“Why’d you do it?”
“Didn’t want to.”
“Didn’t want to?” Pop bellowed. “What do you mean, didn’t want to?”
“To do anything with Tony.”
“That’s part of the ride.”
“I couldn’t. He won’t ever do what I want him to. I can’t ever—”
“Don’t go crawfishin’ around making excuses. Now you go out into that pasture and bring him in and tend to him like you ought to. I don’t want you in the house until you finish, you hear?”
Billy turned. He couldn’t stand it when Pop looked that way. “Don’t ever want to ride a horse again,” he muttered. He dragged his feet through the tall grass, yanked some out and flung it into the air. “Everybody’s always yelling at me, and the stupid horse does just what he wants.”
Out in the pasture Billy saw that the reins had fallen between Tony’s two front legs. A hard, hurting place formed high up under Billy’s rib cage. He knew he’d have to reach down there between Tony’s legs and get the reins. When he approached, Tony backed away. Billy snatched the reins and pulled them tight, but Tony didn’t budge. They struggled. “Stupid horse,” Billy said. “Can’t you do anything I want?” Tony didn’t come in until he was good and ready, and when they finally headed toward the corral, Billy knew that he wasn’t actually bringing the horse in. Tony was bringing him in.
Pop wasn’t outside anymore. Good. In the corral, Billy unsaddled Tony easily enough, but when it came to getting the bit out of his mouth, Tony went after his hand. Billy pulled back, but not in time. Tony bit. “Damn you,” Billy yelled. He grabbed for the bit again and yanked it clean.
“Never going to ride you again,” he cried. “Never ever.” His tears made it hard to see what he was doing, but still he slung the bridle on the hook, did only what he had to do and pushed the corral gate closed with an angry shove. It swung all the way through and creaked open again. He kicked dirt up on his way to the house, and it made his eyes water even more. If any of the horses got out, he’d catch it again, only worse. He turned on his heel, ran back to the gate and latched it, then ran for the house. Inside the door, he made a beeline for his room.
“Well? Did you do it?” Forrest’s voice thundered.
Billy grunted, afraid to talk.
“Answer me straight. Did you finish?”
“I said yes.” His voice cracked, and he shot through the living room to the bathroom to clean his hand. He wrapped it in gauze, then bolted down the hall. His bedroom door slammed closed.
A while later someone tapped at his door. “May I come in?”
It was Mom. “Yeah.”
“Where are you?”
“Bed.”
She sat down next to him, took him in her arms and rubbed his head. It made him cry again, but he tried hard not to make any noise.
“I know it’s not easy to bring in your pony, but finishing off is an important thing to do.”
“Nothing ever goes right for me,” he said, half a sob and half a mumble. “I can’t do anything right.”
She rubbed the back of his neck. Her hand felt cool. “I know how you feel.” She didn’t say anything for a long time, just rubbed his neck. “I wish you didn’t feel that way, Billy, but do you know something? I feel that way sometimes, too.”
“You?”
“Sure I do. I felt that way every day right after I married your father and I didn’t know how to cook. I burned or spilled or ruined practically everything I made. And he was harsh with me, too. But that didn’t mean he didn’t love me.”
Billy grunted.
“It took me a long time, and tears too, to learn that. Slowly it got better.” Billy let her hold him for a while and he relaxed. “And I’ll tell you something else. I’m not all that excited about riding horses either.”
“You aren’t? I never knew that.” He lay back on the pillow and looked at her. Her eyes were kind of misty, as though she had been the one crying. A bruise on her forehead was almost gone now, only a green shadow. She always had bruises. As soon as one was gone, another one came. A brown curl turned the wrong way.
“You know when we have to jump the horses to get across the gully at Santa Maria Creek?”
“Yeah.”
“I always get scared there. I don’t think Mort will know where to put his feet. When Forrie or Faith yell ‘get ready, Mom,’ I always feel a hard knot in my chest and I can’t breathe.”
“You never told anybody.”
“Except you.” Her voice was a near whisper. Her hand stroked his arm, but when she got near the gauze, he drew his hand away. “I haven’t really been comfortable riding a horse since I was in boarding school.”
“Then why do you?”
“Because it means a lot to your father.”
She said it facing forward, the way she often said things, not looking down at him, but just out. He turned on his side, and she reached to stroke his arm again. Her hand felt soft on his skin. He wondered about her, how she could ride a horse. He hadn’t thought about it, or other things she did, before. She seemed strange to him, like he didn’t know her. “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“What can you really see?”
It looked like the question shocked her a little. She didn’t move her head, just blinked and kept facing straight ahead. It took her a while to answer. She moistened her lips first, as if she had to do that to speak.
“Nothing, Billy. Sometimes it’s just a little lighter than other times. That’s all.”
She did a funny thing with her mouth, squeezing her lips together just for a second. Then she reached for him and began to rub his arm. When her hand got close to the bandage he jerked slightly, but didn’t move away. She touched it.
“What’s this?”
“Nothing.”
Her fingers moved gently over the gauze where the dried blood had made it crusty. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” She didn’t need to know. What would she do about it? Probably nothing.
“Billy.”
Her voice was pleading and it made his throat swell. “Tony kind of bit me.” He pulled his hand back. “It’s okay. I don’t want to talk about it.” He rolled over on his side, away from her.
Jean left the room feeling hollow. He was so untouchable. This was one child with whom she feared failing. He was an enigma to her, only a shadowy presence. Like an iceberg three-quarters hidden, he glided about in mistiness, just out of reach. He was not inarticulate, yet he talked so rarely. If she could only see to read his face. He gave her so little to go on, and then sometimes, like this, he shut her out.
She walked into the kitchen and stood at the sink. There was a separateness about him, not one of space merely, but of time. He was so different from Faith or Forrie. He seemed to be waiting to live, not living now. He didn’t enter into the boisterous cowboy games Forrie played. Instead, he would climb into the barrels of horse candy in the barn and eat it. Or he’d climb into the fireplace or sit up on the roof for hours. Often when Betty and Warren or Heddy and Karl came in the evening, Billy wordlessly snuggled up to them on the sofa with a winsomeness that demanded nothing, only the pleasure of being there.
Once, she couldn’t find him all afternoon. She walked through each room, called his name and listened. She asked Faith to look in the barn. She called the logical places—Franny Nelson’s, Lance’s, and Mother Holly’s. Franny walked in an hour later and discovered him right there in the living room all the time, curled up on the sofa facing the fireplace.
“What have you been doing?” she asked.
“Sleeping.”
“When did you wake up?”
“I don’t know.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. It had annoyed her at the time because she thought he enjoyed playing possum, underscoring her disadvantage. It made her feel watched and tricked. Continually, he withdrew from interaction, and now again today he pulled away from her. She felt inadequate, not knowing whether to draw him out or just let him retreat to his own dreamy world. A world far different from what Forrest would have for him, that’s for sure. Billy retreated from Forrest too. It was wearisome always softening Forrest’s sternness. A father couldn’t always be so demanding; he’d drive his children away. She’d have to confront him. Billy would wither, otherwise. Even though Billy had turned away from her, maybe she had reached him with something that bound them closer. Maybe. And maybe not. She knew Forrest hadn’t felt anything like that with Billy, and she wanted it for him, too.
That night in their bedroom, they were quiet as they got ready for bed. Forrest was often uncommunicative when mulling something over. Under the cool sheet she reached out, felt the ropey muscles of his back toward her and moved closer. In bed at night certain things could be said that couldn’t be said in the day.
“Go easy on him, Forrest. He’s just a little boy. Hardly eight years old.” She spoke slowly, pausing.
“Well, it’s time he grew up.”
“But he can grow up in his own way. He doesn’t have to grow up in yours.”
She could tell he was holding tight onto his opinion and his anger. Even though she stroked his back and neck, it was a long time before he relaxed. When she told him about Billy’s hand, he tightened up again. “That might not have happened if you’d let him be.”
He didn’t answer, but his body was rigid against hers. He had heard her. That she knew. Maybe that was all she needed to say. She tried to stay awake trailing her fingers along his neck and shoulders from behind. After a while, her hand slowed and then stopped and she slept.
Forrest was quiet in the morning, unusual for him who always woke up robust and ready for a new day. In fact, he was subdued most of the week, and he worked late each night. The next Saturday he went out to do some gardening. She passed by a window and heard him talking in the patio, heard the snap of pruning shears.
“See any roses?” she heard him say.
“Uh-huh. Two.” It was Billy’s voice. She stood still to listen.
“What do they look like?”
“Fat red ones.”
“Only two?”
“Nope. One more. But it’s only a bud. It doesn’t count.”
“Sure it does. Didn’t you know that inside that bud, wrapped tight around each other, are all the parts that the big opened ones have? There are just as many petals and a center, only it’s not time for it yet.”
“When’ll it open?”
“When it’s ready.”
“How does it know?”
“It just knows, all by itself.” She heard two more snips of the pruning shears. “Just like you.”
Billy didn’t respond, but at least she didn’t hear him walking away. Her eyes teared a little, not for Billy this time, but for what Forrest must have undergone this week.
Chapter Thirty-four
A rooster crowed.
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Jean felt Forrest shift positions. Her voice was soft so as not to disturb the children when she read the Brailled Bible lesson to him in the morning sitting up in the big bed, covers still wrapped up to their middles.
Two feet padded down the hallway and a small form climbed into the bed and settled himself between them. It was six-year-old Hap. Soon his breathing became heavier, more regular. When Jean finished and got up, the motion of the bed woke him.
She walked out to the kitchen and filled the tea kettle. His footsteps followed her.
“Mommy, it’s foggy out. Can’t see anything,” Hap said.
“What’s it look like?” she blurted, her question pouncing on his stray comment. She held her breath and heard him climb into the breakfast booth by the kitchen window.
“Gray. Trees are gray. Barn’s gray. We’re trapped in here. Can’t go out.”
“You can. Later. It’ll go away when the sun comes out.”
She relaxed. If it was color he was responding to, that was okay. She opened the kitchen door and stood outside for a moment. The air did feel damp. She heard the shower water and the hum of Forrest’s electric shaver. A mourning dove gave a distant who-whoo. The tea water boiled and the kettle began to screech. She took it off the burner and stirred the oatmeal. The pull on her spoon told her it was almost ready. “Hap, go get the others. Time for breakfast.”
“
Sacca la puerta, Cocareeto
.” George was waking up too. She reached into his cage to refill his water cup. “
Cocareeeto
.” He stretched out the third sound of the greeting learned from Celerina. She wondered what it meant.
A knock on a door, then, “Hurry up, Flappy.” Forrie’s voice down the hallway sounded impatient. A toilet flushed and a door opened. “About time, two-ton.”
“Mom,” Faith wailed as she came into the kitchen. “Forrie called me Two Ton.”
“Well?”
The single word silenced her.
A hand placed on the upper register of the piano scraped all the way down to the last base note. It set off George.
“Mommy, George’s been chewing his perch again,” Hap said.
All four scrambled into the kitchen booth.
“Can I have syrup on my cereal?” Faith asked.
“A little.”
“What day is today?” Billy asked.
“Monday.”
“But no school. Summer. Yippee!”
She smiled. Though summer stretched long ahead of her, this first day of liberation always brought high spirits.
Someone opened the refrigerator door, letting out coolness into the room. It stayed open for a long time.
“Close the door.”
“I can’t find the syrup.”
“It’s there. Just look.”
“But I can’t find it,” she whined.
Jean walked over to the refrigerator, stretched both hands in, felt the tops of a row of bottles along one side, and pulled out the syrup. “Having eyes, see ye not?”
Forrest’s hard shoes echoed down the hallway.
“This cereal’s lumpy,” Hap grunted.
“Eat it anyway,” Forrest said, coming into the kitchen.
“Can’t. Lumps as big as marbles.”
“Just got to take the lumps as they come. They’re good for you, too. Why, I like lumps better than the smooth stuff.”
“You can have mine.”
A crash in George’s cage sent a shower of seeds onto the table. Piercing squawks and a flutter of wings followed.
“What happened?” Jean asked.
Caught in a fit of laughing, no one could answer. She heard Forrest chuckling, and she began to laugh, too.