“Gasoline?” Fleischer repeated. “That’s crazy.”
“Yep,” Hogarth agreed, stepping through the doors of the hangar to the fresh air outside. “Real tricky stuff.” He pulled an opened pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and tossed it to Fleischer. “Why don’t y’all have a smoke on me.”
* * *
Maybe it was the fumes. Maybe it was the gasoline—slick, silken fluid, its scent that insinuated itself inside their safety suits, the voracious fluid that left the planes clean, grease-free, and gleaming silver. Maybe it was because, no matter how careful they were, it got on their hands, their clothes. Inside their mouths and nasal passages, like they were drinking it. Maybe it was the fumes, but Willie was as sick as a dog.
He was sitting next to one of the steamers, doubled over in a cold sweat, when Fleischer noticed him.
“Jackson, what’s wrong?” Fleischer peeled up his face mask and yelled to him.
Willie just sat there, holding his guts. Fleischer tapped him on the head.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not feeling so good,” Willie managed. Fleischer studied him for a moment, then gestured for him to go into the radio room office. “You can sit things out,” he said.
Willie walked there slowly, painfully hunched, holding his innards, and sat down on a carton of airplane parts. He sat there until the pain tore at him, slicing through his stomach like a razor blade. He let out an involuntary moan, then another. Fleischer poked his head in.
“Worse?” he asked.
“It’s bad,” Willie managed.
Fleischer watched him a moment more. “Report to the dispensary. I’ll have Randolph drive you.”
Willie shot Fleischer an incredulous look. “It’s against rules,” he whispered. “They don’t want coloreds to report to the dispensary.”
“You’re too sick to sit here.” Fleischer signaled to August, who handed off his hose and joined them.
“No,” Willie managed. “I don’t want trouble. Give me a few more minutes.”
“They don’t like us to go on sick call, Sarge,” August explained. “I think they too busy.”
Fleischer looked from one to the other. “Get in the jeep, Jackson,” he ordered. “I’ll drive you myself.”
* * *
They weren’t happy; the nurse at the base hospital dropped her papers when she saw Willie follow his sergeant into the hospital. Maxwell Field Army Hospital was set up for the servicemen and their families.
“Let me get the—let me get—let me get someone in charge,” she stuttered and left them. Willie pressed himself against a wall for support.
They waited. Others came in and were treated, but they waited.
“Take that man to the dispensary behind the hospital,” someone shouted from a doorway. It was a sergeant. He rattled the clipboard he was carrying meaningfully. “Take that man behind the hospital. There’s a place back there for him.”
Willie could barely walk, but he made it to the jeep. Fleischer drove around back, drove to the colored dispensary, a small office behind the hospital. It was bare, except for a few cots and cabinets. And an orderly who was sitting, half-asleep, his chair tipped back against the wall.
“Get the doctor,” Fleischer barked as soon as they entered.
The orderly stood up, flustered.
“Get the doctor,” Fleischer said again.
“He comes in later—” the orderly started.
Fleischer pounded his fist on a table. “Get the doctor!” he yelled. “Get a doctor! Get any doctor!” He was screaming now. “Get the doctor! Now! On the double. On the double! The doctor. The doctor. The doctor!” The confused orderly rushed from the room.
It wasn’t the gasoline after all.
Willie’s appendectomy took place in the hospital, the proper hospital, an hour later.
Chapter 21
The gold lights below me suddenly angle, then thrust into a sharp vertical, piercing the horizon before straightening into the familiar Boston coastline. The plane climbs away from the city. Pale clouds stand in bas-relief against an indigo sky, and we fly through white wisps that leave beads of water along my window. The lights drop behind us, becoming obscured by the darkening night, disappearing into a fog of thickening lavender clouds. We are airborne. We are above the city, then above the ocean, flying from the day, from the past, flying on, as the night reaches and overtakes us.
It is such a miracle, this reaching into the heavens, grabbing just enough of it to stay aloft. This miracle equation of engines and wings and flaps and thrust that keeps us balanced on a ridge of air. One failure, one deletion in the delicate equation, and the sky will immediately betray us, letting us fall, spiral down to an unforgiving earth. But I will not think about that. I need to trust in the miracle once again.
* * *
I put my head back against the hard upholstery and dim the overhead. The engines drone, the plane rocks like a cradle, and it lulls me. I close my eyes, but I see Willie, young, already embattled. I see a white horse struggling to find his place in a herd of black ones who will not have him. I see Malachi, waving to me, his expression unfathomable. I hear my father, “If you tried hard enough, you might actually get good at something.” The sound of the engines fade away as I drowse, wondering whether or not David will be waiting. He once promised that he would always be waiting for me, and now it seems that it had been true. He was always waiting for me. But I hadn’t heard from him at all this time, and I won’t allow myself to think about it. I close off my valves, my pressure valves, and take a deep breath. It’s peaceful now. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?
I had been gone for six days, and it was time for me to return. I’m not sure whether I will ever come back to Boston; I can’t think of that now, either. The pursuit of his story may never be completed, and I’m not sure it is okay. All I know for now is that Willie needed his rest and I was needed at home.
* * *
I have to get a taxi because no one is waiting at the airport. David’s phone went right to voice mail and no answer from the house phone. Maybe he’s asleep. There are no messages on my cell phone.
Everything is in order at home. Even though it is eleven at night, the first thing I do is drop my suitcase on the driveway and visit the barn and my horses. I need to see them, touch them, to stroke the soft muzzles, and playfully squeeze big, rubbery horse lips as I push my face against the hard bones of their foreheads. I kiss each horse good night, then turn out the light before stepping outside into the cool night, to stand under the set of stars that had just been my nearest companions. The ground in front of the barn is raked, every scrap of errant hay is gone, every footprint, except my new ones, scraped away. There are wavy patterns on the ground, made by the tines of the rake. Malachi always rakes like that, like he is weaving the sand and dirt together, weaving a lock into the earth to keep intruders out. All the paddock gates are closed, the wheelbarrows are neatly turned on their noses, handles up, the rakes are hung, everything is in order and I let my breath out in a long sigh. There is a dim light in Malachi’s little house. I won’t bother him.
* * *
David is not home. I make myself a cup of tea and sit at the kitchen table in the dark and sip it. I always fancied that if things changed between David and me, I would know. Like knowing in advance whether your horse is going to spook. They tighten their muscles and raise their heads, maybe snort. I sift back through the past weeks. Nothing. I saw nothing.
Oh.
Right.
He had stopped proposing. My heart drops like a plane in free fall.
He had stopped proposing.
* * *
Malachi is waiting for me outside the barn early in the morning, wearing his tan cap, tan slacks, and a light blue shirt. I hug him, and give him a mug of hot cocoa that I’d made before I left the house, and one of the two bagels that I pulled from the freezer and toasted and buttered for us. He takes a long sip from his cup, and stays quiet. We go ins
ide the barn and settle ourselves down on two bales of hay.
“I need to tell you something,” he says suddenly. “I need to leave.”
I am speechless for a moment, not sure I heard him right. “Why? Where on earth would you go?” I finally ask, my voice quaking. I am more than surprised; I am astonished. I thought he would stay with me forever. I thought I would give him the spare bedroom in the house when he wanted to retire, and then hire someone to take his place running the farm. “I need you,” I say, trying not to let feelings of betrayal color my voice.
“There is places I got to get to,” is all he says.
“But why? Is there something I can do to change your mind?” I ask. “Raise your salary?” I know enough about him to know it’s not about money.
“Hell no, missy,” Malachi says. “I was gonna leave it all to you anyway.”
I smile because I know he doesn’t have anything. We’re always giving him extra money, but I never cared about the money.
“What is it, then?” I ask.
“Family,” he says. “I heard from my big sister, Minnie. She says it’s time to come home.”
I am surprised. He has never mentioned that he had a sister, never mentioned that he had family at all. He always told me he never took calls from kinfolk. I feel a little jealous.
* * *
I can run the farm. I know I can find someone younger, stronger to help me. Someone who won’t slap his thighs and laugh at me when I am unceremoniously dismounted from a horse. Someone who won’t pull a candy bar from my hand and tell me that my horse would grr-eatly appreciate it if I ate an apple instead. But no one else will make me fig tea, with the sweetest of figs mashed in the bottom, and orange calendula flowers delicately floating on the surface, and hand it to me at just the right moment, without asking whether I need it or not, to calm me down.
I can’t imagine this place without him. He did tell me once, a long time ago, that he had “itchy feet” and that he liked to keep on the move. He had also once told me that he had lived on my farm for the past fifty years. What to believe? And more importantly, where could an eighty-one-year-old man go, when he doesn’t have anyplace else?
“Why?” is all I can manage to say. “Aren’t you happy here?”
“Happiest I ever been in my whole entire life,” Malachi replies. And his eyes get a little red and watery.
I turn to face him. “Are you sick?” I ask. “Because I can take care of you. We can get you medical care. I always promised you that.”
He shakes his head and grabs a handful of hay, long strands that he weaves into a braid. But he says nothing.
“Why won’t you tell me anything?”
He gives me a sharp glance and stands suddenly. The conversation is over. “I don’t tell anything, missy, because there’s nothing to tell.”
* * *
I stand up and walk out of the barn to a paddock. I don’t understand. He has been with me for so long, I thought I knew him. Or knew most about him, of what he wants me to know. He never spoke to me about his past, but it didn’t matter. I had recognized his easy familiarity with horses, his competence, his gentle patience, and that had been enough. And I cared so much for him. Suddenly I need something to do. I grab a horse, just holding the side of his halter, and lead him from the paddock to the barn. It’s wrong; Malachi always yells at me to “learn something” and then reminds me to use a lead rope, but I don’t care. I can do things any way I want to. I spend a useless day grooming all the young horses. I can barely look at Malachi.
David comes home the next morning. We greet each other somberly.
“Did you find what you were looking for in Boston?” he asks me as he lifts his suitcase from the trunk of his car and carefully locks it up.
“Did you find what you were looking for in Mexico?” I ask, more pointedly. He gives me a sharp look.
The valves are staying closed for both of us.
* * *
Now that I am paying attention, I can see it had all been getting too much for Malachi. I spend the next few days interviewing barn help and settle on a young woman named Danielle. She has ridden her whole life, had a pony when she was a kid, can ride anything, just loves horses, blah, blah, blah.
Danielle comes every day to clean the stalls. When she arrives, Malachi pulls a bale of hay outside the barn, returns with a saddle and a small bucket filled with water and a little tan sponge floating on top, and starts cleaning, though the saddle looks pretty clean to me. I lean against the fence and watch. Danielle waves to us, and disappears into the barn. I don’t know what to say to Malachi about leaving, and he offers nothing.
Danielle steps from the barn flanked by two horses, one lead line in each hand. I don’t like her leading horses like this; it’s not safe if one of them decides to spook. Malachi just raises his eyebrows.
“One at a time, please,” I call out to her. She nods and puts them in their paddock, shuts the gate, and goes back into the barn.
She comes out with two more black horses, one being Toby, who looks particularly innocent this morning as he gets put in a paddock with his henchmen.
“It goes faster this way,” she says, by way of passively arguing with me, then returns to the small barn and comes back out with Lisbon.
“Where do you want him?” she asks.
“In the paddock with the others,” I say at the exact same time that Malachi tells her, “By himself. I roped off the far end of the paddock for him.”
Sure enough, I see that Malachi has put in temporary wooden stakes, with thin ropes strung across Toby’s paddock.
Danielle nods and leads Lisbon to the small, roped-in area.
“It’s too small for him,” I complain and Malachi nods in agreement.
“But it’s as safe as I can make it,” he says. “You didn’t want him on your lawn.”
We watch as Danielle releases the snap from Lisbon’s halter and he wanders over to a pile of hay. She clips the rope barrier back onto the post. Toby immediately picks up his head and pricks his ears, and trots the rope line, back and forth, his eyes and face in full alert. Before we can say anything, he jumps the rope, catching it in his front feet and dragging the posts down. He races toward Lisbon, the ropes dragging behind him before falling away, menacing the white horse with bared teeth, ears pinned, and comes to a halt atop the hay pile. Lisbon trots a circle around him, a futile, dispirited trot, before he drops to a walk and heads to a corner of the paddock. He stands there, neck lowered, defeated, far from the hay. I can almost hate him for being such a coward.
“Damn,” says Malachi. “I would have sworn it was gonna work.”
“Take the ropes away before the whole herd gets tangled,” I yell over to Danielle as I run to help her. Together, we pull the posts out, one at a time, and drop them into a neat pile of lumber outside the paddock.
“Poor Lisbon,” she says to me, puffing under the exertion of carrying a wooden post. “He better grow some balls, ’cause Toby can eat him for breakfast and still have room for hay.” She drops the post and returns to the barn to grab a wheelbarrow and duck inside to clean stalls.
“You’re expecting him to do what he can’t do,” Malachi says, giving a little hoot. “Lissen up: Hardest thing in the world, to do what you can’t do.”
* * *
We sit on hay bales for most of the morning without saying much more to each other. He’s cleaned four saddles that didn’t need cleaning, and took apart and put back together as many bridles. This tells me that he wants to talk without words actually passing between us. Sometimes we can sit for a whole hour like this, just taking in the sky and the sweet smell of hay and the sight of the horses grazing, in a companionable silence. But today we sit and say nothing, because I don’t know what to say. For the first time since I’ve known him, I don’t know what to say to him. Finally I let out a long sigh.
“Where are you planning to go?” I ask.
He gazes at the sky. It is bright blue, and clear as lac
quer. “I’m thinking Wyoming,” he says. “Or Montana. Someplace I can still work with horses.” I am beginning not to believe him.
“I don’t believe you. You’re going to leave me to work somewhere else with horses?” I tell him. “Besides, do you think someone out there is going to hire an eighty-one-year-old cowhand with a bum leg?” He gives me a goofy grin. “Where does your sister live?” I pursue. “She can’t be living in both Wyoming and Montana!”
“She lives far away,” he answers without answering.
“So, it’s settled,” I say. “You should just stay here. We’ll keep Danielle on as your assistant.”
His mood darkens, and he looks down at his shoes. “Can’t, missy,” he says. “It’ll just be a mess.”
“What kind of mess?”
“A personal kind,” he says.
“I’ll help you with anything,” I promise him. “If it’s legal, David’s a lawyer.”
* * *
Danielle throws a few squares of hay into Lisbon’s corner of the paddock. We watch Toby mosey over, and Lisbon trot away, to the first pile of hay. The two horses go back and forth between the two hay piles, Toby not letting Lisbon rest at either one, exactly the way Malachi and I are going back and forth in our conversation. None of us, equine or human, are getting anywhere.
“Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?” I ask. I am fighting frustration and tears because I don’t want to lose Malachi. But he is resolute. He shrugs and stares at the green and brown mountains off in the distance, the Catskills that surround my farm.
“I just gotta go,” he says. “My ghosts have caught up with me.”
“You and Lisbon,” I say, standing up and brushing the strands of hay from my jeans. I tell him a truth I have only recently learned. “You both have to know this—running away from your ghosts only makes them come after you faster.”
Chapter 22
The new foal is windswept.
Maja’s foal is a black Friesian filly, with sturdy legs, a stout barrel, and a face delicate as lace. She is the last foal of the season, and Malachi foaled her, even though he said he had to leave right away, even though he said he was running from ghosts.
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