Jonas lived lives behind his eyelids. He saw ages of war in faraway places. Through it all, the bay was there. He was always her rider, whether a helmeted Spaniard spitting savages two at a time on his lance or a whooping, painted Indian shaking dripping scalps at the moon.
He felt overwhelming affection for her. Through squalls of bloodshed, when men and animals would buck or cut and run, he knew she would be there beneath him; no sword or bullet or scent of slaughter made her flinch. She was his, and he was hers.
In the hours between dreams, Jonas became a confident rider, to the delight of Famous and
Claire and even Clem, but not to Panos, who maintained his mistrust of the mare.
Jonas took the feed she was allotted and buried it back of the trash heap at night. At first he used what money he had left from his Grandma to buy meat from the butcher’s in town, which he fed to the mare down by the river where no one could see. The money didn’t last long.
He fed her such stray cats and dogs as he could bait and catch, but eventually no more would come near their place.
He soon had himself a dilemma.
Jonas was thinking hard about what to do when he led her into the stable and found Famous waiting for him.
"You’ve been scarce," Famous said. "Just out riding."
"I mean ever since you got that horse. You’re a stranger."
He shrugged, unsaddling her. He’d always been a stranger, hadn’t he? "Want some help?"
"I got it."
"Ought to think about putting her in with Lily Belle," he observed. The mare had been off by herself in the bronc stable all this time.
Jonas shrugged. "I guess."
"Sorry I haven’t been around to help you out with her. ‘Been so damn busy getting ready for Bisbee. I meant to make an appointment with the farrier, maybe get her teeth rasped. They look a little sharp. But you know, since Henry…hell, none of us are the buster he was."
"Yeah."
"I know you liked him a lot." "Yeah."
Famous walked around the stable, rubbing his sides. "What’d you name her?"
Jonas hadn’t. He felt like he didn’t have the right to name her any more than he had the right to name the Queen of England if she wandered up. He felt she had a name, she just hadn’t told it to him yet.
"Blondie," he said lamely. "How come?"
"She looks it in the sun, sometimes." Famous nodded.
"Panos still says she’s bad luck." He looked at the mare. Jonas shrugged.
"I wanted to take you to Bisbee this year," Famous began, " but well, with Henry bein’ gone…I
got to go instead. I don’t wanna leave Claire with just old Panos for company…" "I don’t mind stayin’,’’ Jonas said.
"No?"
"Nope."
It was true. He didn’t know how he’d manage to feed the mare on the trail with Famous and Clem around all the time anyway. This way he could keep on like he was for a while longer, till he figured something else out.
"You and Claire’ll have a good old time," Famous said. "She’s lookin’ forward to it. She told me last night she’s planning to fix a pie for you every week till we get back. Act surprised, though. It’s supposed to be a secret."
"I’d like peach pie," said Jonas.
"I’ll let her know." He patted Jonas’ shoulder and went to the doorway. "Why don’t you fix up the stall next to Lily Belle’s for Blondie? Get her used to it."
"I will," Jonas said. "Hey, daddy?" "Yeah?"
"Where’d you and Claire meet?" Famous leaned in the doorway.
"She was a schoolteacher in Tucson." "She was always a schoolteacher?" "Yeah. I told you that."
"I forgot."
~
Famous and Clem left for Bisbee before dawn the next morning. That afternoon Panos hitched up the buggy and Claire let Jonas drive her into town.
Along the way she chatted him up about school. He half listened, gave half answers.
They went into the mercantile. Carrie Shallbetter came out with the reverend and smiled at him.
When Claire got all she wanted to and gave him the sack to carry, she pointed out a bag of hard rock candy on top.
"That’s for the reverend’s daughter. You take it with you on Sunday and ask her if she wants some after church. Be sure and ask her daddy’s permission. Nothing’ll ingratiate you more with a young lady and her family than hard rock candy and manners sweet to match," she said.
As he put the groceries into the buggy, she said, "Now I’ve got one more thing to pick up and then we’ll head home. You wait here till I call for you."
He watched her go off down the boardwalk. He picked up the bag of candy. Two cans of peaches were tucked underneath. He felt like throwing the candy into the street, but he put it in his coat pocket.
"Jonas?"
Claire poked her bonnetted head out of Fitzsimmons’s shop and waved him over.
Jonas went inside and found Fitzsimmons and her both smiling ear to ear. There was a handsome, brand new black saddle on the counter.
"A new horse ought to have a new saddle," Claire said.
Jonas stood in the doorway. The saddle was stamped with flying eagles and curlicue designs, and the polished leather gleamed like oil. It was a saddle worthy of the bay mare.
"Well go on, Jonas," said Mr. Fitzsimmons, chuckling. "You don’t expect your ma to carry it herself do you? Not after she was good enough to foot the bill."
Jonas looked at Fitzsimmons, then at Claire. He could feel his face heat up. "She ain’t my ma," he said, and stomped out.
~
Panos found Jonas sitting in the stable next to the mare’s stall, cracking candy between his back teeth.
"I oughta yank your britches down and beat your little ass blue," he growled. Jonas sucked the red from the candy.
"What the hell’s gotten into you?" the old Greek said. "Miss Lady’s laying on her bed crying her sweet eyes out. You could’ve at least drove her home."
"Felt like walking," Jonas said.
Panos spat and turned his bushy browed glare on the mare, standing quietly in her stall. "Your daddy never should’ve given you this goddamned nag."
"Don’t call her that," Jonas said, looking Panos in the eye for the first time.
"We should’ve put her down that day Henry died," the old man muttered, and stalked out. Jonas finished the candy and bridled the mare. She needed to be fed, and with Claire busy bawling there’d be no supper, no scraps of beef to sneak.
He climbed onto her back, not bothering with a saddle, and gave her a nudge with his heels. She seemed to respond to the angry fire in his chest, and beat the earth down hard beneath her hooves. They went like an arrow into the desert. Her frothy, swelling flanks wet the insides of his legs. Her mane whipped against his cheeks as he bent low against her.
When they were far from the ranch he dropped the reins, tore open his shirt, and let the wind snatch it away so that the flying grit in the air attacked his bare skin.
He threw out his fists and squeezed her between his skinny knees. He yelled loud and shrill, a boy’s wild scream, his lungs in savage contention with the rushing wind. He wanted to turn around and ride through Delirium Tremens like the bullet of an angry angel, burning up every- thing he passed. He wanted to run down Fitzsimmons in the street as mama had been run down. He wanted to trample Claire under the bay’s hooves as she lay in Famous’ bed, smash Panos into a greasy paste. He’d ride for Bisbee then, overtake Famous and Clem and the mailman, and that drunkard mama had chased out of Skinner & Dunn’s, hell, even pound the grave mounds flat over mama and Grandma, smash and burn the whole bunch like a low flying meteor plowing up a sizzling furrow in the earth, leaving everything in its wake black and smoking. Let the bay mare gobble them all down like a hungry goddess come to eat the world. He couldn’t love the living, and the dead wouldn’t let him go. There was only the bay mare.
Jonas wanted to ride that horse until their own flesh and blood and guts melted away, until the
y were just a handful of black bone and ash. The glowing embers that remained would inter- mingle and be carried by the momentum of their going, up like on a gust of high hot desert wind, up into the empty night sky to there flash out like roaring, dying stars in the cold, lonesome black.
The horse cut left and let out a scream to match his own. Jonas clung to her as she galloped after a fretful, darting white form that flew out from under a creosote bush, yowling its distress.
It was a tawny, big eared coyote out hunting mice. It bolted at the sight of them, but she easily overmatched its speed. Her nose shot down like a hawk’s beak and caught up the howling coyote by the nape, lifting it from all four paws and snapping its neck with one shake of its head.
She drew to a stop, her madness staunched like a flaming bough plunged into a bucket of blood. Jonas lay full on her back, the cooling sweat from his belly soaking his jeans and pooling in his boots, mixing with the loam foaming white on her dark coat. His limbs hung limp and spent. He whispered loving words into her heaving withers as she savagely grunted between bites.
~
It was late when Jonas led the mare into her stall and staggered into the house to collapse on his bed, his jeans and skin crusted with grit and blood.
He was drifting off into another dream of slaughter when he heard the mare nicker and sat up.
He put on his coat and crept barefoot through the quiet house and out onto the porch. The stable he had just left dark was all aglow.
Panos turned when he heard the stable door creak open.
The old Greek had his shotgun. The one he’d used on the colt and her mother last spring. "I thought you were asleep," he said. "I meant to wait till you were."
Jonas’ heart quickened as he saw Panos turn the gun on the mare. He took the pitchfork from where it rested against the wall and rushed.
The prongs sank to the cross bar in Panos’ back and drove him against the stall gate. Panos fumbled the shotgun and dropped it.
The old man gripped the top of the gate and wheezed, looking up into the face of the blood bay mare.
It seemed as if she bent her head to kiss the old man, but at the last moment her jaws opened and clamped over his face. Panos screamed. It was a muffled sound, quickly overcome by the sharp crackling of bone as his jaw collapsed and blood coursed down his throat. His eyes bugged. She threw back her head and lifted him off the floor with her powerful neck. She shook him as she had the coyote and his whole skeleton undulated like a bullwhacker’s whip snapping in the air. The pitchfork popped from his back and fell away. She slammed him twice across the stall gate. The third time his limbs hung loose and rubbery as plough lines and his knees scraped the floor. He swung like a pendulum from her muzzle, three rivers of dark blood oozing from his back and flecking the straw.
She backed up and pulled him most of the way over the gate, until only his feet protruded over the edge. Jonas heard the crackling and wet sucking of her feeding. He glimpsed pink and stark red beneath the door.
Jonas sat down in the hay and put his back against the wall. He hugged his knees and thereon rested his chin. His eyelids were heavy.
Xanthe, he thought as he dozed off. That’s your name, isn’t it?
He did not dream.
~
In the morning, Jonas got up early and went to the house to wash and change his clothes. When he came into the kitchen, his nostrils filled with a delicious, sweet smell unlike any he’d ever known.
Claire was dappled in white flour, her shirt sleeves rolled and her sunny hair escaping from a bun in wiry strands. She smiled. Jonas stood in the doorway and smiled back.
"It’s gonna be a little while till it cools. I can’t put it on the sill. Sand gets into everything around here." She said, and gestured to the fresh baked pie. "Hope you like peach."
"I never had it," he said. Her smile fell.
"But I’m sure I’ll love it." She smiled again.
"Well good."
"I’m gonna go check on Xanthe." "Who?"
"My horse."
"Oh. I thought your daddy said you called her Blondie." "Be right back."
~
Jonas opened Xanthe’s stall. Her coat was stiff with blood, the white blaze black with it.
He stroked her chin and whispered to her, cheek to cheek. "You ain’t still hungry are you?"
The mare flicked her ears.
"I thought so," he chuckled. "Yeah, you can always eat, can’t you? Come on."
He put Henry’s old saddle on her, tied up his bedroll and bags and strapped Panos’ shotgun across the cantle.
He mounted and eased her across the yard, clomping right up onto the porch. He blasted the front door off its hinges with the shotgun. Horses were not known to easily abide setting foot indoors. Panos had told him that. Xanthe didn’t mind.
They each partook of their favorite meals, and then took the trail south toward Polvo Arrido and Mexico.
~
Famous and Clem came home from Bisbee a week later and noticed the open door to the bronc stable. Famous made a note to scold Jonas about leaving it open, though of course not too harshly, as it was the first time he’d done it. While Clem took the new horses to their stalls, Famous found the remains of Panos, knowing him by his three gold teeth.
He backed out of the stable with a rising gorge. When he saw the front door and the black hoof prints scattered across the porch, he went running, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and choking out Claire’s name through the taste of bile and breakfast beans.
A minute later Clem heard the shot that signaled his inheritance of Famous’ Horses.
Chef 's Choice
The Clockworks of Hell
Brian J. Hatcher
Gary answered the phone on the first ring. "Union Missionary Baptist Church. Pastor Waid speaking."
"Is it true you can’t get into Heaven if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit?" "Hello, Dad."
"Lucky guess."
Gary leaned back in his study chair. "Still trying to get the atheist church to teach you the secret handshake?"
"You’re confusing us with the Masons, Son. No secret handshake. Least I don’t think so." "It exists but you choose not to believe in it. How apropos."
Dad laughed. "Here I thought you’d lost your sense of humor."
"With your hilarious religious comedy phone calls to look forward to?" "I shouldn’t call?"
"Where else would I get anecdotes for Sunday School? But you usually call me at home." "I tried," Dad said. "Left three messages on your answering machine."
"Is everything okay?"
"Fine. I just wanted to invite you up to the house."
"We have plans for Thanksgiving, right?" Gary asked.
"You don’t have to wait six months. They’re stocking the lake this weekend." "Dad, I can’t. I’m new at this church and things will be hectic for a while." "All summer?" Dad asked.
"I don’t know."
"Why don’t I come down?"
"Dad, there’s no point driving all the way here just to stay a day or two."
"You taste my home cooking, you might not let me leave. And we can hang out on your day off. Christians rest on Saturday, right?"
"Jews, Dad."
"Fine, when are you off?"
"I don’t have a set schedule," Gary said. Dad sighed. "Here we go again."
"What?"
"When was your last day off?" "Dad—."
"How about the last night you got eight hours sleep?" Dad asked. "Thought so. Afraid God’ll let your church fall apart if you don’t keep an eye on it?"
"Sure, let God handle it. You atheists, that’s your answer for everything."
"Go ahead, make jokes on your way back into the hospital. Bad enough when you were younger. Now you’re Christian and want to be a martyr. When will you realize your best is good enough?"
"It’s not like that."
"Come up this summer. We’ll go out on the lake for a couple of days. I’ll get you back in plenty of
time for Sunday."
"Maybe."
"Don’t make me come down there. You think you know hell, Preacher Man? Watch me raise some."
"I’ll come up. Promise. A fishing trip sounds fun, assuming you don’t spend the entire time quoting Dawkins."
"What kind of father would I be if I didn’t try to broaden your horizons?"
"Not the kind I know. Hey, I’m visiting a church member in an hour. We’ll talk later." "Call me. Soon."
"I will. Bye, Dad."
As Gary hung up, Brother Harris knocked on the half-opened door. "Pastor? You busy?" "No, come on in." Brother Harris walked in and they shook hands. "I’m not forgetting an appointment, am I?"
"My crew finished early, and I thought I’d come by and clean the church. I’m sure you have plenty else to keep you busy."
"I appreciate the help," Gary said. "I’m looking for a custodian to replace Brother Branson so we don’t have to do this every week. I guess I should meet with the Deacon Board to discuss that, and Sister Travis."
"What’s to say?"
"I know I haven’t been out of seminary that long, but I’ve never had anyone walk out of a sermon before."
"Sister Travis was looking for an excuse. Nothing would’ve made her happy except Pastor Grant coming back. As for Brother Branson, he’s been custodian for twenty years. It’s time for a younger guy to take over."
"So you don’t think my hellfire and brimstone sermon on Sunday had anything to do with it?"
"It’s not a head deacon’s place to tell his pastor how to preach. Yes, the sermon was, well, a bit louder than we’re used to. But you have to preach the message God’s laid on your heart. The congregation will either stick with you or they won’t."
"I want to see new faces in the pews, not lose the ones we already have."
"Pastor," said Brother Harris. "Church for you is all day, every day, but it isn’t that way for the rest of us. But even the people who only pick up their Bibles on Sunday need a church they can call home. They need a pastor who’ll meet them where they are. If you can do that, they might eventually meet you a little bit where you are."
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