Paint My Body Red

by Heidi R. Kling

  He nods a little, which means okay.

  Then he types.

  You remember how to cut, Paige. Jake will show you any parts you don’t. Jake here is the next best thing to your old man.

  I smile and nod. I know he is.

  I squeeze his hand. “But will Scout be ready in time? I couldn’t even get the rope harness on her this morning, let alone try the saddle yet. And like Jake was just talking to me about”—before the whole hand-on-leg thing—“cutting takes skill.”

  Dad’s face is still. I wish he could talk. Wish like hell I could hear his voice again—his real voice telling me what to do in low, precise steps.

  Just like riding a bike, Paige, you’ll remember as soon as you get back on.

  “Well, let’s hope I don’t have to get thrown again to re-learn that lesson.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  After dinner, Jake feeds the horses and then announces he’s heading into town for supplies. “We’re all out of bacon. I’m heading into town. Need anything?” he asks. I shake my head, grateful for his asking. I’m standing on the rung of the corral fence, simply grateful I made it to this fence. To this day when so many of my peers didn’t. The more I think about what happened, the more memories I relive, the more surprised I am that I’m here at all. As proud as I am, it’s unnerving.

  I grab a couple handfuls of sweet feed and enter the corral. Seeing Scout will help calm me. But Scout isn’t there. And the gate’s open.

  “Scout!” I run into her stable. She’s not there, either.

  I sprint into the house, but decide against yelling in case Dad is asleep. Anna. Where is Anna? She isn’t in the kitchen or in the living room dog-earing one of her Flea Market Craft magazines circa 1984, either. Crap.

  Down the dark hallway, I notice Dad’s door is open a crack. I don’t knock and enter. Instead, I look through the crack and see Anna sitting in the floral-patterned chair I was sitting in earlier. She is talking to Dad in a low voice. Her hand is on his leg.

  Recoiling, I backtrack down the hallway. I don’t want to bother them or bug Jake with this either. His cell won’t have service on the dirt road anyway. Besides, it was probably me who left the gate open after our walk. I have to find her myself.

  Back in the entryway, I throw on Jake’s duster—I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone, and after the sun sets, it gets cold fast in the mountains—tuck a flashlight into the deep pocket, and set out to look for her.

  I’m about a mile up the dirt road, dusk casting long silvery shadows on the rock and dust, when I hear rustling in the creek.

  My first thought is mountain lion.

  Aside from the flashlight—which I guess I could whack over the animal’s head, but that’s about it—I’m unarmed. I’m starting to freak, flashlight out and shakily aimed, when I hear the rustling again and a familiar whinny.

  “Scout!” I call into the darkness. “Is that you, girl?”

  The weeds are tall, and I’m careful not to step in a snake or gopher hole on the way down the steep hill. The sun has long set by the time I find her taking a drink out of the stream.

  “Hey, you,” I say.

  She looks up at me like, Oh, hey you, back, and keeps drinking.

  “What are you doing down here? Come on, we have to get back. There could be mountain lions or bears.”

  Ignoring me, she continues to drink, like she’s thinking, I’m tougher than any creature out here anyway. What do I have to worry about?

  The creek is wide and clear, like a river, but it’s moving slowly. Clear water breaks over smooth granite boulders, gurgling softly.

  Jake’s words ring in my head: Indians used to break horses in the creek.

  She’s not exactly in the creek right now, but one side is all muddy grass slopes and the other side is water. Infinitely less dangerous than what Jake tried again and again, mounting her in the corral in the heat of the day over hard, potentially spine-shattering dirt.

  “Hey, girl,” I say in a soothing voice. “You know your little adventure here? Well, how’d you like to make it even more fun?”

  She looks up at me and lets me approach. Her nose nestles into Jake’s duster, nudging for sweet feed. I scratch her ears as her face presses into my chest.

  With my arm wrapped around her velvet head, I tell her what’s up in my calmest voice. “I want to try something, and I don’t want you to be scared. It’s not a super big deal. I’m going to hop up on your back, and we’ll just see what happens, okay?”

  I scratch behind her ear. The last thing I want to do is scare her, or worse, lose the trust I’ve worked so hard to gain. I want it to be okay with her.

  How can I make her understand, though?

  Sometimes you got to do stuff that scares you, Paige. That’s how you know you’re alive.

  Jake’s voice again.

  So while she’s eating out of my hand, I hop onto a boulder, grab a handful of her mane, and with all of my abdominal strength, heave my leg over her back, clutch her neck, and hold on for dear life.

  Her back rears, and I grip her neck harder as she bucks again. Then she plunges forward in a gallop-like move that almost shakes me loose and throws me all the way to the left. I haul myself back to her middle, trying to regain equilibrium, but before I’m centered, she rears again, hard and fast. My teeth crash into each other, rattling my brain, and…I’m wet? My eyes fly open, expecting the creek to be maybe knee deep, but it’s up to Scout’s thighs. She jerks to the right, whinnying into the sky as she finally cuts me loose. Flying into darkness, I think, This is it. I’m dead, and in the bright sparks above me, I don’t see stars—

  I see the headlights of a screaming train.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “Paige? Paige?”

  I’m drowning or dead. Am I dead? I hit my head on a rock, and I’m on the bottom of the creek. Through foggy water I see a face, or the sky, or a blur of blue stars. I reach out and up. Strain toward the light. “She’s coming to.”

  I recognize his voice, and I lurch toward it with everything I have. I don’t want to drown. I want to be pulled up into the air.

  I gasp and my head shudders. I feel his hand on mine. “Paige? Can you hear me?”

  I nod and hooves pound against my skull.

  The blur of blue isn’t stars; it’s Jake’s blue eyes.

  “Oh, thank God.” Anna’s voice. “Paige, where does it hurt, honey?”

  I moan.

  “What’d she say?”

  Jake chuckles. “I think she said everywhere.”

  “She’s okay,” Anna says. “She’s okay.” I think she says it a couple more times, but it hurts my ears to listen. Hurts my brain to translate. Hurts my back to move.

  “Can you move your legs?”

  I try to move my left leg. My toe wiggles.

  “What about your right?”

  It hurts. It hurts. But I can move it.

  “Her legs are fine,” Jake says, pressing my muscles with his fingertips. “Fingers? Wiggle your fingers, Paige.”

  I lift my fingers up and press against his palm. He’s checking to see if I’m paralyzed.

  “Lie back down.”

  Jake’s big hand holds my head up and then gently sets it down on something soft. His jacket, his other jacket—I ruined his duster. Now I’m shaking. My head hurts. Everything hurts. Scout! Where is she?

  “We found you on this river bed.”

  “I tried to…like the Native Americans.”

  Jake gets it right away. “You tried to ride Scout?”

  I nod.

  “And she tossed you,” Jake says, matter-of-factly.

  “Scout must’ve drug her out of the creek,” Anna said. “She was out cold when we got here and her clothes are all wet, so it must’ve happened in the creek.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt me,” I manage to mumble through the nails hammering into my skull.

  “Well, she meant to buck you off or you wouldn’t be lying here. But no, she didn’t mean t
o hurt you. She led us here.” Jake’s voice, his words as soothing as the flannel of his coat under my bruised head, as sweet as his fingers brushing the sticky hair off my cheek. “She led us to you.”

  When I wake up again, I squint at the wall, trying to clue together where I am.

  Lavender-flower wallpaper.

  Antique nightstand.

  The hum of familiar and unfamiliar voices.

  I’m in my room at the ranch. How long have I been asleep? I pick at the puzzle pieces of words from my visitors. A doctor is here. “Looks like the concussion is pretty bad, but apart from some minor bruising she’s not in that bad of shape. I don’t think we need to hospitalize her.”

  “Gus wants to know if she needs an MRI or CAT scan?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s alert. Her pupils look fine. And she was speaking to you after she came to, right?”

  “That’s correct.” Jake’s voice. He’s here, too. They’re all gathered around my bed and I’m utterly embarrassed. Why did I think I could just jump on Scout like that? And that it would end in, what? Us trotting back into her corral all heroic like Tristan Ludlow in Legends of the Fall, my mom’s favorite movie from the 90s?

  The doctor asks me a few questions. They decide someone should wake me up every hour during the night. Jake offers to sit up with me and after some arguments, Anna and Dad agree. Anna stays with Dad—she watches him already. And now Jake’s watching me.

  For a while I’m quiet. My head pounds less from the medicine they gave me. A Vicodin I think. I swallowed a horse pill.

  I must drift off because when I wake again, Jake’s sitting next to me, his hand on my shoulder. I’m so glad it’s there, and I hope it stays.

  “Hi,” I say. There’s a scared tremble to my voice, like it’s daring me to speak.

  “Hi.”

  It’s hard to read his expression. I have to ask.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  He nods but his eyes are light. “You scared me,” he says quietly. His thumb rubs circles on my shoulder, like warm little suns.

  I wonder if he’ll warn me again about the dangers of bareback or going off alone, and instead he surprises me. He leans forward and kisses me lightly on the lips and sort of lingers there. I suck in a breath and reach for his hand. He takes it like he’s not surprised in the least. He drags his thumb up and down mine, first on the top and then the soft underside. Then all four of his fingers drift between mine, softly, slowly like they’re asking mine to dance. My fingers follow his lead—they hear the same music—and he sits with me like that in this quiet stillness until I drift off again.

  I wake up in a cold sweat, struggling to breathe.

  I’m underwater.

  No.

  I’m on the tracks.

  No.

  I’m on the tracks underwater, and I’m screaming but no one hears me. Then I hear a voice. It’s Ty’s, and he’s angry. He says I don’t deserve them. I don’t deserve a second chance. Jake fades into focus, replacing Ty’s ghost. He’s reading in the floral chair in the corner. He tosses down the book, and rushes to my side. I throw my arms around his neck and I’m not sure what I say, but he strokes my hair and says shhh shhh shhh. He crawls into the bed next to me, and I bury my face in his neck and then against his chest as he holds me tight, hoping he’s not the dream. Hoping he’s real.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  When I wake up again I’m alone, and the absence of Jake’s little suns is chilled dreariness even though bright sun is streaming through the curtains. I’m fuzzy in the brain from my concussion, angsty from the nightmare, and looped up from the drugs. Did I dream he was here holding me?

  I didn’t dream the kiss.

  I didn’t dream the little suns he rubbed on my shoulder.

  I didn’t dream up Jake, or Anna, or Dad.

  Maybe I don’t deserve them watching over me like angels, but here they are.

  In my swollen-brained state, the wallpaper flowers bud and blossom and bloom.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  They make me stay in bed two full weeks. I get up only to eat and shower and go to the bathroom. I get a lot of pep talks from Anna and Dad (via the computer), but not Jake. Jake, instead of joking around in his usual confident way, treats me like I’m a robin’s egg. He’s kind. He’s careful. He sits on the side of my bed and we play hearts. And we talk. We really talk.

  He tells me about his family, about his dad a little bit, about his mom. I can see that he’s worried. I can feel that he’s getting close, maybe too close, to me. And that worries me. I’m leaving soon. This was supposed to be my stopover between lives, the place to try and pull the pieces of my life back together. It wasn’t supposed to be a place to build a new life. And the fact that that’s what’s happening scares me. I’m feeling things I can’t control. Things I can’t predict. People care about me here. Really care—and it scares the shit out of me.

  Now we’re arguing about the upcoming rodeo—I’m Team Yay, he’s Team Nay—and it’s stressing me out worse than the concussion.

  “Jake, we can still enter—”

  “No. You heard Doc Rhodes. You have a bad concussion. If you get another concussion within three months, you could get permanent brain damage.”

  “I already have permanent brain damage.”

  “Not funny.”

  “It kind of is?”

  He frowns. “Since I already registered you…”

  “Right. Excellent!”

  “You aren’t competing. Not with that head.”

  “But, Jake, I—”

  Instead of arguing with me, he shifts the subject. “You seem okay, so I’m going to head on into town. We need more eggs and alfalfa.”

  “We need more me entering the rodeo for sure.”

  Finger waggling, he says, “Remember when we were camping and I said you’d be a waddy someday. Well. This is waddy behavior at its finest. Stubborn, saddle-driven, crazy-ass waddy behavior.”

  But he doesn’t look mad—he looks proud. He kisses my forehead and the tip of my nose, and now I’m certain he kissed me the other night.

  I scoot up in bed. “You’re the one who told me to do something each day that’d scare me. That’s how I’ll know I’m alive, right?”

  He stops in the doorway and turns around. “I didn’t mean jump on Scout in the dark in a creek.”

  “I want to feel alive so badly.”

  It’s barely a whisper, this truth, but I go ahead and confess it. After so much numbness, I have an inkling of what living feels like again. Now it’s all I want—to capture that feeling and keep it. I’m not going to give it up. I’m not going to give any of this up: not Scout, not the chance to save the ranch and help my daddy, not Jake—not any of it. I’ll fight if I have to.

  “You are your daddy’s daughter,” Jake says, and with a waddy smile, slips out, leaving me to my plans.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The first time I’m allowed outside, I go straight to Scout.

  Of course, we’re in the middle of an afternoon thunderstorm—we get those in the summer months—so I have to walk through hot rain, streaming down from the angry sky, to get anywhere.

  She’s hanging out in the shelter of her corral. “Nice weather we’re having, huh?” I nuzzle into her warm face, and she nuzzles back, grunting a horse hello.

  “Not that you deserve this after you landed me two weeks in bed and almost blew my shot at entering us in the rodeo, but here you go.”

  She gratefully gobbles up the granola mix in my palm, then nudges into my chest, like she knows that’s exactly what I need, like she’s sorry she hurt me. I give her a cuddle back, hugging her beautiful head, scratching her behind her ears the way she likes.

  “Heard you rescued me, girl,” I say. “I suppose a thank you is in order.”

  She nudges into me again, smacking her toothy lips.

  “And I’m not trying to rub it in, but if you hadn’t bucked me off, you wouldn’t have had to rescue me in
the first place.”

  She eyes me like, Uh-huh. If you hadn’t have jumped on my back, I wouldn’t have had to buck you, and the rescue would be moot.

  “Touché.”

  We stay there together and watch the silver rain pound the red dirt. Breathing in the new-rain, I think how happy I am to be alive.

  We wait for the rain to stop. The showers are fast and furious, and I love the sound of water pounding dirt. While we wait, I think. I remember. And then the storm clouds clear morphing from an angry God’s revenge into a gentle pastel sunset. I don’t know if I believe in God, but this is so lovely and magical, this shift in nature, that I take it as a sign from something. Or someone.

  I want to ride her again.

  I want to ride her so badly.

  The evening is now a perfect mix of orange sky sunset and freshly cleansed glow.

  I want to ride her so badly it burns.

  I grab another handful of sweet feed, hold it out in front of her, and lead her toward the step stool next to the fence. When she’s close enough, I climb up to the top of the step stool. She’s busy eating out of my left hand when I swing my right leg up and over her back. She twitches, backs up a bit, but doesn’t toss me. She’s still eating out of my hand and I’m leaning all the way over her neck now, petting her and doing Jake’s Shhh, Shhh, followed by an almost whispered, “Good girl, Scout. Atta-girl. Shhh. Shhh.” When the feed runs out, she jerks her head back and looks at me like I would a kid jumping on my back—not in a mean way, but curious, like, What are you doing back there?

  I keep up the soothing voice.

  Shhh. Shhh.

  I stroke her velvety skin.

  She neighs.

  Shhh. Shhh.

  And then she surprises me.

  She takes off.

  I didn’t shut the gate when I entered. It was pouring down so hard, I tucked my head and ran for shelter. My bad, because now she’s bolting clear out of it. Leaning forward, I grip her mane for dear life. I squeeze my thighs around her middle to keep me on as she gallops straight up the central dirt road we rode on our camping trip. Dirt flies everywhere, hooves pound wet rock, wind zips my hair—and her mane—into my mouth, and it’s exhilarating, like flying on land. Even though I’m scared to death, it’s exactly what I want, exactly what I need.