“Let me try this another way. Does your mom know Earnest?”
“Of course. Everybody does. I told you.”
“Will you please be a helpful girl and run get her for me?”
Willa sighed, and regretfully let go of the hairy beast’s hairy leg. “All right,” she said on a great out breath of sigh. It clearly was not all right.
She stomped out of the barn. Dramatically.
Roseanna took a few steps back and stood beside her son.
“He’s not staying,” she said. “If that’s what you were thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Lance said. “I didn’t say a word.”
“Oh, look,” Patty said, stepping into the barn. “It’s Earnest.”
“That much we’ve established,” Roseanna said. “Any idea what Earnest is doing here?”
“I’m not sure.” Patty moved close to the beast, who reached out and bumped her with his bony Roman nose. “The week before Macy died, she gave him to Archie Miller, down the road. I guess he ran away and came back.”
“Okay,” Roseanna said. “That’s progress. At least now we know how to return him to his owner. Would you happen to have this Archie Miller’s address?”
“Not really. But it’s not hard to find. Just go a mile or two down the road toward Walkerville. His name is on the mailbox. You don’t have a trailer, so I guess you’ll have to walk him back down there. But go slow, and give him a drink of water first. He’s old.”
“How old?”
“Thirty-seven or thirty-eight.”
“Is that old for a horse?”
“Very.”
“How long do horses live?”
“Maybe thirty years if you’re lucky.”
“Okay. Thanks. I think.”
Roseanna watched Patty take her daughter’s hand and lead the little girl reluctantly out of the barn. Clearly the sight of Earnest on his way home was going to be a problem for the kid.
She looked at Lance and he at her.
“Long walk,” she said. “Too bad I don’t have a horse trailer.”
“Maybe we could get a phone listing. Call this Archie guy. Maybe he has a trailer. It’s his horse. Let him come get him.”
They walked out of the barn together and into the glare of morning sun. As if thinking—or in this case dreading—with one mind, they stood together looking up at CPR Hill.
“I’ll go,” Lance said, digging his phone out of his jeans pocket.
“Thanks.”
But he had only managed to get three or four steps away before she changed her mind.
“Lance, wait,” she called to him. And ran to catch up. “I’ll go with you. The idea was to spend time together. Right?”
“I think that’s what I read in the instructions,” Lance said.
Just as they crested the hill together, Lance broke the silence. He was puffing lightly. Roseanna was practically wheezing. Although it did get marginally easier every time she climbed this monolith. Could she actually be getting into some kind of physical shape?
“Why don’t you just get a landline?” he asked.
“It’s funny,” she said. But then for a few seconds she didn’t say why or how it was so funny. “For the first few weeks I literally forgot there still was such a thing. In people’s houses, I mean. And then when it dawned on me . . . well, it just reminded me how awful it is when someone can jangle a loud bell in your home whenever they want you to pay attention to them. What a system, right? You can tell it was invented by people who’d never imagined a better way. I can climb this hill if it’s an emergency. And if it’s not, well . . . incommunicado has been working very well for me.”
They sat cross-legged in the dirt, surveying Roseanna’s personal heaven.
Lance dialed directory assistance.
“In Chudley, New York. Last name Miller,” he said, robotically. Talking to robots made real humans more robotic. Roseanna had noticed that. “Oh. Wait.” He lowered the phone and pressed it against his shoulder to mute it. “Is Archie short for something?”
“Archibald.”
Lance laughed. Lightly and spontaneously, as if he really enjoyed these little jokes between them. Except there had been none.
“Wait,” he said again, this time directly to Roseanna. “You’re serious?”
“You never heard of the name Archibald?”
“No. And I hope I never do again.” Then, into the phone, “First name Archibald.” A pause. “It’s connecting me,” he said.
Roseanna waited. And waited. And waited. There was another eagle, or hawk—or whatever she had seen on her first day in this place—riding thermals over the valley. It gave her something to watch while she waited.
Lance shook his head, clicked off the call, and slid the phone back into his pocket.
“No luck. No answer, no voicemail, no machine.”
“Oh,” Roseanna said, and watched the hawk-eagle glide out of sight behind a golden hill.
“I guess we’re back to the manual plan. Put a rope around his neck and lead him home.”
“Seems that way.”
“I’ll go,” Lance said, sounding sacrificing and brave.
“No. We both will. I’ll come along. Same as I told you before. We’re getting to know each other. Hard to do that if you’re leading a horse down the road and I’m sitting at home.” They stood, Roseanna struggling a bit with balance. She dusted off the seat of her pants. “See, now you’re getting to experience it for your own self, what I keep trying to tell you. I don’t ask for a dog, or a horse, or a kid, or a squatter. They just appear. They just find me.”
“We’ll get this one back where he goes.”
“I certainly hope so,” Roseanna said.
They walked along the road together, the three of them. Lance walked on the inside, one foot in the traffic lane. “Traffic” in this case was an exaggeration. Only two cars had come by in twenty minutes of walking. Roseanna walked on the shoulder. Earnest, a stiff rope looped loosely around the base of his neck, more or less straddled the white line, his hooves clopping rhythmically on the tarmac.
Roseanna didn’t think that rope would do much to hold the horse if he decided to take off. Then again, an unscheduled nap seemed more Earnest’s wheelhouse than an unexpected burst of energy.
The morning had grown uncomfortably hot. Roseanna had begun to feel oppressed by it, and it was dampening her mood even further.
“Good thing we remembered to give him a drink before we left,” she said to Lance. “Too bad we forgot to give ourselves one.”
“It’s probably not too much farther. Maybe old Archibald will give us a lift home. Seems the least he can do after we bring his horse back.”
“Oh yeah. Absolutely. Clearly a valuable animal. Surely a reward is in order.”
“People love their animals even if they’re not valuable.”
“Not sure who could love this beast.”
“Hey,” Lance said. “Watch that. He’s walking right beside you.”
Roseanna stopped suddenly on the gravelly dirt of the road shoulder. Earnest noticed, and stopped as well. Lance hit the end of the rope, which stopped him.
“Are you suggesting this animal speaks English?” she asked.
“Not really. Not exactly. But if somebody said something mean about you in a foreign language, I bet you’d know it wasn’t a compliment.”
“Fine. Sorry, Earnest.”
They walked again. Clop. Clop. Clop.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Lance said.
“I think that’s the whole point of all this.”
“Was there something between you and Alice?”
Roseanna stopped walking again. This time Lance noticed.
“You mean like . . . ?”
“You don’t have to—”
“No. There so wasn’t. No, we were friends. There was nothing . . . why would you even ask that?”
“You just seemed so close to her.”
“I adored her. But not like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
They clopped in silence for a moment. Well, Earnest clopped.
“And I’m sorry if I made it sound like that would be a terrible thing,” she said. “I didn’t mean it that way. It just so . . . wasn’t like that.”
“It’s not your fault,” Lance said. “It’s me. I do that. Look at the world through gay-colored glasses. That’s what Neal says, anyway.”
“Neal?”
“Blank.”
“Blank?”
“‘My partner’s name is Blank.’”
“Oh. Right. I did say that. Didn’t I?”
“And maybe partly because I never saw her with anybody. And I never really knew why you and Dad split up.”
“You didn’t? I’m sorry.”
“I could have asked. I was probably afraid to ask.”
“I divorced your father because he’s emotionally immature and has rage issues.”
“Oh. Well. I knew that. But I figured it out on my own.”
“I think that’s it,” Roseanna said, pointing to a dusty white mailbox twenty or so paces down the road. “Doesn’t that say Miller?”
A car pulled up from behind them, a fairly new Mercedes coupe. The passenger window powered down. Roseanna found herself looking into the face of a woman about her own age. A stranger. Someone she had not seen around these parts before. Then again, that was just about everybody.
“You have Earnest!” the woman piped in a squeaky tone. “Thank goodness.”
“Wow,” Lance said quietly in Roseanna’s ear. “The kid was right. Everybody does know him.”
“We don’t have him for long,” Roseanna said. “We’re bringing him back to his owner right now.”
“You can’t very well do that,” the woman said, as though the reason should have been obvious.
“Why can’t we?”
“Archie passed away.”
They all stood in the road in silence for a moment. Except for the woman in the car, who sat in silence.
“How long ago?” Lance asked.
“They found him three days ago. He might have died the day before that. Heart attack is what they think. His kids and grandkids came yesterday to clear out most of his stuff. But he hadn’t had Earnest long. Took him in after their last family visit, so I guess they didn’t know. Millie Fairfield went by last night to see if Earnest was okay, and he was nowhere to be found. I guess he got tired of nobody feeding him. You should probably give him a flake of hay and a drink of water before you take him home. It’s hot out today, and he’s very old. Thirty-seven, I think. Maybe even thirty-eight.”
“So I hear.”
“I’m so glad he has you. Everybody will be so relieved.”
Roseanna opened her mouth to challenge the supposition that Earnest “had her.” But it was too late. The window powered up and the car drove on.
Lance drank deeply from a steady stream of water put forth by the late Archie Miller’s hose. He bent forward at the waist to keep the rest of him dry. Then he seemed to think better of the plan, and turned the hose directly on himself, letting the water pour down over his head and drench him.
“Is there a bucket around here for the horse, do you think?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. I could go look.”
Roseanna poured hose water over her own head while she waited, and watched Earnest assault a flake of hay that they had thrown directly on the ground in front of him.
Then, much to Roseanna’s alarm, the horse lifted his head and moved decisively in her direction. He marched in way too close, crowding her. Nearly stepping on her feet. He reached out with his whiskery muzzle for . . . it took her a moment to realize for what. He wanted water, and was more than willing to take it directly from the hose.
She turned the arc of it in his direction, and he opened his mouth, peeling back his upper lip to show ancient yellowed teeth. He drank the water in what looked like a series of bites, spraying Roseanna with blasts of water that ricocheted off his massive pink tongue.
“No bucket.” Lance’s voice from behind her. “But I see you two worked it out on your own.”
“We can’t just leave him here to die,” Lance said.
They were sitting shoulder to shoulder in the shade of a maple tree, watching Earnest eat.
“No,” she said. “We can’t.”
“Maybe we can find somebody who wants him.”
“Seriously? A horse who looks like that? Who’s eight years older than horses even tend to live, if you’re lucky?”
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, then.”
“Oh yeah you do. We have to take him home with us. He’s Macy’s horse. He lives there. I have a barn. I have squatters coming out of my ears, so what’s one more? At least this one won’t complain to me about eggs. But I’ll tell you one thing. We’re coming back with the pickup and loading up all that hay from Archie’s shed and taking it home with us. Wherever Archie is now, hay is the last thing he needs.”
“Okay. Well, when he’s done eating . . . if he’s ever done eating . . . we’ll go.”
They sat in silence in the heat for a moment longer.
Then Lance said, “Are you worried about what Jerry said?”
The words twisted deeply into her stomach, spoiling everything. Tanking the mood she had thought to be thoroughly tanked already.
“I wasn’t. I was fine a second ago. Because I was managing not to think about it. But you had to go and ruin that, now didn’t you?”
They were more than halfway home when Earnest did the very thing Roseanna had assumed he was too old to do. He pulled away from Lance, making a sudden turn that dragged the rope right through her son’s hands.
“Ow,” Lance said, looking at his rope-burned palms.
Roseanna expected the horse to run away now that he was free. Instead he stopped in the shade of an evergreen tree, dropped his head, and let out something that sounded like a cross between a sigh and a snort. It left his nostrils looking mildly runny.
“You okay, honey?” Roseanna asked her son.
“I will be, I guess. But that really stings.”
“Let me see if I can get him back on the road.”
Roseanna approached the beast cautiously. He watched her with wary eyes but did not move. She bent down. Picked up his rope. Pulled slowly and carefully, making sure her pressure didn’t tighten the rope too much around Earnest’s neck.
Earnest did not move.
“Well, now what do we do?” Lance asked, appearing at her shoulder.
“I’m not sure. Let me think.” She didn’t think, exactly. Her mind felt strangely blank. But a moment later she came out with a plan anyway. “How about if you walk the rest of the way home and get Patty and Willa? I’ll wait here with the horse. They know him, so maybe they know how to get him moving.”
Lance had been gone a minute or two, leaving Roseanna standing foolishly—holding a rope that was clearly useless for containing the horse—when Earnest collapsed. Or that seemed to be what he did, anyway. He sank to his knees with a deep grunt, then let the rest of his body fall to the ground with a second pained sigh.
Oh dear, Roseanna thought. Maybe this is it for him. He’s old. Maybe he’s just . . . dying.
She moved closer to the beast, who lay with his neck curled around in an arc, his muzzle tucked over his front legs. She sat. If this was Earnest’s final moment on earth, then Roseanna knew she was the last person the horse would ever see. The least she could do was make this moment a fairly good one for the poor old guy.
She reached one hand out, hesitantly. Patted the flat, bony area between the horse’s eyes.
“I’m sorry for what I said about you,” she began, feeling foolish because she was talking to a horse. “Of course somebody loved you. Macy loved you, probably. Maybe even Archie did in those last few months. Willa still does. I should watch what I say, because you’re just old. You just look the way you do becau
se you’re old. I’m going to be old myself pretty soon here, and I hope a few people will still love me even if I don’t look so great.”
Earnest raised his head and considered Roseanna for a few seconds. His eyes looked clear, and he seemed to be taking in everything. He did not look like a horse in his last moment on earth. He looked as though he was quite curious to know what she was so concerned about.
Then he set his head down on his front hooves again and sighed.
Lance showed up in the pickup truck a few minutes later, with Patty and Willa in the passenger seat.
He stopped the truck right in the middle of the road, and they all three jumped out and stood over Roseanna and the horse.
“I think this might be it for him,” Roseanna said.
Part of her didn’t want to say it in front of Willa. It was a tough reality. But the little girl would have to find out sooner or later.
“Why do you say that?” Patty asked.
“Well . . . look at him. He just collapsed.”
“He’s lying down. Horses lie down all the time.”
“They do?”
“Yeah. They do.”
“I thought they slept standing up.”
“They do. A lot of the time.”
“So when do they lie down?”
“When they feel like it.”
“Got it,” Roseanna said.
She had mixed feelings about the development. She certainly was not thoughtless enough to want poor Earnest to die. Then again, there was something neat and fitting about the horse ending his life right then and there, just after both his sequential owners had ended theirs. Now Roseanna would have to be his owner. She would have to take in one more four-legged squatter.
“Willa and I will stay here with him,” Patty said. “You guys go on ahead. He’ll get up and go home with us when he’s ready.”
By the time Roseanna and her son arrived home with the first pickup truck load of Archie’s hay, Patty, Willa, and Earnest were walking slowly through her gate. Willa was sitting astride Earnest, holding a double handful of his scraggly mane.
Roseanna slowed and rolled down the window.
“So he’s okay,” Roseanna said. “That didn’t take him long.”
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