Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

by Wyckoff, Jason A.

  The trucker fell silent.

  Walt laughed, ‘That’s it?’

  The trucker shrugged. ‘That’s all there is to tell.’ He looked embarrassed.

  I said, ‘You must have thought about how that all worked out, though—how those guys lost that time and the people close to them had that time, but time in the world just about stayed the same.’

  The trucker put his hands together and tried to pantomime as he talked. ‘I figured it was like cloth. You know how stories talk about the “tapestry of life” or the “strands of fate”? You get your shirt caught on something and it pulls one of the threads out and makes a big loop that stands away from the cloth. Now, them other stitches that’s close by that thread get all cinched up tight and displaced a little bit. But you get far enough back from the fabric you don’t notice anything at all. I think maybe it was something like that. If it had to do with the bones or with how Walsh had ’em tied, I don’t know. He’s past telling.’

  Walt laughed at me this time. ‘Why in the heck are you trying to make it make sense? It’s a story! And a fine big pile of bullshit it is!’ Walt kept on laughing.

  I thought the trucker might get upset at Walt, but he just let out a big sigh. He left some money on the counter and said, ‘You all have a good night, now.’ He got up and he left. We called out, ‘’Night!’ and ‘Take ’er easy!’ after him as he went out the door.

  Then me and Walt have that conversation I started with.

  When he came back from bussing the trucker’s dishes and putting his cash in the till, Walt asked me, ‘So, have you figured out yet whether or not to believe that tall tale?’

  I said, ‘I think I do believe him. Because of what he left out.’

  Walt laughed again, ‘What? You mean like logic? Like sense? Or how ’bout a satisfactory explanation?’

  ‘No, he just didn’t have those available. I’m talking about the stuff he left out because he was ashamed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look. That one guy Jerry is up at the front, and he’s the guy who cuts the thread,’ I explain. ‘He lost about seven years, right? And the other fella, Speed, down at the tail, he lost about a year. So if that trucker is in the middle, between ’em, how much did you figure he lost?’

  ‘I guess, what? Three, four years?’

  ‘Exactly. He lost three or four years of his life and he didn’t notice.’

  I almost hated to point it out to Walt, because I knew exactly how he’d react. He started to say something, but stopped short. Then his eyes bounced back and forth, looking over his empty little diner with a touch of desperation. It’s a hell of a thing to think about yourself that way. I can tell you that from experience.

  So that’s the trucker’s story. I hope you can use it; it sure as hell is better than anything I could write. I don’t know where you should send the money, though. I’ve decided to go out on the road for awhile to see what I can see.

  A Willow Cat in Meadowlark

  Samantha (‘Sam’ growing up, but not for years now) Perridot sat at her desk, absently perusing the Kundera novel she’d finished the day before. The children in her third grade class, sprawled across carpet squares on the floor, made better use of ‘independent reading time’ than she. Having forgotten to select another book from her stack of ‘unreads’ before departing for work in the morning, Samantha set her mind adrift as her fingers occasionally flipped between pages. She thought of how nervous she had been two weeks prior when she’d first cracked the spine on The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, as such a novel would not be considered appropriate material to have in the classroom, even if it was meant solely for her eyes. She speculated that bringing the book to school was due to a spark of late-spring pique, a gambit towards freedom as the school year ticked almost audibly down to summer. She wondered if a similar subconscious drive had caused her to ‘forget’ to bring any new, weighty tome with her that day. It wasn’t that she avoided literature during the summer—quite the contrary: her immersion in the printed word deepened in solitude. Here, even the magic of a master became cheapened by fragmentation and distraction. It might be better to save the good stuff, she thought. Maybe I’ll just bring a magazine on Monday. Samantha allowed herself a secret smile as she thought ahead to her annual all-day bookstore haunt in mid-July. She dutifully enjoyed herself when her few friends took her out for a drink on her birthday, but she much preferred her private celebration. No one knows you better than you, she always thought.

  Brydon White, an awkward, narrow-shouldered boy with an unusual combination of inquisitiveness and intellectual dullness, clambered upright, his knees seeming to bend inward and out like a jack missing a bolt, elevating his body in a swaying stagger. He held open his book about animals, with one hand under the book and the other spread flat on top to keep the page. He narrowly missed treading on several classmates as he approached Samantha’s desk.

  ‘Mrs Perridot?’

  Samantha tried to hide her wince behind a kindly smile. She didn’t correct the children anymore; after eight months together, she didn’t think she should have to. She whispered, ‘Yes, Brydon?’

  Brydon either remembered belatedly or read Samantha’s ambiguous expression, and he corrected himself, ‘Miss Perridot?’

  She hushed him, ‘Quietly, Brydon. The others are reading.’

  He hissed in a stage whisper, ‘Why are vultures bald?’ He presented the page he had saved, smacking the wide book on her desk. As he pulled his hand away to reveal the picture of the referenced bird, he knocked the top of the book so that it flipped to the floor, closed.

  ‘Awww!’ Brydon moaned. ‘Just a minute.’

  Samantha touched Brydon lightly on the shoulder as he bent to reach for the book. ‘It’s all right, Brydon, I know what a vulture looks like.’

  ‘So why’re they bald?’

  Samantha always tried to answer honestly if she thought there was no danger of imparting information the parents might prefer withheld. ‘Well, it’s because vultures are scavengers. That means they eat dead animals for their food. And when animals are dead for a long time, they get bugs crawling on them.’ Brydon screwed up his face. Samantha couldn’t help but smile at his discomfort. ‘Vultures are bald so that they can eat the dead animals without getting bugs all over their faces, and stuck under their feathers.’

  Brydon’s expression remained pained. He was obviously working through some deep thought. ‘But meat is made from dead animals, isn’t it? Do we eat a lot of bugs, too?’

  Samantha had learned to be wary of accurate truths exposed by youthful logic. She didn’t care to imagine the feedback Brydon’s parents might provide after she explained micro-organisms to him and he refused to eat. ‘Well, you would see them if there were, wouldn’t you?’

  Brydon held his grimace for a beat and then brought his narrow shoulders up to his ears. ‘So how come my dad is bald?’

  Samantha laughed. The children looked up. Brydon was confused.

  Samantha composed herself. She waved her other students back to their reading as she addressed Brydon. ‘Your father is bald for different reasons, sweetie. Why don’t you go and read some more about animals?’

  Brydon retrieved the book and began to move back to his spot on the floor. The classroom door opened, distracting him so that he tripped on Ashley Howard and went sprawling onto the carpet amid her vociferous protests.

  ‘Careful!’ Samantha ordered too late. She rose to extricate student from student in the small jumble, but Principal Weston called her back.

  ‘Uh, Miss Perridot?’

  The Principal’s face was drawn and ashen. He didn’t enter the classroom. He held the door, nervously thrumming his fingers. That he bore ill tidings was obvious, but Samantha couldn’t imagine what they might be.

  ‘Yes, Mr Weston?’

  ‘Could I, uh—could I see you in the hall for a minute, please.’ He looked past her and instructed, ‘Everyone go on with your reading, please.’

/>   Samantha was startled at the direct communication. She wondered if she had lost her job. It seemed madness to let her go so close to the end of the school year. She realised she didn’t know exactly when a teacher should expect to be let go. She also couldn’t help but mark the brief exhilaration she felt at the thought of never having to come back to the school. Confused, she crossed in front of the Principal and waited as he shut the door behind her.

  ‘Um.’ He coughed. He put his hand on her shoulder.

  Oh, God, she thought, trying not to squirm beneath the unwanted touch, Consolation?

  ‘Miss Perridot. Samantha. Sam.’ Nobody called her Sam anymore. The Principal seemed to realise the awkwardness of the informality, and began again. ‘Samantha, I’m afraid we’ve just received a call. In the office.’ He nodded back over his shoulder.

  I know where the damn office is.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some terrible news. Um.’ Another cough, then, ‘I’m afraid your mother has died.’ He squeezed her shoulder. Samantha thought she noticed a quiver of anticipation run through his frame, as though he expected her to sink into his arms and begin to weep. The Principal stood in dumb silence, paralyzed by that expectation charged with unacknowledged sexual excitement. Samantha cringed at the delusion of opportunity from which he suffered.

  Samantha’s response to the news was not at all what the Principal might have expected or secretly hoped for. She blinked several times in rapid succession and stared at him. Embarrassed, the Principal let his hand drop away from her shoulder. Samantha’s lips pursed tight, then released to let in a measured breath.

  ‘Mr Weston, I can assure you that I’m well aware of my mother’s present condition, as she died when I was very young.’

  The Principal’s pallor became even more blanched. He moved his mouth soundlessly.

  Samantha took the Principal’s floundering for an apology and nodded curtly to accept. ‘Is the caller still on the line?’

  ‘Of course, yes, I’ll tell him right away that—that he has got it all wrong. I’m so very sorry, this—I don’t know how this could have happened. Please, just let me, um.’

  ‘No,’ Samantha commanded. ‘If you would be so kind as to watch my classroom for a minute, Mr Weston, I think I’d like to talk to the caller myself.’

  The Principal acknowledged his consent as Samantha’s heels clicked sharply down the hall.

  Janine, the school secretary, ready to coo and comfort, was likewise unprepared for Samantha’s indignant demeanour. Her fingers reached meekly at the air in front of her mouth as though fumbling for a lightswitch in the dark or hoping to actually take hold of the appropriate sentiment.

  Samantha hurtled past her. ‘I’ll be taking the call in Mr Weston’s office.’

  She shut the door behind her and sat at the Principal’s desk. Papers were stacked neatly. A framed photograph of a golf foursome faced her; metal balls and loops swayed on several small wooden bases. Samantha picked up the receiver and pushed the blinking button.

  ‘Hello?’

  Samantha had never heard of Meadowlark, Ohio or Meadowlark, Pennsylvania, though she could understand why both municipalities straddling the border chose to retain a name both demure and pleasantly evocative. She wondered if the town predated the border or simply had been founded in ignorance of its whereabouts. The policeman had stressed that he was calling from the Pennsylvania side; if the woman in question had died on the Ohio side, she would have been sent to Youngstown.

  Recalling the conversation, Samantha couldn’t remember exactly if it was a policeman with whom she’d spoken. She felt sure he’d never referred to himself as ‘detective’, though she didn’t think a detective would be the one to call unless foul play was suspected, which was not the case. More likely she had spoken to someone at the coroner’s office and had subconsciously misapplied his level of authority. Though initially flummoxed by the situation, the man from the coroner’s office (Samantha now presumed that had to be the correct identification) had been quick to apologize for the error and told Samantha to pay it no further mind. At which suggestion Samantha immediately volunteered to drive the hundred-odd miles to Meadowlark to view the corpse and confirm her ignorance of the deceased. The man could only acknowledge her right to do so, even if he couldn’t understand her motivation.

  Samantha was confused when she received directions to a funeral home instead of a hospital morgue. She questioned how the body had been released when there appeared to be some question of identity. Samantha did not appreciate when the official quipped that there was really only a question as to her identity. He then admitted he would not be the one with whom she would meet when she arrived. Samantha wondered wryly if his absence might be attributed to her caustic hostility on the phone and assured him she meant to convey only her annoyance at the general incompetence of the mistake and not at the poor fool stuck delivering the news.

  With the passage of every ten miles of road Samantha revisited the question of why she was bothering with the journey at all. She oppugned the prosaic reason she would make the trek—that she was driving almost two hours to look at a stranger’s corpse because she never knew her mother. Abandonment issues, insecurities? She blew a raspberry at her reflection in the rear-view mirror. She was long acclimated to having only one parent and had spent little of her youth thinking she suffered the dearth of the other. She knew pictures, she knew stories; she experienced enough of her mother’s presence in her home and in the remembrances of relatives that she could feel a defined, palpable absence. Because of that, her mother was existentially real to Samantha; she might not have known her mother, but her mother was not ‘unknown’. The hardest part of her adolescence was accepting that she didn’t have any issues not remembering her mother when so many around her seemed to think she should.

  One pang of guilt lingered: While she couldn’t remember firsthand her mother’s face, she remembered perfectly the smooth, polished mahogany box, the closed lid, the brass clasps. Samantha hated that she had the wrong memory and that she had no one else to blame for the discrepancy.

  Samantha sighed wearily. This is so stupid. She considered turning around, not for the first time. She split her thoughts:

  What is so stupid?

  Driving two hours to look at a dead body.

  Is that it?

  Oh yeah. Not only stupid, but worryingly macabre.

  ‘Worryingly’?

  Worrisomely. Either is fine.

  But be honest with yourself—me—is that what you think is really stupid?

  Samantha sighed again. No, what I think is truly stupid is that I seem willing to entertain the possibility that this crazy dead bitch who identified me as her next of kin might actually be telling…

  The truth?

  ‘No,’ Samantha declared.

  So what if she couldn’t remember her living mother? So what if she could remember only the closed casket? An elaborate conspiracy involving the hospital, the police, and the funeral home seemed unlikely. The tears of her family were certainly real. In fact, it was her father’s enduring melancholy—and Samantha’s inability to empathize—that drove a wedge between father and daughter, and, as she grew, they grew apart. In a very literal sense, Samantha could not understand why he couldn’t get past her mother’s passing—it had never been an issue for her.

  And yet, here you are.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Try this,’ she chuckled, imagining a phone call to her estranged father.

  ‘Hello, Dad, it’s Sam,’ she narrated, correcting herself, ‘Samantha. Funny thing happened today.’ She laughed. ‘Got a call at work. Yes, that’s right—I still babysit the blank-eyed next generation of middle management. Mm-hmm. Anyway, you remember how mom’s dead, right?’ Samantha groaned and grimaced. Her musing had gone dark too quickly and it was no longer funny to contemplate. Samantha turned on the radio to quiet her mind.

  Samantha had to admit Meadowlark (both sides) was endearing: wide, elm and maple-line
d residential streets passed by large Georgian and Victorian houses with second-storey balconies en route to a clustered but uncluttered business district. She expected to transition between states at an intersection, but saw the border marked only by a small metal sign on the side of street halfway down a city block. The centre square struck Samantha as near-institutionalized Americana, but she was pleased to see it had not stagnated. Modern chain stores with tinted glass fronts squatted in near-perfect hopscotch between older mom-and-pops in unstained cement and bright brick. Samantha admired the seamless blending of preserved charm with modern amenity; it bespoke of vigilant but affable town pride.

  A middle-aged man shut and locked the door of a hardware store. He waved to a young couple passing to the coffee shop on the corner. Samantha looked at the clock on her dashboard and saw it was precisely seven o’clock. A teenager in a red polo shirt exploded from two doors down balancing a red vinyl bag on his palm as he hurried to a pizza-sign-topped Ford on its last tour of duty. Traffic was light. Samantha turned right at the next intersection and drove two blocks before pulling off into a small parking lot.

  The woman looked to be about sixty. Though stippled lines framed her eyes and ran down from her thin lips, and despite showing the early creases of waddle around her neck, if not for her present condition Samantha would have guessed that the woman possessed vitality sufficient for another two decades of life. A few strands of defiant brown still highlighted the short, unmanaged feathers of mottled gray falling back from her crown towards the metal gurney. Her face was peaked, narrowing towards the temple, wide at the hinge of the jaw. Though her lids were shut, the lift of the eyebrows suggested forthrightness of character. The woman lay stripped beneath a white sheet. Samantha noted that nothing betokens death in its universal anonymity and equanimity like naked shoulders.