by Sean McGinty
“God, you’re such a pain!”
The fire was brighter now, the smoke thicker, with little bits of papery ash floating down from the sky like a light snowfall. As for the horses, when we got to them they were pretty much losing their shit, both mentally and physically, racing around the corral, nostrils flared, stopping every now and again to shake their manes or dig at the ground.
“Let’s hose the perimeter!” said Isaac.
But you can’t fight a wildfire with a garden hose—I mean you can, but you’ll lose. That much was clear as soon as we got the water going and observed the puny stream.
“We gotta move the horses!”
“Fine!” said Evie. “Open the gate and let’s go.”
“Well, we can’t just let them out!”
“Oh, yes, we can!”
“How would we get them back? We need to lead them. We needs ropes and…and…what are those things on their faces called?”
“Bridles?” said Isaac.
“Yeah, that! Does anyone see a bridle around?”
Isaac disappeared into Anne’s yellow shed, emerging a few seconds later with a bundle of ropes in his arm. “Maybe some of these are the bridles?”
“Yeah! Here. I’ll put them on the horses.”
“In your condition?” said Evie.
“I’ll do it,” said Sam.
“Me too,” said Isaac.
But as soon as they stepped into the corral, the horses bolted to the far corner and wouldn’t let anyone near them. Sam and Isaac ran around the corral like a pair of rodeo clowns while Evie and I shouted helpful advice from the railing. The horses bucked and snorted and spun around, dust rising up in a lavender cloud.
“Hold on! You’re just scaring them!”
Sam came to the railing wiping sweat from his brow.
“Us scare them? Did you not see that? THAT ONE ALMOST MURDERED ME!”
Well, if I were one of the horses I’d probably be freaking out, too, what with the fire and the smoke and everyone running around like crazy. It might help if there was someone around who was confident and knew what they were doing. But there wasn’t anyone, so someone was going to have to pretend.
“We need to try something else,” I said. “We need to coax them or something.”
“Hey! I know!” Isaac jammed his hand into his pocket and came out with a handful of purple candy. “Think one of these might do the trick?”
Candy in one hand, bridle things in another, I hobbled across the corral. The horses crowded together in the corner, eyeing me all warily, but they didn’t bolt. Maybe they could tell I was injured. Maybe they trusted me. Maybe they were just tired of the whole fiasco. I don’t know what it was, but they let me get right up next to them, and before I knew it I found myself standing face-to-face with Cain and Abel.
You forget how big a horse is until you see one up close again. They were right there, heads cocked to look at me with their giant bloodshot eyes. I held out my hand and they turned to me, nostrils like shot glasses, and when the white one breathed with a loud sigh I could feel it, the warm horse breath on my face. The animal smell of it. I unwrapped a candy and held up my hand. The horses eyed the shiny purple cube. The white one parted its lips, teeth like giant kernels of corn.
YAY! for Jolly Ranchers™—the purple sugarless kind—because as it turns out in a random survey, two out of two horses love the shit out of them. While they crunched the sweet candy, I put the bridles on. Isaac came in with some ropes, and we tied these to the bridles and walked the horses out of the corral. They were calm now, as if being led away from the fire was all they ever really wanted.
“Well!” said Isaac. “I can tell you when I woke up this morning I didn’t expect to be doing this!”
It was pretty badass alright—the next question being: Who was going to drive Evie’s car? You could tell no one wanted to do it. It’s not every day you get to save a couple horses from a wildfire.
“Fine,” said Evie. “It’s my car. And I am the girl after all. And the girl never gets to do the fun stuff.”
“Now, now,” said Sam. “I distinctly remember you did something fun just this morning. What was it? Oh, yes: you made me get up at four A.M.”
“I’ll drive,” said Isaac.
“Really?” My sister turned to him with shining eyes.
“I don’t get to drive much in the city. And certainly not on a dirt road while simultaneously outrunning fire. I’ll park your car where it’s safe and jog back to help. Here. Take this.”
Man, let me tell you, when he handed Evie the lead rope she lit up like a little girl. Like she was 13 again, like that time she won the math contest. It occurred to me that you could do a lot worse than a guy like Isaac. It also occurred to me, as I watched him drive away, that with my ankle all busted up I probably should’ve caught a ride with him, but on the other hand I’d given an oath of service to these horses.
After another fifty yards, however, I was having second thoughts. Up to this point I’d been going off of adrenaline, but now the adrenaline was gone. With each step I discovered I could put less and less weight on my foot, until I was pretty much just straight-up hopping.
“Hold on. I need a sec here.”
Sam and Evie slowed. The horses slowed. As for me, I couldn’t move. My ankle had become a tender, throbbing brick. I couldn’t put any weight on it.
“We’ve got to keep moving!” said Evie.
“Dear,” said Sam, “we can barely see the fire from here.”
“It’s right on the other side of that hill! And have you not noticed which way the wind is blowing?! Let’s go!”
“Evie, I can’t walk.”
“Then hop! Come on!”
“Evelyn, listen to your brother. He can’t walk.”
“I’ll call Isaac. He can come back with the car and get Aaron.”
“What if I ride the horse?”
My sister laughed. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
I hopped over to the white horse. “Don’t worry. This one’s super-gentle. Anne told me.”
“No way. You are not riding a horse. Sam, tell him he is not riding a horse.”
But Sam, good old Sam, was like, “Have you ever ridden a horse before?”
And I was like, “Yes, as a matter of fact.”
And Evie was like, “The county fair doesn’t count.”
And Sam was like, “Well, it has to count a little….”
And Evie jabbed her finger at him. “You be quiet, Sam! Not another word. No more big ideas. And YOU”—she pointed the finger at me—“you are NOT riding that horse.”
So I rode to town on a white horse that morning, no shit.
It wasn’t easy getting up there, but with Sam and (grudgingly, protesting every inch of the way) my sister, I was able to do it. Even with the two of them grunting under me, I could barely get my leg up to the level of the horse’s back. Finally, I had to just slide up there on my belly and sort of scooch around until I was in a huddled position, one arm wrapped around its neck, the other clinging to its mane. The horse stepped backward, shifting to adjust this new weight. I clung on like a monkey at the windy top of a tree.
“Well, don’t grab its HAIR!” Evie yelled.
Like I said before, you forget how big a horse is until you see one up close again—and that goes double for when you sit bareback and feel all the muscles moving. There was this, like, kinetic tension to it, like it was an effort for the horse to go human speed, like if it wanted to it could be doing 30 mph in five seconds flat. There’s a reason they call it horsepower.
But hey, I was doing something new and exciting. Riding a freakin’ horse! And it was weird. And it was cool. And it was actually kind of fun. Like real fun. And also terrifying. And at the same time I was trying to keep from dying, all these voices kept ringing through my head. All these voices having to do with holes. Katie, who warned me about the hole that can’t be filled. Shiloh, who correctly taxonified me as an asshole. Anne Chi
carelli, who told me everything was holy. I was feeling kind of funny.
“You might try sitting up more,” said Evie. “You’re kinda bear-hugging the thing.”
First she doesn’t want me to get up, and now she’s an old ranch hand, a certified equestrianaut? She had a point, though. But it wasn’t as if I could just let go all at once. I took my time, first loosening my grip enough to sit up, then slowly moving my hands to the base of its neck, not quite clutching the hair but ready to grab on at any moment. And whaddya know? She was right. It was a lot better that way.
In order to maintain balance, I fixed my eyes on the nearest moving/stationary point, which happened to be the back of Sam’s head. I looked at his pink scalp shining through his thinning hair. After a while I began to wish I had a hat to give him, because the sun was up now and we still had a ways to go.
An idea occurred to me. Steadying myself with my right hand, I lifted my left hand from the horse’s neck and slowly raised it into the air, stretching my arm until the shadow of my hand rested upon Sam’s head, covering the pink spot like a little shadow yarmulke.
And as I did this, something weird happened.
I felt a coolness on the back of my head. Like a cloud passing between the sun. I reached back to touch it, but as soon as I did, the heat was there again. I raised my hand again to cover Sam’s head. The coolness returned.
It was like, ??
I moved my hand away from Sam’s head again. The heat returned.
And then this other feeling—I can hardly explain it—but this other feeling suddenly came over me. It was like the whole world opened right up. Like someone had rung a bell. And it was like I suddenly understood—or more like remembered—because it’s like I already knew it. I’d known it all along, only I’d forgotten it. We all know it, we just keep forgetting it, because we keep distracting ourselves with fun and FUN® and whatever else. But here it was. All of it. It. Everything.
And it was all OK.
And also more than OK. I don’t even know how to say it. Everything was OK, and everything was also kind of terrifying, but everything was also good, and it was magical. It was the light, and the light was everywhere, and it was everything—including me—I was part of it, too—and it was all part of me. And it was wonderful. And by wonderful I mean the old-school definition: full of wonder. And by full of wonder, I mean holy.
That’s when it really hit me. This is holy.
All of it. It’s all just the thing that it is, and it’s amazing and it’s here, and we’re in it, we’re swimming in it, just like we’re swimming in the shit, except it isn’t shit. It’s more than shit. It’s above, beyond and including shit. This world—how can I even explain it? The whole thing is filled—I realized it then—the whole thing is overspilling really—with holy wonder.
And a single word came to my lips and drifted away: “Wow.”
And but listen: if all this sounds crazy or platitudinous or whatever, I understand. Most of my life, if I’d told myself what I just told you, I would’ve told myself to go jump off a garage. But not this time. This time I felt it. I knew it. We’re all entitled to our little revelations, right? Not Revelations™ soap (YAY!) or NüRevelation™ face cream (YAY!), but real revelations. And this one was real, and it was good, and I had to share it with someone, and now I have shared it with you.
I shared it with my sister and Sam and Isaac, too—out there on the ridge at the edge of town where Isaac came jogging to meet us. I told them everything I’ve just told you. And the three of them stood there blinking at me in the holy morning light, and then, Evie said:
“Are you high?”
And I was like, “Maybe?”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, I did eat some pills. I thought they were aspirin.”
“You thought. Oh my God! My brother is hallucinating on pills!”
How could I even explain it to her? That it didn’t matter what I was doing. Because maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t, but everything was OK. It was more than OK. It was good and wonderful and holy. It really, really was. I sat there on the horse checking out the scene and thinking to myself, This is wonderful; that is wonderful. This is holy; that is holy.
Evie? Holy.
Sam? Holy.
Isaac? Cain? Abel? Holy, holy, holy.
It was wonderful, holy, all of it and everything—filled and spilling over with pure holy wonder: the ground, the brush, the fence, the power lines, the hills behind my grandpa’s place, the smoke rising into the sky…
Not long after that, Evie dragged me to the hospital. I pleaded to stay out there and enjoy the holy wonder of it all, but she was done conceding. She’d already let me ride a horse, almost die in a wildfire, and O.D. on pills—and that was enough. We waited in the waiting room, and then the doctor checked my reflexes and blood pressure, but everything was fine. I wasn’t dying of drugs. My ankle was broken, though. I’d fractured it. As my reward, I got one of those big boot things (YAY! for medicwear®) and crutches, and it took forever, and then I had to fill out paperwork.
I wondered holy down the hallway on my crutches, looking at the wheelchairs and posters and fake plants and thinking how wonderful it all was. Just touching every little thing with my eyes. This is holy; that is holy. The receptionist (who was holy) gave me a pad and pen (that were holy) and I filled out the intake paperwork (holy)—name, birthdate, address, holy, holy, holy, and when I got to the part that said OCCUPATION I paused for a moment, and then I wrote THE LAST COWBOY, just like that, all in caps.
I wanted to keep it going, the holy feeling of wonder, but it had already started to fade a little as we headed back to my grandpa’s house. Other things began entering my mind. Like what about the property? And what about Oso? Where had he gone? Was he OK?
When we got to the ridge, Isaac and Sam weren’t there anymore. A police officer had taken their place.
“I’ll tell you what I told the guys with the horses,” he said. “Although the road is officially open again, the fire is not one hundred percent contained. Do not cross any police lines. Otherwise, you’re free to go and see what’s left.”
See what’s left.
Evie and I didn’t speak as we headed down the road. The plume of smoke was gone, but the air was hazy and smelled like campfire, and as we climbed the last gentle rise I clutched my seat. In the distance, a wide black scar blanketed the hills where the golf course had been. So what next? What about Anne’s place? What about my grandpa’s? The entire inheritance burned to a crisp? I kept thinking about the tree. That gnarly Russian olive.
I saw the corral, and Anne’s little modular—and as we dipped down again I saw my grandpa’s property, and the tree was still there.
The truck was still there.
The house was still there.
It was all still there.
And I was like, “Holy shit, OK,” and Evie was like, “No kidding.”
A fireman waved us over to the side of the road. He had pretty much the biggest beard I’d ever seen.
“You the couple that lives here? Good job on your firebreak. We’re always trying to get people to understand the importance of preventative measures. We live in the desert, for God’s sake. You thought ahead, and today you were one of the lucky ones. Today that thinking saved your house.”
It was true. You could see where the fire had ended. The blackened earth came right up to the edge of Anne’s property, where I’d stopped the weedwacking. A couple guys with shovels were there putting out the hot spots.
Later, after everyone had gone, Homie™ popped up.
> hey original boy_2!
u r a FAIL!
1 call(s) from unavailable!
“Hey, bro. How goes it? Sorry I didn’t come back. I was trying to put out the fire!”
“Yeah, that was something, wasn’t it?”
“You’re OK, then?” said Oso.
“Yeah, I’m OK.”
“And your grandpa’s place?”
&n
bsp; “Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Awesome. So have you checked the hole?”
Funny, but in the excitement of the day I’d completely forgotten about the hole.
I looked across the brush at the mounds of dirt. All that earth scooped out of the hollow. The tree branches hanging over it like an open umbrella. Right. Yes. The hole.
I crutched out to the tree. Oso sure had moved a lot of earth. A couple of the mounds were almost up to my chest. As for the hole, I couldn’t even see the bottom of it—just a shadow pooling in the evening light. I looked into the darkness, and the darkness looked into me, and it was just like that for a while.
I got on my knees and dug my hands into the side of the tallest mound. Roots. Rocks. Dirt clods that burst into powder when I squeezed them. Holy, I reminded myself.
The feeling was fading fast with the evening light, but I tried to hold on to it. I found another spoon (holy?), then a whisk (holy?). I crawled from mound to mound, sifting through the earth, setting aside kitchen implements as I went, trying to remind myself of the light and holiness. And at the base of a smaller mound I found another fork, one last piece of cutlery.
So this was it. I held it up in the dying light. Oh, holy fork.
It’s the thought that counts, right? If nothing else, he’d led me on an adventure. And it hadn’t been all bad—parts of it had been pretty good. If it weren’t for my grandpa, I wouldn’t have met Katie. And now she was gone. So OK. It can’t be true that every single Irish folk hero—after he or she has solved the impossible riddles and completed the harrowing journey—is successful in the end, can it? I put the fork in my pocket—one last memento—and crawled back to where I’d left my crutches.
And that’s when I saw it.
Near the bottom of the slope of one of the dirt mounds, there was an odd protrusion. Something kind of block shaped. I crawled to it and swept the earth away. Some kind of a box. A metal box. A lockbox—with, yeah, a lock on it. Your standard Master® Combination lock (YAY!) with double-reinforced construction and rust-resistant casing.
So here it was. And yet there was one more clue I’d missed. The will is the key, he’d said, but that made no sense to me now, because I didn’t need a key, I needed a combination. What was the combination? It didn’t matter. Master® locks are tempered and reinforced and rust-resistant or whatever, but there’s more than one way to crack an egg. I grabbed a rock, a big sturdy rock, and instead of going at the lock, I went at the hinges of the lockbox. I whanged it with the rock and whanged it with the rock, and eventually the hinges began to bend and break.