by Oakland Ross
“He didn’t.”
“Oh, right.”
“No. I mean it. I’m sure it was one of the other two.”
“Davey? Or Edwin?”
“One or the other.”
I just shrugged. Maybe she was right. Who knew?
“So …” she said. “Della can go right back to work, bullet wound and all?”
“Crazy. But yeah.”
“How about tomorrow, then? In the afternoon? I might be free. I’ll give you a call.”
Might be free …? “Okay.”
Hilary shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and leaned against the side panel of the car. “What about your parents?”
“What about them?”
“Did they say anything? About Della?”
“Just the usual. I have to be more careful. That kind of stuff.”
“They didn’t call the police?”
“No. They said there’d be no point. It was probably some hunters who thought she was a moose.”
“Hah.”
“I know.”
I looked away. There was definitely a mystery here, and not just regarding the identity of Della’s shooter. There was a mystery about Hilary and Bruce, too. I wondered what else she wouldn’t talk about.
“Okay,” I said.
I hoisted my tack from the car, and Hilary closed the trunk. The boot. I could tell she was restless and wanted to get away. I thanked her for rescuing my saddle and bridle, and then I stepped back from the car. She walked around to the driver’s side.
“I’ll call you,” she said. She climbed into the front, pulled the door closed, and turned the ignition key. In a cloud of dust, she was gone.
For an entire week after that she failed to call, never mind her promise. One day drained slowly into the next. I kept on schooling Della, did roadwork, cantered or galloped through the high fields north of our place. By then Della’s wound had pretty well healed, and the stitches were gone. We could easily have resumed our afternoon forays down to the quarry ponds or our bareback training over at the Barkers’. But Hilary didn’t call.
You’d have thought I didn’t exist — that was what it felt like, like not existing or not mattering. It felt like torture, or a kind of torture, like being deliberately subjected to pain.
And then she called — a week late, but she called. She said that we should get back to work, that we should meet that same afternoon. It was just past ten o’clock in the morning, and I’d been eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich while reading a book about Einstein’s theories of relativity. Not theory. Theories. There are two. As for Hilary, she sounded perfectly normal on the phone, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, as if we’d been in close contact all along. I couldn’t understand why she was doing this to me. I wanted to ask her, but I was afraid of what she might say. So I just said, “Fine, see you.”
Early that afternoon I hacked toward the Barkers’ place. Hilary met me by the Quinton Vasco lands, and we rode the rest of the way together. She looked a lot better now than she had a week before, not so pale or worn out. The cut on her lip had healed, and her bruised eye looked better, or maybe she had just covered it with that stuff. Mascara, I think. Once again we took the long way around, cantering through a succession of cornfields while skirting the main entrance that led to the house at Colonel Barker’s. When we reached the paddock at the back of the property, I saw that a course of jumps had been set up, a half-dozen fences, mostly about three feet high — Hilary’s doing, probably.
“Watch,” she said.
She removed Club Soda’s saddle and bridle and vaulted back on. What I saw next, I could barely believe, then or now. Right away, I could tell that Club Soda was completely alert to Hilary’s signals, every change in the pressure of her legs, each shift in the distribution of her weight. His ears twitched in different directions but mainly pointed forward. He arched his back and tucked his head into his chest. He was listening, waiting, expecting — and somehow Hilary made him understand what she wanted, as if by some kind of telepathy. She guided that difficult creature around the course, jumping each fence cleanly — and not just cleanly but beautifully, in perfect balance. She kept her arms outstretched at her sides, like an acrobat or some sort of gliding bird. I watched as closely as I could, but it was impossible to tell exactly how she did it. When the round was done, Hilary brought Club Soda to a halt, through only the guidance of her legs and her body’s weight, and even that was a kind of magic, achieved without apparent effort. Next she straightened up, and Club Soda broke into a canter, making straight for me. He stopped just a few feet away — and bowed his head!
Hilary put up her hands in a kind of shrug. “There,” she said. “That last bit was just for show, hey.”
“The head bow?”
“Yebo.”
I was deeply impressed, with or without that final embellishment. Of course, I was. I didn’t know how to describe what I’d just seen. Remarkable? Miraculous? Impossible? Any one of those adjectives might have served, or all of them together, all of them squared. It was as if Club Soda was not a separate being, as if he were simply an extension of Hilary’s will, or as if they were two parts of a single creature.
“I can’t believe you did that.”
“Just for the record, I wasn’t showing off, not really. I only wanted you to see what can be done.”
“Just don’t tell me it was easy.”
“No, it wasn’t. It isn’t. You need to practise and practise. But, bit by bit, it comes. You’ll see.”
Somehow I doubted that.
Hilary threw her right leg over Club Soda’s neck and dropped to the ground, a completely irresponsible dismount, but what did she care? She clipped a shank to his halter and tied the shank to the paddock railing in a quick-release knot. Next she slogged around the course on foot, lowering the rails at each of the jumps so that they were no more than two feet high. She marched back to me. She told me it was my turn. No bridle. No saddle.
By now I was more or less resigned to my fate, which was to perish after being thrown from a horse, so I did as Hilary said. I tried my best — and I managed to get around the course. In a way, I did. I fell off three times, Della refused twice, and she knocked down two of the rails. But we got around.
Hilary clapped her hands. “Bravo!”
I couldn’t help smiling, never mind the falls. Despite the missteps and the refusals and the knocked-down rails, it had felt sort of … almost … good. I was getting better — more stable, more consistent, gentler. Della and I were working as a team, and it showed.
Just then I heard another pair of hands clapping, not Hilary’s but someone else’s — a slower pace, with a sarcastic rhythm. I looked around. Sure enough, it was Bruce bloody Gruber. He strutted toward us, past the crabapple trees. He was wearing a grey T-shirt, blue jeans, and workboots, with a cigarette dangling from his lips. I noticed he had a few scrapes and cuts on his face, too. That made me wonder. I realized he must have hiked all the way here, all the way from Second Line. How did he even know about this place?
“Good job, buddy,” he said to me. He clapped a couple more times, squinting through the smoke from his cigarette. Then he thrust out his palms and cracked his knuckles in rapid succession. “But next time, try stayin’ on the fuckin’ horse, why dontcha?”
I ransacked my brain, hoping I’d think of something to say, something really pointed and clever, something that would humiliate the guy. Of course, I came up with nothing. Just silence. Meanwhile, Hilary marched over and gave Bruce Gruber a kiss on the fucking lips. I’m not kidding. Next he enclosed her in his arms, as if they’d been lovers for years. What the hell was going on? It was as if he were a new yearling of hers, one she’d finally broken to saddle but only after a bitter struggle, and now they belonged to each other. The mere sight of those two — it revolted me. It made my head burn, as if there were a fire inside my skull.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hilary
South Africa, Winter 1962
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Hilary turned onto the service road that led into Mooi River. She’d just come from Bruntville, where she’d spoken to Muletsi’s mother. The conversation hadn’t lasted long, hadn’t needed to. “Basutoland,” she’d said. They would ride to Basutoland. It was the only way out of this fix. Mrs. Dadla had nodded, just a gesture, nothing more. She didn’t mention Muletsi’s name at all. Still, it was as if she had been expecting this, Hilary’s words. It was as if some circle had been closed. After that, Hilary hadn’t stayed long. There was no point in drawing more attention to herself than necessary.
Now there were a couple of errands she wanted to discharge. She wanted smokes, and she wanted to pass by the bottle store. Neither transaction would take long.
First, she bought a carton of Rothmans at the café, and then she stopped by the bottle store across the street, the drankvinkel, for a quart of Scotch. That was when it happened. She was walking out with her purchases and bearing along the pavement toward her car — her mother’s car — when frigging bloody hell if she didn’t blunder straight into Jack Tanner. She damned near dropped everything she was carrying, the carton of smokes and the quart of Bell’s. It was the first she’d seen of him since she’d got back.
“Hilly …” he said. He didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t seem to show any emotion at all. He just said her name, or his preferred approximation of her name, and then he said it again, with that faint question mark at the end. “Hilly …?”
She didn’t bother to correct him. Hilary. She didn’t say anything. All she wanted was to get away from here, far away. She took a sideways step and made to walk past him.
He moved to block her. He was carrying a package, too, what looked like a box or a carton inside a brown-paper bag. It was impossible to say what it was. He had several days’ growth of beard, and his skin looked as though it had been rubbed with sandpaper. It was raw — reddish in patches, where it wasn’t sallow — and there was a scar just below his right eye, a rib of proud flesh, along with a faint indentation that hadn’t been there before, minor but perceptible. That was Muletsi’s doing, no question.
He said, “I heard you were back. I was looking right forward to seeing you.” He spoke, for all the world, like a frigging old beau.
She stood where she was, didn’t move. She was afraid of making a scene. She didn’t want anything to do with this man.
“How was Jah Rule?”
He spoke as if they were at a braai, making conversation, except she hadn’t the faintest notion what he meant. Jah Rule …? What was that? Then she remembered — rhyming slang. It was a habit of his. He meant school, probably. She didn’t reply.
They were both silent for a time. Then he said, “I’ve got a cousin up in Joburg. I ever tell you that? Damned if I can remember his name. Nigel, is it? Nigel Whatsit?”
She glanced away. What was this? Small talk? He wanted to engage in a give-and-take of polite drivel? To what conceivable end? Sometimes she couldn’t figure out what was in his head. Now, without quite meaning to, she must have motioned in a way that showed her impatience, because his posture stiffened. He took a step back.
“I’m late,” she said. Again, she moved to walk past him.
Again, he shifted his body, the adjustment ever so slight, barely detectable. “Late …?” he said. “Late for what? I haven’t seen you in ages, and here we bump into each other quite by accident, and so soon you’ve got to go? Haven’t you time for a coffee?” He glanced at the two bags she was carrying and then behind her at the bottle store. He narrowed his eyes. “Or a Castle maybe? Wouldn’t that be better? What’s the harm in a pint or so? You don’t have to be running off now, do you? Not from your old mate, Jack.”
She watched as he shifted his own parcel to his right arm and then ran his left hand up the side of his face again. He was worrying at that scar, drawing attention to it, too.
“You’re not my mate,” she said. “You’ve never been my mate. Please. I want to go.” She tightened her jaw. That was a mistake — to have said please. She knew it at once.
He was smiling already. He’d noticed it, too. His manner changed at once, no hint of aggression now. Now he was all lightness and ease. “Oh, by all means,” he said. “By all means.” He stood aside, to let her pass. “Miss Anson.”
And she knew what he was doing — he was letting her go. He was frigging well granting her permission to leave. But what choice did she have? None whatsoever. She walked past him and kept right on walking. She walked all the way to her mother’s car, halfway down the block. She didn’t look back, didn’t need to. She could tell he was watching her, could feel it in the ripples running up her spine, as if the twin beams of his gaze were boring into the small of her back.
When she got to the car, her hands were shaking so hard she damned well dropped the keys. She had to set her parcels down on the pavement so she could retrieve the bloody things. Then she had to use both hands to pry the door open. She placed her purchases on the passenger seat and climbed in herself on the driver’s side, pulled the door shut. She shoved the key into the slot, turned the ignition, and swung the car around, stalling it twice. Then she sped away, knowing all the while that he was watching her go. Christ, she could still feel the force of his gaze, hot against her spine.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Sam
Ontario, Summer 1963
HILARY AND I WERE riding north along Second Line, just having completed another of our schooling sessions at Colonel Barker’s. She was in a triumphant mood, much as she tried to pretend otherwise. At a competition in Dunturn the previous weekend, she’d taken top honours in the advanced division.
For my part, I had done all right, I guess — better than my previous showing in Falkirk, where Della and I had been eliminated during the cross-country phase. This time I got through the competition without being thrown out, and that was progress of a sort. I had also managed one other feat. I’d beaten Edwin Duval in the dressage event, if not by much — my seventh place to his eighth. Still, no one had expected that even if, overall, Edwin had done far better, finishing in third place. Another Kelso rider, Janet Hünigan, had won first prize in our division. All in all, it had been a very good showing by Kelso — just not by me.
Pretty soon Hilary and I reached Number Four Sideroad, where I meant to turn left and ride home on my own. There’d been a time when I would have kept heading north along a slender trail that ran through a succession of grassy meadows and maple woodlot, a shorter and more beautiful ride, but Quinton Vasco’s fences now blocked the way.
I reined Della to the left.
“Hang on,” said Hilary. “I know a different route. At least, I think I do. Come on. Let’s see if this works.”
She urged Club Soda off the road and down through a ditch overgrown with timothy grass and daisies and that other flower — goldenrod, I think. Club Soda scrambled up the opposite side.
She glanced back at me. “Come on.”
“That way’s closed off.”
“Not anymore.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I went along anyway — curious, I guess. I soon caught up and then followed Hilary as she traced the chain-link fence. A thicket of maple trees stood on the far side of the barrier, partly obscuring a large open hillside rising to the east.
“Look. I told you.” Hilary pointed just ahead.
I saw what she meant. Someone equipped with a powerful set of wire cutters had opened a large gap in the fence, providing more than enough space for a single human to pass through. Even a horse could manage it.
I whistled. “Who did this?”
“Who do you think?”
I didn’t bother saying the guy’s name. What would have been the point?
“Don’t tell anyone, hey.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it.”
“Right. I won’t.”
Hilary dismounted and drew the reins over Club Soda’s head. Witho
ut hesitating, she slipped through the gap in the fence, then paused while Club Soda lowered his head and sprang through the opening right behind her.
She turned back to look at me. “Come on,” she said.
Wasn’t this illegal? What about the men with walkie-talkies and guns who were said to patrol the Quinton Vasco lands, not always but sometimes?
“Come on.”
I took a deep breath. I realized that, all this time, I’d been misjudging my fate. I would not be killed by falling from a horse. Instead, I would be shot for trespassing — but at least I would not die alone. Hilary would perish, too. We would succumb, the two of us, together. I found this prospect oddly bracing, so I took another breath, dropped to my feet, looped the reins over Della’s head, and led her through the gap in the fence, as easy as that.
Once inside, I stopped and looked around, thinking there must be someone nearby — some guards, some sort of security. But I saw no one. “Now what?”
“Now we’re free. Come on.”
We remounted and picked our way over a fencerow of fieldstones sheltered by maples before emerging into an open meadow of alfalfa that rose sharply to the east. Hilary touched her heels to Club Soda’s flanks, and he sprang into a canter. I hesitated for an instant and then followed her lead. The tall grass shoots peeled away like pages riffling in a book, and we raced toward the summit of a broad green ridge. Hilary was well out in front and was already waiting by the time I pulled up at her side.
“Look at that.” She pointed off to the east, where the earth seemed to plummet away before rising again in the distance, a view of cascading hills that extended for what must have been miles, one emerald wave after another. “Reminds me of Natal,” she said.
“South Africa looks like this?”
“Parts of it.” She fumbled for a cigarette, lit it, and put back her head. She blew out a cloud of smoke. “I can see why what’s his name wants this land. This must be the best view in Kelso.”
A couple of heavy trucks were stationed not far away, one with a crane mounted on its bed, but there were no humans around, or none that I could see. I told Hilary there was a trail near here that was famous as a lovers’ lane, or it once had been. You couldn’t see it from here, but it ran across the meadow below, down to the east. People used to drive along a rutted trail and then park somewhere, in order to do whatever it was they did.