Better Luck Next Time

by Julia Claiborne Johnson

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “My mother was really looking forward to having grandchildren, that’s all. It just hit me that she’ll never get to meet little Quarter. She’s gone, my father’s gone, the house. My whole life. Nothing’s left.”

  After a long pause, Emily said, “You still have their rings, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Can I see them again?”

  I got up and fetched them from the bottom drawer of my bureau. I kept them knotted inside a sock there so they wouldn’t fall through a crack in it or the floorboards and disappear. She slid Miss Pam’s ring onto her finger and the other onto mine. They both fit pretty well, something I took as a good sign. “So you’ll start over,” she said. “Have a family of your own. Another house. I hope you’ll be very happy with Mrs. Howard Stovall Bennett III. I hear she’s a lovely woman.”

  Emily left dangerously late the next morning, just as the sky started going gray. I stood at the window watching until she disappeared into the house. Just before she did, she turned and blew me a kiss. Fifty years on, and I can still see her there as if it were yesterday, her face turned back to me in the halo of brightness cast by the little porch light Margaret left on all night long. I waved and blew a kiss in return, even though I was pretty sure she couldn’t see me. I realized then that I still had my father’s ring on, and that she’d forgotten to return my mother’s to me. I took off Big Howard’s and slid it into my pocket. I figured she’d notice Miss Pam’s on her finger soon enough and keep it safe until it was time for me to slip it on her finger for good, in the process transforming the ex-Mrs. Archer Sommer into the lovely Mrs. Howard Stovall Bennett III.

  After Emily went inside I stood at the window as the sky lightened, hoping she was right. We’d be happy together, wouldn’t we? Even if we never managed to have a baby of our own, Portia would come to love me and I’d think of her as my own flesh and blood.

  While I stood there mulling over the change in my fortunes I saw Hugh drop from Sam’s window, collect his bike, and ride silently away.

  The next morning Portia’s plate and glass were empty. So was Dumpling’s stall. Also Portia’s bed in Coyote. She must have slipped inside the house sometime during the night while Sam and I were otherwise occupied. Bottom’s head was on the mail table with an envelope propped inside his mouth and the fairy wings folded beside it. The envelope was addressed to Max and Margaret, and inside was a ten-dollar bill and a note:

  Dear M&M, Here’s some money to pay for Dumpling, plus one bridle and a saddle. I’ll send more later, once I’m settled. I’m pretty sure I can get a job now that I know how to fly an airplane. Thanks for everything. Portia.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I don’t like the next part of the story much, so let’s try to get through it quickly.

  When Emily and Nina finally came downstairs both their faces were stiff with anger. Nina’s hair was a mess and she had on the fairy costume, so I gathered Emily had shaken her awake with the news of Portia’s note. “I forgive you in advance for all the rotten things you just said to me,” Nina croaked, her voice still rough with sleep. “You’re going to be pretty ashamed of yourself when I’m the one who finds your daughter.”

  “She told you where she was going?” Emily asked. “And you didn’t warn me?”

  “Of course Portia didn’t tell me where she was going. I’ll do an aerial search.”

  “That airplane,” Emily said bitterly. “None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you and it. This is your fault. I can’t believe I ever trusted you. I hate you.”

  “Join the club,” Nina said, and walked out the front door. Sam drove her to the airport in the ranch house station wagon. She didn’t even take the time to change into real clothes before she left.

  Meanwhile, I chauffeured Emily into town. I thought it odd at first that she chose to sit in the back, but I’d also noticed that she remembered to take off my mother’s ring, so I gathered she was trying to be discreet.

  “Portia didn’t really run away,” she said, as much to herself as to me. “Knowing her, she ran to her father. I’m sure she’s having breakfast with Archer right now. They must be having a wonderful time talking about what an awful person I am.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t answer.

  As we pulled up to Archer’s hotel, she added, “Portia always loved Archer best because he lets her get away with murder. She wants to live with him, in whatever squalid little apartment he finds? Fine. We’ll see how she likes that. That girl doesn’t know how lucky she is.” Before she got out of the Pierce-Arrow, Emily said, “Give me the car keys, Ward. You’re riding Dumpling back to the ranch. I’ll drive Portia.”

  I handed her the keys. “It’s going to be all right,” I said, only half believing it.

  We found Archer in the lobby of the Riverside Hotel, reading a newspaper and drinking a cup of tea. Alone. To his credit, instead of blowing up when Emily managed to choke out what had happened, he leapt to his feet and wrapped his arms around her.

  For the drive back to the Flying Leap, Emily handed over the car keys without making eye contact, as if I were a valet driver at a restaurant bringing around her car. I tried to take comfort from the fact that she and Archer rode all the way there pressed against opposite doors. The only words that passed between them was Archer asking, “What made this stain here on the upholstery?” and Emily answering, “Kittens.”

  I pulled into the barnyard behind the Chevrolet just as Sam stepped out from behind the wheel. Cowboy boots first, then fairy costume.

  “Who on earth is that?” Archer asked.

  “That’s Sam,” I said. “He must have changed clothes with Nina before she got into her airplane.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she asked him to, I imagine,” I said. “She left in a hurry. That dress is what she sleeps in.”

  “How do you know what she sleeps in?” I did not like the imperious tone he took with me.

  “Because I tuck all our ladies in before I read them bedtime stories,” I said. “Didn’t Emily tell you?”

  I know it wasn’t the sort of thing I would have said under normal circumstances, but it had been an upsetting morning and his supercilious attitude really put my nose out of joint. I know that was uncharitable of me since the man’s daughter had gone missing and he was on his way to losing his wife. Still.

  Sam was in and out of the bunkhouse in a flash. Once he was in dungarees again he set off on a buckskin mare named Honey, the fastest of our horses, to trace the various routes our afternoon trail rides followed. Max took the Chevrolet into Reno to confer with the sheriff, and Margaret disappeared into her office, calling around to neighboring ranches to put out the word. Emily and Archer spent the morning huddled in the porch chairs Nina and I had occupied not so long ago, two untouched glasses of iced lemonade I’d brought them sweating rings onto the Switzerland of wicker table that stood between them.

  Somehow Margaret and I managed to get lunch on the table. As I was clearing afterward, I heard the distant drone of an airplane and clattered my tray of dirty dishes onto the mail table in the hall so I could hurry out to the porch. To the west, an orange dot on the horizon resolved itself into Nina’s plane. It buzzed the barnyard and loosed a flutter of bright streamers that fell to the corral. I ran to pick it up.

  The note inside the message pouch read, Buzzards. Gopher field. Horse down. Kid up. The plane wheeled away again. I squinted after it and saw the carrion fowl circling in the distance, a grim merry-go-round of black dots against the flat, white sky. Nina’s plane circumnavigated that spiral to be sure we spotted it. I remember thinking what a blessing it was that Nina had taken to the air to look for Portia, as Sam never would have ventured into that forbidden territory on horseback. The kid had never been on one of our trail rides, I realized, and so hadn’t been warned off it. Nor had she gotten very far before catastrophe struck. That makes sense to me now, of course. If there’s anything
I’ve learned from years of working in hospital emergency rooms, it’s that most terrible accidents happen within a few of miles of home.

  Then: Emily and Archer, eyeing me anxiously as I cleared my throat a couple of times before managing, “Good news. Looks like Portia is okay,” and handing Nina’s note to Emily.

  Archer and Emily hugging. Him shushing her as she wept on his shoulder, stroking her hair, kissing her forehead. Emily not pushing him away.

  Me, asking Archer, “Do you know how to ride, sir?” and him answering, “Do I know how to ride? I played polo for Harvard.”

  Of course you did, I thought.

  Archer lounging against the breezeway wall, watching me tack up three horses, never lifting a finger to help but eyeing me critically, as if he were grading my performance.

  Emily vanishing, then reappearing, just as I had all three horses set to go. She looked like she’d been crying. “It’s going to be all right,” I repeated, believing it less and less.

  Boosting Emily into her saddle and seeing Nina’s unloaded revolver tucked into her waistband. We both knew what “horse down” might mean, but she was the one who thought two steps ahead and went for the gun. As I swung into my saddle I wondered how old Dumpling had gotten to be. Fifteen? Sixteen? Old, but not so old.

  Riding the outer perimeter of the fenced-off gopher field. Tying our horses to the wooden posts of the barbed-wire fence. Putting one foot on the bottom strand of wire and holding another as high as I could while Emily and then Archer scooted through. Nina’s plane, reduced to a child’s toy by the distance, landing across that pitted minefield for the four-legged. Nina running at the farthest reaches of the wash that first Emily and I, then Sam and Hugh had used as our lovers’ lane. The V of Dumpling’s ears swiveling above the ditch’s bank alongside the crown of Sam’s old hat perched on Portia’s head. The kid leaping to her feet. The old gelding stretching out his forelegs, one grotesquely swollen, its hoof at a crazy angle. Dumpling groaning and subsiding to the ground again.

  Portia, her face dirty, sweaty-headed from Sam’s old hat, sobbing, “I wanted to come for help, but he kept trying to get up to come with me.” Running to her father’s arms, not her mother’s. Archer, outside the gopher field again, lifting Portia onto the horse I’d ridden out, the two of them galloping hell for leather back to the ranch house.

  Emily, pulling the revolver from her waistband and Nina rooting around in the pocket of Sam’s jeans, pulling out a bullet like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat. I remember marveling at Nina, knowing Emily would think of the pistol, and at Emily for understanding Nina could be counted on to supply the ammunition. The two of them, so perfectly hand-in-glove. Emily, snapping the empty cylinder open to slip it into the chamber like a hardened movie gangster, and handing the loaded gun to me. Me kneeling in front of my old friend, realizing I’d never offed anything bigger than a horsefly, much less a horse. So blinded by tears that I had to feel around to find my buddy’s face.

  Nina, calm and dry-eyed, nudging me aside, taking the revolver and putting muzzle to the jagged slash of white that paved the center of the gelding’s forehead. Dumpling exploring her pockets for sugar cubes. Nina coming apart then worse than I had.

  In the end, Emily took the gun, pressed barrel to target, pulled the trigger. Done.

  I have witnessed many deaths since then. I won’t say none have hit me harder, but I do know that I’ve never let myself crumble like that since. Emily may have wronged me in many ways, but I’ll always be glad to have witnessed her sangfroid in the face of the inevitable. If not for her example I might not have made it through the war and the forty-some-odd years of tough calls that came afterward in my work as a physician. If she could be so cool-headed when it counted most, so could I.

  “I’m keeping the gun, Nina,” Emily said. “You can’t be trusted with anything.”

  Nina wiped her face on her sleeve and mumbled, “I’m all right now. Give it here.”

  “No, you aren’t,” Emily said. “You took my daughter up in that deathtrap of yours. What is wrong with you? What if you’d crashed? What if she’d died?”

  “I never took her up in my plane,” Nina said.

  “Liar,” she spat.

  Emily crawled back through the barbed wire unaided, the revolver stuck in the waistband of her pants. Untied the last horse and rode away at a conservative trot, her elbows pressed against her sides. Never once looked back.

  “Come on, Ward,” Nina said. “We need to get this tack off before Dumpling starts to stiffen up.” She dropped to her haunches and brushed away the flies that had already started to congregate around his half-closed eyes.

  “You never should have let Portia fly your plane,” I said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “I know you did. You told me so yourself.”

  Nina stood. She was as tall as I was and I thought how odd it was, being eye to eye with a woman instead of talking down to her. “I told you I let her sit in my airplane. Wings folded. She was never airborne. Not once.” She helped herself to the bandana protruding from my pocket and wiped her face with it. “She outplayed us, Ward.”

  “Who did?”

  “Portia. She wanted her parents to stay together.”

  “They’re not staying together,” I said. “Emily loves me. She told me so. She’s divorcing Archer and marrying me.”

  “Oh, kid.” She stuffed the bandana in the pocket of Sam’s borrowed dungarees and squatted at Dumpling’s head again. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  “You are a liar. Everybody knows that about you.”

  Nina seemed to give my accusation serious consideration before responding. “I’m more of a fibber, actually. When it counts I tell the truth. I’ll take the bridle off, okay? You shouldn’t have to do that. Then we’ll both deal with the saddle.” She reached between Dumpling’s ears.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t you dare touch him.”

  “Look, I’m sorry you got hurt, Ward,” Nina said, straightening up again and pensively wiping her hands on the bandana she’d lifted from me. “I wanted things to work out between the two of you. Honestly I did.”

  As sometimes happens when you’re young and foolish, I wanted nothing more than to lay the blame for my misfortune at somebody else’s feet. I’d like to think that I’ve outgrown that, but of course some people never do. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “You don’t think I’m good enough for her.”

  She shook her head. “Based on everything I know about him, Ward, you’re twice the man that Archer is. I did my best to convince Emily, I promise you. It would have made a sweet story, too, wouldn’t it, me talking her around to picking the right guy? Then maybe someday I might do the same thing for myself.” Nina shaded her eyes and looked over my shoulder, in the direction of the ranch house. Both of us were tall enough to see over the edge of the wash, and I thought—I hoped—she’d seen Emily riding back to us. But what she was looking at, if she was looking at anything at all, was the afternoon sunlight glinting off the ranch house windows. “Do me a favor, Ward. Tell Max and Margaret I’m not coming back.”

  Of all the responses I might have come up with, what I said was, “If you leave before next Monday you won’t get your divorce.”

  “So? I’m cashing in my chips, pal. I’m not planning on marrying again between here and the kingdom, so I don’t see the point in going through with it anyway. Hugh’s the best friend I’ve ever had. Maybe that’s enough.” She started savaging her fingernails.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  She shoved her hands deep inside her pockets, cleared her throat once or twice and scuffed a toe in the dirt. “I’m sorry about everything, Ward,” she managed finally. “Look, promise me you won’t waste your life pining over somebody you can’t have, kid. That’s a fool’s game. If anybody knows that, I do.”

  She stumbled off across the pitted gopher field then, climbed in her airplane, and took off. The little orange and silver biplane circl
ed overhead a few times, to drive away the buzzards, I thought, until I saw the bright ribbons of a leather pouch fluttering against the white-hot sky.

  The scrawled note inside read, Maybe E’s not good enough for YOU.

  I’ll admit it was a struggle working Dumpling’s tack off by myself. I had to squint while I removed his bridle because his eyes had already started to film over and seeing them without the light in them like to have killed me. Once I got the bridle off I covered his face with a bandana, knotting pebbles into the corners first so it wouldn’t blow away.

  Getting the saddle off was both easier and harder. I had to sit on the ground and push my boots against Dumpling’s withers to roll his carcass up enough to drag the damned thing free. The blanket underneath and the wooly lining of the saddle were still warm and damp from his back. After I finally managed to extricate everything I lay flat in the dust with the saddle in my arms and closed my eyes. Sic transit Dumpling. I heard a sort of rustling sound and opened my eyes to a couple of buzzards lit on the brink of the ditch perusing the day’s menu. They probably couldn’t believe their luck, happening on a banquet featuring two of your fancier meats, horse and human, instead of the usual high-desert offerings of jackrabbit and lizard. I sat up fast and threw rocks at them until they flew away. I knew the carrion fowl were there to do the job nature had designed them for, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

  I rested there with my back against Dumpling’s until every bit of warmth had left him and it was so dark that the buzzards called it a day. Then I got up, draped the bridle around my neck, gathered the blanket and saddle in my arms, and headed back. I tripped some on the uneven ground and stepped in a hole or two without coming to any harm before I reached the barbed-wire fence. Instead of crawling through it with my burden I walked along it until I found the gate. Left open by Portia, I imagined, when she rode Dumpling through. I was careful to shut it behind me.