasn’t said anything yet.” As the words left his lips, the rooster sucked in, lungs full, he blasted his alarm to the hills. “Until now…”
They sat on the porch in silence with cooling coffee cups and watched the sun like a busted yolk oozing along the eastern ridge. He felt her turn to look at him. It took a while before she said, “Hey, Mr. Desperado, Mr. Outlaw Jesse James, you’ve got work to do. You better git to gittin’.” She stood up. “C’mon, hurry up, let’s go…”
He locked his fingers across the top of his head and watched the yolk become whole as it rose above the ridge. “Let’s go look at that colt Lamar was talking about.”
47
His Honor’s Place
Six thousand square feet of two-story limestone mansion housed Lamar McCarthy, the intrepid Leona, and their nine-year-old daughter Sarah.
Jesse had called Lamar before he left for court and arranged to deal with Miguel, his barn manager, who wore a black twenty-pasteight mustache and led the way with a no-breed blind mongrel at his heels. Ten years earlier, they’d forded the Rio Grande together eluding the Border Patrol in the pitch of night. The mutt had been with him ever since. Miguel now had papers, thanks to the judge. The mutt did not. They walked up to a fenced pen big enough for a horse to get to running in it. He was standing under the shed roof at the end, alert, armed, ready for war. Feral instincts had warned of their approach. He was on his toes, shifting from foot to foot as if the earth might give way beneath him. From a hundred feet away, his energy was manifest, wild, twisting, coursing through the network of bone and muscle cloaked in black velvet.
Jesse’s practiced eye scanned him from feet to withers and nose to tail.
As if to say, you want to see something, take a look at this, he shook his head, blew his nose, shoved his hind feet into the ground, and lunged forward. He galloped the length of the fence and instead of turning at the corner, drove his quarters into the ground, slid fifteen feet in a dust storm, rolled over his hocks and took off in the direction whence he’d come and continued around the pen at neck breaking speed. He circled it four times, then ran to the center, skidded to a stop, and stood, looking at them, hardly breathing, as if to say, “You want more?”
“I’ve never seen a horse as black as that,” said Holly. “He’s beautiful.”
“He sheds out, he’ll look like a polished boot.” Jesse hadn’t taken his eyes from the colt. The colt hadn’t taken his eyes from Jesse. “The judge didn’t lie. He’s got some moves to him.”
Miguel said, “He’s muy fiero, Mr. Jesse. He don’t like people too much.” As if to prove Miguel’s appraisal, the colt exploded from absolute stillness into violent motion, charging straight at them from fifty feet away, like a Spanish bull at a matador. He came with such velocity they backed away from the fence as if he might come through it or sail over it into their faces. He screeched to a stop, wrapping them in a cloud of dust. When it settled, he stood there with eyes blazing through a scrim of forelocks, focused on Jesse.
Jesse held his gaze, feeling the heat that emanated from him and said to Miguel, “You don’t have a round pen here, do you?”
“No, señor. We got no round pen.”
Meeting the black’s fixed gaze, Jesse said, “You reckon we can get him in the trailer?”
“They got him in one to get him down here, Mister Jesse.” He was smiling at the obvious. “He didn’t like it too much.”
“I’ll just bet he didn’t.”
They finally got him loaded with some coercion in the form of ropes, a blindfold, and muscle. Miguel would be gimpy for a week having suffered the indignity of a hind foot slamming his thigh like a battering ram yet leaving the bone intact. On the way home, sporadic spells of silence were shattered by unshod hooves hammering cushioned walls. Holly said, “Are you sure he won’t break a leg or something?”
“He’s too surly to hurt himself. If he does, we’ll feed him to the dogs.”
48
Round Pen Reasoning
They pulled into the driveway at the Lazy JB, ominous quiet in the trailer behind. Jesse backed the trailer up to his round pen. He got out and opened the door to the eight-foot-high walled pen to form a funnel when he opened the trailer gate against the pen. From the outside, he untied the ropes that held the colt against the trailer wall and set him free. In a clatter of hooves, the black shadow bowled out of the trailer into the pen, dragging rope behind. Jesse shut the pen door and parked the truck and trailer in its place.
Walking back with Holly at his side, carrying her camera, she said, “What will you do with him now?”
“Well, we’ll start with kindergarten and see if he’s got any sense at all or if he wants to be a retard and end up in a can.”
“Can I watch?”
“You can stand on the platform on the other side of the pen and look over the top.”
The pen was a circle, fifty feet in diameter. The walls were inch-thick plywood panels bolted to six–by-six-inch posts. The bottom half of the eight-foot wall was lined with three-quarter inch-thick rubberized conveyor belting. It was a combination combat zone, therapy room, and padded cell.
Jesse secured the door behind him. The colt in the center thirty feet away turned with fury in his eyes and froze. He flattened his ears and showed a rim of white glaring at the top of his eyeballs. His nostrils stiffened wide. His mane and tail were twisted, tangled into witch’s knots. Jesse could smell the wildness of him. He lacked the scent of leather and cultivated grain. Jesse held a long, soft ranch rope, coils in his left hand, loop in his right. They stood sizing each other up. Jesse tried to read the colt to anticipate his first move. Neither flinched. The colt was a stallion, a dominant monarch with a troubled childhood who saw Jesse as a challenging interloper to be vanquished, run off into the hills with his tail between his legs. Jesse meant to show him there were other ways to go.
He shook out the loop, feeding rope, increasing its size as he swung it over his head in a buzz of nylon against rawhide. He took a step forward, the rope whirring. A move that would have sent most horses into flight. The soot-colored colt reared up pawing the air and came down charging, ears pinned and teeth bared, straight at him. Jesse had thought he just might. He was ready. He stood his ground. At the last possible second he stepped aside and snapped his wrist, and like the crack of a bullwhip, the tip of the loop popped the colt across his nose and stung him good. He bawled and bucked, clacking his heels high in the air. Then he whirled and came again, with the same result. He stopped and shook his head saying that didn’t hurt, but still thinking about this creature in front of him and trying to figure how to deal with him. Jesse took a step toward him. He backed, still considering. Jesse had the loop laid out behind him.
The colt decided to try again and made a move. Jesse swung the loop up ready to pop. The colt stopped. Jesse advanced, swinging the rope. The colt decided departure might be an answer and took off around the pen on fire to get somewhere. Jesse stood in the center swinging, feeding rope into the loop as the black head tossed toward the wall looking for a hole to freedom. He bucked and lashed out with powerful kicks and galloped through the deep sand on his way to nowhere. Mounting fury was being fed by frustration. He’d begun to breathe deeper now, sucking air into the gaping funnels of his nose as Jesse stepped in front of him popping the rope and forcing a change of direction. He dug in and whirled around his hocks, and spurted away with such intent, he tried to climb out of the pen by diving up the eight-foot wall and hanging his forelegs over the top. He scrambled with hind feet not meant for wall climbing and fell back with a heavy thump, landing on his side in the sand. He got up galloping, panicked, lost his balance, fl
ipped ass over head, and came up running, breathing harder now.
Jesse jumped in front of him again, forcing him to turn away and flee once more. He quit swinging the rope and just stood there watching the colt run. The colt began stealing glances at him and then he’d look away at the ever-present wall, then back at Jesse who began to murmur soothing sounds of greeting. He flicked an ear in acknowledgement although continuing his run.
Jesse stepped toward the path the colt would take but not so quick to force a turn, more to arrest forward motion, saying whoa as he came. The colt began to slow. The furious pace in the deep sand had taken its toll. Rest was becoming a good idea. Jesse continued his seductive whoa, offering a soft place to sit, relax, and talk it over. The colt quit the gallop for the lope and then the lope for the trot and finally a wary walk, never taking his eyes from Jesse. At last he paused. He turned and faced the foe, his ribcage bellows pumping, breath rifling in and out of flaring wells, sunlight glistening on his soaking black hide, veins pulsing underneath, eyes burning, aimed at Jesse.
Jesse let the rope slip from his hand to the ground, moving slowly toward the quivering colt. He stopped, extending his hand, palm down, in a gesture of friendship and peace. A step closer, his hand a foot from the charcoal muzzle, air pumping warm from nostrils now tense. An inch closer, he reached. The colt flung his head, froth fleeing his lips, and turned away from this god who was trying to get inside him. Jesse supported his desire to leave, chased him away and picked up his rope, swinging the big loop and tossing it easily out at the colt running. He kept flicking half-hitches softly, smoothly, over the colt’s head, around his neck, across his butt till the rope draped the horse like a string of pearls and he trotted easily under the ornament.
Ten laps later, Jesse offered again a place to sit and rest, saying whoa, easy boy, easy now, dragging the words out long and slow and stepping easily ahead of him to encourage a willingness to stop. The colt was looking at him now, flicking an inside ear.
In five minutes, he’d gotten to where the colt was standing still, letting him stroke his face and rub his neck and wipe away the sweat dripping from his lips. The mouth began to soften; the ears were tuned to him.
He snapped his fingers in a steady beat while he stroked and rubbed and leaned against the colt. Then he stepped away and beckoned the colt to follow, snapping his fingers. And as if on a lead, he did, his nose a foot behind Jesse as he walked a figure eight, trailed by the colt festooned in rope. Jesse murmured reassurance as he took the rope and slowly unwrapped the colt, letting it drag over and around the sensitive parts. He fondled the coils and brought them slowly up to the colt’s nose. He snapped his fingers and rubbed the slick neck with the back of the hand holding the rope that flopped against the wet hide. When he got near the tender underbelly, where the lion rips first, the colt thought seriously about leaving town. But Jesse had sensed it and backed off till the colt was ready to trust him there.
In less than ten minutes, he could flap the rope anywhere on the colt’s body while he stood like stone. He snugged his loop around each ankle separately, and led the colt in a circle by the roped foot alone.
When he eased the saddle down on the Navajo blanket, the colt bunched his back but he never moved. Jesse talked him into a soft acceptance of the girth pulled around his belly. He leaned against the colt, denying he was wild and dangerous and stroked him as if he were a friend in grief.
He stepped away from the colt who started to follow but Jesse pushed him off and sent him around the pen at a trot to get the feel of the saddle on his back and the stirrups flapping at his sides.
He held the lead rope in his left hand, standing close to the colt’s shoulder, right hand on the saddle horn, he raised his left foot to the stirrup and tested his weight in it, the colt looking at him and fixing his legs to accept the weight. He stepped off the ground, standing in the one stirrup, ready to bail if the colt exploded. He eased his right leg over the saddle and lowered his seat till the colt was bearing his weight. The colt’s feet were rooted in the ground. Jesse knew he could uncork at any second. He was the kind that if he panicked would dive to the sky, flip his belly to the sun and come to earth upside down on top of you. He gently pulled the halter lead bringing the horse’s head to the left. He moved his left front foot and then the right. Jesse squeezed his legs and the colt walked off as quiet as a kid’s pony carrying a friend he’d never had.
Jesse didn’t try to guide the colt but let him take him where he wanted to go. In that moment, came the mutual acceptance, the genesis of an inspired relationship.
He opened the door to the pen and invited Holly in. She seemed mesmerized as she walked up to the colt. She stroked his face and gazed into his huge brown eyes, the rage gone and in its place, the world seemed to exist. “That was the most amazing thing. I can’t believe how you did that. You got him to trust you.”
“He’s a pretty good boy. He’s just scared. I don’t think he’s got a mean bone in him.” He reached and rubbed the once clenched muzzle between his hands and felt it soften like dough before it’s bread. “We just might suit each other. What do you think, boy?” He traced a circle lightly between his eyes, then stroked an ear. “We’ve got to come up with a good name for him.” He was looking at Holly. “You do it. You name him.”
“I’ll have to think about that.”
Holly was holding the lead rope at the wash rack getting showered with over-spray as Jesse wielded hose and sponge, flushing dirt and sweat from the seal-smooth hide. The colt seemed content with the attention and his very first bath. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad world after all.
He found Chauncy, the little black goat and put him in the arena with the colt. The colt arched his neck and stiffened with nostrils flaring. He lowered his head as if to bite or strike the little guy. Holly said, “He could kill that goat in a second.”
“Chauncy’s quicker than a mongoose. He’d have hell trying to get a piece of him.” Just then, the colt’s ears came forward as he sniffed the goat and determined he was not a threat. The goat walked around the colt to check him out and finally walked right under his belly and out the other side. The colt pushed his nose against the goat’s ribs and a friendship was born.
49
A Last Night with Peppermint
He’d been thinking maybe tonight they would just hold each other and talk or not talk —just be with each other. She was lying there in pale moonlight and candle glow like a portrait from another time. He could feel the steamy warmth of her radiating from the bed to where he stood. The curving ivory shoulders, her bosom rising above and beneath Irish lace, a slender arm under her head, the golden shimmer of hair spread across the pillow, a curl rested in her armpit. Her eyes were half closed; a distant smile gave no clue of its cause.
He slipped under the covers and moved his arm across her breasts. He was full of the feel of her flesh under the thin sliding gown as he drew it up and down. An unspeakable passion began to swell in him. He turned her face to his as his hand traced her thigh beneath the film of fabric and kissed her parted lips, tasting the peppermint candy that she pushed into his mouth with her tongue. He lifted the gown over her head and draped it to cover his face and wrapped it tight, a mummy mask, and bent to kiss her belly through the cloth across his lips, then moved to the soft moist mound and slipped away the gown from his face. He felt himself drawn into a wilderness of danger and enchantment. Her fingers moved in his hair, clutching at his brain.
She seemed as light as air, his hand beneath her back, the other on her breast, a leg over his shoulder, as he pushed against her with all of his being until with a stifled cry he ceased to exist as Jesse and became Holly Marie. She pulled him to her and said his name, “Jesse, yes…yes.”
50
Soot
He loaded her bags in the truck. When he came back into the house, she was looking at a framed, black and white photo on the wall. It was Zack, two years old, on the black horse, tucked into the saddle in front of Jesse
and holding the reins in fingers articulate beyond his years. She felt him behind her. “He’s holding the reins just the way you do.” He took a deep breath and on the exhale, said, “Yeah…” He was a little surprised to find his eyes instantly wet.
“It’s a great picture,” she said, aware of its effect. She moved to gaze at the others, his mother and father, a grandmother, two grandfathers, uncles and aunts and cowboys and old men with moustaches. She wanted to imprint them freshly in her mind to take the memory along. There were none of Jolene or any other woman.
A slim history of a man alone.
They walked to the barn where she said adios to Ricardo and Blizzard and Dozer, the horses she’d ridden, and the pregnant mare San Mamacita, and then to the arena where the black colt stood looking at them with curiosity instead of suspicion and rage. Chauncy was three feet away like a small shadow of the coal-black colt.
She hung her arms on the top rail, looking at him and said, “Soot. Lamar described him that way. I think it’s right. I think you ought to call him Soot.”
“Soot. I think it fits him. Soot it is. Hey, Soot.” The colt flicked his ears, shook his mane and moved his feet but stayed where he was.
“They respond to you in a way I’ve never seen. Why is that?”
He shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe they sense that I’m not trying to steal their fire. I just want to share it a little.”
“Are you trying to steal my fire?”
“No ma’am. I want to keep your fire burning right where it is.”
51
Departure
Flight 2452 was ready for general boarding. They got up and walked toward the entrance to the jetway. He took her in his arms and held her so tight he thought he might hurt her. “I feel like I’ve got a bowling ball in my throat. I love you, Holly Marie.”
“Thank you.” She smiled in that perfect politeness. “You be a good boy now.”
