Hank & Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  She crawled back into bed and slept, waking two hours later. She got up and stretched, fetched Hannah a bowl of kibble, threw one of the amoxicillin tablets down her throat, and stroked until the dog swallowed. She thought about washing her face. The tube sat in its holder on the counter, right next to the pump. She didn’t want this final confirmation, but when she looked, a small gray ring in the bottom of the tube looked back at her. Proof. She left it where it was, dressed in her jeans, threw a T-shirt over her bare breasts, and scrubbed her teeth at the sink. Hannah came up, nosing her leg, sensing adventure. She stroked the dog’s head and pointed to the door. They both went outside, moving at a quick pace toward the lightning rock formations on the perimeter of Hugh’s property. Chloe kept her head down, looking out for anything else Hannah could get hurt on. They walked two and one-half miles, up a steady incline to the flat rock outcropping where they’d come dozens of times before to watch the sunset. A blue-bellied lizard lay there doing push-ups, warming his cold skin in the shaft of sunlight. Chloe sat down on the rock and Hannah stretched out beside her, ignoring the lizard’s quick jettison to a higher, less populated rock. They watched the sun come all the way up, no big gold ball, no fiery tomato, just a cupping of some ordinary god’s hands to gently yellow the sky.

  Chloe lay back down on the rock and sighed, unbuttoned her jeans. Gabe was right, she had put on weight, just a couple of pounds, but it was pressing the buttons. Was that baby, or was it three meals a day? Her hands gravitated toward her pelvis, reaching inside the jeans to feel the swell of stomach, trying to assess the differences that, no matter how small, she shouldn’t have missed. She began to stroke herself, across the belly first, to calm the fear more than awaken the flesh. Gradually, her hand moved lower, parting the folds of skin until she grazed the small bump of her clitoris. The sensation slowly built as her finger darted back and forth, and didn’t start out erotic, just an absolutely necessary physical affirmation to convince herself she hadn’t been swallowed up inside that small gray ring and choked to death. She felt heat begin to rise in her belly, dapple her breasts and throat, felt it grow like a crack of lightning across a dark sky, arcing, seeking a target, and did not pull her fingers away. When she came, she made no sound. Only the barest twitch crossed her face. The hidden muscle spasms from her womb throbbed, strong and rippling. What did that do to it—the baby? She quickly pulled her damp hand away and felt foolish. No laws against your own pleasure, but it was a dull and momentary gift compared to what two people could accomplish. Hank had been able to coax miracles from her flesh; he’d left proof of that inside her. All those years she’d slept around with stablehands and never once gotten unlucky. Ain’t that the way the luck goes, seems like it never can be found…. She buttoned her fly halfway and let the sun bake overhead for a little while until her breathing quieted. Then she patted Hannah’s neck.

  She would take her Hermès saddle to Wesley, let him buy it, get out of horses, start a new life. Use a little of the cash settlement to pay for an abortion. It was still legal, and women had the choice. It wasn’t a baby yet, just a few swimming cells, a child’s drawing of a baby, dark dots for eyes, finger buds—Stop—don’t imagine it. Surely it wouldn’t take much out of her to cross over a few picketing right-to-lifers, just a couple of steps of awkwardness, papers to fill out, the exchange of cash, then feet up in the stirrups, ride ’em, cowgirl. The scrape of the doctor’s scalpel, and then the flowing blood. Freedom.

  When Chloe returned to the cabin, Pilar was playing alone in the shade of the biggest oak tree. At one time that tree had been Hank’s aerie. Pilar had a small red cloth laid out beneath the tree, bits of bark torn into plate-size chunks, and an acorn cup for each plate. “Dos bebidas, por favor,” she said aloud to an imaginary waiter. She took up her doll, the acrylic hair wound into greasy ropes, smoothed her doll’s dress down, and held her in her arms, whispering to the doll’s glassy stare with great intensity. Then she lifted her own T-shirt and pressed the doll’s face to her breast. All around her oak trees stood like stubby guards, their small leaves spangling in the sunlight like sequins.

  Chloe moved back silently so as not to disturb the girl’s play. She ducked back behind the corner of her house, taking one last look at Pilar, who swung her grinning face upward in the sunshine in a moment of childhood bliss. Constantina had came looking for her and stopped short, directly opposite Chloe, watching her little girl pretend at mothering, a bemused smile across her face. Chloe studied Constantina’s huge belly, the way she laid a hand protectively over it, crooning a song Chloe couldn’t make out, but singing, all right. Hija, hija.…

  Chloe went inside her shack long enough to grab her keys and motioned silently for Hannah to walk through the woods to the truck. She felt ashamed, with ten thousand dollars sitting in the bank. Constantina and Pilar had no trouble accepting their circumstances, and they lived far less comfortably than she did. I have no mothering instinct, she told herself. Shit, I can barely keep hold of this dog.

  Wesley was wearing his flannel shirt and the silver trout bolo tie; maybe he slept in them. He was waiting on people, selling some of the wealthy horse folk a few things more than they needed when Chloe came into his store lugging the saddle. He gave her a wink, turned back to his customer, then did a double take.

  She nodded and set the saddle down on the counter, then stood looking over his bargain table at the odd pieces of tack he was selling for half price. Old hackamores more people abused than used properly, a mismatched set of English spurs, salt and mineral blocks broken in shipping, but would a horse care? Wes was a good salesman; he took his time and engineered things so the customers thought they were making a reasonable choice, but in the end they bought exactly as he had first advised them, top quality tack and the old brand names that lasted. He rang up the purchases, called out to his stockroom for his helper to load them into the customer’s car—brand-new King Cab, Chloe noted—and made his cheerful small talk, calling everyone by name.

  “Well,” he said when he returned from holding the door for them. “I thought the court was going to pay you some money.”

  “They did. It’s tucked away in the bank. There’s other reasons to unload a saddle. This time it’s yours for keeps, Wes. I want you to sell it.”

  He ducked behind the counter and shuffled papers into stacks. “If I do, you can’t come crying back to get it because it won’t be here.”

  “I know that.”

  “What are you going to do when one of your rich little students comes wandering into your arena, lugging your saddle?”

  “Grit my teeth, take her money, and teach her some horsemanship.”

  He cocked his head like a bewildered dog. “You want to come at me again? I thought everything went okay in the courtroom.”

  “It did. Look, I’m horseless except for a few lesson nags, and maybe it’s time to put all this behind me, like you said. If I sell the saddle, I can always get myself a new one, maybe one with less history to it.”

  “How’s your boyfriend feel?”

  “Don’t give me that. By now you’ve heard all the news. If not Hugh, then Gabe or Francisco—somebody at the stables.”

  “All right. I’ll give you eight hundred.”

  “Eight hundred? A grand or I take it back to the truck.”

  “Eight-fifty. And a month’s credit for feed, including hay.”

  “Deal.” They shook hands. He held on to hers, pressed it to his dry lips.

  “Maybe I didn’t do so well with the game of life, but you’re still young, Chloe.”

  “And?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Has Gabe been talking when he shouldn’t have?”

  “We care about you, that’s all.”

  “Dammit.”

  “Chloe, I’m a down-home boy. I can piece the truth together nearly as good as my grandmother could patch her quilts.”

  From a counter display, she picked up a keychain shaped like a snaffle bit and play
ed with it. “So?”

  “So if you’ve got a bun in the oven, I’d hate to see you do a foolish thing you’d regret I’ve seen what that can do to a woman. When she isn’t sure. It’ll haunt you. Think long and hard.”

  For such a spread-out county, there was no keeping a secret. They might as well have been roommates. She let him count out the bills and kept her lips tight. “You know me better than that, Wesley. When I make a decision, I think it all the way through.”

  “Be sure you sniff all this one’s corners before you do.”

  “I will.” She gave him a hug, held onto his aging body, and felt the strength of his embrace. For all it reminded her of Fats, Wes’s love was entirely different. A woman could feel safe there, could sleep dreamless, and wake refreshed, not worried about the contents of the new day. Not one iota of passion, but enough security to make you sleep through the night.

  “Hang on any longer, and I won’t never turn you loose,” he whispered.

  She stepped back and looked into his gray eyes. “I love you,” she said, and gave him a kiss, right on the lips.

  He pressed his hand to his mouth and looked embarrassed.

  “After all these years, you’re shocked?” She went out the door, where Hannah stood up in the truck bed and wagged her tail.

  The Carlson boys rode single file behind her down the steep rocky grade onto the fire road. Billy, the rent string horse she’d chosen, welcomed his position as leader, arched his neck proudly, and kept his footing. Behind the boys, Mark, who tried several excuses to get out of coming along on the ride, begrudgingly rode Casper, Billy’s next-door neighbor. From time to time Casper let out shrieking neighs, and Billy answered. Chloe turned her head back to look, and Mark shook his head. “You know, everytime he does that I just about have a heart attack.”

  The boys laughed. “You’re a wuss, Chapman,” they said, and whatever that meant, Chloe noticed it sure tickled the hell out of Kit, who rode alongside Marquise, the only one still a little insecure about his equitation.

  “You’re doing great,” Kit told him. “Keep your head up. Tonto doesn’t need you to watch his feet for him. He’s been walking on them for almost twenty-seven years.”

  It was hot; Chloe could feel the back of her neck getting sunburned. If she didn’t watch it, one of these days she would end up a leathery old wattle-necked turkey like Fats. Sunscreen only worked until you sweated it off. She led the boys through the cool forest, where ferns lined the canyon floor and the live oaks’ thick branches formed a lacy canopy overhead. Sun peeked through in between branches, yellow as newly ripped plywood. Over the top of this hill there were two ways to go: the fire road into the Whiting Ranch, and the long grade that led to a new housing development, where acres of huge stucco houses with swimming pools and tall iron fences were spreading through the hills. Before long they would multiply; nobody’s land was sacred. Maybe Robin Leach was up there right now, dipping jumbo strawberries into French champagne.

  She legged Billy to the right along the fire road. Rattlesnakes were likely this time of day. They lay across the road in full sun, soaking up heat. Absalom used to spot them before she did. There’d been times she’d given him a kick to go on, and he’d held his ground, unmoving. She would dismount and check his feet, unbuckle and examine his girth, give up, then, one foot in the stirrup iron, hear the familiar rattle before the snake moved on. She sat back in her saddle and Billy halted.

  “Okay, you guys,” she said, turning back to view her scraggly line of riders. “This road’s five miles long and flat. We’re going to lope these horses, and when I say lope, I don’t mean gallop. No passing each other, no Lone Ranger bullshit; you’re riders now, you’re responsible for keeping your animal in hand. We’ll blow it out for a mile, then it’s back to the trot. Understand?”

  Mark sighed and made the sign of the cross on his blue workshirt. The boys nodded. Kit just grinned. Chloe pressed a hand to her belly. Get used to it, kid. Hook up with me, and this is the way it’s going to be.

  “Stand still, this is a Kodak moment,” Kit said, posing each boy standing alongside his horse. Kit snapped pictures of the boys with arms thrown around the necks of their horses. Some of them were tight lipped, a few were sniffling. Marquise looked like an African chief, his black face stern, a gentle hand on the reins. Since mastering the lope, he’d undergone a small transformation.

  Anton held up his leftover lunch apple. “Take my picture, Kit,” he urged, but wily Tonto reached across and swiped the apple in one clean bite, and Kit howled. “He almost got you that time!”

  Willie sat alone on the picnic table, off to the side of the photo session, his face down, shoulders hunched up. Chloe went to him. “You need a cigarette?” she asked.

  He looked up at her, surprised. “Chapman will bust me.”

  “You need one or not?”

  “Yeah, I could use one.”

  She offered her pack, lit it for him with a match. She kept her distance, didn’t reach out to touch him. “You’re going to miss these horses, aren’t you?”

  “A little.”

  She looked away, toward the rows of pipe stalls, where horses stood dozing, slurping from their waterers in the late-afternoon sun. She could hear the highway traffic faintly, ever constant behind the wall of oak trees that grew alongside the stables. “Willie, I’m going to tell you something I’m not going to tell any of the other boys. You have something they don’t—that spark it takes to make a rider. That’s why it hurts you so bad to say good-bye to them. From here you go back to the ranch. What happens next?”

  He shrugged. “I’m supposed to go back to my mom.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “Shit. She’s a flaming alkie. Half the time I end up wiping puke off her.”

  “So take care of her until you’re eighteen. It won’t kill you. You’re a smart guy, Willie.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Listen, if you’re smart enough to swipe car stereos, you’re smart enough to make the best of a bad situation at home. Try setting yourself a goal, maybe work toward the horses. You stay in school and out of trouble, I might be able to get you a job at a stables.”

  “No way.” Tears glittered in his blue eyes. He knuckled them away, and Chloe stared hard at the new ink-pen tattoo on his wrist.

  “The horse world’s not that huge. I know a few people.”

  “Can I write you when I get home?”

  “Sure you can. Now hand me that cigarette, here comes Mark.”

  Even Kit was crying when the Carlson Ranch van pulled away. Great sobs tore from her chest, and she leaned against Chloe. “Oh, my God. How can you stand this, year after year? I feel like I’m going to die!”

  Chloe patted her shoulders. “Kit, get hold of yourself. I can’t have you weeping whenever it’s time to move somebody on. Those boys were just about in love with you. Don’t you know that crying sends men running scared into the sports page? Every single bit of life is out there just waiting to break your heart. You have to hang tough. Now, come on, we have tack to clean, and lessons again in the morning.”

  “Wait up,” Kit said, wiping her face. “I have to get a snot rag from the office. Snot, I’m telling you, one major drawback to crying.”

  Chloe leaned against the railing where the horses had been tied. The metal bar still held heat from the day, and it was pleasant against her back. She would miss those boys, too. This summer they’d kept her going. Now they would be turned loose back into the big, bad world, and they’d already failed there once. A wave of sudden understanding overcame her, chilling her sunburned skin—So, Mama, that’s why you gave me away, wasn’t it? You were afraid of days just like this one.

  The screen door banged twice as Kit came out. She let out a big sigh, then held a white envelope in her hand out to Chloe. “Look what was on your desk,” she said. “Looks like somebody in Arizona wrote you a letter.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  Of course, he hadn’t r
eally expected her to answer his letter, but when August 13, another of those rare, perfect northern Arizona summer days with a temperature that hovered around eighty, and only the lightest of afternoon rains segued into a quiet dusk, Hank couldn’t hide his disappointment. The roof was finished, and even without lemonade bribery, the Indian children pronounced it a job well done. It was solid and would hold through winter and well beyond. Despite the darkening sky, he wasn’t ready to put the tools away and face down the long night alone in the cabin.

  Shirtless and driven, he’d worked double-time getting the corral fence put up, though it was unlikely it would ever again hold anything save a neighboring pony when the Indian children came calling. He’d spent three days on the gate alone—hinges—they looked bafflingly simple until you tried to match the pin to the joint and make the whole business line up. Fixing broken things took unwavering faith and unlimited patience, and he had found plenty of both here with no tempting distractions. By a small miscount in estimating, he had twenty boards left over, but at $5.20 a running foot, he’d find somewhere to use them. Hammer in hand, he drove a few more nails home into the top rail and slipped on the last one, smashing his thumb right above the moon of the nail. He cried out and stuck it in his mouth where it throbbed hard, and stood in the dark, letting the tears flow down his face.

  Up the dirt road that led back to town, he heard the rumble of a truck. Please God, he thought, not now, not Joyce Greer offering the everlasting pot roast again. I’ve been polite, and I’m thankful for my blessings, but I don’t know if I have it left in me to be civil, not today. But it was a truck, and it was coming his way. He could see headlights now, two small white beacons shining down on him. The truck, like countless others he passed in town, was towing a two-horse trailer behind it. Well, he’d learned the gods had no respect for any mortal timetable; when the mood struck them, they sent a stranger or even came themselves, in such clever disguises you never caught on until the test had been flunked, yanked from your hands, leaving you stinging and sorry. He reached for his shirt, hanging across the fence rail. It didn’t cost much to act neighborly, to offer a drink, to take a look at a map. People got lost all the time, and if a small act of human kindness could help them be found, it was the decent thing to do. But there was something familiar about this truck—inside the cab, he could make out the curve of a woman’s face, and next to her, the tall pointed ears of a white German shepherd, riding shotgun.