The two women stepped away from the others and crossed the rectangle of yard toward the barn. Johanna placed a hand at the small of Claire’s back and walked beside her. There was depth to the small gesture and Claire wondered how much the Wolfchilds knew about her and Aiden’s history, how much detail Golec had shared with them. “You know about our troubles?” she asked her.
“Not much,” Johanna said. “Enough to know that a mother and a son need time and a place to mend their lives. I’m honoured to be able to give that.”
“Why?”
Johanna stopped and Claire turned to face her. “I have a son I haven’t talked to in a long time too,” she said. “Only my son lives right here, an arm’s length away from me. So I know how hard words are to find sometimes. I know how life can destroy language.”
“Yes,” Claire said. “What happened with your boy?”
“We’ll talk about that in time. Right now you have to go to yours. Victoria’s got him mucking out a stall before dinner.”
“I imagine he’s happy about that.”
They found him at the far end of the barn. He was having trouble getting his footing in the wet straw, and as they watched him, he cursed quietly when his feet slid sideways as he tried to punch the pitchfork into the muck of the stall. Claire barely recognized him. He’d grown taller. His hair was longer and he’d filled out a lot. She was amazed at the lean muscle he’d developed and the strength he showed driving the tool downward and pitching the load into the wheelbarrow at the stall gate. His face was stern, flushed with the effort of the work, and there was a driven look to his eyes she hadn’t seen before.
When he looked up and saw them through the slats of the stall he stopped and she watched his face register her presence. It was like watching a high cloud in the wind, the features dissipating, the way his face lost the intensity of the work and the anger and smoothed mysteriously into a placid, stoic mask, the eyes becoming obsidian, distant. He placed the fork against the wall and the dull thunk of it echoed in the silence. He wiped his forearm across his face. When he stepped awkwardly through the muck and out of the stall she saw no vestige of the narrow-shouldered, thin boy who’d stood in the prisoner’s box so long ago. A piece of straw clung to his shoulder, and she stepped up and reached out to remove it. He flinched but caught himself and settled and watched her hand take the straw and flick it onto the floor.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey yourself,” he said.
“Looks like a big job.”
“Yeah. From one shithole right into another.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? This current shithole or the other one?”
“Both, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, save it.”
“Save it?”
“Yeah. I don’t need to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
He looked at Johanna. “Any slippery words of woe,” he said.
“Yes, well, I’m just glad it’s over.”
“It’s not over. It’s a long way from being fucking over.”
“You’re out, Aiden. You’re free.”
He laughed, hard and ironical, and Claire could feel his bitterness washing like a wave through the air between them. “You call this free? You and the cop set it up so I would come here. You and the cop and those bullshit words about honour. Well, I’ll do this stretch too just like I did the other one. It’s the second stretch I do because of you.”
“Aiden, I didn’t put you into prison.”
“You don’t think so?” he asked. “Think again. You built the situation.”
“What situation?”
“My fucking life, mother. You never once thought about what I might want. It was always you, always what you wanted, always another man down on the muffin. You know why I wanted to stick up that joint? So I could start buying my way away from you. Away from you and your self-centred little jelly roll.”
“That’s no way to talk to your mother, son,” Johanna said sternly.
Claire saw Aiden’s eyes flare.
“I’m not your son. I’m not anyone’s son. Don’t call me that, and you can tell your bullshit old man to stop calling me that too.”
Johanna stepped forward and stood directly in front of Aiden, who met her gaze steadily. She brushed a long strand of hair off her face, then folded her arms across her chest. “You can start using warrior words around this ranch when you start acting like a warrior,” she said.
“I am a warrior,” he said and punched his chest.
“No, you’re not. You’re a hurt little boy who wants his mother. Well, your mother’s right here, right now, and you’d do well to try reaching out to her instead of pushing her back.”
“Yeah, well, what do you know?”
“I’m a mother too and I have my own wounded son.”
“The cripple?”
Johanna dropped her hands to her sides and spread her feet a little wider. She looked at Aiden calmly. “I’ll stop using your word if you stop using mine,” she said.
Aiden held her gaze. Then he nodded. “All right,” he said.
“Okay,” Johanna said. “Now talk to your mother.”
She walked away and the two of them stood a scant yard apart, and Claire could feel each second as it ticked away. It struck her then that language is built of silences, the real words tucked away inside the wide gulf of the silences people fall into between the words. She wondered how long she and her son had struggled for talk, how many years had been built more of gulf than coastline, and she hungered for him to say something, anything so this wave of anxiety could crest and break and allow them air. As she looked at him she could see the boy beneath the visage of the man and she trembled a little in recollection of him, the wide-eyed, beaming boy she’d struggled to raise, and she wondered if he could recall him too. He only looked at her mutely, the eyes narrowed by caution and the beaming radiance of him lost in the stoic jut of jaw. She stepped forward and put a hand up slowly to that jaw and he recoiled in a small way before he caught himself and let her touch him. His skin was coarse with stubble and Claire felt like crying. She traced his cheek with her fingertips and when they got to the mouth she kept them there, the pads meeting the moist fullness of his lips and feeling the warmth of his breath. She raised the other hand and cradled his face lightly with her fingers and brushed both hands across his mouth again and then put them to her own face, her own mouth, and kissed them lightly and closed her eyes and let the first tear roll down her face. He put one big knuckle up and caught it. He held the hand in front of him and looked down at it before slowly rubbing the tear into the skin with his other hand.
“Thank you,” she said, and he nodded and turned and went back to the work of mucking out the stall.
He didn’t like guests. Guests disrupted the flow of things, the order, the predictability, the routine. In the last year or so he’d come to depend on things being what they were day in and day out. It steadied him. He had no need for expectation and there was only the work on the old girl and the vague idea he had come to develop about getting her up and on the road again. Time wasn’t anything he counted or measured anymore. There was just the matter-of-fact satisfaction of the job. It was all he needed and all he cared to claim as his own. Guests, however long they arrived for, altered the pitch of things, and he resented the effect they had on his routine. He was preparing to lie out and examine his work on the undercarriage when there was a knock at the door before it slid open and the old man poked his head in.
“Okay to come in, boy?” Lionel asked.
Joe Willie heaved a sigh and put the flashlight down on the workbench. “Yeah,” he said.
“Don’t mean to bother you.”
“Why do it, then?”
“Call it cussedness, I guess. I just wanted a word with you.”
“About?”
“About our company.”
“Your company.”
“Yes,” Lionel said and put a foot up on the running board of
the old truck. “Our company. The kid is kinda gonna need a hand getting straightened out.”
Joe Willie snorted. “Probably coulda used a hand a lot earlier. Right square on the backside. Wouldn’t have needed any straightening out now.”
“Can’t say,” Lionel said. “Don’t know the whole story.”
“No need. Convicts ain’t peaches. They don’t just grow.”
“Well, he’s a guest. He’s welcome.”
“Not around me he’s not. Don’t like convicts no matter what their story.”
“Seems to me you aren’t exactly partial to most folks,” Lionel said.
Joe Willie picked up the flashlight and turned toward the old truck. “Long as they leave me be,” he said. “I’m partial to that.”
Lionel watched him bend and roll onto his back and push himself under the truck. There was the sound of metal scratching against metal and his boots never moved at all, and eventually the old man tired of waiting for words and walked out of the shed and back to the main house. Once he’d gone Joe Willie climbed back out and up into the cab. She didn’t complain so much anymore when there was weight presented to her. He grinned at that and flexed his left hand. The bolts on the undercarriage were changed and tight now. It had taken all that time but the old girl felt solid or at least as solid as her age allowed her to be. He thumbed open the engine-repair manual and began to read, nodding and dog-earing important pages. The springs were next and then the engine, the guts of her: the growl, the moan, the promise of the road. It surprised him how much he wanted to hear that.
“In the round pen there’s nowhere for the horse to go,” Johanna explained. “You don’t have to worry about them bolting and can just concentrate on sitting. Sit the horse. Feel its motion.”
“There’s no saddle,” Aiden said flatly.
“I want you to learn to feel the horse,” Johanna said. “I want you to feel it with your legs. How a walk feels, a trot. Riding’s all about partnership, and feeling with your legs is the best way to start to form that.”
“Injun style,” Aiden said.
Johanna looked at him levelly. “You can call it that,” she said. “It’s how we rode in the purely tribal days but it’s just bareback, that’s all. It’s all about rhythm, Aiden. A horse has got it and so do we. The trick is matching them up, making them work together.”
“Can’t be all that hard, then.”
“Why don’t you hop on up and we’ll see,” Johanna said.
“No, thanks. My mom’s the one who wants this.”
“Scared?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“No.”
“Well, then?” Johanna held the reins out to him.
He looked at her, and for a moment she thought she’d pushed too hard. He looked over his shoulder at the others, who were laughing at some shared joke. When he turned to her again his jaw was set grimly.
“All right. What do I do?”
Johanna led him to the mounting block. She showed him how to stand on it and ease himself up onto the horse. She could see him gather himself, a steady pulling inward of focus. It was a look she recognized completely. When he moved it was a lithe, deliberate motion and he was on the horse smoothly, without the usual slithering about and nervous hitching and kicking of green riders.
“Good,” she said. “You did that very well. Always try to be that smooth, that fluid when you move around a horse. No herky-jerky.”
“Got it,” he said.
“Now, I’m going to get him to move around the pen and lead him with the training lead. When he starts to walk, try to feel the rhythm. Feel it with your legs and in your seat.”
“My butt?”
“Yes. Keep your back as straight as you can and drop your heels so they’re in a straight line with your shoulders. Relax.”
Aiden settled into the position and stared straight ahead.
“Don’t squeeze the reins so hard,” Johanna said. “Let them sit in your hand. Nothing is supposed to be tight up there. You’ll feel the rhythm better if you’re loose. Just sit, relax and feel the motion. Remember, there’s nowhere for the horse to go in here and I’ve got him on the lead.”
She chucked the horse into a walk, and the others watched as Aiden worked at adjusting to the slow roll of movement.
“Good,” Johanna said. “Good. Can you feel that on the inside of your legs?”
“Yes,” Aiden said and kept his gaze centred straight ahead.
“Good. That’s a good seat you have. Good seat.”
The boy held the posture and gradually, as they circled, his shoulders dropped into their natural position. By the time they’d done a half-dozen loops around the pen he was settled.
“Stay relaxed just like that,” Johanna said. “We’re going up a notch now into a trot. It’ll feel strange but concentrate on getting the flow with your legs and butt. Try to see it in your head.”
The boy was still except for the motion of the walk and he continued to keep his eyes fixed on a point somewhere just beyond the horse’s ears. He nodded but didn’t say a word. When she coaxed the horse into the trot there was a struggle for balance and Aiden’s seat came up and bumped the horse’s back a few times, but he reclaimed his equilibrium with the same deliberate set to his face. Within three laps he had the rhythm and his position was perfect. They continued to circle and Johanna watched him adjust, seeing the concentration in his face and the focus settle into his hips, thighs and seat. He didn’t fight the rhythm with the usual desperation of green riders and he seemed to ease himself downward into the gait as though he could intuit the movement and placement of the horse’s feet.
Without saying anything Johanna urged the horse up to a canter, and again there was a battle for balance but Aiden reclaimed it quickly. He kept his seat and everyone watched him circle the pen perfectly in time with the gait. Johanna watched his hands. He held the reins comfortably, draped along his palms, and his wrists bounced lightly against the inside top of his thighs. When she brought the horse down to the trot again and then into the walk without telling him, the boy adjusted perfectly. When he stepped off the mounting block with a pinch-lipped grin, she could see a familiar fire.
“Perfect,” she said. “You’ve never ridden before?”
“No,” he said. “You’re a good teacher.”
“Takes a good student to make a good teacher,” Johanna said. “Now, I want you to take the reins and lead him back to the stall. Walk right beside him, talk to him, thank him for the ride, stroke him and lead him right into the stall. One of the boys will show you how to brush him out and get him watered. Can you do that?”
“I can do that,” he said. “But when can I get back up there again?”
She laughed and rubbed between his shoulder blades. “Soon,” she said. “We’ll trail ride a bit before sunset. Introduce you to a saddle.”
Aiden walked off toward the barn, talking quietly to the horse, who swished his tail and perked up his ears at the talk. Johanna crossed the pen.
“Did you see that?” she asked the others.
“Kinda reminded me of someone I saw once before,” Lionel said. He chewed on a piece of straw as he watched Aiden lead the horse to the barn.
Claire struggled. It was difficult for her to get into rhythm with the horse like Aiden had. Walking was fine. She could relax and sit the tiny mare they gave her, but once the gait changed, rhythm went right out the window. She felt panic, and she concentrated more on not falling off than on riding. She made it awkwardly around a dozen or so times before Johanna got her off.
“We’ll work with the saddle,” she said. “Don’t worry. Not everyone takes to bareback right away. Most people prefer the security of a stirrup, and besides, you’ve been up already. How’d it feel for a first time?”
“Scary,” Claire said. “But I really loved it.”
“Good,” Lionel said and draped an arm around her shoulder. “This old girl will know that, and the more you ride
her, get to know her, the more she’ll adjust to you.”
“Horses adjust?” Claire asked.
“Sure do,” Lionel said. “I had my old boy for fifteen years now and it’s like he knew before I did what I could handle at my age.”
“Amazing,” Claire said. “I’ve always wanted to ride. From the time I was a little girl.”
“Well, then, our mission is to get you comfortable and let you do it every day you’re here,” Birch said. “Why don’t you lead her in, give her some water and groom her. We’ll tack up and head out on the trail soon.”
Claire led the mare into the barn and into the stall beside Aiden, who was busy brushing his horse. He nodded to her, and Claire busied herself following the wrangler’s instructions and getting used to being around the horse in the stall. She loved the smell. The horse odour, dusty, oily, old, seemed to lead her nose deeper, further into the world of the stable, into the tang and sharpness of liniment, the grassy dryness of hay, the mouldy wet of straw, the flat, papery husk of rope, the warm invitation of leather, and beneath it all the sour pungency of manure and urine. It pleased her. Claire believed it was the first real smell she’d ever experienced, so full and true and alive. She brushed the mare and talked to her in low tones, praising her for the work she’d done and telling her how she was looking forward to the adventure of the saddle trip to come.
“Ankle deep in horse shit and you look like you’re loving it,” Aiden said.
Claire saw him peering through the slats in the stall. “I am,” she said. “It’s like everything I ever imagined and nothing like it at all, all at the same time.”
“Good for you.”
“And how are you doing?”
He stepped across the stall and dropped his brush onto the small shelf with the curry comb. He stopped to rub the horse along the neck and when he turned to her his eyes told her nothing.
“I’m fucking glad to be out, I know that. But it’s like I could be anywhere and feel the same. Everything just feels weird, that’s all. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. I don’t feel seventeen, I feel fucking eighty. Except for maybe being on that horse.”
“Thank god for horses, then.”
Dream Wheels Page 19