Marvel and a Wonder

by Joe Meno

  Jim stood, staring out the back kitchen window, then turned away, looking down at his feet. “Well, I guess I’d like to send it back to the family so they can sort it out.”

  “Mr. Falls, as I’ve said, mistake or not, the horse belongs to you. You’ve already signed for it, so, as I’ve said—”

  “But is there someone else I can return it to? Some other relative? If it was all just a mistake, like you said, then you should be able to find who it actually belongs to.”

  “I can assure you, Mr. Falls, that if any error was made, it’s going to be in the best interests of all those involved to remain disengaged from the ongoing legal battle over the remaining properties. Including you.”

  “Then I’d like to send it back to you if I can.”

  “Mr. Falls?”

  “I wouldn’t like to keep something that doesn’t belong to me.”

  “But it does belong to you, sir.”

  “By accident.”

  “By accident or not, the papers of ownership have been legally transferred into your name.”

  He took a deep breath, the sound of which reverberated as static through the telephone’s receiver. “Now I’m going to tell you something,” Jim whispered into the phone. “I’m going to tell you a secret, if you don’t mind.”

  “No, it’s quite all right, Mr. Falls, I don’t mind.”

  Jim breathed through his nose, feeling his tongue go soft against his teeth. “I had a wife that died a few years ago. Three years ago. All this time, I guess I thought she was the one who sent it.”

  The line was quiet for a few moments after that.

  “I’m sorry,” Jim said. “I appreciate the call. I do. It’s just a lot to think about.”

  “I’m sure it its. I hope you have a good evening, Mr. Falls. I don’t believe we’ll be speaking again, so good luck,” the voice said, and then there was another long pause before they both finally hung up.

  * * *

  Later Jim made his way to the stable and crouched down beside the animal. Staring at it eye to eye, he put a hand to its muzzle and thought he might cry.

  The boy followed him out a few minutes later and asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Jim looked up and smiled, blinking a few times. “It’s ours.”

  _________________

  Before any daylight had shone on Tuesday, the boy had already fed the horse, squatting beside the animal as it ate, petting its long neck and whitish-silver coat. There was a gray-colored marking along its neck shaped like a handprint or a crown. The boy thought: God the Holy Ghost, God the Holy Spirit. He placed his palm on its side and felt the short, bristly hair and the warm flesh beneath. “Good morning, my friend,” he said, careful not to speak too loud, not wanting to be heard. “Good morning.”

  Then they led her out of the stable and into the side pasture. Rodrigo put the fancy-stitch saddle on and drove her back and forth along the snake-rail fence, getting her ready for the upcoming race, the horse like some kind of flag, some kind of semaphore, some sign the boy could not make sense of nor decipher—appearing and disappearing before him.

  Later that morning the boy was going to empty the trash into the gray bin when he got startled by a dog; it was one of the Farrells’s from down the road. A big, black-flecked mutt with front legs wider than its hindquarters, it had snuck into the poultry yard and gotten hold of a hen and was now shaking it by its neck. The boy hated dogs, had feared them ever since he was a child. One of his mother’s boyfriends had raised pit bulls, and one of these brutes had bitten him on the arm when he was five, leaving several pink keloid scars along his shoulder. Since then, large or small, the boy felt nervous around them. Now he saw the dog shaking the bird hard, so he deposited the bag of trash and yelled out for his grandfather. The beast quickly dropped the hen and began barking, inching closer as Quentin backed away. A few feet behind him was the snake-rail fence. He shouted again for his grandfather and Rodrigo appeared, poking his head around from the side of the henhouse, holding a rooster by its feet. He spotted the dog and turned the rooster free, then scrambled around for something with which to fend off the animal. He came back with a rake and held it before the dog. The mutt lunged forward, snapping its short jaws, and Rodrigo quickly leapt over the chicken wire.

  The dog now bared its teeth, the boy letting out a high scream as he backed toward the split-rail fence. He fell, stumbling over a post, and the dog leapt forward, seeing an opening. The boy pulled himself between the long wooden slats of the fence, his gym shoe getting stuck, the dog catching hold of the sneaker and tearing at it. The boy screamed again, crawling on his hands and knees into the muddy field, the dog snarling at the fence rail, poking its muzzle through. The boy screamed once more and looked up and saw a lengthy oblong shadow; he crawled toward it in his panic, confusing it for shelter. But it was the mare, which had been left in the paddock to eat. The mare reared up, striking out with its forelegs, the dog scuttling back in fright, the horse’s fearsome shadow falling upon the lesser animal like the appearance of night, the boy watching, amazed, still down on his hands and knees, the dog disappearing along the path at the east end of the property, the grandfather running around the side of the henhouse, shotgun in his hands, firing twice awkwardly into the air.

  * * *

  After dinner, the boy went off to the woods at the end of the far west field, crawling into a fort he had made of plywood and sticks three or four years before, when he was twelve. Buried under a piece of limestone, inside an old, weathered Lone Ranger lunch box—its paint flaking, revealing the rusty metal beneath—were all his treasures. A useless Zippo. A shark tooth his mother had brought back from a trip to San Francisco. Some girl’s blue kneesock he had found in the boy’s room after school. A picture torn out from an ancient nudie magazine he had discovered in the basement of an abandoned farmhouse. He glanced through the photos, the paper soft from frequent handlings, seeing a dark-eyed beauty pinning up her hair with a provocative gesture, her faded pink negligee having fallen open. Beneath the pictures from the magazine, there was a school photo of a girl two years older named Belinda Clarke. It had been neatly cut out of the boy’s yearbook. In the black-and-white photo, the girl was playing the clarinet with an elegant, wistful expression. Her eyes were closed as if waiting to be kissed. There was something about her wrists, with several of her fingers held aloft, that made the boy feel weak, like he was the trilling sound the girl must have been making. Beneath that, there was a Polaroid of his mother, from when she was twenty: hair blown and sprayed back, dyed an unnatural white-blond. She looked like a model from the magazine rack at the drugstore.

  He sorted through all these riches, then added a pencil sketch he had done of the horse, placing the drawing on top of the pile. In the picture the hind legs weren’t quite right, and neither were its proportions, but he had captured the feeling, its personality, the horse rearing up majestically in a daunting, protective pose. He studied the drawing once more, folded it up, and forced the lunch box closed.

  * * *

  Quietly, the boy slid the bolt open and crept inside. He did not know if the horse was asleep. Through the opening where the slats of wood met the roof, he could see stars. It was later than he had thought. He rested his hand lightly on the horse’s mane and placed his cheek against its bristly coat. The horse stirred a little, the boy setting his hand against his narrow jaw.

  “Do you know the future?” he murmured. “Can you tell me what you see?”

  The horse blinked its long eyelashes, nuzzling his palm.

  “What happens to me? What happens to my mother? Do you know where she’s at?”

  The horse rubbed its nose against his hand. The boy grinned.

  “What about my grandpa? Can you tell me what happens to him?”

  The horse snorted gently. The boy petted the animal in ever smaller circles.

  “Everything was bad before you showed up. But now you’re my friend. You’re my only friend. Don’t try to leave.
If you try to leave, I’ll follow you. I will.”

  The boy closed his eyes and carefully placed his forehead against the animal’s neck.

  * * *

  In the night, not quiet, the land settling itself from the day’s heat, its loamy fields becoming as dark as the evening sky. It was like some ancient mirror; one meadow coal-black, the other interrupted by the age-old invention of stars.

  * * *

  The brothers timed the drive to the rural road on Tuesday after midnight, calculating how long it took to get to the farm, then how long it took to get from the farm to the highway for their escape. They did it on one attempt in ten minutes, another twenty-one. Each trial was wildly different depending on who was driving. Gilby, the younger, was too cautious, observing the speed limit, signaling with each and every turn. The older brother drove faster but could not be counted on to keep the red pickup in the center of the lane. After some mild bickering, it was decided the elder would drive, though Gilby thought this decision—the first of many—would be their downfall.

  _________________

  Around eleven a.m. on Wednesday, they were giving a hen with a respiratory infection a dose of antibiotics. The bird pecked at their gloved hands, the boy holding the chicken over the wings to stop her from flapping or trying to fly off, the grandfather taking hold of her tiny head from behind to carefully pry open her beak. Rodrigo stood grinning, believing it a better course of action to simply put the dose in the hen’s water, though there was no real way to tell if she took the proper amount. The grandfather ignored the farmhand and shoved the plastic syringe deep down the bird’s throat, pushing past the bulging windpipe, then squirted the solution in. The bird squawked, dropping feathers, and the grandfather took her by the legs and put her back in her own cage, afraid she might infect the others.

  Just then a cloud of dust began to rise along the far dirt road. They were unsure who it was at first. Both grandfather and grandson looked up and saw the gray-blue, foreign-model hatchback zigzagging down the lane, its engine uttering a deathly rattle.

  “Who is it?” the boy asked.

  “Looks like your mother,” Jim said.

  The boy watched the hatchback slow in front of the farmhouse, awkwardly sideswiping the blue pickup. Rodrigo shaded his eyes, then shook his head. He walked off, hurrying back to the chickens.

  Jim looked over at the boy. Deirdre had driven a decent-sized dent into the passenger side of the old Ford; Jim gaped at it for a moment before walking around the front of his daughter’s car. The radio was blaring and she was behind the windshield, smiling or crying, Jim could not tell which. He opened the door and peered inside. Her upper lip was swollen now, and a red mark had blossomed along the left side of her face, both these insults something more recent. Grandfather and grandson, father and boy, stared at the face for a moment more before Jim finally spoke.

  “Deirdre?”

  She glared up at her father, the blank eyes going even blanker for a moment.

  “Deirdre?”

  Now she glared at him.

  He saw the hatred there in her eyes and something in him went cold. “Quentin,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “Give me a hand.”

  The boy nodded. Jim grabbed her under the arms and lifted, the boy taking hold of her feet. They got her up the porch and through the kitchen and then dragged her onto the sofa in the parlor. She looked at them and smiled, reaching out a hand to the boy.

  Quentin asked, “What happened to your lip?”

  She placed a finger against her swollen face and frowned. “Someone busted it.”

  Jim was through being angry or sad or even worried. All he felt now was a peculiar kind of embarrassment on his grandson’s behalf. The boy stood there observing his mother, only able to glance at her out of the corner of his eyes.

  “Why did you come back?” he asked.

  “Because,” she said. “Because I love you. I missed you.”

  The boy shook his head. “Why did you come back?” he asked again, watching as his mother’s expression became a false, rigid mask. She looked from him to his grandfather and then turned and started crying, burying her face in the sofa cushions.

  The grandfather put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy wiped a few tears from his eyes and hurried off, the kitchen door banging behind him. The grandfather stood there for some time, listening to his daughter’s sobs, then turned and hid in the quiet of the coop.

  * * *

  Before dinner, Jim came back inside and found her smoking at the kitchen table. He took off his hat and flapped it about, trying to force the cloud of cigarette smoke outside. He went over to the refrigerator and removed two small steaks, and then thinking on it, took a third.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette.

  “Maybe you’d like to cook something for your son.”

  “He’s old enough to cook for himself,” she replied, lighting another. “He’s in high school. The way you treat him you’d think he was an infant.”

  “How much would it take?”

  “What?” she said, painted-on eyebrows turning to daggers.

  “How much would it take? For you to stay out of his life. For you to leave the two of us alone. For good.”

  She huffed. “For good?”

  “For good.”

  “You’re fucking crazy, old man,” she said, and gave a sharp laugh. “Ha.”

  The grandfather sighed and walked over to the larder. In a metal flour jar, he found the roll of cash, bound up with a heavy-duty rubber band. He peeled off four bills, then a fifth, then carefully placed them before his daughter at the table.

  Deirdre looked down and scoffed. “You’re not going to buy me off with fifty bucks.”

  The grandfather added two hundred dollars to the pile and said, “You take this and you don’t come back. You don’t call. You don’t even send us a letter.”

  She narrowed her eyes and hissed, “Are you fucking nuts? What makes you think I’m going to take your stupid fucking money?”

  Jim stared at her impassively and said, “You will.”

  She laughed again, her knee jerking up and down. “You’re fucking nuts is what you are.”

  “Take it.”

  After a long drag on her cigarette, she said, “Fuck you and your stupid fucking money,” with as much venom as he had ever heard, then, placing three fingers down, slowly slid the money into the front pocket of her bomber jacket. She crushed out her cigarette and stood, one high heel slightly bent, the other unclasped. At the screen door she paused, her back to him, and said, “You never gave me love. You and Mom, you were always so fucking stingy. That’s why I’m the way I am.”

  Jim did not look up. “No,” he responded, putting a hand on the counter. “If you come back, I’ll call the police.” Then there was the sound of the door slamming shut, the screen vibrating in its frame. When he glanced up again, there was only sunlight—obscured by the rectangular shape of the door—and the round, distant sun.

  * * *

  At eight p.m., the boy came back, trotted up to his room, and locked the door. It was dark and the constant sound of the cicadas and crickets reminded Jim how long he had been gone. He heard the sound of the boy’s music and video games come on, then stood and made his way upstairs. He knocked twice on the door before the boy opened it.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” Jim said. “Man to man.”

  For some reason the boy had his Walkman on, while the TV and hi-fi were both blaring. He nodded and took a seat on the bed.

  Jim grimaced weakly and sat beside him. He cleared his throat once, then again, then put a hand on the boy’s knee. “Your mom . . .” he said.

  “Is a bitch.”

  “No,” he said. “No. She’s sick. She’s gone to get some help. She won’t be back for a while. I just wanted you to know where she’s at.”

  The boy sniffled. “I hate her.”

  �
�No,” the grandfather said. “You love her. We both do. This is why it hurts like it does.”

  The boy let out a squeal, then a sob, and the grandfather, hands upraised, feeling unsure, pulled him into an awkward embrace. After some time, he patted the boy on the back, then left him and hurried to his room, happy for the dark.

  * * *

  Nighttime once again; the moon one evening larger, a glowing porcelain figure, a knickknack on a cloudless mantle.

  * * *

  There was a gun shop on Route 9 that sold used handguns. The younger brother had no priors and, as it turned out, you didn’t need a license to buy one. They drove out by the Burnham bridge, parked down in a culvert, and blew off a few rounds, broken bottles glinting faintly in the dark. It was frightening—the look on the older brother’s face—as he squeezed the trigger again and again. It was like he wasn’t a real person at all.

  After they were back inside the dirty red pickup, after they were headed back to the highway, the younger brother asked, “So when?”

  The older brother, Edward, shot him a disapproving look and held a finger to his lips.

  “Fuck that,” the younger brother said. “I need to know when. I got a fucking life too, you know. I can’t wait around until you get your head together.”

  The older brother nodded, glanced back toward the road, then said it: “Tomorrow.”

  _________________

  Dawn that morning was a cold one, the fields dewy. The sound of boots on the slick green, brown, yellow grass. The smell of coffee in an old metal thermos. The chickens noisy, their voices the primitive racket of daylight arriving. The horse silent in its stall. The sun like some mythical animal already beginning its western run.