Marvel and a Wonder

by Joe Meno

  * * *

  First they candled the fertilized eggs. The good ones he handed to the boy to be put back with the hens, while the bad ones—the quitters which had stopped growing, already beginning to smell a little off—he tossed into the silver bucket at his feet.

  Later that morning, they mucked the horse’s quarters and fed her, then Rodrigo tacked up. He turned to the boy and asked, “You ride again?” but the boy only shook his head shyly.

  “Go on,” the grandfather said. “Give it another try.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” the grandfather asked.

  “I’m scared.”

  “That’s no reason. I’m scared of plenty of things. I still got to do them. Go on.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Just try.”

  The boy began to inch away but Rodrigo put an arm around him and helped him up, left foot into the left stirrup, his right leg swinging awkwardly over. On top of the horse he looked less like a child. Rodrigo gently led the horse along the fence line. The farmhand made a few kissy sounds, keeping the horse calm.

  “How does it feel?” Jim asked.

  The boy smiled nervously.

  “Let her run!” Jim shouted.

  “Now we go,” said Rodrigo, giving the horse a pat on its hinds. Then the animal was alive, a kind of curious machine, bounding forward, the boy doing everything he could to stay in the saddle. They were going so fast he forgot to be scared, feeling himself blinking out tears, the animal galloping beneath him, wind whipping in his eyes.

  Afterward, Rodrigo helped him down. Though the boy walked stiffly, his legs and groin sore, he was still smiling ten minutes later, his grandfather patting him on the back, his breath coming hard.

  “I love her,” the boy said. “We are like brother and sister. I’ll never let anyone ever take her away.”

  Jim glanced over at Rodrigo, who smiled back.

  * * *

  They ate lunch early, the boy spreading the bologna sandwiches with a thin layer of mayonnaise before setting the plate in front of his grandfather. As they ate, Jim stared at the boy’s features once again and asked: “Did I ever tell you about the first Fourth of July I spent over in Korea?”

  The boy shook his head, eating around the crust of his sandwich.

  “No? Well, when I was over in Korea, I would get homesick. My mother used to send me letters, photographs sometimes, news about the farm, people in town. Once it was Fourth of July and our jeep broke down along this supply road and so we had to spend the whole evening hiding in a ditch. We had a bottle of GI gin, stuff the soldiers used to make themselves, and we sat in the jungle all night waiting for a convoy to come pick us up. It got dark and we could see the lights in the sky; I thought they were mortars at first, but my partner, Stan, he said they were fireworks. The GIs made their own. They were pretty, but it was strange to see them in some other place. The kind of houses they had over there, the kind of trees, it didn’t look right. It made me feel strange, seeing those fireworks. It was the first time I felt like I belonged to anything. To a country. I couldn’t see it until I was over there.”

  The boy chewed thoughtfully on the corner of his sandwich.

  “I don’t know why it is the way it is,” the grandfather said.

  The boy set down his sandwich, quietly contemplating the grandfather’s words.

  Jim went on: “You did a fine thing today. You were afraid but you got up there anyway.”

  The boy smiled.

  “You’re figuring out what it means to love something. Because when you love something, you got to be ready to give up everything.” He patted the boy on the shoulder and wandered from the room.

  The boy glanced out the kitchen window, seeing the shadow of the horse as it quietly grazed in its paddock, stretching out upon the ground.

  * * *

  On Thursday, both brothers woke up late. It looked like their mother had finally decided to go to work. So they both slept on through the morning, undisturbed, one in his bed, the same bed he had known for as long as he could remember, the other curled up fetal-like on a sofa infested with fleas, abandoned on the screened-in porch. They did not wake each other, but somehow, perhaps through telepathy, the kind of which is known to develop between siblings, twins, or participants in phenomenally disastrous events, they both tottered over to the kitchen table, a silent argument then arising over the final contents of a box of Cocoa Krispies, the younger brother, Gilby, having to settle on Honeycombs instead. Before their bowls of lukewarm cereal, they went over the plan: They would each have a gun. Or only Gilby would have a gun, as Edward had already done a stretch in the pen, and if circumstance or dumb luck intervened, and the duo happened to get pinched beforehand, etc., etc. Or they would wait until midnight, when the old man and the boy would be asleep. Or one would wear a mask and knock on the door of the house and keep the inhabitants at gunpoint while the other tended to the horse and trailer. Or they would both wear masks and tie up the old man and the boy—less of a chance of something going wrong that way. Or they would simply pull up in the truck, hook on the trailer, lead the horse inside, and drive off without having to use any guns at all.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “You don’t be stupid.”

  Gilby looked down at his cereal bowl, a ribbon of yellowish sugar swirling beneath the remainder of milk. “And then what?” he asked, afraid to look his brother in the eye.

  “And then we drive off.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. We take off. I already made a couple phone calls. I’m waiting to hear back from a friend of mine who lives outside of Lexington. We get the horse, drive it down there, drop it off, come home. Mom won’t even know we’re gone.”

  It was true. Even if Gilby didn’t want to admit it, his older brother almost always had some kind of plan.

  There was a faint squeaking and groaning on the stairs, the sound of their youngest brother, high school age, in his stockinged feet, clambering down the steps. The two brothers shot each other the same look, both of them glaring down at their near empty bowls of cereal, the baby-faced Walt scratching his rear before he belched and took a seat at the table.

  “What are you faggots up to?” he asked, pouring himself a generous serving of Honeycombs.

  * * *

  They walked the mare up into the trailer. The boy made whispering sounds, keeping the animal quiet. They threw the door closed and locked the bolt into place, and as the three of them were climbing into the front seat of the pickup, the boy asked, “Do you think she’ll win?”

  The grandfather looked from the boy to the farmhand and shared a bashful smile. “Did you ask her?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Well, what she say?”

  “She said she likes to win. She said she’ll win every time we race her.”

  The grandfather smiled. “Do you believe her?”

  The boy nodded.

  The grandfather grinned wide, slapping the boy’s leg hard, and said, “That’s good enough for me.”

  * * *

  On Thursday evening, the mare seemed to run faster than ever. There was a crowd of nearly forty onlookers gathered in the hot aluminum stands with three other horses running: Duane Rose’s cobalt-colored mare, its legs splaying out like stilts; Bill Evens’s black, long-necked gelding; and a buckskin stallion from over in Gypsum. After the starting gates were flung wide, the white mare pulled out two lengths ahead, then three, dust rising beneath its hooves, pink nostrils flared, the orange-helmeted jockey hanging onto the irons for dear life. She came in at 19:76, and the grandfather, the boy, and Rodrigo leapt into the air. Duane Rose dropped his cigar and almost fell from his seat.

  “We got to get this horse down to Indy,” Bill exclaimed.

  “Indy? Heck, she should be over in Oklahoma or Kansas,” Duane Rose grumbled. “You got no business running her around here. What you need is a proper trainer.”

  “What you need is a manager,” B
ill Evens corrected. “Somebody who knows the ins and outs of the business. A genuine sportsman.”

  The grandfather smirked. “Have you got anybody in mind?”

  “I’ll get you to one of the futurities. Or Los Alamitos. I’ll make you and your grandson there rich.”

  Jim smiled, but did not answer at first, tilting his hat from the setting sun. He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “We’ll have to see about all of that.”

  Later, the grandfather divvied up the winnings—$2,500­—half in cash, the other half made out in a check, handing $500 to Bill Evens for his jockey and the use of the track. The rest he stuffed in his pockets, front and back, putting a hundred of it in his left boot like when he was an MP back in Korea.

  On the way home, they pulled into the town of Dwyer for an ice cream. There had been a Tastee-Freez that was now a Dairy Queen, and the three of them sat in the cab of the pickup, licking the soft-serve, grinning goofily at each other. It was late, past ten as they drove back, and the lights of the highway made the grandfather squint, causing his smile to appear even larger.

  Then they dropped Rodrigo in town. The grandfather put several loose bills in the migrant’s hand. They drove on, the boy beside him, the radio blaring an old cowboy song by Gene Autry.

  * * *

  The pale-blue truck passed the large wooden fence just before eleven o’clock—turning up the final curve of the drive—the grandfather and the boy having remained silent the rest of the ride home. Jim backed the trailer into place beside the awkward-shaped stable, switched off the engine, and climbed out. The boy followed, unlocking the bolt, sliding it free, and carefully walked the mare down the ramp. The grandfather unhooked the trailer from the hitch and parked the pickup near the house. The boy dawdled near the shed, saying goodnight to the horse, and then headed inside. The boy and the grandfather grinned at each other once more, standing in the kitchen, the grandfather sorting out the remainder of the winnings on the kitchen table.

  “Pick one.”

  “What?” the boy said.

  “Pick a bill. Any one.”

  The boy smiled and reached out for a twenty, then seeing a hundred, picked out a Ben Franklin instead.

  Both of them climbed the stairs, the boy first, then parted in the hallway with a shared nod of their heads. The grandfather fell into his bed, sleeping more soundly than he had in some time. The boy sat down in front of his video games, turning his headphones down low, dispatching all manner of foes with a renewed interest.

  * * *

  At half past midnight, the boy thought he heard a car door close. He flinched a little, thinking of his mother, and removed his headphones. He pulled himself up and off the floor and parted the dust-covered drapes slightly. Parked askew in front of the chicken coop was a dirt-flecked pickup, in the dark looking more purple than red.

  The boy waited to see his mother fall out of the passenger-side door. Instead, when the doors opened, he saw two men, one with dark hair, one wearing a mask, the masked one walking over to the stable with a profound sense of urgency, the other, the dark-haired one, glancing back at the farmhouse again and again.

  The boy flew down the hall and gave his grandfather a heavy shove, the old man coming awake with a groan.

  “Sir.”

  “Mmh.”

  “Sir?”

  “Huh.”

  “Grandpa. Somebody’s outside. By the horse shed.”

  The grandfather sat right up, bare feet hitting the cold wood floor.

  Down the stairs and peering out the kitchen door, they saw the red pickup parked beside the chicken coop, the odd shapes of the strangers moving there in the shadows of the stable like figments from their imagination. “Stay here,” the grandfather said, and slowly opened the screen door. But the boy did not obey. So they stepped outside together, the grandfather switching on the front porch lights, the glow tracing the outline of some kind of motion—the shadows of shoulders, legs, hands—drowning out the features of the strangers’ faces. “Stay here now,” the grandfather said again, and this time the boy listened. The grandfather hurried down the back porch steps and pulled the driver’s-side door of the blue pickup open in a flash, reaching behind his seat for the shotgun. He switched the safety off and came around from behind the shadow of the old blue truck, gun upraised, taking aim at the figures in the dark.

  It took Jim a good moment or two before he understood what was happening: somehow they had already rigged the fancy silver horse trailer to the red pickup. Someone was leading the mare from the rickety stable, its blue-black eyes flashing in the glare from the headlights; up the silver ramp it went, right into the trailer. The grandfather held the shotgun before him, stunned for a moment, only watching; the one leading the horse was wearing a black ski mask, and a sidearm had been shoved into the back of his pants; the masked stranger now turned and saw the old man with the rifle pointed at him. The second intruder came out of the stable, dragging a sack of oats. Seeing the lights on the porch and the old man standing with his shotgun pointed before him like a divining stick, the intruder’s face became a rictus of shock, the mask having been placed on the top of his head like a hat. In that moment, both the grandfather and the young interloper suffered the same odd pang of recognition, the young man pulling the mask down over his face, dropping the bag of oats at his feet, the first one shoving the trailer gate closed, locking it in place with the bolt, taking his time, just as coolly as he pleased, then turning, grabbing ahold of the pistol at the back of his pants, lifting it to take aim, the old man seeing the gesture but not believing it.

  The grandson, screened behind the haze of the glowing porch lights, recognized the familiar face, the same one he saw every Saturday—scruffy, unwashed, goateed—the face quickly disappearing beneath the folds of the black fabric mask, the boy opening his mouth to shout something, the grandfather already taking aim at the older brother, then pulling the trigger, feeling the unsatisfying stillness of the weapon in his hands, the stock not thundering backward into the soft padding of his arm, thinking, The dog . . . that dog. I used both shots scaring away that dog. The slower-moving one, the older brother—saw the surprise on the grandfather’s face, the shotgun in his hands not firing—and raised his pistol eye-level, then fired. The sound of a single gunshot. The boy screaming. The grandfather falling, his white hat flung back. The two strangers hurrying around the side of the trailer to the idling pickup. The doors torn open, one by one, the two of them climbing inside in a rush. The red pickup speeding off, its taillights glowing bright, then fading, the silver trailer rocking a little over the bump at the foot of the drive; the boy having leapt off the porch at the sound of the shot, the grandfather’s body lying in the dirt like a felled tree, all stiff-looking angles, fingers splayed open, bloodshot eyes staring up at the cloudless sky; the echo of gunfire still ringing in the night.

  _________________

  Out on the highway the night became a town, a fortress, a structure of fluorescent radiance, shadow upon shadow, light upon light: the billboards, the signposts, the unconvincing trees, the weeds, the abandoned cars, the startled animals, the sagging wire fences, each becoming the beams and joists from which a complete city materialized. The city was cyclopean in its dimensions: a city tremendous in its bleakness, a city staggering in its quiet. They were lost in this nameless world of night and no matter what speed they drove, what direction they headed, they still could not outdistance it, nor find its boundaries. An anxious throb of dread filled the cabin. The tires spun. The radio antenna rang back and forth along the right side of the hood. It was not the darkness now but the emptiness of the land that was so terrifying, stretching out forever in all directions beyond the limitless, unseen horizon, so that the late hour was not only the numbers flashing there on the dash but a place, as real as any town, state, country, extending in front of them; humid, stormy with the inexhaustible current of late-summer static, heat lightning splitting the black sky every few moments, then growing calm again
, the taste of rain in the air but none coming. The wind through the open window was no comfort; it was warmer than they had hoped or expected, the sound of it rattling the panes of glass, winding itself along the contours of their agitated bodies, striking their screwed-up faces, one more irritation, making it impossible to keep a cigarette lit, the worry of which caused the older of the two to curse, finally rolling up the driver’s-side window in a fit and a fury.

  In the darkness, the hood of the truck would flash from red to black for a moment, then back again, as they passed under the highway lights, crossing beneath an overpass, heading away from some unwelcoming exit, the miles on the speedometer ticking up, the hulking, insistent shape of the trailer behind them giving them the feeling that they were being followed.

  On and on, the infrequent blur of a vehicle passing in the opposite direction drew out the vague shapes of faces, hands, limbs in the skeletal figures of solitary trees, fence posts, and highway debris. Every thirty miles or so there was the expression of the younger brother, white, tightened around the mouth, appearing and reappearing, the shocked look of a plea welling up in the eyes—the plea being ignored, then rebuked by the older brother—the truck hurtling itself farther and farther away.

  * * *

  Indianapolis. The lights and structures of tall buildings, houses, backyards, streets, cars moving back and forth even at this late hour, going on two a.m. The faces of the people behind the windshields of the cars passing by were dark, indistinct. A billboard advertising a new movie. An ambulance screaming past. A child, curled up asleep in the backseat of a station wagon. The sound of someone else’s music roaring through gigantic car speakers. Lights in the office buildings, in the houses, red taillights arcing before them. Smokestacks that even in the dark spoiled the sky with dusty smoke, signifying the unalterable presence of man. Cigarette stubs. Beer cans. The detritus of a civilization concerned only with itself. The city rising up before them, with its concrete barriers, metal railings. The shape of it suddenly like a graveyard, the lights the hallowed glow of thousands of unknowable spooks. The skyline captured in the rearview mirror. The return of darkness. Then the eerie silence. Them driving on.