by Joe Meno
“Sir?”
“—”
“Gramps?”
“—”
“Jim?”
The old man snorted awake.
“Gramps. That’s them. That’s them,” the boy whispered loudly.
The grandfather nodded, wiping at the sleep which had gathered in the corner of his eyes.
“What do we do now?”
“Hold on. Hold on,” the grandfather said.
“What do we do?”
“We watch.”
“Watch for what?”
“The right moment. They’re gonna drive off, and then we’re gonna get that horse back when the time comes.”
The boy nodded once more, though not in agreement.
The girl—it was maybe the man’s daughter or girlfriend, Jim did not know—shouted something, shoving the passenger-side door open, trying to make a break for it. The man reached across the seat and, without so much as a frown, offered the girl the back of his hand—a wide, arcing blow that caused the girl’s head to snap to the side. Then the man leaned over and pulled the passenger-side door closed, quickly starting up the truck.
“We’re not gonna do nothing?” the boy asked.
“We are—just wait.”
“But they’re gonna drive away.”
“Just wait.”
“He’s starting it up.”
“Hush now. Keep your eyes out.”
They watched as the dark pickup slowly crept from its parking spot.
“Go on,” the old man said. “Start her up. Follow two or three cars back. Take your time. We ain’t in a hurry now.”
Once again the black pickup made its way along the highway, advancing with a reckless velocity north along I-40; only now it was being followed, the pale-blue truck rumbling along in the distance, the old man’s eyes fixed on the road ahead, the silver trailer—its square shape—the vanishing point of his line of sight.
* * *
An unblinking eye, the moon peering pale over the tips of white dogwoods, the red crumbling brick edges of industrial buildings, black voluminous smokestacks angling skyward—their vapors ringing the skyline, the moon glancing down at a green glass bottle left like an offering, broken at the neck, at the gold and silver necklaces lining an all-night pawnshop window, all of them see-through with moonlight. Darkness falls, darkness falling, the city of Nashville fading behind.
* * *
Along the side of the road was an unfathomable order of trees: the girl held the sore spot on her cheek and watched them whip past with their lifeless fury.
“We’re going north. We’re going north, I know it,” the girl whispered bravely.
Rick, his left eye unblinking, remained silent behind the steering wheel. He looked straight ahead, the wooded highway hurtling past with a violence all its own.
* * *
The taillights of the pickup and the silver trailer flashed brightly before the boy’s eyes, constant, undeniable, quietly dividing the borders of the night. Beside him, his grandfather had gone white. He looked shaky. The boy steered the vehicle and kept watch on the red lights ahead. He whispered his grandfather’s name several times, “Gramps? Gramps? Gramps?” but heard no reply, and so, after about ten minutes, he finally said his name directly once again: “Jim?”
“—”
“Jim.”
“—”
The boy slowed the vehicle down, taking his eyes from the road. He reached over and touched his grandfather’s blue-veined hand. It felt brittle, cold. The old man was murmuring to himself—the boy could see his lips moving—and his eyes were trembling beneath his wrinkled eyelids, the eyelashes also shuddering. The boy turned back to the road and saw the other truck drifting off in the distance, the silver trailer flashing beneath the occasional billboard or highway light, and sped up, the engine slow to respond, the hood rattling before his eyes.
* * *
The woods were a blur of black edges and dull lines: all of a sudden, seeing their shadows, the skeletal, gloomy outlines, the impenetrable black figures, shapes from a bad dream, the girl realized she did not want to die. Not anymore. She did not know when she had figured this out, but she was suddenly aware of how important it was that she stay alive. The pickup was moving faster and faster now, the entire city of Nashville lost somewhere behind, one town, then another appearing before vanishing along the side of the highway; billboards, advertisements, attractions faded into view, then departed from sight, the road ahead lit only by the truck’s headlamps; and beyond the twin globes of yellow light, there was nothing, the night having shifted to the epic, uninterrupted land of blackness. The girl realized she would have to do something quickly if she was going to escape. It was obvious now that he had driven her all the way out here to kill her—she was as sure of this as she had been of anything in her life. So she watched him, studied his stony face. She saw the line of his thin gray lips, the unforgiving glare in his squinting eye, saw him crouched over the steering wheel like some kind of gargoyle, saw a hand on the wheel, the other floating above the clutch, then saw the unfastened seat belt. She almost smiled to herself, feeling her own belt buckled across her chest. Then, without another thought, before the doubt and wordless terror could settle back in, she grabbed hold of the steering wheel and pulled it with all her might, baring her teeth as Rick shouted and tried to fight it free.
The black pickup spun wildly from the right-hand lane, plowing into a plastic mile marker, roaring directly into a ditch, the front end flying up from the ground and burying itself into a culvert overgrown with cattails and brambles. The silver trailer came crashing from behind, slamming into the truck’s rear bumper, tearing loose from its hitch, landing on its right side. The sound of the collision was fearsome—glass spiderwebbing in brilliant shrieks, plastic exploding outward with concussive groans and snaps, metal sheering metal.
* * *
When things had stopped moving, when the dirt had settled itself earthward once more, there was a low hum, the engine running down, and a fierce wailing from the upended trailer. Then there was a thump, and another, then a third; hearing it, Rick knew it was his pulse pounding, reminding him that he was alive, and what a damnable fool he had been.
He held one hand to his forehead, the blood hurrying down his face, the thump coming from somewhere inside his head again. He pulled himself free from the wreckage, jaw sore, left shoulder popped from its joint. He limped away through the crushed door, afraid something might catch fire, knees buckling as he fought his way up the incline, falling on his side, his breath coming in sudden, uneven gasps. He heard the thump once more, realizing then it was the horse, before it began to whinny—the sound of its pleas unlike anything he had ever heard, guttural though high-pitched. Cursing, he made his way back down the culvert, sliding through the upturned mud to the trailer, placing his hands on the lopsided handles. The trailer door was bent, forced shut, and it took all of his strength to pull it open. The horse came galloping out of the warped, silver prison like a cloud, like a cannonball, leaping free, though as it moved, Rick could see its rear flank was seeping blood and its foreleg was split, broken below the knee. It cantered a few paces on, then stopped, huffing at the cool night air, flicking its head, ears erect, turning to glance back at where Rick was squatting in the mud.
He did not think of the girl; not until he was breathing properly again. Shifting his weight to his left side, he limped back to the driver’s-side door, folded upon itself, and peered inside. The passenger seat was empty, the door hanging wide open, no shadow nor trace of her shape visible anywhere in the night. He began to laugh, as he had once again underestimated her, thinking how much she was like her old, sickly grandfather, how vicious, how fearless. He pulled himself up out of the ditch, keeping his eye on the horse, seeing the animal stumbling slowly toward the highway.
“Ho! Ho!” he called to it, holding out a hand, taking a wobbly step forward, spooking it. And then, once again, it was gone, taking off wildly down t
he hillside—broken leg or not—disappearing in a white-and-red-specked flash, the sound of its hooves striking the dirt, marking time with the thrum of blood in Rick West’s head. He stood there numbly, blood-soaked, staring off as if he were born mute or dumb, watching it go.
_________________
The pale-blue pickup halted a good fifty yards from the crash, slowing down along the shoulder of the road, the pernicious rattle of loose gravel beneath the vehicle’s tires startling the grandfather awake. He grunted a little, lifting the white cattleman hat from his eyes, peering out into the darkness at the abstract, rectangular shapes rising from the edge of the highway, just beyond the yellow circles cast by the flickering headlights. Before bothering to even ask, he had the door open and was limping out, staring at the upturned trailer flung on its side, its door torn open, the horse gone. There was the man, the one who had been driving the other truck, squatting along the side of road, shaking his head, laughing a little to himself, out of his wits maybe, whistling at some far-off point in the distance. Jim followed the man’s gaze and saw a white streak passing across a wide-open field—saw, at once, that it was the mare, running off-kilter, one of its forelegs hitting the ground awkwardly, as if it did not trust its own step, though, somehow, the animal still appeared to be flying. The grandfather turned back and hurried toward the open door of the pale-blue pickup, seeing that the night in the distance had just begun to blossom with color—a smear of orange, then blue, then red—and the eastern sky, where he was now staring, already showing light.
Back in the truck, the grandfather slammed the door behind him. “She’s off the other way.”
The boy quickly threw the truck into gear. The vehicle jerked forward, its headlamps momentarily lighting the raw-looking face of the man sitting alone on the side of the road, laughing at the balled-up truck and trailer, before passing on.
“That was her?” the boy asked.
“That was her,” the grandfather said, looking back over his shoulder.
“How do we get her?”
“Turn around. And then we’ll hop on that exit over there.”
The pale-blue pickup rattled off, its engine clattering, returning to the road. The grandfather glanced in the side-view mirror as the man on the side of the culvert stood, pulled a weapon from beneath his coat, and began to stalk off through the weeds toward the barren field where the horse was now standing frightfully still.
The boy piloted the truck across the center of the road, the vehicle fighting through the unmowed grass, and then sped in the opposite direction, back toward an off-ramp they had just passed. The grandfather was quiet, trying to catch sight of the horse, but it was already moving again, trotting from the field toward a small town that sprung like a gash among the heavy acreage of trees.
Soon the animal was rushing along a narrow main street, past a liquor store, then a motel, then an abandoned movie theater. From there, the horse disappeared down a side street, the pickup truck speeding in pursuit. Stopping at a street corner, the boy stared through the early-morning light for any sign of white. In a wide lot, there were several pieces of laundry hanging along two lines, and for a moment the boy thought it was the mare, and then blinking, leaning forward, he thought they might also be ghosts. On the third blink, he saw them for what they were, and asked, his voice a whisper, “Where did she go?”
“You drive down that way,” the grandfather murmured. “I’ll walk from here.”
“But what about—”
“Go on now. We don’t got time to argue.”
The old man pulled himself out of the cab, fixed his hat straight on his head, and marched with an awkward limp down the main street, whistling a little, clucking softly with his tongue. The pale-blue pickup pulled away from the curb, its red taillights tracing the arc of its path down a narrow side street.
* * *
The girl huddled in the underbrush, hidden by the high sweep of brambles, arms folded across her chest, lips chattering, entire body trembling, not from fear or shock but the shape of the shadow crossing before her, pistol in hand. It was him. She could smell him, the dank odor: like a rat’s den, oily, nervous. She could hear him groaning a little to himself, snarling as he pushed his way through the weeds, passing only a few feet from where she was now crouching, her eyes closed tight, hands folded fiercely in prayer against her left cheek, Rick West’s figure pausing there for a second before it strode on, disappearing into the lightening shadows, traveling down the declination of meadow, heaving itself over a low barbed-wire fence. When she was sure he was gone, when she had crouched there for as long as she could, daring to think she was safe, she darted out from the thicket and made her way toward a pair of headlights as they approached down the highway, arms raised before her in a plea. It was an elderly couple, an old man and an old woman, in an ancient Ford station wagon. The car stopped, and the girl—fleeing from the night and whatever she’d been—climbed inside.
* * *
The grandfather loped on a little farther and was surprised when he saw the horse standing there, grazing in front of a small white church. It had its muzzle buried in an azalea bush and was nipping at its leaves, ears flattened along its narrow skull, teeth working over the fibrous twigs, breath pluming from its nostrils in twin puffs. Jim slowed his gait, striding with his hand upraised, still clucking, kissing the air slightly, stopping about ten feet from where the horse was feeding. Suddenly, it lifted its great neck, blinked its long, feminine eyelashes, then turned quickly from where it was standing and galloped off once more.
“Son of a bitch.” The old man watched the animal dazzle away into the dark, a flash of lightning curving along the horizon, shooting west down an ever-widening street.
* * *
The shape hurried on, pistol in hand, left leg dragging a little, as the ribs and thighbone on his left side felt desperately sore. His forehead had stopped bleeding and so he folded his handkerchief back into his jeans, pausing to look up at the small unlit town, shades and curtains drawn, inhabitants still asleep. Rick spat something from his mouth, trying to get rid of the taste of blood, and then moved on, finding no sign of the horse, nor any other semblance of life. And then, like another lost soul gleaming before him, the horse came around the corner and made a wild dash through an abandoned lot, clods of dirt rising. Rick fired blindly, shooting at wherever it had just passed.
* * *
The boy pulled the pickup to a halt at the end of a brick-paved alley, glimpsing the horse with its head in a dented silver garbage can standing in a long row of other silver garbage cans. It snuffled at some trash and then raised its eyes, hearing the squeak of the pickup’s brakes. Quentin hurried from the vehicle, leaving the door open and the engine running. The horse lifted its small ears, looking alarmed.
“It’s me,” the boy said, no longer moving.
The horse shifted backward when the boy slowly held his hand out.
“Don’t you remember? It’s me.” He took another step forward, thinking if only he were to touch it, if only he were able to get close enough, if only he could place his hand along the side of its neck, then there’d be no reason left to doubt.
One more step, he smiled and put the flat of his palm against the animal’s soft throat. Feeling it tremble, feeling its pulse, he thought, It’s going to be all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Then there was a gunshot and the horse fled again.
* * *
The grandfather huffed a little as he limped his way over the sidewalk, past a gray slate parking lot belonging to a rundown funeral home. Directly behind him, the steeple of the church clanged to life; he could hear the bell in the tower begin to toll, the sun’s brightness now visible in the easternmost edge of the sky, parked cars, windowpanes, leaves of trees all suddenly beginning to glow with light. The bells behind him chimed one, two, three, four, then five, though in their reverberations what the grandfather heard was unfamiliar, distant, frightening. Instead of the clangor of the blue-bronze clapper aga
inst the blue-bronze bell, it was an exhortation, an appeal for the old man to stop his clumsy advance across the parking lot; one, two, three, four, then five, the echo of the Sunday-morning chimes no longer a far-off sound but now altogether an immutable sort of voice. The old man trudged on regardless, marching past the funeral parlor—multicolored caskets displayed indiscreetly in its window—here was a gold one, a bright blue one, trimmed in bronze, one all white—the pearly handles, the silk cushions, the filigree shapes like harps and angels. He trotted past their mute, rectangular shapes and spied the horse at the end of the street, drinking softly from a yellow fire hydrant that had sprung a leak. He held his hand out against a blue mailbox a moment, observing the horse leaning there in the early light, its rear flank bloodied, its foreleg badly bent, a silver lather having gathered along its muscular shoulders and neck. He held out one hand toward the animal, trying to call to it, but it did not heed him, only lapped at the trickling water before galloping on.
It was standing in the center of a used-car lot by the time the grandfather caught up with it again, the animal resting gallantly between several rows of rusty vehicles. Jim could see its sides heaving, its nostrils trembling. There were colored plastic flags flying in the air overhead, red and orange and yellow and green, and behind him an enormous banner of the stars and stripes. He could hear the flags whipping above his head, the horse standing there, huffing at the air, whiter than white, the skin around its muzzle gray and pink, like some imaginary creature, breathing hard among the columns of Toyotas and Fords, former competitors parked side by side. The grandfather limped forward, raising his hand, reaching out toward the horse, pausing, afraid to spook it, afraid to find it no longer standing there. He placed a hand upon the horse’s nape, feeling the lather gathered there, the heat of the animal’s skin, its blood coursing beneath his own, palm against neck, flesh against flesh. It was like meeting an old friend; and so he smiled a little, seeing that it did not startle, only stood there, foreleg split, blood sparkling along its shin.