by Becky Citra
The rain is drumming on the metal roof, as loud as gunfire. It’s dim but I find a switch on the wall, and when I flick it, the barn fills with bright light. I stand still for a minute, breathing in the smell.
Mom loved the smell too. I suck in my breath. Where did that come from? I don’t even know if it’s true. I try not to think about Mom. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to feel. She left us to live with that trainer and that was a crummy thing to do.
The fact is, my memories of Mom are all screwed up. I remember Dad doing all those little-kid things like tucking me in at night or reading me a story. I even remember him giving me my bath. But not Mom. She was always busy meeting with other trainers or judging horse shows or talking on the phone to clients. Did Mom even think about me after she left? I’ll never know because she went and got herself killed and my world fell apart. Dad sold the stable and all the horses, including my horse Monty, who I adored, and we left.
I take a few deep breaths until I feel like myself again. Whatever that is. I decide I need a project, so I spend the next hour sorting through the pile of tack in the little room. I shake out saddle blankets, knocking out bits of grass and dirt and seeds, and stack them on racks. I move all the saddles to one side, straightening out girths, leaning them carefully against the wall. There’s nothing really wrong with them that a bit of saddle soap won’t fix. I hunt through the clutter on the shelves to see if I can find some. I dig through brushes, plastic curry combs, hoof picks, a tin of something called Hoof Maker, a bucket of rags, a bottle of mane detangler, some sponges. No saddle soap.
I clean up the mess on the shelves, finding a place for everything. I make a pile of things to throw away. Keeping busy makes me feel a lot better. When I’m finished, I survey the room. There’s still lots to do but I’ve made a start. Suddenly I realize that it’s quiet— no more drumming on the roof. I go to the barn door and gaze out. Everything is dripping, but the clouds have torn apart and patches of watery blue sky are poking through. The air is fresh. I’m starving.
Six
It’s lunch hour at school and for once I’ve got something to do. As soon as the bell rings, I head downtown to the tack store. It’s four blocks away, right in the middle of the town, which is only about twelve blocks from end to end. A life-size model of a horse stands outside the store and there’s a bulletin board by the door, covered with photographs of horses for sale and notices about riding camps and horse shows. I’ve been here once before, about two months ago, just to look around, but I never told Dad. I love everything in the store: the blankets with their bright Navaho designs; the gleaming saddles with intricate patterns tooled into the leather; the bright red, blue and green halters; even the rows of buckets on the floor filled with all kinds of brushes.
This time I have something I want to buy. I pick up a can of saddle soap and then, on an impulse, a brush with soft brilliant-pink bristles. When I leave the store, I check my watch. I have fifteen minutes until school starts for the afternoon, and there’s something else I want to do.
I walk a couple more blocks to the museum. I’ve been thinking about that little girl who disappeared—Livia Willard—and I’m wondering if the museum might have some more newspaper clippings about her.
I pass kids going the other way, back to school, holding Slurpies, bags of chips and cans of soda. I avoid their eyes, though one girl says hi. Startled, I say hi back. The museum is in a small blue building that looks more like a house. A CLOSED sign hangs on the door. A smaller sign in the window lists the days and times that it’s open, and I try to memorize them.
The school is quiet when I get back, the hallways empty. I’m late. I stash the brush and saddle soap in my locker and run to math class.
It’s Sunday afternoon and it’s hot again, but not muggy like before. I’m lying on my stomach on a towel on our dock, propped up on my elbows, reading. I just washed my hair and it’s drying in the sun, spread over my shoulders. A motor thrums and I glance up. A boat is speeding toward the dock, two streams of white wake spreading out behind it.
It’s Van. He cuts the motor when he gets close and drifts in to the dock. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say. I put my book down and sit up.
Van scrambles out and ties the boat to the side of the dock. He’s barefoot, in cutoff jeans with no shirt. Something gold glints in the sun. It’s a tiny cross on a chain around his neck. I’ve never known anyone my age who wore a cross. It’s giving me all kinds of signals, but I’m not sure what they mean.
Van dangles his feet in the water, and I sit on my towel, my knees drawn up to my chin. We talk for a while about school, mostly which teachers we like and don’t like, the same kind of nothing conversation we’ve been having every day while we wait for the school bus. Then Van says, right out of the blue, “You should try coming to the youth group in the fall.”
I hide my surprise by slathering sunscreen on my legs. No one’s invited me to anything for a long time. “What is it?” I ask.
“It’s a group of kids that meet at the Baptist church.”
“Oh,” I say. Van has got to be kidding. I instantly remember the kids holding hands in a circle outside the school that day. The religious group. Now I know where I’ve seen Van before, besides in social studies. He was the guy who smiled at me. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
In a youth group, you’d probably be expected to talk about your problems to strangers. Like Alcoholics Anonymous or something. No way I’m doing that. But I can’t say that to Van. “I don’t believe in God.” My voice sounds loud, too loud. I don’t want Van to leave; I just don’t want to join this group.
Van just shrugs. “So? Not everyone in the group goes to church. Pastor Jim won’t care. He opens it up to anyone who wants to come.”
“Who the heck is Pastor Jim?” I say. I grin. “And is that his real name?”
Van looks slightly ticked off. “He’s in charge. Officially. But he’s cool. He stays in the background. Let’s us run it the way we want.”
I’m not interested, I’m really not. But I ask anyway, “What kind of stuff do you do?”
“Hang out, watch movies, sometimes we go bowling or swimming or something. Just stuff.”
Van sounds edgy now, and I wonder if I’ve offended him. The youth group might be okay; it’s just not for me.
He stares at me. “You should try it,” he repeats.
I don’t like being pushed. “What? Stand around holding hands in a circle at school and looking weird?”
“It’s just a prayer circle,” says Van. “Just a way to get the day off to a good start. You wouldn’t have to be part of it if you didn’t want to.”
“I like being alone,” I say. “Honestly. Groups just aren’t my thing. It’s actually fun not having friends.”
I don’t know why I said that. It was supposed to be funny, but it sounds pathetic. Van’s face is more transparent even than mine. He doesn’t embarrass easily but he definitely looks annoyed. “I don’t think sarcasm suits you,” he says stiffly.
I’m tired of talking about this. I stand up and stretch. “Have you ever seen Renegade?” I ask.
“Who’s Renegade?” says Van.
“A horse,” I say. “Come on.”
Van’s impressed with Renegade.
We’ve brought apples, cut into slices, but Renegade still won’t take them from my hand. We perch on the fence rail, watching him pace back and forth on the opposite side of the corral. The wind is blowing, tossing his mane.
“One of these days I’m going to start training him,” I say. “When he gets used to me.” I’ve been reading and rereading the articles I printed off the Internet, and I’m immersed in words like pecking order and dominance and partnership. But I’m still not sure how to start. I’ve been trying all week to get close enough to touch him, but he always skitters away.
Van nods seriously, as if he thinks I can really do it. “We have two ponies,” he says. “My sisters ride.”
> “How about you?” I say. “Do you ride?”
“Nope. I’ve never been interested.”
“I used to ride all the time,” I say. I didn’t plan to tell Van this. It just kind of spills out. “My mom and dad trained horses. Dad taught me how to ride when I was about three. I’ve got a picture of me sitting in front of him on his horse. When I was seven, they bought me an awesome horse called Monty.”
“Really?” says Van. He sounds interested. Not annoyed anymore. “What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“Well, your dad’s fixing up cabins right now. That’s not exactly training horses. And you’ve never said anything about your mom.”
Now I’m really wishing that I had kept my mouth shut. I go for the condensed version. “Mom died in a riding accident when I was nine. We sold our stable. The rest is history.”
I know I sound flippant but it’s the only way I can deal with this. I’ve never talked about it to anyone. Everyone says it’s better to let things out instead of bottling them up inside. I’ve never tested out that theory. Neither has Dad. I’ve already told Van more than I meant to. And I don’t feel better. I just feel kind of scraped out inside.
“You must miss your mom,” says Van.
“Actually I don’t.”
I’ve had enough. I jump down from the rail. Van jumps down beside me. “You must have hated giving up your horse.”
I don’t say anything.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I shrug. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
It’s not exactly a lie, what I’ve told him, unless you can lie by leaving things out. There’s no way I’m going to tell Van about Mom leaving us. It’s complicated, way more complicated than Van thinks.
To his credit, he shuts up.
Van ends up staying for dinner. He phones home from the lodge. I’m in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes for a salad, and Tully’s frying hamburger meat for tacos. I can hear Van saying, “Just tell Mom. Okay? It’s none of your business. Just tell Mom.”
“Sisters,” he says when he gets off. “You’re lucky you don’t have any.”
After we eat, Tully makes tea. We linger around the table and Tully tells stories about the Masai Mara in Africa. Dad and Van especially like hearing how it’s the women who build the houses. They cover them with cow dung. Honestly.
“Come to think of it, the women do most of the work,” says Tully.
“We should move there,” says Dad, and Van snickers.
“Ha, ha,” I say.
But I wouldn’t mind going to Africa and seeing some of the things Tully’s seen. I add that to my list of dreams—travel the world.
Van and I take Max and Bob for a walk after dinner. (Tinker is asleep on her bed, exhausted from chasing squirrels all afternoon, and won’t budge.) We follow the dusty road that leads along the lakeshore, past the cabins. Between the trees, the lake glitters in the setting sun. A quavering cry breaks the stillness, sending goose bumps up my arms. Van says, “It’s a loon. There’s a pair that nests here. They come every year. They nest on the island in the middle of the lake.”
“I heard them one night,” I say, “but I didn’t know what it was.”
The loon cries again, and this time there’s an answering warble, far down the lake. I think about how cool it is that Van knows they come every year and where they nest. Dad and I will be gone in the winter, but Van will still be here. He’s told me how he and his dad build a skating rink on the lake. It’s hard to picture on this warm summer night, and I wish that I could see it.
Piles of rubble are heaped up outside cabin five, along with stacks of tarp-covered lumber and several sawhorses. Sawdust carpets the ground. We peek in the door. Most of the inside has been ripped out. The walls between the bedroom, the bathroom and the main room still stand, but there are no closets or cabinets or anything.
“It’s going to be nice when it’s finished,” I say, remembering bits of Dad and Tully’s conversation. “They’re putting in pine siding and tile in the bathroom and brand-new appliances.”
The sawdust makes Van sneeze, and we keep walking, all the way to cabin ten. This is where the road gets narrow and overgrown with grass until it disappears into the trees. It’s as far as I’ve been.
“Tully said something about another old cabin at the end,” I say. “It’s kind of abandoned.”
“I’ve seen it from the lake,” says Van. “Let’s see if we can find it.”
No one’s been past here in a car for years, I guess. Small bushes grow right in the middle of the road. In places the road seems to disappear altogether and we have to search in the grass for old tire ruts. We walk for a few minutes, brushing away mosquitoes, and then we spot the cabin, on the shore of a shallow marshy bay.
It’s small, probably just one room. Like the other cabins, it’s built out of logs, but it looks much older. It sags into the weeds as if it is tired. Lime green moss covers the logs in patches. Ragged holes gape between the shingles on the roof, and two of the windows are missing their glass.
The door is hanging by only one hinge. Van props it open and we go inside. The cabin is empty, except for a wooden table with a broken leg, and two chairs. There’s an old wood-burning cookstove in one corner, with an enormous spiderweb suspended between the rusty stovepipe and the wall. Dried leaves are scattered across the floorboards, and the few windows that still have glass are thick with dust.
“A good project for your dad,” says Van with a grin. He goes back outside, but I hang around for a few minutes. I try to picture someone living here, sitting at that table, eating a meal cooked on the stove.
Something catches my eye: marks gouged into the wood on the frame of the doorway. I trace them with my fingers. They look like letters but the wood has swollen around them and it’s hard to make out what they are. There are four marks. A letter S, I think, maybe a T. Someone’s name, scraped into the wood to prove they were here?
I go outside. At first I can’t figure out what Van is doing. He’s thrown his runners on the ground and rolled up his jeans. He’s calf-deep in water. Then I realize he’s standing on the remains of a dock submerged in the lake. He tips the halfrotten boards back and forth, waving his arms for balance.
“There’s an old boat in the bushes over there,” he says. “It’s got some holes in it but I might be able to fix it up.”
Bob has been for a swim and he gives a great shake, spraying my legs. I can hear Max somewhere close by, barking. I call him and a moment later he bursts out of the bushes, his tongue lolling.
Van rocks the dock again, bracing with his knees, and I say, “I’d laugh if you fell in.”
“Not a chance.” Van jumps to the shore. “The mosquitoes are horrible,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
It’s dark when Van leaves. Dad’s worried that he won’t be able to see, but Van shows him the light on his boat. Besides, he says, he’s grown up on this lake. He knows where all the hazards are.
Dad goes inside our cabin after Van leaves, but I stay on the dock. I hear the thrum of the boat’s motor long after Van disappears into the darkness. When I finally go inside to get ready for bed, I walk over to the dresser in my tiny bedroom and look at a photograph of me perched in front of Dad on his horse Skipper. I look about four years old. I’m wearing a helmet and Dad is wearing a cowboy hat that shades his face. His arms are wrapped right around me, and I’m grinning. I tell myself I can remember those rides with Dad, but I can’t really. For the first time I wonder who took the photograph.
Seven
A small blue car is parked outside cabin two. I spot it just before supper the next day, on my way back to our cabin from the barn. The guest that Tully was expecting must have arrived while I was with Renegade.
I brush bits of hay off my jeans before I go inside. Then I change my T-shirt, wash the horse smell off my hands and head to the lodge.
Tully wants everything to be perfect for his firs
t official guest. At the end of the long table, he has laid four places, with woven place mats and bluehandled cutlery I haven’t seen before. Wild lupins and brilliant Indian paintbrush fill a tall white vase. He’s lifting a pie with a brown-sugar-sprinkled crust out of the oven when I come in. I inhale a delicious breath of apples and cinnamon.
A woman is standing in front of the wall beside the fireplace, her back to me, looking at some of Tully’s photographs.
“There you are, Thea,” says Tully, setting the pie on a rack. “I’d like you to meet Mrs. Wilson.”
“Oh, please, call me Marion,” says the woman, turning around. She has a crisp English accent and is small and kind of birdlike, with short gray hair. She looks like she’s in her sixties. I was expecting someone younger. She’s dressed neatly in pressed blue jeans, a pink sweatshirt and white running shoes.
Marion walks across the room to shake hands with me. “Tully’s been telling me about you,” she says. Her eyes are bright blue, and up close I can see fine wrinkles in her skin. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
“It’s great to meet you too,” I say. Marion Wilson seems nice, and I can’t think of a single reason why she would have lied about her friends staying here ten years ago. I decide that Tully must have got it wrong, or maybe the ranch was operating then and there just aren’t any guest books from those years.
Dad arrives and Tully makes the introductions again.
Dad and Marion talk about the flight from England and the drive up from Vancouver. I gravitate to Tully’s Africa photographs. Every time I look at them, I notice something new. This time it’s the soft downy manes on the backs of the baby cheetahs.
At dinner, most of the conversation is about Italy. Marion has traveled there a lot, and she and Tully have been to some of the same places. Dad says that Italy is somewhere he has always wanted to go. For a moment I look at Dad with new eyes. This is something I never knew about him. The talk drifts to Italian wines and it turns out that Dad knows something about those too.