by Ian Stansel
Right then, though, Lena wanted only to get rid of her. The plan had been disrupted and she worried that she might back out if she wasn’t gone by daybreak. There is a reason crimes are committed in the dark. Night comes and people lose their minds a little. Lunacy is just the right word. But she still had more than an hour, so instead of raising suspicion higher than it already was by her mere presence that early, she changed her tune, said, “Maybe coffee would be nice.” Rain disappeared and by the time she returned with two mugs complete with half-and-half and a quarter-spoon of sugar in each, Lena had Pepper fully tacked save for the saddlebags, still stashed in a back corner of the tack room. The sun was inching up toward the horizon, light still just a whispered rumor.
They drank their coffees. Lena pulled on her jodhpurs and tossed her old shitkicker duck shoes back into the tack room. She then urged Rain to try to get a bit more sleep. “It’s going to be a busy day and I need to depend on you,” she said. “Go on.” This last utterance given with the force of a caring boss. An authority. Rain pursed her mouth into a smile, turned back to the apartment, and slipped into the dark. Lena waited a moment. She then finished her preparations—strapped on the saddlebags, twisted herself into backpack straps, cinched Pepper’s girth one more notch—mounted, and was off.
In the purple predawn light, she took Pepper through the town of Fairfax. They passed the old movie theater, the restaurants, the deli, the grocery, the elementary school. No one was out yet save for a couple of women, older than her, power-walking. They paid her no mind. How many places were there anymore where the clopping of horse hooves in the middle of a town could elicit so little reaction? She paused in her thinking, her anxiety, her grief, to thank God she lived right there.
Rain would manage the stable for however long it took. She’d done it in the past when Lena and Frank had gone away. Everything would be fine, as though Lena herself were running the day-to-day. The house, at the west edge of the property, the one where Lena had lived with Frank for the past decade, would be fine too. Her horses, her car—they would all remain there as if nothing out of the ordinary were occurring, as if she weren’t out stalking her brother-in-law. And if she had to miss Frank’s funeral, then so be it. He would understand.
On the far side of town she rode the shoulder of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard up White Hill, excavated granite walls rising on either side of her, walls that within hours would be crawling with sinewy, spiderlike rock climbers. Folks in Marin did so love their recreation. But now the rocks were clear. From the top of the hill, the mouth of the San Geronimo Valley, she would make her way to Nicasio, where her hunt would begin in earnest.
Grief excused all manner of odd behavior. Like taking a horse out for a ride at five o’clock in the morning. Would it follow, then, that she would be forgiven when it came out that she was hunting her husband’s killer? No, probably not. That right there, that was a crazy thing to do. A crime. Murder. She wouldn’t let her mind skirt the word. She was going out to murder a man. She would track him, thinking with his mind as well as she could, seeing with his eyes. It might take a day, a week. She did not know. She did know that she would be relentless and she would catch him. And when she did, she would fetch the .38 from her pack and shoot him dead.
Only a few cars passed that first morning, their headlights cutting through the dark, illuminating the mist settled on the fields flanking the road. And none of those drivers and passengers would recall seeing a middle-aged woman atop a horse, her eyes ringed with grief but blazing with intent.
Three
Frank. The man was a pestilence. Silas used to keep a tally in his head of all the wrongs he’d been done by his brother, but at some point it became useless and impossible. One ill deed morphed into the next. A slight would recall an insult years back. Why bother to differentiate between one and another? It was a sea; what was the use in counting every polluted wave to come along?
Of course there were times that stuck out, specific instances highlighted in his list of grievances. Frank shot Silas, first of all, with a goddamn Colt six-shooter. You don’t forget something like that. And this was no childhood playing-with-Daddy’s-pistol scenario. This was just twenty years back. Both men in their thirties, and that son of a bitch aimed steady-handed and pulled the trigger, looking to kill. If Silas were a different sort of fellow he might have chalked his survival up to some kind of divine hand. But he wasn’t a different sort, and he knew he had just one thing to thank for his pulling through: Frank had always been shit with a pistol.
So that took top billing. But there were others, mostly to do with horses, business. The brothers had waged war on each other since parting as partners when Silas was twenty-nine, just a couple years after their father died and not even a decade after they took over the old stable. Silas didn’t like to dwell on their battles too long, for he knew damn well that in the big picture he was no mere victim. But still he ranked Frank’s crimes against him as far worse offenses than he’d ever committed. Until now.
He and Frank were born two years apart, Frank the elder. Funny story with Frank: He didn’t have a birth certificate until he was in his twenties. Kid was born in the back of a Ford pickup at the side of the road. Their father, Silas Sr., had been rushing his wife, Virginia, to the hospital. This was back in the early 1960s and San Geronimo, where they lived, was about as remote then as the craggy tip of a mountain. But halfway down the hill into town, Virginia says, “No, no, stop the truck, it’s here, it’s here now, here it comes,” and Silas Sr., he tears over to the shoulder and runs around and tosses this big old horse blanket over the bed and goes and pulls his wife out of the truck by her armpits and gets her somehow up on the blanket and she’s screaming bloody goddamn murder and by the time he pulls off her undies and pushes her knees up like he must have seen somewhere, the goddamn kid is crowning and Silas Sr., he’s thinking, Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus, because, one, what he’s watching, and two, he’s about to be a dad and that whole complex of worry comes crashing in, and then suddenly Virginia is quiet except for these kind of extended groans and sad sighs, and he’s in awe of her—how the hell does she know how to do this?—and the head kind of pops through the opening and Virginia says, “Get him, Silas, get him,” and he does and by God it is a him, and he’s a father to a son, and he wipes the kid’s mouth out like his wife tells him and the kid is crying, Holy Mother of God, is this kid crying, like Silas Sr. never heard before. Or so the story went. After a few minutes of dumbfounded silence (and after the confusion of the placenta passing—“Good God, woman, is there another?” Silas Sr. asked), Silas Sr. says to his wife, “You okay?” and she pants, “Okay,” and then, “Give him here,” and Silas Sr. does and it’s only then that he remembers that they’re on the side of the goddamn road, and so he says, “Let’s go home,” and Virginia just nods.
Story continues, Frank was sitting Western before the year was out. Never went to a hospital, parents never even gave a thought to registering their child with the federal government. No one asked for a birth certificate until the taxes on the property went under his name.
Frank loved this story, told it at every opportunity, thought it made him some kind of born outlaw, living outside the bounds of conventions and rules. Gave him what Silas Jr. always thought of as an unearned swagger. Of course, through the first half of his life Silas often benefited from his brother’s ego. Silas never would have had the brass, at twenty-one years old, to take over the stable A to Z, but after a short, intense life of riding and drinking and smoking, their father was in failing health, and Frank showed no reservations about assuming control of the place. The old man sat on a barstool in the sun just outside the south door to the barn, thinking on the notion a minute. Then he said, “Your grandfather left me a big old bag of nothing, and I made this out of it. It ain’t much, but it’s better than what I got.” He pulled on his Lucky Strike. “I’ll be gone soon enough and Ma’ll be gone sometime, and the whole shit show’ll go on regardless. So you two do what y
ou want.”
Frank took the lead and the boys instituted a plan to rehab the entire outfit. The elder brother reasoned that there was only so much money in Western riding, especially in this particular part of the world, so they would change modes, become English. Frank was gleeful about the notion, but for Silas Jr., this meant relearning to ride almost completely. The first time he found himself posting in the saddle, he felt like a sellout. Bit of a queer, even.
“Better than a goddamn redneck,” Frank told him that evening. They were in the tack room, a dim bulb illuminating almost nothing, Silas reclined on an old boarder’s empty tack box.
“Like riding bareback, these things,” Silas said, kicking at a used English saddle Frank had bought earlier in the week.
“You’re trying to sit it.”
“I been sitting a saddle going on two decades.”
“That’s the problem.”
“This is coming natural to you?”
“Hell no. But neither is being broke, watching these fuckers around here rake it in. Ain’t no money in cowboying. Maybe in Pop’s day, not today. Not around here.”
“We ain’t starving.”
“That’s a low bar you’re setting.” He clicked the light off and on and off and on. “Do you know how much folks will pay for a fancy horse to take to shows? For some somebody in a white shirt to tell ’em to keep their heels down?”
Later that night, Frank tossed a copy of The Joy of Riding onto Silas’s bed. He said, “These people don’t know the likes of us, brother.”
And they didn’t, not for a while. Frank and Silas rolled all the barrels out of the old arena and replaced them with jumps. After ten months of rehabbing the old barn, building a new covered arena, trading in nearly all of their old gear for new English saddles, bridles, bits, martingales, and stirrups, all the young men had accomplished was an easy alienating of their old boarders, nearly all of whom shook their heads at the boys’ forced transformation of their outfit and then made a nearly simultaneous exodus when Frank, without consulting his brother, doubled monthly board fees.
“Your daddy knows about all this, I imagine,” one man said to Silas as he loaded his palomino into a trailer. “What’s he got to say about it?”
“Frank and I are running the place now,” Silas told him, feigning confidence.
“That’s clear enough. Watch which way you run it.”
Silas stood as the man—one of their last boarders—towed his horse away, out of sight.
Inside the house, Silas said, “Goddamn it, Frank.”
His brother sat at the kitchen table and didn’t look up from a Dover catalog. “What now?”
“Just lost Jim Glosser. Trailered Atlas away.”
“Yeah, he mentioned he was going to do that.”
“Glosser’s been keeping his animals here since we couldn’t reach a fucking stirrup. We’re losing everybody, for Christ’s sake.”
“Seems that way. We’ll probably have to remortgage the place.”
“Remortgage?”
“Refinance. Whatever they call it.”
“More debt, you mean.”
“This isn’t a something-for-nothing sort of situation.”
“We got enough debt.”
“Can’t get a return without putting something down, and since we got shit to our names right now, we borrow.”
“That’s called digging a hole.”
“That’s laying a foundation, Silas.”
Silas appealed to his parents. Frank was visiting a stable called Dutton Acres, a sprawling, venerable outfit over in Novato, the aim of the trip being to steal whatever ideas he could from them. So this left Silas and Silas Sr. and Virginia at the dinner table, forks clawing at dark meat. Silas said, “If you two have an opinion about what’s happening here, you’d be within your rights to say it.”
“Some risks being taken,” Silas Sr. said. “That’s sure enough.”
“I think it’s exciting,” Virginia said.
“Excitement don’t pay the bills,” Silas said.
Virginia scoffed. “You don’t need to tell us who and what pays the bills.”
“I’m just saying it’s too much. All at once. You don’t tear down the goddamn house while you’re living in it.”
“You two are partners,” Virginia said. “Have you tried talking to him?”
“I don’t know,” Silas said. “Yeah, I guess.”
“You have or you haven’t,” Silas Sr. said. He set his fork clanging against his plate and took his chicken thigh in hand, got a good bit of meat and fat in his mouth. When he was done chewing he said, “We gave the place to the two of you, but an outfit like this needs one person taking the lead. That’s how a thing works. Too many cooks in the kitchen and everything goes to shit.” He lit a Lucky and stood. “Good chicken, Ginny,” he said. He set a quick hand on his wife’s shoulder and then strode into the living room.
Silas and Virginia finished their meals. After, Virginia said, “Frank is the firstborn, and that means something to a man. There’s no getting around that. It’s the way it’s always been. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.” She reached a hand to Silas’s wrist. Her fingers were small and felt cold on his skin. Just then Silas wanted nothing more than for the whole operation to fail, to fall apart so utterly that there would be no rebuilding. He swore he would leave horses behind, work the rest of his life drilling holes in some dank factory, if he could only watch his brother’s plans burn up in a great display of arrogance gone aflame.
“You two’ll work it out,” Virginia said, getting up and clearing the table. “Nothing else to do but do.”
The next day Frank found Silas outside the arena painting jump poles. “I just got a loan on a new horse today,” Frank said. “An Oldenburg. Four years. Ten grand. They’re dropping her off tomorrow.”
Silas stood in awe of the words, the numbers, which seemed to linger between him and his brother like the smoke of Frank’s cigarette. They’d never spent more than five hundred dollars on a horse.
“Knew you’d say no,” Frank said in response to the silence. “I also knew you’d come around eventually. The deal couldn’t wait for you to catch up.”
“Ten thousand dollars.”
“Be worth double that when we’re done with her,” Frank said.
As far as Silas was concerned, this was the end. His brother was a dreamer of big dreams, but reality was reality. Silas could hardly even conceive of ten thousand dollars. The next day, Frank put the Oldenburg in the barn’s biggest stall, the one they used for birthing. Silas had to admit to her beauty. Black as oil. Not the biggest horse, a bit under sixteen hands, but powerful, with huge hooves anchoring her body. When Frank brought her to the empty arena and let her loose, Silas saw her move and was won over, captivated. He’d never seen an animal move like that. Dancing, she was. Goddamn dancing. “Look at her,” he said.
“That’s right,” Frank said, hopping up and sitting on the fence next to his brother. “Look at her.” They watched the horse for a good ten minutes, watched her run and trot and kick, and when she got that out of her system, they watched her stand there, sniffing at the ground, swishing her tail at flies. Silas wondered if this was anything like what other people felt when they went to church.
Frank broke the silence, said, “You telling me we can’t sell this horse for twenty grand or more? A little training? Get some discipline in her? Fuckers’ll be lining up. We’ll have our pick of buyers. And then we get another one and we train it and we sell it for a pile of money, and then another and another, and in the meantime people see what we can do breaking a horse and they come to see what we can do to teach them to ride and they start boarding here, paying through the nose, and we build more and buy more and sell more and train more and that’s how the hell this works, brother.”
Silas understood then that his desire to watch Frank fail would go unsatisfied. His brother was right. They would train this horse and sell it for more than Silas had ever i
magined possible. They would buy and sell more and the two brothers would become what Frank wanted them to be. Successful. Admired. Known. How much easier it would have been had Frank tossed him off like the dead weight he was. Silas wished he could direct his anger outward, could find some vessel other than himself to carry his disappointment. But, as they would for years to come, Frank’s successes only illuminated Silas’s own shortcomings. Silas hated his brother for making him hate himself.
Frank slid off the fence and handed the mare’s halter to his brother. “Get her back inside. And next time you want to talk to Ma and Pop about this thing I’m doing, don’t. You talk to me or you keep it to yourself.”
⟱
Silas camped that first night in a shallow valley, under a small brake of poplars, and woke to the sound of Disco’s hooves tamping down the dirt just a foot away. Eyes bleary and head throbbing from the wine he’d sucked from that leather teat, he didn’t realize for a moment that they were now surrounded by cattle, maybe three dozen. Silas gathered his things and tacked his horse as fast as he could, not wanting to be spotted by any rancher happening by to check on his herd. Disco protested the bit some, not yet having gotten her fill of the field grass. Silas’s stomach gurgled and he could feel a bowel movement coming on, but he needed to get away from the camp spot quickly. Didn’t want to have to talk to anybody or answer any questions.
Disco moved right along over hills and through valleys, into the rising warmth of the morning, and Silas couldn’t help but admire and thank God for the unquestioning nature of these animals. It wasn’t stupidity. Far from it. This was a grand intelligence at work, a knowledge that most plots of land were identical. It was people that mistook this place or that for something special. Thinking too much was its own form of stupid, born out of arrogance.