Borrowed Horses (40 page)

“That palamino. Jesus, Joannie, even if you
had
two hands.”

The words were buzzing flies. I passed through the gate and squeezed Zephyr into a slow canter, sitting well back to maintain collection as we moved through the opening circle.

Jenny scowled from the thinly filled stands. I bent my eyes to the first fence and rose forward in my seat. Zephyr opened her stride, and we crossed the start line; the clock had begun.

Zephyr’s hooves beat
Jennifer, Jennifer
to the base of the first fence, but landed
Timothy, Timothy
. We were clear, but the landing rang within my hand, sending shockwaves through my arm. I brought my body slightly upright and she collected herself, deft and sensitive.
Relax
. The reins were bridged in my left hand, where I held them quietly. Fence two, clean. My hand began to drop away from me, lopped out of consciousness. I turned my head and Zephyr turned to the wall, coming in strong and forward to the jump, utterly fearless, and seeming to collect herself in air to make the turn. My heart was beating to the rhythm of her feet, strong and steady. We picked up speed again as we rounded toward the triple with a long, ground-covering stride. Parts one and two were clean, but the rail of that oxer bounced in its cups. We’d come in too fast, too shallow—a rider error—and Zephyr was over-confident, perhaps. I shifted my weight slightly back, maintaining a jumper’s halfseat, and gave the reins a slight pressure.

If the rail fell, we’d lost, but to look back now would command a turn. I looked instead to the next obstacle, turning her up the center, eyes trained over the top of the green fence. Zephyr was mad, irked at the fence that clipped her, and threw her legs forward as if striking the air as she galloped through it. “Easy,” I said, resting my body weight heavier in the saddle to remind her I was there, then lifting and squeezing hard with my legs as we pushed into air. She took it high, clearing not only the fence but the standards on either side. If anyone ever doubted she could jump grand-prix, that fence ended those doubts. She landed and bucked. Those watching gasped, but Zephyr ignored the noise.

I legged her on:
Timothy, Timothy, Timothy
. If I won this round, if I won Zephyr, I’d be on the phone with him this afternoon. I’d tell him that I needed him. In Zephyr’s hoof beats, I discovered that she wasn’t the only thing I had riding on this.

Zephyr’s ears swiveled toward the liverpool, and she snorted, her head suddenly high. We hadn’t practiced water. I growled her forward, clamped my legs to her sides, breathed in deeply, blew away tension. Zephyr pinned her ears flat to her head and jumped long with no sound of splashing water. “That’s my girl,” I said, as she moved ever faster. I bit my lip, pain screaming through my hand, forcing tears to my eyes. I gritted my teeth and looked to the next fence, allowing her stride to fill me with its hope. Zephyr followed the path of my vision forward to the square oxer. We were moving with some real speed now. The wind carried us forward and over the last fences, its parcel. Zephyr and I breathed in unison, lungs heaving, as we crossed the finish line and circled to slow ourselves. I looked back to the red Swedish. The X of its crossed rails was in place. All that remained was the question of time.

Jenny was gone from the grandstands. Only the ghost of her disgust remained. My hand had become my only thought. Eddie beamed, “My God! She goes better without reins,” but his words were distant.

I’d been steadied by the splint of beating hooves; that splint was gone now. The pain in my hand eclipsed the euphoria of finishing. I sagged in the saddle like a sack of grain, split at the corners, pouring out. Blackness closed in at the edges of sight, but I willed it back.

A man’s hand lay on my thigh. I studied it: the finger nails jagged and nicked from work, the long lean strength, the spread of bones given movement by muscle, the veins that gave it geography. I couldn’t trust my voice to speak or my eyes to travel forth from that one hand I knew, but I felt something latent blooming at its touch. I’d lost a hand; now a hand supplied itself.

“So this is Zephyr,” Timothy said.

Zephyr’s ears lazed out and her head drooped, recovering from the effort of jumping. She swished her tail at a fly and looked generally unimpressed, but he’d spoken her name with all the notes of appreciation. He’d seen us.

Eddie took Zephyr’s reins and turned to Timothy. In a glance, Eddie sized him up: the hand resting on my thigh, the eyes on mine, neither of us flinching. He stroked Zephyr’s neck. “Can you give Joannie a lift to the hospital?”

“Hospital?” Timothy’s gaze never left mine, but there was a subtle change in its quality. He looked in for all the unsaid things.

“She got kicked in the hand earlier,” Eddie said. “Shouldn’t have been riding.”

I collected. “No one ever died of a broken hand,” I said, and swung down from the saddle, but the pain that charged through me as my feet hit the too solid ground caught the words in my throat and stole the strength of my knees. Timothy’s arm caught me before I could fall.

Eddie said, “Give me your truck keys. Jenny and I will get the horses home.” He shook his head and patted Zephyr’s shoulder. Pride lingered in the ill-suppressed smile as he looked into her calm eye. “We’ll talk about a price tomorrow.”

If Timothy’s arm were not around me, the words might again have stolen my knees. Instead, I managed to say, “Don’t go raising the price just because we won today.”

“Don’t push it, Joannie. I’ll get your ribbon for you. You go.”

Timothy walked me to his borrowed car, an ashy silver bullet-shaped two-seater long familiar to me. I swallowed the coincidence. Small towns only get smaller the longer you live in them.

Timothy spoke softly as we went, like someone telling a time-worn myth. “All week,” he said, “I felt like I was forgetting something. Something important. It hung there in the back of my mind, tickling, and I couldn’t get to it. Then there I was, trying to sleep in this morning, and I dreamed you were calling me, real clear but quiet. Insistent. And it came to me—the show, New Year’s. I kept hearing your voice saying my name the whole way here. Timothy, Timothy. It was like a drum beat, only it was your voice whispering it.” He maneuvered me into the car, wiping the tears from my eyes. “You were great today. Really great. There was one fence she jumped like it was eight feet high—”

“—the green vertical—” (my voice barely audible)

“—it was like art, watching two bodies move together like that. Like a horse and animal could be one person. It was like catching the wind by its hair and letting it lift you. I don’t think anyone else there could have stayed on for that jump.”

“The blonde might’ve.” I couldn’t say more. Already a scream was threatening. I shut my eyes as the engine turned over. The car shook, and the fractured bones grinded against each other. Red trumpets. There would always be another horse to beat, another rider, another Mouse, another Jenny. There would always be dormancy; there would always be bloom.

Timothy eased our way forward onto the open road, the old engine shuttering fresh pain. The whole world collapsed into that broken hand. My clenched jaw forbid the scream that threatened to rise, and I trained my eyes on his neck’s fish. He’d released me saying I’d always been strong enough, but he’d been wrong. I was and I wasn’t. Having walked the border between staying alive and living, it wasn’t my need itself that made or moved the mountains in my path, but
how
I needed.

He looked over. “You O.K.?”

My left hand gripped my right, squeezing the bones into a constant but consistent pain. Dark wings fluttered in my throat. If I’d opened my mouth, it was not words that would fly out.

The eye is a kind of hook. If you want to fly, you must look beyond the horizon. Flick your gaze down at the fence, and the hook will catch; your horse will pull a rail. What is this strange gravity? How does it relate to windows of the soul, or the book of the mind a horseman reads in the equine eye? What touches there? What pulls? Is the eye body, mind, or soul?

Timothy cast his glance to mine and pressed the accelerator. We surged forward along a silver thread of the highway that bent through the rolling Palouse, our eyes turned to the western horizon, the way forward, the course.

Acknowledgements

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the many people who helped me make this book. In particular, I would like to thank:

My children, Gwendolyn and Oliver, for forgiving me those hours I spent staring at my computer into a world you couldn’t see, delaying our trips to the park or the library so that I could finish a chapter or write some notes. I love you both more than I can express.

My husband, Nathanael Myers, who took on parenting and meal cooking and countless other duties to give me the time and space to write, and whose constructive but unflinching commentary helped me revise this novel through its most dramatic redrafting.

My dissertation committee at the University of Georgia, including Richard Menke, Roxanne Eberle, Judith Cofer, and most especially to Reg McKnight, whose faith in me never flagged. Any draft not inscribed with your insightful comments (“needs more pepper”) seems to be missing a little something.

The members of Reg McKnight’s graduate fiction workshop, but most particularly to Kirsten Kaschock and Jeff Newberry, who continued to read drafts long after we’d all been hooded. I am lucky indeed to count two such talented poets and novelists among my dearest friends.

My parents, for your unwavering belief in me, and to my talented sister, Megan Griffiths, who is always up for a good long talk about art and what it should do—and whose humor keeps the conversation from ever getting too stuffy.

My fact checkers: Sara Steger for making sure I got my Southern women right, and Jerry Cummings, former program director of radiography at Athens Technical College, for teaching me how to take an x-ray. Any mistakes in here are mine alone.

Tom Ordway, who, for so many years, taught me how to bend the bow and let the arrow fly.

My agent, John Talbot, for taking this book on and finding it a home, and my book team at New Rivers Press, including Alan Davis, Suzzanne Kelley, David Binkard, Megan Bartholomay, and Jenna Galstad, for your belief and support and for making this book happen.

Josh Ritter and Rural Songs for permission to reprint the lyrics from the song “To the Dogs or Whoever.”

Killian, inspiration for both Foxfire and Zephyr, who forever set the bar by which all great horses must be judged. You will forever be my grey old gentleman. I miss you every day.

And to all the many, many others—too numerous to list—who helped me along the way.

About the Author

Dr. Siân Griffiths lives in Ogden, Utah, where she serves as assistant professor of English at Weber State University. Her work is published in
Quarterly West, Ninth Letter, Cave Wall, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, Clackamas Literary Review, Oregon Literary Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Permafrost, Versal, Court Green
, and
The Georgia Review
, among other publications. Her story “What Is Solid” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Janet Burroway included her poem, “Fistful,” in the third edition of
Imaginative Writing
.