When Horses Had Wings

by Diana Estill

  He’d cornered me, and I had to decide. Already I’d earned the title of Fornicator. I didn’t need an Adulteress tag to go along with it. I might not have always chosen correctly between right and wrong, but that didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to continue my moral vacation. The sins I’d committed hadn’t shaken my belief in monogamy. Contrary to Neta Sue’s opinions, I was not like my daddy.

  “If I wasn’t married, I’d do lots of things. You’d be surprised.”

  The line grew dead quiet. Maybe the connection had been broken. I waited to hear a dial tone.

  Anthony’s voice broke the silence. “Then why do you stay with him? Why don’t you leave?”

  How many times would I need to hear this question before I found an acceptable answer? “I’m leaving him soon...as soon as I save up enough money.”

  “Good God, Renee.” Anthony’s voice went high. “Is money all that’s keeping you from doing it?”

  My gaze shifted from a watermark on the ceiling to my sleeping child. “Yeah, money and thinking about Sean.”

  “I’ve got cash, right now,” Anthony said, his speech accelerating. “How much do you need?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know.” I realized I truly didn’t have any idea. How much would it take to live normally, with adequate space, standard utilities, and a super-strength deadbolt? “Enough to feel safe.”

  If I left Kenny, no amount of money would protect me. I knew that, but didn’t say it. Kenny would hunt me down and shoot me, as he’d threatened multiple times. That stern realization kept me from accepting Anthony’s offer, but it had zero effect on my lustful desires.

  I said I had to go before the conversation heated up any further, and my shorts caught fire.

  I pictured myself sitting in a boat next to Anthony, our bodies rocking gently in time with the lapping waves. I could feel the sun warming my skin, sense its searing rays heating me through. Anthony’s imaginary kisses sent a white heat burning deeper inside me. “Burn me up,” I said to no one. “Let me smolder into ashes that the winds will carry far from here.”

  ~

  A severe drought and repeated whirlwinds freed the white rock dust to travel for miles. The summer of ’76 tested the perseverance of every living plant and creature within the bounds of our powder-coated community. I could practically hear the weeds in our yard choking for breath.

  By late June, our lawn had ripened to pale hay. Corn ears roasted in place in the fields, singed beyond any hope of harvest. Area well and lake levels fell so low that you couldn’t drink a glass of water until you’d first set aside the liquid and waited for the silt to settle.

  Due to the weather conditions, Limestone County proposed outlawing fireworks for that year’s Fourth of July festivities. Considering what my empty-headed husband accomplished with a Roman candle, it was a crying shame local government didn’t follow through. Townies were to blame. They kicked up such a ruckus that the fireworks stand was permitted to open in its usual place—ten feet past the White Rock city limits sign.

  I looked forward to Independence Day because the holiday reminded me of the stock from which I’d come: determined people, idealists, folks willing to fight for their freedom and confront the unknown. Somewhere, if only I could look back far enough, my ancestors had included fearless men and women who deserved to be celebrated.

  Momma probably had ulterior motives for doing it, but she agreed to orchestrate a July Fourth shindig of sorts. She’d use any excuse she could find to gather what was left of her family. “Ya’ll bring little Sean and we’ll have a picnic,” she suggested. So after the town parade was over, we collected at the park behind Momma’s place next to the public landfill. The only apartment units in White Rock hadn’t exactly been built on the choicest of lots.

  “Looks like we got lucky,” Kenny said, sniffing. “Wind’s out of the right direction today.”

  I turned my head and giggled. What a joke. There wasn’t any wind. Besides, Kenny’s smeller had quit detecting those odors a long time ago.

  Underneath the shade of an ancient cottonwood tree, we choked down bologna and cheese sandwiches and guzzled old-fashioned root beers. Sean insisted on playing on the merry-go-round, but the darn thing was too hot to touch, so I kicked around a medicine ball with him instead. Kenny and Ricky wandered off down by a dried-up creek bed, probably to go smoke pot. More often than not lately, Ricky had those incriminating bloodshot eyes, a droopy posture, and an I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude about most everything. Mentally, Kenny and Ricky were the same age. Both their IQs combined would come up short of a triple-digit number.

  It didn’t take long to reach a consensus that it was too hot to be outdoors. Regrouped inside, we hoped to pour the last of our sodas over some of Momma’s homemade vanilla ice cream. She’d churned the dessert for hours, but when we opened the container its contents looked like regular milk.

  Momma stared inside the ice cream freezer the way a child might study a broken toy. “I can’t imagine what happened,” she said, her hands resting on her hips. “I ran out of rock salt, so I used a little from the shaker.” Momma pointed at a ceramic hen on the kitchen table. “You don’t think that would have done it, do you?”

  “Naw,” Kenny said. “In the winter, we use table salt all the time at work. Breaks up the ice real good.” He burst out laughing, and Ricky hee-hawed. They were obviously high.

  Momma looked dismayed.

  Kenny and Ricky were still snickering about Momma’s freezer failure when they left to go buy fireworks. “Don’t spend all our grocery money,” I called after them, fully expecting Kenny to ignore me. Stoned, he thought he was a millionaire. Sober, he suspected I was a thief.

  Anytime Kenny couldn’t account for money that he spent, he’d shout, “Goddammit, Renee! You’ve been in my wallet again. Where’s the twenty I had in here?” Then he’d find my purse and empty its contents: a brush, lipstick, some gum wrappers, and sometimes a few hairy pennies he’d leave in pile on the floor.

  Momma and I sat at her oak dinette, a gorgeous piece she kept hidden underneath an ugly tablecloth. “It’s not practical to eat right on the wood,” she’d explained. Maybe not. But the gingham checked vinyl cloth Momma had thrown over the table hid its beautiful wood grain patterns. For all anyone knew, that furniture could have been made of cardboard.

  Sean played on the shag carpet beneath our feet. To keep him occupied, I’d brought along some of his MatchBox Cars. I didn’t want him listening to what I was about to tell Momma. Now was the perfect time for me to fess up, to admit how much I wanted to ditch my marriage and find the kind of release Momma had gained but resented.

  Daddy had been gone for over a year, yet divorce remained a touchy subject. Possibly Momma was too ingrained in religious doctrines to hear me out. I’d have to be delicate with the facts when I told her what a creep Kenny was. She’d want the precise details of my dissatisfaction. Then I’d have to explain why, if Kenny was all that bad, I’d remained with him for nearly five years. I hoped she’d be sympathetic.

  Before I could begin, Momma asked, “Ya’ll been doing okay financially?”

  The perfect opening.

  “Better...now that I got this new job. But Kenny still spends way too much on stuff we don’t need.”

  Momma frowned as though she’d expected me to say I’d opened a college savings account for Sean. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  “Like fireworks and eight-track tapes and twenty-two shells and dual mufflers.” I shook my head. “And here Sean is, don’t even have his own bedroom. And he’s not ever gonna have one if we don’t start saving somethin’.”

  “Oh…” Momma’s mouth hung open. “So that’s why you’re having your credit union statement sent here? You’re trying to save money without Kenny knowing it?”

  I felt a catch in my throat. “Please don’t say anything about that in front of Kenny.” If she ever divulged that account, Kenny would think I’d been violating more than his billfold. And he’d make me pay
in ways too horrible to imagine.

  “Said I wouldn’t, and I won’t.” Seemingly annoyed, Momma left the table and strode into her kitchen. From inside the top drawer next to her sink she withdrew an envelope. She dropped the packet onto the table in front of me.

  I opened the letter and checked the statement balance: $520.00. With one hand, I slid the form across the table. “Just file it with the rest of them.”

  Momma scooted her chair forward. “You heard from your daddy lately?”

  Once again, our conversation had taken a turn in the wrong direction. How did she do that every time? Momma had a knack for centering any discussion on her pain, her loneliness, life’s unfairness, and Daddy’s fall from grace. No wonder I never told her about Kenny’s terrible temper. She never gave me the chance.

  I sucked on my straw. “Not recently. But can I tell you something?”

  Momma nodded vigorously, probably thinking I meant something about Daddy.

  There was only one way for me to say it. I leaned forward onto my elbows and blurted, “I’m thinking of leaving Kenny.”

  Momma’s body stiffened. Her chin jutted out. “You’re leaving him?” She loosened the paper towel underneath her drinking glass and pressed it to her mouth. “I knew it! Your daddy’s corrupted you.” She shot me a disapproving look. “You think what he’s done is okay, don’t you? Think it’s perfectly fine to shun responsibility, throw away God’s law and make your own.”

  She’d done it again, circled right back to Daddy, the way she always did.

  “What Daddy did was different. He didn’t even have a reason for leaving. But I’ve got about nine million. Wanna hear ‘em?”

  Momma set down her damp towel. “No, I don’t.” She drew her lips into a tight thin line. “Divorce is wrong, Renee Ann. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Says it right there in the Bible—”

  Momma was not the person to appeal to for help. In her opinion, unless a man was cheating, stealing, drinking, or gambling away everything he owned, a wife had no justification for ending a marriage. That was why she’d stayed with Daddy for so many years, despite the demands he’d put on her and the lashings he’d given me and Ricky. Several times Momma had watched Daddy take his belt to us, open-ended, as if he were whipping buggy horses. She’d stood there and looked on in silence with the same indifference she now showed me. I would never make her understand how much my heart hurt to be loved by someone—anyone—how my ribs ached to be hugged, how I longed to be held in something other than a chokehold, to be kissed by a clean-shaven man who saw me through adoring eyes—someone who listened to me as though I could offer something of value, other than a place to park his penis.

  “You mean, divorce is wrong, even if your husband beats you?” I squawked.

  Momma stared at me, dead on, the way Daddy used to do whenever I questioned his authority, which, to be perfectly honest, wasn’t all that often. “You’re telling me Kenny beats you?”

  I could see she didn’t believe me. Already she’d drawn a dividing line, and I was standing on the wrong side of it. “Yes.”

  She folded her arms in front of her. “Then how come you never mentioned it before now? How come—”

  Momma’s apartment door swung open. In like a crazed posse marched Ricky and Kenny, their arms loaded with fireworks. Kenny boasted, “We done got us a fu—a shit-load of explosives!” He plopped down onto Momma’s maple sofa, spilling out a grocery bag full of bottle rockets, Roman candles, sparklers, and Black Cats. But all I saw scattered across Momma’s scratched coffee table was our next month’s grocery budget.

  Ricky dived for a fistful of bottle rockets. “Can I shoot these here ones?”

  “How many you got?” Kenny asked, considering Ricky’s request.

  “Maybe four dozen.”

  Kenny squinted like he was working hard to recall something. “Yeah. I reckon. I bought a gross of those.”

  I gave Momma a sidelong look. “Guess we’ll be eating with you next week.”

  Kenny heard me. “Now don’t start. I didn’t buy all of these, Re-nee. That stupid U-bang-ee down ‘ere gave me extry.”

  Someone had done something nice, given Kenny free merchandise, and here he was calling the guy degrading names and insulting his intelligence. Kenny was lower than the current water table. “Ever think maybe he was just trying to be nice,” I said.

  Kenny double-blinked. “Naw, I doubt he was being sweet on me.”

  By nightfall, Kenny and Ricky had conjured up an extra-long list of excuses to step outside: they had to get more bottle rockets from Kenny’s car, needed to see where that smoke in the park was coming from, wanted to see about a car Ricky’s friend’s brother had for sale. Each time, they returned smelling like a potpourri of dried alfalfa, bark chips, and smoldering pine needles. I figured they’d blown through Ricky’s entire stash of pot. But as it turned out, Ricky had an ample weed supply and Kenny still had plenty of Roman candles to burn.

  Glimpsing the remaining fireworks, Ricky suggested, “Let’s shoot ‘em off the balcony!”

  Momma acted like she hadn’t heard Ricky’s temporary flash of brilliance. Either that or she was too engrossed in the evening’s televised festivities to pay him any mind.

  Sean slept, draped end-to-end across both our laps, exhausted from all the running around he’d done that morning at the parade and then later in the park.

  Kenny and Ricky each grabbed a Roman candle and proceeded through the sliding glass door that lead to Momma’s apartment balcony. “Aren’t you supposed to butt those things into the ground?” I asked. If either of them heard me, he didn’t respond. I saw little use in repeating myself. I was too busy weighing out Momma’s strict interpretation of my marriage vows.

  It looked like I’d have to wait for God to intervene before I could break my ties to Kenny. ‘Til death do us part. Maybe his demise would come quickly and he’d blow himself to smithereens with some of his fireworks. Possibly, Kenny might get zapped by lightning, run over by a semi-truck, or fall victim to some industrial catastrophe. Or perhaps the Lord would look down on me with pity, the way He had favored David in that Bible story, and grant me victory against an oversized goon.

  I was reviewing all the causes of premature death I could think of, when a ball of fire swooped through Momma’s living room. It happened so fast, I didn’t register Kenny’s Roman candle had shot backwards from the wrong end. All I saw was a green globe of light, like some kind of UFO, whiz by me. The glowing ball bounced off Momma’s recliner and then tumbled out of sight, leaving behind a burned trail of singed shag carpet.

  I leapt from the sofa and stomped along the streak of smoldering yarn for all I was worth. Then I ran to get a pitcher of water from Momma’s kitchen, but she’d already beat me there.

  “Move!” she yelled, jolting past me. “Gotta pour this on the floor before it’s too late.” However, her carpet was the least of her worries.

  “Holy shit! Sonofabitch!” Kenny yanked at the curtain rod over his head. “Get the other side,” he hollered at Ricky. “Get it down! Now!”

  Dark smoke billowed up from the bottom of the gauzy curtains framing the patio door. The Roman candle’s misfire had caught the edge of the panels, setting blaze to one of them along its hem. Within seconds, the window treatments flamed waist-high, smoke swirling up to the textured ceiling. In no time at all, the air turned a tobacco color.

  Kenny tugged at the curtains, shattering the rod, while Momma splashed three quarts of cold water onto the sheers. Her aim being less than perfect, she managed to spray her Zenith TV, too. On the screen, televised fireworks burst into 3-D. Instead of putting out the curtain flames, Momma had extinguished her television.

  I looked on in silence, my feet locked into place beneath me. Sean sputtered awake and sat up wild-eyed.

  In all the commotion, I couldn’t think what to do next: seize my child and run for our lives, or grab the phone and call the fire department. As strange as this might sound, a part of me wanted to simp
ly stand there, the way a farmer might monitor a stubble fire, and watch those curtains flame brilliant against the night sky.

  ~

  Sometime around midnight, I placed Sean on the sofa in our living room. His eyes fluttered open like a doll’s before he dozed off again. I covered him with a lightweight sheet and switched on a fan. Tonight I was extra-thankful for the oscillating propeller noise.

  Closing the bedroom door, I gave Kenny a glare that must have alerted him to what was coming next.

  “Don’t say a goddam word,” he warned.

  Now, if I had any good sense about me, I might have kept quiet. But Independence Day had a carry-over effect. The more I thought about my gutless response and the damage Kenny had caused, the angrier I grew. I didn’t know who I detested more, Kenny or myself. I’d stood there like a deaf-mute while the village idiot had set fire to my mother’s residence.

  Ready for sleep, Kenny pulled off his red, white, and blue muscle-shirt. I stared at the words “Spirit of 1776” emblazoned on the fabric. Had that war been fought by folks like me, I felt sure we’d all be celebrating Queen’s Day instead the Fourth of July.

  I couldn’t keep my tongue still another minute. “Damn it, Kenny! Have you lost your mind altogether? How could you do such a stupid thing?”

  His eyes dared me to continue, but I kept going.

  “You smoked up Momma’s apartment, burned up her curtains, and cracked her sliding glass door. For chrissakes! You even melted the knobs off her TV. And now you’re going to come in here and act like it never happened? Just go to sleep?” I tugged out of my jeans, stomping the waistband flat against the floor. “If you and Ricky hadn’t been so busy getting high, none of this would have happened.”

  “Shut up. I don’t have to listen to this. Heard enough already.” Kenny swaggered past the end of the bed and over to my side, where I remained standing. Leaning close, he all but dared me to hit him. “It was an ac-ci-dent. Kind’a like your face, you know? An accident.” He howled into the air. “You’re one ugly-assed dog. You know that?”