Borrowed Horses (30 page)

Timothy let the words hang in the air a minute before he spoke. “Maybe that’s what we should celebrate, though. Because at the same time we’re dying, we’re also building, right? Like how you said the skeleton is always getting remade, we’re always dying but we’re also always being born. Maybe the big death is also another kind of birth.”

I smiled. “You sound like my parents, all faithful and optimistic.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe, but it’s too easy to be depressed. I’ve seen people doing that all my life, deciding not to fight. But nothing’s ever really simple. Maybe the birth and death are a necessary balance.”

“Or maybe death just reminds us to live while we can.” I took a bite of what was quite possibly the best sandwich ever. “Do you want to go to dinner with me and some friends on Friday?”

“Sure.” He looked at me again, sideways this time, appraising. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“What? I’m supposed to reveal all my mysteries now?” I tried to smile like a sprite, like the dream Joannie. “I thought you just said you like complications. Besides, I’m the nameless woman with the bone horse, remember? Secrets are part of my charm.”

He laughed. “You’re my
femme fatale
. I’d better be careful.”

“That’s right.” I kept my tone light, hiding the worry I felt. He
was
right. I thought of Joan of Arc; I thought of Eastwood. The time had come to prepare for battle.

After Timothy left that night, I went running. The November air was invigorating, so crisp and so dark. I imagined turning the moon on and off, riding a horse of bone, a fire burning within. The image lifted me onward. A thin mist moved across the street, slicking it with the beginnings of black ice. I placed my feet carefully and focused on balance.

I inhaled slow, deep breaths that cooled my tongue and throat. My warmth was more powerful than its freeze. I moved between the halos of light dropped by street lamps, half in love with the rhythm of my feet, the way my heels absorbed weight with each stride, the roll toward my toes. I could run for miles like this.

A cloud rolled over the nearly full moon, silvering its edges in light. Frost-crystallized, the neighborhood glimmered like the glass boy whose blood I still wore. My parents would see him as a good soul awaiting the opportunity to sing in heavenly chorus, but I could not see that as a hopeful vision. Surely, there was more to life than earning your place in eternity. I imagined his days, being hurried to Cub Scouts and soccer, arguing with his sister, avoiding his homework, trying to get in another race on MarioKart rather than setting the table. An American boy’s life was no preparation for Paradise.

A breeze picked up and tickled across the hairs on my neck. On a night like this, could heaven offer any improvement on Earth? Was there air like this in heaven? Was joy possible without a body to feel it—without these legs striding, these lungs breathing, this mouth tasting sweetness in the frozen mist? The silence, broken only now and then by the rare, low hum of snow tires on pavement, was a music in its own right beyond that of any faith-invented choir. If Earth could be this good, what’s a heaven for?

These were the attitudes that had shocked my CCD teachers when I was a child. Training for confirmation, I’d asked for evidence that the Bible was divinely inspired. The teacher, so bent on his mission to fill us with the sweetness and light of his hopeful imaginings, had melted down completely. His skin had reddened right to the bald spot in the middle of his thin red hair, and he quivered within the thin madras plaid of his Sunday shirt as he answered in barely controlled rage. I’d been pummeling him with questions for weeks. He talked about what a big, long book it was, how impossible its creation would have been for mere mortal men had the mind of God not touched them.
Bullshit
, I thought.

My mother let me stay home from church after that. I’ve long wondered whether my own inclination toward faithlessness was by then supported by the CCD teacher, who saw me as a corruptive influence. What conflicts I must have created in him …though certainly no more than the conflicts I felt in myself. My parents believed that to keep me in church against my will would only strengthen my resolve against it, barring me from ever taking God willingly into my heart. They were right, yet even having my way, I’d never come around like they’d hoped. Now, we simply avoided talk about the state of my soul.

My legs felt tireless this evening, like they had a marathon in them that wanted out. I ran past my old high school, three stories of Depression-era brick built by the CCC and ornamented with concrete. It was annexed later with the functional but imagination-deprived architecture of the nineteen sixties. The only ornamentation there were brown squares of … what? metal? plastic? that sat at the top and bottom of each window. I wondered if the same shades still hung inside—the long rolls vertically striped in circus colors: turquoise and lime green in some rooms, orange and red in others.

Mouse and I had owned those buildings while we were there. I could still feel the hardness of the brown vinyl-tiled floor in front of her locker, where we ate our packed lunches. We were always too good for the cafeteria, though even we would occasionally deign to purchase one of their freshly made maple bars. We spent our days laughing at everyone: the teachers who thought they were smarter than we were, the peers who knew they were cooler. I imitated Madame Beauclerc’s histrionics at another sample of my poor handwriting; Mouse mocked the girls in the bathroom fretting over the state of their mascara.

I ran on, feeling like the last one standing. In the dark stillness of night, the high school was as still as a mausoleum. Tree branches and moonlight threw shadow lace across my path, patterned like the cast-off veil of a communicant. The breeze had picked up, blowing steadily through my fleece. My body was too warm now to mind the cold. Stopping to wait for the light of a cross walk, I imagined what I looked like to the passing car, the steam rising through my stocking cap alight with moonlight, stretching out and dispersing.

I thought of Mouse’s last birthday. Seventeen. We had the party on the Mountain, inviting everyone, even the kids we barely knew. The Hoedown Jamboree, we’d called it, a loving tribute to rednecks everywhere. Mouse and I wore matching trucker hats and form-fitted flannel shirts. Half the school showed up, hicked out in impromptu costumes, chewing straw and tobacco, cheap illegal beer tucked casually under arm: Oly, Hamm’s, Milwaukee’s “Beast” by the case. Rumor had it that Chad Johnston brought a sixer of Rainier (still cheap, but a significant step up), but if he did, I never saw it. In the boom box, we alternated bootlegged tapes of classic country: Kenny Rogers, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash. When we knew the words, we belted them out; when we didn’t, we danced like fools.

It would have been a historic party, one to be written about in yearbooks and talked about at reunions, if only its honoree had lived. It’d been that night that Mouse had first flirted with the bastard who killed her. I hadn’t paid much attention at the time. I’d been flirting too. Flirting had seemed like harmless entertainment then. I flirted to feel my own power, seeing how badly I could make someone want me, then disappoint him. I was as chaste as I was naïve. Mouse, I felt, was the same: untouchable.

Later, when the party was winding down, Mouse and I lay on the hood of the Pod, reclined against the windshield drinking warm cans of Schmidt’s, “the every other letter beer,” and watching the horizon lighten against the pines. She talked about her plans after high school. She was set to be our class valedictorian with letters in track, cross country, and soccer, and lately she had spent her nights filling out applications to big schools in glamorous places: Berkeley, UCLA, NYU, the University of Chicago. “Get the hell out of this town,” she said, like we all said. She was going to do something major.

I’d been quiet. I had no plans then. All I cared about was riding Foxy, my new horse. It was weird to think of him that way now, of not knowing him precisely. I’d taken riding lessons for the past few years, but I’d only just met Eddie. He didn’t train high school students as a rule—
kids
, he’d called us, his tone implying that nothing more need be said on the matter. Connie had talked him into giving me a trial. I could still remember how he watched me that day, his eyes wary and grudging, looking for the first sign of flightiness, loudness, disrespect, lack of commitment. Rebellious, I refused to play into his stereotypes and became the only student he had under twenty-five.

He’d taken me on more for Foxy’s sake than from any early indication of talent on my part. Eddie liked Foxy from the first, commenting on his confirmation and carriage. He couldn’t believe my parents had found him in a neighbor’s yard, an out-of-shape pet trained for Western pleasure and not showing a great deal of aptitude. He was too leggy, they’d complained. He didn’t “jog.” Eddie immediately asked to be allowed to train Foxfire to jump, and my parents agreed to the price. He was a far more demanding trainer than I’d ever had, and my parents liked the determination and focus they saw him creating in me.

I ran on, refusing to slow until the last quarter mile, when I broke stride to begin my cool down. My breath was deep and rich. I shook warmth into my hands. Looking back was a way to avoid looking forward if all that was forward was darkness. I had set wheels in motion that I couldn’t control.

The phone rang as I let myself in. “Joannie,” Eddie said, “I’m calling for two things. Item one: I’m thinking of taking Zephyr to Deep Creek Saturday morning to train on some cross country jumps before it freezes. You interested?”

“Yes.” It hadn’t required a moment’s thought. “Is she ready?”

“I think so. She’ll respect those fences more than the ones we can set up in the indoor, and you’re right about her working better outside. Still, we’ll work some cavaletti this week. Meet me at the barn at seven on Saturday morning. Item two: There’s a new boarding stable in Lewiston, and they’re putting on a winter schooling show. Some New Year’s thing—first of January. If things go well tomorrow, I want to put Zephyr in it.”

“Are you offering me the ride?”

“If you’re interested and aren’t going out of town.”

“Do you even have to ask? When have you ever known me to pass on a show?”

“Good. One more thing then: I think Jenny should show Hobbes, but I don’t want to put him in the same trailer with Zephyr.”

“She’d kick the shit out of him.” The thought came with some little pride.

“Exactly. It’s not worth the risk. Would you mind pulling him in your trailer if we can talk Jenny into showing? He shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

I began to rub the calluses on the sides of my finger, an old nervous habit. The sting from my cut jolted me back, and I inhaled sharply.

“You O.K., Joannie?”

“Yes, sorry. Yeah, I’ll haul Hobbes.”

“Good. I’ll see you Thursday for our lesson. We’ll do a few small fences to get Zephyr thinking about jumps.”

The still green numbers on the microwave’s clock preserved the notion that time was not ticking. The digital numbers composed themselves of fences and walls, loose boxes and pens.

Showdown

I
couldn’t decide what to call Timothy, how to name the role he filled. “Boyfriend” was wrong; it smacked of high school and the girls I’d ridiculed for making zit-riddled, hormone-driven adolescent boys the center of their existence. “Lover,” too, was wrong; that was what Dave had been. Lovers were exciting because they were illicit. Love had very little to do with lovers. Timothy took things slow. We had not so much as kissed yet, though I felt as close to him as I ever had to Dave. Still, I seemed to be assuming too much to call him any of the usual names. Timothy was my corner: the place I went to when I collected my strength.

On Friday night, he came to the door with his hand deep in his pocket, hiding something. He brought it out with a flourish; a single large bulb rested in the middle of his palm, with all the romance of a brown turnip. He tossed it to me. “It’s an amaryllis,” he said. “Fill a jar with gravel and bury this halfway in. It should bloom around Christmas.”

A few unpromising strands of dark fiber hung from it. It reminded me of root cellars and darkness. “Will it be beautiful?”

“Time will tell.” Clint Eastwood was haunting his sly smile once more. His bike rested against the railing behind him, and his face was pale with the night’s cold. “You should see the frost,” he said. “The moon is full, and the ice crystals are acting like natural prisms. There are tiny spectra everywhere if you look for them.”

I put the bulb in my coat pocket, and we, my body in his body’s nook, walked together down the icy street crushing rainbows under foot. “Dave will be there tonight.”

“Dave?”

“The guy who famously drug me out into the parking lot at Rosauer’s. He’s my friend Jenny’s husband.”

Timothy considered this. His jacket was too thin for the night, and I wondered if he had a warmer one, or if he’d simply learned to live with cold. He held his head proudly, or obstinately, in the face of winter.