“Hey, Corrine!”
It was Ricky Dale Oakes, pedaling past on his bicycle, with a black dog running alongside. Ricky Dale did a quick stop, hopped off and wheeled his bike up the walk to the porch, where Corrine and Willie Lee were playing with Willie Lee’s kitten and his new battery-powered truck.
Corrine said, “Hey,” but did not want to act overly interested. Ricky Dale was in her grade at school, in Mrs. Noble’s class. He was the sheriff’s son, but he wasn’t stuck-up about it. All the girls thought he was cute, and Corrine did, too, but she wasn’t about to admit it.
The next instant here came that black dog, a big puppy, running up on the porch, knocking over the truck and chasing the kitten. The kitten screeched, Willie Lee tried to grab him but missed, and Munro went after the intruding dog, while Ricky Dale and Corrine both tried to get hold of the big canine. It was so much commotion as to cause Aunt Marilee to poke her head out the door.
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Just my dog went after the cat, Miz James. I’m sorry. He’s just a pup.”
“Well…” Aunt Marilee’s eyes swept them. “Y’all look okay…. Nice to see you, Ricky Dale. How’s your mama doin’?”
“Fine, I guess. She doesn’t really tell me, though.”
Aunt Marilee chuckled at that and went back in the house. She was working on an article and had that absentminded look she wore when trying to figure out her writing.
Ricky Dale dragged his puppy to the foot of the stairs and held on to him. Willie Lee, with his arm around Munro, sat on the top step. Corrine leaned against the post. She was glad she had on the pair of good denim overalls and a tanned turtleneck sweater that Aunt Marilee had bought her from The Gap.
“I live down Porter two blocks,” Ricky Dale said, inclining his head in the direction from where he’d come.
“Oh,” Corrine said. She had little experience in talking to boys, or girls, either, for that matter.
He said, “I’m goin’ up to Mr. Valentine’s to take care of a couple of horses.”
“You are?” This from Willie Lee, whose eyes popped wide.
“When did Mr. Winston get horses?” Corrine asked. She had a disappointing moment when she wondered if Ricky Dale was just a faker.
“Oh, they ain’t his. They’re Leanne Overton’s—she’s his niece. She moved in there a couple of weeks ago. Mr. Valentine’s friend, Ms. Bell, died last Christmas, and his family thinks him and that other old lady that lives with him need somebody to kinda keep an eye on them. Miz Overton needed to separate her mare and its filly from her others out there at the MacCoys’, and Mr. Valentine has that good horse place. His wife used to be a barrel racer.”
Ricky Dale seemed like he knew a lot about people and goings-on.
“Miz Overton hired me to look out for ’em. Fifteen dollars for the week, and an extra five dollars when I come on Saturdays. I’ll groom and exercise ’em, just work with them, so they have people attention. That’s important with baby horses, like that filly.”
Corrine wondered if he really knew this much about what he was saying, or if he liked to pretend he knew so much. She wondered if he was big enough to handle horses; he wasn’t but just a bit taller than she was, maybe ten pounds heavier. Probably what he would do mostly was clean the stalls, and that wasn’t exactly handling horses, but she saw no need to say this.
He continued on to say that he had been riding horses since he was three years old, that his grandfather, who used to be the sheriff for years, had taught him. He had even herded cattle with his grandfather.
“But he had to sell out his place and move into MacCoy Acres for old farts.”
Corrine wished she could think of something to say.
Willie Lee did. “Do you have a horse?”
“No. I did have. Mason MacCoy gave me his Old Buck to ride, but he died.”
Corrine could not speak to that horribly sad thing.
“I am sorry,” Willie Lee said. “That is sad.”
“Yeah, well, it happens. Buck was real old.” He looked downward as he spoke, then lifted his head. “My grandfather’s gonna help me buy another horse. A young one that I can train. I’m gonna save my money from this job.”
“That will be nice,” Corrine said, wishing she could come up with a better comment.
Then Ricky Dale asked, “You guys want to come up to Mr. Winston’s and see the horses? You’d like the baby horse, Willie Lee.”
Corrine stared at him. She was at once impressed that he spoke equally to Willie Lee and amazed at the invitation.
“Yes, I want to come,” Willie Lee said instantly.
Corrine, always more cautious, said, “We have to ask Aunt Marilee.”
“Okay,” Ricky Dale said.
Willie Lee went racing inside. Corrine followed more slowly behind. Her mind was skimming over all sorts of reasons why going with Ricky Dale could turn out to be a bad idea. She was afraid she might do or say something stupid, and she really didn’t want to find out something stupid about him.
But Willie Lee threw himself upon Aunt Marilee’s lap. “Ma-ma, can we go to see hors-es up at Mr. Win-ston’s with Ric…Ric-ky Dale?”
Corrine’s faint hope that Aunt Marilee would disapprove was squashed when her aunt said, “Why, that sounds like a fine idea for a Saturday mornin’.” Aunt Marilee apparently considered Ricky Dale in a good light.
Mr. Winston’s corral was at the rear of his deep backyard, partially shaded by large pecan trees. The mare was a black-and-white paint, a “high-dollar” kind, Ricky Dale said. Her baby, a two-month-old filly, was the same, with a large black spot on one hip and black on each ear, as if someone had painted them.
When he saw the horses, the black dog, Beau, went racing forward, barking, ducked under the fence and chased after the horses, that went all over the corral. Ricky Dale ran after him, yelling until the dog, tongue hanging out, stopped and obeyed his master’s call. Corrine, standing with Willie Lee and Munro outside the corral, looking on, figured it was more that the dog had stopped to get his breath.
Ricky Dale parked Beau outside the fence and called Corrine and Willie Lee inside. Munro followed. The filly poked her head beneath the mare’s neck, watching them with sharp curiosity.
In that moment of looking at the mare and her baby, looking into the deep, dark eyes, Corrine fell totally in love with another being other than Willie Lee. In that instant she was lost forever to an adoration of horses.
“Come here, Pretty Girl,” Ricky Dale coaxed, then instructed Corrine and Willie Lee not to move, nor look the horse right in the eyes.
The next instant the filly was slipping beneath the mother’s neck and coming forward, straight for Willie Lee. The mare moved, putting herself next to the baby, who stretched her neck and nose toward Willie Lee.
“Breathe into her nose, Willie Lee,” said Ricky Dale.
Willie Lee touched his nose to the filly’s nose. The filly drew back and then put her nose out again. Corrine thought it was about the neatest thing she’d ever seen, and she was glad when she got a chance to do it, too.
They all eventually got to pet the filly and the mare. Corrine decided she liked the mare best. She liked the way the mare let her lean against her and put her check against her strong shoulder. She could have stayed there with the mare forever.
But Ricky Dale had come to do a job. He found two rakes, and Corrine and Willie Lee took turns helping to clean the large stall. Corrine figured Ricky Dale wasn’t a fool; he’d gotten help for the job.
Willie Lee was not much help, but Ricky Dale told him that he was.
They were putting fresh pine shavings into the stall when Ricky Dale’s dog started chasing the horses again. Ricky Dale ran out into the corral. “Beau! Beau! You stop that!”
Beau looked at Ricky Dale, and the mare at that instant kicked the fire out of the dog. Kicked him hard enough to cause a loud thud and to send the dog flying backward. Corrine, watching, experienced a slice of horror and unrea
lity. The dog got immediately up from the ground, then stood with all four legs splayed, as if for balance. Ricky Dale went toward him, and the dog started toward Ricky Dale, and then he just keeled over.
Ricky Dale reached the dog and went down on his knees. “Beau?”
Corrine, having followed after Ricky Dale, saw that the dog’s eyes were closed, and its blackish tongue hung out of its mouth, but it wasn’t panting. It lay still as death, a term she had heard one of the women in her old neighborhood down in Fort Worth use.
Panic rose inside her, and she looked over to the Valentine house, wondering if she should go get someone.
Then there was Willie Lee getting on his knees and pulling the dog’s head onto his lap. Corrine went to tell him to stop that disgusting action of touching a dead dog, but something, some odd prickling at the back of her neck, stopped the words. Slowly she fell on her knees beside him.
“Willie Lee?”
He didn’t answer. His arms were around the dog’s neck, his cheek pressed against the dog’s fur. His eyes were closed, and there was this strange look on his face. It was the sunlight, she thought, and looked up, seeing the beams slanting through the bare branches and shining on Willie Lee, making his pale hair glow. Corrine blinked, looking at it. She saw Munro pressed against Willie Lee; the dog’s eyes were slits, as if things were bright for him, too. All was still as death.
Then she looked across at Ricky Dale, who looked at her. For whatever reason, neither of them pulled Willie Lee away.
And then Willie Lee’s eyes came open, and he straightened back up. “He is o-kay.”
“What?” Ricky Dale said.
Then the black dog’s eyes opened up. Corrine looked harder. Yes, his eyes opened and his tongue went back in his mouth. He lifted his head.
Ricky Dale said, “Beau?”
The dog got up, sort of drunk like, and licked Ricky Dale in the face.
“Beau is bet-ter now. Right, Mun-ro?” Willie Lee smiled.
Corrine told Willie Lee to go to the backyard ahead of her. “Start feeding the rabbits, and I’ll help you in a minute,” she said, and hung back to say goodbye to Ricky Dale, who was getting his bike. His black dog waited a few feet away, watching with his stupid-puppy-looking expression. The kick hadn’t made him any smarter.
“Thanks for takin’ us along to see the horses,” Corrine said.
“Yeah.”
She thought he was looking at her as oddly as he had Willie Lee.
“I’m glad your Beau was just knocked out,” she said, watching his face closely.
He looked down at his bike. “Yeah. Me, too.” Then his eyes came up—they were very green, looked like cat’s-eye marbles. “I think maybe he wasn’t just knocked out, Corrine. I think maybe he was dead, and that maybe Willie Lee brought him back to life.”
Corrine chose her words. “Well, I don’t know about that.” She regarded him with a raised eyebrow, the way Aunt Marilee could do to someone. “But I do know that if we tell that story, everyone will think we made it up. And they’ll think we’re crazy. Some people already look down on Willie Lee as being half-crazy.”
His shoulders dropped, and his eyes shifted, thoughtful like, to the ground.
“Don’t tell anyone about what happened, Ricky Dale. Just don’t tell.” She started it as a plea, but then she added firmly, “I won’t back you up, if you tell. I’ll say you’re lyin’.”
She gazed at him in a way to let him know she meant business. In that moment, she felt exactly like she imagined her aunt Marilee did, which was knowing and doing whatever it took to protect Willie Lee.
Ricky Dale wet his lips, but she couldn’t read his expression. Then he nodded and turned his bike toward the street. Halfway along the walk, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “I don’t think Willie Lee is crazy.”
She didn’t reply, and he got on his bike.
She turned then and went up the steps, pausing at the top to hang on to the porch post and watch Ricky Dale pedal off down the street, with the black dog running behind him.
Eleven
Off with the old, on with the new…
What was wrong? He and Marilee were to be married. They were getting along fine. No arguing. Comfortable.
The problem was the word “comfortable.” It was not comfortable.
It was like there were questions buzzing around their heads now when they were together.
It was as if she were saying things that he could not hear.
They hadn’t made love since before Christmas.
It wasn’t required, he argued with himself. He had never considered sex the proof of love. Hadn’t he loved Barbara Ann Jewel in senior high, and he hadn’t had sex with her, simply because he had loved her so much. Plus, he had been terrified of the consequences, he admitted. In those days a person went straight to hell for even touching his own private parts, not to mention a woman’s. Kissing was okay, but keep the tongue out of it, too, or you went to hell.
Of course, he had by the age of sixteen dared all of it, and he hadn’t gone to hell. He’d gone to heaven. Well, until later, when there would be all sorts of squirmy feelings and complications. Growing up meant hard lessons, but he was far from that now. What was going on with him about this thing? He was an adult man; he should be able to understand. But that was a pitiful joke played on human-kind. Did anyone ever come to understand enough?
He thought of how he had felt with Marilee in the porch swing, that last time they had been alone. Why in the world had he acted like such a fool?
He had wanted her so badly right then. Every part of him had longed and clamored to bury himself in her sweet warmth. To take succor in her rich womanliness. In fact, he swelled at this very moment with the memory and desire, as his mind quickly took off with images of their hot and sweating bodies entangled in sheets made damp by their lovemaking.
A chill swept him. The desire scared him afresh, as it had then. The wanting, the need, seemed not to have an end. It was like looking into an endless black pit that threatened to swallow him should he get one step closer.
And Marilee was backing away from him. There was no evidence in her manner of this, he argued with himself. Yet he could feel it.
Stuart James did not help matters. Not that Tate felt actually threatened by the man, but he did not at all like the way James kept looking at Marilee, as if he was about to scoop her up and run off. Tate kept having the urge to punch the man.
At least that urge he could understand, he thought with a loud sigh.
“What are you sighing about?”
His mother had come into the kitchen, quietly, in her soft-soled ballerina slippers that she wore when doing her yoga.
“Oh, nothin’.” He didn’t want to resent his mother being in the house. He loved his mother. But sometimes she made him feel like a child again. Would that ever end? “I’ve been working on an editorial. Havin’ trouble comin’ up with something interesting.” He hid his face in his cup, draining the last of the coffee.
“They don’t all have to be Pulitzer prize winners.” She put a cup of water in the microwave and pushed the buttons. “Maybe you need to skip an edition or two. You know, your readers might more appreciate your column after a bit of absence.”
He frowned, not liking the thought at all. What if his readers decided they didn’t miss his column? It was his paper; he wanted his name in it. Besides, use it or lose it, so the saying went.
This thought was like a splinter into his mind.
He had not done well at being a husband the first time around. And since his divorce, he had not had a long-term relationship with a woman. He could count on three fingers the number of women he had slept with in the over fifteen years since his divorce. He always wondered if men exaggerated this part of their lives.
Once again alone, he sat himself at the kitchen table and his notebook computer. Put his fingers on the keys. Writing, he knew, did not depend on inspiration. Writing came from application. Just write, an
d the ideas would then begin, not the other way around.
Was this the answer to his relationship with Marilee, too? And to his fears? He faced the fear of writing by the doing. Would this work with the black hole of uncertainty that sucked at him?
He wondered this as he typed out what came to mind, a garbled sentence, but within ten words, he was forming ideas and putting them on the page.
Half an hour later, as he finished up his editorial, his mother came through lugging a white plastic trash bag. She informed him that she had cleaned out the towel closet and the medicine cabinet.
The medicine cabinet? He hoped his shaving cream and razors and aspirin were not in the trash bag.
“Do you know, I found Milk of Magnesia bottles in the bathroom closet, with a fifteen-year-old date? Muriel had some definite problems with keeping house.”
He had seen the blue bottles in the far back of the deep closet. He hadn’t thought they were bothering anything.
With some amazement, he watched as she simply opened the back door, threw the bag out, then closed the door again, turned and immediately demanded of him: “Why have you not done anything around here?”
“I haven’t even been here a full year,” he said, feeling the odd need to defend himself. “And I did have a newspaper to get on its feet.”
She likely didn’t understand the magnitude of the job he had taken on.
“Between Marilee and the newspaper, Mom, I’ve been fully occupied.”
His thoughts followed with: And it was easier to spend most of his time over at Marilee’s. He liked being over at her house.
Quite suddenly he was seeing the dreary old house through his mother’s eyes. The only rooms he had used at all were his bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen. He had an aversion to the other rooms, he realized.
The big old Porter house had previously belonged to his cousin, Muriel Porter, who had also owned the paper. She had sold both to Tate and left town, and when Muriel had left town, she had carried away with her only her clothes, and no more of those than she could fit into two full-size suitcases and an overnighter. When Tate had arrived the previous spring, the closets had been crowded with clothes that looked to have belonged to at least two generations, the rooms filled with heavy furniture that possibly dated from the early part of the century, and the walls decorated with wallpaper not much newer, and aged photographs and memorabilia from a bygone era.
At the Corner of Love and Heartache Page 11