Reality Check

by Abrahams, Peter

  “No, nothing like that. He’s fine.”

  “Are you at the barn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Because something bad is going on—there’s already talk of parents coming to get their kids until…until whatever’s going on stops.”

  “Seems a little over the top,” Cody said.

  “It does?” Maybe it was his imagination, but Cody thought he heard less fear in her tone, as though he’d calmed her in some way; a pretty unlikely notion.

  “Yeah,” said Cody. “That’s all Clea said about Midnight, that he was a great horse?”

  “What else would she be saying?”

  “Nothing about wanting him?”

  “Why would she want him? She loves—loved—Bud.”

  Cody stroked number two off the list. 3: Got tired of M.

  “Got to go to class,” Alex was saying. “You around later?”

  “Around where?”

  “How about the Rev? Five or so?”

  Through the window, Cody saw Ike drive into the parking lot. “See you then,” he said. He fetched the wheelbarrow, went out to help Ike with the feed.

  “You’re not a bad worker,” Ike said when they were done with unloading and had walked the horses. “Ask too many questions, is all.”

  “Here’s one more,” said Cody, guiding the last horse—Dusty, a little brown mare, very gentle, already one of his favorites—into her stall. “Did Townes get tired of Midnight?”

  “Huh?” said Ike, leaning a pitchfork against the wall.

  “Bored with him or something?”

  Ike’s mouth opened, closed, reopened. “Can’t believe you did that—right up and asked a question, not two seconds after—”

  “And what’s the answer?”

  “Can’t believe you did that when I just—”

  “Ike! Answer the question!”

  Ike’s eyebrows rose. He looked shocked. “What’s so goddamn important?”

  Cody stole Alex’s line, so undeniably right. “Something bad is going on.”

  Ike licked his lips; his tongue was yellow and scaly. “Bud getting shot?” he said.

  “And Clea disappearing,” Cody said, and, suspecting that Ike was missing an obvious point, added, “A human being.”

  “Human being,” said Ike in a sarcastic way.

  Cody thought: Weirdo. And at the same moment remembered Larissa’s take on Ike: Looks like an ax murderer. But could a weirdo, a murderer, have cried over Bud the way Ike had? Maybe. Some people had to be badly fucked up inside—otherwise how could any of this be happening?

  Cody glanced at the pitchfork leaning against the wall, a stride or two closer to Ike than to him. “Did you have some problem with Clea?” he said.

  Ike’s lower lip, cracked and chapped from weather, started to tremble. “Me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I see through you,” Ike said. “You’re just like him.”

  “Like who?”

  “Orton.”

  “I’m like Sergeant Orton?”

  Ike nodded. “Sneaky. Two-faced. Asking lots of questions. Accusing Ike first for no good reason.”

  Cody shifted sideways—yes, maybe a little sneaky—toward the pitchfork. Ike was a strong, rawboned guy, and he might have that whittling knife on him.

  “What did Sergeant Orton accuse you of?”

  “Just like you are—doing bad. When the truth is Ike could never harm a living thing.”

  Did such people exist, who could never harm a living thing? Cody doubted it; and if they did exist, he himself certainly wasn’t one of them. He gazed into Ike’s red-rimmed eyes and said it again: “Did you have some problem with Clea?”

  Ike’s hand, huge and gnarled, shot out with a quickness that took Cody by surprise and grabbed his right wrist, squeezed it in a grip that felt like fire. “My problem is two-facers like you and Orton.”

  Cody tried to free his arm, could not.

  “Somethin’ wrong with you two-facers, thinkin’ anything bad about Ike and that kid, nicest kid in the barn, not like some others I could mention. Want proof? Give you proof, same as I gave Orton—I had Dusty over to the vet that whole afternoon, two to six.” He paused, chest heaving, breathing heavy, a little spit showing at the corners of his lips. “Don’t believe me? Call the vet.”

  Cody did believe Ike, flat-out; at the same time realized that Sergeant Orton must have verified Ike’s story—how else could he be walking around, a free man? “I believe you.”

  Ike let go. Cody overcame the urge to rub his wrist. Ike glanced at his own hand, stuck it in his pocket. “Just want a fair shake is all,” he said.

  Cody caught a look deep in Ike’s eyes, a look of pain: and somehow knew that Ike had suffered a lot in life. “I know,” he said.

  Ike turned away. “Answer to your question is no,” he said. “Who’d ever get bored with Midnight? Champion goddamn horse in the stable.”

  In his mind, Cody crossed out number three, leaving only 4. Needed the $.

  “Other than that—and I know this sounds callous,” Alex said at a Rev corner table, after Cody had finished telling her about finding Bud’s body, “how’s the job?”

  Cody gazed at Alex for a moment, then laughed. There was a lot to like about that face—soft, smooth skin, lively eyes that made her seem older, those braces doing the opposite, and almost always, in his brief acquaintance with her, an expression of being right there, her mind not somewhere else. Clea had that too; no surprise they’d become friends. “Not bad,” he said.

  “Whew. You’re not offended.”

  “Nope.”

  “I know it’s awful. No one knows what’s going on. But doesn’t it have to be related, Clea disappearing and now this?”

  “Like how?”

  “I don’t know how,” Alex said.

  “Think of a possible connection,” Cody said. “You’re smart.”

  Alex didn’t deny it. She sipped her hot chocolate, a faraway look appearing in her eyes. “Did you ever see The Godfather, part one, I think it is?”

  Way too many times: It was Junior’s favorite movie, along with Fight Club. “You’re thinking about the scene with the horse?”

  “Just the head, wasn’t it?” Alex said.

  “And?”

  “In that case it was a threat,” she said.

  Sergeant Orton’s idea: sending a message. “Who’s being threatened here?” Cody said. “Why?”

  Alex gazed into her hot chocolate, shook her head.

  Cody stuck to his own theory: Someone had been afraid of Bud, of the possibility that Bud might remember—how else to put this?—the scene of the crime, and lead searchers to evidence of it. In fact, something close to that had happened—he’d found Clea’s cell phone; not a fact he was allowed to disclose.

  “What?” said Alex. “You were about to say something.”

  Cody shook his head. She gave him a look. Suddenly and to his surprise unable to meet her gaze, he bent over his Coke, took a sip. He wanted to tell Alex about the cell phone, knew he needed help from someone smart, someone his own age, a friend. Did he trust Sergeant Orton? No. But at the same time, things the sergeant said seemed to make sense. For example: the importance of secrecy. Whoever they were looking for was close by.

  “Can I ask you a funny question?” Alex said.

  “Sure,” Cody said, sounding anything but in his own ears.

  “Have you got a lot of friends?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “What’s the big surprise?”

  “No surprise. It’s not that you’re not att”—Alex blushed—“perfectly presentable, but—”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Alex laughed, blushed some more. “It’s just that you seem like a bit of a loner. I mean in a good way, the stranger who rides into town.”

  “
I’m a lousy rider,” Cody said.

  “I didn’t mean literally.”

  Discussing his friends couldn’t lead anywhere good. Cody tried to change the subject, could only find a clumsy way. “But I hear Townes is a good rider,” he said.

  “I guess so,” Alex said. “Doesn’t it help that he has the best horse?”

  “Who told you Midnight was the best horse?”

  “Clea. Isn’t it true?”

  “That’s the word,” Cody said. “What else did she say about Midnight?”

  “What I said before, how powerful he was—and, oh yeah, how he and Townes were this perfect team.”

  “Perfect how?”

  “In competition, moving as one, that kind of thing. That’s what got her interested in Townes, the first time she saw him ride.”

  Something seemed to twist inside Cody’s chest. He felt Alex’s gaze, busied himself with his drink. “That’s how they got together?”

  “Yeah, through riding,” Alex said. “The next thing I knew they were off to New York for Columbus Day weekend, doing the bar scene.”

  “How?”

  “That’s the kind of thing Townes can pull off. I think he’s got fake ID, but lots of places are pretty lax about carding. Even in this little burg—Big Len’s, for example.”

  “The bar on Governor Street?”

  “Supposedly,” Alex said. “I’ve never been, but Townes took Clea a bunch of times.”

  Cody came close to saying: But she doesn’t even like beer.

  Alex seemed to read his mind. “She developed this thing for margaritas. But it didn’t last long—Big Len’s turned out to be kind of grubby.” She dipped a finger into the hot chocolate, licked it off. “The whole thing didn’t last long, not for her.”

  “What whole thing?”

  “With Townes. She was planning to break up with him.”

  “She was?”

  Alex nodded. “Kind of weird, just me having this little fact. Clea told me the day before she disappeared. She was up really late, working on the Princess Di report. I could hear her through the wall, reciting the speech out loud, so I stuck my head in the door, just to tell her to relax, it was going to be all right, and she turned to me and said, ‘I’m going to break up with Townes.’ Just popped right out. And I was like, ‘How come?’ And she promised a tell-all for tomorrow, meaning last Wednesday. But of course that didn’t happen.”

  “Do you think she did it, broke up with him?”

  “Wondered about that,” Alex said. “I doubt it. Really wasn’t time—they were in different classes all day, and dumping him during riding practice wouldn’t be her. Makes me feel kind of strange, knowing what he didn’t know, watching him on those searches, hacking through the woods like a madman.”

  But Cody couldn’t help thinking: Maybe she did tell him. Maybe he didn’t like hearing it. He tried to make the facts line up behind those ideas and couldn’t. For example, where did the sale of Midnight fit in?

  “Did Clea ever say anything about buying Midnight?”

  “No.”

  “Or wanting to own him?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just wondering,” Cody said.

  The waitress—not Deirdre, who didn’t seem to be around—brought the check.

  “I’ll get it,” Alex said.

  “Not fair,” said Cody. “I had the burger and all you had was that little salad.” He took the check, added in the tip according to Frank Pruitt’s foolproof formula. When he looked up from his calculations, he found Alex watching him.

  “Can I ask you another funny question?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you going out with anyone?”

  The true answer was no, but Cody said yes.

  “Oh,” said Alex. And then, after a moment: “Anyone I know?”

  The logic of the lie now made the true answer yes, but Cody said no.

  Conversation didn’t come easy after that. They left the Rev, Alex heading back to campus, Cody on his way to Big Len’s Sports Bar on Governor Street.

  TWENTY-TWO

  CODY HAD NEVER BEEN in a bar before. There was plenty of underage drinking in Little Bend, but not in bars. Everybody knew everybody, and it just didn’t happen. He opened the door to Big Len’s Sports Bar and walked in.

  Cody found himself in a dark place, the exact size and dimensions hard to determine. A bar ran the length of the left side, with tables and chairs on the right. Most of the light shone from three TVs, a big one behind the bar, two smaller ones in the table-side corners.

  Big Len’s was mostly empty. A few men sat at the far end of the bar, hunched over mugs of beer; an old couple was sharing a pitcher at one of the tables. Cody took a stool at the near end of the bar. No sign of a bartender. SportsCenter was on TV, the commentator going over the spreads for upcoming NFL games. Down at the other end of the bar, one of the men said, “Fuckin’ eight and a half points?”

  “So?” said another man. “Take the under and stop bitching.”

  “I’m not bitching.”

  “You bitch more than my wife.”

  “No one bitches more than her.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “You brought her up.”

  “Fuckin’ watch your mouth, talkin’ about my wife.”

  “Dudes, chill,” said another man. And then, raising his voice: “Len. Customer.”

  A door opened behind the bar at the far end; Cody glimpsed some sort of storage room, cartons, a cooler against the back wall. A man emerged, first in silhouette, and then, as the storage-room door closed, just dimly lit. Tall, broad shouldered, barrel-chested, with long lank hair and a bandito mustache: Big Len. Big Len wore a tight, long-sleeved T-shirt, a studded leather vest, jeans; had a thick gold chain around his neck. He came forward, eyes on Cody—intelligent, experienced eyes, not friendly. Did Big Len recognize him from that time in the parking lot behind the bar—a distant sighting? No recognition showed on his face, not even for an instant. Cody was just another customer to him, but on the young side. Next would be a request for ID, some fumbling excuse, Cody on his way out.

  Big Len gave him a slight nod. “What’ll it be?”

  “Uh,” said Cody. “Maybe, like a beer?”

  “Like, any special kind?” said Len.

  “Bud Light,” Cody said, his mind blanking on all other brands.

  Without taking his eyes off Cody, Len reached down for a bottle, snapped off the cap, set the bottle on the bar. “Run a tab?” he said.

  Cody’s mind blanked again; whatever Len had just said didn’t even sound like English.

  “I’ll run you a tab,” he said. “Cash, Visa, MasterCard.” Len smiled. He had big white teeth, maybe a little too white to be real. “Cash is always the nicest.” At the other end of the bar, one of the men laughed.

  Len moved away, wiping off the bar with a not-very-clean rag. Cody took a sip from the Bud Light bottle. It didn’t taste like anything. First time in a bar, getting served no problem, and he had no desire to drink. A funny story to tell Junior; Cody wouldn’t have minded having Junior beside him at that moment—Junior was one person he could trust, maybe the one person.

  Down the bar, Len poured another round. “Eight and a half, Len,” said one of the men. “How they come up with that?”

  “Don’t like it, stay away,” Len said. “No law says you have to bet.”

  The man laughed. “Then where would you be?”

  Len gave him that bright white smile. “Right here,” said Len. The man stopped laughing.

  Cody took another sip. Up on the big screen they were now showing highlights of big hits from last week’s games. Not all the kids liked the hitting in football, but Cody did: The hitting was what made the game so special. Like the way you play football, son. Ever been to Pennsylvania? Deep down—and this was something Cody would never say aloud, would really not even admit to himself—he had a dream of playing in the NFL, had still not abandoned it. Kind of crazy, since h
e wasn’t even on a team, and had this—maybe not a bad knee, but not as good as the other one. Would it ever be? He looked down at his left knee, straightened it, flexed it.

  “Like football?”

  Cody glanced up. Big Len was back.

  “Yeah,” Cody said.

  “Got a favorite team?”

  “Broncos,” Cody said.

  “Yeah?” said Len. “Don’t get too many Bronco fans around here.” He reached down—snap—and set another bottle in front of Cody, even though the first one was half full.

  “I didn’t—”

  “On the house,” said Len. “Always good to see a new face.”

  “Um, thanks.”

  “Name’s Len,” Len said. He had pale eyes—hard to say the exact color in the weak light of the bar—made all the paler by his black hair. “Len Boudreau.”

  “Cody,” Cody said.

  Len stuck out his hand. They shook. Len’s hand was big and strong—bigger and stronger than Ike’s—and he squeezed pretty hard, but just for a split second before letting go.

  “New in town?” he said.

  “I…no,” Cody said. “I’ve been around.”

  “Yeah?” said Len. He reached down, snapped open another Bud Light; but this one was for him. He tilted it to his mouth, took a big hit, almost half in one swallow. Len wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “What the doctor ordered, right, Cody?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But beer sometimes needs a little pal.” He reached behind him, took a bottle off the shelf without looking, set it on the bar with two shot glasses. “How’s bourbon sound?” Len said.

  Cody had tried bourbon only once—a night out with some of Junior’s older cousins, all real big like Junior, even the girls—had ended up totally wasted, and the next morning had sworn off bourbon forever. “Uh, wouldn’t really—” he began.

  “Take that for a yes,” Len said. “Who turns down a free shot of JB? Only the limp-wristed types, right?” Cody didn’t answer. Len filled the shot glasses, clicked his against Cody’s. “Here’s to football,” he said, and raised his glass. Cody hesitated. Len made a little glass-raising gesture. Cody raised his glass. Len drained his shot in one swallow. Cody did the same. Len refilled the glasses. “Been around, huh?” He took another big hit of Bud Light, again wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Funny—don’t recall seeing you around.”