by Ian Stansel
“What’s your horse called?”
“Disco,” he said.
The surf continued to crash onto the beach as Lena dismounted, picked up Silas’s gun and stashed it in her bag, then remounted and pressed Pepper into a trot. Arriving at the alarmed horse, she said, “Okay, whoa, now, Disco, settle down,” in as soothing a voice as she could manage. The bay’s eyes were wide and black. She tossed her head, the loop of the lead migrating up to her ears. Lena’s feet landed in the soft sand and she unhooked Pepper’s halter from her pack. She stepped toward Disco, but the horse was panicked something awful and she reared slightly, a warning shot. Still clutching Pepper’s reins, she tried to calm the frightened bay. “Come on, sweet girl,” Lena said. Disco reared again and Pepper tugged away at the reins. “Goddamn it,” she said. Lena jerked at them harder than she otherwise would have and Pepper took two steps up toward his owner. Rain was bent over trying to keep the lead around Disco’s neck, but Lena could see that Major was catching the fear, too, prancing in place, wanting away.
Lena backed off from Disco and yelled, “Silas, come here and calm your horse.” The man hesitated like a headstrong teenager, then slowly rose. “Hurry up!” she shouted, and he quickened his pace slightly at the command.
Between the blasting sounds of the waves, Lena thought she heard something else, high-pitched, unnatural, rising and falling. Sirens. She didn’t know if the other two heard them, but within seconds there would be no doubt. Silas neared. The handle of his pistol displayed itself at the opening of her saddlebag.
She turned back to Disco. “Come on, whoa, now,” she said.
Silas got to them and approached his horse, sweet-talking all the way, getting a hand on her jaw, stroking down to her satiny lower lip, cooing, “There we are,” and slipping the halter over her head, buckling it in place, easing the lead rope from behind her ears and clipping it onto the halter.
Lena breathed.
Then another sound, a violent thudding, came quick as an ambush—a helicopter from over the bluff where Lena had spotted Rain and Silas just minutes before. It lurched forward and hovered above the three people and their horses, coaxing spray up from the sea. The whirring of its blades competed with the rush of the surf, and won. Disco reared at the chaos, and Major backed away frantically. The girl tried to steady him with the reins, but Major only tossed his head against the bit. A voice issued from a speaker: “Police . . . remain where you are.” At the sound, Major reared back, sending Rain tumbling to the ground. The thud of her body in the sand echoed in Lena’s head. “Rain!” she called over the cacophony of helicopter blades and blustering surf and the sirens getting closer.
Silas, who’d been struggling to keep hold of Disco, lost a grip on the lead, and the bay turned on her back hooves and bolted eastward, away from the water and the helicopter, up across the low dunes. Lena went to mount Pepper, but not before Silas hoisted himself up onto Major and kicked the horse into motion. “No!” Rain called weakly.
“Stop!” yelled the voice from the helicopter.
Silas paid no attention and galloped along the path in the sand his own horse had set. Lena got herself on Pepper and gave chase, pressing her heels into the horse’s sides and reaching forward to let the reins slacken. “Come on now!” she hollered.
Silas was a hundred yards ahead. She could not see Disco, who had overtaken the dunes and disappeared into the redwoods. The helicopter followed but lifted as they approached the trees. Lena’s heart banged away in her chest. As she moved through the wood, a bolt of electric cold shot across her skin. She scanned the land ahead for holes, fallen timber. She watched Silas narrowly miss getting brained by a branch. From outside the wood she heard what she’d dreaded, car tires screeching across pavement. As the two riders emerged from the canopy of green, Silas was still far ahead, but she’d made up ground. He rode out onto 101 and cut past a handful of cars stopped in the southbound lanes, drivers and passengers gawking and holding up cell phones. Lena followed up the embankment. When Pepper clomped onto the slick pavement, his right front hoof slipped out to the side. The horse listed and Lena nearly went toppling off the saddle, but the horse righted himself and got back into stride.
Lena was almost beside Silas now, and she could see Disco in front of them, heading straight up the northbound lanes. Cars were pulled to the shoulder. Behind glass, more cavernous mouths. More phones. They were close enough to the bay that Lena could watch the end of the lead rope flitting and popping on the road surface between the horse’s hooves. So focused was she that it took some moments for her to realize that not only was the helicopter hovering alongside, but police cars were now not far behind them, lights flashing. Still she rode on. She rode because she wanted to ease that horse to safety. She rode because after the events of the past days, she could think of nothing else to do.
Another half mile and Lena and Silas were within five, six lengths of the bay. Then it happened. As if in slow motion. Lena saw the end of the lead jump and land with Disco’s stride, and the bay’s hoof come solidly down on it. The rope went taut and jerked the horse’s head down and her momentum flipped that great animal up through the air, and she landed on her back with such force that it seemed to quake the earth itself. Silas issued a thunderous exclamation of horror, a sound from deep within the man. Lena pulled Pepper’s reins too hard, too quickly, and the horse’s head flew up and his hooves went sliding and Lena was once again nearly flung from Pepper’s back. Silas sprang from Major before the horse was stopped and was thrown into two leaping strides across the road and fell onto his hands and chest and face. He got back to his feet and ran to his downed mare.
Silas knelt at his horse. Blood streamed from his nose. Disco was on her side, alert but barely moving. Her nostrils flared and expelled thick plumes of breath. Along her spine, patches of skin had been sheared off by the asphalt. Lena dismounted and took Major’s reins before he too bolted and the terrible mad dash began anew.
“Silas,” Lena said, though she could think of nothing else to say to him. She wanted to point out the police, who’d stopped their vehicles in a line not a hundred feet behind them, but this detail of their situation seemed irrelevant to the scene of a rider and his horse. She wanted to kill him, her husband’s murderer, but she struggled to reconcile the man who shot Frank with the one who now caressed an injured animal.
The police called through a bullhorn, told the two of them to raise their hands, to walk toward them. Lena looked back and saw they had guns drawn.
Silas said, “Don’t let them put her down.” His focus remained on the horse. “Whatever vets the cops bring in are going to say she needs to be put down, but don’t let them. Unless she’s paralyzed, don’t let them. They’re lazy and they don’t give a shit about her.” Then he looked up at Lena. “You’ll take her? You’ll do this for me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Fuck, Lena,” Silas said. “If I had it to do over.” But he did not finish the thought. He turned back to the bay. “By God but you’re a good goddamn horse.”
He stood and stepped toward Lena. The cops shouted for him to remain still. Silas didn’t look at her but reached into her saddlebag and pulled out his gun.
“Oh, Silas, don’t,” Lena said, but he’d already marched away from her and the horses.
Epilogue
Lena arrived at the stable early, just after seven o’clock. A few trailers were already being pulled into place, and riders coaxed their steeds down the ramps, rewarded them with carrots and apples. A trio of women tied their horses and gathered around the front of one’s truck. A box of pastries was open on the hood. Each of the women drank from steaming silver travel mugs. Another truck and trailer arrived and eased its way down the drive. Then another. Another. Each pulled into the pall of fog that lingered yet on the field between the barn and the house. The scene was no less entrancing for its utter familiarity. It was early May. The most beautiful moments of the year were upon the region. Cool mornings and even
ings. Warm days.
Lena had sold the property in January, five months after Frank’s death. It was a struggle to get the deal made, but in the end, with the help of a banker Lena had known and worked with for years, a woman whose daughters had taken lessons from Frank, the stable was sold to Rain for much less than what Lena knew it was worth. No matter. The barn, the land, the house, all of them belonged to her now. And this day she was holding her inaugural show, a simple hunter-jumper affair.
Lena wouldn’t participate in the event. She had developed a distaste for competition and the hullabaloo of shows. The measuring of one’s skills against another’s, the pinning and collecting of ribbons, it all seemed to her, if not harmful, then at least unnecessary. She’d moved Pepper and Disco to a small ten-stall barn near her new place in San Anselmo. She rode Pepper a few times a week, usually leisurely trots and canters, occasionally taking a low-set rail if the old boy had a good bit of energy to burn off. Disco couldn’t be ridden due to extensive bruising to her spine, but she was a sweet-natured girl, if a bit skittish from time to time. Mostly Lena let the two of them wander and graze in the pasture. She’d sit on the fence and watch as they absently flicked their tails at flies. This was enough for her just then.
“You didn’t bring Pepper?” Rain said from behind her.
“No,” Lena said, turning and finding her young friend in clean britches and a crisp white shirt.
“You should have. You would have beat the pants off everybody.”
Lena pressed her lips into a smile. “Another time.”
Rain came to Lena and hugged her. “It isn’t the same without you here.”
“Well,” Lena said. She took in the barn, the outdoor arena. “New judges’ stand.”
“It’s a new fence too.”
Lena said, “Ah. It is. I couldn’t tell at first.”
“A few other things, too. Want a walk around?”
“You must have things to do.”
“Please. I’m so nervous I’ve had everything ready for a week now.”
Rain led Lena around the arena and through the barn, where they came to Major’s stall. He was working through a flake of alfalfa but, seeing Lena, put his head over the door.
“How is he?”
“Good,” Rain said. “A little jumpy. We’ve been taking it easy, but he’s a strong boy.”
Lena caressed Major’s satiny chin. “This is the horse you’re going to think of years from now, you know that? You’re going to have a lot of them in and out of here, but this is the one you’ll come back to. This is your special one.”
Rain wiped tears from her cheeks. “Which was yours?”
“I still have mine.”
The old barn hands, all of whom had stuck around after the sale of the stable, waved and called out to Lena. Some came to her with smiles and awkward but sincere greetings. Lena reciprocated, inquiring after family members and states of health. She knew the place and the people so well that the few changes that had occurred shone as if spotlighted: The new arena fence and judges’ stand, freshly painted gates and rails and standards, three new stall doors. Good for her, Lena thought. Best to make some changes straightaway. Let the place know who’s in charge.
Rain said, “You know you can board them here. For nothing.”
Lena looked at her. “You can’t afford to give stalls away. I know the numbers as well as you do.”
“We could make it work.”
“No,” Lena said. “Anyhow, it’s better this way.”
They walked to the arena, where the early jumper-class riders were measuring strides between jumps and the flat classers were mounting carefully.
Rain said, “I think about being out there with you all the time. I dream about it.”
“I do too.”
Rain said, “I’ve dreamed about him. More than a few times. It was basically every night for a while there.”
How many nights had Lena dreamed of Silas? How often had she thought of Frank? The questions were ludicrous. How many molecules made up the air? How many atoms locked together to construct the earth? It was all immeasurable—her past and present, her days and nights, her love and anger and grief. All of it continuous and endless.
Lena said to Rain, “You have things to do. I’ve headed up enough of these to know nothing’s ever done completely.”
“I guess there are things I could be handling.”
“Go on.”
With a long hug, Rain left Lena, walking businesslike around a bend of fencing. Over the next hour, the crowd grew. With few exceptions Lena knew everyone arriving, but she said little to anyone and no one said much to her. The first class started, a junior flat, just a handful of riders. Lena watched from a discreet spot at the far end of the arena as the right girl got blue. Good young rider. Good form. There was a time, not too long before, when Lena would have tried to poach her. Would have tried and succeeded. The girl would have been boarding with them before the week was up. But that was no concern of Lena’s anymore. She was out of the business, happily irrelevant. The girl accepted her blue and nodded to the judges—the excitement of a win barely contained in that young face—and exited the arena trailing a low cumulus of gray dust.
A scenario ran through Lena’s head: Frank lives. Well, for a while, anyway. The disease continues its march through Frank’s body and eventually kills him, some night, in some hospital bed, with Lena there to cry and hold the scabbed heft of his hand. Until then, though, she has him. In his frequent agony and incoherence, but she has him. Riley comes to the hospital and whispers quiet words at his father. Even Silas shows up to see his brother off. Ill deeds are forgiven. Hatchets buried. The fraternal feud at last put to rest. Lena and Silas spend silent time together in the hospital room, in the waiting room, in some horribly bright hall between the nurses’ station and the room where the warmth of Frank’s body lingers yet in the polyester mattress stuffing. She looks at her brother-in-law and sees those features he shared with her husband: the longish nose, the rounded jawline—these common characteristics that Lena had remarked upon once or twice early on but that neither boy would acknowledge. Silas’s mouth purses into a sad smile, and at once Lena knows that the past is the past and that sometime in the future, when the acute pain of Frank’s departure has faded and all that remains is the tinnitus-like ringing of grief, she and Silas might run into each other at an event and nod and say hello and even eventually share a small, fond memory of their history. And with this, for a moment, Lena won’t feel so utterly alone.
After the second class, Lena felt she’d offered sufficient support to her friend. She walked along the edge of the property beneath a line of colossal eucalyptus trees and made her way back to the far spot in the field where she’d parked Frank’s truck. The door squealed as she opened it, but the truck’s frame scarcely registered her small body in the driver’s seat. Across the field, her old house sat squat beneath rolling shoulders of earth. The truck reeked of ancient cigarette smoke and Lena thought to herself the same words she’d been thinking for half a year, the words that she imagined would echo for years to come, regular as a mantra, useless as a prayer: I want you back, I want you back, I want you back.
She turned the key, and the truck’s engine started with a sudden exclamation, like a man clearing his throat in a silent room. The morning’s dew had yet to evaporate from the hood of the truck.
On the seat next to her was a cardboard box, her name and address printed in tidy letters across a white label. It had been Detective Ortquist who’d phoned and told her of the situation. He said that normally someone from the coroner would call but these seemed to be special circumstances. He figured it might be better coming from him, this odd question.
“What question is that,” Lena had said.
“We’re legally obligated to ask the next of kin,” he said, “if they want the remains.”
“Silas’s remains.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“For Christ’s sake.”
<
br /> “Believe me, we wrestled with this,” Ortquist said. “But there are no other relatives.”
“And what happens if I say no?”
“There’s a place they go.”
“The trash.”
“Not the trash,” he said. “But, yes, they’re disposed of.”
So on the passenger seat sat a box. Inside the box was a thick plastic bag. Inside the bag was Silas.
It was while staring at that box, a nightly habit she’d taken up since its arrival at her door a month before, that she came to understand something: There’d been more to her husband’s murder than bad fraternal blood. In the investigation it had come out that Frank had gone to visit Silas only a week before the shooting. There’d been a woman there, friend of Silas’s, who’d given a statement. The news sank Lena for a good few weeks. The police asked if she had any idea why Frank would have been there at Silas’s spread, but Lena could think of no reason. None that made any sense, anyway. But sense had never driven the brothers’ interactions. So she watched the box, as if it alone could explain to her what had happened. It told her nothing, of course, but what she’d already known, that they were bonded, those brothers, in a way she’d always nearly admired. Hatred, after all, did not flare up from a void. There must have been something there in the first place. Love. Passion, even. And this was what led to Frank’s death, their mutual commitment to each other over all else.
From the old stable she headed down Sir Francis Drake and up White Hill, past the rock climbers and cyclists, into the San Geronimo Valley. She wove her way through dense woods, emerged in Nicasio, and rumbled past Silas’s stable, now empty and hung with signs reading FOR SALE.
She made it to the beach at Point Reyes and trudged across the dunes to a deserted water line. The wind knocked her backward a step. Above, the iron clouds were impenetrable. How this coast could be so dark, so unforgiving, yet so beautiful. At the water, she knelt and opened the box and pressed her fingertips into the plastic and pulled. She raised the bag of ashes and pebbles and shook and closed her eyes and squinched her mouth and let the wind carry the whole gray mess across the sand and back into the wild grasses until the bag was nothing but a bag and the beach was nothing but a beach. Then Lena rose and brushed the sand from her knees and made her way again to the truck’s cab.