by Kristie Cook
Mrs. Holt led Rambo away from the stream back toward the open pasture. Jen and Bobby followed. Dumbo and Midnight continued to drink, and Than seemed oblivious to the departure of the others, his face still turned up to meet the rain. Therese just sat and watched him.
Than opened his eyes when thunder crashed again. He looked over at Therese, and they shared a smile of embarrassment. He noticed the others had gone several yards away to the open pasture, so he said, “Come on Midnight,” and he gently pulled her reins to one side to lead her away.
Therese mimicked Than. “Come on, Dumbo.” But Dumbo stubbornly refused to come. He pulled up a tuft of grass that had been growing near the stream to feed. “Come on, Boy!” Therese said a little more forcefully. Instead, Dumbo walked further up along the stream and fed on more stalks of grass. “Great.” Therese glanced back at the others. Than was waiting for her about twenty yards away, but the others were already cantering along the fence line again.
Meanwhile, Dumbo refused to listen. “Come on, Dumbo!” Therese gently touched the stirrups against his sides. He went further up the stream, pulling long tufts of yellow grass. Before Therese knew what was happening, Dumbo reared up and down, over and over, braying loudly. She screamed in horror, “Whoa, Dumbo! Whoa, boy!” His back right hoof slid on the bank and into the stream; she could hear the rocks slipping, the hoof sliding, and then the leg belted beneath him, and he fell sideways toward the stream. Therese screamed in terror and pushed both feet against the stirrups, and she managed to stay on top of Dumbo as he rolled into the water on his side. She pulled her right foot loose and pushed with her left to avoid falling under the horse. She fell on the opposite side of him, on the bank among rocks and grass, on her left side. She rolled when she fell and came to a stop at Than’s feet. Her elbow and hip hurt, not to mention her neck, and she was terrified for Dumbo.
“Are you okay?” Than knelt beside her with wide eyes.
She sat up, dazed. Then she looked into the stream. Dumbo hadn’t moved from his side in the water. His head was lifted toward the sky, and he was whining with pain. “Dumbo!” Therese jumped to her feet and went to the horse. “Oh, no! Oh my God! Than, I think he’s really hurt!”
Than held Therese back, and as she tried to pull away she saw a snake hissing in the grass at his feet. He grabbed the snake behind its head with one hand, and then he flung it nearly a hundred yards down the stream away from them.
Therese was in too much shock to wonder how he could throw it so far. “That snake must have been what spooked him,” Therese said. “It’s okay boy!” She couldn’t take his loud cries. She felt so helpless.
Soon Mrs. Holt and the others returned.
“Oh no!” Jen cried from on top of Sassy.
“What happened?” Mrs. Holt dismounted Rambo. She quickly went into the stream and squatted in the water next to Dumbo to assess his injuries while Therese and Than told the story. Therese was in tears before they had finished. Than put his hand on her shoulder.
“Are you hurt, Therese?” Mrs. Holt asked.
Therese shook her head. “I’m fine.” Then she said, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Holt. I’m so, sorry! Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
“Bobby, go to the barn and call Dr. Gilbert. Ask him if he can come right away. Tell him it’s an emergency. The rest of you take the other horses back to the pen and remove their tack. Then turn all the horses out to the second pasture. Jen, lead Therese on Rambo. I’ll stay here with Dumbo.”
Bobby took off on the General across the field.
“Is it bad?” Therese asked.
“We’ll know more once the vet takes a look at him,” Mrs. Holt replied.
Another crash of thunder cracked overhead as the sad party obeyed Mrs. Holt’s orders. Therese couldn’t stop crying. On top of her worry over Dumbo, she was scared to death to ride Rambo, even though Jen held a lead and would be in complete control.
“Try not to worry,” Than said as he helped her mount the huge horse.
After they had returned to the pen and removed the tack from the horses, Jen went to turn them all out to the second pasture while Than led Therese, still in tears and beside herself, toward the house. Bobby got them clean towels. The thunder shower had passed, but they were soaked. They went inside to wait for the vet. Therese called Carol to tell her what happened and why she’d be late, and Carol made her promise over and over that she was telling the truth about not being hurt.
“I really am okay,” she said into the phone. “At least, physically.” Then the sobs came over her again in another wave. Than put his arm around her where they sat on a wooden bench in the entryway with towels draped over their shoulders. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to come home.”
After a while, Jen ran inside to say the vet was here, and so Bobby, Therese, and Than jogged behind her out across the first pasture where Dumbo lay in the water, no longer whining, totally exhausted, but still on his side. Mrs. Holt was soaked with her hand on Dumbo’s cheek as the vet, shin-deep in water and using a flashlight, did his best to examine his patient.
As the group of teens got closer, Dr. Gilbert was telling Mrs. Holt that he was giving Dumbo a sedative and pain killer solution so that he could more safely maneuver around the animal. The water was shallow enough so he wouldn’t drown. Therese watched in horror as the vet stuck the giant needle into Dumbo’s neck. Dumbo flinched, but within seconds closed his eyes and lay still. The vet propped Dumbo’s head up on a rock to keep it out of the water.
Bobby wrapped a dry towel around his mother’s shoulders and convinced her to come out of the stream. Therese looked into Mrs. Holt’s anguished face and said again how sorry she was.
Mrs. Holt gave Therese a big hug and said, “Please don’t feel for a minute that this is any fault of yours. This could have happened to any rider.”
But it happened to me, Therese thought.
The group stood on the banks of the stream watching as the vet conducted his exam. Therese became aware—vaguely at first and then more acutely—that Than had his arm protectively around her shoulders again. Jen came up and put her arm around Therese’s waist from the other side. Bobby stood close to his mother with a hand on her back.
Eventually, the vet stood up and walked over to them. “It’s not good,” he said. “Maybe the kids should go inside.”
Mrs. Holt looked at Therese. “Than, would you please take Therese back to the house? The others can stay.”
“Please, Mrs. Holt. I want to stay, too.”
Mrs. Holt hesitated. Then she looked at the vet and nodded. “It’s okay, Dr. Gilbert. Go ahead.”
“Well, Dumbo has two broken legs, his right front and his left hind. His left hind leg is broken in two places, and I think a couple of ribs may be cracked as well.”
“Oh no,” Bobby groaned.
“What do you recommend we do about it?” Mrs. Holt asked.
“I hate to say it, Steph, but I think we’re gonna have to put him down.”
“No!” Therese yelled.
Everyone looked at her, Than tightening his hold around her shoulders.
“Stay calm for the others,” he said softly in her ear.
“What’s the alternative?” Mrs. Holt asked.
“A slow and painful death,” the vet replied. “He’ll never recover.”
A blanket of dread and grief wrapped itself around Therese. This couldn’t be happening, she thought. She covered her mouth with her hand.
Mrs. Holt walked back out into the stream beside Dumbo. She kissed his still and quiet cheek. “Alright, kids. Time to go back to the house. I’ll stay here with Dr. Gilbert. Than and Therese, it’s business as usual in the mornin’, okay?”
Therese slowly nodded. That would be hard to do.
***
When the four teenagers got back to the house, Than asked Therese if he could walk her home, and she said yes, glad for the company. She could have called her aunt, which would have been a good choice since she was wet and c
old and really upset, but she wanted to be with Than. He had become quite good at comforting her.
She hugged Jen and Bobby before she and Than headed home, apologizing over and over for something she knew wasn’t her fault but had nevertheless left her with a horrible feeling of dread. She and Than were quiet most of the way. Dusk was falling, and the deer had come out in the tall grass across the road. Therese watched them with blank eyes.
Than broke their silence. “That’s the first time I’ve seen firsthand what happens when a person or animal dies. I’ve never seen how hard it is for those they leave behind.”
Therese’s thoughts went from Dumbo to her parents. She clenched her jaw to stay back the tears. “Very hard,” she muttered.
“I really am sorry, Therese,” his voice was low and husky. He stopped and took her hand. “I’m so sorry people and animals have to die. I wish there were another way.”
He seemed more upset than she had realized, as on the verge of punching something, and she wanted badly to fling herself into his arms and let them each wash away the other’s pain, but she checked herself. “Thanks.”
He released her hand and walked her up to her front screened porch. “Will you come early tomorrow for a swim?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You need to do something to heal the pain,” he said.
“You see your first death, and now you’re an expert,” she snapped, and then immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. See you in the morning.”
Therese went inside to find Carol wrapped in a blanket on the living room couch watching a movie. “You alright?” Carol asked.
“I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
“Are you sure? You don’t want to talk about it?”
“I’m sure.”
Clifford jumped from the couch beside Carol and followed Therese up the stairs. She turned off Jewel’s lamp and told her good night. Puffy was in his wheel already at work. Therese climbed out of her soggy clothes and went to her bathroom to take a long hot shower. Clifford stood outside the shower curtain waiting, as though he sensed she was upset and needed a friend.
Once she was dry and in her nightshirt, Therese cuddled with Clifford on her bed. She felt bad for snapping at Than when he was only trying to help. She was also worried he might not like her anymore. Why did she have to be so rude? She took the stringy stuffed animal toy lemur from where it hung on the headboard post and wrapped it around her neck. She couldn’t stop her mind from replaying the tragedy with Dumbo over and over. Her mind went from the tragic events on the pasture to those at Huck Finn Pond. Therese closed her eyes, wishing she could die, too.
Before she had fallen completely asleep, she felt a presence other than her pets in her room, and her eyes snapped open. The moonlight washing into her room wasn’t bright, and she could see no one. She could have sworn she felt someone standing over her bed looking down at her, about to touch her face. She stopped breathing to listen, but after seeing and hearing nothing more but Puffy running in his wheel, she closed her eyes and told herself it must have been a dream.
Chapter Sixteen: Doubts and Confliction
After leaving Therese safely at her door, Than went to her room and, in invisible mode, conversed with the hamster and the tortoise.
“I love her,” he said in each of their tongues. “And she’s hurt. Please comfort her. Can you please?”
“If she picks me up!” The hamster said, as he ran round and round. “Good human! Good human! I’ve known others, and she’s good! If she picks me up, I’ll lick her with my tongue!”
Than turned to the tortoise, which now said, “She’s loving and tender. So gentle and loyal. I try as best as I can to let her know I love her, too.”
A noise came, and then Therese entered. Than softly thanked the animals, and listened as the tortoise said a bit more. Then Than took his leave.
He soared down past the abyss, past Cerberus and the gate and down to his father’s chamber in such a state of fury that the bats swirled down from their perch and made their escape into the cold night earlier than was usual. Although Hades must have foreseen his son’s arrival, he still showed surprise at his son’s rage, the son whom he was used to seeing as the more temperate of his two boys. A tinge of guilt ran through Than as he told himself to show more control.
His sister Alecto stood in the shadows beside their father. Her fire-red hair stood up in a Mohawk and contrasted with her deep black, beautiful eyes. A choker of black stones adorned her neck and similar stones served as buttons in her leather jacket and tight leather pants and high-heeled boots.
“Thanatos?” Hades asked. “Alecto was just apprising me of her progress in a number of the Furies’ pursuits, including the killer of your girlfriend’s parents. But something tells me you are not here for a report.”
“Have you found him?” he asked his sister.
She shook her head.
“Why are you here?” Hades asked Than.
Than tried to think how to put his sorrow and his shame and his desperation into words, but no words seemed to fit the caged and raw emotion he had never before felt. Finally, seeing his father was in a patient mood, Than swallowed and said, with more control and less rage than he felt, “I used to envy the humans their short lives. Their deaths make their lives more meaningful.”
“You no longer think it now?”
“I still think it, Father. Death is better than immortality, a yoke only we gods must bear.”
“I can’t see your thoughts, son. You must speak them.”
“Death is good for those who die, but not for those left behind. Why haven’t I understood before tonight the depth of that pain? If a horse could raise so much anguish in my mortal heart, I can only imagine what the loss of a parent or child would do. Father, I’ve ignored countless prayers from billions of souls because I felt there was nothing I could do; but I’m a god. Surely there is something?”
Hades looked down his thin nose at Than. He scratched at his beard and, Than could see, stifled a smile.
“Are you laughing at me?” Than said, moving dangerously close to his father.
Alecto stepped back, further into the shadows.
“Not at you. At the whole cosmos.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Than asked.
“Son, nothing is free. Everything comes with a cost. As you have said, the mortal creatures of the world, at least the good ones, are fortunate that their lives end and their souls spend the rest of eternity in near oblivion; unlike we who must endure our mundane tasks forever. You said yourself that the brevity of their conscious lives makes their journey more meaningful than ours. We are like caged hamsters in a wheel, spinning, spinning, spinning. Humans have but one spin, one go, one bright moment and then the flame goes out.
“The advantage of mortality is clear to us, but not to them, and that is why those left behind suffer. They miss the company of their loved ones, but it is the feeling that the deceased no longer exist that hurts the most. This is the cost mortals must pay. Let me put it to you this way: Mortality is better than immortality, but only the immortal have the ability to see this, and there lies both the irony and the cost of human happiness.”
Than shook his head. “So there really is nothing then? Nothing we can do to ease that cost?”
“If there is a way we gods can ease that burden, it is by inspiring this understanding into the human heart. I don’t know if it is possible, though. They have such limited minds.”
Than sat at the foot of his father’s throne on the hard, cold rock awash with defeat.
Hades asked, “A horse’s death has brought you to me in fits?”
Than looked up, ashamed. “Hip winked at me as he took the soul of the creature, completely ignorant of the pain we were feeling. How many times have I been so calloused as that?”
“Never. You and your brother are very unlike each other, as I am to mine.”
“It w
asn’t the horse’s death that hurt so much as the pain I could feel in the humans left behind. That and the overwhelming feeling of helplessness. And also the rage that I, a god, could do nothing.”
Hades smiled. “I am familiar with the feeling. I suppose it is good that gods are humbled now and then.”
Than said nothing.
“How goes it with the girl?” Hades asked.
Than, used to being honest for so many centuries, could not find it in his heart to lie. He glanced at Alecto, unsure if he wanted her to hear, but went on and said, “I love her, but I’m having second thoughts about teaching her to love me.”
Hades lifted a brow. “You find her unworthy?”
“No. Just the opposite.”
“I find that insulting and despicable. Don’t weary me this way.”
Than stood up. “You don’t understand me because I can hardly explain myself. What I’m trying to say is that she loves the Upperworld and its inhabitants more than most humans, and I worry I would make her into a despondent wife down here.”
“There is no other kind of wife down here,” Hades said. “Remember that.”
Chapter Seventeen: The Wildhorse Saloon
Therese woke up sore Wednesday morning. She climbed out of bed, stiff and in pain. She replayed the events of the previous evening over in her head and shuddered. Maybe she should stay home. She picked up the phone and called Jen.
“My mom warned me you would call,” Jen said on the phone. “But she says it’s really important that you come this morning. You’ll heal a lot faster if you do. Moping around all day will make it worse. My mom had to threaten Bobby for the same reason.”
“But I’m in pain,” Therese objected. “I hadn’t gone riding in a year. And I fell down and hurt myself, remember?”
“We can’t make you come,” Jen said, “but my mom will be very disappointed and really upset. It’s your choice. Don’t forget we still have the Wildhorse Saloon tonight. I’ve gotta go.”