The Horse Whisperer

by Nicholas Evans

  “Let me do this first,” she said. And she eased herself over between his legs and took him in her mouth. It was a long time, years even, since she’d done it and the thrill of it made him take a sudden shuddering breath.

  “Oh Annie. I don’t know if I can take this.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I want to.”

  What wanton liars love makes of us, she thought. What dark and tangled paths it has us tread. And as he came, she knew with a flooding sad certainty that whatever happened they would never be the same again and that this guilty act was secretly her parting gift.

  Later, when the light was off, he came inside her. So dark was the night, they could not see each other’s eyes. And thus protected, Annie at last was stirred. She turned herself loose to the liquid rhythm of their coupling and found beyond its sorrow some brief oblivion.

  THIRTY

  ROBERT DROVE GRACE DOWN TO THE BARN AFTER breakfast. The rain had cleared and cooled the air and the sky was a faultless wide curve of blue. He’d already noticed Grace was quieter this morning, more serious, and he asked her on the way down if she was okay.

  “Dad, you’ve got to stop asking me that. I’m fine. Please.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She smiled and patted his arm and he left it at that. She’d called Joe before they left and by the time they got there he’d already fetched Gonzo from the paddock. He gave them a big grin as they got out of the Lariat.

  “Good morning, young man,” Robert said.

  “Morning Mr. Maclean.”

  “It’s Robert, please.”

  “Okay sir.”

  They led Gonzo into the barn. Robert saw that Grace seemed to be walking with more of a limp than yesterday. Once she even seemed to lose her balance and had to reach for the gate of a stall to steady herself. He stood to watch them saddle Gonzo, asking Joe all about him, how old the pony was, how many hands, whether paints had a special kind of temperament. Joe gave full and courteous answers. Grace didn’t say a word. Robert could see in the gathering of her brow that something was troubling her. He guessed from Joe’s glances at her that he saw it too, though both knew better than to ask.

  They led Gonzo out the back of the barn and into the arena. Grace prepared to mount.

  “No hat?” Robert asked.

  “You mean no hard hat?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “No, Dad. No hat.”

  Robert shrugged and smiled. “You know best.”

  Grace narrowed her eyes at him. Joe looked from one of them to the other and grinned. Then Grace gathered the reins and, with Joe’s shoulder for support, put her left foot in the stirrup. As she took the weight on her prosthetic leg, something seemed to give and Robert saw her wince.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. It’s okay.”

  With a grunt of effort she swung the leg over the cantle and sat in the saddle. Even before she’d settled he could see something was wrong and then he saw her face screw up and realized she was crying.

  “Gracie, what is it?”

  She shook her head. He thought at first she was in pain, but when at last she spoke it was clear they were tears of anger.

  “It’s no damn good.” The words were almost spat. “It’s not going to work.”

  It took Robert the rest of the day to get hold of Wendy Auerbach. The clinic had an answering machine with an emergency number which, curiously, seemed permanently busy. Maybe every other prosthetic in New York had cracked in sympathy or through some lurking defect whose time had suddenly come. When at last he got through, a weekend duty nurse said she was sorry but it wasn’t clinic policy to give out home numbers. If however it really was as urgent as Robert said, which by her tone she seemed to doubt, she would try to contact Dr. Auerbach on his behalf. An hour later the nurse called back. Dr. Auerbach was out and wouldn’t be home till late afternoon.

  While they waited, Annie called Terri Carlson, whose number—unlike Wendy Auerbach’s—was listed in the phone book. Terri said she knew someone over in Great Falls who might be able to rig up another kind of prosthetic at short notice but she advised against it. Once you’d gotten used to a particular type of leg, she said, changing to another was tricky and could take time.

  Although Grace’s tears had upset him and he felt for her in her frustration, Robert felt also a secret relief that he was to be spared what, it now emerged, was to have been a surprise staged specially for him. The sight of Grace climbing up on Gonzo had been nerve-racking enough. The thought of her on Pilgrim, whose calmer demeanor he didn’t quite trust, was downright scary.

  He didn’t query it however. The failing, he knew, was his. The only horses he’d ever felt at ease with were those little ones in shopping malls that you slotted coins in to make them rock. Once it was apparent the idea had the backing not just of Annie but more crucially of Tom Booker too, Robert had set about salvaging it as though it had his full support.

  By six o’clock they had a plan.

  Wendy Auerbach at last called and got Grace to describe precisely where the crack was. She then told Robert that if Grace could get back to New York and come in for a new molding late on Monday, they could do a fitting on Wednesday and have the new prosthetic ready by the weekend.

  “Alrighty?”

  “Alrighty,” Robert said and thanked her.

  In family conference in the creek house living room, the three of them decided what they’d do. Annie and Grace would fly back with him to New York and the following weekend they’d fly out here again for Grace to ride Pilgrim. Robert couldn’t return with them because he had to go again to Geneva. He tried to look convincingly sad that he’d be missing all the fun.

  Annie called the Bookers and got Diane, who’d earlier been so sweet and concerned when she heard what had happened. Of course it would be okay to leave. Pilgrim here, she said. Smoky could keep an eye on him. She and Frank were getting back from L.A. on Saturday, though when Tom would be back from Wyoming she wasn’t sure. She invited them to join them all that evening for a barbecue. Annie said they’d love to.

  Then Robert called the airline. They had a problem. There was only one other seat on the return flight he’d booked himself on from Salt Lake City to New York. He asked them to hold it.

  “I’ll get a later flight,” Annie said.

  “Why?” Robert said. “You may as well stay here.”

  “She can’t fly back here on her own.”

  Grace said, “Why not? Come on Mom, I flew to England on my own when I was ten!”

  “No. It’s a connection. I’m not having you wandering around an airport on your own.”

  “Annie,” Robert said. “It’s Salt Lake City. There are more Christians per square yard than in the Vatican.”

  “Mom, I’m not a kid.”

  “You are a kid.”

  “The airline’ll take care of her,” Robert said. “Look, if it comes to it, Elsa can fly out with her.”

  There was a silence, he and Grace both watching Annie, waiting on her decision. There was something new, some indefinable change in her that he’d noticed first on the way back from Butte the previous day. At the airport he’d put it down simply to the way she looked, this new healthy radiance she had. On the journey she’d listened to the banter between him and Grace with a kind of amused serenity. But later, beneath it, he’d thought he glimpsed something more wistful. In bed, what she’d done for him was blissful, yet also somehow shocking. It had seemed to have its source not in desire but in some deeper, more sorrowful intent.

  Robert told himself that whatever change there was doubtless stemmed from the trauma and release of losing her job. But now, while he watched her making up her mind, he acknowledged to himself that he found his wife unfathomable.

  Annie was looking out of the window at the perfect late spring afternoon. She turned back to them and pulled a comic sad face.

  “I’ll be here all on my own.”

  They laug
hed. Grace put an arm around her.

  “Oh poor little Mommy.”

  Robert smiled at her. “Hey. Give yourself a break. Enjoy it. After a year of Crawford Gates, if anyone deserves some time it’s you.”

  He called the airline to confirm Grace’s reservation.

  They built the fire for the barbecue in a sheltered bend of the creek below the ford, where two roughhewn wooden tables with fixed benches stood the year round, their tops warped and runneled and bleached the palest gray by the elements. Annie had come across them on her morning run from whose tyrannical routine she seemed, with no apparent ill effect, to have all but escaped. Since the cattle drive, she had only run once and even then was shocked to hear herself tell Grace she’d been out jogging. If she was now a jogger, she might as well quit

  The men had gone up earlier to get the fire going. It was too far for Grace to walk with her taped-up leg and resurrected cane, so she went with Joe in the Chevy, ferrying the food and drink. Annie and Diane trailed after on foot with the twins. They walked at a leisurely pace, enjoying the evening sun. The trip to L.A. had just ceased to be a secret and the boys babbled with excitement.

  Diane was friendlier than ever. She seemed genuinely pleased that they’d sorted Grace’s problem out and wasn’t at all spiky, as Annie had feared, about her staying on.

  “Tell you the truth, Annie, I’m glad you’re going to be around. That young Smoky’s okay, but he’s only a kid and I’m not too sure how much goes on in that head of his.”

  They walked on while the twins ran ahead. Only once did their conversation pause, when a pair of swans flew over their heads. They watched the sun on their earnest white necks craning up the valley and listened to the moan of their wings fading on the still of the evening.

  As they drew nearer, Annie heard the crackle of firewood and saw a curl of white smoke above the cottonwoods.

  The men had built the fire on a close-cropped spit of grass that jutted into the creek. To one side of it, Frank was showing off to the children how he could skim stones and earning only derision. Robert, beer in hand, had been put in charge of the steaks. He was taking the job as seriously as Annie would have predicted, chatting to Tom with one side of his brain while the other monitored the meat. He nagged away at it constantly, readjusting it piece by piece with a long-handled fork. In his plaid shirt and loafers, standing alongside Tom, Annie thought with affection how out of place he looked.

  Tom saw the women first. He waved and came over to get them a drink from the cooler. Diane had a beer and Annie a glass of the white wine she’d supplied. She found it hard to look Tom in the eyes as he handed it to her. Their fingers touched briefly on the glass and the sensation made her heart skip.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “So, you’re running the ranch for us next week.”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “At least there’ll be someone here smart enough to use a telephone if something comes up,” Diane said.

  Tom smiled and looked confidingly at Annie. He wasn’t wearing a hat and he pushed back a fall of blond hair from his brow as he spoke.

  “Diane reckons poor old Smoke can’t count to ten.”

  Annie smiled. “It’s very kind of you. We’ve way outstayed our welcome.”

  He didn’t answer, just smiled again and this time Annie managed to hold his gaze. She felt that if she let herself, she could dive into the blue of his eyes. At that moment, Craig came running up to say Joe had pushed him into the creek. His pants were soaked up to the knees. Diane yelled for Joe and went off to investigate. Left alone with Tom, Annie felt panic rise within her, There was so much she wanted to say but not a word of it trivial enough for the occasion. She couldn’t tell if he shared or even sensed her awkwardness.

  “I’m real sorry about Grace,” he said.

  “Yes, well. We sorted it out. I mean, if it’s okay with you, she can ride Pilgrim when you get back from Wyoming.”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you. Robert won’t get to see it but, you know, to have got this far and then not—”

  “No problem.” He paused. “Grace told me about you quitting your job.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “She said you weren’t too cut up about it.”

  “No. I feel good about it.”

  “That’s good.”

  Annie smiled and swallowed some more wine, hoping to diffuse the silence that now fell between them. She glanced toward the fire and Tom followed her look. Left to himself, Robert was giving the meat his undivided attention. It would be done, Annie knew, to perfection.

  “He’s a top hand with a steak, that husband of yours.”

  “Oh yes. Yes. He enjoys it.”

  “He’s a great guy.”

  “Yes. He is.”

  “I was trying to work out who was the luckier.” Annie looked at him. He was still looking at Robert. The sun was full on Tom’s face. He looked at her and smiled. “You for having him, or him for having you.”

  They sat and ate, the children at one table and the adults at the other. The sound of their laughter filled the space among the cottonwoods. The sun went down and between the silhouetted trees Annie watched the molten surface of the creek take on the pinks and reds and golds of the dimming sky. When it was dark enough, they lit candles in tall glass sleeves to shield them from a breeze that never came and watched the perilous fluttering of moths above them.

  Grace seemed happy again, now that her hopes of riding Pilgrim were restored. After everyone had finished eating, she told Joe to show Robert the match trick and the children gathered around the adults’ table to watch.

  When the match jumped the first time, everyone roared. Robert was intrigued. He got Joe to do it again, and then again more slowly. He was sitting across the table from Annie, between Diane and Tom. She watched the candlelight dance on his face while he concentrated, scrutinizing every move of Joe’s fingers, searching as he always did for the rational solution. Annie found herself hoping, almost praying, that he wouldn’t find it or that if he did, he wouldn’t let on.

  He had a couple of attempts himself and failed. Joe was giving him the whole spiel about static electricity and was doing it well. He was about to get him to put his hand in water to “boost the charge” when Annie saw Robert smile and knew he had it. Don’t spoil it, she said to herself. Please don’t spoil it.

  “I get it,” he said. “You flick it with your nail. Is that right? Here, let me have another go.”

  He rubbed the match in his hair and drew it slowly up his palm toward the second one. When they touched, the second one jumped away with a crack. The children cheered. Robert grinned, like a boy who’d caught the biggest fish. Joe was trying not to look disappointed.

  “Too darn smart these lawyers,” Frank said.

  “What about Tom’s trick!” Grace called. “Mom? Have you still got that piece of string?”

  “Of course,” Annie said. She’d kept it in her pocket ever since Tom gave it to her. She treasured it. It was the only piece of him she had. Without thinking, she took it out and handed it to Grace. Immediately, she regretted it. She had a sudden, fearful premonition, so strong she almost cried out. She knew that if she let him, Robert would demystify this too. And if he did, something precious beyond all reason would be lost.

  Grace handed the cord to Joe who told Robert to hold his finger up. Everyone was watching. Except for Tom. He was sitting back a little, watching Annie over the candle. She knew he could read what she was thinking. Joe now had the cord looped over Robert’s finger.

  “Don’t,” Annie said suddenly.

  Everyone looked at her, startled to silence by the anxious note in her voice. She felt the heat rising to her cheeks. She smiled desperately, seeking help among the faces in her embarrassment. But the floor was still hers.

  “I—I just wanted to figure it out myself first.”

  Joe hesitated a moment to see if she was serious. Then he lifted the loop from
Robert’s finger and handed it back to her. Annie thought she saw in the boy’s eyes that he, like Tom, understood. It was Frank who came to the rescue.

  “Good for you Annie,” he said. “Don’t you go showing no lawyers till you’ve got yourself a contract.”

  Everyone laughed, even Robert. Though when their eyes met she could see he was puzzled and perhaps even hurt. Later, when the talk had moved safely on, it was only Tom who saw her quietly coil the cord and slip it back into her pocket.

  THIRTY-ONE

  LATE SUNDAY NIGHT, TOM DID A FINAL CHECK ON THE horses then came inside to pack. Scott was in his pajamas on the landing getting a final warning from Diane who wasn’t buying his story that he couldn’t sleep. Their flight was at seven in the morning and the boys had been put to bed hours ago.

  “If you don’t cut it out, you don’t come, okay?”

  “You’d leave me here on my own?”

  “You betcha.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Try me.”

  Tom came up the stairs and saw the jumble of clothes and half-filled suitcases. He winked at Diane and steered Scott off to the twins’ room without a word. Craig was already asleep and Tom sat on Scott’s bed and they whispered about Disneyland and which order they’d do the rides until the boy’s eyelids grew heavy and he slept.

  On his way to his own room, Tom walked past Frank and Diane’s and she saw him and thanked him and said good-night. Tom packed all he needed for the week, which wasn’t much, then tried to read for a while. But he couldn’t concentrate.

  While he was out with the horses, he’d seen Annie arrive back in the Lariat from taking her husband and Grace to the airport. He walked to the window now and looked up toward the creek house. The yellow blinds of her bedroom were lit and he waited a few moments, hoping he’d see her shadow cross, but it didn’t.

  He washed, undressed and got into bed and tried reading again with no greater success. He turned off the light and lay on his back with his hands tucked behind his head, picturing her up there in the house all alone, as she would be all week.