He must not have wanted me to.
Headlights sweep across the kitchen and May’s eyes come up. Her head tilts slightly, reading the sound of the motor. “Everett is home,” she says.
We sit quietly for a minute, and the engine cuts off, the truck door slams, and Everett joins us in the kitchen. His mood feels heavy to me, dark, more than I wish to carry. And I am feeling things acutely now, as if my nerves were all exposed. I think this is what it feels like to be sane.
“May,” he says. “Ella.”
“Are you hungry?” May asks him.
He shakes his head. He sets one big hand on my shoulder. “Were you able to find your brother?”
“Yes and no. Were you able to help your son?”
“Yes and no. I’m going to get some sleep.”
When he has left the room May shakes her head, as if to clear the sadness away. “He’s never been anything but trouble.”
“Everett?”
“Our son.”
“Oh. Of course.”
“Everett thinks we raised him all wrong. But do you know anybody who raised their kids all right?”
“Not personally, no. May, why hasn’t Yozzy come back?”
She shakes her head. I’m not sure why I thought she would know.
In the morning Everett and I load into the pickup and drive to Sam Roanhorse’s.
Sam says Yozzy left for home almost two days ago, and my heart falls, and it’s held up so high, by such narrow lashings, I wonder how far it has to drop, and what will become of it now.
We ride the open countryside, off the road, toward home, and I kneel in the truck bed, my hands flat against the roof of the cab. I ask for guidance on where to look.
When I see her, I knock on Everett’s window and point.
We drive up close to her, and she lifts her head. She’s spread out on her side. She does not try to get up. I limp, hobble to her, and Everett follows close behind.
I hold her neck, and whisper to her, but her eyes are hollow, filmy, and she says only, thank you for coming, and goodbye.
“The trip was too much for her,” I say.
Everett says, “No, it was exactly enough. She’s done what you needed. She’s done.”
A minute later he’s back at my side carrying Simon’s rifle. I’m shocked to see it. I had no idea he’d brought it, but now, in a deep place, moving deeper all the time, like quicksand, I understand.
“You or me?” he asks.
“It should be her owner,” I say, in a voice that might not belong to me.
He hands me the rifle. I don’t ask why. I wait for him to explain.
“She has no owner. She belongs to herself. You gave her what I never could. You gave her something important to do.”
He leaves us alone.
I cry into her neck, and remember the pain of my own walking, and the coyotes who tried to take her, and how they’ll never have her now.
“Yozzy,” I say. “I think we found Simon after all. I don’t think we can help him, but I think we found him. I just wanted you to know that. Thank you. Goodbye now.”
I need her to know this before she goes, though I suspect I am the only one who needed to hear it again.
Her eyes say she understands this moment, and my role in it, and that she’s more than ready. I kiss her on the nose, and rise to my knees, and set the rifle to point into her ear.
I remember this from the deer on the Sacramento highway.
When I feel I’ve set the rifle properly, I remind her that I love her and I look to the sky not down. I ask my finger to do the unthinkable, and it must be wiser than the rest of me, because it does.
I hear, but I never see.
I keep my eyes closed, and as her soul leaves, a part of me leaves to follow, a horse part, something I loved dearly but no longer need.
I turn away without looking, limp back to the truck, and ask Everett to please check to see that I’ve done the job correctly.
When he returns he puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “Perfect.”
“What do you do with a dead horse in the Navajo tradition?” He only shrugs.
I thought there was a tradition for everything, every passage, but Everett says the traditions are ancient, from a time when there were no horses in America. He suggests we leave her where she is. He says even if we had a way to do so it’s a crime to bury a thousand pounds of food, sustenance, that the native animals could use.
“I don’t want the coyotes to have her.”
“They can’t, Ella, she’s gone. It’s just her body.”
“But I worked so hard to protect her.”
“Of course you did. You needed her. She needed herself. Let that change now.”
We drive home in silence.
Halfway home I see him up ahead of us, hobbling along by the side of the highway, moving in the same direction we are. He is wearing the overalls, one strap on his right shoulder holding the baggy things in place, the bib drooping on the left where I cut a strap away. For whatever reason, I assume that what I am seeing is not real.
“Everett, do you have mirages around here?”
“That man, you mean? Is that your brother Simon?”
“No. But I think he used to be.”
We pull up close, close enough to see his white hair flapping out behind him in the hot breeze. Everett slows the truck as we pull alongside him.
“Don’t stop,” I say. I’m thinking of Yozzy, thinking that this wild former Simon tried to shoot her. “He’s not my brother anymore.”
Everett crawls the truck along, a mile or two an hour, beside the man, who does not turn to look.
“But if he used to be, maybe he could be again.”
I roll my window all the way down. “Simon,” I say. He is not more than three feet from me. I could lean out and touch him, but I don’t. He turns his head slightly at the sound of his name. “Simon, where are you going?”
“Going home, Ella.”
“Good. That’s a good thing to do, Simon.” I wish he would turn and look at me. I want to see it in his eyes, the way I did in my dream. I know for certain now, because he called me by my name. But I want to see Simon in him. It doesn’t make sense inside me, how much he has changed. “Sarah misses you.”
“How is Sarah?” he says, and the voice is close to something now, riding on the edge of a voice I know.
“Worried sick about you.”
“I’ll go home, tell her I’m okay.”
“Good. That’s good, Simon.”
He continues to shuffle along the road beside us. He shifts his eyes over to look at me, indirectly, assessing in his periphery. I assume I am the source of his interest, but I’ve forgotten that I have his rifle between my knees, pointed straight up to the roof of the truck cab, both hands steady on the barrel.
“That’s mine, you know,” he says. Childlike and resentful.
“Yes, it is. You won’t need it in Sacramento, though. I thought maybe we’d leave it here with my friend Everett. Would that be okay?”
“I guess.”
“I have your wallet. Maybe you want it back now.”
He stops walking. Everett brakes a few feet beyond him, then shifts the truck into reverse and backs even with Simon in the middle of the road, which is otherwise empty. No car in sight in either direction.
I say, “Look at me, Simon,” and he does. And it’s Simon. “I’m going home, too, Simon. Maybe we could travel together. It would be almost like old times.”
He seems to think about this for a few moments. He looks down at the dirt under his bare feet. Up at the sky. Then he nods his head and climbs onto the truck bed, and we all head back to the Ankeahs’.
After lunch Simon bathes, and I borrow a pair of scissors from May, and ask Simon’s permission to groom him. He nods, wide-eyed, and asks how short his hair will be, and if I’ll leave a mustache.
“A mustache? Oh, yes, I think we should. Don’t you? As far as the hair goes, it’s going to go pretty
short, because it’s so tangled. But it’ll grow fast.”
I cut just below each matted knot—through the center of some—and brush out what’s left. He doesn’t fuss, though I’m sure it pulls. When I can comb through it, I even it out as best I can.
I trim his beard close to the skin, then lather his face with soap and shave him with a borrowed razor. He holds still, seeming to almost enjoy the attention. I make faces at him, to suggest how I’d like him to hold his mouth, to help me shave more closely.
I towel away the last soap, and he looks almost like Simon again. The eyes have changed, he’s too thin, but the mouth and mustache look familiar; the hair is blonde again, because it was never white. The surface was only bleached by the sun.
He says, “I want to go home now.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Because you came all this way to find me. How did you find me, Ella?”
“I’m not sure. I just tried to think like somebody who knows you. Why did you try to shoot my horse?”
“So you wouldn’t ride away again. Thanks for coming for me, Ella.”
The blanket May gave him to wear has fallen off one shoulder, and I see the angry scars of sunburn blisters, deep and maybe permanent, and I want to touch them, as if my touch could heal somehow. I want to know how someone could allow such a thing to happen. Before I do, I see the scars on my own wrist, as I reach out, and the overlay of the two brings a sense of quiet, of no questions, in my mind. I ask too many questions anyway.
“How do I look?” he says.
I ask May for a mirror, and she gives me a small hand-held one, and smiles at Simon, and runs a hand over his short, clean hair. I hold the mirror for him, and he sees himself. His face changes, from surprise to embarrassment to something I can’t read, or don’t dare.
“Kind of short.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’ll grow fast. When we get to the next town, I’ll buy you a hat.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s your money, actually.”
I turn the mirror around and look at myself. My hair is tangled, my face clean, red, windburned, the scar on my chin still visible. My eyes are the same, only better. I sigh in relief.
“What do you see, Ella?”
“Just me, Simon. Only me.”
Everett comes in and shakes Simon’s hand, and he likes Simon, and Simon likes him. I don’t have to ask this, I know. But then, I think, everybody likes my brother Simon. Everybody always has.
We sit out on the porch, and Everett smokes, and I keep my feet propped up, and the cool air of evening washes over us like a river, washes us away, but not too far, and we are as close to home as we will come on our way home.
I hear Everett tell Simon that the man he was is not gone, only joined by other men he was, but knew nothing about.
I leave them there to talk.
In time Everett brings a pile of wood out to the yard and sets it beside me, where I sit staring north, toward Sam’s house, and beyond. He builds a fire with three or four sticks, then throws on another two when it’s burning well.
“What’s that for?” I ask.
“Keep it burning for three days. It’s a funeral offering. It will help you mourn.”
“I thought there was no tradition.”
“Well, you needed one, so I made one up.”
I sit cross-legged in front of the fire until sundown, defying the stiffness in my legs. I feed it wood if it appears weak. I watch the cold northern landscape through its waves of heat. I watch the sparks and smoke and ash rise, always rise, with the heat, like the things we discard, whether they were part or all of what we thought we were.
The moon, which is also rising, smiles across this moment. My brother Simon comes to sit with me at dark, brings me dinner, and I thank him and set it aside. He sits in silence with me for a long portion of night, and rises from time to time to feed another stick of wood into the flames.
I lie down and stare at the stars, because the heat hurts my eyes. The stars are always cool. The stars never change. Or, if they do, within our lifetime the change is unnoticeable.
Simon speaks up in the stillness.
He says, “I’m sorry I tried to shoot her.”
“I’m sorry I tried to shoot you.”
“You did? Oh. Well, anyway. You missed.”
“I’m not cut out for this stuff.” I sit up, close beside him, and loop my arm around his shoulder, and kiss him on the temple, and lean my head against his. “What happened, Simon? When did everything fall apart for you?”
He seems to know the answer sooner than he shares it. “All along, Ella. I guess nobody noticed.”
I look to the moon, hanging three-quarters full over the horizon. It says, see what I told you? Things have been shifting all this time.
“Why did you leave your checkbook in your coat pocket, Simon? Did you want me to find you?”
He considers this for a long time.
“Checkbook?” he repeats. He seems confused, and I realize he has no memory of owning a checkbook at all. I nod at the moon, nod my understanding.
He begins to speak again, then catches himself.
“What?”
“Oh, you get mad when I talk about Mrs. Hurley.”
“Maybe I’ve gotten better at it in my old age.”
He sighs, like he isn’t sure enough to try, and it reminds me so much of twelve-year-old Simon, it gives me goosebumps. “You know the last thing she said to me before she died?” I expect a rehash of just what she said to me. Take care of that sister of yours. Pretty much negating the value of the whole deal, turning it into a weak admonition not to turn on each other. “She said if I ever needed someone to lean on I should remember my sister Ella. She said you’re a lot stronger than you look.”
I laugh, and say it’s not the first time she was ever wrong.
“She wasn’t wrong. She was never wrong.”
She was wrong, sometimes. But not about this. She knew I would turn out strong. She knew Simon would break under the strain. She noticed, and she tried to tell me. But I don’t try to say all that to Simon.
“Well, she wasn’t perfect, Simon. By her own admission. Remember what she used to say? ‘I have two major flaws, both in my own eyes, and the eyes of the Lord. A taste for strong spirits and a feel for games of chance. But I go to church every Sunday, and if the good Lord took exception, he’s had ample chance to mention it by now.’” I even get the voice down fairly well.
Simon stares, wide-eyed, and for a minute I think I’ve angered him. Then I see he’s amazed and impressed.
“You really do remember.”
“Yes, I really do.”
He leans back and closes his eyes. “She was right in the long run. When will we go home, Ella?”
“When the fire goes out. Then we’ll be all done here. Then we’ll go.”
He falls asleep beside me, and I stroke the slight remainder of his hair. I build up the fire before I go to sleep.
“Tender, amazingly hopeful.” -Kirkus Reviews, of Becoming Chloe
“Vibrant and heartbreaking.” -Publishers Weekly, of Becoming Chloe
By the bestselling author of Don’t Let Me Go and Pay It Forward, this captivating short story collection features ALWAYS CHLOE, the long-awaited novella sequel to Becoming Chloe, Hyde’s award-winning novel.
Jordy and Chloe are living above a restaurant in Morro Bay, the first place they landed after their trip down the Big Sur Coast. But Jordy has a boyfriend now, an old flame who’s come back into his life in a big way.
Chloe stretches herself as far as she can go to give them her blessing, but her issues about living--or even sleeping--alone turn this happy reunion into a potential disaster. Chloe stops eating, stops sleeping, stops paddling her beloved and battered blue kayak in the bay.
No one knows how to help her. When her friend Old Ben, the man who runs the fuel dock nearby, gives her some advice, his words could either save the day or send her o
ut to sea forever, depending on her unique mind’s understanding of them.
A heart-wrenching stand-alone novella, and an answer to the many readers who asked for a sequel to Becoming Chloe, ALWAYS CHLOE is ultimately about the struggle to balance others’ needs with our own--and exactly how expansive and forgiving the human heart can be.
This collection also includes four previously published short stories, including Breakage, which won honors in the Tobias Wolff award, and The Lion Lottery, which was cited in Best American Short Stories.
Download your copy here!
Also by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Fiction:
Walk Me Home
When You Were Older
Don’t Let Me Go
Second Hand Heart
When I Found You
Always Chloe and Other Stories
Electric God/The Hardest Part of Love
Funerals for Horses
Walter’s Purple Heart
Earthquake Weather and Other Stories
Jumpstart the World
Diary of a Witness
The Day I Killed James
Chasing Windmills
The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance
Love in the Present Tense
Becoming Chloe
Pay It Forward
Nonfiction:
The Long, Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of Pay It Forward
How to be a Writer in the E-Age...And Keep Your E-Sanity
About Catherine Ryan Hyde
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of 20 published and forthcoming books. Her newer novels include When I Found You, Second Hand Heart, Don’t Let Me Go, and When You Were Older. New Kindle editions of her earlier titles Funerals for Horses, Earthquake Weather and Other Stories, Electric God, and Walter’s Purple Heart are now available. Her newest ebook title is The Long Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of PAY IT FORWARD, her first book-length creative nonfiction. Forthcoming frontlist titles are Walk Me Home and Where We Belong.
She is co-author, with publishing industry blogger Anne R. Allen, of How to Be a Writer in the E-Age...and Keep Your E-Sanity!
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