Two if by Sea

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  Claudia had raised Prospero and trained him, too, with the help of a college coach and then two esteemed professionals. It could have been a murderous combination, like a codependent couple. It was not, but Claudia had an inflated faith in her own flexibility. Now she pulled up and brought Prospero to the center, where Frank stood. She slid off, with one hand automatically soothing the horse’s glistening neck.

  “Pro is a really tidy horse, Frank,” Claudia argued. “You see how much room he has.”

  “Until he bonks a stile . . . that is, a pole.” Frank sometimes caught himself using the quasi-Brit Australian terms. “He’s not a tidy horse, Claudia. He’s a lummox that can jump like the cow over the moon.”

  “But those are just touches. I think I can go for the time and trust him not to take any rails. If I don’t win this class, I won’t even get near the Olympic trials. I have to take chances.”

  “I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take chances later. Later, you will have to take chances. Today, right now, I would rather you be conservative, Claudia.”

  “Conservative? I am being conservative.”

  “It’s a hot day. Go slower. You said you would do what I say. I thought you’d agreed to do what I say?”

  “I am doing what you say,” Claudia insisted. “And you said you’re not a real coach.” Frank realized that it wouldn’t have occurred to Claudia that she refused on principle to do anything that wasn’t her own idea. Woe betide the man who married this woman. Maybe she was already married, for all Frank knew. Maybe she left her husband in a closet when she went to work, like a broom. Maybe she wasn’t even into marriage . . . or men, for that matter.

  “Frank?” Claudia said. “Frank!”

  “What?” He blushed, having been caught imagining Claudia brandishing a riding crop over the prostrate form of a woman wearing only thigh-high leather boots. He laughed and said, “You’re going to take him all out no matter what I tell you.”

  “I’ll try to pull up a little.”

  “Good. But really try. A class like the Mistingay is your perfect event. We don’t know the order, but you’re already coming in under the qualifying time for the final three . . .”

  Ian squeezed through the fence and came running, skinning past Prospero’s back legs to rub his belly. Claudia had to visibly stop herself from calling out for Ian to look out. He was so little, these horses so big and excitable. Since the night of Edie’s wedding, “the Ian effect” had not been much in evidence. Many children were deft around animals. Frank saw Claudia watching Ian, and imagined her thinking, Am I seeing anything extraordinary? He didn’t discuss it with her. Claudia, he decided, would have to speak first.

  “Helmet,” Claudia said to Ian, and Ian zoomed off again, returning with his riding helmet, the size of a melon on his little head. As Frank and Claudia discussed strategy for the Mistingay Medley, a very formal, old A-level event in Chicago sponsored by some soft-drink heiress, Ian set up his mounting stool, scaled Prospero like a tree, settled on the smaller, flatter jumps saddle, and began circling the ring in a posting trot. Patient and sedate by nature, Prospero responded sweetly, but the big stallion must have felt as though he was being ridden by a talking monkey. Frank had taught Ian to hold the reins properly, but the horse’s ears seemed to flick in response to Ian’s cheerful monologue—Do you like hotdogs, Pro? You would if you tried them. Do you like chocolate, Pro? Do you like chocolate cake best of all? Do you like crisps? You would if you tried them. But they’d make you fat, I bet. I like crisps. They don’t make me fat because I can fly. Can you fly? I know you can. I saw you fly! If Prospero had been a cat, he would have purred. Even Claudia didn’t soothe her mount so easefully.

  “Look at him,” Claudia said. “He’s three. I rode a pony when I was three. Not very well either.”

  “I absolutely could not ride like that when I was three, or ten, and I grew up on a horse farm.” Breezily, Ian urged Prospero into a slow canter, which worried Frank a little because Ian’s legs were so short that he used the saddle straps as makeshift stirrups. Ian needed his own saddle. Frank would make the call tomorrow. He also should get Ian his own horse. He would make that call today. Glory Bee was more than eighteen hands tall—not that a fall off a short horse was any more or less hard on a child than a fall off a tall horse. Most often, Ian rode with Frank’s own childhood saddle. It was functional, but still too big. Frank had used it from age eight to about twelve, before he got an adult saddle, but after he switched over from riding bareback with a rope halter. Though he ate more than Frank—ate more in fact, not pound for pound—Ian still weighed about as much as an armful of thistles.

  Claudia said suddenly, “Do you think he can do this because he’s telling the horses how to be good?”

  Frank waited to see if Claudia would say more. When she didn’t, he answered, “I think he’s a natural rider. Maybe he had some experience with horses before. The Ian effect probably helps, though.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “Never out loud before, but sure, I suppose I do.”

  “Do you think he does it deliberately, or it just happens to people and creatures around him?”

  “I know he does it deliberately, the little hand thing. But I think it just happens, too.”

  “The little hand thing . . . I think I almost recognize it,” Claudia said. “I don’t know from where. I can’t remember.”

  Frank pictured a concentric ring of circles spreading out from a single pulse—relatives, friends, teachers, pets, wild horses, orangutans. Why not Cape buffalo? Disarmament summits? Divorce mediations? Prison riots? Forcibly, Frank folded his mind back to manageable size. Ian trotted past them. Did doing what he did make Ian happy? How would it feel to know for certain that you could make people be good? Why wouldn’t it make you happy? You would feel powerful, but at the same time, peaceful and protected, at the top of the food chain. What if police could do this? No one would ever need a handgun the size of a cannon. The volatility of people, the particular terror of Frank’s own youth, was already husked away for Ian. From everything Frank had ever heard about giftedness, from a supernatural grace at being a shortstop to a voice that spanned five octaves, such blessings were inevitably mixed. Yet there seemed to be no downside to Ian’s way of being.

  “Bring him to me now,” Claudia said, smiling, her face shiny with sweat.

  Ian said, “No way!”

  “Yes. I get to ride now. Pro has to practice. Remember, we have to be polite.”

  “Can I get Glory Bee?”

  Half exasperated, Frank said, “Sure.” Ian surely knew he was a major force. Little as he was, he was well aware of the privileges he could command. Even Frank, who knew what was going on, couldn’t resist the boy. Around the child, Glory Bee wouldn’t kick or bite Prospero. But Frank could tell from her demeanor that Glory Bee didn’t like Prospero. She didn’t like any other horse. Although an impatient equine sneer had replaced her homicidal glare, Glory Bee was still Glory Bee. The irascible part of her personality was all the personality she had. She was in thrall to Ian. She behaved for Frank. She only put up with Patrick, although judging by the changes in the jumps Patrick had built, Glory Bee was coming along quickly. Thanks to Ian, Glory Bee might actually experience her destiny. Ian jogging around yelling or humming was better for him than sitting inside watching the computer play Ping-Pong with aliens. It was better for the horses. Most competition horses had been raised around adults who weren’t big talkers—for whom horses, not people, were the warm-blooded credential. World Cup A-level events could be sedate affairs and tedious, the announcer’s stagy whispers reminiscent of old-time golf tournaments. Once, at the Australian Show Jumping Championships, a baby’s cry shook the great horse Tanzania so fully that he stopped in the middle of a parallel oxer and refused to budge, even when Brian Mahoney whacked him on the rear end. Ultimately, Mahoney had to lead the horse out of the stadium, and Tanzania stopped a second time when the same baby cried out. The crowd was
so indignant on Mahoney’s behalf that Frank feared for the innocent mom and her child.

  Jealous as he was of Patrick’s incarnate aptitude for coaxing the best out of horses, an aptitude that Frank never possessed, he found himself looking forward to the work with Claudia. The small needs of the farm receded. In a burst of largesse, he hired a crew of Amishmen who piled out of the back of a truck driven by an outsider and put the roofs and fences and stalls in order in two ten-hour hives of holy carpentry. It was better work than Frank could have done himself in an uninterrupted month. Lesson learned. He was sharpening the skill he supposed he did have that the Amishmen didn’t; and they had set him free to do it.

  As Claudia took her seat again, Frank noticed that her pants were baggy. She was getting thinner. A tall woman, five eight or so, she now weighed no more than a hundred and twenty pounds. From years of police work, Frank could guess weights as ably as any carnie. She looked more angular than womanly, and tired, her brow pleated against the late-day sun.

  “Claudia, don’t worry. Worrying about this isn’t going to help. Let’s stop for today. A rest helps put everything to rights.” He sounded like Tura. For a moment, he was swept back to the farm kitchen, Tura setting out a bowl of pasta the consistency of papier-mâché, and Cedric, who with Tura was always the soul of politeness, finally putting his fork down, telling his wife, “Darling, I would rather eat my shoe . . .” Frank thought of the last time that the Bellinghams sat at their old table on a hot night. Did they know that this was the last time? Did they gaze at each other, and ignore the harsh voices?

  Claudia spoke up then. “Frank, I’m thirty-three. I’ve waited so long for this.”

  Frank shook his head forcibly, scattering the ghosts. “But you’re very talented, and you’re very close. The more we’re on the same page, the closer you get.”

  “I think we are! You’re just so held in.”

  “Today I am. In Chicago, I won’t be.”

  “But Pro’s strength is that sensitivity, those fast turns. I have to go all out right now so he knows that’s what we expect.”

  “He’ll listen to your hands when the time comes. Let’s try to make this a smooth, clear round with the jumps configured this way and no touches. And next time we’ll build on speed.”

  Claudia said, “Fine.”

  She set off again, light and relaxed in her seat, walking Prospero to the center before she took off in the complex series of jumps on the course Frank moved each time.

  In a show canter, twelve steps was the standard for horse and rider to build to a jump; if he set up a line with half of that, Prospero and Claudia had to adjust dramatically. She always could, and simply the sight of her hands in motion was enough for her horse. Today, he added height and width so that the verticals were seven feet and four inches, higher than any legal course would ask, and an oxer with a seven-foot spread. Frank had made a water jump by nailing a tarp to a rectangle of two-by-fours, then filling it with an inch of water. Today he drew that makeshift pool away so that Prospero would have to soar beyond thirteen feet to land with his back feet solidly on the far side. He tapped every other fence, but rocketed over the false wall as though it wasn’t there, and cleared the water like a man might jump over a stream no wider than a kitchen sink.

  “I’m going to try again, and make sure he does a really clear round,” Claudia said. The second time, they did just that, and Frank applauded.

  Just as he did, he saw the car ease into the driveway. If he hadn’t been looking at Claudia, he wouldn’t have seen it. The car was nondescript, big and black, with tinted windows. It kept coming, slowly, raising no dust, to within three hundred yards, then two hundred. Then it stopped.

  Two men got out. Both wore suits—the kind of odd, boxy-tailored suits that, in Frank’s experience, turned out to be very expensive. Before one of them could adjust the flap of his blue suit jacket over his hip, there sparked a fiery particle of light. A gun. Automatically, Frank reached behind him for his own gun, to the place inside the belt behind his hip, where it hadn’t been for years and wasn’t now. Frank turned and went into the barn to unlock the shotgun. He brought it out as Claudia sat, immobile, Prospero’s tail flicking at flies the only motion in the world. Lifting it to his shoulder, he pointed it at the broader man, the driver’s chest. If the guy was forty yards away, and had some fancy big-assed hand cannon, he could murder Frank like a dog. They stood there, this way, for a long time. Frank knew that both of them saw him raise the shotgun. Then, to his horror, Frank felt Ian take hold of the back of his jacket. One of the men waved at Frank. He called out something, some kind of greeting in a voice thickly grottoed with guttural sounds. Then the thickset driver got back into the car, and, after a pause, so did the other man, and the car pulled away.

  Frank glanced down at Ian. He was shaping his small fingers at chest level again, as if pantomiming spectacles.

  Claudia slid down from her saddle, dropping Pro’s reins on the ground.

  “Hey, Ian,” she said. “Where’s Glory Bee?”

  “Patrick said wait a minute, and then those bad guys came.” He shrugged.

  Claudia said, “Oh. They were bad guys?”

  “Yes, but maybe it’s a minute now.” Ian whirled and took off at a run.

  “Who were those guys?” Claudia said to Frank. “You don’t point a gun at everybody who comes over, do you?”

  “No. But I pointed a gun at them.”

  Claudia said, “Wait. Wait.” She sat down on the mounting stool and covered her eyes with her hands. “I know what Ian was doing now.”

  “Now?”

  “Just then. It was speech. That was American Sign Language. That was the language I studied in college.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Claudia held up one hand and turned her back, jogging outside the ring to her car. When she came back, she was studying the screen of her cell phone. “There’s a website . . .” she said. The sun was broiling the meat of his neck, dazzling his eyes, making him blind and slow. Suddenly Claudia looked up at him.

  “It means ‘behave,’ ” Claudia said. “ ‘Be nice.’ ”

  Frank said, “Sure. That makes sense.” He carried the gun back to its locked rack. When he came out, Claudia was stroking Prospero’s crest, under his mane, with hungry hands. He said, “How would you write that?”

  “You don’t write it,” Claudia said. “That’s the whole point.”

  “But if you did write it?”

  “In books, they make drawings of two hands pointing to the right and then to the left, once or twice. They show the direction with little arrows.”

  ELEVEN

  ON THE MORNING of the competition, as Frank and Claudia loaded Prospero and Glory Bee, Ian hopped down the steps, his backpack carefully stuffed with what appeared to be most of his clothing and a large box of cereal. Hope followed Ian, wearing a frown of annoyance unusual for a summer morning. For Hope, a summer morning was as close as she ever expected to get to heaven: the prospect of a day in her pony cart, filling the cart with good food and her head with good talk from her friends, was a tonic she waited for during the entire school year. In her first summer of retirement, and perhaps with Ian’s company—although she would not admit how much she looked forward to the time she spent with him—Hope was grown younger. From Eden and Marty, just last week, had come welcome news. There would be a grandchild, or, as they were graceful enough to refer to it, “another” grandchild, not long after Christmas—a plan that simple arithmetic proved had apparently been in place for some time.

  “Did you tell him he was going?” Hope said.

  “I didn’t tell him that he was going.”

  “Did you tell him he was not going?”

  “I didn’t tell him he wasn’t going either.”

  “Nice,” Hope and Claudia said together.

  “Are you scared of a little kid?” said Hope.

  Frank said, “Scared? No. It just didn’t come up.”

 
He was scared. He didn’t want to leave Ian here, at the whim of . . . whoever showed up, with only an older lady and the occasional presence of Marty and Eden. He also didn’t want to disappoint Ian in any way: Ian had known too much disappointment. He also knew that Ian, denied, would either drive Frank nuts by some mechanism Frank couldn’t imagine, or, and Frank could imagine this, turn away from him.

  “Ian, you can’t come this time. I’ll be busy with Claudia and Pro, and Patrick will be busy with Glory Bee. Next time, you can come.” He could hear Ian about to say it . . . Be nice. Please.

  Instead Ian walked past Frank, crawled up onto the running board of the truck, and buckled himself into his car seat.

  “Honey, you can’t go,” Frank said, the endearment on his lips again surprising him. “You can’t come this time. You have to get out.”

  When Ian would not allow Frank to unbuckle his car seat, Frank quickly but gently pulled the whole seat out of the truck and set it on the ground. He laid one arm across Ian’s small chest until he could extract him from the seat.