The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  And he believed in that moment that everything had changed, that nothing that had come before mattered, that nothing would ever be the same again. He almost called out to her, in spite of himself, hating himself for it, that weakness, almost called across the smoky, blackened plains of his half-dream, knowing she could not hear him, knowing she would not answer even if she could. But he did not call out. Instead, he yanked the startled mare around and rode, blindly, brutally, in the opposite direction, under the fierce hot stars, away from the Hills and her.

  FIFTEEN

  Sunday came. The boy was there beside him in the barn, the skates in a sack across his shoulder. Lathias did not look up. “You go on ahead,” he said. “I have work to do.”

  The boy just stood there, as if he did not understand.

  “Go on ahead,” he said again, pulling his saddle from where it hung by a peg just inside the doors.

  The boy said, uncertainly, “You’ll come later?”

  Lathias turned away. “I have work to do.”

  “But,” the boy said behind him, “it’s Sunday. You said Sunday.”

  Lathias just lifted a hand and walked away across the yard, the saddle over his shoulder, out toward the home pasture where his mare grazed with the other horses on the first sparse blades of grass.

  “I wasn’t spying,” the boy called after him, “if that’s what you think.”

  But he just kept walking. Spying. What did it matter? So what if he had been watching them. It was nothing. The boy could not see into his head. Could not see into his soul. It was nothing. Nothing had happened.

  THE RIVER

  ONE

  Maybe the boy heard them over the beating of his own heart, those two riders moving steadily along the snowless horizon. Or maybe he felt them, the distant drumming of hoofbeats across the earth. Maybe he even thought, There, it comes, I have only just placed that cross and already it comes, without even praying yet.

  Whatever the reason, when the boy looked up and saw the two riders in the distance, hazed by the smoke blown over from the brush pile burning at Hausers’, he jumped down from the rubbing stone and ran to catch up to Elisabeth, calling her name against the risen wind. The domed sky curved depthless above them, and around on every side, settling at the unfettered horizon like the stilled edge of a bell.

  As he ran, the boy thought of the two sagebrush twigs he had left in the shape of a cross as an offering atop the stone as Lathias had once told him, though he was too angry to think of Lathias now, too hurt, and so he thought instead of those riders that came because of it, that cross, and of the girl before him, witchhaired, waiting with the familiar expression of strained tolerance with which she often regarded him.

  “Elisabeth,” he shouted, pointing. “Two riders.”

  “So?”

  “So?” he said, coming up beside her. “Don’t you know? If you see two riders, you make a wish. To get rid of something.”

  She started walking again.

  “Like a wart,” he said, following, “or a toothache, or, or anything. You say, ‘Give the back rider my toothache, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’”

  She stopped then and looked at him sharply. “Who told you that?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Lathias,” she sneered. “You believe everything he tells you?”

  “Not everything,” he said, but thinking, Why wouldn’t I? Thinking, But he said Sunday. He promised.

  She seemed angry, too, and the boy wondered if Lathias had done something to her, also, though Elisabeth did not always need a reason, it seemed.

  “And you think that works?” she said.

  “I don’t know. I never tried it.”

  “So try it, then.”

  The boy looked back at the riders. The horses were not moving swiftly, but already they were almost out of sight.

  “I don’t have a toothache,” he said. “Or warts.”

  “Try something else, then.”

  “Like what?”

  “There must be something you want to get rid of.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What about that scar?”

  The boy felt his cheeks grow hot. He turned away from her.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “It has to be something you can get rid of.” Wondering, as he always did, why she sometimes said those things, as if she were mean. As if she were angry with him for some reason, though he could not think why. Maybe it was Lathias, then. Angry, too, that he had not come with them. Angry that they’d had to walk because his father would not allow him to take the horses without Lathias.

  “Hmm,” she said. “What about Leo? Would it work on him, then, do you think? Is he something you can get rid of?”

  “You shouldn’t wish for that. You shouldn’t wish people gone. What if they die?”

  “What if they do?”

  “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “All right, then, I won’t say it.” She looked down at her hands. “What about these freckles?”

  “They’re nice.”

  She tsked. “Well, you wish for something, then. I’d try that scar if I were you.”

  He looked back at the distant riders. They were almost gone. “Do the freckles,” he said.

  “I’ll do it,” she said, “to prove it doesn’t work.” She closed her eyes. “Give the—”

  “No, you have to kneel.”

  She clucked her tongue again in annoyance.

  “Hurry,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “you have to be able to see the back rider.”

  She dropped to her knees in the high brown grass, grudgingly, her hair whipping in her face.

  “Elisabeth,” the boy said, and she opened her eyes. But he could only shake his head, ashamed, for the thought, whatever it was, was already gone. It happened that way sometimes, not with Lathias as much as with her; nothing, where he knew there had been something a moment ago; like a sound that wakes you in the night, the awareness of a sound without the recognition. So, to fill the space he said only, “Hurry.”

  She closed her eyes again and he closed his, too, folded his hands.

  “Give the back rider my freckles, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  The boy crossed himself, and they waited a moment, eyes shut, hands clasped, the wind rushing between them.

  “Well?” she finally said.

  He opened his eyes.

  “Oh,” he said. “No.” Knowing she would be disappointed, in spite of what she said, in spite of her supposed disbelief. He was sorry, too; not because of the freckles, but simply because Lathias was wrong: it did not work. Another disappointment.

  She rose and they stood there a moment, bodies rocking a little in the wind.

  “Maybe,” he said, “it only works with warts.”

  But she said nothing.

  “Maybe,” he said, “you have to believe it will work for it to work.”

  She cast him a dark glance.

  “It was good that you tried,” he said. “It was worth a try, not?”

  But he did not really believe that, either. Not today. Nothing seemed good.

  “Anyway,” he said, “freckles aren’t the worst thing.”

  “Yes,” she said peevishly. “It could be worse.”

  He knew what she meant. She might as well have said, Look at you.

  He knew her well enough by now to know that she was in one of those moods. Later she would feel sorry for it, maybe, and be kind to him, say kind things, or as kind as she ever got, anyway. And think that maybe he had forgotten whatever mean thing she had said. But he was not stupid. He bore her no grudges, he was always ready to forgive, to be friends again; was eager for it. But he was not stupid.

  Elisabeth started walking again and he followed her, through the smoky air, across the Horseman’s pasture, past the sighing and softly undulating horse graves, beyond the homesteads, toward the river. When they reached the Bull’s Forehead, they stood a moment, facing the w
ind and the river—frozen still along its edges, but running in a low, narrow channel down the middle, fluid and dark as a bullsnake. The boy scanned the hills on the other side, swiped with light and dark striations, and thought, It did not work. Why didn’t it? What did we do wrong? It is me. It must be. It is Lathias. And it is her, too. It is my own skin. It is the weather, maybe, and the earth and that sky, the stars and the planets and the ways of God. It is everything.

  She sat down abruptly in the long grass.

  “Spring breakup soon,” he said. But she made no reply. “Don’t you want to go down?”

  “No.”

  He glanced across at her, then squatted down by one of the stones that made up the circle on the hill. Sighed. What the boy chose to think of as disappointment—their separate disappointments, separate but similar too—still lingered between them, making them uneasy with each other, ashamed of their own hopes.

  The boy rubbed his palm on one of the stones. “I know a story,” he said, tentatively. “About how these stones got here, this circle. It’s a good story. A medicine man put them here. For his daughter. She died and he—”

  She looked at him then. “Another one of Lathias’s stories.”

  He squinted back at her.

  “You do believe everything he tells you.” she said.

  He pulled at the grass around his boot, but he did not answer.

  She made a dismissive sound and shook her head.

  After that they sat for a time, without speaking. He pulled at the dry grass, breaking it between his fingertips, tossed it aside. Looked out into the valley.

  “River’s low,” he said. But she made no reply.

  He lifted the tin syrup pail he carried and rattled it a little by its handle. “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  And so he lowered the pail and blinked out at the valley, soft now in the late afternoon light, the creeping haze of the distant fire.

  “Wind’s changed direction,” he said. “There’s smoke, from over Hausers’. Brush pile. They should know better, all this wind.”

  It was only what his mother had said at breakfast. But his heart wasn’t in it. At the thought of Lathias he sunk again into the perplexing guilt and disappointment and heaviness he had felt since that morning. I wasn’t spying, he’d said. But that was not true. He had been spying. And on top of it he’d lied to Lathias. But he did not like to think of that. It was better to think of Lathias’s wrongs. And wasn’t he a little bit happy at Lathias’s absence? Just a little bit? But he did not like to think of that, either.

  “Anyway,” he said instead, “it’s smoky, all right.”

  When she did not respond, he rattled the pail again. He was hungry. He would have liked to eat, but he set the pail behind him, and he thought, If I cannot see it, then it is as if it is not there.

  “Me neither,” he said, after a while, “I’m not hungry neither.” And he rustled his feet in the long grass so she would not hear the churning of his outraged stomach over the wind. But he would not eat. Not when she was unhappy; with him. He couldn’t. Anyway, there was nothing he could do about it, her annoyance. Wait for it to pass. He wished she would speak, though. She could do that at least, sitting there in the smoky wind, motionless but for that hair, writhing, and the flapping black wing of her coat.

  But she would not, it seemed, and so they sat and stared out at the river again, or up at the sky or over to where the old braucha’s place hunched next to them on the edge of the valley.

  Finally, Elisabeth stood and started walking down the draw.

  “Wait,” he said, and he rose and caught up to her, wishing he could think of something to say.

  When they reached the riverbank, she stopped and stared out irritably across the ice, arms folded in front of her.

  “Why didn’t he come?” she said.

  The boy looked down. “I don’t know.”

  After a minute, she said, “He doesn’t like me much.”

  And the boy said nothing, wanting her to believe it was true. Wanting himself to believe it. She looked at him, waiting, and when he did not respond, she said, “You think a lot of him. Don’t you.”

  “Yah,” the boy said, “of course.”

  She stared at him for what seemed to the boy to be a long time.

  “You ever wonder why he stuck around?” she said. “All these years?”

  The boy shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he?”

  But she just kept on staring at him, a funny kind of look on her face, and this time he stared back. And she seemed so angry with that, with his staring, that for a moment he thought she might reach out and slap him. But she did not. They only stood there at the edge of the river, locked in a gaze that it seemed neither could, would, break. Then, as they stood there, an odd thing happened. The smoky wind calmed, almost settled, and white flakes began to drift down upon them, infinitesimal, thrown into sudden feathery relief against the dark hills and the black coursing of the river’s spine.

  The boy lifted his head.

  “Look,” he said suddenly, forgetting her anger. “It’s snowing.”

  Elisabeth watched him. Then she too turned her face to the sky.

  “It’s snowing,” he said again, his voice lighter still, wonder-filled, almost amazed, holding his palms up to the silvered air. “Look.”

  Elisabeth reached out and, dabbing a flake from his palm, placed it on her tongue.

  “No,” she said, flatly. “It’s ash.”

  And stepped out onto the frozen river.

  TWO

  Lathias stayed in town all that Sunday, looking in the windows of the closed shops and sitting in a back corner of Wing’s nursing a cup of coffee so long that Wing finally said, “You order now?” and Lathias got up as if to pay for his coffee and leave but Wing waved him back into his seat and, disappearing into the kitchen, came back moments later with a plate of steaming food. Lathias tried to object, but Wing just smiled and nodded and waved at him to begin eating, and so Lathias, though he was not hungry, thanked him and ate.

  All day, guilt had been gnawing away at him. Knowing the boy had taken it hard, goddamn it, why did he have to take every goddamned thing so goddamned hard? But it was done now. If he had been hurt, then so be it. He would have to be hurt sometimes, a little bit. Wouldn’t he? Otherwise, that’s not living. Oh hell, he thought. Christ Almighty. Rubbing his face in his hands, the smell of the food sickening him, but eating it anyway, he did not want to seem ungrateful. But sick, he felt sick. Sick at his stomach, sick at his heart. Things were changing, had changed. But he could make it up to the boy, would make it up to him. They would do things without her, like they used to. Not the river, that was over, they could not go without her now. The boy would not want to. But he would take the boy somewhere (but, even so, thinking, Where, for God’s sake, where would I take him?), if Helen and Stolanus would allow it (thinking, Even if there were somewhere, they would never let him go, Helen wouldn’t), but letting himself get carried away anyway at the thought of going, not just for a day or two, but for good, to live somewhere else, it would be easy for him to find work and the boy could live with him, start over somewhere. But then he thought of the scars and the seizures that would be the same no matter where the boy went, and he lowered his fork and pushed his plate away.

  The big windows by the door had darkened and Wing and his wife glanced at him now and then, wanting to go to their own supper, no doubt, and so he took his coat and slipped some coins beneath the edge of his plate. He deserved no one’s generosity or goodwill or pity, not today, maybe not ever. Nodded in thanks as he left. Thinking, But I cannot avoid her, not forever. That was not possible either. Amazed, suddenly, at the finiteness of possibilities. Knowing he must see her, must talk to her, and settle, finally, this thing that was or was not between them.

  ——

  When he rode into the yard, it was full dark. He put up the horse and walked to the house, seeing through the window Helen at the stove over a boiling pot and St
olanus staring at the set table looking bewildered, as he always did when he found himself alone with Helen.

  When Lathias came in on a blast of spring air, Helen dropped the spoon she was using and Stolanus half rose from the table. Lathias looked from one to the other.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Helen stepped forward. “He’s not with you?” she said.

  Lathias felt something sink in him, a sudden lurching and dropping of his heart. A pounding in his head. He glanced to Stolanus, waiting also.

  “No,” he said, “I have not seen him all day.”

  Helen made a small sound in her throat, turned away.

  “Ach,” Stolanus said, “he is fine. Probably out in the yard somewhere.”

  Helen said nothing, just stood staring into that pot of boiling water, as if she might divine something there, but Stolanus waved Lathias over to his seat at the table and said again, the heaviness in his voice betraying him, as it always did, “He’s fine. Out running around. That’s what boys do, not?” And winked at Lathias, to convince them both, to convince all three of them, and maybe he even meant it, or believed he did, which amounted to the same thing in the end.

  Lathias sat down at the table and Helen said, without turning away from her pot, “After dark? You know as well as I.”

  And she was right. Lathias knew it, too. The boy would never stay out after dark, not by himself, probably not even with Elisabeth. But he was with her, or had been, of this Lathias was certain.

  Stolanus shrugged. “Maybe he’s growing up, then.”

  “But he’s afraid of the dark. He wouldn’t stay out.”

  “Good, then,” Stolanus said, “maybe he will learn there is nothing to be afraid of. It’s good for boys, a little adventure.” But looking at Lathias all the time. “What do you say, Lathias?”

  But Lathias just sat there with his eyes fixed on the table, thinking, thinking, and he could not look at her, knew as well as she did: something was wrong.

  Stolanus went on, eyes glistening, like someone with a fever. “This one here, he’s had adventure. How old when you left home, Lathias? Thirteen?”