When Horses Had Wings

by Diana Estill

  Clomp. Swish. Clomp. Swish. I could hear her out there with her broom, sweeping away yesterday’s dusty layers like she did every morning. Maybe that was Granny’s way of calling out to me, “Hey, come outside, and let’s visit so I don’t lose my mind trying to talk to this old fart over here.” Unless it was raining, my front door generally remained open, as it was on that October morning, to catch a breeze.

  Sean struggled away from my one-handed grip, ran to the screen door, and grunted. Filled with the normal curiosity of an eighteen-month-old, he remained impossible to feed. I caught up to him right as Granny Henderson approached the other side of the screen door. “Mornin’, Peanut. You comin’ out to help me pick up pe-cans today?”

  The only vegetation in our front yard was a mature pecan tree that stole all the sunshine needed to support grass. That was just as well; neither of our two worse-halves would have mowed a lawn, anyway. Proof of that existed in our backyards, where what looked like a hayfield had grown right up to the foundation. I’d worn a footpath through those weeds to access the wire clothesline attached to the house.

  “We’ll be right out, Granny,” I said. “Sean needs to finish his cereal, first.” But Sean wasn’t about to return to breakfast now that he’d seen Granny. I gave up trying to convince him cold oatmeal was useful only as glue and joined my neighbor outdoors.

  “Them damn squirrels ’bout got all our pe-cans today, Sean,” Granny huffed. The three of us inspected the front yard, bending and stooping like a flock of bantam chickens. We tossed the few nuts we found into a bushel produce basket Granny had set out for that purpose. “We better hurry,” Granny said. “Looks like more rain’s a-comin’.”

  The Hendersons’ Chevy had vacated its usual resting place, so Sean stopped to poke his fingers in the water that remained where the car had been parked.

  “Old Man gone already?” I asked.

  “Left before eight this morning, dressed like he’s goin’ to meet the Mayor,” Granny said.

  “Maybe he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Lordy, girl. If that old devil can find another woman to put up with him, she’s more than welcome to him. I wished he could.” She walked back to the porch and scooted into her swing. “Don’t nobody want a man who won’t do nothin’ but piss on hisself.”

  I laughed. “I think I got one of those, now.” I set Sean on the steps, next to me. He kicked his feet in front of him and squealed in utter delight over being outdoors.

  “Hmmm. You know, you just might. I believe you just might.” Granny scratched at her dry scalp, then brushed a loose silver tendril from one eye. “And if you ain’t careful, you’re gonna end up just like me,” she said in a more serious tone.

  I kissed the top of Sean’s platinum-blond head as he patted at my thighs. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s two things I never got, but you still can… and if you get ’em, things might turn out different for you. Them’s education and a job. You gotta get you some kind of work if you don’t want to still be living here when you’re eighty.” Granny stopped to wave at a pickup heading east on Hawk Creek Road. “I know. You tell yourself times’ll get better. But they don’t, I’m tellin’ you. They can’t. Not as long as you only know how to make babies, wipe noses, and tend to a man who won’t stop gallivanting all over like he’s some kind of dandy dude.” She looked at her empty driveway and shook her head. “I’d sure miss talking to you and Little Sean but, honey, you’d be better off out there a-workin’ so you can have some kind of life.”

  I was contemplating what Granny had just said when an auto marked, “County Sheriff,” pulled into her side of the drive. A deputy stepped from the vehicle and approached us.

  “One of you two ladies Mrs. Henderson?” he asked, scraping the mud off one of his shoes onto the sidewalk Granny had just swept.

  She looked at the man like he was a ten-year-old who needed scolding. “I am.”

  “Ma’am, could you come with me to the Sheriff’s Office? We believe we may have found your husband’s vehicle down off the Hawk Creek Bridge embankment.”

  ~

  Folks speculated about what might have happened to poor Old Man Henderson. I had my theory. Granny had hers. I thought he was probably driving with that cane of his, misjudged the distance between him and one of those rock-haulers, and at the last minute swerved to miss the narrow bridge that wasn’t wide enough to carry both of them at once. Granny said she believed he was looking at a girlie magazine, the one found inside his car at the scene, and missed the bridge entirely. No matter who was right, I only hoped there hadn’t been any grape seeds stuck to that men’s journal.

  ELEVEN

  Judging by the way salesmen kept showing up on my doorstep, someone must have sent Sean’s birth announcement to the Lolaville Chamber of Commerce. Either that or I had the same name as a recent sweepstakes winner. Whatever the cause, I was grateful for any interruption that offered a break from my daytime monotony. My life as a stay-at-home mom had become long on habits and short on thrills. I’d read Sean’s Little Golden Books so many times that I could recite them without looking at the pages, and I’d come frighteningly close to falling hard for Mister Rogers.

  The sales calls began with a guy wearing a seersucker suit and a pompadour hairstyle. He did his best to convince me I needed life insurance. Or rather, Kenny did. “For just fifteen cents a day, you can have five thousand dollars’ worth of protection and peace of mind,” the salesman enthused. But I didn’t need an adding machine to know I couldn’t afford his offer. And Kenny’s short fuse and frequent outbursts guaranteed I’d never have peace of mind.

  After the insurance man dropped in on me, I received a visit from an elderly gentleman who offered to bronze Sean’s baby shoes. He said, “As a mom, you’ll naturally want to have these keepsakes preserved.” I’d been saving Sean’s first pair of Thom McAns in a box I’d set up high on a closet shelf. It had never occurred to me that I should have smothered them first in melted copper. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to destroy a perfectly good pair of baby shoes that way or how it made sense to waste precious dollars on what looked like melted pennies.

  I had to laugh when the encyclopedia salesman with the earnest look and desperate message arrived. He insisted Sean was at risk. It was his duty, he said, to warn me about what happens to children who don’t have good study aids. Considering that Sean’s second birthday was still weeks away, and he wouldn’t be learning to read for another four years, I wasn’t overly worried.

  I explained to the encyclopedia guy that Momma had already begun collecting a set of children’s reference books with her A & P Grocery stamps. She’d acquired volumes A through M, minus the H. But the store manager had promised to help Momma find the missing copy. I was hoping she’d get it soon because I’d read all the other volumes, from front to back—twice.

  Granny marveled at the way I attracted “peddlers.” For some reason, salesmen avoided her house. Granny’s explanation was, “They know if they come ’round here, they won’t get a word in edgewise. I’ll talk their ears off.”

  I knew exactly how Granny felt. There were times when I’d have chatted with an escaped convict for the sake of variety. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy being home with Sean or playing house servant to Kenny on those rare occasions when he was in a good mood. I simply longed for more conversation than I could get from a toddler and an elderly neighbor. All day long, I’d wait for the chance to talk to Kenny. But when he came home, he spoke very little—other than to ask where something was or to order a change of TV channels. After emptying garbage cans for eight hours, he didn’t exactly want to discuss his work. His days, I imagined, were even less eventful than mine.

  Weekends weren’t much better. Kenny spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons riding around in his car, going to no place in particular, burning gasoline we couldn’t afford to waste. He’d take a jaunt down by the lake to see what was happening—never much—maybe cruise the city park to see wh
o was there—rarely anyone—then follow some deserted county road until he tired of viewing the same scenery over and over. He could have been working out the answers to some puzzle in his brain. There was no way to be sure because he didn’t speak, and probably couldn’t have if he’d wanted to. While he drove, he kept one hand in his mouth so he could chew his nails. Often, I asked him to drop me off at Momma’s place so I didn’t have to witness him gnawing his cuticles and wearing away the last of the Plymouth’s tire tread. Besides, I thought it senseless to ride around in circles.

  Sometimes at home, I tried to draw Kenny into a verbal exchange. But it was difficult to find a subject, other than sex, that appealed to him. I could have told him about Granny’s failed attempts to teach me to crochet or what new curse words Sean had learned to repeat, if Kenny had seemed interested in that kind of news. However, to do that, I would have had to shout over the TV. And I couldn’t compete with Columbo.

  Once Sean learned to speak, he paid close attention to anything uttered with emphasis, especially phrases Kenny yelled at me or screamed during sports programs. When a wheel fell off Sean’s toy tractor, I heard my precious darling shout, “Sumbitch!” After that, I asked Kenny to watch his language when Sean was nearby. Kenny just smirked and said, “Watch it do what?”

  One afternoon, while I was teaching Sean a nursery rhyme to improve his vocabulary, I heard a knock at my door. Seated in my lap, Sean walked his fingers up my collarbone, chanting, “Teen-sie ween-sie spi-der.” I rubbed my nose against his, handed him his Teddy bear, and scurried to the front door.

  On my porch stood a fellow who looked to be in his early thirties, with chiseled features and soft eyes, dressed in pressed jeans and a starched dress shirt. He held a thick black binder in one hand and grasped a business card in his other. I eased open the screen door. “Can I help you?” I knew full well I couldn’t because I had no money to buy whatever he was selling.

  “Good afternoon. On The Spot Photography.” He handed me the card. “I understand you’re a new mom, so I thought I’d come by to offer my services.” The man studied my face. I gave him a welcoming look that he likely mistook for product interest.

  “I specialize in children’s portraiture. If you have time, I’d like to show you some of my work.” He offered his binder for my review.

  I looked behind me to be sure Sean hadn’t been frightened by the stranger. He seemed disinterested in anything other than the Teddy bear he was nuzzling. “Sure,” I said. “Would you like to come inside?”

  I never thought about what might follow. I only imagined it would be easier to sit on the sofa and look through his pictures than to make him try and balance that binder while he flipped the pages. The gentleman appeared harmless enough, and I had an hour or more to kill before Kenny came home. I’d already whipped up some tuna salad and cooked fried fruit pies for dinner, so looking at photos seemed as good a way as any to pass the time.

  “I’d love to, if you don’t mind.” He stepped inside and immediately zeroed in on Sean. “Hi, there, buddy. Whatcha got? Is that your friend?”

  Sean handed the toy bear to the chatty visitor. “Bo-bo!”

  “Bo-bo?” The photographer made a silly face.

  “That’s what he named it.” I sat down on the couch, thankful to have earlier wiped the grime stains from the cracked vinyl armrests.

  “Maybe I can take a picture of you with Bobo.”

  I smiled. “Would you like a fried blackberry pie and some tea?” I’d made the fried pies from some dewberries Momma had picked from the farm fencerows. Not many people knew the difference between dewberries and blackberries, so I hadn’t bothered to make the distinction. With enough sugar added, the two tasted pretty much the same.

  The photographer sat down on the sofa next to me and opened his notebook. “I’d love a fried pie.” He sighed. “My grandmother used to make the best fruit pies.”

  “I doubt mine’ll live up to your grandma’s, but my husband says they’re half decent. Be right back with one.” I motioned for Sean to follow me to the kitchen. He tottered behind, dragging his bear by one ear.

  From a cabinet, I grabbed two Milk Glass saucers I’d received as a wedding gift but had never found an occasion to use. The plates were too small and “phoo-phooey” for Kenny’s liking and too fragile for Sean’s active hands. I slid a dessert onto each saucer: one for my guest, the other for me. For Sean, I broke off a piece of my fruit pie and squeezed out the berries so nothing was left inside the pastry but a thick, purplish filling. He dropped his stuffed toy and reached his chubby fingers to grab the fried crust. I hadn’t yet taught him how to say “thank you,” but his eyes glinted with appreciation.

  In the living room, I set down the saucers and backtracked to retrieve two glasses of sweet tea. Already the photographer had opened his binder to display a pair of eight-by-ten photos. I glanced at the perfectly posed preschoolers in their nice, clean outfits. Then I looked at Sean in his Kmart-special corduroy pants and stained T-shirt that, like his lips, were smudged with blackberry jam. My imagination had to stretch far to envision how differently the children in those portraits lived.

  “Ohmigod,” he exclaimed, “this is soooo delicious.” I grinned and sat down next to him, leaving an appropriate distance between us.

  The visitor told me how he could photograph Sean using an assortment of backdrops. He flipped through his notebook and showed me examples of each one—various colored screens and props, including a white rocking horse that looked like it had come to life right out of a children’s storybook. His photography was crisp and distinctive, and I could tell he had a talent for working with kids. But even more than a portrait of Sean in one of those lavish settings, I wanted my son to have the lifestyle those images implied.

  I studied the last pages of what the photographer called his portfolio. “What a great prop!” In one picture, a little girl holding a paintbrush stood before an artist’s easel. The child, who looked to be about three, wore a royal blue smocked dress with a red painter’s palette embroidery stitched to her bib collar. Her hair, pulled up on the sides and fastened at the crown, was accented by an enormous cherry-colored bow.

  “That’s my daughter.”

  “She’s adorable.”

  “Yeah, she’s a sweetheart.” The man’s posture straightened. “She wants to be an artist when she grows up, just like her mother.”

  The salesman quoted his photography rates, which exceeded my weekly rent, and said to call him when I was ready to schedule a session. He thanked me for the pie and my hospitality as the screen door closed behind him.

  I’d just settled Sean in front of the television when Kenny came tearing through the living room door in a high-alert mode.

  “Who the hell was that?”

  I looked up at him from the sofa. “Who?”

  “That longhair I saw pulling out of here.” Kenny scanned the room like a detective searching for murder clues. His gaze settled on the coffee table. There remained the two empty saucers, accompanied by two forks and two partially filled tumblers. “You had that man in this house?”

  “A photographer. Selling children’s portraits.” I stood up. Kenny had that look that hinted he was about to go berserk. I’d learned to recognize the flaring nostrils, deepening frown, and raised chin as a kind of personal safety alarm. “Look.” I held out the business card the photographer had left behind. “Here’s his card.”

  Kenny fumed like a madman. His face grew so red it looked like it might explode. “I don’t give a damn what he was selling. I want to know what he was getting!”

  “A fruit pie.”

  “Or maybe a fur pie!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I took a step toward Sean.

  Kenny lunged, swinging one forearm like a bat. The blow struck my right shoulder and sent me reeling. I stumbled into the two-by-four top of our makeshift coffee table. The concrete base sliced a gash in one shin as I fell. My head hit the sofa, and my left
knee caught one of the boards. The plank shot up and slammed against my mouth. I half expected the ceiling to crash down on me next.

  Sean let out a shriek and took off running toward the bedroom.

  “You listen to me! Don’t you ever let a stranger in this house again!” Kenny’s words spewed out faster than his mouth could keep up. “I tode you…you can’t be talkin’ to no men when I ain’t around. Don’t…don’t act like you don’t know what I mean.” He kicked one of the two-by-fours hard with his steel-toed boot. I dodged the flying lumber. “It means you keep your sorry ass inside this house, and you keep them pussy-sniffin’ hounds outside. You got that?”

  I nodded, feeling my pulse in my lower lip. A taste of blood. With one hand, I wiped at the split. Something hard rolled across my tongue. I leaned and spit out a piece of enamel. I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t keep from it. It hurt. Every bit of it. The cuts and gouges, the mistrust, the fear of what could happen next. “All right. All right,” I whimpered. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  “You’re damn right it won’t. Not unless you want me to ruin what’s left of your ugly-assed face.” Kenny exhaled loudly. “And there better be some of them pies left for me.”

  ~

  I couldn’t eat much that night, not with my busted lip and shattered spirit. Kenny wolfed down two sandwiches, three deviled eggs, and two fried pies before he left the table to make his nightly escape. When I heard the theme music from Adam-12, I knew I was safe for the rest of the evening. Physically, at least.

  I pulled Sean’s highchair near the sink so I could watch him while I washed the dishes. He tore a Vienna sausage into morsels as he chewed on a single chunk. I wiped his mouth with a dishtowel.