Chasing Painted Horses

by Drew Hayden Taylor

  “Thank you.” Between the dozen or so metres separating them and the sound of the wind, they barely heard her parting words. Brother and sister watched her walk down the lane, a sad and forlorn figure momentarily happy.

  “Well, that was strange,” said Ralph. “What now?”

  Her eyes still on the retreating Danielle, Shelley took a deep breath of winter air. “Well, we could go beat up that friend of yours. He deserves it.”

  Though he doubted they would actually do it, Ralph found that this time he couldn’t argue with his sister.

  THAT AFTERNOON AFTER school, William didn’t make his way over to Ralph’s house. Instead, he went home to where his large family lived. He put up with his brothers’ and sister’s taunts, and the perplexed looks his parents gave him when they understood that he wasn’t over at the Thomas home. For the rest of the evening, he sulked in his room. Looking out the window at various cars driving by, William felt kind of bad, though he would never admit it. After all, why should he feel bad? He hadn’t done anything wrong. For some reason he couldn’t explain, something about Danielle bothered him. It made him angry and uncomfortable. With such a big and boisterous family, he was used to feeling angry and uncomfortable, but this was in a way he wasn’t used to. So he’d done what he always did when he was angry and uncomfortable: he’d lashed out. It was something he’d picked up from his older brothers. It’s a commonly held belief that bullying is passed down the generations, but very seldom is it encoded in the DNA. A definite case of nurture over nature. But William knew none of these things. When something bothers you, you bother it back. It’s nature.

  For obvious reasons, because of his very nature, William had no friends other than Ralph. While he was frequently rough and physical with his friend, he seldom abused their relationship. He was sure Ralph appreciated the boyish companionship. They made good buddies. Hanging with William was better for Ralph than hanging around with his sister. Still, William had to put up with that sister’s obvious dislike of him, though he didn’t quite understand it. William didn’t think he was as bad as Shelley implied. He thought of himself as quite charming and interesting. Maybe he did horse around a little too much and was rude occasionally, but who wasn’t? Girls! he frequently thought.

  In the messy room he shared with Jimmy, the brother closest in age to him, who was playing hockey in town, William leafed through a handful of comic books that belonged to his brother. Jimmy never let his younger brother read or touch any of his things, but since Jimmy was seldom home, it afforded the younger Williams boy some limited reading opportunities. Luckily for William, this sibling absenteeism helped him avoid many brotherly beatings.

  Alone and quiet in his room, William wondered what Ralph was doing; was he playing some game with Shelley or eating a late-afternoon snack their mother had whipped up for them? While the Thomas family was fed and fed well, in the Williams house, with such a big family, there was seldom anything left in the refrigerator to snack on. William had already checked the fridge. Essentially, there were only condiments and pickles at the moment. Not even the good kind of pickles — bread and butter — but dill. Dill was not a flavour William enjoyed.

  William was bored. None of his brothers actually played with him, unless the older ones wanted to torment their younger and smaller sibling. His sister had a life of her own with other girls, just like Shelley did. Floyd and Justine Williams, parents to the rowdiest group of relations in the village, weren’t usually home. There was work and family responsibilities outside these four walls. Though it was a busy and bustling house, today it was just William, alone in his shared room. That was one of the major reasons why he spent so much time over at the Thomas house.

  There was, of course, homework to do, and even though he hated both the thought and practice of math, doing it would have to be better than being bored and lonely. Almost reluctantly, William picked up his school book and casually noticed all the drawing he had done on the cover. The bottom half looked like petroglyphs and pictographs. His history teacher had done a couple classes on them, and they had briefly fascinated the young boy. He had reproduced facsimiles of Indigenous images from all across the country on his math book. Above them was the logo for the rock band Guns N’ Roses. And beside it was a sketch of a horse. It startled William for a moment. He had forgotten that he’d drawn it, almost immediately after Danielle had first drawn hers. While better than most ten-year-olds could attempt, it still paled in comparison to hers. And he had tried very hard.

  For a moment, he thought of the little girl that he had persecuted in the classroom. Luckily, he hadn’t got in trouble with Ms. Martel for what had happened; she had missed all of what had transpired in her classroom that recess. He had been able to talk himself out of a detention as the bell rang in the midst of his scolding. But there was a little part of him, he was quite sure, that for some bizarre reason almost wished he had been punished. Everything was not what it once was. It bothered him. William didn’t know where things were going and how much they were going to change. It wasn’t fair.

  There was something new, something different about the generally miserable way he felt. He couldn’t define it, wasn’t used to it, but it sure wasn’t good. Guilt was a new emotion to William. The boy didn’t like it. He wasn’t sure what to do about it. He turned his attention to a math problem, hoping this strange emotion might be crushed under his geometry assignment. But it was not.

  ACROSS THE VILLAGE, down Twin Pine Lane, sat Danielle on her mattress, which lay on the floor at the back of her mother’s trailer. At the foot of the bed, almost lost in the worn and dirty sheets, stood a horse. Not her close and special friend that she’d drawn on the Everything Wall in the Thomases’ kitchen, but the plaster one Ralph and Shelley had given her. Danielle had put it there when she got home. She’d been staring at it ever since. It was so pretty. She heard something break outside her door, down the hall near the living room, but she ignored the sound. There was always something breaking. Instead, she focused on the horse. It was very different from her friend, but in this particular case, different wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She was sure there was no conflict between the two.

  All around the little girl on the bare wall were faint but familiar echoes of images that had been scrubbed off the white, dingy paint. Bits of a tail here, and some hind leg over by the door. Near the window she could make out, if she looked hard enough, faded lines that could be a mane. Bits and pieces of her precious Horse that couldn’t be scrubbed clean. Danielle’s mother had tried many times, punishing her daughter many more times for doing something so “fucking childish” as to draw on the walls of her room. For reasons unknown, her mother took her artistic abilities as a wilful and disobedient act aimed directly at challenging her parental authority.

  So Danielle didn’t call her special friend to come and visit anymore. Besides, the Horse didn’t like it here in this small, oppressive, smelly room. He didn’t like Danielle’s mother and especially didn’t like the man who also lived in that trailer, who occasionally put “the skinny child” to bed. The Horse disliked this trailer so much, got so angry with how the girl was forced to live, that Danielle no longer felt she should draw him here. Though she didn’t know how or why, she was afraid the Horse might do something very bad. She knew the Horse was meant for better places than her tiny bedroom. It liked the house that Ralph and Shelley lived in. Very much, in fact. It came so quickly and easily when she called it into the Thomases’ kitchen.

  Danielle could now hear voices outside her room. Loud voices. Arguing. It was times like this she really wanted the Horse, needed him, for something she couldn’t conceptualize. Without the Horse on her walls, she looked at the small, cheap — though she thought it was the most fabulous thing in the world — reproduction of a horse. It would have to do. She picked it up and stroked its cold, hard flank. She wished it was warm and soft.

  For a brief moment, she had a flashback to
the school and the incident that had happened earlier in the day. William had been mean to her. He had wanted her to draw a dog. Didn’t he know she couldn’t? Only the Horse. Dogs barked loudly and bit people. She’d tried to tell him that, but that boy didn’t want to listen. He was so big and mean. It had almost hurt when she’d put the chalk on the blackboard and tried to make her hand draw something else. He didn’t understand. Part of what scared her is that when something like this happened, the Horse seemed to become angrier, darker, like it was transforming into something that was fed by all the bad things around her. Luckily Shelley and Ralph had come to her rescue and even walked her home. She liked them so much, and so did the Horse. But they were so far away, and she was here.

  Still gripping the horse, she looked around her dark room, lit by a small lamp sitting in the corner on the floor, and saw the faint, washed-out remains of the Horse. Even in this semi–darkness, they seemed to glow for the girl, the light from a warm and inviting home.

  In another part of the trailer, she heard her name being screamed. Danielle hoped against experience it was for something good. Maybe dinner. Putting the horse down in the corner and covering it up with a towel she’d found, the little girl exited her room.

  Underneath the towel in the empty room, the horse fell over.

  And later that night, Danielle Gaadaw disappeared.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE NEXT DAY at school, Ralph and Shelley kept to themselves. Seldom did they spend their spare school time together, but recent events with their young friend had given them common ground. And William … he was to be ignored. Always desperate to be the centre of attention, this did not sit well with him. For most of the recesses, he sat on one of the swings, ignoring the cold that seeped in through his jeans, patiently waiting for the free time outside the school to end. Occasionally he’d spot Shelley or Ralph across the field and would watch them, refusing to miss them.

  Once, in the hallway, he’d seen Ralph walking towards him but had managed to dodge into the boys’ bathroom. In class, because they often got into mischief when they were seated together, it was a long-held policy in the various classrooms to not allow them to sit near each other. That meant few unavoidable interactions today. And at the end of the day, once the bell had rung and they were dismissed, William was first into his boots and coat and out the door.

  This was the routine for the next few days. Though they pretended not to notice him, both brother and sister knew perfectly well William was there. It was a small reserve and an even smaller school. Ralph missed his friend’s companionship, and in a weird, unexpected way, Shelley felt the absence of It, though she would not admit it. How William had treated Danielle was so shameful, there was little chance it would be forgotten or forgiven. It was a potentially friendship-ending event. They’d seen a side of Ralph’s friend they wished they hadn’t.

  Even William’s first stirrings of guilt had made him wonder if possibly he’d gone too far in what had happened in that classroom. Lying in bed at night, eating his lunch alone, walking the snowy streets of Otter Lake, he would find his mind going back to the incident in the classroom. The more he thought about it, the more puzzled he became. Was it really that important to make Danielle draw a dog? Why? Then he remembered, he’d pushed her to the chalkboard. He always pushed Ralph, and on occasion Ralph would push back. That was their relationship. The other day, he’d pushed Shelley. That was wrong. He knew he shouldn’t push girls. And yet he’d pushed Danielle.

  If he’d seen that little girl somewhere at school, William might possibly have done something to try and make it up to her. But what, he wasn’t sure. Definitely not apologize. That wasn’t William. Something. The young boy wanted things to be back the way they were. Even if it meant he couldn’t draw the best horse. He’d be more than willing to accept that. But he hadn’t seen Danielle.

  None of them had.

  Nor would they the next day. Or the day after that. Danielle Gaadaw was not coming to school. Behind the school, Shelley found Ralph sitting on a stump that had once been a tall oak tree before it had been struck by lightning, about a year before Ralph had been born.

  “Have you seen her?” Shelley was almost out of breath. The hill down to the oaks was a steep one. There had once been a fun and fabulous ice slide down it that the kids had spent their lunch hour and recesses sliding down. But in their infinite wisdom, the teachers had dropped a load of sand on it, making it virtually impossible to pick up any decent speed or a sufficient lack of friction; any attempt at sliding down the hill now resulted in ripped and torn clothing and the occasional detention if caught. Student safety and legal precautions were the reasons cited, not that it mattered to the kids. It was just another infringement on juvenile fun. Yet another memory of childhood enjoyment banned by the same adults who a few decades earlier had themselves flown down that same hill with loud and joyous abandon. The hypocrisy of adulthood was not lost on the youth. Even so, it was inevitable that these kids, down the road, would turn into adults themselves and eventually end up pouring their own buckets of sand onto the next generation’s fun. One of the few real constants in the world.

  This led to a unique cause-and-effect battle between the students and the school staff. On Fridays after class, some enterprising kids would mysteriously surface just before dark with pails of water and pour them down the sanded slide. The outcome was a weekend of excellent downhill skimming. But, come Monday morning, more sand would be poured down the icy hill for yet another week. It was an eternal cycle, repeated throughout each season and over the years. But this was an issue for another time.

  “No, I haven’t. You?”

  Shelley shook her head. “Of course not. I wouldn’t be asking you if I had.” Shelley paused as she looked up the hill. “Should we do something?” Another earth-shattering event, Shelley asking her younger brother for advice.

  “Like what?” For a moment, brother and sister said nothing, because neither knew what to suggest. What do you do in a situation like this? A shy little girl hasn’t been seen in school in a couple of days. She could be sick. Wouldn’t the teachers know? The principal? Would the principal have called a truancy officer? Did truancy officers still exist? These mysterious creatures had long been lorded over students as a way to frighten them into regular school attendance, but Shelley and Ralph weren’t actually sure if they really existed. Were they like the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny?

  Shivering slightly, Shelley held the collar of her light brown coat closed. “I don’t know.” Once more they were silent, feeling the cold breeze coming off the lake that gave the community its name. Spring was still two months away, and already they were hearing adults complain about how tired they were of winter. “How about William? Talked to him lately?”

  “Nope. I’m still mad at him.”

  To Shelley, that was the only good news of the day. “I always told you he was a bully.”

  “Yeah.” The wind seemed to be picking up, focusing the cold and helping it to find every seam and opening in their clothing, resulting in the unusual and silent wish that recess would soon end. “We could go look for her. I mean, we know where she lives. Or even just call her. Nothing wrong with that.”

  Shelley smiled. “Good idea. As soon as school is over. Do you know her phone number?”

  Ralph shook his head. “Gotta be in the phone book.” They had a plan. It was a beginning.

  But it wasn’t.

  Finding the Gaadaw phone number was the first thing they focused on once they got home that afternoon. But there was no Hazel Gaadaw under the heading of Otter Lake. “Maybe they don’t have a phone,” offered Ralph.

  “Who doesn’t have a phone?” answered Shelley, looking as incredulous as a possible for a twelve-year-old. “Everybody has a phone.”

  “Hey, don’t get mad at me. I don’t know anything. Maybe it’s listed under someone else. What do you think we should do now?�
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  Shelley thought for a moment. “We could go over there. They’re just twenty minutes away. It’s almost dinnertime, so they’re sure to be home.”

  Though devoted to solving the mystery of the missing Danielle, Ralph put up a half-hearted attempt to postpone their doing so immediately. “Go outside!? It’s cold, and we just got in. Do we have to? I mean, like you said, it’s almost dinner.”

  “You’re such a wimp. Come on, we’ll be back before dinner. Or do you have a better idea?” Unfortunately, Ralph had no such better idea, resulting in both brother and sister once again dressing for battle against the Canadian winter elements. The Thomas door opened, letting Shelley and Ralph out on their mission. And as Shelley had predicted, twenty-two minutes later they were walking down Twin Pine Lane, barely a minute away from the Gaadaws’ trailer.

  “What do we do, just knock on the door?

  Shelley shrugged. “I believe that’s how things are usually done. People do it all the time.”

  “Very funny, but, Shelley, we don’t know these people.”

  “We know Danielle.”

  Ralph didn’t seem convinced. “I’ve heard stories about that place. About Hazel and that guy. What if something happens?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. And don’t listen to stupid stories. I bet William started them all. Look, there it is, just ahead.”

  Indeed, the Gaadaws’ trail was just two dozen frozen feet ahead, a beat-up white trailer of the long and narrow variety. It appeared to have survived many bad winters and scorching summers over the years. There was a set of well-worn steps leading up to the door and, along it, a wobbly handrail of dubious strength. The sun was beginning to set in the cold late-afternoon sky, making it gloomy. A dull yellow light could be seen coming from the front window. Taking a deep breath, Shelley marched forward. Climbing the steps, she knocked gently on the door; she could hear something rattling on the other side. Maybe something like a dream catcher was nailed to it. There was no answer. She knocked again, a little louder. Suddenly the door opened, and there stood Hazel Gaadaw framed in the doorway.