“I’m not going to tell her no. She’ll just do it anyway behind my back. At least I know where she is. She needs a father right now. You picked a bad time to have a midlife crisis, you asshole.”
When the word asshole enters the conversation, there is nowhere to go but down, so I get off the phone, though not before promising to come back soon. I know Honora needs me. But I can’t go back. Not yet.
Mother makes it through next. She is worried sick and wants me to come home. Calls me crazy for preferring to stay in a state where entire cows get lifted off their hooves and thrown onto a different farm. Her voice sounds weak and I ask if she is all right.
“Nothing a little death couldn’t fix,” she says.
It is another moment when I should say something about the lung cancer. But two decades worth of not caring, or attempting not to care, get in the way.
“It’s a mess here, Mother. I should go.”
Being outside, away from the pull of BellSouth, feels like the only safe place, tornado or no tornado. I find a pair of work gloves in the barn and start dragging piles of branches. There are so many of them, spread over every inch of the property, it will take months to clear it all. The tornado did $250 million worth of damage over three counties and killed two people in a neighboring town. Cousin Georgia wants to replant the apple orchard, but Osborne refuses to talk about it beyond saying, Don’t be stupid, Georgia, it’s gone—one hundred years and a wind took it all away.
The roar of a chain saw interrupts the meadowlark’s morning song and the chatter from the radio in the barn, where talk of the tornado has been replaced by breaking news of the passengers’ release from the hijacked Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. Georgia and Osborne’s handyman/groundskeeper/farming expert, Jimmy Trotter, calls me over to help him cut a large branch from a downed tree.
Jimmy and his family live in a small house on the eastern edge of the property. Georgia says he saved the orchard several years ago when fire blight threatened to destroy the trees.
It takes the two of us to drag the cut branch to the pile. I ask if he thinks the orchard should be replanted.
“Who knows? This is good growing ground. Maybe not apples.”
When Jimmy leans over the chain saw and it jumps to life again, I motion for him to wait.
“What, Mr. Cooper? I need to work.”
The jarring loudness of the saw requires me to yell my question twice.
“Miss Chambers?” he says. “She’s the best riding teacher around here.”
“She’s giving me a lesson later this week. Says she’ll have me riding by the end of it.”
“Miss Chambers doesn’t fool around. You’ll see.”
Elle had called earlier and said she’d be happy to give me a lesson. It would provide a welcome break from clearing branches on her farm. Best riding teacher around, is she? Probably never taught a forty-two-year-old out-of-shape guy before.
When Friday finally arrives, I take longer than usual with showering and dressing. A dusty, half-empty bottle of Old Spice sits on the dresser in my room. It smells close to how it should, so I slap some on my face and neck before heading up to the stables with a cup of coffee. “Peanut Farmers Get the Shell Out” is written on the mug.
Getting acquainted with the horses before Elle shows up seems like a good idea. They hear me coming and neigh in a friendly way. I fill each of their feed buckets and hang them over the stalls. After reassuring myself that the horses are too busy eating to be worried about me, I grab the shovel off the wall and set to work. Darcy throws me a backward glance when I get to hers. I tell her she can either leave me alone or step in crap the rest of the day, and after stamping her back foot once, she returns to breakfast.
By the time Diamond’s stall is cleaned out, patches of sweat have formed under my arms. I take off my heavy flannel shirt and work in my undershirt. Whitey finishes her oats first and keeps looking over at me, so I stand by the stall and scratch behind her long, hairy ears. Darcy finishes next and begins nickering at me, too. Which one will Elle suggest I ride? Diamond looks like the safest bet. He’s much bigger than Darcy and Whitey and possesses a reassuring calmness. I pat him on the forelock and bribe him with the promise of fresh apples tomorrow if he makes me look like Travolta in Urban Cowboy.
“Diamond’s everybody’s favorite.”
The voice comes from the stable doors. Elle stands between them. Her legs are encased in tight riding pants, knee-high boots hug the roundness of her calves, and she wears a long-sleeved shirt with “Chambers Riding School” in faded letters on it. I begin not to care if I fall off.
“Good morning,” I say.
“Don’t bet on it.”
“Trying to scare me?”
“No,” she says, laughing, then adds, “well, maybe a little.”
Elle looks me up and down, stopping at my feet. “No cowboy boots?”
“Nope.” Never owned a pair of them. The old, brown lace-up work boots are the closest thing I have.
“You’re not wearing them,” I point out.
“That’s because I teach English riding, not Western.”
I wonder if this means we’ll have tea instead of a beer after the lesson. She disappears into the tack room. All three of the horses hang their heads over the stalls, nostrils flaring. Darcy keeps tossing her head. Whitey watches me out of the corner of her eye. Diamond’s ears prick up and he does a little dance back and forth in his stall.
Elle explains each step as she tacks him up—how to insert the bit gently into his mouth, to always remember to put a blanket beneath the saddle to prevent its chafing the horse’s skin, how to cinch the saddle properly so you won’t fall off. She pulls a few sugar cubes from her pocket.
“And this is the final piece. Give them a treat before and after you ride and then they’ll love to see you walk in the door.”
There is a soft, lilting quality to her voice that suggests the South but isn’t deep enough to make me believe she grew up here.
“Where are you from?”
She rolls her eyes. “People ask me that all the time. I think you Southern folks are obsessed with accents. It’s like you want to tell the exact county a person is from by the way they talk.”
She’s right.
“The drawl, if you can call it that, is from living here for almost five years and going to college out here. I’m from California originally.”
California transplants are a scarce breed in the South. Most of the visiting Californians I’ve run into talk about how quaint the South is and how slow the pace, but you can tell they’d go crazy with all this slowness if they lived here.
“What made you stay out here?”
She shakes a finger. “Quit stalling. We’re getting you up on this horse. And the answer to your question is I fell in love with this part of the world when I went to college at UVA, and even a nasty divorce from a Virginia gentleman couldn’t keep me from settling down here. No place like it, really. ”
“I went to UVA, too.”
“What year? I graduated in seventy-four.”
I turn away from her and pat Diamond’s neck. The tendons are pronounced and thick. “I was there a little before your time.”
If I say more, she’ll know what an old geezer I am and that I never graduated. “How long have you been divorced?”
“We are curious this morning, aren’t we?” she says, leading Diamond out of the stables.
“I’m divorced, too. It’s been about two years. Since it was legal. We were separated for a few years before that. My ex-wife remarried last month.”
I tell myself to shut up; she doesn’t want to know any of this.
Elle stops next to a tree stump. “Let’s focus on the horse now, okay? Hop up on the stump.”
“How come?”
“Trust me, okay?”
We face each other and our eyes meet. Today hers are the color of slick river rocks, darker than I recall. In them I glimpse guardedness. The confidence falls away for a moment and I see her, really see her, for the first time. She has been hurt. Deeply, I suspect.
“Are you ready or not?” The tone is all business again.
The saddle is a tiny scrap of leather that looks big enough for a small child, not a grown man. There is no saddle horn. When I mention this fact Elle nods.
“That’s right. English saddles don’t have horns. Sorry.”
She looks far from sorry. As I climb on top of the stump, getting a leg over the saddle without having anything to grab becomes a big problem. Mounting a horse consists of two motions—putting the foot nearest the horse into the stirrup and then, in one fluid motion, hiking the other leg up and over the horse. She notices my scowl.
“Mounting is the hardest part of learning to ride English-style. Don’t worry. We won’t get it down perfectly today. We just need to get you up there. Ready?”
“No, but I don’t think that’s going to stop you.”
“Give it a go, old boy.”
She stands next to me and places my hands in the right spots on the saddle. I can feel the rough calluses on the plump underside of her fingers against mine. Elle taps my left leg and motions for it to go in the stirrup. After almost losing my balance twice, I manage it.
“Now, on the count of three, I want you to push off with that back leg and swing it with everything you’ve got over to the other side of Diamond. Got it?”
I glance at the horse, who is busy nibbling at a fly on his chest.
“He’s not going anywhere. Diamond would wait patiently for a week for you to get on him.”
I mutter a curse before attempting to throw my leg over. Somehow it gets stuck halfway and my body begins sliding in the opposite direction. Elle quickly shores me up, allowing the leg to make it around Diamond’s ample side. It takes a minute to situate my feet properly in the stirrups.
The ground looks far away and I grip my legs tighter. The high vantage point offers a view of the farm all the way to the towering sycamore grove to the east, untouched by the storm, and the symmetrical lines of the peach orchard to the west. Diamond stands stock-still like the champion he is. I feel no need to set the horse in motion.
“You did it!” Elle claps. I grin.
“Now, I want you to hold the reins lightly, don’t exert any pressure, while I lead him into the ring.”
“I’m pretty happy just sitting up here. No need to do anything else.”
“Don’t be a wuss.”
The rest of the lesson passes without catastrophe. Diamond pretends to let me tell him what to do. Toward the end, Elle asks if I want to take it up to a trot. When “trot” is defined as going faster, I shake my head.
“I agree,” she says. “We’ve got to have something for you to look forward to.”
Walking suits me fine. I have never been one of those guys who are hooked on speed. The world turns too fast as it is without me trying to keep up.
After taking off Diamond’s saddle, blanket, and bridle, we let him loose in the ring. Elle suggests letting Darcy and Whitey out to join him for a little exercise. As I lead Darcy out to the ring, she nicks me on the shoulder, not hard enough to break the skin but with enough force to make me jump.
“She’s mad at you. She’s jealous because you rode Diamond instead of her. Got to look out for that one.”
“So I hear.”
We lean against the ring’s wooden railing and watch. Darcy and Diamond chase each other while Whitey stands in the middle, his tail flicking every so often to ward off a fly. The sun has burned off the morning mist. Next to me, Elle lets her head fall back, closing her eyes.
“I love this time of the year. The sun still warms you but doesn’t make you break out in a sweat and the air smells like apples and leaves.”
Without thinking, I turn to her and lean in, unsure of what to do next but certain of the desire to be closer to her. I want to taste the sweetness of her mouth. The wind blows a dark curl across her face and I reach up to grasp it, tucking it behind her ear. I hear the soft intake of breath when my hand makes contact with her skin.
Her eyes fly open. She looks ready to run. “Zeke.”
There is a warning in the word but the sound of my name in her mouth does me in.
The warmth of her breath against my cheek is hot and moist. Strangely hot and moist.
We are not alone.
Darcy has sidled up and put her large nostrils inches from my face.
Elle giggles, a relaxed and girlish sound. “See, I told you she was a jealous one.” She steps away from the railing, putting distance between us.
We both pretend I had not been trying to kiss her. It is not my style to bear down on a woman with a kiss. I was raised to ask a girl first.
“What’s your schedule like tomorrow?” She will not look at me, focusing instead on brushing dirt off the tops of her pants.
“I don’t imagine I have much of a schedule.”
“A man of leisure these days. I forgot. How about another lesson after lunch? I’ve got a couple in the morning over at my place.”
“Why don’t I meet you there?” I want to see her in her own surroundings.
She says no, it’s better for me to keep riding Diamond. “See you tomorrow then.”
“At least let me walk you home.”
“Why do all Southern men think women are helpless?”
Her tone rings with a surprising bitterness. Most likely her ex is responsible for putting it there.
“See you tomorrow,” I say.
Elle turns and gives me a wave, causing a lift in my chest that can only be described as dangerous.
Twenty-Nine
Letters to Home
1960
September 2, 1960
Lacey Farms
Bailey, Virginia
Dear Carter,
I made it to Virginia. Remember I showed you on the map where I’d be going to school? Right in the middle of Virginia? The train ride took fifteen hours. I wish you’d been with me. It went through the Appalachian Mountains, and those mountains stretching up toward the sky, touching the clouds—it was one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen.
You caught anything worth eating lately? Remember to get some of those worms from up in the catalpa tree. The bluegills can’t resist those.
Cousin Georgia and her husband’s family have the biggest house and farm I’ve ever seen. Georgia and Osborne live on just one floor of the main house. Her in-laws live on the second and third floors. My room’s on the back of the house, overlooking the apple orchard. I’m going to box up some of the apples once they get ripe and send them back to you and Rosie.
Things sure are different here. Every night I have to wear a tie to dinner. Cousin Georgia and Osborne and I eat with his mom and dad in the formal dining room (formal means fancy). They have candles lit and these special dinner plates from England. We eat a lot of food I’ve never had before, like parsnips (they taste a little like carrots but not really) and aspic, which is pretty disgusting stuff—you don’t even want to know what’s in it. And they mainly talk about their real-estate business during dinner—which property needs work, which property needs to be sold, which property they should develop next. I don’t say much.
Compared to our house, Lacey Farms is pretty quiet. They have lots of animals, but they live down in the barn, and there aren’t any kids running around crazy like at our house. Cousin Georgia and Osborne couldn’t have kids, so it’s just them and his parents, who are really old—they must be fifty. After dinner Georgia plays the piano. She asked me what kind of music I like. I told her rock and roll and she and Osbo
rne laughed. She plays classical music, which is nice to listen to while I’m studying or reading. I don’t know how to tell you what it sounds like except it’s kind of like church music.
Classes started yesterday at the university. White columns seem to hold up every building. The library looks like a church. You walk up the steps, pass columns so wide I can’t reach my arms around them, and inside it’s quiet enough to hear the scratch of someone’s pencil against paper. There are so many books, Carter. I want to live there and go floor by floor, row by row, and read every book in the place.
Speaking of reading, are you reading at night like you promised? I left The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at home for you. You like that story better than Tom Sawyer. I know it’s hard to read without me there, but you can. I know you can.
Guess I’ll say good-bye for now. Remember I’m coming home at summertime, okay? That’s only nine months away.
Love from your brother,
Zeke
September 15, 1960
Lacey Farms
Bailey, Virginia
Dear Jackie,
See, I told you I’d write and here I am. It seems so long since I’ve seen you but it’s only been five weeks. Virginia is beautiful. I wish you were here and we could go and see everything together. Next week Cousin Georgia’s taking me to see Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home. I know you’d like to see it, too. Sure you don’t want to come out to Virginia? There’s a good girls’ school nearby. I’ve met a couple of girls from there and they say it’s a real nice school.
How’s the dress shop? There are a lot of little shops like Abigail’s in Charlottesville in a place called the Corner. I pass by it going to class and think about you every time there’s a salesgirl in the window putting an outfit on a mannequin.
I miss you. You thought I’d get all the way out in Virginia and forget about you, but I think about you all the time. I have the picture of you from the junior social, with the gardenia in your hair, on my nightstand. Do you miss me? Are you still sad about the baby? I think about the baby sometimes. How it would’ve been born by now and you’d both be at Lacey Farms with me. I get a little sad then.
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