The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  FIVE

  The very next day, Monday, Lathias sat mending some harness by the stables. Helen was out in the yard, too, taking wash down from the line, before the wind came up and dirtied everything all over again. Stolanus had gone to town, on some errand forgotten that morning, and Lathias was wondering if the boy had gone with him, having not seen him since lunch. But, just as Lathias was about to go look for him, the front door of the house opened and the boy peeked out, glanced to where Helen stood with her back toward him, and then bolted straight across the yard toward the root cellar, holding something balled up under his arm. After a minute or two, when the boy did not reappear, Lathias put the harness aside and crossed the yard after him.

  The boy had left the cellar door wide open—too trusting and inartful himself to be successfully deceptive. Lathias was used to finding his own books lying open on his bunk or his hunting knife out of its sheath, photographs misplaced; but the boy would never harm anything, never steal, and so Lathias would put his things in order and say nothing.

  The boy stood now in the root cellar, half in a shaft of sunlight that fell through the open door, quickly stuffing a flour sack with the last of the apples Helen had saved over from the previous autumn.

  Lathias was puzzled but only momentarily. It had not been difficult to see in church the day before, how the boy looked at that new girl, Leo Krauss’s girl; not with embarrassment or shock or indignation or disgust, but with a kind of reverence, as if it were an angel standing there in the aisle and not simply a girl (and not even a particularly tidy girl at that); and then, just that morning, the boy had been there with Lathias and Stolanus outside the hardware when Mike Weiser said, “I don’t know what they’re living on out there.” So it did not take Lathias long to guess what the boy was up to.

  “Old Blackie’s gonna love you today,” he said from the doorway.

  The bag slipped from the boy’s hand and apples spilled out around him.

  “By God,” Lathias said, “you know how to treat a horse right.”

  He bent and began gathering up the apples, and the boy knelt, too, dropping them back into the sack.

  “It’s not stealing,” he said. “I’m not stealing them.”

  “Does your mother know?”

  The boy looked past him, as if she might be there. “Will you tell her?” he said.

  “No. But you keep feeding them horses like this they’ll be too fat to work and then you’ll have to answer for it.”

  The boy picked up a few more apples. After a while he said, “It’s not for the horses.”

  “Oh,” Lathias said. “Is that right?”

  “It isn’t any of your business anyhow. That’s what I think.”

  “It isn’t,” Lathias said, handing him an apple. “But leave a little behind, not? Your mother’s sure to notice if you clean her right out.”

  The boy knelt there, thinking about it, then he returned a few apples to the bin, not looking at Lathias where he crouched in the doorway watching him.

  “There,” the boy said, his face flushed up, and he stood, not quite looking at Lathias. “All right, then.” Rubbing his palms against his thighs. “I’m going out for a while,” he said.

  “All right.”

  “I don’t have to tell you where.”

  “You don’t have to tell me nothing.”

  “All right.”

  “All right.”

  The boy scratched the back of his arm. He studied the apples in the sack. Finally, he said, “That girl in church there, you know who I mean?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Did you think she was pretty?”

  “Yes,” Lathias said, “I think she was.”

  The boy nodded, thoughtfully. “How old would you say she was?”

  Lathias shrugged. “Your age. A little older.”

  “How much older?”

  “Couple years maybe.”

  The boy pursed his lips, nodded again.

  “All right, then,” he said, and lifted the sack.

  “All right,” Lathias said. “Don’t be too long.” Then he added, though he already knew the answer, “Your mother know you’re going somewhere?”

  The boy just stood blinking at him.

  “All right,” Lathias said. “All right. Go on.”

  Lathias watched him cut across the back pasture and straight for Krausses’, through the scant brush along the Sand Hills. There would be less chance of meeting someone that way, though Lathias worried about this less than he had when the boy was younger. It was not the first time he had gone there alone—out to the Sand Hills—without telling anyone, though Helen would have been horrified to hear it; for her, nothing had changed. The boy understood this, too, and so he would often sneak away from the house, when Helen was preoccupied, as she often was now, lost deeper in herself each year, it seemed, or when she lay down for the long afternoon rests she had begun to take daily. Stolanus did not notice, or if he did, thought nothing of it. And so it was only Lathias who knew that the boy sometimes left the farm.

  In earlier years, Lathias had followed him, just to see where he was going, to make sure he was safe. But the boy never went far. Only out to the Sand Hills and back. And, of course, it seemed that the boy must someday surely turn and discover him there. But he never did. And so Lathias would trail him to the Hills, watching as the boy poked around in the brush or sat in the shade of a chokecherry stand, eating berries.

  Once, during those first years, he’d watched as the boy pulled something from his pocket and stared into his palm. Lathias watched as the boy kept angling his head to the left, then to the right, then back again. It wasn’t until the boy ran a finger across the scar on his temple that Lathias realized it was a shard of mirror he held. Where he’d gotten it, Lathias could not imagine. Surely not from home, for Helen had long ago packed away the old mirror she’d kept in her bedroom, packed it away sometime after the accident. When Lathias realized it was a mirror the boy was staring into, he turned away, walked home, feeling sick. After that time, he never stayed long. When he was sure the boy was all right, he would go home.

  Eventually, when he saw the boy leaving the yard Lathias let him go alone. But once, he said to him, “You know you can never go to the river without me.”

  And the boy said, “Why would I do that?”

  And so Lathias did not worry. He was not a child any more. He needed to do some things on his own. Otherwise, how would he survive as a man? Lathias knew that he could not watch out for him forever. It would be impossible.

  Of course, the boy knew early on that Lathias was following him. How could he not? He was not stupid. At first he thought it might be some game. Then he realized, no, it was the same as Lathias waiting for him by the school steps all those years ago.

  “I can’t always be with you,” Lathias had told him back then.

  “I know that.”

  “And so you have to be careful.”

  “Of what?”

  Lathias had stared at him. He just shrugged, shook his head. Then he said, “You know how deer lie quiet in the brush by the river, and you can’t see them, you could just about walk right over them before you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you could do that, if you needed to?”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, feeling frustrated, caught in his own inability to speak frankly. He did not want to scare the boy. But, still, he did not want the boy to be treated badly, teased. To be hurt any more, by anyone. So he said, “They do that when they are scared. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” the boy told him, sensing Lathias’s frustration, “I understand. I see what you’re saying.”

  But he did not see. What had deer to do with him? After that, he tried it once, under an old bent willow on the edge of the Hills. He lay there for a long time, barely daring to breathe, keeping still, still, waiting. He even nibbled at a few blades of dry grass. Scratched at one haunch with his hoof. Nibbled.
Sighed. Waited. Surely, he thought, surely, something will happen now.

  Nothing ever did.

  ——

  Today the boy did not stop to sit on the warm sand and stare out at the fields, as he liked to do, but walked steadily, following the line of the Hills, toward the Krauss farm squatting there, impossibly almost out of sight among the scrub and dunes, as if the whole place were sinking, returning to the primordial dirt from which it had come and to which it belonged. When he got close enough to see the yard, he wondered what he should say to the girl anyway. He had not thought that far ahead. So he stopped walking and stood trying to think what to say. And as he stood there thinking, he almost turned back, decided that he would turn back, he must. That was when he saw her. She was seated away from the yard a bit, out on the trail that led from the farm to the main road, her back against a stone pile, her white dress pooled around her in the dirt. He stood watching her, admiring the way she seemed to be there so naturally, a pale flower—or not a flower, but a rock herself—then he flung his sack across his shoulder and walked on.

  Maybe she heard him coming, maybe she did not, the boy could not tell. But she did not move to look up, even when his shadow fell across the dirt she was drawing in with her finger. He stood watching, then crouched down and put the sack at his feet. He both did and did not want her to turn toward him, notice him. He knew how he would look to her. So he kept his face turned away slightly, the way he always did. Waiting on her. But she said nothing, nor made any sign that she had noticed his presence at all.

  “I like that,” he finally said, not looking at it. “That’s a nice picture you made.”

  She lifted her head then, and the boy glanced at her, out of the corner of his eye. The sun hit her full in the face. Up close, he was amazed at the strange cinnamon colour of her eyes, at the gold flecks floating there, all that beauty at once. He almost turned to face her, caught himself just in time, watched out of the corner of his eye again as she stared at the pattern of circles and lines and crosses she had drawn there. Of course, he knew it was not a picture, not a drawing, that was not what he meant. There was no deeper meaning; it was something to do. He understood that, had spent many an hour passing the time in similar ways. But he could not now say that, it would sound foolish, and before he could think what to say, she reached out and in one smooth motion wiped out the drawings with the palm of her hand.

  He rubbed his own palms on the front of his trousers, thinking that perhaps he should go. But he did not. He watched her ignoring him, glaring out at the line of the horizon that rippled faintly in the heat. He lifted the bag a little, let it thump against his leg.

  “I live over there,” he said, motioning with his thumb. He waited. “We’re neighbours.”

  He began to grow nervous. What more could he say? He thought of the apples in the sack at his side. Stupid. What had he been thinking?

  “Well,” he said, and stood as if to go.

  “I saw you,” she said. “In church.”

  “I saw you, too.”

  She nodded. The boy chewed his lip. Then he pointed at a pile of something she held in her lap, half covered in the folds of her skirt.

  “What you got there?”

  She unfolded the skirt, revealing a pile of glass shards—clear and coloured, blue, green and amber—and scooped some up into the palm of her hand, holding them up to him.

  “What is it?” he said, touching the shards with the tip of his finger. He thought she might pull her hand away, but she did not. He picked up an amber one. “Where’d you get them?”

  She waved vaguely with her hand toward the Krauss farm behind her.

  “Looks like a point,” he said, holding it up to the light. “I have one this colour.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “A point.”

  “What the Indians would use, for hunting. It’s a piece of rock worked with a stone, so it’s pointed, like so,” he said, holding the shard of glass up, “for arrows.”

  “Oh,” she said, unimpressed. “I used to find them. Back home.”

  “Did you keep them?”

  “What for?”

  The boy shrugged. “I have a boxful, under my bed. We find a lot, down at the river, down around the old fort.”

  “What fort?”

  “Down at the river there. Used to be. They’re gone now, mostly. But we find a lot of good stuff, me and Lathias.”

  “Lathias?”

  “He lives with us. He’s older. He takes me places. To the river. He found a hunting knife there once. Blade was rusty, but it was still good. He cleaned it up. Looks good as new. It’s a good knife. I could show you sometime. And arrowheads. And I’ve got all kinds of skulls and bones. Teeth. Old rifle cartridges. Lead musket balls, even. Real lead. All kinds of things. I could show it to you.”

  “What for?”

  “Just so you could see them.”

  “I mean, what do you keep that stuff for?”

  He shrugged again. After a moment he said, “I guess I just like it.” Then he added, “I don’t like to think of it out there. Just left.” He shrugged again, embarrassed.

  She nodded and turned away, dragging her finger through the dust.

  The boy watched her a bit. Then he said, “Where’d you get all that glass, anyway?”

  She looked up at him sharply. “Back there,” she said, tilting her head toward the Krauss farm. “It’s everywhere, under that big tree, you know, by the house there?”

  “No,” the boy said, “I’ve never been there.”

  “There’s bottles tied there, up in that tree, and jars, too, but I guess some of them smashed, all that glass, it’s everywhere. I cut my foot,” she said, pulling off her shoe. There was a vivid gash along her instep.

  “You should clean that,” the boy said, “with some alcohol. Looks infected. See where it’s red there?” He reached toward her foot, then pulled his hand back. Stuck it in his pocket.

  The girl stared at her foot, then slipped her shoe back on. She looked up at him, studied him so long that he began to grow uncomfortable and he turned his back to her, pretending to look out at the horizon.

  “Where’d they come from,” she said, “all those bottles?”

  “I don’t know,” the boy said from across his shoulder. “I’ve never been there.”

  “It’s right in front of the house there, you can’t miss it.”

  “No, I mean I’ve never been there at all, to Krausses’.”

  “Oh.” She frowned up at him. “That seems kind of funny,” she said, after a while. “How come?”

  The boy kicked his toe at the cracked dirt. “Just never have. So what?”

  “Seems kind of funny, that’s all. You living so close. Don’t your folks get on with him neither?”

  “Who?”

  She jerked her head toward the farm again. “Him.”

  “Oh. No. I guess not. I guess they don’t.”

  She nodded again, slowly, and tilted her head at him. “How come?”

  The boy shrugged. “My parents don’t like him much, I guess. Lathias, neither. Nobody does.” After a moment, he added, “I don’t know why. He seems all right to me.”

  “Well,” she said, “he’s not.”

  “Why?” he said, turning back toward her. “What does he do?”

  “He doesn’t do nothing,” she snapped. “What did he ever do to your folks?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “That’s right.” She shook her head in annoyance, looked away. Then she said, “So, it’s just because your folks don’t like Leo? That’s why you’ve never been there?”

  “I guess.”

  “So it’s not …” she said, and she lifted her hand and then dropped it, “it’s not that there’s something … kind of funny about the place?”

  “Funny?”

  She shook her head. “Just … strange?”

  “Strange how?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said
irritably, and rattled the glass in her lap. “Never mind.” An ant had crawled up on her ankle and she reached down and crushed it between her fingertips, rubbing them together until it was just a paste there, which she wiped on her dress. She studied her fingertips and then she said, “Was he married before, or did he have a sister or something?”

  “Who?”

  She flashed her eyes at him. “Leo.”

  “Oh. Yah,” the boy said, “he was married.” As if it could not be otherwise. “A family, too. Gone now.” Though, of course, she would know that.

  “And,” the girl said, “his wife, was she … was something wrong with her?”

  “How should I know?” the boy said, sounding irritable too now, though he did not mean to be.

  “This is her dress,” she said, “isn’t it?”

  “How should I know?” the boy snapped again.

  After that, neither of them said anything for a while.

  In the end, feeling sorry, he said, “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Elisabeth. My grandfather used to call me Rusalka.”

  “That’s a nice name.” Though he did not specify which.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  He waited, but she did not ask his name.

  She said, “I think it was her that put those bottles there.”

  “Who?”

  But she just shook her head and said nothing more.

  It was a moment before he realized she was staring at him, that he had forgotten himself and had turned fully toward her as they spoke, exposing the ugly, scarred side of his face. He quickly turned his face away, squinted his eyes at the horizon again, where a hawk circled lazily. But she just kept staring at him that way until she had stared so long that it was awkward for him to stay and awkward for him to go. And so he just stood there beside her, sweat forming uncomfortably between his shoulder blades.

  Finally she said, “You talk kind of funny.”

  He wrinkled up his nose a minute. Was she making fun of him?

  “Are you German?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, surprised, “isn’t everybody?” Of course, he knew that was not literally true, knew that it sounded stupid. He had only meant everyone around the parish. Even Lathias, who was only part, was still German. That was all he meant, but he could not now say it.