Sarah's Window (14 page)

The Flint Hills Rodeo drew contestants from all across the country—steer ropers from Texas and bull riders from Colorado and Wyoming, bronc busters from California. In his younger, wilder years Billy Moon had done a little of it all, had ridden the bulls and wrestled the steers, but now he kept to roping, stayed pretty much on the back of his horse, counted on his skill with a lasso and his good timing to bring home the silver buckles and the big money prizes. It was the young drifters who went for the bull riding and the bronc busting, traveling the circuit from one rodeo to another, arriving all tough and grim-faced with their saddles hoisted over their shoulders and their overnight bags in their hands, with just enough money in their pockets to cover the entry fee, a few beers, and a cheap room for the night. But the steer ropers like Billy Moon were a different breed, many of them professional men, educated attorneys or dentists or businessmen, men with homes and wives and families, a little older perhaps, with reason to be a little more cautious.

The Grand Entry with its horseback pageantry of rodeo queens and waving flags had taken place earlier in the afternoon, and it was now getting on in the evening. Billy was sitting with a few buddies on the tailgate of a truck, sipping beer while they waited for their events. Billy had always enjoyed the company of cowboys, but this spring he found their camaraderie to be just the antidote he needed, helped him keep his mind tuned to something other than Sarah and the way she'd been avoiding him. He liked the heat and the dust and the grit on his skin, liked listening to their lumbering conversation, liked the way they prodded one another along with sharp wit and dry laughter, and silences punctuated by the sound of spit hitting the dirt. They never talked much about themselves or about people, unless it was how one-armed Ward Butler liked to test an electrical outlet by spitting on his thumb and sticking it in a live socket, and how one day he got shocked so bad he went into a coma and lay on the closet floor in his boxer shorts for two hours before his wife came home and found him. Or how the woman at the car wash up in Strong City was almost strangled to death when she dropped the water gun and it went crazy on her, flipped and flopped until it wrapped itself around her neck, and it took three guys to get it off her. For the most part they talked about the mechanics of things, things that broke down and could be fixed, pumps and air conditioners and alternators and the like. They talked about their cattle, their horses, their dogs, and their trucks. They never talked about their cats or their women.

Somebody checked his watch and noted the time, and Billy slid off the tailgate and tossed his empty beer bottle into the front seat and headed back to where his horse stood tied to the side of the trailer. A truck hauled a trailer by, kicking up a cloud of dust, and when the dust settled he looked up and saw Sarah coming toward him across the field. She was carrying the baby on her hip, John Wilde's kid, and Billy turned away and heaved the saddle up onto his horse. The sight of that kid called up all kinds of resentment. He knew all about how she had taken him on this spring, knew the whole sorry situation, about Susan and the baby's poor health, but Billy felt there was something more to it, felt Sarah was hiding behind her new status as mother to avoid settling some things that needed to be settled between them. Billy liked things to be simple and clear. Sarah had never been simple and clear.

He didn't turn around right away, even after she greeted him, just sort of grunted out a reply and reached under the horse's belly to grab the cinch and buckle it up. She was talking to the horse, trying to get the kid to pet him. She took the baby's hand in hers and stroked the horse's nose, then tickled the soft, velvety muzzle.

"Careful. He bites," Billy said.

"I know that," answered Sarah, but she said it sweetly and he could tell she was in a good mood. "I know this horse."

Billy watched her for a moment, then shook his head.

"You're tempting fate, girl," he said, and she backed away while he unfastened the halter and worked the bit into the horse's mouth.

She had bought the baby a straw cowboy hat that was too big for him, and she'd tied a red bandanna around his neck. Billy thought he looked ludicrous. But he seemed content, didn't seem to mind that the hat kept falling down over his eyes.

"I'm a little surprised to see you here." He slung the bridle over the horse's head.

"Why?"

"Didn't think you were very fond of rodeos."

"I came to see you ride."

He fastened the chin strap and then held the reins out to Sarah.

"Can you hold him for a minute?"

"Sure."

"Don't turn your back on him."

He stepped into the trailer, and through the doorway she could see him strip off his T-shirt and slip into a white Western shirt. He was a small man but muscular, and Sarah caught a glimpse of him as he buttoned up the shirt, white against his sun-browned chest, and she looked away.

He came out, tucking in his shirt.

She bought a corn dog from a vendor and found a place on the bleachers near the starting gate, just a few rows up. She sat there with Will, the two of them nibbling halfheartedly at the corn dog while they watched the first of the contestants. It was always the horses Sarah loved to watch, more than the riders, the way they burst out of the box with their necks stretched long and their ears up, all long-legged muscle and pounding hooves as they zeroed in on the steer up ahead and closed in on him. They boxed him in, a horse on each side, the hazer and the bulldogger, careening along beside him as he shot back and forth, adjusting their gait to the speed of the steer so they were dead even and holding him in place. Then the work fell to the horse on the left flank, the bulldogger's horse. He'd feel the shift in weight as the rider slid to the right and hung from the horn by his left hand, right foot still leveraged in the stirrup until his left foot was over the saddle and he was down in the hole. A good horse stayed the course, despite the man dangling from the saddle, kept the steer right there off his right eye while the rider got his right arm underneath that horn. There was always that moment's hesitation, and then, arm locked around the horn, the bulldogger cut loose. His feet popped up in the air and he was on the ground with the steer. The rest was up to the man, and the horse was riderless and running free.

Sarah kept her eyes peeled for Billy, and finally saw him arrive on horseback alongside his partner. She watched him line up with the other teams beside the box. She thought what a fine-looking man he was, and she knew then she didn't love him, wondered why she couldn't, wished to God she could.

During John's visits to Berkeley he made it a point to check up on their home in San Francisco. He and Susan had purchased the house following his promotion to tenure track, but the timing was ceremonial rather than financial. He never could have afforded such a place on his income alone. After all, it was her six-figure salary they spent to renovate and decorate, her taste that prevailed, and in the long run it was her pleasure it procured. It was a long commute for him but convenient for Susan, who worked in the city, and in the back of his mind John had always felt it to be more her place than theirs.

Now, his office up at the university, that was a different matter. He had moved in an old sofa so he could nap during his nocturnal stints at the lab, and he had installed a small refrigerator and a microwave to enable him to catch a bite to eat without leaving the premises. His work had always been a veritable emotional and mental fortress against invasion from the outside world, against tumultuous passions and disturbing events, those things he spent his life trying to avoid.

Whenever he came into town he would generally pick up a rental car at the airport, drive straight to his office, and work long into the night. He preferred to catch a few hours' sleep on the sofa and then walk down to the faculty club gym for a shower and shave in the morning rather than commute back and forth to the city. Nevertheless, he made it a rule to stop by the house at least once and visit with the neighbor who was keeping an eye on the place in their absence. The lights had been set to an automatic timer and a security company was being paid to keep watch. A gardener came by once a week to maintain the lawn. Most of their furniture was still there; they had moved only their personal belongings and the desk and chairs from John's office.

Most of the time John whisked in and out, but on this particular evening he found himself lingering at the bay window, pausing to take in the ocean view that had sold them on the house. They had achieved an enviable lifestyle, both of them with prestigious careers, and Susan's skilled investment decisions had already netted them enough personal wealth to assure their financial security.

As John watched twilight settle over the ocean he tried to imagine their return to this house in the summer, what it would be like to carry on as they had. With or without Will, it seemed to him equally strange. Uncomfortable. Instead of setting foot back in an old, familiar place, a place filled with bright hopes for their future, it seemed to him a dead place, a place to be rid of. When he thought about it he realized that—outside of his work—the only passion he had experienced in his life, and what little joy he had known as a father, seemed to be bound up with Sarah, in a little town of no consequence in a remote part of the country. Things had happened to him back there that had never happened to him before, and he felt connected. Whereas this place that he called home left him with an emptiness as vast and barren as the hills he had gazed upon from Sarah's window.

Quickly he locked up the house and hurried out to his rental car. After fighting the Friday-night traffic all the way back to Berkeley, he arrived tired and out of sorts, ate a sandwich he had picked up on the way, and then lay down on the sofa in his office. He awoke a few hours later and worked through the night and all the next morning in the lab, taking apart and rebuilding the magneto-optic trap, a procedure that normally took him days of intensive work. He left a long, detailed memo for his colleague and then, without shaving, drove directly to the airport and waited in the lounge until he could get a flight back to Kansas City.

He tried to call Sarah from the airport in Kansas City but there was no answer. He knew her well enough now, knew this did not necessarily mean she was not home, and so, heedless of speed limits and lurking highway patrol, he sped down the turnpike to Bazaar with the accelerator of his old BMW flat to the floor.

It was after nine o'clock when he pulled up to her house. There were still lights on, although not in her window. He tapped lightly on the front door and the porch light came on and Jack answered the door. He spoke gruffly, said Sarah wasn't home, and John apologized, thinking he'd probably woken the old man. John asked if she'd be home this evening, but Jack said something about her being her own free agent and his not keeping tabs on her. Yeah, Jack said, she had Will with her. Never went anywhere without him, and then, seeing the troubled look on John Wilde's face, Jack asked if there was anything wrong. John answered that there wasn't, just that he was missing his boy, he'd been out of town and hadn't seen him in a while, although Jack suspected there was more to it than that.

An hour passed and Jack was on his way to bed when he looked out the front window and saw John Wilde's BMW still parked in front of the house. He told Ruth he was going outside for a smoke and then he hobbled out and leaned against the porch railing while he lit a cigarette. He pocketed the lighter and glanced around the front lawn. The BMW appeared to be empty, but as he moved to the side of the porch, he caught sight of John Wilde sitting on the curb on the other side of the street.

John stood and crossed the street.

"I thought I might wait for them. If you don't mind," he said as he came up the front walk.

"She might not be home till late," Jack answered as he picked a flake of tobacco off his lip.

"I don't mind."

Jack motioned to the front porch swing.

"Wanna sit for a while?"

"I'm imposing."

"Naw. Once I get to bed I'm not sleepy anymore. Can't seem to sleep except in front of that damn TV."

Jack laid down his crutch and settled himself onto the swing, and John sank down next to him.

Jack started rambling on about his accident, about how he lost his leg and how the gangrene had been eating away at him all these years.

"Doctors tell me if I quit smokin' it might help. But a man's gotta have some pleasure left, don't he?"

Then he talked about Thut's quarry, the place where he lost his leg, and said how it had been one of Sarah's favorite places when she was a kid. Back when she was little it wasn't being worked, he said, had been abandoned since the 1800s.

"She loved to wander out there," he went on, "and when I got her her pony, she'd take him up there. A little Connemara stallion. Black as pitch. You shoulda seen her ride that fella. Those little Connemaras are jumpers, and she'd take off over the open fields with him lookin' for fences and ditches and scrub brush to jump. She used to come home all bruised up from fallin' but she never said a peep about it 'cause she was afraid we wouldn't let her ride. She'd just hobble up to her room and close the door and we'd never hear a complaint out of her. Never broke anything. She was lucky for that.

"When she got older, she'd just light out on her own. It got so the neighbors used to call up to let us know what part of the county she was roamin' in. The Prathers at Tetersville, they'd call and say they'd seen her down their way; or old Dirty Shirt Sam, who worked several of the ranches, he'd call me and say she was over on the Verdigris. Come summertime she'd disappear all day long. Sometimes even all night. That's when her grandma put an end to all of it."

Jack paused, took one long pull from his cigarette, then snuffed it out in a coffee can on the floor beside him.

"Her grandma sold the pony. Without a word of warnin' to Sarah." Jack shifted in the swing. "Sarah was fifteen then and Ruth was worryin' a lot about her. She looked grown, like a young woman, and she was wild. But that was the end of it for Sarah and her grandma."

Jack shook his head. "She hasn't really changed much. Still wild. She may seem tame 'cause you don't know her. But I figure she's just biding her time until the waters return, and then she'll be gone. Not really the kinda girl a guy can depend on. Got her own way of seein' things."

Jack fell silent. After a moment he picked up his crutch and rose from the swing.

"Time for me to be turnin' in."

John stood abruptly. "I guess I might as well go," he said.

Jack thought maybe he was waiting to be contradicted, the way he lingered there, his hands on his hips and his eyes still on the road. But then he mumbled a good night and marched quickly down the steps.

Jack hobbled back inside and switched off the porch light.