Half broke horses: a true-life novel

by Jeannette Walls

  Someone with that sort of moxie, I thought, was either a born leader or a con artist. “What was he like?” I asked.

  Rosemary considered the question for a moment, as if trying to figure it out herself. “Interesting,” she said. “Different. One thing about him—he wasn’t a very good swimmer, but he jumped right in.”

  The jumper’s name was Rex Walls. He had grown up in West Virginia and was stationed at Luke Air Force Base. Rosemary came back from her first date with him practically giggling with glee. They’d met at a Mexican restaurant in Tempe, and when some guy had flirted with her, Rex had started a fight that became a general brawl, but she and Rex had ducked out and run off hand in hand before the cops arrived.

  “He called it ’doing the skedaddle,’” she said.

  Just what she needs, I thought. A hellion. “That sounds very promising,” I said.

  Rosemary ignored the sarcasm. “He talked all night,” she said. “He has all sorts of plans. And he’s very interested in my art. Mom, he’s the first man I’ve ever dated who’s taken me seriously as an artist. He actually asked to see some paintings.”

  * * *

  The following weekend Rex showed up at Horse Mesa to look at Rosemary’s art. He was a rangy fellow with narrow dark eyes, a devilish grin, and slicked-back black hair. He had courtly manners, sweeping off his air force cap, shaking Jim’s hand vigorously, and giving mine a gentle squeeze. “Now I see where Rosemary gets her looks,” he told me.

  “You do know how to spread it,” I said.

  Rex threw back his head and laughed. “And now I also see where Rosemary gets her sass.”

  “I’m just an old schoolmarm,” I went on. “But I do have a nice set of choppers.” I slipped out my dentures and held them up.

  Rosemary was mortified. “Mom!” she said.

  But Rex laughed again. “Those are fine indeed, but I can match you there,” he said, and slipped out his own set of dentures. He explained that when he was seventeen, his car had hit a tree. “The car stopped,” he said, “but I kept going.”

  This fellow did have a way about him, I thought. And at the very least, you knew anyone who could laugh off a car accident that took out all his teeth had to have a little gumption.

  Rosemary had brought in some of her paintings—desert landscapes, flowers, cats, portraits of Jim—and Rex held each one up, praising it to the skies for originality of composition, brilliance of color, sophistication of technique, and on and on. More horseshit, as far as I was concerned, but Rosemary lapped it up, just the way she did that existential hogwash from the Frog art teacher Ernestine.

  “Why aren’t any of these paintings hanging on the walls?” Rex asked.

  In the living room, we had two woodland prints that I had bought because the blue of the sky perfectly matched the blue of the rug on the floor. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Rex took them down and replaced them with two of Rosemary’s paintings that didn’t have any blue at all in them.

  “There,” he said. “On display, where they belong.”

  “Well, they’re nice, but they don’t match the rug,” I said. “It took me a long time to find prints with exactly the right shade of blue.”

  “To hell with matching,” Rex said. “You got to mix things up every now and then.” He pointed at my prints. “Those are just reproductions,” he said, and then gestured toward Rosemary’s paintings. “These are originals, and not just that, they’re goddamned masterpieces.”

  I looked at Rosemary. She was glowing.

  BY THE END OF the summer, Rex and Rosemary were dating regularly. I couldn’t tell how serious she was, but that polecat Rex was sure persistent. I felt I could read the man like a book. He was charming, but most con men were, since before they fleeced you, they needed to gain your trust. My crumb-bum first husband had taught me that. This Rex fellow always had a joke on hand, could talk about any subject, passed out compliments like candy, and made you feel you were the center of the world, but you couldn’t trust him farther than you could throw him.

  He also had all sorts of grand plans and was always talking about new energy sources—solar energy, thermal energy, wind energy. Jim thought Rex was all talk. “If we could harness the hot air coming out of that gasbag,” he said, “we could power the whole of Phoenix.”

  I didn’t actively discourage Rosemary from getting serious, since there was no more surefire way to make that willful young woman want to do something, but I did try to point out that he might not make the ideal mate for the long haul.

  “He’s not exactly a rock,” I said.

  “I don’t want to marry a rock,” she said.

  What she liked about Rex, Rosemary told me, was that when he was around, things always happened. He loved to start conversations with absolute strangers. He loved to act on whims. He loved pranks and surprises. Once he sneaked one of Rosemary’s smaller paintings into an art museum in Phoenix, hung it in an empty spot, then invited Rosemary to come to the museum with him. She’d never been so startled—or tickled—than when Rex led her over to it and, feigning surprise, said, “Well, lookie here. Best painting in the whole damned building.”

  Some of the things that happened around Rex were strange, Rosemary explained, some were exciting, some were funny, some were scary, but he made everything into an adventure. Because of his own wild streak, he had a way of recognizing it in others, as if they were Masons communicating by secret hand signals. You’d go to a circus and meet the clowns, the bareback rider, and the sword swallower, wind up after the show tossing back shots in a bar with all of them, the sword swallower showing you how to stick a knife down your throat, the bareback rider describing how the Nazis had sent her to a concentration camp because she was a gypsy, then one of the clowns— the sad-eyed one—would confess that his old sweetheart was living nearby and he’d never loved anyone since, so you’d all pile into the car and drive over to the sweetheart’s house and you’d find yourself at four in the morning standing under this strange woman’s window serenading her with “Red River Valley” in the hope of rekindling her love for the sad-eyed clown.

  Early one Saturday morning that fall, when Rosemary was home from college, Rex showed up at Horse Mesa. He was wearing cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat. Rosemary, Jim, and I were finishing our Cream of Wheat at the kitchen table. I asked Rex if he wanted me to fix him a bowl.

  “No, thank you, ma’am. I got a big day planned and I don’t want to weigh myself down.”

  “And what are your plans?” I asked.

  “Well, you’re all true horse people,” he said. “And I figure that since I’m going to marry this here daughter of yours, I gotta show you all that even though I’ve never been astride a horse, I got what it takes to ride one. So I’m off to find myself a horse today, and if you all want to come along and give this hillbilly a few pointers, I’d be most obliged.”

  Jim and I looked at each other. This fellow just was not going to go away. Meanwhile, Rosemary was saying that the Crebbses, who lived on a ranch at the foot of the mountains and sent their two kids to my school, had some quarter horses that they’d be happy to let us ride. So when we finished our Cream of Wheat, we all dug out our boots and set off in the Ford for the Crebbs place.

  Ray Crebbs told us the horses were in the corral and the tack was in the barn and we were free to saddle up, but the horses hadn’t been ridden for a couple of months and might be a bit fresh. We picked out four, but all of them were herd-bound and didn’t want to come to us, so Jim had to lasso those buggers before we could get them into the barn.

  Rosemary always had to have the most spirited horse in the herd, and she chose a hot little bay. I had my eye on a quiet gelding for Rex, but he said there was no way in hell he was riding a horse whose balls had been cut off, so I gave him the mare I’d picked out for myself, even though she was acting a tad scutchy and head-shy.

  After we saddled up, we headed out to the corral. Rosemary and Jim started trotting around to limber up their hor
ses, and I sat on mine in the middle to give Rex some tips. The poor fellow was being pretty game about it, but you could tell right off he was not a natural horseman. He was trying too hard. He was tensed up and leaning forward, which put all his weight in his shoulders. I told him to relax, sink down into the saddle, and take his hands off the horn, since it wasn’t going to save him.

  Instead of relaxing, Rex kept up a steady patter about what a cinch this riding business was, what a blast he was having, and how he wanted to put this old nag through her paces. “How do I get her out of second gear?” he asked.

  “First you got to learn to keep your fanny in the saddle,” I said.

  After a while I let Rex trot, but he kept popping out of his seat and jerking leather. Still, he insisted that he wasn’t getting off until he’d galloped because, he said, until you’d galloped on a horse, you couldn’t say you’d really ridden one.

  “You want to make her gallop, just kick her,” Rosemary called.

  And that was what Rex did, whacking the mare in the ribs. The horse started but didn’t break into a gallop, probably figuring that it wasn’t a good idea with this unbalanced rider. Rex was nonetheless surprised, and he started shouting, “Whoa! Whoa!” and sawing at the reins. All that noise and commotion spooked the poor mare, and that was when she took off.

  As the horse tore around the corral in a big circle, I yelled at Rex to sit back and grab mane, but he was so deep in the hole of his panic that he didn’t hear a thing. He kept shouting at the horse and jerking the reins, but the horse just leaned against the bit and galloped on.

  Jim and Rosemary scooted into the center of the corral to get out of her way. The mare had made a few circuits without slowing down, and I could tell that Rex was starting to come unglued. I could also tell by looking at the mare’s eyes that she was frightened, not angry, and that meant she wanted to stop but needed permission.

  I jumped off my horse and walked into the path of the galloping mare. I was prepared to dive to the side if she didn’t stop, but as she got close, I slowly raised my arms, looked her in the eye, and in a quiet voice said, “Whoa.” And right in front of me, she stopped.

  In fact, she stopped so suddenly that Rex pitched forward, clung to her neck for a moment, then fell to the ground.

  Rosemary slid off her horse and ran over. “Are you okay?” she asked him.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “He just had the lace knocked off his panties.”

  Rex got to his feet and dusted off his jeans. I could tell he was shaken up, but he took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. Then a big grin spread across his face. “I found the gas,” he said. “Now all’s I need to do is find the brake.”

  Rex insisted on getting back on, which I was glad he did, and we had ourselves a nice little ride around the Crebbs’ spread. It was late afternoon by the time we got back to Horse Mesa. I heated up some beans and, after we’d eaten, suggested we play a few hands of poker.

  “You won’t ever hear me say no to that,” Rex said. “I got a bottle of hooch in the car. How’s about I get it and we can have ourselves a pop or two.”

  Rex got the bottle, Jim set out glasses—including one for himself, just to be polite—and we all took a seat at the kitchen table. Rex poured everyone two fingers of whiskey. I dealt. There was no better way to read a man’s character than to watch him play poker. Some played with the aim of holding on to what they had, others played to make a killing. For some it was gambling pure and simple, for others it was a game of skill involving small calculated risks. For some it was about numbers, for others it was about psychology.

  Rosemary, for example, was a terrible poker player. It didn’t matter how many times I explained the rules, she was always asking questions that revealed her hand. No sooner had I dealt the cards than she looked at hers and asked, “Does a straight beat a flush?”

  “You’ll never win if you give yourself away like that,” I said.

  “Winning’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Rosemary said. “If you win all the time, no one wants to play with you.”

  I let that one pass.

  As we got deeper into the game, I could tell Rex was a good player. To him, the game was not about reading your cards, it was about reading your opponents, and at first he seemed to know exactly when to fold and when to raise the stakes.

  But he’d kept the bottle of hooch at his elbow. Jim and Rosemary hadn’t touched their whiskeys, and I’d taken only a few sips of mine. Rex kept refilling his glass, and as the evening wore on, he started playing too grandly, overbluffing, overbetting, losing pots he never should have tried to win, and getting mad at his cards when they let him down.

  After a while he stopped pouring himself shots and started swigging straight from the bottle. That was when I knew I could take him to the cleaners. I waited until I had a solid hand—a full house, eights over fours—and then I let him think he was bidding me up, but I never called him, and soon he was in deeper than he realized.

  I laid my cards on the table. Rex studied them, his expression turning sour, then threw his own cards facedown at the pot. After a few seconds, he chuckled. “Well, Lily,” he said, “that gelding didn’t have any balls, but you sure got yourself a pair.”

  Rosemary giggled. I had the feeling she liked the way her boyfriend had just gotten cheeky with her mother. Truth be told, he was the first fellow she’d brought home who hadn’t been even a little bit scared of me.

  Jim looked at Rex with raised eyebrows. “Watch yourself, flyboy,” he said.

  “No offense, pardner,” Rex said. “I was paying the lady a compliment.”

  Jim shrugged. “She’s taken many a ranch hand’s paycheck that very same way,” he added.

  Rex reached for his bottle to take another swig, but it was empty. “Guess we polished that off,” he said.

  “You polished it off,” I said.

  “Maybe we’ve played enough,” Rosemary said.

  Rex nodded. He set the bottle on the table, stood up, then lurched to one side.

  “You’re drunk,” I said.

  “Just got a little buzz,” Rex said. “But I do believe I’ll be taking my leave.”

  “You can’t drive that road in the condition you’re in.”

  “I’m fine,” Rex said. “I drive like this all the time.”

  “Maybe Mom’s right,” Rosemary said.

  “You can sleep in the garage,” Jim said.

  “I said I’m fine,” Rex told him, and started fishing in his pocket for his keys.

  “Listen, you boneheaded boozer,” I said, “you’re too drunk to drive, and I’m not allowing it.”

  Rex leaned both his fists on the table. “Listen, lady, Rex Walls don’t take orders from anyone, certainly not some old leather-faced, hard-assed biddy. And with that, I will bid you good night.”

  We all sat there in silence as Rex staggered out, slamming the screen door. We heard him turn the engine on, gun it, and then, with a screech of tires, he drove off into the darkness, down the mountainside on Agnes Weeps.

  THE NEXT DAY I felt I needed to have a serious talk with my daughter about her boyfriend.

  “That scalawag might be fun,” I said, “but he’s also a danger to himself and others.”

  “Nobody’s perfect,” she said. “We’re all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.”

  “True enough,” I said, “but not everyone lines up exactly in the middle. Rex is unstable. You’ll never have any security with him.”

  “I don’t really care about security,” she said. “And anyway, I don’t believe I’ll ever really have it with anyone. We could all be killed by an atom bomb tomorrow.”

  “So you’re telling me the future’s not important? That you’re going to live your life like there’s no tomorrow?”

  “Most people spend so much time worrying about the future that they don’t enjoy the present.”

  “And people who don’t plan for the future get am
bushed by it. Hope for the best but plan for the worst, my dad always used to say.”

  “You can’t prepare for everything that life’s going to throw at you,” she said. “And you can’t avoid danger. It’s there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you’ll miss out on all the adventure.”

  I felt there was a lot more I could say about the subject of danger. I could have given her an entire lecture on it, talking about my dad getting his head staved in by a horse when he was three, about my Chicago friend Minnie getting killed when her hair got caught in machinery, about my sister, Helen, taking her own life after accidentally getting pregnant. Life came with as much adventure and danger as any one body needed. You didn’t have to go chasing after them. But the fact of the matter was, Rosemary hadn’t really listened to what I had to say ever since that time we visited the Havasupai and I gave her the whipping for swimming with Fidel Hanna.

  “I don’t know what I did wrong raising you,” I said. “Maybe I tried too hard. But I still say you need an anchor.”

  Later that day there was a knock on the door. When I answered it, Rex Walls was standing outside. He had a big bouquet of white lilies in one hand, and he held it out to me.

  “Lilies for Lily, by way of apology,” he said. “Though they’re not as lovely as their namesake.”

  “That’s not exactly the tune you were whistling last night.”

  “What I said was inexcusable, and I’m the first to admit it,” he said. “But I was hoping you’d cut a fellow some slack.” He’d had a tough day, he went on, falling off a runaway horse in front of the woman he loved, then getting beat by her mother in poker, all of which led him to take a few nips too many. “But you started it, you know, calling me a bone-head.” He paused. “And I do know how to drive drunk.”

  I shook my head and looked at the lilies. “I could cut you all the slack in the world, but I still think my daughter needs an anchor.”

  “The problem with being attached to an anchor,” he said, “is it’s damned hard to fly.”

  What a scoundrel, I thought. Always having to have the last word. But the lilies were pretty. “I’ll go put these in water.”