Loving Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  She always arrived early, in order to stop and say hello to the horses, who’d been moved to the barn now that school was back in session. Poor old barn—the building had seen better days. Six falling-down stalls opened onto a piecemeal, common arena. It was the students’ responsibility to keep it mucked and to feed the horses every morning and evening. With no piped-in water, the water had to be hauled, and mostly the kids remembered, but Chloe always made a point to check the trough. The quality of hay Ganado Elementary could afford wasn’t the best, but Arizona horses were tough. They didn’t know what to do with treats until Chloe arrived and started giving them lessons. She went from stall to stall, snapping chilly supermarket carrots in half, chatting to each interested muzzle that bent forward to meet her.

  “Donatello,” she whispered. “How are your legs today, old man? Take advantage of this sunshine. Soak it up, winter’s coming.” She guessed the arthritic gray gelding was an Appaloosa/Percheron cross. Like Elmer, her old lesson horse in California, he looked like glue on hooves, but one couldn’t ask for a better horse to teach tiny tots. She scratched his broad neck while he nosed her jacket for more carrots, and the smell of grateful horse caused her to fantasize about starting up her own riding school here in Tuba City. It would have to be nonprofit, or lessons for barter, because nobody here had much money. Hank would go ballistic if she tried to do such physical work while she was pregnant. He didn’t like that she came down here. Christ, he wouldn’t even hear talk about her waitressing until after the baby came, even though there were plenty of part-time possibilities in that area, and they could sure use the money.

  She moved down the row, distributing the contents of her forty-nine-cent bag of carrots fairly. It was weird to wake up when she felt like it, and maybe do nothing more ambitious all day long than wash the dishes. She’d painted the kitchen walls, insulated the bedroom, and tacked up cedar paneling. She was about to start work on the bathroom until Hank decided that laying tile might be hazardous to the baby’s health.

  Inside the last stall stood the paint horse, at least sixteen hands of Overo Medicine Hat, chocolate-and-white mare, unreasonably sweet-natured, given her gender. Chloe fed her some sugar cubes and the mare nickered, and after they were gone, continued gently scrubbing her tongue over the outstretched palm.

  So things had gone for weeks now. A bag of carrots and table sugar for this one horse who now trusted the woman who came by five times a week. Chloe held out the halter so the mare could sniff it, connecting the straps and buckle with her sugar fix. She slid it around the mare’s neck, waited a minute, then moved it up against her nose. The mare blew out a nervous breath, settled, and Chloe fastened the buckles. The mare allowed herself to be led out of the stall into the arena. Chloe tied her to the fence and began brushing her shabby, well-marked coat. With regular grooming, vitamins, daily exercise, this horse could be something. She had conformation, willingness, a kind eye. The Indian kids took the other horses out on the school grounds, ran them into a lather, tried to learn to rope off them, but the mare they left idle.

  Today all that was going to change. Chloe threw a folded blanket across the mare’s back, pushed a hackamore bridle over the halter, and hitched herself up. Before the mare could think about protesting, Chloe cued her to walk and began to circle her around the arena in figure eights. It was growing dusky, the Arizona sky readying itself for another sunset, the paint box spilling its contents onto the horizon. The basketball players stopped throwing the ball and came her way.

  “Hey, why you riding Sally?” one of them asked.

  “Her name’s Sally?”

  “Enit. Sally Ride, like the astronaut.”

  “Well, Sally’s a pretty nice horse. I think somebody ought to be riding her.”

  The boy who’d spoken handed the ball to his friend and reached out to pet the mare. “Yeah. But nobody does in case they might accidentally wreck her.” He pushed back his shock of hair, so black it looked wet. “She belongs to Junior Whitebear.”

  “So?”

  “Someday he’ll come back, and if she’s wrecked, Junior’ll be pissed and come looking for you.”

  “Let him. She won’t be wrecked, she’ll be in shape.” Chloe legged the mare into a trot. The horse made the transition easily, her head bent, listening to Chloe’s body with her own. “How long’s this Junior fellow been gone?”

  The basketball players looked at one another and tried to remember, counting on fingers. “Must be eight years now.”

  “That’s an awful long time to let a good horse sit wasted. Some people might call that abuse. I’m riding her.”

  The boy frowned. “What you gonna do when Junior shows up and asks why you rode his horse without permission?”

  Chloe smiled. “First I’ll ask him if he wants to make something of it. Then maybe I’ll kick his butt clear to Kingman.”

  They laughed, hit each other with the ball a few times, the way boys will at that age, Chloe thought, remembering the juvenile offenders she’d worked with, basically decent boys with rotten homes that failed to keep them out of trouble. These boys walking away from the arena fence were a year or two yet from cigarettes and baggy jeans, trying to convince girls to let them feel up their breasts. False bravado and stupid choices; that would be their rehearsal for entrance into the world of men. In Indian country all that was tempered a little by close family ties. Maybe postponed was better than nothing.

  Chloe dismounted, checked the mare’s feet for stones, gave her a quick brushing, and put her back in her stall. She whistled for Hannah and hurried off to find Hank. She hummed “Ride, Sally, Ride” and smiled to herself at the slight muscular ache tingling in her thighs. Thunder was too much of a baby to work yet. He wasn’t gelded. If Hank wouldn’t let her tile the bathroom, the mare would do as a substitute activity.

  “Short Dog Johnson’s turning out to be quite the artist,” Hank said. “Today I read them the story of Daedalus and Icarus. Later, during art, kid draws a set of wings, Chloe. He has the architecture down fairly accurately, and he detailed each individual feather. He tells me, ‘Mr. Oliver, if Icarus had been wearing this kind of flying wing he wouldn’t have falled.’ Falled. If there was a library worth spit in this town I would have bet money he’d read a book on avian anatomy.”

  “Maybe you’re just one hell of a storyteller.”

  Hank smiled. “Thanks. I just wish the other kids weren’t always giving him the business.”

  “The cooties thing, huh?”

  Hank nodded. “Poor little guy. No dad in the picture, his mother working all the time. He’s got no friends except for his sketchbook.”

  “Kids can be brutal. Second thoughts about the job?”

  “No. Third grade isn’t that bad, especially if we get sunsets like this one every night. Though I must admit I’m experiencing a philosophical conflict over having to assign a ‘slow readers’ group when half these guys aren’t even on speaking terms with the alphabet.”

  “Sounds like typical school bullshit to me.”

  Hank leafed through the mail, his fingers stopping at his mother’s letter. He set the envelope down on his lap, unopened.

  “Aren’t you going to read it?”

  “Later on,” he said, leaning over to kiss her.

  Outside, the highway peeled away behind them. They passed the roadside stands, empty now, in the shadow of a billboard for a drilling company. “Red Power” was neatly spray-painted over the advertisement, obscuring the company’s intentions, more like an insistent claim than any graffiti announcing gang boundaries. Hannah sat up between them as Chloe drove the winding road to the cabin, whining when she recognized they were nearing home. Hank tapped the letter on his thigh, and in Chloe’s mind, the song was singing itself deep into her cells: Ride, Sally, ride.

  5

  Saturday, November 28

  Dear Kit,

  It’s been raining like a bitch for weeks, then about a half hour ago, everything suddenly went so quiet and creepy
I looked out the window and what do you know, my first Arizona snowstorm. So I run out there and hold up my hands like a three-year-old, watching the flakes land on my skin and melt. If anybody saw they’d no doubt think, “Typical Californian.”

  Hank’s off in search of a cord of wood that won’t cost us a fortune. Money’s tight, but he’d never say so out loud. Getting pretty good at this man-against-the-wilderness routine, our Hank. Braving the supermarket, too. Mark my words, after that, he’ll stop off at some used bookstore. He’ll go without shaving cream and wear socks with holes in the toes, but when it comes to books he shakes the wallet clean. Ain’t that just like an educated man, spending his last few dimes on books for the classroom? Something to remember when you start liking boys. Meanwhile, Hannah and me are snug indoors by the stove, looking out the windows. Where there was bare red earth and rocks now it’s starting to make little drifts against the barn, real pretty, kind of like those old-time Christmas cards with the sprinkled-on glitter. Only sun-baked California babes like you and me can get a kick out of such weather.

  You asked what it’s like being pregnant. Truthfully, I feel like a pot-belly stove, hot down there all the time. Everybody’s wearing thermals and here I sit, barefoot. You should see my breasts—big as grapefruit! I take off my shirt and Hank gets this really stupid grin, like he hit the tit jackpot. My bad ankle swells a little, especially after I ride. I swear, Hank about freaks every time I get within ten feet of a horse. Like I haven’t ridden every single day of my life save for the one I was in jail. The doctor at the clinic gets all riled about it, but the way I see things, if I have to give up cigarettes and coffee, I get to keep riding. That’s only fair.

  Lots of color horses on the reservation. The big-mouthed cowboys tell endless jokes about them, like wearing big hats and sucking a cheekful of Copenhagen makes them experts on anything besides stained teeth. I’ve been kind of looking after the school horses while Hank teaches. There’s a pretty decent paint mare who belongs to this jeweler dude who everyone says got world-famous and moved off the reservation to someplace yuppie. The Navs go on about him like he’s their own personal long-lost Hollywood Square. I wonder if he trained her. She has one of those rocking-horse canters you’d just die for.

  Hank’s happy enough. I watch him with the Indian kids. It’s just elementary school, making their letters and sounding out words, poster painting, but he comes home so excited you’d think the teaching part beat the paycheck. Summer wasn’t so bad, when there was stuff to do, like work on fixing up this place, go exploring, but I miss stinking of horse sweat, aching in every muscle, serving breakfasts and filling up my pockets with tips. These days it’s mostly my bladder that gets sore thanks to Junior riding it all day. Feels like a million years ago I had my own school, lesson horses, riding students. When Diane took over did she keep offering the group lesson on Saturdays?

  God, I miss California. The view of the Painted Desert from Third Mesa, those tiny horsehair baskets they sell at the Cameron Trading Post, the big charge Hannah gets when she dumps over the trash cans Hank thinks he’s booby-trapped—it’s all right, but it isn’t home yet.

  Hey, ask your dad if you can come visit for spring break. Tell Rich Wedler his last best waitress said he should cut the moths loose from his wallet and fly you to Flagstaff. If he won’t spring for the shuttle from Phoenix, I’ll drive down and get you. Mention that we have three museums and the Grand Canyon’d make a great science project. Tell him you need cross-cultural experiences. Tell him Hank said that part.

  And speaking of foreign lands, in a couple more months I guess I’ll be somebody’s mother. Hard to picture. This baby has got to be a boy because I sure don’t have a clue how to raise a girl, unless she’s just like you, all attitude and pretty red hair. Speaking of hair, are you still dyeing yours Down There?

  Write soon. Send pictures. Here’s one of Hank just before he fell off the barn roof. He only bruised his shoulder a little. I slathered it with Bigel oil. Hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving and your father didn’t feed you diner chow. Say hey to Lita for me. Tell her to keep chopping the vegetables on a slant. I know how much that rankles your dad.

  Big hugs from the big mama,

  Chloe

  P.S. Thunder just laid down in the snow and made a horse angel!

  Chloe set down the ballpoint pen and stretched her cramped fingers, examining her winter-chapped hands. As she stamped and licked the envelope for the letter to her old boss’s daughter, she ran her toes over the back of the sleeping dog beneath the desk, digging deep into her thick, white fur. Hannah sighed and, without opening her eyes, continued napping. When the weather started turning bad, thunder and lightning, tennis-ball-size hail, the shepherd ran away, down their dirt road toward Flagstaff proper. One time she’d been gone a week. Chloe finally discovered her hanging out with the bikers at the Silver Saddle Saloon off Highway 89—forty goddamn miles away. The bikers made remarks about how a mother-to-be who couldn’t keep her dog at home wasn’t likely to fare better with a child, and Chloe was afraid to flip them off, this being their territory, not hers. Bottom line, until spring Hannah stayed tethered to a lead or indoors where Chloe could keep an eye on her.

  She sniffed at her cup of tea and gave a little shudder: cold, green, and definitely good for you. If only there were some Hershey’s cocoa in the house. She pictured that old-fashioned, sturdy brown-and-silver tin with the pry-off top—universal kid medicine. Chocolate helped. Strong black coffee would be better, but if Hank smelled coffee on her breath, he’d be on the phone to Dr. Carrywater in the time it took her to spit it out. If I was meant to eat grass I’d have been born a cow, she tried to tell him. But then he’d kiss her neck and gently press his hand to her belly, saying, Do you have any idea how sexy pregnancy looks on you? I get hard just looking at you. Drink half the tea, do it for the baby. Mostly she did, but their spiky cactus plants on the kitchen windowsill didn’t seem to fare too badly on herbal supplements.

  As she watched her colt try to make sense of the snow, she imagined holding a Wedler’s Café mug of steaming chocolate. Atop the surface puffy white marshmallows bumped each other like chunks of melting iceberg. It would be a Thursday afternoon in Kit’s dad’s restaurant, Chloe’s last break before filling ketchup bottles and salt shakers, wiping down the Naugahyde booths, collecting Kit, and heading out to the stables. Some old geezer in the corner would be snoring over his newspaper, and Chloe would just let him nap there until she finished her cocoa. She’d hear the sound of silverware clattering into dishwater, smell whatever soup was simmering for tomorrow’s special, almost taste the undercurrent of Comet and disinfectant floor cleaner, and all that familiarity would make her feel safe.

  Maybe in the crowded supermarket aisles of Flagstaff’s Food4Less Hank would right this minute pick up her thoughts and pull down a package of chocolate from the shelf. Not likely. Hank didn’t veer off the shopping list the way she did, instinctively understanding that fat yellow potatoes or homemade tacos could go a long way toward soothing the melancholy from aimless winter days. Particularly not an ex-college professor now teaching elementary school to Indian children for less than half his usual salary.

  She’d come to him with nine grand and pocket change—her settlement from that developer-engineered bust on Hugh Nichols’s land, where the police had broken her ankle and charged her with assault when what they were really angling for was a way onto Hugh’s property. If Hank’s lawyer hadn’t fought so hard, she might still be sitting in that jail cell, her skin crawling with shame. He’d stood by her, and continued to do so, even though she could tell his parents considered her pure trailer trash. That kind of loyalty made it as much his money as hers. They’d put it to good use building the barn, wrapping the summer cabin’s water pipes in heat tape, double-glazing the windows, buying new tires for her truck, and rebuilding his Honda’s transmission. The biggest drawback to having money was that it didn’t last forever. Hank had the condo in California up for sa
le, but the real estate market there was “soft” or some damn thing.

  Sometimes it felt like they were just sort of dragging along with the program set by the baby, the by-product of their crazy-for-each-other desire. Well, worrying was one sure way to get wrinkles. As if he sensed her fear, outside, the colt brayed in terror at the snow.

  She sighed, dribbled tea on the cacti, poured the excess down the granite sink, slipped on Hank’s sweat pants and jacket, and toed her feet into her old Tony Lamas. She twisted her thick blond hair back into a bun and anchored the ballpoint pen through it. Grabbing an afghan from the couch, she wrapped it around herself, hitched the leggings over her belly and opened the back door. She’d learned not to trust those bright blue skies. Arizona winters played practical jokes. The air was so bitter that each cold breath felt as if it could freeze her lungs. To the northeast the sky was crowded with pewter-colored snow clouds, moving along toward Colorado and New Mexico. She stopped a moment in the yard, getting her bearings, fighting the solitary panic that sometimes came over her way out here with neighbors and a real town so far away. The idea of a winter’s worth of snow on the way was a little blinding. The bigness of sky felt all-encompassing, as if the swirling white dust were the result of some massive bird fluttering his wings. I don’t belong here, she thought, the scar on her shoulderblade itching as it always did when she was feeling without purpose and eager to hit the road. As if to concur, the baby kicked hard at her ribs, twice.

  When Dr. Lois pressed the stethoscope to her skin and chatted about growth charts and gestational age, Chloe smiled vaguely, imagining the pregnancy was happening to someone else. After those exams she rewarded herself with a ride on the jeweler’s mare. In the shadow of the cottonwoods, along those bare dirt roads, she gulped in the fragrance of fall turning to winter hungrily, the fresh, dry, earthy smell scrubbing her clean, simplifying everything, erasing these unspeakable thoughts. Astride the mare at the canter, she imagined the baby clinging to her ribs and her unspoken warning: Any child of mine better learn to hang on.