Borrowed Horses (9 page)

Jenny looked at Dawn and me in turns, trying to determine, I guessed, whether we were making fun of her.

“I don’t see why it couldn’t be girls,” I said. “Why should guys hold the monopoly on strength or silence?” Strength in silence, I corrected myself, a brand of silence. Joan of Arc knew when to silently don the gear to prove her point and when speech would better win the people to her vision.

But Jenny was no maid of Orleans. Over the course of a few warm, lazy days that past week, we chatted while cleaning tack, the scent of saddle soap an incense, the barn a confessional. She told me she was a “traditional” kind of girl. Born and raised outside Savannah, she married four years back, the summer after her high school graduation, to the high school sweetheart who graduated two years ahead of her. He worked; she kept house. I imagined a Ward Cleaver to her June, a slight, bird-like man with slicked black hair and a briefcase in hand arriving nightly to dinner hot on the table. He gave Jenny an allowance out of which she paid for Zip’s lease, riding lessons, and the new paddock boots on her feet. I’d never thought much of that kind of life, but Jenny made not working into a full-time job, volunteering at her church and becoming a big sister to a local school kid.

Still, there were things that irritated me. Like now, always talking about “my husband.” Where Dawn said “Russ,” Jenny said “my husband,” and I couldn’t work out why. Was it reverence? Did she value his role, husband, over the man himself? Did she think we would? Was she just that formal? Or did she repeat his role, my husband, my husband, to emphasize her own place in the world: wife. I’d had enough of wives. Suddenly, I needed her to stop talking, if only for a moment, so we could enjoy the peace of the day, but she chattered on and on.

“My husband said the funniest thing last night…”

“My husband’s been grumbling about the amount of time I’ve spent at the barn…”

“My husband’s mother makes the best coleslaw you ever tasted in your life…”

“My husband’s worried that I’m riding out too soon…”

“My husband says I shouldn’t get a perm…”

Just then, a pheasant, spooked perhaps by the rocks Zip kicked when he walked his foot-dragging obstinate walk, burst from the gutter’s wild wheat, all green head and brown feathers, its red-rimmed eye, its panicked
chuckchuckchuckchuck
.

Before the sight of the bird could translate into thought, all three horses spun and bolted, racing across the road, jumping its short bank into the neighboring field. Fear trumped arthritis, and for thirty seconds, Foxfire was young again. He sprang with that magnificent, powerful thrust of muscle, and I slacked the reins as if I could will it to last.

Three paces behind us, Sunny slowed and Foxfire remembered his age. Our hoof-prints marked a wide swath of spoiled crop. There would be an angry farmer. Zip, empty-saddled, pulled mouthfuls of green alfalfa.

“Shit.” I jumped down to grab Zip’s dangling reins while Dawn went to find Jenny. Already, I was constructing worst-case scenarios: a broken spine and life-long paralysis, a broken neck. Luminous bones hung before me, delicate as smoke against the black of film. Bodies break in ways that cannot be fixed. You could lose someone that quickly—I saw it everyday at work. I knew it earlier still. There were mistakes that couldn’t be undone. Mouse’s death at the end of our senior year had taught me, but I wouldn’t think of that.

I mounted, ponying Zip back to the ditch. The thrill of his bolt faded, Foxy hung his head and plodded on. For yards, there was no sound except for a slight stirring of wind in grass. I had momentarily wished ill upon Jenny, just as I’d wished the worst onto Mouse in a spasm of anger a decade back, and again it manifested.
You have to be careful about what energy you put out into the world
, my mother always said. I shook off the thought, superstition, and let Foxy carry me forth. Grass blades slid over grass blades. Whispers. We’d covered some ground. Finally, the low sound of voices speaking seriously floated over the bank’s edge.

Dawn was helping Jenny pick rocks out of her forearm. There wasn’t much blood, just enough to make the dirt stick. The injury was only skin-deep, but the skin is where the nerves are. Jenny turned her red and burning eyes to mine.

“You O.K.?” I asked.

Dawn answered for her. “A little shook up is all. Her hip’s pretty good and sore, but this,” she held up Jenny’s forearm, “is the only damage other than bruises.”

“Thank God for helmets and thick blue jeans,” I said. Jenny was drawn, paler even than usual, and terribly, terribly sober.

Like me, Foxfire was tall—just over seventeen hands. Literally on my high horse, looking down on Jenny in her ditch, I was imperious, even if I didn’t mean to be. I held Zip’s reins forward. It was a lame offering, and Jenny made no move to take them. “You said nothing would happen.”

It was Dawn who answered. “Nothing did happen.”

Jenny raised her arm, letting blood speak its eloquent testimony.

Dawn scowled. “You’ve got two friends at your side, your horse is caught, and you’re able to ride. You’re scratched, but y’ain’t broke.” She took Zip’s reins from my hand and slapped them into Jenny’s. “You’re earning your stripes. You want to be a rider, then you’d better get used to it, and the sooner the better.”

There was no arguing with the jut of Dawn’s pointed chin or the flame in her eye. Jenny took the reins, and heaved herself back into the saddle. She flinched as her arm grazed the pommel, but she said nothing.

This was why I loved Dawn, though I had been on the receiving end of her diatribes myself. Her fire never lasted. The love I felt for her moved through my skin, St. Elmo’s fire in the rigging, heating it instantly as a blush. Dawn had a particular brand of charisma.

Jenny muttered, “My husband’s going to kill me when he sees this. He always said riding was a dumb idea.”

I was prepared to let the comment slide. Dawn was not. “It ain’t his call, now, is it?” Dawn’s thin, shrewd face dared Jenny to contradict her. Russ called her “Spitfire” when she got like this, his eyes brimming with love and admiration. I felt it, too. At five foot ten, I was a head taller than either Dawn or Jenny, but I only noticed it around Jenny. Dawn, the shortest of all of us, always seemed to be looking me right in the eye. “You want to ride, then damn it, you ride.”

“It’s his money,” Jenny shot back, her own chin up and eyes flashing, showing there was hope for her.

“Don’t you ever believe that.” Dawn didn’t advise now; she commanded. “You keep his house, you fix his meals. You earned that money. Those are your wages and you’ll spend them as you like. Don’t you let him forget that.” There was now an added edge in Dawn’s voice. We were on the grounds of a fundamental belief.

At the house, Connie helped Jenny from Zip’s back and folded her under her wing, cooing to her like some awkward, over-sized bird. She took off Jenny’s helmet and stroked her hair with a rough, ruddy hand while her own frizzled hair lifted on the breeze. Jenny ate it up, leaning her head on Connie’s broad shoulder.

I ponied Zip to the barn and waited for Dawn to condemn Jenny, but she didn’t say a word. The horses were eating hay in their stalls when Jenny returned to the barn, arm neatly patched. From the tilt of her smile, I guessed Connie had offered a few nips of something “medicinal.” Dawn put her hand on Jenny’s shoulder. “Feeling better?”

“Connie says I owe you all a beer.” Jenny’s voice was bright now. We’d been forgiven.

“Hey, that’s right,” Dawn said. “I always thought that was a raw deal—the one who falls having to buy the round.”

Jenny shrugged, and just that quick, she was one of the gals. “What are y’all doing tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Dawn said. “Eat leftovers and rent a movie?”

They turned to me, eyebrows raised. “Shit,” I said, “same thing I do every night: buy food, watch TV, and contemplate my total lack of social life.”

Jenny tilted her head in triumph. “Then I say we all meet at El Mercado’s at six, Budweiser all around.”

It would be Bud, it was always Bud, but my spirits rose in response to Jenny’s. The beer was an olive branch not to be turned down.

“Good,” Jenny said, seeming to grow a little taller. “That’s settled.” She smiled serenely when a new thought set her eyes dancing. “Hey, Dawn, I’ll get to meet your Russ, and y’all will meet my Dave.”

“Dave?” I asked.

“My husband.”

A Story to Regret

T
he Count of Monte Cristo
lay on top of the television. I flipped through its soft pages, wondering why I kept it. Each page wore the history of its reading. Page 146 had a grease stain. Perhaps Dave had set a cruller there, a temporary bookmark, while he got a fresh cup of coffee. Page 352 was flecked with blood—a paper-cut. All were browned at the edges where the oils of his palms had permeated the paper’s fiber. I, too, was marked. Nothing obvious, nothing you’d notice on the surface, but there was something essential from him that I’d absorbed. I was browned and softened and stained.

I put the book back and told myself that it wasn’t him, that Dave was a common name.

I tried to imagine him with her. Did the stubble of his five o’clock shadow rub Jenny’s cheek raw when he kissed and kissed her? Did his one hand slide over her hip as the other clasped her neck? Could he feel that same passion for her? Could he love this woman? I shook myself.
It wasn’t him
. My Dave wouldn’t dole out an allowance. He’d have no patience for a woman who would expect one. My Dave wouldn’t have left books and school and all he loved—
he
wouldn’t work construction for a woman like Jenny.

Russ and Dawn were waiting for a table. In the dim light of the vestibule, Dawn’s hair was a stiff blonde cloud, with the lights from the restaurant illuminating her hairspray to a tangle of silver lining. Russ’s crew cut stood in salute. The style suited his broad, smiling face. He’d look the same at sixty as he did now. A little greyer perhaps, more sun-lined, but his denim work shirt would always drape the same broad, sturdy shoulders. His eyes, the same shade as the denim of his shirt, would always shine with laughter. Russ was an immutable force of nature. Time didn’t touch him.

Jenny and Dave—her Dave, my Dave—arrived, diving together through the thin drizzle under an old letterman jacket that Dave held to shield them. The hostess called us to our table. They’d been laughing at a shared joke when he saw me. Jenny, slightly in front, didn’t see him go dumbstruck, but once we were at the table, her eyes never left him. “Dave,” she nudged him, her gaze puppy-like with the sick adoration of a love-struck woman, “these are the girls from the barn.”

He gave a weak smile. “She never mentioned your names,” he said, as if Jenny weren’t standing right next to him. “You were always just, ‘the girls at the barn.’”

“Well, she talks about you all the time,” said Dawn, causing Dave to look right at me, his eyes trying to plumb mine.

“But until today you were just, ‘my husband,’” I added.

“That’s not true. I said your names,” Jenny said, her southern accent thick and sweet as honey.

Dave hung his jacket on the seatback and sat directly across from me, his toe brushing mine under the table as he pulled in his chair. Not a quick, accidental touch either, but a long, slow slide, making my breath catch. That settled it: I’d be getting drunk that night. My fingers gripped the side of the table. Dave was still looking at me. In my confusion, I’d dropped my guard.

Mariachi music pumped from the speaker above our table. The waitress came, a short woman who would have been slender except for her large, pregnant belly. Jenny asked for a pitcher, and I ordered a margarita with a double shot. Dawn’s “yahoo” in response to my drink order turned heads at nearby tables; Dave’s face broke into a wide grin. “Have you and Joannie known each other for long?”

No one had introduced us by name yet, but I was the only one who noticed that Dave used mine. Dawn said we’d met years ago when Foxy and I first came to Connie’s. “She was so quiet and, what with her riding
English
and all, at first I thought she was a spoiled bitch.” Dawn smiled lovingly at me. “Just goes to show, first impressions are
always
right.”

I blew her a kiss. “Thanks, Love.”

“You bet.”

Dave’s foot traveled up the inside of my calf. I faltered only a moment before drawing my legs well underneath me. He was being too obvious, but Jenny was clueless. “I told you these girls were funny.” She put her arm on the jacket that hung on Dave’s chair, droplets still shimmering in its burgundy-colored wool.

My margarita arrived, and I drank while she rubbed Dave’s shoulder. She leaned into him and kissed his cheek. I flagged down the waitress to order another before this one ran out. My bed was empty, but an empty bed can be all the loving arms a drunk woman needs, and I loved the way margaritas felt on the back of the throat, the way they scratched at places otherwise untouchable.

I don’t remember who started talking about the subject of regrets, but the subject itself arose from my drink order: stories of worst hangovers leading us naturally to regret. It became a sort of party game; everyone going in turn.

Dawn began with the story of an early hunting trip. She’d just gotten her first gun for her birthday—her sixth. She had been on hunting trips before, but this would be the first time she went armed. Her father had talked gun safety, and they’d shot paper targets for weeks. She hadn’t tried to kill anything yet, and she was itching to. A picture of her cousin stood on the mantel, a grouse gripped by its legs in his tiny fist, his first kill. She was eager to have her picture next to his, so when she and her father went in the woods that day and she saw a chickadee fitting in the branches of a hawthorn, she asked if she could shoot it. Her dad laughed. “Sure, Baby Doll,” he said.

She pulled the trigger and hit her target. It fell quickly and without struggle: one shot, one kill. “Immediately, I knew I’d done something wrong,” she said. “Knew it without looking at my dad or hearing his low whistle. It looked like an exploded golf ball laying there, not a bird. I’d done that. I turned to Dad so he could tell me I’d done right, but I could see by his face that he was shaken. He said, ‘hot damn,’ and his voice was unsteady. ‘I didn’t think you’d actually hit it.’” She’d said it looked smaller than it had in the tree. Not meat, not threatening, just a small innocent thing she’d killed to prove she could.