by Lisa Wingate
The spurs were wicked looking instruments; the old-fashioned kind charros wore in Mexico. My father always said that if a man couldn’t control a horse without using tools like that, he didn’t need the horse. At the end of our row, Dad crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at the spurs.
Brother Ervin turned them over in his hand, touching a thumb to the ring of spines and appearing impressed by the sharpness. “Still pretty formidable, after all these years,” he said, and chuckled, his round stomach shaking up and down where his polyester western suit hung open. “You know, I watched my daddy use these spurs on many an ornery young horse. He was a big man, served in the First World War, mounted infantry.
Went off when he was just sixteen, because he felt it was what he needed to do. He was one of those old-time cowboys that don’t hardly exist anymore—lived by the code. Make no excuses and take no excuses. He was hard on horses and hard on kids. There was a lot of years I resented that. I was angry with the kind of man my father was.”
Scanning the crowd, he sought the faces of others who felt the same, then nodded meditatively, the wrinkles deepening around his eyes. “Looking back, I think he did what he knew. Most folks go through life that way, when you get right down to it—they aren’t trying to hurt anybody, they’re just doin’ what they know.
They learnt it from someplace, and they never thought about whether it was right or wrong. Mostly, what’s done with us as a child is what we go on and do in life. My father’s way got the job done. Many was the day he roped a colt, and if it fought, he just let the rope get tighter and tighter until the critter either gave in or choked down and fell to the ground. Sometimes, he used that old blacksnake whip and these spurs until there was hair and hide and blood all over the breakin’ pen, him, the horse, and the rest of us.” Flipping the rowel on the spur, he let it turn in the sunlight. The metal moaned softly and the jinglebobs chimed an eerie music as if they remembered the rise and fall of a boot.
“Watching him cured me of ever wanting to be a horse breaker. I figured if that was how the job got done, it wasn’t for me. There’s nothing easy about making a twelve-hundred-pound animal bend to your will.” Down the row, Justin Shay nodded in agreement. Beside me, Nate grabbed a pencil and made a note on the church bulletin, and up front, Betty Prine glanced at her watch, giving the preacher a disgusted look. She hated it when Brother Ervin went off on a tangent. She wanted to get to the point, read Scripture, sing “Old Rugged Cross,” and go home to Sunday dinner.
Brother Ervin pretended he didn’t see her, as usual. “Now, back in them days, we still delivered milk and eggs around from our farm, and there was an old black man who lived on my route. A lot of you probably don’t remember Hardy Pots, but he was the father of our Pastor Harve, out at Caney Creek Church. Hardy Pots was old and crippled up by the time I knew him, but he still broke horses for folks. I’d watch him sometimes when I passed by his place, and I never saw a whip, or a spur, or heard his voice raised when he was in the corral with an animal. Seemed to me like he didn’t do much but stand there and let the horses run around him. It never occurred to me to really ponder the reasons for that.”
Pausing, Brother Harve set the spurs atop the pulpit, where the colored light from the windows fell over them, bathing them in red. “It’s been only just recently I finally understood why it was always so quiet around old Hardy’s corral. You see, I been readin’ the book on which the movie is actually based, An Ordinary Horseman.” Taking the book from behind the pulpit, he held it up for everyone to see. “If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to. There’s a few copies floatin’ around town these days, and maybe even one in the library, if you’re lucky. The book will help you understand the movie, but there’s a deeper meaning here. This book’ll tell you a lot about how we ought to be to each other, and how our heavenly Father is toward us.”
Brother Ervin set the book aside and let the assertion—that something about God could be learned from a book about horses— settle. In the front rows, Betty Prine and the ladies of the Literary Society frowned back and forth at one another. They’d warned Brother Ervin in Church Council time and time again that examples should be strictly biblical. Brother Ervin went on, “You see, there’s a lot of us think God is like my father was. They think He just throws on the rope and keeps the pressure up until we choke down, and when we go the wrong way, He lays on the blacksnake and the spur.” With a benevolent smile, Brother Ervin shook his head at the spurs. “But you see, that’s not how a good horseman works. A good horseman is patient. He’s quiet. He knows that the horse’s natural state is to live in partnership. Deep down, way down in its instincts, that animal realizes that isolation puts it in danger, makes it vulnerable. The horseman sees that truth all the while the animal is circlin’ the corral, squealing and kicking and trying to keep as far away as he can, and so the horseman just waits. He waits because he knows the nature of the horse. He waits when the animal does wrong. He waits when it fights and runs away. He just moves real quiet around the corral. He lets that horse run all it wants, wear itself out as much as it needs to. Eventually, the horse figures out things aren’t good out there by the fence. It stops and turns to the horseman, and comes into the center, and sees that’s where peace is. That’s where safety is. That’s where rest and comfort lie.”
Taking the spur from the red light, Brother Erve covered over the rowel with his hand, so that the sharp points were no longer visible. “God is a good horseman. He waits while we circle the fences of our lives—whatever they are, whether it be a bad childhood, or a destructive habit, family problems, an addiction, a personal tragedy, an inability to forgive someone else or to allow ourselves to ask forgiveness, or believe we deserve it. The Good Horseman waits, and each time we turn and look at Him, He stretches out His hand, slow and quiet, until finally, sooner or later, we reach for it, and we come to the center with Him, and find that peace was waiting there all along.”
Iris Mayfield struck up the music, and Amber crested the steps to the microphone as Brother Erve let the last words fade. He took the spurs of a horsebreaker to the altar of the Good Horseman and laid them down atop the Bible. I watched metal touch the worn leather cover, felt the preacher’s hand move away as if it were my own.
Where there was pain, I felt the beginnings of release, and all at once I understood that the Good Horseman had been waiting for me for a very long time.
Chapter 20
Nathaniel Heath
When the service ended, a crowd of hand-shakers mobbed our pew, and we were trapped. Lauren must have seen it coming, because she slipped out during the closing hymn and disappeared through the back door as The Shay’s admirers gathered around.
Justin was in his element. Compared to the usual throng of screaming fans and jostling paparazzi, the Daily Baptists were pleasant people—friendly, laid back, definite foodies. We garnered at least a dozen invitations to Sunday dinner, and Bob offered to feed us at the café for free. Justin seemed to be entertaining the offers, so I took the opportunity to play Marla and remind him that he needed to head back to the hotel and focus on the proposal. It was now noon, T minus five hours in Horseman terms. When Dane arrived this evening, we had to be ready to whisk him off into the sunset, impress him with cowboy magic, convince him that Justin could do a picture without guns and car chase scenes, and dazzle the Dane kids with pony rides until their father had no choice but to attach himself to the project. With Dane committed, Randall and the studio would be hard pressed to fight it.
I hoped.
They wouldn’t say no to M. Harrison Dane, would they?
No. No one would say no to Dane. All I had to do was get Justin back to the hotel and get him focused. Why that was my job, I couldn’t say. I wasn’t the one who had wanted this project in the first place. I was the one who said it was a stupid idea, yet here I was, worrying about scheduling and other practicalities while Justin sailed around the crowd like a cuttlefish, handing out autographs, posing for photos
with Amber and the Dailyians, and acting like he had all the time in the world.
What’s wrong with this picture?
He knows you’ll do it, Oprah muttered in my head. He knows you’ll play the adult, which leaves him free to act like a teenager at the prom. You should just step back. Leave it to him. It’s his project. This happens every time. He acts like an idiot, and you end up stuck in jail in Morocco.
How’s that workin’ for ya? Dr. Phil added.
I pictured Dane showing up and Justin stumbling through the proposal materials, unprepared and bloated on chicken-fried steak and mile-high coconut pie from the Daily Café.
Not happening. Not.
I told Frederico we needed to get Justin out of there. Happy to oblige, Fred did a pretty good job of elbowing old ladies out of the way, gathering up The Shay, and clearing a path to the door, where we said good-bye to Amber, who was headed to some little town near Dallas for a fund-raiser but planned to be back in the evening before Dane arrived.
Justin was pouty about the idea. “I figured you’d come help me study the proposal, babe,” he complained, his arm looped around her shoulder.
Amber’s big blue eyes were filled with the self-inflicted guilt of a natural nurturer. “I’m sorry, Justin. I didn’t know Mr. Dane was gonna decide to come today. This fund-raiser’s been planned for weeks. If I don’t go, they won’t be able to put together the money so kids can have coats next winter. I thought I told you about thay-ut.” She probably had, but Justin only heard what he wanted to hear. Right now, with Dane coming in a few hours, he was feeling pressured and needy. He wanted to lean on someone, preferably someone cute.
Amber cast a desperate look toward a van with a radio station logo on the side, already waiting for her in the parking lot. “Justin, I’ve gotta go. I’ll be back this afternoon before Mr. Dane comes. I promise.”
“Yeah,” Justin muttered, slipping into passive-aggressive protest mode as Amber kissed him on the cheek and hurried off. “Go ahead. I’ll figure it out. If Nate hadn’t taken so long to get me the proposal, we wouldn’t be in a bind, anyway.”
I gaped at The Shay, my sleep-deprived brain fishing for words. Back up a minute. Let’s review. I’ve been kidnapped and taken to Texas. I’ve been working like a word slave for days, up all night to pull this rabbit out of a hat for you. I got up and went to church instead of sleeping, because I figured we probably needed a miracle to pull this off, and now this mess is my fault?
I’m going home. That’s it. I’m going home. Let the horseman take care of himself. Whatever happens, happens. …
“The Good Horseman is patient. … ” The words from the sermon repeated inconveniently in my head. “The Good Horseman waits, and each time we turn to look at Him, He stretches out his hand, slow and quiet, until finally, sooner or later we reach for it. … ”
By the door, Willie laid a hand on Justin’s shoulder, saying, “Now, son, calm down. You ever seen a Thoroughbred on race day? He’s a ball’a nerves from the minute he hears the tractors draggin’ the track. He’ll pace, and chew the stall door, and act up. If you don’t watch him, he’ll burn up the energy he needs for the race, just worryin’ about it ahead. To win, he’s gotta keep calm, stay focused, so that when the time comes, he can git out there and do what he’s meant to do.” Willie’s big hand squeezed Justin’s shoulder and he leaned close, meeting Justin’s eyes, horseman to wannabe. “You gotta stay calm. Keep focused. I’ll help you read—” Willie paused to cough, and the coughing turned into a spasm that sent him staggering off the porch. Imagene and Frank hurried down to check on him as he caught his breath and stood upright again, looking pale.
“Everything all right?” Brother Ervin asked as he closed the church doors.
“Fine.” Willie’s voice was hoarse and sparse. “Think I swallered a gnat.”
Donetta cast a concerned look at Willie, and by the car, Mimi stopped conversing with Fred long enough to notice that her boyfriend didn’t look so well. “Everything okay, sweetie?” she called, and Willie waved her off.
We all stood for a minute, trying to figure out what should come next. Finally Donetta suggested that Willie go back to Frank’s to rest for a while. Since the beauty shop was closed today, Donetta and Imagene would help Justin study the proposal packet, or practice lines in the sample scenes, or whatever was needed. “I got some actin’ experience, and back when American Megastar did Amber’s hometown show, Imagene got interviewed. On national TV.”
Justin didn’t protest. He wanted someone to coddle him, and now he’d found someone. I considered being a fly on the wall during this afternoon’s script session, but really, I wanted to go find Lauren. I’d been thinking all morning about what Donetta had said when she woke me up earlier.
“Sometimes God puts a new path under your feet, not because you think you’re ready to walk it, but because He knows that’s the way you need to go.”
Maybe Donetta was right, or maybe it was just wishful thinking on both our parts, but I wanted to further investigate the possibility before my time with Lauren was officially over.
“I think I’ll head back to the hotel on foot,” I said as the group moved toward various vehicles in the parking lot. It was a nice morning, the town quiet in the reverent way of little towns after Sunday service, when everyone moves on to dinner at Grandma’s house or the local café. I felt good inside, like Sunday was more than just another day for once, and that was the way it should be.
The pastor’s sermon replayed in my head as I walked, and I considered the time I’d spent circling the fences of my life at top speed, looking for a way to bust through, to break away from my mom, from Doug, from pointless leftover childhood questions, like, If my grandparents loved me, why did they let my mother take me away time and time again? If my mother loved me, why was some guy she’d just met always more important? If my father cared about me, how could he die and leave me with my mom?
If the people who raised me didn’t care about me, then I wasn’t anything special and I never would be. …
Doug was right. …
All these years, I’d been battering the same barriers over and over and over, thinking that the answer lay in breaking through and leaving the past behind. I’d looked for the answer somewhere outside—my work, my house, my car, my name in the credits, a paycheck, A-list parties, friends with big names. But every time, I came up empty. The answer wasn’t there. On the way back to the hotel, it dawned on me: Maybe the answer isn’t in getting beyond where you come from but in learning to accept the things that went into your making. Maybe the secret is in looking at the end product and figuring out what it’s good for.
I pondered it as I strolled the long way home, past the feed mill, where my steps echoed hollowly against the tall grain silos, and I could hear the river floating by. Maybe the point of life isn’t in getting past it, but in making something of it.
The new frame of thought took shape in my mind, and I realized that I wanted to share it with Lauren. I looked for her when I got back to the hotel, but there was no one around other than Frederico, doing thigh burners in the exercise room, while Imagene, Donetta, and Justin sat gathered in the beauty shop. They were sharing chicken nuggets and gravy as Donetta read the proposal aloud. They were impressed with my work, which was nice, but in reality I could see that, between the distraction of the two of them talking and people passing by outside the window, stopping to gawk or wave, Justin wasn’t getting anything done.
“You’d probably better take that upstairs,” I suggested, and he gave me a peeved sneer.
“I got it under control, Nate.” Dipping a nugget in the gravy bucket, he leaned over and touched one of the pages, leaving behind a greasy smudge. I made a mental note to reprint a clean set before Dane arrived. No telling what shape these would be in.
“It’s time to get focused.” I sounded like somebody’s mommy, but what other choice was there? For whatever reason, Justin wasn’t getting down to business, and time was ru
nning short. He needed to concentrate, and generally, he only did that when there was no one around to play with.
Imagene regarded me in an acute way, then nodded as if she understood. “You know what, Netta. We should head on over to Frank’s place and take them some of this pie.”
Donetta straightened in her chair. “I gotta help Justin go over his script, Imagene. Besides, Frank took a pie home from the café yester-dey. They probably still got some left.”
Imagene’s eyes widened, and behind Justin’s back, she thumbed insistently toward the door. Donetta ignored her and focused on the papers. Finally, Imagene grabbed Donetta’s arm and tried to lift her out of the chair, and for a minute, I thought we were about to be ringside for a wrestling match.
“Uhhh … we can just go upstairs,” I suggested, and got another annoyed frown from Justin. As long as there were people, and pie, and a constant stream of admirers passing by the window down here, he wasn’t in the mood to leave.
“Nonsense.” Imagene was a determined woman when she had her mind set. “We’ll just head on out to Frank’s and leave the buildin’ quiet for you boys. We’ll take Frederico with us. You can have the whole place to yourselves to get ready for this evenin’ and such. Besides, Donetta and me ought to go check on Willie and make sure he’s feelin’ all right, shouldn’t we, Netta?”
Peering up over the top of her bifocals, Donetta smacked her lips as if she had a bad taste in her mouth, but then finally acquiesced. “Oh, you’re right, I guess we should. Knowin’ Frank, he’ll have Willie out in the pasture a’horseback. Somebody’s got to take care of the poor man, him havin’ that lung cancer and all. He—”
“Netta.” Imagene pulled Donetta’s sleeve, and it was clear to me, even if Donetta seemed oblivious to it, that a rather large cat had just escaped the bag.
“Well, it’s not like you could count on that Mimi to do it.” Donetta was completely oblivious to the secret now prowling the room. “You know, he hadn’t even told her he has cancer, and her supposed to be his girlfriend and all. Can you imagine—”