Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Gideon’s stallion Jupiter was famous throughout the state. An albino bred to race!—to carry a man of Gideon’s size easily and gracefully! Jupiter was a remarkably tall horse, some eighteen hands, and his coat was ivory rather than white, and his smooth-rippling mane and tail were so striking, and his head, his eyes, his ears, his profile were so uncannily beautiful—he had to be seen, people claimed, to be believed. A graceful giant of a horse. Spirited, obviously very strong, possibly even headstrong (for Gideon had to use his knees to control his mount, who was always shivering and shuddering, and yearning to leap forward, to run free with or without his master on his back), possibly even dangerous. (It was rumored, falsely, that Jupiter had killed his previous owner. Or a stablehand at the Bellefleurs’. Or had tried to kill Gideon himself.) When Gideon first appeared at local competitions with his albino stallion a murmur always arose from the crowd at the very sight of him. Young Gideon Bellefleur with his thick, brushlike dark hair and his dark beard, his prominent cheekbones, his strong nose, his skin that was always tanned, but a warm, honeyish tan, not at all swarthy or Indian-burnt; not at all coarse. Young Gideon Bellefleur who was so handsome, so aloof and yet courteous, and remarkably graceful for a man of his size and build: and was it true, people asked, that the Bellefleurs were still millionaires?—or was it true that they were nearly penniless, and had mortgaged the castle twice over, and would soon be forced to declare bankruptcy? They stared hard at Gideon, and felt both envy and resentment of that envy, and yet a curious wild affection as well, for he was—he and Jupiter and the pride they so blatantly took in each other—somehow more real, more wonderfully, incontestably real than the other men and their mounts. Even had he lost—and he did not, of course, lose—they would have stared at him with the same fixed, fascinated gaze, something in them calling out to him, yearning for a glance of recognition from him, from the haughty Bellefleur in him, which of course he would never give—was quite incapable of giving. Gideon Bellefleur. And his legendary albino, Jupiter. . . .

  Nevertheless, Gideon was to sell the stallion immediately after the Powhatassie race, and he would have sold all the horses in the Bellefleur stable if old Noel hadn’t stopped him.

  The Whirlwind

  On that summer afternoon many years ago, several weeks before Germaine’s birth, a record number of spectators came to the fairgrounds at Powhatassie, to see Gideon Bellefleur ride his white stallion Jupiter against six other Valley horses, including Marcus, the three-year-old golden chestnut stallion owned by Nicholas Fuhr. Though Jupiter was the favorite to win the four-mile heat, it was rumored that his age—six years—was beginning to tell; it was rumored that he had done poorly in secret workouts on the Bellefleur track, and that the shrewdest bets were now being placed on Marcus. Of the other horses only one was promising—a beautiful dapple-gray mare with English and Arabic blood, about fifteen-four hands, eleven hundred pounds, far smaller and slighter than the Bellefleur and Fuhr stallions. She was owned by a farmer and horseman named Van Ranst, from the eastern corner of the Valley, a stranger to the Bellefleurs (and one who would go on to breed horses for competition not only at tracks throughout the state, but at Belmont Park, and in Kentucky, and Texas, and even in Jamaica, Cuba, and the Virgin Islands); her name was Angel (and when she learned this fact Leah, who had bet far more on Jupiter than anyone, even Hiram himself, knew, felt a thrill of despair).

  A fair clear summer day. More than forty thousand persons were jammed on the course, which had been designed to accommodate little more than half that number; the Bellefleurs, with the exception of Gideon (who had no time to contemplate such nonsense) were inordinately pleased, since fairgrounds officials announced a record turnout and the record turnout was surely in Gideon’s honor. By this time Jupiter’s fame was no longer limited to the Nautauga Valley and the Chautauqua mountain region. There was talk hundreds of miles away of a magnificent ivory-white stallion that, despite his size and muscular frame, could run a four-mile heat in 7:36, manned not by a light-boned jockey but by his owner, one of the young Bellefleurs, himself a figure of mild regional notoriety. To see the albino stallion run was to allow oneself to be bewitched: for the creature was so dazzling-white, a white more intense than white, and even his great pounding hooves were white (and always kept spotless), and his long silky mane and tail, as soft as a child’s hair—and, it was said, the skill of his master was such that horse and man appeared, on the track, a single striving creature, wondrous to behold. It was not only women who gazed upon horse and rider with an adulation so intense as to verge on alarm.

  “You love their eyes on you, don’t tell me!” Leah cried half bitterly.

  Gideon, brushing his thick hair, bent slightly at the knees so that he could stare at his reflection in the mirror, declined to reply.

  “They’re mad about you. They crave you. Last July, that pathetic creature from downriver—do you remember—and she was actually engaged—and to one of the young men at Nautauga Trust—pushing her way through to you like that, her hair in her eyes, her face smudged: to offer herself to you so openly! As if I, your wife, didn’t exist.”

  “You exaggerate,” Gideon mumbled. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “She’d been drinking. She was desperate. I might have taken pity on her if she hadn’t practically pushed me aside . . .”

  “Would you have taken pity on her, really, Leah?”

  “As a woman I could sympathize with her derangement.”

  “It was Jupiter she wanted, not me.”

  “Then certainly I could sympathize!”

  Gideon’s shoulders shook, as if he were stricken with silent laughter.

  Driving to Powhatassie husband and wife were seated side by side, but did not touch; nor did they speak: There was talk of the purse—$20,000—which was the highest in the state; there was talk of unofficial betting; of the threat that reformers would picket the fairgrounds, and that one of the area’s leading evangelical ministers would preach against horse racing from a hay wagon, as crowds began to arrive—a rumor that was to prove unfounded, though the Powhatassie race would be, to future reformers, the most natural instance of what was wrong with such events, where the Devil had the freedom to mingle with spectators, to corrupt them with sickly dreams of instant wealth, and to excite them with the promise of capricious violence. There was talk too of Nicholas Fuhr and Marcus, who would certainly give Gideon a run for his money. . . . There was talk in the limousine of many things, but Gideon and Leah sat in silence, staring before them, Gideon’s hands resting uneasily on his knees, Leah’s crossed arms resting on her immense stomach.

  Hiram, acting as Leah’s agent, had employed a certain bookmaker out of Derby to act as his agent; and a rather large bet was made in his name, on Jupiter. But since Jupiter was the odds-on favorite, a dismaying amount of money must be risked, many dollars to bring in a single dollar. “If we lose . . .” Hiram said thoughtfully, pressing his glasses against the bridge of his nose. “We won’t lose,” Leah said. “We can’t lose.” “But if, if, simply for the sake of speculation, if,” Hiram said, “if we lose, my girl, how can we tell the others . . . ?” “We won’t tell the others, why should we tell the others,” Leah said quickly, “we can’t possibly lose—haven’t I made that clear to you? I know.” “You know, you’ve seen?” Hiram asked doubtfully. “I know, yes,” Leah said passionately. “I’ve seen.”

  And then through another agent who was to suspect, but not to know, her identity, Leah made a sizable bet of her own. She hadn’t the cash to cover it, naturally—she hadn’t any money of her own, and no property at all—but she had a pearl necklace, and a sapphire ring edged with diamonds, and a canvas sack of Georgian silver stolen from the recesses of a kitchen closet, and a pair of eighteenth-century Dutch Delft vases by Matheus van Boegart, stolen from one of the third-floor rooms; and a medieval anlace, a two-edged dagger with an immense jeweled handle, come across by accident in a trunk stuffed with dresses, women’s shoes, and religious trinkets. W
hile making the transaction Leah wore one of Violet Bellefleur’s old hats, a yellowed gauzy rather poignant thing the size of a wagon wheel; it stank of mothballs and age, and the veil, drawn down becomingly to Leah’s strong chin, gave her face the eerie anonymity of a statue’s. “This bet,” the agent said, sniffing out of nervousness, “this bet is a serious matter. I want you to know, if you don’t”—perhaps he sensed, beneath her calm, a glacial terror neither she nor the child in the womb comprehended—“that such a sum of money is a serious matter.” “I understand,” Leah said softly. Like a maiden, like a very young girl, the sort of girl, in fact, she’d never been, she gave herself over to the agent’s penciled calculations, and accepted from him, without a murmur of protest, the fact that her winning—that is, her husband’s winning—would be so much less than her losing. The one would be magnificent, the other catastrophic.

  Because of the reserve between them Leah did not dare ask, nor would she have wanted to ask, the sum of money Gideon himself was betting. But through a judicious interrogation of Ewan she gathered that the sum was fairly modest—it would bring in only about $12,500—no more than $15,000. “But doesn’t he expect to win!” Leah cried involuntarily, staring at her brother-in-law. She and Ewan rarely looked at each other: it might have been that Ewan’s bearish figure, his unruly graying hair, his brick-red skin, parodied certain inclinations in her husband, who was a far more attractive man; it might have been that Leah, for Ewan, was so much more his natural mate—big-boned, arrogant, fleshy, voluptuous—than his own wife, he dared not contemplate her even speculatively. “Of course he expects to win, we always expect to win and we do win,” Ewan said, with an offended dignity that rather charmed Leah (for she was, like Della, inclined to believe that the Lake Noir Bellefleurs were essentially barbaric), “but there’s always the possibility, after all, that we won’t.” “But I deny that possibility,” Leah said. Her breath had become labored. If Ewan noticed, he might have attributed it to her condition. “It isn’t a possibility at all,” she said. “He can’t lose. Jupiter can’t lose.” “I agree,” Ewan said, nodding, as one might nod to a distraught person, or a very small child whose babbling almost makes sense. “Oh, yes, I agree. I wouldn’t be a Bellefleur if I didn’t agree,” he said. “But still.” “But still?” Leah cried angrily. “But still,” Ewan said. Leah contemplated him for a long moment, her slate-blue eyes narrowed, their focus so intense she might have appeared, to poor bewildered Ewan, somewhat cross-eyed. Then she said, finally, shaking her head, “He cannot lose. I know. I would stake everything I own on it—my life, even—even the life of this child.”

  ONCE, AS CHILDREN of perhaps eight or nine, Gideon and his friend Nicholas were tramping through the woods on the Bellefleur estate, when, quite suddenly, in a hairsbreadth of an instant, they found themselves facing, across a narrow stream, a full-grown black bear. The creature appeared to be staring at them, its head inclined to one side; and then, after a long moment, it turned and moved indifferently away, back into the woods. With its poor eyesight, perhaps it hadn’t exactly seen them . . . and they were downwind from it. . . . Both children had begun to tremble badly. Gideon, the taller of the two, glanced at Nicholas, and burst into laughter. “You look so funny,” he said, wiping at his mouth. “Your lips are white.” “Your lips are white, goddamn you,” Nicholas said. Throughout their boyhood the bear remained at the periphery of their vision, even after, in fact, they had seen other bears, and even hunted them: the glimmering white on the creature’s chest, the blunt cagey head, the perked-up ears that were like a dog’s, the stance of the thing itself, which was like a dog’s, uneasily raised on his hind legs. “You look funny,” Nicholas said, giving Gideon a shove; and quite naturally Gideon shoved him back. Their bowels contracted with fear. Their pulses rang. “A black bear won’t attack,” they told each other, “there wasn’t any danger, d’you see how it walked away?—it didn’t want any trouble from us.” One of the mythologies of their boyhood was established.

  And when they were both fourteen, and hunting with their fathers and older brothers, in the foothills south of Mount Blanc, they came upon, from different angles, a solitary white-tailed buck browsing in a drowned-out field, and both their shots rang out at once—and both their shots struck the deer, which gave a single whistling snort of incredulity and anger, before it turned, and sprang, and fell to its knees, bleeding wildly from two great gaping wounds in its chest. They had struck the deer!—both their shots! One shot from each gun, and each had struck its target! In the very first instant the young Gideon may have felt a pang of resentment at the fact of Nicholas—the fact that they would be forced to share the giddy triumph of their first kill—and he sensed his friend’s resentment of him; but in a matter of minutes, as the boys ran splashing through the flooded field, hooting and shouting crazily, they were reconciled to each other, and perhaps even secretly pleased. (“Nicholas is my closest friend,” Gideon told his father when, one Christmas, it seemed that he was spending too much time at the Fuhrs’, and not enough at home. “But friendship never takes precedence over family,” his father said.)

  The black bear of their childhood had contemplated them with that uncanny solemnity that belongs to nature, and had appeared to judge them—to judge them as insignificant. It had simply turned and trotted away. But the white-tailed buck—ah, the magnificent buck with its thirty-inch antler spread!—the buck was another story, the story of Gideon’s and Nicholas’s first significant kill. And it was one they were to tell often.

  Nicholas Fuhr, now thirty years old, still unmarried, still with as wild a reputation in the Valley as he’d ever had (having eclipsed Gideon years ago, after Gideon’s marriage), was a handsome, beardless young man, nearly Gideon’s height, with curly wheat-colored hair and slightly sloped broad shoulders, and a habit, which endeared him to his friends, of throwing his head back when he laughed, and of laughing in great appreciative explosive outbursts. His people were comfortably prosperous farmers; like their neighbors the Bellefleurs they had once made a small fortune selling timber in great quantities, and they had even—like the Bellefleurs, in the mid-nineteenth century—mined iron ore, out of broad but rather shallow deposits in the foothills. The Fuhrs had settled in the region some decades before Jean-Pierre crossed the Atlantic, and they had sold the colony the iron ore that was eventually fashioned into the famous chain of 1757 that was stretched across the Nautauga at its narrowest point, at Fort Hanna, in order to block passage of French ships. (“A chain across the river!—I don’t believe it,” Gideon would say as a boy, as he and Nicholas hiked along the bluff above the Nautauga. Sometimes it had seemed to him that amazing things had been done so easily in the past, long before his or even his father’s birth—that there was a magical quickness, a magical fluidity, between the imagining of a feat and its execution. And hadn’t there been dangerous Iroquois everywhere, and frequent sorties by Algonquins from the north, not these sour, defeated half-breeds who ran down pregnant does, and had fished the trout streams nearly dry, and might still be found, from time to time, on Sunday mornings in Bellefleur or Contracoeur, lying in a drunken stupor in the center of the street, their clothing vomit-stained, their faces scarcely human? Hadn’t there been gigantic black panthers, and gray wolves so reckless with hunger they might rush into a clearing and make off with small children; hadn’t there been many more coyotes and bobcats and black bears, and tall creatures no one had exactly seen, bearlike, and yet half-human? All that remained of that time were the swamp vultures, or the Noir vultures (sometimes called the Bellefleur vultures, but not in the presence of a Bellefleur) and these were retreating, it was said, deeper into the swamp north of the lake; not one had been sighted for years.)

  Before the race Gideon shook hands with Nicholas, whom he had not seen in months; the men stared at each other, and smiled self-consciously, and talked, for a few minutes, of inconsequential matters—it had been for years a matter of hilarious ribaldry between them, that Nicholas’s cousin-t
wice-removed Denton Mortlock should have married Gideon’s priggish older sister Aveline; as adolescents, frequently aflame with filthy, outrageous visions, they had mocked and jeered and tried to imagine scenes of sexual activity between the two phlegmatic stoutish persons—but then Aveline did have three children, and what, precisely, might that mean? So Gideon murmured something about the Mortlocks, who were already assembled in the Bellefleur box at the homestretch; and Nicholas murmured, almost too quickly, a coarse jest; and Gideon laughed; and suddenly there was nothing to say. At another time Nicholas would certainly have inquired after Leah, with whom he was, it was sentimentally believed, half in love; but the tension of the race was building, one could very nearly feel it in the air, and anyway, these past few months, hadn’t Leah seemed—hadn’t she presented herself, deliberately, when Nicholas came to visit—rather strange?—rather too flagrantly, lewdly pregnant?—so that poor Nicholas, who had dreamt innumerable times of Leah Pym’s body, felt faint in her presence, and even somewhat nauseated; and his dreams now of her were jarring. At another time Nicholas would certainly have inquired after Gideon’s father and mother, and Ewan, and the twins, and the rest, but today he was distracted, he seemed uncharacteristically nervous, as if he’d felt, in his friend’s hard handshake, how very much Gideon needed him to lose.