Back to the Garden

by Clara Hume

  The man turned to look to the rest of us, firelight casting orange glows on our faces and shadows flickering to the edge of the night around us. He seemed very old. His body was thin and bony, his face black as a crow, and as his eyes squinted, his brow furrowed.

  "Call me Ishmael," he said with no smile upon his lips. He then turned to face directly to Jimmy, who stood up slowly.

  Jimmy—Chapter 18

  Back when Loretta and I was still a thang, before we started getting too many gray hairs, on Friday nights we would go to the Sarsaparilla Pub down in Sandpoint and dance and sing and drink with our fellow blue-collar workers and ranchers. We were a rowdy but sincere gang. If a fight broke out, it was settled with another beer and a slap on the shoulder. Only time we had real trouble was when we started getting drifters, only by that time me and Loretta was getting too old to head down the mountain all the time, and she was on an early ride to her grave with the flu.

  One of our gang was my best buddy Ishmael, who was born down Mississippi way and had come up on a dime. He'd hopped on a train with some pals when he was but 12 years old and lied about his age so he could get work along the way: he did fire lookouts, crop-pickin', you name it, but found his real talent was riding horses. He started working on my old man's ranch was he was 14 and never looked back.

  Me and him became fast buddies. I was a bit younger and looked up to this man highly. He was unbreakable and joined the rodeo circuit for a while. I watched him fall off bulls, horses, and mules and pounce right back up like nothing. One time he broke a leg and kept riding through the barrels until my daddy made him come down and get his leg splinted.

  Ishmael hardly ever said nuthin' about his life back in Mississippi.

  One day I was might sad for we had to put down my favorite horse, Gorblimey. She'd gotten beat up awful over a fence jump gone bad and was in pain. My daddy called me and Ishmael into the barn and said, "I want you boys to help ease her comfort."

  I don't know why my daddy didn't just do it himself. I coulda more easily done it if she weren't my favorite horse. But he handed me a shot of barbs to shoot into my Gorblimey's head, right betwixt her eyes, and I took the needle and was shaking so badly I couldn't do it.

  "Gotta do this, son," my pa said. He was not the gentle type, but this time he was trying to be.

  I remember looking at the chestnut body of that horse, which just that morning I'd saddled up and fed, and I could see one of her eyes roll up to me. She was a sweet horse, a bit energetic to ride, but friendly to me. She was my friend, and that's all there was to it.

  "I can't, Daddy." I said.

  I tossed the needle down on the ground, and Ishmael picked it up, brushed the sawdust off it, and gave the shot to the horse quickly.

  A few moments later, my horse had a faraway gaze and she was gone.

  "Dammit, Ishmael," I cried. I was just a kid. "We coulda fixed her!"

  I ran out of the barn screaming my head off. Nobody came after me, and I ran all the way from the barn up to my second story bedroom in the house, with Mother yelling at me, "James Robert Coombs! What in tarnation is goin' on with you?" I could just see that woman now, her big, full body in a perpetual flowered apron. Her voice always loud and commanding.

  I ignored her, slammed my bedroom door, and dove across my bed flat on my stomach so I could bury my tears in the pillow. I don't remember crying before or since, but that was my first match with death and I'll be gawd-darned if my best new buddy Ishmael hadn't betrayed me. Him and my daddy.

  I could faintly hear Daddy march inside and tell Mother what in tarnation was really happening, and I heard her yell at him something fierce, but then he simply let it bounce off of him like usual and went back outside.

  I didn't talk to anyone for the rest of the week. I wasn't relieved of chores, but hung my head low while kicking up dust on the ranch with my boots in whatever moody, solemn shuffle I had adopted that week. I had an old television up in my room that sometimes pulled in a channel from satellite. I would watch the news of the world until falling asleep or until the channel would blank out. Back then, the television on our mountain got only one channel, The News. All it talked about was the resource wars. It was scary to watch as a kid. But it got my mind of my horse.

  I had difficulty going back into the barn, but then Daddy finally said I couldn't keep neglectin' my chores, so I went back in spooked good, cause I thought my mare would be lying there on the floor, but of course I knew better. She weren't there no more, but to this day if I was to step inside that barn I'd be gettin' the goose bumps.

  I was angry, and every movement I made was with brute force. If I forked hay, I slammed everything around. If I had to shovel up shit, I flung it across the room and tried to hit the trash pail. If I had to ride, I rode hard and fast. Later I figured that puberty and killing one's own horse just don't go hand in hand.

  Ishmael was a pretty stolid teenager. His eyes were always calm. I think he had a Buddha spirit. He worked and played hard, but you could barely get that guy riled up for anything. Part of his strength was in his control of his own self. I done read up on martial arts like that, where they focus on steadying yourself and not acting out. Ishmael was that type. He had an equanimity that everyone envied. You couldn't ruffle that guy's feathers for nothin'.

  Knowing this, I didn't try to, either. I'd see him in the barn and out in the meadows, and I just walked on by. I was going to meet his utter composure with my silent treatment.

  But one day I was out tending to horseshoes, when he came by and said, "It's been two weeks, Jimmy, and I want to talk with you about that mare I put down."

  I didn't look at him.

  "She was in pain, Jimmy. And nothin' could be done about it. Each second longer that nothin' was done, she was feeling worse and worse. I had to help her out. I wasn't doin' it out of meanness."

  I didn't say a word. I kept nailing on the shoe, my mind racing with anger that seemed to not have any other outlet. No matter how many turds I'd thrown, doors I'd slammed, or miles I rode, I couldn't rid myself of that grief I felt over losing Gorblimey.

  It all welled up inside, and I turned toward Ishmael and bore into him, fresh hot tears in my eyes, and screamed, "She was my favorite horse, you damn bastard!" I punched him and hit him and tried to shove him over, but he was too strong.

  I went at it for several minutes, and the whole time he let me do it and kept muttering, "Now, Jimmy boy. It's gonna be okay."

  I finally stopped because my daddy was coming out to yell at me, but Ishmael said, "It's okay, Mr. Coombs, he don't mean nothin' by it."

  I ran off again, only this time Ishmael followed me. He ran as far as I did. It was on that same mountain in Idaho, and I ran all the way to the treeline beyond the corral and finally just couldn't run or be mad anymore.

  "Dammit, Jimmy, I'm really sorry!" Ishmael yelled. It shocked me cause I'd never heard him raise his voice before.

  I stood there, with my bloody and bruised hands, and sweat and tears running down my filthy face, and suddenly noticed I'd given him a real shiner.

  "Fuck, Ishmael, I didn't mean to hit you so hard."

  "Maybe I deserved it," he said. He was just so modest and humble, I hated myself for taking everything out on him.

  "Naw, naw, you didn't," I assured him. "I know it. I knew Gorblimey had to go. I just...I didn't want her to be the one. Hell, I put down other horses, but couldn't say bye to her. She was a filly when I was a baby, you know."

  "Never knew that," he said.

  He put his arm around me and said, "Let's go back home."

  We started walking down the hill, and I noticed the sky startin' to fade to dusk. Ishmael and I walked side by side, friends again. I was starting to feel the worst guilt for punchin' him. He let go of my shoulder, and swung down to pick up a piece of some kind of long weed and started chewing on it.

  "Why'd you name her Gorblimey, anyway?" asked Ishmael.

  "Welp, there's a story behind that," I started.
As we jaunted down the hill, I told him, "She was born two nights before I was. For the longest time they thought we'd both be born on the same night, but we wasn't. Mother and Daddy decided they would give that filly to me and let me name it whatever I wanted. Before I got to talkin', they just called her Horse. Well, I was about two or so and had my own vocabulary, but wasn't talkin' good enough to come up with a real creative name. I was out in her stall one evening. Daddy always wanted to socialize the horse with me, ya know, settin' me atop of her and that shit. Well, he was doin' just that and one of the new guys at the ranch who was from the UK came by and said, 'Gawl blimey! He is going to be a cowboy someday.' Daddy laughed, and I laughed—or so the story goes—and then I said, 'Gorblimey!' or what sounded like it, and they named the horse that. Come to find out later it was some sort of Cockney phrase or some shit that were some corruption of 'God Blind Me,' but I ain't never been sure on that one."

  Well, I never saw a man laugh so hard as Ishmael. His laughter came from somewhere deep inside, and he fell down and rolled in the grass, getting hay all over him. He couldn't stand up for a long time. I think he mighta peed himself, and soon enough I was giggling like a little school girl, and damn those hormones! One minute you was crying, the next you was punchin' your best friend, and the next you was rolling around giddy on the ground.

  That day cemented our friendship I 'spect as good as any friendship could ever be, and there'd be times in the future ol' Ishmael would come through for me, and me for him.

  That night we were dangling our legs out on the front porch swing, and I said, "Was it easy for you to put that horse down?" I couldn't say her name no more, because each time we did we couldn't stop laughin'.

  Ishmael's eyes got a little dark, and he stopped swinging and said, "I've had to put down a few horses in my time. It ain't never easy, but you have to not think about it."

  "I normally don't," I agreed.

  Then he said, "Where I'm from, in Mississippi, I watched my father get put down cause he was black."

  "Huh, what?" I asked.

  "Was comin' back from a dance one night near Jackson with my folks. We was just walkin' down the lane, and some boys came up in a convertible and started yellin' at us. It was close to midnight, and they was drunk. One of 'em threw a beer bottle at us, and it hit my head. I was just maybe eight years old then. My mama shielded me with her big body, and Daddy said in a whisper, 'Just keep walkin'."

  Those boys wouldn't leave us alone. They stopped their car, hopped out, and stumbled around, calling us 'filthy niggers' and threatening to shoot us. Well, one of 'em had a gun, and he started waving it all over the place. His friends tried to call 'im off, but it didn't work. He started shootin' the damn thing, and his friends got scared and was yellin' at him to stop it. The others jumped back into the car and started drivin' off, and this here fellow they left behind gets mad and points the gun dead on to my father's head and says, 'I am gonna do you a favor, nigger, and get rid of the misery your kind has spread upon this earth, and once I let you go, you ain't cause no more pain.'"

  I watched that young man shoot my father dead right before my eyes. He ran off, and that was that. My father died in our arms, and whoever that boy was, nobody ever caught 'im. Little did he know we hadn't been miserable 'tall. We was having a good time down at a barn-dance, and even though we didn't have much as far as possessions, you couldn't find happier folks."

  "Holy hell, Ishmael," I said. I gave him the hugest hug ever. I ain't hugged another man before. "I hope you realize that guy was an ass? Ain't no business of him doing you that way." I started feeling like bawling again, but stopped myself.

  "You learn to live with it, Jimmy. It hurts, but you move on."

  That man was my best friend all my life. He moved up from being a ranch hand to running his own place and got married to a fine woman named Jessie. They had three sons, and she died giving birth to the last one of those at age 47.

  By that time, my Loretta had passed away from the flu. She'd died some five years back, and so I went down to the Sarsaparilla to help nurse my old friend Ishmael back to health with the medicinal values of whiskey and rye. We met up at the corner sandwich joint, had a few laughs over supper, and then walked into the dim pub down the dusty road. It was early July, very hot out, and the pub had no air-conditioning, cause it cost so much to run it even then. The owner of the place, Sam, had the windows and the front door open, and there was a hint of a storm, and it blew in these strange winds all night.

  Jessie had died the week prior, and Ishmael was determined to start to get over her. His sister had the boys at her house that night, includin' the newborn. Poor Ishmael just couldn't deal with it all yet.

  We were drinkin' something heavy and ended up on the wide wooden-planked porch of the pub before the sunset, sittin' in these big rattan rocking chairs out there they had so you could watch people walk by or play chess, and we was enjoyin' a smoke and the cooling of the night, when Ishmael said something I would never forget.

  "I slept with her," he told me, his eyes all a glaze.

  "Slept with who?" I said laughin' my arse off, because everything is funny when you're having a good time.

  "Loretty," he said solemnly.

  I bolted out of my chair and punched him in the face. You'd think the adrenalized hormones of my teenage years had come back in full force. "You what?" I bellowed.

  I'd knocked him completely out of his chair, and the barkeep came out with his rag and said, "Now, boys, don't you be startin' no trouble."

  I'd hit Ishmael straight across the jaw, and caused him to bleed too. I figured I'd caught him with the ring I wore symbolizing my commitment to my now dead wife who he just admitted sleeping with. If I hadn't been so drunk, I would have let him explain first, but neither of us was exactly thinkin' straight.

  I could see tears come out of his eyes, and he said, "Whoa now, Jimmy. We ain't never had sex. I said sleep, not screw. It was one night long ago back when we was kids practically, back when my oldest was a young'un."

  He was trying very patiently to get the words out, and even though I'd heard the 'no sex' part, I couldn't stop feeling enraged. My hand hurt too.

  "What are you tryin' to tell me, Ishmael," I said, exhibiting the sort of self-composure I'd just lost a few seconds before.

  He got up from the dusty ground, wobbly, and sat back down on his chair again. He took a bandana off his neck and wiped the blood off of his face with it. I slowly sat down too, but felt like I could pounce back up at any minute.

  "It was the night you took Lizzy Collins home," he said.

  My mind trailed back to twenty years prior on an opaque fall night, before such heat had come to the mountain, but back when we weren't driving so much due to declining oil around the world. It was a night we was all at the pub: me and Loretta, Jessie and Ishmael, Les Carlson, the whole gang. We had a rip-roarin' night, and I got drunk and started flirtin' some with a new girl on our mountain, Liz. She was a pretty thing, with big green eyes that were almond shaped. But both me and Loretta flirted at times, and it meant nothin'. We'd never really do nothin'.

  It got to be close to 2:00 a.m. and I was drunker than normal, and that lady Liz had no way home. Her daddy lived near our place, about two mile down the road. But Les lived the other way, and Loretta, feeling tired, didn't want to walk with Liz and me. I offered to walk Lizzie home, and Jessie and Ishmael walked home with Loretta.

  Well, as per usual, they weren't quite done callin' it quits when they got up to our ranch, and Jess, Loretta, and Ishmael decided to drink some coffee and stay up till I got back.

  I remember I didn't get back for a very long time.

  Liz was not a slut at all. And I wasn't unfaithful to my wife, either, never had been, never intended to be. But Liz was fallin' asleep on that walk home up the mountain and kept fallin' down from drinkin' too much as she stumbled along that dusty road. It was pitch black, and the moon and stars were hidden from the cloud cover. There was a wind, lea
ves blowing, and a spit of rain on and off. I had to stop here, carry her there. By the time I got her back to her daddy's house, I was met with a rifle pointed to my face. He didn't believe me when I told him his daughter was drunk or that I was only offerin' to walk her home. He plum made me wait at their house until he called the police and they came out and interrogated me. They inspected her everywhere to make sure I hadn't of raped her. And they thought it was suspicious she was so dirty, but she had fallen down a lot and I weren't in exactly great shape myself that night to carry her home.

  By the time I got back to my cabin, the sun was just starting to lighten the eastern sky. I got in, and Loretta woke up, yelling at me that I had slept with Liz.

  "Look, darlin', that ain't what happened. Check with the police. They know."

  For some reason, Loretta didn't believe me on that one; she'd been convinced I was sleepin' over with Liz Collins.

  "She lives with her daddy, Loretta! Be real," I pleaded.

  I looked at Ishmael now and said, "I came home that mornin' after an awful night of getting Liz home. You know that."

  "That be true," he said. He rocked a little in his chair.

  "Then you better lay it on me what you meant by you slept with Loretta that night."

  Ishmael nodded. "It was after you left. Loretta made Jess and me some coffee, but an hour passed, and Retta was too worried about you. Jess went on home and insisted I stay and console Loretta. Jess figured you were sleeping around too. She had to get up early the next mornin' with our kid.

  "Loretta and I were havin' a good time, Jimmy. We had a nice talk about you and her, but as the hours went on, I was feelin' good, like I was developin' some kind of mutual respect and gettin' to know my best buddy's wife better, and then she opened some more whiskey. And we was drinkin' it, and our talkin' went more from her worried about you to her bein' mad that you was probably gettin' it on with that pretty young Liz. I tried to convince her it weren't true, but she wouldn't believe it.

  "I dunno, Jimmy. She said to come inside and sit on the couch with her, and I did, because I right didn't know what else to do and where that might lead. She placed her head down on my lap and said, 'Can you just hold me till he gets home?' and I said 'Sure, honey.'