Reality Check

by Peter Abrahams

Cody said nothing. Ike slowed down to let him draw even, but then when he did, sped up again. He spoke over his shoulder. “Know how to shoe ’em?”

  “Horses?” said Cody.

  “They don’t shoe pigs, do they?”

  “No,” said Cody. “I don’t know how.”

  Ike made a little sucking noise between his teeth. He led Cody past the corral, around the back of the barn, toward a narrow plowed path Cody hadn’t noticed before. It cut through the woods, opened into a clearing, and there stood a small cabin, smoke rising from the chimney, straight up in the still air.

  “They like it,” Ike said.

  169

  Cody took a guess. “Getting shod?” he said.

  “Course not,” said Ike. “How would you like it, gettin’

  shoes nailed into your feet? What they like is wearin’ ’em, the shoes.” How did Ike know that? Cody kept the question inside, but Ike seemed to answer it anyway. “Just like us,” he said.

  “We’re wearin’ shoes. We’re animals.” Ike pointed to the front door. “That’s my door.” He walked around the side of the cabin, past a woodpile, stopped at a second door, much smaller. “This is your’n.” He took out a key and opened the door. “Don’t be forgettin’.”

  “I won’t.”

  Ike turned to him. Cody noticed he was missing a few teeth.

  “I’m talking about us bein’ animals, what not to forget,” he said. Ike stepped inside, entering a tiny, closet-size entrance hall with a steep staircase rising to the right. Cody followed him up. Ike opened another door at the top, this one unlocked, and gestured for Cody to go in. “Know how to use a woodstove?”

  “Yes.”

  “Easy on the wood. Room heats up quick.”

  Cody looked around. Not hard to see why: The place was tiny, with a narrow bed along one wall, a counter bearing a small square fridge and hot plate against the opposite wall, sink and toilet in one corner, woodstove in the other; hardly enough space left over for both of them to be inside at the same 170

  time. Frost coated the windows, and Cody could see his breath. A little wave of happiness took him by surprise: This was the first place he could call his own.

  “Don’t lose this,” Ike said, handing him a key.

  “I won’t. Thanks.”

  “Easy on the wood.”

  Cody fired up the woodstove, went back to the car for his things. The room heated up fast, the frost melting off the windows. Cody gazed out at the woods and saw something red almost at once: a cardinal. It stood on a branch near the window, seemed to be staring right back at him; then, without any sign of preparation, the cardinal took off and flew over the forest, losing first its redness, then its shape, and finally vanishing altogether. Cody went downstairs, locked the door, returned to the barn. Mrs. McTeague, all her things, including maps, flyers and phone, even the desk: gone. Cody didn’t understand. Was the search over forever? What if the snow melted? Didn’t there have to be some backup plan? He saw Ike moving through the shadows at the back of the barn, on the way to the tack room with a saddle over his shoulder.

  Cody went into the tack room. Ike was setting the saddle on the floor of one of the lockers. Open, stall-type lockers lined one wall, a locker with a name plaque for each member of the 171

  team. Clea’s locker stood next to Townes’s.

  “Hey, Ike.”

  Ike dropped the saddle, whirled around. “Don’t you be scarin’ me like that.”

  “Sorry. I was wondering what the chances were of the snow melting.”

  Ike blinked a few times, seemed to compose himself.

  “Always does.”

  “Soon?”

  “By May,” said Ike, “at the latest.” Was that meant to be a joke? Cody couldn’t tell. A wall phone rang. Ike answered it, listened for a moment, said, “Yup,” and hung up. He turned to Cody. “Know how to polish a bridle?”

  Cody nodded. He’d seen Clea do it once or twice.

  “Polish them ones up,” he said, pointing with his chin to a couple of bridles lying on a workbench. “I’ll be back.”

  Ike left, putting on his plaid hat with the ear flaps sticking out to the side. Cody went over to the workbench, picked up one of the bridles. From the doorway behind him came Ike’s voice, startling him the same way he’d startled Ike. “Wash those bits,” he said. “And get the dirt out of the leather first—no point oilin’ otherwise. ’Cause why? ’Cause you’re just oilin’ in the dirt, is why.”

  Ike went away. Cody soaked the bits, washed the leather 172

  with saddle soap, patted it dry with a towel, applied neat’s-foot oil from a bottle on the shelf. Not bad work; in fact, he kind of enjoyed it.

  Ike hadn’t returned by the time he was done. Cody examined Clea’s locker. What he saw: saddle, bridle, reins, halter. What he didn’t see: boots, helmet, anything personal. She’d been wearing the boots and helmet, of course, a good thing, the helmet especially. He carried Clea’s tack to the workbench, cleaned and polished it all. Still no Ike. Cody left the tack room, walked through the barn, stopped at Bud’s stall. He had two or three sugar cubes in his pocket—but also the halter in his hand, so a certain plan must have been forming in his mind all on its own.

  Bud snorted, rolled his eyes.

  “Hey, Bud,” Cody said, “it’s me.” He stroked Bud’s face. Bud calmed down. His big brown eyes looked unhappy, but Cody knew it was more likely he himself was just—what was the word? projecting?—yeah: He was projecting his own mental state into Bud’s eyes. Except that Bud really did look sad.

  “What happened, Bud? Where is she?” Bud stood very still. At the other end of the barn a horse neighed, a high-pitched sound that sent a funny feeling down Cody’s spine. He looked around, saw no one; only the horses, a calming sight, for some reason. They were all watching him in a 173

  trusting kind of way; or at least that was how Cody interpreted their expressions. He went to the window. His car was the only one in the lot; nearby stood the Bobcat, untended; beyond, the empty lane leading back to campus, snowbanks lining both sides. No one in sight.

  A minute or two later he was leading Bud out of the barn. The halter looked a little lopsided on Bud’s head—Cody had never put one on before—but he didn’t seem to mind, following along without protest, applying no pressure at all on the reins. Cody walked Bud across the yard, by the riding ring and onto the loop trail. Snowmobiles had already passed through, packing down the snow. Cody glanced back, saw that Bud wasn’t having any trouble, certainly less than he was, with snow already invading his sneakers. “I know you remember,”

  he said. Bud snorted, tossed his head a bit; Cody felt Bud’s tremendous strength through the reins. He held out a sugar cube. Bud grasped it with those big, loose lips of his. They walked on.

  The woods had changed, were quieter now, snow muffling all their sounds, also coating the evergreens and toning down their greenness, leaving a simple world of brown and white. All that whiteness covered the horseshoe prints Cody had seen before. Was it possible there was something distinctive about Bud’s hoofprints, some mark that could have left a trail right 174

  back to where things went wrong? A question too late in coming, but had the searchers thought of it, back on day one when it might have done some good?

  “Whoa,” Cody said.

  Bud halted, gazed straight ahead. Cody dropped the reins, went back to examine Bud’s hoofprints. Loose snow had obliterated most of them, but he found a few sharp-edged impressions, nothing distinctive about them. Bud twitched his tail, stamped his right front foot. Was he impatient to get going? Cody picked up the reins, stroked Bud’s face. “What happened?” he said. Bud’s eyes didn’t look sad anymore, were just big brown liquid pools, revealing nothing.

  They kept going, past two or three trails entering the loop, smooth unmarked snow covering all of them, and came to the house-size mossy rock with the big crack down the middle. Snow had somehow filled in the crack, leaving a jagged white mark on the ro
ck face, a sight that for some reason made Cody uneasy. He gazed at it for a while; then came an idea. Maybe, around the back, this rock concealed one of those crannies Sergeant Orton had mentioned. Had anyone looked?

  Cody dropped the reins. “Don’t go anywhere,” he told Bud. Bud stood still. Cody circled the rock, up to his knees in snow right away, saw no cranny, no hole, no hollowed-out depression. He bent down, dug through the snow with his bare hands, and 175

  found underneath nothing but dead leaves, stiff and frozen. He took the reins, led Bud along the loop, got used to the warm feeling of Bud’s breath in the small of his back. A few minutes later, he spotted the sign nailed to a tree up ahead: UPPER MOUNTAIN CROSSOVER—4.5 MILES TO ROUTE 7. At the same time, Bud’s nose nudged his shoulder, as though urging him to pick up the pace. Cody picked up the pace, but there’d been less snowmobile traffic here, and once or twice he sank down in the snow. His knee began to hurt. Bud nudged him again.

  “What is it?”

  Bud made a whinnying sound. Cody glanced back, saw he was doing that eye-rolling thing.

  “What’s on your mind?” Cody held out another sugar cube. Bud took it, relaxed a little. They went on, reached the crossover trail, marked with snowmobile tracks. Cody halted and turned to Bud. “Which way?” he said. “Straight ahead, or do we—”

  With no warning, Bud neighed—a piercing, wild sound, terrified and terrifying—and rose up on his hind legs, front hooves flailing the air, just missing Cody’s head. Cody dropped the reins, leaped back.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Sergeant Orton stepped out from behind a tree, not ten feet away. “I’ll ask you the same question,” he said, right hand on the butt of his gun.

  176

  BUD STAMPED HIS FOOT and tossed his mane, backed away a step or two and then went still. Without taking his eyes off Cody—or his hand off the gun—Sergeant Orton bent down and grabbed the reins. Three breath clouds rose in the air—

  Cody’s and Sergeant Orton’s, plus Bud’s, much bigger—and drifted off in their separate ways. “I asked you a question,” the sergeant said.

  “I’m, uh, working here now,” Cody said. “A job. At the barn.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Um, I thought, maybe that Bud would lead me to wherever . . .”

  “That was one of the first things we tried,” said Sergeant Orton. “You aware of that?”

  Cody hesitated, trying to see down the two diverging roads leading away from yes and no . He got nowhere.

  “Any weapons on you, Cody?” said the sergeant.

  “Me?”

  “Little popgun, maybe? Knife of some sort?”

  “No,” said Cody.

  “Just keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Cody kept his hands by his side, exactly where they’d been, but now he was hyperconscious of them.

  “Ever been arrested?” the sergeant said.

  “Never.”

  “A snap for me to check,” Sergeant Orton said. “That part of the job gets easier every day.”

  Cody said nothing. He’d had a run-in or two like the one with the cop out at the quarry—pretty common kind of thing for boys in Little Bend—but none had led to arrest, and Sergeant Orton could check all he wanted.

  “A bit of a tough guy, huh?” said the sergeant.

  Cody did not reply.

  “I’m dressed warm and you’re not,” Sergeant Orton said.

  “Many many layers.”

  Cody shrugged.

  178

  “Meaning I can wait out here all day.”

  “For what?” said Cody.

  “The answer to my question—were you aware we’d already tried this horse idea?”

  Cody gave up trying to see the future. He chose the truth, maybe because it seemed easier, or maybe—he got a sudden glimpse inside himself—because that was his default setting.

  “I knew,” he said. “Mrs. McTeague told me.”

  Sergeant Orton nodded, a tiny movement, but something about it told Cody that the sergeant had known this bit of information about Mrs. McTeague from the get-go. His hand came off the gun butt. “And she told you the idea came to nothing?”

  Cody nodded.

  “Raises the obvious question,” the sergeant said. Then came a pause, and in that pause Cody tried and failed to figure out any obvious question. “Which is,” Sergeant Orton said,

  “how come you thought you’d do any better?”

  “It’s just that Bud—the horse—trusts me, and so . . .”

  “Any special reason for Bud trusting you?”

  Cody felt those probing eyes. Was this another question Sergeant Orton already knew the answer to? Cody took a deep breath, made a decision; right or wrong, he didn’t know—all he knew was he started to feel better at that moment. “The thing is,” he said, “I’m from Colorado, the same town as Clea.”

  179

  “Hell, I know that,” said the sergeant. “Ran your plates the same hour you first showed up. Or let’s maybe delete that first for the moment, stick to you just showing up at the barn. The big question is where you were last Wednesday.”

  The feeling-better thing vanished at once. In its place came dizziness, as though Cody had suddenly grown much too tall, his head way too high off the ground, total collapse coming next. “What . . . what are you saying?”

  “A simple matter of fact,” said the sergeant. “Account for your whereabouts last Wednesday.”

  “But that’s the day she disappeared.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was at work.”

  “Where?”

  “Delivering lumber.”

  “Where?”

  “Back home,” Cody said. “In Little Bend.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “But I don’t understand,” Cody said. “Are you saying something’s—”

  Sergeant Orton’s voice rose over his. “Want me to cuff you? Answer the goddamn question.” Bud got nervous, started shifting away. Sergeant Orton gave the reins a sharp tug, strong enough to pull Bud’s head down.

  180

  Cody didn’t like that; it made him combative. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said.

  Sergeant Orton’s free hand shifted back to the gun. “Five seconds,” he said.

  For four of them, Cody considered the idea of bolting away through the woods. On the fifth, he said, “I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Ms. Beezon. She can tell you.”

  “That’s your boss?”

  “Kind of. At Beezon Lumber.”

  “You don’t go to school?”

  “I don’t have to,” Cody said. “I’m almost seventeen.”

  “I know how old you are.” Sergeant Orton reached into an inside pocket, took out a cell phone. “Call her.”

  “Don’t know the number,” Cody said.

  “That meant to be funny?” said the sergeant. “Don’t know the number of your employer?”

  “It’s not meant to be funny,” Cody said.

  Sergeant Orton punched some numbers on his phone, then paused, index finger curled over the keypad. “This Ms. Beezon know you’re here?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Who does?”

  “From Little Bend? I guess nobody.”

  181

  “What about your parents?”

  “There’s just my d—my father. He thinks I’m looking for work, but not this far away.”

  Sergeant Orton gave him a long look. Then his finger pressed the last number. “Beezon Lumber, Little Bend, Colorado.” He waited, the phone to his ear, his eyes on Cody. Cody tried to remember some previous time he’d told Sergeant Orton his age and couldn’t. “Ms. Beezon, please,” said the sergeant.

  “Ms. Beezon, I’m with statistics, Department of Education. Just checking to see if you can confirm an employee, recent dropout name of Laredo, first name Cody.” Sergeant Orton listened, nodded, then said
, “Did he work last week?” More listening. “Monday to Friday?” The sergeant nodded again. “And what were the hours?” He listened some more, said, “Much obliged,” clicked off. Then his eyes were back on Cody. Cody thought: No way to trust a guy like this, not ever. Up above, the wind was stirring, rattling the upper branches.

  “Ever been in North Dover before?” said Sergeant Orton.

  “No.”

  “Have any relatives here, any friends?”

  “No,” said Cody, then added, “except for Clea.”

  “I hear she was your girlfriend.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “The way this works,” said the sergeant, “is I ask and you 182

  answer. Was Clea Weston your girlfriend?”

  Cody nodded.

  “I also hear you broke up before she came to the academy. What can you tell me about the circumstances?”

  “We broke up.”

  “And how did you feel about that?”

  Cody shrugged.

  “Losing such a bright, beautiful girl, my guess is it got inside you, twisted around, riled you up.”

  “Riled me up?”

  “Made you a bit crazy—a possible plea down the line, if you play your cards right, meaning tell the truth.”

  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying,” Cody said, but all at once he felt the cold, through and through.

  “It’s actually kind of common,” said Sergeant Orton. “A syndrome, you might say. Some guys get this idea in their heads and can’t shake it. All they hear in their minds is this same one thing, over and over—if I can’t have her, then no one can.”

  Cody didn’t think. He just hit Sergeant Orton in the mouth as hard as he could.

  Maybe not quite in the mouth. Sergeant Orton turned out to be pretty quick for an overweight, middle-aged guy. He shifted his head, just enough to change the angle of the blow, diminish it a little. At almost the same time he drew his gun, 183

  started to raise it. But Bud, maybe scared, was moving too. He reared up again, and again flailed the air with his front hooves. One of them came down on Sergeant Orton’s hand, knocking the gun loose. Cody wheeled around and took off down the crossover trail.

  “Halt!” Sergeant Orton shouted.

  Cody didn’t halt. He kept running, but so slow, like an underwater runner, his feet sinking a few inches into the snow with every stride.