Barn Blind

by Jane Smiley

  “Where’s your thirty-five cents?” But John was already trotting away. Because, somehow, his brother did look vaguely ridiculous, too formal, overwarm, already sweating, Henry fished the quarter and the dime out of his brass-hard back pocket and headed for the hotdog stand. Upon buying a soda as well (“They’re not cold yet, young man,” said some strange and officious mother), he went back to the spot and rewarded himself for his generosity with only one small bite.

  John returned even more red-faced, having been greeted with good-natured whistles and hoots. He snatched the hotdog from Henry, griping about the missing bite, then dripped mustard on his breeches. (“Shit,” he said, then, “Give me some of that, too,” reaching for the Coke.) In the interval since mounting, he had donned lovely pale yellow riding gloves, trimmed in narrow brown, set with holes in patterns like jewels. Henry had never seen anything like them around the farm before. Mother treated their string gloves with jealous anxiety: doling them out and calling them in, practically putting them on their very hands and snatching them off. “How’d you pay for those?” he asked.

  “None of your business. I charged them, actually.” They both smiled. This was indeed a victory. Awed, Henry pursued the matter no further. “Here,” said John, handing over his litter. “It’s almost time for my class.” He turned Teddy to go, then paused. “Hey,” he said, “why are you wearing your pajamas under your pants?” Henry looked down. The cowboy-patterned legs, which he had so carefully folded up to his knees, had dropped down over his shoes. He shrugged. John shrugged. “Wish me luck,” said the older boy.

  “Good luck,” said Henry, wanting to say more.

  And here he was. Kate, although she knew better, couldn’t repress an appreciative “hmm!” as Peter trotted into the ring, and even then she would have admitted that the judge’s sudden alertness was not unintended by her, lifelong good sport though she considered herself. The horse, MacDougal, and the rider, her own son Peter, did look extraordinary. Light put down his glass of ice water and leaned forward. The course was a large and complex one, designed not by Kate but by a local horseman who had brought over a few of his own jumps. It was basically a four-legged serpentine with a fifth leg that crossed the others at a sharp angle. Without knowledge of the line, the arrangement of jumps looked chaotic, and a number of them could not be taken straight on. It began and ended with wide brush fences, four feet nine and four feet eleven respectively. The other fences were somewhat smaller, but quite as intimidating.

  Peter’s warm-up circle was exquisitely round, and seemed to be generated by vigilance itself. MacDougal tossed his head, his ears flicking backward. But the anger was momentary. With some weight or finger signal that Kate couldn’t see, Peter soothed the horse and moved him into an alert canter. In his practiced and stylish way, MacDougal gathered himself for the fence, shortening his own last stride, pricking his ears until the tips almost touched, bringing his back hooves and hocks deep under himself, then taking off. Peter rocked forward in perfect harmony, so perfect that Kate could feel it in her own body and had to stifle an utterance. The horse jumped big, nonchalantly, tucking his black hooves against his elbows for a split second, then he galloped on. Three strides and he was ready for the rails, then they made the first 180-degree turn, and were already over the chicken coop that stood just a stride out of it. “Watch his head,” Kate wanted to say to the judge, “watch my son’s head.” It turned with the readiest calmness, computing the line, tallying the jumps, seeming of itself to guide and rate the horse; seeming of itself to predict, a moment later, the exact same turning of the horse’s head. Gallop, gather, leap, gallop, gather, leap. It was hypnotic. Talbot Light made no sound or movement until the last, huge fence, when, as the horse sprang, the judge stood a little out of his seat. Clean round, no time faults. In open jumping classes, winning was mathematical: the other two horses in the jump-off were big leapers, but not smooth. Either of them could do it. Kate bit her lip.

  As the jump crew ran in and raised the fences three inches, it was clear to Kate that Peter should make no mistakes. Style had impressed Talbot so far, but the impression could only be nailed into place with successful tactics and visible tact. The jump crew scattered to the rails, and the announcer called out Peter’s number. Go slow, Kate thought. The key to a good time was corner cutting, not rushing. He entered as quietly as before, as if the course before him were a three-foot practice course, twice around. As quietly, he settled deep into the saddle; as quietly, he faced the obstacles one by one; as quietly, he shaved his corners until Kate wanted to close her eyes; as quietly, he kept the horse in perfect balance from the first stride to the last. Now it was Light’s turn to grunt involuntarily. This, perhaps, was the highest compliment, because it showed that this jaded judge’s soul was actually moved. He said nothing, however, and did not look at Kate. Each of the other two horses knocked down a pole.

  When Peter brought Mac in to accept the blue, the horse shied at the photographer. “Never without something up his sleeve, that animal,” she said gaily. “Smile for goodness’ sake, don’t you like to win?” Peter stood up straight, acted as if he liked to win, and smiled, not for the camera, but for his mother. “I love you,” she said. It seemed perfectly natural at the time.

  “Your brothers are doing very well today.”

  The voice, instantly familiar, shocked Margaret, so that she pretended to find a hair in her tunafish sandwich and to remove it very carefully. She looked up. Harrison Randolph looked more adult than ever. “Yes, they are. Better than I am by a long shot.” Peter had won both his jumping classes. John had taken the open working hunter, as well as second in his equitation class.

  “Are you disappointed?” He smiled.

  “No, not really.” She thought of confessing her nighttime revelation of indifference but did not, both because it seemed disloyal to the farm to admit it now, when there were so many strangers peering about, and because one confession could lead to another and another. She moved over and he sat down, miraculously. He had come. He looked very handsome, and she feared that he would allude to her failure to get in touch with him. Oh, indeed, he looked very, very handsome.

  He said, “Winning gets less important, maybe.” She was relieved. “When you’re grown up.”

  She blushed. “Well, I . . .”

  “You are grown up, aren’t you? I thought I heard you say something about that once.” His eyes were bright with mockery.

  “I haven’t seen your gray.”

  “I’m saving him for the combined event.”

  “He’s sound, then.”

  “Of course. I’m not cruel, you know.” He was still laughing. “Really I’m not.”

  Again she noticed how he said the words “I” and “you” in the oddest way, as if they contained a freightload of significance. Undoubtedly a simple trick of speech, perhaps even a regionalism, yet each time he said either he aroused both her interest and her resentment. She wished to look at him, but also to go away. “I believe you,” she said.

  “Look at me.”

  She did so.

  “You’re very pretty.” He smiled that smile of Peter’s and she thought, yes, she was very pretty. It would be good to remember that. He added, “It’s a good thing you didn’t call me that night.” Margaret coughed, and when he did not elaborate, began, “My moth . . .”

  “Yes, I did see your mother drive past with those people from Chicago, the Smelt somethings.”

  “The Meltzers.”

  “Yes, it’s a good thing.” Now his eye was upon her.

  “Why?” She tried for a flat, cool tone, and attained something between a squeak and a bark.

  “Look at me.” He put the tip of his finger beneath her chin. “I did have designs.”

  It was hard to keep looking at him, but she made herself. His eyes were not brown but dark hazel. Their color made him seem less sinister, in spite of his “designs.” He was not so handsome after all, and he was old, like someone’s uncle. It was uncle
s who always told you you were very pretty, and while predicting unprecedented social success for you, stepped aside, out of the running. “So you say,” she replied.

  “Mmmm.” In a moment he said, “My wife is coming back from the Orient next week. She’s been gone nearly five months.”

  “Does she work there?” Margaret skated over the “she” as delicately as possible.

  “She studies. She’s a jade specialist at the Smithsonian.”

  Their previous chatter fell away, and Margaret sat up attentively. “How did she get to be that?”

  “Well, she went to Stanford. . . .”

  “I mean, how did she get the idea?”

  “Her father was a famous Sinologist, and they lived in Taiwan for a good deal of her childhood. She was born in China.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I am. She didn’t just think of it. I keep wondering how people just think of things to do. Do you have a real job?”

  “You could call it that. I’m a stockbroker, but it’s hardly something I thought of. I work for my uncle.”

  “Hnnh.”

  “My uncle would be insulted at your tone. He has lots of theories on the philosophical profundities of the stock market. But, yes, you may sneer. Anyway, some people do just think of things. My sister is a primatologist, and there hasn’t been a primate in our family for years.” He chuckled, but Margaret did not respond. “She got the idea at college, I think.”

  “Yeah?” She tried to sound polite, but there was no hope, in spite of the primatologist. Surprisingly, as she looked toward the warm-up ring where her brother was mounting Teddy, across the driveway and past the house and barn that formed the arena of her memory, tears started down her cheeks. “Good Lord,” said Harrison Randolph.

  “I’m sorry.” She snorted and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. This bout, she could tell, was going to be a plentiful one. “I don’t know anything to do. I don’t even know how to find out.” She snorted again. And would every man always bring out the most moist, least attractive facets of her being? He offered her his handkerchief.

  “You know why I went into selling stocks? It seemed very innocuous. Nothing wrong with making money, right? Are you O.K.? Look.” He raised his voice slightly. “None of my friends knew what they wanted to do until they were about thirty. By then, of course, there was the wife and the house and the kids, or maybe the dissertation, and anyway they’d been doing what they now didn’t want to do for eight or ten years.”

  Margaret gave a huge, shuddering sigh. Harrison leaned forward and pulled off his boots one by one. Then he wiggled his toes and made a face. Still she would not smile. “There’s another thing, too. When you’re younger you love lots of things. Baseball cards, model trains. You wouldn’t believe the model train my father built me, with all sorts of tunnels and levels, even a waterfall that the train ran under without getting wet. My sister used to wring her hands and run out of the room every time I switched it through there because she thought I was going to be electrocuted. Ah, what a train! After that came the horses, and I was terribly avid, almost possessed. I thought I’d never get to the bottom of that one. Then it was girls. Women, I mean. Sorry.” He glanced at Margaret’s sober countenance, and said, “Are you afraid you won’t find something that goes as deep as the horses do, or did?”

  Margaret nodded and put her hands over her face.

  “Don’t fall for the two temptations.”

  “What are those?” Her voice was barely audible.

  “Marriage and trying to do over and over what you did before. Marriage doesn’t work the way you think it’s going to.” He cleared his throat. “And doing the same thing over and over again is incredibly boring. Even riding. Why do you think masters of hounds always fall asleep in their chairs right after dinner?”

  Margaret wiped his handkerchief, which was enormous, over her cheeks and chin.

  “My sister stays out in the jungle in Venezuela for years on end. When she comes home she turns her nose up at the accoutrements of civilization and pines away for monkeys. I envy her, even though she isn’t very nice and doesn’t have any friends, only colleagues, and the jungle and its various diseases have really taken their toll of her looks. I don’t know. Do you feel better? All your choices are before you, my dear.”

  The handkerchief was now soaked, as were both sleeves of her shirt, but the tears had abated. She sniffed a couple of times, and was able to look at him again. “I don’t have any choices.”

  “Yes, well, sit with me for a minute or so.” He smiled very sweetly, designs or no.

  The afternoon cooled with the approach of dinnertime and the rising of a breeze that was almost springlike in its fragrance. There were five families in the ring, one of them, the Wards from Kansas City, consisting of eight members. Hillyard Ward, eighteen months, slumped against his father’s arm, but the rest of the family sat up chipper and straight, expecting to win.

  Axel, Kate, Peter, John, Henry, and Margaret were ranged next to them, mounted on six of Kate’s flashy home-bred bays. They were a striking group, two blond, four dark, three rangy, three compact, all six perfectly accoutered, all six attesting, for the time being, to the wisdom of Kate’s theories and methods. Even Axel’s legs hung limber but still at just the proper angle. All their hands and wrists were set in the mold of Kate’s hands and wrists (although during more strenuous activities the results of Kate’s old accident were apparent in the way she held her arm rather high), all their backs were supple and firm, like hers, and more upright, perhaps, than the Wards’ backs or the Jordans’ backs on the other side of them, because Kate’s theories were more German than Bob Ward’s or Ella Jordan’s. A few of the Pony Club mothers, who were yearly fascinated by this display of Karlsons, knew nothing about theories, but they remarked how proud and somewhat reserved the family looked, how their family solidarity as well as their equestrian ease was epitomized by that slightly exaggerated upright posture. Once a year, a few of the mothers took time out to envy Kate, whose family, in contrast to theirs, was centripetal rather than centrifugal. Not one riding child, one hospital volunteer, one football player, all of whom had to be driven everywhere all the time, but four intelligent children who stayed at home and knew one another, day in, day out. Everybody at the dinner table, and no rule about it to be enforced.

  Herbert Eisen paused in his winding up of extension cords and admired the Karlsons, too. Behind them as they sat there expertly controlling their horses, around them as they trotted down one side of the ring, were their own trees, their own fences, their own rolling fields, as far as the eye could see. The place was, even this late in the summer, so green, so breezy, so refreshing: streams, ponds, fruit trees, horses, cats, geese, pastoral order on every hand. And such a handsome family, he had to admit. Peter, of course, was the beauty and Margaret actually rather plain, but on the whole Eisen found it pleasant to look at the Karlsons. No one fat, everyone, even Axel (whom Eisen knew for a fact to be a real workaholic), sun-browned and obviously active. Each of the children was quite well mannered, and their mother never seemed to show the usual middle-aged strains of fatigue and harassment.

  Eisen heard two mothers murmuring behind him about how their children spent more time here than they did in their own homes, and he smiled. Ellen, too, but who could blame them? The mothers, and perhaps he, himself, would have done the same had they been children. He knotted the last of the cords, then began to pour out tubs of melted ice. He felt, not exactly envious, but not exactly serene, either. He snapped at one little boy, but also smiled at the two mothers, and one of them said of Kate, “She’s really something, isn’t she?” Eisen nodded.

  The Wards did win. The judge handed the blue ribbon to Hillyard, who promptly put it in his mouth, and the trophy to Mrs. Ward, who smiled and mentioned that next year there would be another tiny entrant in the family class, if everything went well. The ringmaster repeated this over the microphone, and the audience applau
ded again. The Karlsons were the last out of the ring. For a moment, alone center stage, it was apparent that everything was indeed theirs, intruding Wards notwithstanding. The ringmaster thanked them for their hospitality, and the applause for them was even louder than for the others. Here, the ringmaster seemed to be saying, was success of a very particular and rare nature. Kate smiled her glorious smile, Axel shaded his eyes, and Herbert Eisen thought to himself that who, at this moment, did not want to be them?

  10

  IN the morning Henry was there one minute (“Peanut butter for breakfast,” said John. “Yuk!”) and gone the next. The legs of his pajamas were pinned with safety pins, and included in the black saddle bag were two pairs of underpants, forgotten the day before. He was less enthusiastic about going than he was filled with conviction. It was this conviction that carried him nonchalantly past mother, coming out of the main barn (he’d thought she was still in the house) and without a wobble past father, who, hammer in hand, was walking the fence line looking for loose boards. He looked up as Henry passed, and Henry waved. Axel shouted, “Be back before lunch,” and then there was the sharp sudden sound of his hammer on wood. That, thought Henry, is that, and it was almost difficult, although inevitable, to keep pedaling. He swayed himself around the S curve, past the four Thoroughbreds who were grazing near the fence, past the red-winged blackbird, who rose out of her nest, as usual, and made a feint for his head. He pedaled faster, steering hard into the left-hand rut. He made himself think of the miles of exfoliating asphalt ahead of him, and dropped over the lip of the hill, holding tight and staring toward the first appearance of the bridge. With luck, no cars. No cars. As he shot through, he shouted, “Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!,” which lifted his spirits slightly, and then he began the long struggle up the far hill.

  It was almost difficult enough, after all, to encourage him to turn back, but still the journey had little to do with his wishes, everything to do with his fate. He pumped and pumped. Here were father’s stalls, here the gates. A car approached and he stopped, pretending no interest in the road outside the gates. Two Pony Clubbers waved. He waved back. The car crept down the hill behind him, and soon the coast was clear. Left foot to left pedal. He readjusted his saddle bag, his clothing. He coughed. He checked the brake, although it had always worked. Now then. Here was his silver, here were his greenbacks. He thought of meat, potatoes, fruit, vegetables. At last he jumped down on the higher, left pedal and was, although still visible for at least the next five minutes, gone.