“Goddamn men,” the woman says and turns back to the bar. She raises a finger for a drink and when the bartender comes over she points at Muriel’s glass and Muriel says she has to go. She worries the woman can see her trembling. She looks around for Rosie but does not see him in the crush of people.
“But what about your husband?” the woman asks.
Muriel shakes her head.
“It’s only a spat. You know how fragile men are,” the woman says, to Muriel and to the general air.
Muriel pushes off the bar ledge and moves toward the door. On the front wall above the windows is a carnival racing game, one-dimensional horses snugged into green lanes of serrated plastic, each affixed with a number and jockey in silks. Three men in the front corner gesture largely and one lifts a billiard bridge and spreads two of the horses forward from the pack and as Muriel walks past them they laugh. Outside on the street she pulls off the hat and curls it brim to brim and shoves it in her purse. She lights a cigarette and smokes it as she walks back toward the lounge.
* * *
—
THAT WEEK THE RAIN comes in earnest. For several days Muriel does not go back downtown. The evenings draw long and the house is gloomy and grayly cold. The horse does not return. As Muriel washes up she glances through the kitchen window with some hesitation, as if the horse’s absence is a trick played by a child. As if, when she turns away, the horse will emerge through the door and frighten her.
One night Lee drinks too much and says, his hands palmed together as if in prayer, “I remember this girl from town. She had two men. One was a kid Julius ran with, pool hall kid, even shorter than you are, boy could he hit a pocket. I played with him once and it was like basic training or worse, I was dead on the ground inside three minutes. The other guy, he was a college kid none of us knew. He ran the sand mill across the river and wore the tiniest knot in his tie, like McCarthy. I don’t know how they met each other. He wasn’t the kind of guy any of us would have known personally.”
Muriel can feel the marine layer passing into the valley as a moist draft through the window, stealing the remnant warmth of the kitchen. She’s heard this story before but she doesn’t interrupt.
“It went on this way for a while, and the girl—her name was Sally, I want to say—she spent her afternoons with Julius and his friend and then went to dinner half-tilted on Hamm’s and in a better dress with this other guy, and then she’d come back late to the pool hall or wherever they were and get right back to her short man, who knew where she’d been and didn’t care. Baffled me, when Julius told me about it. And he said it like it was a thing anyone would understand, though six months later she sat the short man down and told him it was over, and in another month there was her name in the engagement section and Julius was just outraged.”
Muriel knows Lee thinks of this story as a parable about money but she can’t help thinking he’s sending her some message, though the distance the drink has made in him is his own distance. When she leans closer to him he leans into her for comfort.
“You must have known a dozen guys who lost out this way,” she says, to placate him.
“I did. And Julius did too, but I do think he was more upset about it than his friend. I think Julius hated that she picked what wasn’t real, honestly. It bothered him to no end that she hadn’t chosen what he thought of as love. That would be something that bothered him.”
“Would it.”
“And I guess I thought that too, but really I didn’t know her, so who was I to say.”
She leans into his shoulder. This is a new version and she watches his face as he works through it.
“I guess maybe he thinks now that I’m on the other side of that story,” he says, and there is sadness in his voice but pride too. She thinks that, in the time Lee waited for her to sell the house, he had begun to think of himself as an actor in a narrative of stuttering progress, challenged by trials of love and spirit for the sake of some greater victory. Maybe that was always true of him, though she hadn’t known it. And it suited him, this sense of himself as outsized, as protagonist, and not simply because it was a comfort against his small life but because it was the burdened way he made meaning.
“That’s what time does,” she says.
“What’s that?”
“Change which side of the story you’re on.”
Lee laughs kindly and low. “We’re gonna have to get cheered up, huh?” he says and kisses her cheek.
She thinks again of her lost money and the hotel by the sea. She recalls that first winter at Del Mar, when she had begun to lose. After months of terrific reliability, losing had been hard to understand. Later she would realize just how much losing had to do with winning, but she didn’t know it then, and her days had been occupied by a careful attention to everything, as if somewhere in the inflection of the horsemen’s voices or the color of their ties she might find a clue to her small fate. She watched the weather and the shopkeepers and the men walking along the avenues and the ragged stray cats. She worked through every sign and pattern she knew, for insight into her trouble. She wonders what Julius is doing and if he has spent her money already and if someone has left a dark scent along his collar. Still no anger comes forward, only a sharp, familiar desire to be where he is.
* * *
—
SUNDAY MORNING, she is awakened by a knock at the front door. She hears Lee answer and then a woman’s voice. Lee comes in the bedroom and pulls on his boots and jacket.
“Neighbor saw her up the road,” he says.
“Saw who?”
“That damn horse.”
He leaves and the front door closes hard. In the kitchen Muriel starts the kettle and walks first to the front window and then the back but sees only the rain and the scrim of light as the sun rises. When the kettle boils she makes a cup of coffee and sits at the kitchen table. Soon the front door opens and Muriel expects Lee’s voice calling out but a woman walks into the kitchen.
“No dice,” the woman says. There in the doorway is the woman who gave her the olives months before, dripping on the linoleum. Lee comes in behind her.
“I’m going to try something else,” he says.
“I’m not sure you’re going to have much chance in this rain,” she says.
Muriel sees that some disagreement has already passed between them. Lee nudges by the woman and into the kitchen. He gathers a wilted head of lettuce and an apple and two winter tomatoes, then opens the breadbox and finds a last slice of pie. He looks at Muriel.
“It’s all right by me,” she says.
The woman turns to him as if to speak but doesn’t. She looks at Muriel and shrugs.
Muriel says, “Is she by the river?”
“Walnut orchard,” the woman says.
“She was eyeing it, before,” Muriel says.
“There’s walnuts. Who could blame her?” the woman says.
“You go ahead and get warm now and then I’ll take you back up,” Lee says to the woman. He pulls the lettuce to his nose and regards it, then tosses it on the counter. He puts the tomatoes in his pocket and holds the pie flat on his hand like a jewel. With these items he leaves the kitchen and Muriel smiles at his broad back.
“I don’t think he’ll catch her,” the woman says.
“We’ve been looking for her a week now.”
“Well maybe, then, if she’s not had her fill of nuts. You can get a horse to do most things for food, even come home.”
The woman takes a step into the kitchen and holds out a cold hand and says, “Sandra.”
Muriel recalls the moment, months ago now, in which she might have asked this and didn’t. Sandra wears a man’s flannel shirt with the long tails folded over and tucked, the sleeves rolled so the fabric sits squared above her elbows like straps. Her hair is pulled back in a single plait and curled under. Everything wet f
rom the rain. She looks around the kitchen as if she is accustomed to entering spaces meant for others, or in which she might be unwelcome. For a moment Muriel stands dumbly staring. Then she holds up a halting finger and finds a towel in the hall closet and comes back and hands it over. Sandra leans against the counter and squeezes the water from her hair and wipes down her arms, then drapes the towel over her shoulders. Muriel hands her a cup of coffee.
“Did you try to tie her before?” Sandra asks. She looks at the coffee and frowns.
“Wouldn’t take it.”
“No surprise there. What you need is a rope bridle, get one without any brass in it. Then you can tie her up or lead her by it. She ain’t going to like being ridden or corralled, at her age.” She turns to the unpainted wall and with a finger draws the long outline of a snout, then a quick half-circle around it and two lines up and behind the ears. The wet tip of her finger leaves a faint trace on the Sheetrock. “When you catch her, that is.”
“You know horses,” Muriel asks.
“If we’re talking relatively, the answer is yes.”
Sandra goes to the window and fingers the curtain back and looks out. Muriel stands beside her and together they stare out into the rain but they do not see Lee or the horse. The ash trees are freighted as if by the heavy clouds above. Muriel wonders if she should mention their meeting or if the woman even remembers her, but then Sandra turns away from the window and drains her cup. She backs against the counter and looks at Muriel.
“I didn’t know this was the lot you wanted. I used to play down here. Before the levees, the water rose to the top of this bluff in spring and rolled down to make a pool where the road meets the edge of your drive—there was no road then—and my father and I fished for bluegill here, down among the rushes and small turtles and snails the size of your pinkie nail.”
Sandra turns her face up, grinning. A little spur of history that connects them.
“You haven’t been here long,” she says then.
“As you can see, we’re not finished.”
“You will be soon though.”
“So you’ve lived here your whole life,” Muriel says, to talk of something other than the house.
“I was gone some time, actually. Then my father died and I came back.”
“Why did you go away?”
“Same reason anyone does.”
Muriel pours the coffee and sits at the table. The woman nods to the empty chair.
“You’re not from here, though,” she says.
She wipes her face and neck again. Above the oven range, the clock ticks off the time. She hopes Lee will catch the horse, but below this hope is another strange and surprising one, that they will have to keep looking forever.
“Kansas,” she says.
“Long ways.”
Sandra flattens the towel over the seat and sits. Across the table she seems very small. Perhaps Lee had spoken to her roughly, perhaps it was only the weather.
“Why would you ever leave the plains?” she asks.
“Have you ever been there?”
“No.”
“Well then,” Muriel says.
“Now wait. I went to Idaho once.” She holds up an enlightened finger. Muriel smiles at her. Sandra speaks as men often do, and not the way women usually speak to each other.
“I had a friend who moved there. I only went to see her the one time though,” Sandra says.
“I’m not sure Idaho counts.”
“They have sand dunes in Idaho.”
“There you go.”
“My friend loved it. She dreamed of going there her whole life, though honestly it was hotter than hell and full of church people. I guess we all take what paradise is offered us.”
She says this without bitterness. Muriel nods and lights a cigarette. Outside she can hear the faint whine of a car out west on the paved road. Sandra reaches across the table and raises her eyebrows and Muriel passes the cigarette to her. She brings it to her lips and blows the smoke out thickly without inhaling and hands the cigarette back.
“I’ve given it up, you see.”
Muriel laughs and some tension is broken between them.
“You think he’ll catch her?” Muriel asks.
“Well, she isn’t fast. But she’s had a lot of years to learn.”
Sandra leans in as if in conspiracy and lowers her voice. Her pleasure at what she says next expresses itself in a blush.
“I guess his pouting worked then,” she says.
“Or your olives didn’t,” Muriel says.
“You should’ve got García’s olives, like I said.”
“That’s not what I remember you saying.”
Muriel looks up at the ceiling and then out the window. Outside the light gutters as the trees blow across it and from far off she can hear sirens and the slap of the river against the bluff.
“Why’d you get a horse if you have no fencing?”
“My brother-in-law.”
“He gave it to you?”
“He hauled her from Nevada in that trailer.” Muriel nods her head toward the tree line. Sandra laughs. Muriel passes the cigarette again.
“All these cowboys, but this whole place will be a cul-de-sac by next year.”
“Surely not so soon.”
“Mark my words. I ought to sell out myself.”
“He thought he was getting a bona fide mustang,” Muriel says. There is a guilty pleasure in this, holding Julius up for ridicule. For a moment she has made him harmless.
“Didn’t he ever see Roy Rogers?”
Sandra takes another parochial drag and passes the cigarette back. Muriel holds it a moment and regards the ash, which has crumbled to the table. She licks her thumb and presses it away. She likes this woman’s self-possession. She suspects it developed in another, harder time and had been abandoned for solitude.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Sandra says.
“Well, here I am.”
“You ought to come up for dinner sometime.”
“Me and Lee, we work late most nights.”
From the front room the sound of the door opening and Lee appears at the threshold as if by evocation. He’s soaked and dripping and across his jacket front is a smear of blueberry. Muriel stands up.
“Well,” he says. “I think you can see how well I did.”
“Did she get any of that pie?” Sandra asks. She rises and lifts the towel from the seat and drapes it over the lip of the sink, then sets her cup on the counter.
“Snatched it and ran,” Lee says.
“You might say that’s progress.”
“I guess if you think so,” he says.
He snaps his pant leg out and shoots mud across the room. Muriel senses his need to posture for the woman. She sees something else too, which she had not been able to name before. She recalls the moment the horse necked in under the doorway, Julius leaping to turn the horse away and Lee rising calmly, not in fear or apprehension but in joy at being surprised, at the simple presence of the horse. He wants to be thrust into peril. He doesn’t like that the woman might see this pleasure in him or that she might join him in it.
“The tires rotted on that trailer?” Sandra asks.
“It ain’t in great shape, but no.”
“I’ve got an idea.”
The three of them walk outside and up to the road and Sandra tells them what she means to do. Lee looks skeptical and tries to argue but the woman simply walks away and begins to rock the trailer to test its weight. Lee stands watching her while the rain falls on his shoulders. Finally Sandra stops and turns to Lee and explains again and points to the tree line and speaks in an appeasing voice. Lee nods and shrugs and finds a shovel in the garage and digs out the trailer tires where the mud has slung against them. Then he pulls the trailer by th
e tongue while Muriel and Sandra push from the back, and together they wend it through the yard and angle it alongside the stand of ash trees where the rain is dampened. They lash the door open and then Lee goes again to the front and takes the tarp from the pile of backfill dirt and drags it across the wet yard. He hands one end of the tarp to Sandra and she stretches it between two trees. Lee ties it there, and then they tie the other side through the trailer vents, making a shelter as wide as a bedroom between the tree line and the trailer.
“Now who wouldn’t come back for that,” Sandra says.
“If you say so,” says Lee.
“Get some dry hay, too,” Sandra says. “You gotta give her something to come back for besides cold shade. And then when she does, you’ll need a fence.”
The woman looks at Muriel a long moment and her look is a request for something. In the rain she is dark and young, the way rain turns people back to children.
“Come on then, let’s get out of this weather. I’ll give you a ride back up,” Lee says.
“That’s all right.”
Sandra stomps into her own cold boots and rolls down her shirtsleeves. She turns back and says, “I can spare a little feed. I’ll put that around and between us we’ll get her.” Then she walks back out into the druid morning.
* * *
—
THE WEEK BEGINS under light drizzle. The hay molders under the tarp and Lee sets out a bucket which fills with rain and inside the trailer they dump a dozen apples sliced open for the scent. Muriel sleeps poorly. As always she dreams of horses, but also of heavy rain like a screen across the winter fields. She dreams of the Radford Hotel and the empty room and the money on the bed. Each of these dreams presses forward through the day and brings along a portentous feeling.
On Swift Horses Page 21