I walked around with my dad until he abandoned me at the beer tent to be with his friends and tell his favorite Rolo story, though I don’t think they’d ever met. Dad was always quick to point out how Rolo stole his job and everyone knew it because my father was the best farm worker there was and Scarsdale had the best farm and that meant the best money and weren’t there enough people in the town to hire? Looking for outside help, my dad always said, was the luxury of the asshole rich. All the men would agree with him because they’d wanted that job, too, but they wouldn’t have fucked a horse to get it like Rolo must have.
I found Jim-Bob and Earwig standing around the beer tent waiting to see if one of the fathers would get drunk enough and feel sorry for sober boys and pass them a cold one or two. I thought they were avoiding me because they were embarrassed for abandoning me with Rolo, but that wasn’t the case.
“Did you bring it?” Jim-Bob asked me, flicking his lighter. He had a shiner around his eye. I didn’t ask about it, because I could recognize that kind of damage when I saw it. Earwig only had his mother and three sisters, so he kept staring at it, but even he knew better than to say anything. Those kinds of things you maintained quietly, else you were a pussy.
“Bring what?” I asked.
He lowered his voice. “You know, idiot. The picture. From the Bible.”
“Oh.” I said. “No. He took it. Rolo.”
“Shit.”
I was giving Jim-Bob a “sorry-bout-that” cigarette when we saw her. Last year’s Apple Queen. She looked better than in the picture, even with more clothes on. I couldn’t remember her name, but I never could remember any of the names of the Apple Queens. You could always tell an ex-Apple Queen, even long after they became our mothers and grandmothers. There was something about the way they walked, like they were better than us, which I guess was true because they were better than us. Sometimes you’d see them walking around on a non-Fest day with their rhinestone crowns on their head, the sun hitting it and shining so bright it pierced your eyes to look at them straight on. Still, we all wanted them, better than us or not—still wanted to see what they felt and tasted like.
She was swinging a bright red leather bag on her arm. It looked heavy. She stopped in front of us. I couldn’t see her eyes. She wore big dark sunglasses. Earwig and I held up our chests and stared at her full on. Jim-Bob was a year older than us and had more experience with girls, so he looked like he gave two shits.
She said, “Can I bum one?”
Jim-Bob gave her his cigarette. He held the lighter up to her lips. I was impressed; his hand didn’t tremble or anything.
“You boys come to watch the crowning?” she asked.
We nodded.
“I was so pretty last year.”
We nodded.
“Having a good time?” she asked.
We nodded.
“You gonna cheer for the new Apple Queen?”
We shrugged. It was the right response. For the time it takes to smoke a cigarette real slow, last year’s Apple Queen stood next to us against the tent and puffed. Some of the men would occasionally pat her on the head or her ass and say, Hey, Apple Queen, hey, and sometimes she’d say hey back and other times she stood still like it hadn’t happened. We thought it was real cool, like we were being real slick and all that because she stayed with us. After, we were going to leave without saying anything, because that’s what you do with a girl, even an older one; you leave them wanting more. But Earwig opened his damn mouth and told her we hung out by Rolo’s barn and she should come by with us whenever she wanted. More smokes, he told her. And booze.
“I know the place,” she said. She said she might stop by in that airy way older girls had, and once she was gone Jim-Bob and I really let Earwig have it. We punched him on either side, hard, but he didn’t cry because none of us cried from something like that.
We all went to watch them crown the new Apple Queen. It was a good day for it. Sometimes it rained, but today it was stark and sunny. While all the women sat around and smoked and whispered in one another’s ear, the men took all the fruit they’d pulled off the tree branches until they’d left them bare and laid them all down at the new Apple Queen’s feet. Then they took the crown and blue sash from last year’s queen and gave it to the bright-faced new one. She was plump in the face and brunette this time and she sat high on bushels of red and pink and green and rotting brown apples and raised her hands above us all, all very pretty like. We all loved her with our eyes, except last year’s Apple Queen. She looked like murder. Red revenge. Sure, she smiled, and her teeth were all straight and white, but she had the same expression my dad did when he takes off his belt in the middle of the day.
After the festival died down and the men had to be carried away by their wives and daughters, Jim-Bob and Earwig said they were going to go to the diner and get free sodas from Earwig’s mom, who worked as a line cook and would sometimes slip us burnt toast and undercooked eggs if we waited around long enough. She was a tired, happy woman and we all liked her. On the weekends she worked as a vet tech, which I think she liked better, said it was more fun, but there wasn’t enough business to do it full time and there was no husband for her to only work when she wanted. She was always extra special nice to us boys, and if we were good she’d let us watch her cut the dead animals open or throw them into the fire.
I said I might join them at the diner later, said I was going to try to get the picture back, but really I just kept thinking about Rolo and that horse. He’d looked at that stallion like I saw Jim-Bob look at last year’s Apple Queen. Maybe the rumors were true.
When I got there Rolo was shoveling out heaps of shit. He fumbled with the shovel when he saw me. I should have asked for the picture, but he just kept looking at me like he didn’t know what I was, even though I suppose we looked mostly the same, except he was older and dirty. I asked if I could watch him take care of the horses. He stared at me for a long while, and I thought he would refuse, but he just turned around and kept shoveling. I took it as invitation enough.
He took care of the stables for Mr. Scarsdale, who was rich enough not to live around us. Scarsdale grew up in the house a few over from where I was born and lived, but he had a good sense for numbers and cheating, so he’d made it out of here. The girls all wanted to be the Apple Queen, and we boys all wanted to be like Mr. Scarsdale, who could afford to keep this land for breeding and competition but didn’t have to live on the shit himself.
Rolo worked hard and was real kind to the horses, kinder than my dad was with me, anyway. He really took his time with them, especially when he bathed them. He’d take a hose and wet the ground near their hoofs, then splash their legs. He spent a lot of time on their legs, smoothing the muscles there with his bare hands. He said you had to check the vein on the inside of the leg and make sure it was cool before you hosed their body, else they’d colic. Then he’d move up the firm thighs and massage them, then onto their shoulders before moving to their necks, their long torsos, and the tail. He shampooed their manes and tails and scrubbed hard, whispering cooing things I couldn’t make out all the while. Then he’d put on their anti-sweat sheets and call them good boy or good girl, like my mom used to do when I was young and coming out of the bath. After, he’d cut up carrots and feed them. When the sun wasn’t too hot he worked them around the yard, which didn’t seem much like work. They liked to run, their long, knobby legs prancing like they were on show, and their tails shining. Rolo must have brushed them all the time to keep their fur that straight and that nice.
I think he must have been lonely, because he told me all their names without me asking. There was Pinky, Haze, the tiny white mare was Butler, there was Charles Schulz, and the big brown stallion who’d been angry yesterday was Strut. Strut was Rolo’s favorite. I could tell. He took his time with Strut, whispered all sorts of soothing things, called him “a sweet dumb beast” and fed him red appl
es.
“Hey,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“That picture.”
“Yeah?”
I shrugged. “You still got it?”
He kind of turned away from me and hid his hand in his pocket. “Yeah.”
“Can I have it? It isn’t mine. I gotta give it back.”
He took his hand out of his pocket and handed me the picture, except it seemed cleaner now than when he’d taken it. Washed, if you can wash a photograph.
“Shouldn’t do that,” he said, looking at Strut. “What would she think if she knew?”
I didn’t know. She was an Apple Queen. How would I know what kind of things went on in her head?
“She looks like a sweet thing,” he said in the same tone he used when talking to Strut.
* * *
Even after I gave Jim-Bob the picture back and he decided we shouldn’t spend so much time near the barns (“Fucking horse fucker,” he said. “Shouldn’t be allowed to be in town. Pervert. Probably watches us and gets off on it.”), I still kept going back. Sometimes I didn’t talk to Rolo and he didn’t talk to me, but he’d always let me watch, and sometimes he let me shovel out the shit which I didn’t care for really but it felt good to clean something for the horses. My favorite was when he let me touch Strut. Not much, and never for long. Just a quick stroke of his nose or a fast pound on the flank. The horse was wild and angry, but when he was younger, he’d won a couple of races, so they let him do what he wanted, so long as he would mount a mare when he was supposed to.
I had to keep making excuses why I couldn’t hang out with Jim-Bob and Earwig. Jim-Bob said, Fuck, whatever, when I said I was sick or I had to stay home and help my mom with something, but Earwig would get all quiet and say he missed me and he hoped I got better soon. I called him a dope, and then he said bye and hung up, but I felt bad for him.
I never saw Rolo anywhere outside of the barn. He must have gone out for food and supplies and things that you need, but he wasn’t ever in town. Didn’t he want a cup of coffee with the other old guys? I always offered him a cigarette because that was something you did with friends—and it would force him to go into town and buy more if he took to them—but he always refused. Said it was bad for the horses. Said it was bad for me, too, but whatever.
He wasn’t a talker, but I could usually get him to talk about the horses. If I asked about what people said about him he always told me to shut up, but if I asked nice things he would talk back. Once he started talking without me having to ask anything.
“See that?” Strut was running and whinnying. I thought it was because he was pissed or something, but Rolo said it was because he was happy.
“He’s fenced in,” I said.
Rolo grunted and grabbed the cigarette from my mouth. He broke it in half and threw it behind him. “Strut’s easy,” he said. “He don’t need things like we do. Just simple stuff. All sorts of ugly things don’t exist in his world. The only thing ugly to him is the fence, but see there? He runs around it like it ain’t there, so it ain’t.”
And Strut did gallop around it like it wasn’t there, like he wanted to take the turns he did and not because there was wire and wood in the way.
“Think like a horse does,” Rolo said. “It might disconnect you for a bit.”
I could tell he thought that was a good thing. I tried offering him a cigarette again, but he said no.
It was Earwig who called me and begged me to hang out with him, so I cut an afternoon with Rolo short and met him at the diner. His mom said she hadn’t seen me around much and made me a strawberry milkshake. Earwig lowered his head, waited until his mom had her back turned, and whispered that Jim-Bob was fucking last year’s Apple Queen. I think he told me so that he’d have someone to spend time with during their act. He seemed more lonely than usual. But he was a good kid. A little off but good all around. For him I spent the next afternoon with Rolo, went home for dinner because otherwise my mother would have sent my father out, pissed off from working nine hours, to drag me to the table, and planned to spend the evening with Earwig and Jim-Bob.
We three met up where we used to go whack off together, but Jim-Bob had brought the ex-Apple Queen. We couldn’t tug on ourselves with an Apple Queen around, especially if she was Jim-Bob’s. Seemed rude. She wore a red dress that ended before her knees and didn’t wear shoes. It was dark, but she wore sunglasses anyway. Her toenails were painted pink. Her fingers were dirty.
She brought beer, much more than we could ever get raiding our parents’ cabinets or hiding bottles in our coats at the drugstore, and we got really trashed. Earwig didn’t know when to stop, so he vomited, drank more, vomited again, and passed out, but not before he cried out for his daddy, wherever that guy was. Last year’s Apple Queen was older and wiser and knew what to do, so she rolled Earwig on his side and said this way he wouldn’t choke on his vomit or smash his nose and suffocate in his sleep. Apple Queens are sweet like that.
I kept staring at Jim-Bob to see what changed when someone fucked an Apple Queen. We’d all imagined what it would be like, but besides his clenched jaw and looking off into the distance, it didn’t seem like much was different. He didn’t even pay attention to the Apple Queen, and I felt bad because maybe they had a fight or something—people who fuck often do—so I made sure she always had a full beer and a cigarette in either hand. That made Jim-Bob even more quiet. He tried putting his hand on her bare ankle but she hit him, hard.
She said, “Show me the horses,” and she said it to me. “Jim-Bobby told me you hang around here a lot on your own.” That made Jim-Bob wobble to his feet.
“What are you pissed about?” she asked him. She was laughing.
“Nothin,” he said. “I’m going home. Tired.”
“Oh, fuck you,” she said. “You’re just a shit.”
Jim-Bob took two of the better beers and walked off, muttering to himself the whole time.
I wasn’t feeling right, so when she asked me again I shook my head. “Can’t. Not mine to show.”
“You can,” she said. “I want to feel that smooth thing under me. What’s a queen without a steed, huh?” And I knew then that she hadn’t drank nearly as much as the rest of us had. Or she could handle it better. She grabbed my hand and led me, like I was some magic bunny foot that would get her through whatever barrier she believed was there but she didn’t really need me. I was disposable. I didn’t mind. Her hand was soft and dirty and that was OK. It was simple and I liked it.
She opened the barn door and I guess Apple Queens have a strange sort of strength in them. They don’t look it, but they got it. She pulled me in and she was laughing.
We saw Rolo there and we stopped moving. He was only wearing an old pair of jeans and stood in front of Strut’s stable, holding the horse’s muzzle in his hands right close to his face. He had his eyes closed and he was touching his lips against the horse’s nose and he must have been whispering something because I could hear the vowels drawn but I couldn’t make them out. It sounded something really painful kind of beautiful like. It hurt to watch. I wanted to leave, but the Apple Queen pulled me forward. Rolo turned and saw us and he looked scared.
“What’re you doin’ here?” Rolo said. He jerked back from Strut. The horse whinnied and threw his head back, almost hitting the side of the pen. “Get outta here.”
I wanted to but the Apple Queen kept dragging me. “Oh, wow, all that shit they say about you is true,” she said. “You really do fuck them.” She made it sound like that was so cool.
“I said go!” He looked at me, his face all red, his eyes almost all white and wet. I pulled myself away from the Apple Queen and stumbled to the barn door, but I was so curious that I didn’t leave. I stood in front of the doors and watched the Apple Queen take careful steps toward him on her toes, like a ballerina.
She picked up one of the apples Rolo
kept around for the horses. A green one with spots, the real sour kind. She brought it to her nose and took a big whiff and smiled. She stared at Rolo and bit into the apple, the liquid dripping out the side of her lips. She took the piece from between her lips and offered it, opened palm, to Strut.
“Don’t,” said Rolo.
But she winked and the horse sniffed her palm, opened his muzzle and, with his huge, blunt teeth and sloppy lips, gulped the apple piece up. The Apple Queen took another bite of the apple and swallowed it. “Sweet,” she said.
Rolo grunted and rubbed his chest like he wanted to cover up.
“Aw, don’t be like that, Mister Roly-Poly,” she said, sitting on the side of one of the troughs. “You’ll scare the kid.” She spread her long, pretty arms and said, “I always wondered that about you, whenever they talked about you. Old Rolo likes to fuck horses. They say I’m too old to be the Apple Queen anymore, but that’s just age. So what’s wrong with you? Why doesn’t anyone like you? Is it because you can’t get a woman to spread herself for you? Come here,” she curled her fingers towards him. “I can like you, if you want. Don’t you want to know what you’re missing?”
She fisted the hem of her red dress in one hand and lifted it, willy-nilly, like she wanted to get it over with. Then she laid back and parted her thighs really fast, balancing herself on the two ends of the trough. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Around her thighs, near her pussy, she had tattoos of thorns. I felt worse than I did before. I wanted to touch those thorns and see if I’d prick myself.
“Well?” she said when Rolo didn’t move. “Ain’t you gonna?”
But Rolo just looked scared. Like she was scaring a big old man like him, even though she was shorter and must have underweighed him by about sixty pounds. Strut was grunting and hitting his body against the side of his pen. Rolo kept looking at the horse and then back at the ex-Apple Queen.
Magic for Unlucky Girls Page 4