The Horse Whisperer

by Nicholas Evans

  THREE

  FOURTEEN

  TWO CREEKS RAN THROUGH THE BOOKER BROTHERS’ and and they gave the ranch its name, the Double Divide. They flowed from adjacent folds of the mountain front and in their first half mile they looked like twins. The ridge that ran between them here was low, at one point almost low enough for them to meet, but then it rose sharply in a rugged chain of interlocking bluffs, shouldering the creeks apart. Forced thus to seek their separate ways, they now became quite different.

  The northern one ran, swift and shallow, down a wide, uncluttered valley. Its banks, though sometimes steep, gave easy access to the cattle. Brook trout hung with their heads upstream in its breaks and eddies, while herons stalked its shingled beaches. The route the southern creek was forced to take was lusher, full of obstacles and trees. It wove through tangled thickets of Bebbs willow and red-stem dogwood, then disappeared awhile in marsh. Lower down, meandering a meadow so flat that its loops linked back upon themselves, it formed a maze of still, dark pools and grassy islands whose geography was constantly arranged and rearranged by beavers.

  Ellen Booker used to say the creeks were like her two boys, Frank the north and Tom the south. That was until Frank, who was seventeen at the time, remarked over supper one night that it wasn’t fair because he liked beaver too. His father told him to go wash his mouth out and sent him to bed. Tom wasn’t so sure his mother got the joke, but she must have because she never said it again.

  The house they called the creek house, where first Tom and Rachel, then later Frank and Diane had lived and which now was empty, stood on a bluff above a bend in the northern creek. From it you could look down the valley, across the tops of cottonwood trees, to the ranch house half a mile away, surrounded by whitewashed barns, stables and corrals. The houses were linked by a dirt road that wound on up to the lower meadows where the cattle spent the winter. Now, in early April, most of the snow had gone from this lower part of the ranch. It lay only in shaded, rockstrewn gullies and among the pine and fir trees that dotted the north side of the ridge.

  Tom looked up at the creek house from the passenger seat of the old Chevy and wondered, as he often did, about moving in. He and Joe were on their way back from feeding the cattle, the boy expertly negotiating the potholes. Joe was small for his age and had to sit like a ramrod to see over the front. During the week Frank did the feeding, but at weekends Joe liked to do it and Tom liked to help him. They’d unloaded the slabs of alfalfa and together enjoyed the sight and sound of the cows surging in with their calves to get it.

  “Can we go see Bronty’s foal?” Joe asked.

  “Sure we can.”

  “There’s a kid at school says we should’ve imprinttrained him.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He says if you do it soon as they’re born, it makes them real easy to handle later on.”

  “Yep. That’s what some folk say.”

  “There was this thing on the TV about a guy who does it with geese too. He has this airplane and the baby geese all grow up thinking it’s their mom. He flies it and they just follow.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that.”

  “What do you think about all that stuff?”

  “Well Joe, I don’t know a whole lot about geese. Maybe it’s okay for them to grow up thinking they’re airplanes.” Joe laughed. “But with a horse, I reckon first you have to let him learn to be a horse.”

  They drove back down to the ranch and parked outside the long barn where Tom kept some of his horses. Joe’s twin brothers, Scott and Craig, came running out of the house to meet them. Tom saw Joe’s face fall. The twins were nine years old and because of their blond good looks and the fact that they did everything in a noisy unison, they always got more attention than their brother.

  “You going to see the foal?” they yelled. “Can we come?” Tom put a big hand like a crane-grab on each of their heads.

  “So long as you keep quiet you can,” he said.

  He led them into the barn and stood with the twins outside Bronty’s stall while Joe went in. Bronty was a big ten-year-old quarter horse, a reddish bay. She pushed her muzzle toward Joe, who put a hand on it while he gently rubbed her neck. Tom liked to watch the boy around horses, he had an easy, confident way with them. The foal, a little darker than his mother, had been lying in the corner and was now struggling to his feet. He tottered on comical, stilted legs to the sheltering side of the mare, peeping around her rear end at Joe. The twins laughed.

  “He looks so funny,” Scott said.

  “I’ve got a picture of you two at that age,” said Tom. “And you know what?”

  “They looked like bullfrogs,” Joe said.

  The twins soon got bored and left. Tom and Joe turned the other horses out into the paddock behind the barn. After breakfast they were going to start working with some of the yearlings. As they walked back to the house, the dogs started barking and ran out past them. Tom turned and saw a silver Ford Lariat coming over the end of the ridge and heading down the driveway toward them. There was just the driver in it and as it got nearer he could see it was a woman.

  “Your mom expecting company?” Tom asked. Joe shrugged. It wasn’t until the car pulled up, with the dogs running around it still barking, that Tom recognized who it was. It was hard to believe. Joe saw his look.

  “You know her?”

  “I believe I do. But not what she’s doing here.”

  He told the dogs to hush and walked over. Annie got out of the car and came nervously toward him. She was wearing jeans and hiking boots and a huge, creamcolored sweater that came halfway down her thighs. The sun behind made her hair flare red and Tom realized how clearly he remembered those green eyes from the day at the stables. She nodded at him without quite smiling, a little sheepish.

  “Mr. Booker. Good morning.”

  “Well, good morning.” They stood there for a moment. “Joe, this is Mrs. Graves. Joe here is my nephew.” Annie offered the boy her hand.

  “Hello, Joe. How are you?”

  “Good.”

  She looked up the valley, toward the mountains, then looked back at Tom.

  “What a beautiful place.”

  “It is.”

  He was wondering when she was going to get around to saying what on earth she was doing here, though he already had an idea. She took a deep breath.

  “Mr. Booker, you’re going to think this is insane, but you can probably guess why I’ve come here.”

  “Well. I kind of reckoned you didn’t just happen to be passing through.” She almost smiled.

  “I’m sorry just turning up like this, but I knew what you’d say if I phoned. It’s about my daughter’s horse.”

  “Pilgrim.”

  “Yes. I know you can help him and I came here to ask you, to beg you, to have another look at him.”

  “Mrs. Graves . . .”

  “Please. Just a look. It wouldn’t take long.”

  Tom laughed. “What, to fly to New York?” He nodded at the Lariat. “Or were you counting on driving me there?”

  “He’s here; In Choteau.”

  Tom stared at her for a moment in disbelief.

  “You’ve hauled him all the way out here?” She nodded. Joe was looking from one of them to the other, trying to get the picture. Diane had stepped out onto the porch and stood there holding open the screen door, watching.

  “All on your own?” Tom asked.

  “With Grace, my daughter.”

  “Just to have me take a look at him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You guys coming in to eat?” called Diane. Who’s the woman, was what she really meant. Tom put his hand on Joe’s shoulder.

  “Tell your mom I’m coming,” he said and as the boy went off he turned back to Annie. They stood looking at each other for a moment. She gave a little shrug and, at last, smiled. He noticed how it made the corners of her mouth go down but left untouched the troubled look in her eyes. He was being railroaded and wondered why he didn’t min
d.

  “Excuse me saying it, ma’am,” he said. “But you sure as hell don’t like taking no for an answer.”

  “No,” Annie said simply. “I suppose I don’t.”

  Grace lay on her back on the floor of the musty bedroom, doing her exercises and listening to the electronic bells of the Methodist church across the street. They didn’t just chime the hour, they played whole tunes. She quite liked the sound, mainly because it was driving her mother crazy. Annie was down in the hall, on the phone to the real estate agent about it.

  “Don’t they know there are laws about this sort of thing?” she was saying. “They’re polluting the air.”

  It was the fifth time she had called him in two days. The poor man had made the mistake of giving her his home number and Annie was ruining his weekend, bombarding him with complaints: the heating wasn’t working, the bedrooms were damp, the extra phone line she’d asked for hadn’t been installed, the heating still wasn’t working. And now the bells.

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if they played something half decent,” she was saying. “It’s ridiculous, the Methodists have all the good tunes.”

  Yesterday when Annie went out to the ranch, Grace had refused to go with her. After Annie left, she went out exploring. There wasn’t much to explore. Choteau was basically one long main street with a railroad on one side and a grid of residential streets on the other. There was a dog parlor, a video store, a steak house and a cinema showing a movie Grace had seen over a year ago. The town’s only claim to fame was a museum where you could see dinosaur eggs. She went into a couple of stores and the people were friendly but reserved. She was aware of others watching as she walked slowly back down the street with her cane. When she got back to the house she felt so depressed, she burst into tears.

  Annie had come back elated and told Grace that Tom Booker had agreed to Come and see Pilgrim the following morning. All Grace said was “How long have we got to stay in this dump?”

  The house was a big, rambling place, faced with peeling pale-blue clapboard and carpeted throughout in a stained, yellow-brown shagpile. The sparse furniture looked as if it had been picked up in a yard sale. Annie was appalled when they first saw the place. Grace was delighted. Its glaring inadequacy was on her side, a perfect vindication.

  Secretly, she wasn’t as opposed to this mission of her mother’s as she made out. It was a relief in fact to get away from school and the tiring business of putting on a brave face all the time. But her feelings for Pilgrim were confused. They frightened her. It was best to block him right out of her head. Her mother however made this impossible. Her every action seemed to force Grace to confront the issue. She’d taken this whole thing on as if Pilgrim was hers and he wasn’t hers, he was Grace’s. Of course Grace wanted him to get better, it was just that . . . It struck her then, for the first time, that maybe she didn’t want him to get better. Maybe she blamed him for what had happened? No, that was stupid. Maybe she wanted him to be as she was, forever maimed? Why should he recover and not her? It wasn’t fair. Stop it, stop it, she told herself. These whirling, crazy thoughts were her mother’s fault and Grace wasn’t going to let them get a hold in her head.

  She redoubled the effort in her exercises, until she felt the sweat trickle down her neck. She lifted her stump high in the air, again and again, making the muscles ache in her right buttock and her thigh. She could look at this leg now and accept at last that it belonged to her. The scar was neat, no longer that angry, itching pink. Her muscles were coming back nicely, so much so that the sleeve of her prosthetic leg was starting to feel a little tight. She heard Annie hang up.

  “Grace? Have you finished? He’ll be here soon.”

  Grace didn’t reply, just let the words hang there.

  “Grace?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  She could feel Annie’s reaction, picture the irked look on her face giving way to resignation. She heard her sigh and go back into the drab dining room which, as a first priority of course, Annie had transformed into her office.

  FIFTEEN

  ALL TOM HAD PROMISED WAS THAT HE WOULD GO and have another look at the horse. After she had come all that way, it was the least he could do. But he’d made it a condition that he would go alone. He didn’t want her looking over his shoulder, putting pressure on him. She was pretty good at that, he already knew. She had made him promise to drop by afterward and give her his verdict.

  He knew the Petersen place, just outside Choteau, where she had Pilgrim stabled. They were nice enough people, but if the horse was as bad as when Tom last saw him, they wouldn’t put up with him for long.

  Old man Petersen had the face of an outlaw, three days of grizzled beard and teeth as black as the tobacco he always chewed. He showed them in a mischievous grin when Tom pulled up in the Chevy.

  “What’s it they say? If you’re looking for trouble, you’ve come to the right place. Damn near killed me getting him unloaded. Been kicking and hollering like a banshee ever since.”

  He led Tom down a muddy track, past the rusting hulks of derelict cars, to an old barn, lined either side with stalls. The other horses had been turned out. Tom could hear Pilgrim long before they got there.

  “Only fitted that door last summer,” Petersen said. “He’d have had the old one down by now. Woman says you’re gonna sort him out for her.”

  “Oh she did?”

  “Uh-huh. All I can say is, make sure you go see Bill Larson for a fitting first.” He roared with laughter and slapped Tom on the back. Bill Larson was the local undertaker.

  The horse was in even sorrier shape than when Tom last saw him. His front leg was so badly wasted, Tom wondered how he even managed to stand, let alone keep up the kicking.

  “Must have been a nice-lookin’ horse once,” said Petersen.

  “I reckon.” Tom turned away. He’d seen enough.

  He drove back into Choteau and looked at the piece of paper on which Annie had written her address. When he pulled up outside the house and walked up to the front door, the church bells were playing a tune he hadn’t heard since he was a kid in Sunday school. He rang the doorbell and waited.

  The face he saw when the door opened startled him. It wasn’t that he’d been expecting the mother, it was the open hostility in the girl’s pale, freckled face. He remembered the face from the photograph Annie had sent him, a happy girl and her horse. The contrast was shocking. He smiled.

  “You must be Grace.” She didn’t smile back, just nodded and stepped aside for him to come in. He took off his hat and waited while she shut the door. He could hear Annie talking in a room off the hallway.

  “She’s on the phone. You can wait in here.”

  She led the way into a bare, L-shaped living room. Tom looked down at her leg and the cane as he followed, making a mental note not to look again. The room was gloomy and smelled of damp. There were a couple of old armchairs, a sagging sofa and a TV playing an old black-and-white movie. Grace sat down and went on watching it.

  Tom perched himself on an arm of one of the chairs. The door across the hallway was half open and he could see a fax machine, a computer screen and a tangle of wires. All he could see of Annie was a crossed leg and a boot that bobbed impatiently. She sounded pretty worked up about something.

  “What! He said what? I don’t believe it. Lucy . . . Lucy, I don’t care. It’s got nothing to do with Crawford, I’m the bloody editor and that’s the cover we go with.”

  Tom saw Grace raise her eyes to the ceiling and wondered if it was for his benefit. In the movie, an actress whose name he could never remember was on her knees, hanging on to James Cagney, begging him not to leave. They always did this and Tom could never understand why they bothered.

  “Grace, will you get Mr. Booker a coffee?” Annie shouted from the other room. “I’d like one too.” She went back to her phone call. Grace flicked the TV off and got up, clearly irritated.

  “It’s okay, really,” said Tom.

  “She just m
ade it.” She stared at him as if he’d said something rude.

  “Okay then, thank you. But you keep watching the movie and I’ll get it.”

  “I’ve seen it. It’s boring.”

  She picked up her cane and went off into the kitchen. Tom waited a moment then followed. She shot him a glance when he came in and made more noise than she needed to with the cups. He walked over to the window.

  “What does your mother do?”

  “What?”

  “Your mother. I wondered what line of work she was in.”

  “She edits a magazine.” She handed him a cup of coffee. “Cream and sugar?”

  “No thanks. Must be a pretty stressful kind of job.”

  Grace laughed. Tom was surprised by how bitter it sounded.

  “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

  There was an awkward silence. Grace turned away and was about to pour another cup but instead she stopped and looked at him. He could see the surface of the coffee in the glass pot trembling from the tension in her. It was plain to see she had something important to say.

  “Just in case she hasn’t told you, I don’t want to know anything about this, okay?”

  Tom nodded slowly and waited for her to go on. She’d good as spat the words at him and was a little thrown by the calm reaction. She abruptly poured the coffee but did it too fast so that she spilled some. She clunked the pot down on the table and picked up the cup, not looking at him as she went on.

  “This whole thing was her idea. I think it’s totally stupid. They should just get rid of him.”

  She stomped past him and out of the room. Tom watched her go, then he turned and looked out into the forlorn little backyard. A cat was eating something sinewy by an upturned garbage can.

  He had come here to tell this girl’s mother, for the last time, that the horse was beyond help. It was going to be tough after they had come all this way. He had thought a lot about it since Annie’s visit to the ranch. To be precise, he’d thought a lot about Annie and the sadness in those eyes of hers. It had occurred to him that if he took the horse on, he might be doing it not to help the horse but to help her. He never did that. It was the wrong reason.