by Tyler Keevil
I stepped inside and looked at Shenzao’s stall and saw her standing there, perfectly fine, with her head extended over the stall door. She was nuzzling the palm of a girl, who had her back to me, but I took to be Samantha. She was wearing jeans and a fleece and tuque, and from beneath her tuque her hair hung down, dirty and blonde. I had an inexplicable feeling as I stepped towards her and because of that I tripped on a feed bucket and the bucket clattered and I fell right over it, onto my belly. The girl turned to witness this slapstick display, and as I lay there like a fool I got my first real look at her: lean and sinewy as rawhide, with an angular face – all chin and cheekbones – and a thin mouth, which curled into a sly, scornful smile upon seeing my antics. Her bangs stuck out the front of her tuque and that accentuated the similarity. She looked like Sandy. She looked just like our sister Sandy had, at that age.
And that, of course, changed everything.
She said, ‘Who in the hell are you?’
I picked myself up and dusted off my thighs, though they weren’t really dusty – they were smeared with horse muck.
‘I’m Jake’s brother,’ I said.
I held out my right hand, which was also now muddied, and of course had only the three fingers, which she must have noticed. But she shook it anyway.
‘He called you Poncho,’ she said.
‘My real name’s Tim. Poncho’s my nickname.’
She made a face – sticking out her tongue and scrunching up her eyes.
‘That’s a weird nickname,’ she said.
‘It’s the only one I got.’
‘I don’t have one at all. Just Sam.’
‘We’ll come up with a nickname for you.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Sure.’
I stood gazing at her in a kind of stupefied astonishment.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘I came to check on the horse.’
‘That’s what Jake said, too. You’re just as weird as him. You both act like a couple of crackers.’
‘Isn’t cracker slang for a white guy?’
‘That’s what I mean. You’re a pair of goddamn crackers.’
I started laughing. It was the funniest insult I’d ever heard.
I said, ‘I’m just hungover is all.’
‘I heard you all drinking. Last night.’
‘Sorry we woke you up.’
‘That was nothing compared to his friends.’
It took me a moment to realize she meant Delaney. Shenzao moved to nuzzle Sam again, and she turned her attention back to the horse. In profile she looked even more like Sandy. She had the same sparrowhawk features: sharp cheekbones and a short Roman nose.
She asked, ‘Did you really bring her here on a boat?’
‘Did Jake tell you that?’
‘I didn’t get the chance to ask him. My mom told me.’
‘We sailed her from Vancouver.’
‘How long did that take?’
It struck me as a very practical and sensible question.
‘A couple of days.’
‘She’s gorgeous.’ She ran her palm down the bridge of Shenzao’s nose, or snout, or whatever you call it on a horse. ‘She’s like a fairytale horse, or something from a story. The rest of the horses we have are old nags, compared to her.’
The other animals were standing with their heads angled towards us, curious.
‘Do you look after them?’ I asked.
She kept stroking Shenzao, not looking at me.
‘Somebody has to. Patrick’s only here once in a while. Mr Jenkins – a farmer – comes out to drop off feed and hay and check the horses over. He’s due today, later on.’
‘You do the rest?’
‘Most of it. Mom doesn’t much like animals.’
‘She said that.’
She scratched Shenzao behind the ears and the horse started licking her, slobbery and friendly as a dog. Sam laughed and turned her face aside.
I said, ‘She seems to have taken to you.’
‘Just ’cause I fed her this morning. She was starving.’ She looked at the ground and scuffed it with her boot, leaving a mark in the dirt. Then she looked back up, her expression both shy and sly. ‘I ride them, too. I’m pretty good. Do you think I could ride her?’
‘You asking my permission?’
She nodded, real solemn-like.
‘She ain’t ours. We only brought her down.’
‘For Mr Delaney.’
‘I don’t really know why, or for who.’ She looked so down about it, I just couldn’t say no to her. ‘Tell you what – she’s still ours till we hand her over. So I’d say you can ride her, if your mom will let you.’
‘She won’t be awake for hours.’
She said this matter of factly. She was already heading towards the wall, to where the bridles and halters hung on wooden pegs. Her whole act – being shy, asking permission – had been put on, and my agreement was taken as a given.
‘You’re going right now?’ I asked.
‘I go most mornings.’
‘On the trails?’
‘In the paddock out front. But I ride the trails, too.’
‘Ain’t you a bit young?’
‘I’m nearly ten years old.’
She said it contemptuously, as if questioning her capability was a real insult.
‘Maybe we should come watch you.’
‘Sure – you and your cracker brother can watch.’
I laughed again. I had no idea where she’d picked up that word.
Back in the bunkhouse, Jake hadn’t moved from where he’d been standing when I left. By that I mean he hadn’t moved at all. He’d let his cigarette burn to the butt and all that remained was a curling crescent of ash, dangling there precariously. I stopped in the doorway and we stared at each other. He looked as if he’d just finished crying or was about to start: his eyes wet and red-rimmed.
‘You met her?’ Jake said.
‘I sure did.’
‘The timings would work out, if it happened after Sandy, before my trial.’ He gripped his head. He looked like he wanted to tear it off his shoulders. ‘How could she not tell me?’
‘Maybe she didn’t know, at first.’
‘She must have suspected, even if she was sleeping around.’
‘I guess she wants you to know, now. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’
‘What a way to tell me.’
‘Maria has her own manner of doing things.’
I went to stand in front of him, mirroring his pose. It was as if we’d both had the wind knocked out of us.
‘I had the damnedest shock,’ he said.
‘Me too.’
‘When I first saw her I couldn’t even talk.’
‘I know. I tripped on a bucket.’
‘You tripped on a bucket?’
‘A feed bucket. I fell right over.’
Jake started laughing, the kind of relieved, tearful laughter that only seizes you every so often. After a minute I joined in, and once we got going we couldn’t stop: something just cracked open in us and nothing but laughter poured out. He put an arm around my neck and tugged me into a hug. It was awkward and weird and oddly tender, for him.
‘That’s my daughter out there,’ he said, wondrously.
‘We need a couple of cigars, for this.’
‘We need more than that.’
We both looked at the door, where I’d placed our bags and things. We didn’t even have to say anything about that. It was clear we weren’t leaving, not until we figured it out – until we somehow figured the whole thing out.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jake panicked when he heard I’d told Sam she could ride the horse. He called me a goddamn fool and claimed I was taking chances with his daughter’s life. I had this terrible vision of the horse throwing her and trampling her, and it all being my fault. It didn’t matter that I’d been in a state of shock when I’d given her permission, nor that she’d seemed so confident a
bout the whole thing. Letting a little girl ride a racehorse that had been stuck on a boat for two days seemed about the dumbest thing I’d ever done, and after our recent activities that was really saying something.
‘Where’s she going?’ he asked.
‘In the paddock out front.’
‘Come on.’
The paddock was a big rectangle, about a hundred yards long by fifty across. Sparse grass speckled the ground, hoary with morning frost, and split-rail fencing ran around the perimeter. As we hustled up we saw that we were too late: Sam and Shenzao were already out there. At first, due to the low clouds and morning mist, horse and rider appeared as a ghostly shape, moving across the far side of the enclosure. As they circled towards us they seemed to emerge from the haze, slowly materializing, and the sight reminded me of that day at Castle Meadow, when we’d watched Shenzao train. Sam looked small enough to be a jockey and rode like one, too: leaning low over the pommel, hunched forward in the saddle.
‘Try to get her attention,’ Jake said.
We stopped at the fence and leaned up against it, waving our arms. At first Sam didn’t ride at a gallop, but what you might call a canter. Her upper body stayed completely relaxed and she gave the impression of being part of the horse, like a centaur, rather than separate and detached. As horse and rider floated by together Sam raised one hand in passing – ignoring our desperate and frantic signals – and kept right on going. Shenzao showed no signs of skittishness or nerves and simply looked happy to be let loose, and not cooped up in a trailer or a galley or a stable stall. She was a racehorse, after all, and bred to run.
‘What do we do?’ I asked.
‘Damned if I know.’
Stopping them, clearly, was out of the question. So we lit a couple of smokes and leaned up against the fence, with our arms folded across the top rail, slowly relaxing as it became apparent that no tragic disaster was forthcoming. We watched the pair of them go around and around. We didn’t talk much. It felt almost impolite to talk. It reminded me of being at a performance, or recital. Sam rode for about half an hour, never going dangerously fast but occasionally changing the gait, trying out her control of the horse. After a dozen or so laps she slowed Shenzao to a trot and did a cool-down lap. Then she walked the horse up to the fence where we waited. We applauded.
‘Where’d you learn to ride like that?’ Jake asked, which struck me as funny – more like a line from a dime-store western than something my brother would actually say.
‘It’s all I do out here.’
She swung a leg out of the stirrup and slid down neatly, without releasing the reins. She had put on riding boots and a helmet at least one size too big, so it bobbed around as she moved.
‘How’d she handle?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t have to do a thing. She just wanted some exercise.’
She patted the horse’s neck a couple of times and then ran her palm from Shenzao’s head to shoulder, just below the mane. The horse was breathing hard – her breath coming out smoky in the cold morning air – and there was a sheen of sweat on her coat. You could smell the sweat, too. A healthy animal smell, different to the sad stink of her being all pent-up in the galley.
‘You made it look pretty easy,’ Jake said.
‘Do either of you ride?’ she asked.
‘Hell no. I’m a musician and he’s a damned fisherman.’
She glanced sidelong at him, looking uncommonly shrewd for a nine-year-old.
‘You want to try?’ she asked.
Jake probably should have said no, and of course didn’t due to his own stubbornness and pride. Instead he clambered over the fence into the paddock, the timbers creaking under his weight. Shenzao eyed him in a way that seemed to me sceptical and suspicious. It was as if she was thinking: not this loser, again.
‘Can you hold the reins?’ Sam asked me.
I climbed over the fence, too – rolling my substantial bulk awkwardly onto the top rail, since the gouge in my calf was still hurting me something fierce. We hadn’t bothered to rebandage it after we arrived and started drinking. I took the reins and stood with Shenzao’s head next to mine. Her big eye gleamed that pale, albino blue, piercing and unblinking, as if peering right into my cowardly and no-good heart.
Sam showed Jake how to put his foot in the stirrup and step up and swing his leg over the horse’s rump. It took him a few tries but he managed, in his own way, by sprawling himself over the saddle first and then twisting to slide his leg around. It goes without saying that this action lacked any grace or elegance and in that way was almost endearing, seeing as it was Jake – struggling so earnestly to impress her.
‘How’s that feel?’ Sam said.
Jake sat up, gripping the pommel and shifting around in the saddle.
‘It feels high. How do I look, Poncho?’
‘Mighty fine, Lefty. Like a real outlaw.’
‘Shoulda brought my six-shooter.’
Sam talked him through how to sit in the saddle: squeezing the horse with your knees, back straight, head level. She didn’t let him have the reins at first. She just told him to hold onto the pommel as she took the reins from me, and led Shenzao around the paddock. It was the funniest damned thing: like seeing those pony rides at the fair, where kids get a short run-around with a trainer guiding the animal. Only here it was the kid in charge, and this grown man sitting awkwardly up there, looking pleased and proud as a schoolboy. When they came back around Jake grinned his gap-toothed grin and pointed an imaginary pistol at me.
‘Check it out, Poncho. I’m a goddamn cowboy.’
I shouted back: ‘Take the reins, Jake – no training wheels.’
He said something to Sam, and they debated it for a minute. He must have convinced her, or maybe she was just talking him through how to do it. She held onto the bridle while he got ready, raising the reins up and in front of him. He didn’t look particularly confident. Sam let go of the bridle and stepped aside and allowed Shenzao to move forward of her own volition.
I suppose what happened next was both predictable and inevitable. Shenzao simply trotted along amicably for a dozen steps and then casually bucked her hindquarters, flicking Jake off as neat as can be. He threw out his hands and clawed the air, like a very clumsy cat trying to spin around to land. Only he didn’t come all the way around. He hit the ground hard on his side and lay there, still. Shenzao stopped and looked back disdainfully, as if surprised he’d been undone so easily.
Sam said, ‘Holy cow.’
We both ran over there – from different directions – and converged at the spot where he’d landed. Jake was curled up and clutching at his gut and trying to breathe. Sam crouched to check on him but he waved her back, and rolled laboriously over onto his hands and knees. He’d landed in a half-frozen puddle and his face and jacket were streaked with mud. We kept asking him if he was okay, and he grunted out something about being winded. When he had finally caught his breath he looked up and grimaced.
‘I guess I deserved that, for all I put her through.’
I helped him to his feet. I asked him if he’d broken anything and he limped in a circle a few times, testing out his limbs and bones and muscles, before declaring that nothing seemed to be seriously damaged.
‘I did okay at first.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘for a few feet.’
Sam said, ‘I shouldn’t have let you.’
‘Weren’t your fault.’
Shenzao stood off to one side, innocent and obedient. She peeled back her lips and made a funny hee-haw sound – this sort of donkey sound – as if she were laughing at him.
‘I know you did that on purpose,’ he said, and shook his fist at her.
He was half-joking, but you could tell he was pretty sore at her, too.
‘You want to try, Poncho?’ he asked me.
‘Hell no. She’d do worse to me. Plus my leg is still killing me.’
I could feel the burning sting of the cut every time I moved.
Sam s
aid, ‘Maybe tomorrow we can go riding. The other horses are all well-broken.’
‘We’ll see, kid.’
I heard whistling, and looked at the porch. Maria had come out there, dressed in a ratty pink bathrobe and slippers. She waved at us, beckoning, and shouted, ‘Brunch is on.’
Brunch was coffee and cereal. Maria made her coffee black and scalding, bitter as sin. We sat down at the table and drank it from Styrofoam cups and ate cereal out of those tiny travel boxes – the kind that come in packs of six. We did this very civilly: the passing of milk, the pleases and thank yous, slurping and chewing, as if having breakfast together was a natural and frequent occurrence. Sam sat down with us (she had coffee like an adult) and as things dragged on she looked from Jake to Maria, waiting for one of them to explain the oddity of the set-up, and our presence. Tension hummed between them like a filament, but of course neither said anything. It was left to Sam to break the silence. She stirred her Cheerios with her fork and said, ‘Jake got thrown into the mud.’
Maria said, ‘Who said you could go riding that thing?’
Sam hesitated, looked at me, and said, ‘Nobody.’
‘I did,’ I said. ‘But thanks for covering for me.’
Maria said, ‘Pat wouldn’t want you riding his prize cow.’
‘She’s a horse, Mom.’
‘A spiteful one,’ Jake said. He was still covered in mud and looked like a revenant who’d clawed his way out of the grave. ‘A spiteful beast with a grudge and a good memory.’
‘Did you guys steal her?’
She asked it in the innocuous way kids do – a perfectly natural question. Jake looked to Maria, raising his eyebrows, and she made a helpless, resigned gesture, which struck me as funny. It was as if she was subconsciously telling him, ‘Don’t ask me: she’s your daughter.’