by Annie DeWitt
Afterward, I went over to the tree where I’d hidden the rucksack. As I bent over to readjust my hair, I felt a sting on the back of my legs where Fender flicked me with the wet part of his T-shirt.
“Got yah,” he said, sprinting past me up the trail out of the marsh.
When we emerged onto the road Otto was having it out with The Sheik in front of the barn. The Sheik had witnessed a great fright in his youth. The sound of water in a gutter ten feet off made him stop short. Otto was trying to train the nervousness out of him. There was a thick sheen to The Sheik’s coat. His legs frothed under his tail. Otto spurred him forward, trying to get the horse to stand with his hooves on the grate in front of the barn where the runoff from the mountain emptied out into the sewer.
I admired Otto for the way he rode with his hair gleaming. Helmets, he said, were for novices and women. I’d heard him tell Father that saddling a horse was like taking out the mother of your children. You combed your hair and dressed for the occasion. Rumor had it, Otto’d trained horses for the Kennedys once.
The Sheik stared unflinchingly at the sewage grate across the road as we approached. His front legs were squared. Otto let him have it on the head with the blunt end of the whip.
“Flighty devil,” Otto said, stroking The Sheik on the withers once the horse was straddling the grate. A thin sweat had broken out on Otto’s brow. He dabbed at the moisture with his hankie.
As Otto dismounted, Callie made her way down the drive.
“Jesus, Houser,” Callie called. “You break my balls just watching.”
“Why don’t you take this flighty little Arab out jumping while he’s good and greased,” Otto called to her. “He’d fly over a barrel of burning petrol if you asked him.”
“He’s more of a lady’s ride anyway,” Father said.
“The old show boat,” Otto said. “Sides of iron. Soft as hell in the mouth. Doesn’t like other men hanging on his beauty.”
“You know what they say, baby,” Callie said, gutting the foam from the corners of the horse’s mouth where it had gathered around the bit. “A feather in the saddle is a bird in the hand.” She smiled at Father.
“I’ll give you a leg up,” he offered.
I remember the rise and fall of Callie’s bottom as she trotted off down the road toward the far pasture where Otto had set the jumps. It was that time of the day where the shadows grew long and dusky. What was left of the sun existed somewhere between the curve of Callie’s behind and the saddle. We all stood there admiring it for a moment.
“Haven’t known a horse that hasn’t taken to her,” Otto said.
As we turned the bend toward the paddock, Birdie came up the road. She carried a small metal tray lined with Dixie cups. Watching her approach in the setting darkness, it seemed the world would swallow her whole. She’d spent the day at the Starlings’ under the care of their eldest daughter who was trying to convince her suit, the one in pharmaceuticals, to give her a baby. In the meantime, she was borrowing other people’s children to show off her skills.
“What have we got here?” Otto said, kneeling down to examine Birdie’s tray.
“Mouthwash,” Birdie said. “Two for a dollar.”
“Well now,” he said.
Birdie put the tray down in the road and reached into her pocket. She produced a wad of bills.
“Where did you get those?” Father said.
“Ray’s daughter sent me out with them,” she said. “She said I could keep a dollar for every ten.”
We stood there staring at the wad of green in Birdie’s fist wondering if Ray’s daughter was back on coke and needed money.
I looked down at the rows of Dixies. The mouthwash had saturated a few. A thick blue liquid seeped onto the tray.
“Well I’m no stranger,” Otto said, reaching into his billfold and handing Birdie a ten dollar bill. “I’ll buy you out. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Otto took a cup from the tray and shot the liquid into his mouth, swishing for a minute before spitting into the grass.
“Not bad,” he said to Father. “Toothpaste and club soda.”
Callie was making the rounds by the time we reached the gate.
“Jumped three foot fences since the first time I threw her in the saddle,” Otto said watching. “I’ve never seen a woman more alive with her feet off the ground.”
“Some people just aren’t made for walking,” Father said.
“Never was. Never will be,” Otto said. “Problem is, she doesn’t have an eye for a husband that can hold her anywhere but half way down his nose.”
“Well,” Father said. He looked at me for a moment before pulling me to his side. “You know better than all that,” he said. “Tell me you know better than all that.” Father’s eyes were glassy. He was talking about the Dixies and the coke and he was talking too about the light under Callie’s rear and how much he both feared and admired it.
We stood watching Callie jump until there was enough dusk in the air that the oxers had lost their color.
14.
After all the light had faded, Fender and I bore our hides. The phone rang as I was clearing the dishes.
“It’s hot up here,” Fender said.
We met at the Starlings’ pool.
I raced him there panting and gleaming. I’d given myself a good scrub in the shower, looking for some ugliness to shed. What I found was a mound of flesh at the top of my thighs and Mother’s plastic razor rusting in the corner of the stall.
It took me a while to figure out which way to go with the hair, to shave against the grain.
Fender hurdled the fence. I climbed the chain-link hand over foot. Once, I thought I saw a light go on in the Starlings’ kitchen when I rattled the links.
“Stick close to the shadows,” Fender said. “And don’t let your mind get the better of you.”
“OK, Senator,” I said. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Our stripping off was a hurried embarrassment. There wasn’t much glamour in us. Mostly that part of him just looked like something best left under his trunks. His shoulders were everything. Broad and smooth and tapered, they anchored an acreage of muscle which moved easily under his flesh.
Once we were in there wasn’t much to do but move around. The water was cool. The willow which overlooked the fence cast a shadow on the surface. We kept what parts of ourselves we could submerged to avoid drawing attention should anyone come to a window. Every now and again I felt the pull of Fender’s body as he swam by. There was something confident in his small undulations.
“I wish we could go sliding,” he said, looking up at the big blue plastic shoot next to the pool.
Eventually I got out to shake off. There was nothing to do but drip. I stood there with my arms out. The night was warmer than the water. I leaned over and wrung out my hair. A puddle formed around me on the concrete. Fender paused under the willow.
“Quit staring,” I said looking for the whites of his teeth, wondering if there was a smile for me beneath all that.
As I bent down for my clothes, Fender hoisted himself out of the far end. There was something shy in the way he approached me. He girdled himself up in the middle and shielded himself with his hand. I’m not sure if it was his age or the tendency of a man to hold himself close in the cold, but there didn’t seem much to cover.
When Fender was dressed we sat in the chaises. The crickets were out. Fender looked restless. Our big baring had let him down.
“Well, at least we got to swim,” he said.
I wanted to keep him out longer by the pool.
“I know where Ray keeps his bottle,” I said.
We jimmied the lock to the tool shed where the Starlings kept their floats. Fender dropped his jackknife. It made a dull thud on the concrete.
“Keep a look out,” Fender said.
After that we were in.
The whiskey was under the oilcloth Ray kept over the generator. I reached for the highball glasses off the shelf next to the goggles and dusty mouth tubes.
We filled the glasses half way. Fender was planning on stealing the bottle. He fiddled with the inside of his jacket like he wanted to put something heavy against his lungs.
“Nah,” he said after turning the whiskey around in his hand for a minute. “It wouldn’t be fun that way.”
The first sips burned. A flame leaked down the back of my throat. After a while I started to taste caramel. Maybe it was the color. I opened my lips and tossed back my head.
When our glasses were empty we sat there staring. Fender’s eyes dropped down his cheeks when I looked at them too long.
My head felt heavy for my neck.
“Put it between your knees,” Fender said. He brushed my hair out of my face. I kicked over my glass. It shattered on the concrete. The lights flicked on in the Starlings’ hall. We had the time it would take Ray to bend down under the sink in his stupor to retrieve his Colt.
The first shot went off as we hit the bushes. Ray was aimed high to scare off the coyotes. It was too dark to kill anything from such a distance. Even still, you never knew where he’d point his piece.
“Fuck,” Fender said. “The cops will be all over my place.”
“Ray’s a drunk,” I said. “They’ll probably just think he did it himself. If not, Ruth will blame him.”
“Why would a man steal his own liquor?” Fender said.
“Maybe he forgot where he’d hidden it,” I said.
When we emerged from the woods, we sat on the old boulder that lined the road in front of the drive to the Starlings’ house. The old blind guy in the golf hat lived there with his fat wife. Sweet people too. No one ever heard much of them. The man drove an old yellow Volvo. Occasionally he took it out when his wife wasn’t home. I’d seen him rushing headlong down the wrong side of the road. He had that old people way of taking life on the offensive. People said he kept the boulder at the end of his drive so he’d know when to turn. Father’d gone over once in a storm. The snow had been so high that it took out the electricity for several days. The fifth day, Father got to worrying. If the old couple perished, he’d feel responsible. Mid-day he put on his tall rubber boots. Mother gave him cans of baked beans and creamed corn. When Father returned home he said the couple had been living on Spam and soda crackers. The old fatty had tried heating soup over a candle.
“You think they’re alive in there?” Fender said looking back at the house. The lights were off. Given the hour that didn’t mean anything.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just be careful not to trip the flood. Father says they’ve got a light system on that house to scare a criminal. The old guy waits until the cat trips the alarm to get up to piss at night.”
In the distance we heard a group of people coming down the road. Father was among them. I recognized the way he lumbered. When he walked he kicked up half of the dirt in front of him. This is what they mean by kin. You see yourself most clearly in them when they’re just a speck on the horizon.
Otto was with them too.
It was odd to see people out at that hour. Summer had a way of dragging part of the day into the evening. There was so much heat to be had.
Fender and I hid behind the boulder until they passed.
“I’d pick them off if I could,” Fender said, lining his arm on top of the rock and cocking his finger.
“That’s my old man,” I said.
“Your old man keeps some company,” he said.
Wilson was holding up the back of the line next to Callie, the heels of his trousers dragging in the dust. Cash had brought along a few of the farm hands, migrants workers whom he kept on through the picking season. Father and Otto were the first to pass. They dragged an old horse blanket full of brushes and equipment. I recognized it from the print. It belonged to the Shetland that had died. With his free hand Father was smoking a cigar.
“I’ll pack it in when we hit the brush,” he said. He nodded up the road where it dead-ended into the trail that cut into the forest and let out onto the butte overlooking the highway.
“I knew there was a reason I spent so much time hanging around a young man,” Otto said. “Almost makes up for you stealing all my women.”
“I haven’t stolen anything yet,” Father said.
“A woman can only put out her signals so many times before she gets tired of waving her flag around,” Otto said.
“It’s a losing man’s battle,” Father said.
“The problem with men your age,” Otto said. “You’ve got your eyes trained too far ahead. You get so caught up in all this dying you’ve got left to do, you forget to get up every day and shave your damn beard.”
“I like my beard just fine,” Father said.
Otto clicked on his radio, an old transistor that he used to listen to the ballgames. “I hope the rain holds off till we get a good burn going,” he said.
Fender and I started to trail them as soon as the men were out of earshot.
They settled in the clearing overlooking the highway where Mother, Birdie, and I had sat while observing the Atlas. The sound of passing cars at that hour was nothing but the occasional screech of tires. There was a traffic light a half-mile off in the distance where the highway met the interstate. Next to the on-ramp was a weigh station for the truck drivers and the drunks.
Fender and I crouched in the bushes. The men built a fire in the sandpit. Fender said his brothers and bunch of the high school kids went there to make out on the weekends. They’d built the pit to roast hot dogs. Someone had constructed a grill out of an old bike tire to toast the buns.
Father tossed the tire to the side while Cash cleared out the pit with a rusty rake. One of the kids who frequented the spot must’ve brought the rake out there to tame the fire at the end of the night after everyone’d gotten sick of getting off.
Once the pit was good and level Father and Otto doused the Shetland’s blanket with kerosene. Ray tossed the match. The men’s faces lit up as they stood watching the flash.
“Stand back,” Otto said as Wilson started toward the flames. “There’s enough sickness burning in there. I’ve seen enough death this summer.”
Otto set the old transistor on the end of the picnic table closest to the pit. He kept Callie’s shadow in the corner of his eye. The legend was Callie’d come to him as a child. Otto’d started her in the stable as a favor. His Helene had insisted Callie live in the RV with Wilson. By the time Callie was legal, she’d shown the best horses in the county. Along the way she’d found herself a husband. It was unclear now where she slept nights. She’d turn up for days and then disappear for a stint.
That night Callie belonged to Father’s loneliness though he didn’t know it. Once the fire was burning, Otto turned up the music and got everyone on their feet. Even Father danced. Callie moved into his arms. Father stared at her and tried to pattern his body after hers. The farmhands retired into a huddle around the fire with a pack of Coors. Someone produced a bag of peanuts. Occasionally you heard the crackle of a shell exploding as they tossed it into the flames.
The remains of the Shetland’s gear burned into the evening. Though the body was cold in the ground, Otto figured there might be some disease still lurking in the earthly possessions to which the horse once belonged. Disease crept up out of the earth that summer. No one wanted to see any more of it. Especially Otto.
Just when talk had stagnated Ray emerged from the brush. He fired a round into the air on the other side of the clearing. “Pellets you animals,” he cried when the men started hollering at him. “Just thought I’d bring a little noise to scare off the coyotes.”
Ray was drunk. Otto and Father each took him by an arm.
“Dumb fuck,” Fender kept
saying. “I should have stolen his bottle just to spare his wife half her hassle when he gets home.”
It was cold in the bushes. Our feet were damp. The liquor had dried out the inside of my head.
Fender shivered in his shirtsleeves until I put his arms around me under his jacket.
“There,” I said.
“So this is what old people do to get off?” Fender said, pulling me closer. “Light fires far enough from their homes that they don’t burn their wives down?”
I drifted off to the vision of a carnival. I was riding the old white hobby horse hanging on Otto’s porch. The music from the merry-go-round was loud and the smell of popcorn hung in the distance. Each time the ride made a turn my little white horse lurched forward. From the way it sounded when I tapped my fingers on the body, I could tell it was hollow, nothing but empty fiberglass. Just as the ride let out it started to burn.
I woke in the night to the sound of two men urinating in the bushes.
“I never meant to want much from her,” I heard one of them say. It sounded like Father. I wondered if he was talking about Callie. I wondered how far he’d fallen for her. I wondered if he’d pulled her into him as he’d done that morning with Mother in the kitchen.
The next morning we woke to the sun in our eyes. There was dew on our faces. Everything around us was wet. Fender was on his feet with a cigarette. I wiped the dirt from the backs of my thighs. “I’ll get you home,” he said. “Before they come looking.”
I walked over to the pit where the ashes were smoldering and extinguished the embers with my foot. The whole place smelled like whoring. It was the horsehair or the kerosene. I tapped the corner of the Shetland’s blanket with the corner of my toe to stir up the last of the coals.
At the bottom of the pile there was a small metal bit. “Dead weight,” Otto had described the old snaffle to me once. “Barely pulls any at the corners. Every now and again you massage his tongue with it to remind him to turn. When an animal takes to gumming the metal, he’s already broken. Best thing to do is turn him out to pasture and let him cut his teeth on the brush.”