David arrives home two hours late. The expectations of my animals after having waited this long for human companionship and food are now too high and David is beyond tired.
The dogs see the car headlights coming up the long driveway and begin to bark from the backyard where they’ve been confined for the last thirteen hours. By the time David parks, the barking has crescendoed into a wall of noise.
David opens the backyard gate and the dogs pounce on him
with their wet and muddy paws, yapping (in Skippy’s case) and woofing (that’s Bernie and Chip) for his undivided attention. To David’s credit, he doesn’t reprimand them; he even tries to sound excited to see them, but I can tell it’s an act—he’s got the voice right, but his face gives him away.
After a few minutes with the dogs, David brings them inside to feed them. Chip, true to his breed, is the only real food hound, but tonight all three eat as if they should’ve eaten hours earlier, which is precisely the case.
The food settles the dogs down for now, but David still has a long way to go before he can even think about resting. He opens a bunch of cat food cans and places them on the floor without even bothering to empty them on a plate.
None of my six cats is prickly. They are all former strays who have suffered through human cruelty or indifference. I believe they are grateful for our warm, comfortable home even though they must occasionally remind the dogs that
c
comes before
d
in the alphabet. They have come to trust that they will be treated with respect and kindness—clean litter boxes, fresh food, clean water, and space on our bed.
Now, however, my cats stare at the open cans in what I imagine is hurt and disappointment before giving in to hunger and licking the contents.
Ignoring the cats, David changes into old clothes, slips on a pair of rubber boots, and trudges back outside into the moonlight to tackle the big animals.
Collette is the first stop, and she has some choice words for my husband. Her water trough is frozen over, which means that the heating element designed to keep this from happening must be replaced. David knows how to do this about as much as he knows
how to fly the space shuttle. Instead, he tries to fill the trough using the hose hooked up to the water pipe in the barn. This could have worked, except David forgot to drain the hose following its last use and it is now filled with ice. In the end, David is forced to carry buckets of hot water from the house to melt the ice in the trough, a task made more time consuming by the fact that he spills about half of each bucket on himself during each trip.
Finally, David comes to Arthur and Alice. They are still out in the paddock. David at least remembers that he must bring them into the barn for the night. We have coyotes and even the occasional bobcat in the woods surrounding the house. While direct confrontation is unlikely, Arthur in particular spooks easily and I’ve seen enough of equestrian medicine to know that panic causes injuries that can kill a horse.
David opens the gates connecting the paddock to Alice’s stall so she can walk right in to the bucket of horse food that David has placed there for her. Alice is more than happy to follow the well-worn routine and get out of the night. She is chewing even before David slides the bolt of the stall door closed, locking her in.
Arthur also chooses to come into his stall from the paddock. David’s relief is palpable—one more fight he can avoid.
At the moment Arthur enters the barn and begins to eat, the shrill ring of David’s cell phone shatters the relative quiet. Arthur startles at the noise for a moment, but settles down as soon as David answers the phone.
“Yes?”
Cell phone and BlackBerry service on the property—whether at the house, in the barn, or in the woods—quite simply sucks. There were times when I would walk in on David contorting himself into
poses that Gumby and Pokey would envy in order to receive e-mails on his BlackBerry.
The signal tonight is no different—only one bar—and David strains to hear Chris on the end of the line. “Where are you?” Chris asks.
“I can barely hear you,” David shouts into the phone. Chris says something unintelligible. “Say again?” David asks as he moves around the barn to try to increase signal strength.
“I said that we have a problem. Those assholes in the Morrison case filed a motion in limine.”
“What are the grounds?”
Chris’s answer is garbled.
“Hold on a sec. Let me find a better spot.” David, his eyes fixed on the signal strength indicator, stands at the barn entrance, where the reception is slightly better.
“Okay,” he says into the phone. “Start over. What are they seeking to exclude?”
“Any trial testimony of our experts.”
“What the hell? Our expert testimony is the case. When is the motion returnable?”
“They moved by order to show cause. Our papers are due day after tomorrow.”
“This just keeps getting better. What basis?”
“They say we didn’t turn over all the notes of the experts.”
“That’s absurd. Of course we did,” David says. There is a long pause as David waits for Chris to assure him that at least this part of his life remains safe. When she doesn’t volunteer, David finally asks, “Didn’t we?”
Chris blows out a breath as if her next words are physically painful. “I thought so.”
David takes the phone from his ear and looks at it for a moment as if it has betrayed him. When he speaks again, his voice has an unpleasant edge. “You thought so? Did I hear you right? You thought so?”
“I’m sorry. I had to delegate the production on this to a first-year. I guess there might have been a mistake.”
“Allerton will hang me for this. I’ll be labeled a liar. That’ll be it for me!” I hear in David’s voice a growing panic that is alien to his usual work personality. “I won’t be able to fix this, Chris.”
“I know. We’re checking everything now, but it’s going to be hours. So far, we know that—”
“Know what?”
Chris doesn’t answer him.
“Tell me.”
More silence from Chris. David checks the phone and sees the
SIGNAL LOST
message blinking back at him. “Crap.” He’s about to redial when Arthur comes charging out of the barn and into the night.
I’m not sure how Arthur released himself from his stall. I assume that David didn’t push the bolt all the way in and Arthur worked it open with his huge lips. He’s done that a few times with me. It was a plaything between us; I’d give him a little extra grain or a rub around his ears and he’d go back into the stall a little less jumpy for the attention.
But this time Arthur isn’t playing.
Arthur runs about four lengths from the barn entrance and then turns toward David, snorting angrily. Released from the small confines of his stall, awash in the spectral glow of the moonlight with plumes of smoke streaming from his nostrils, Arthur is the picture of raw power unleashed. He is now animal life freed from the constraints of human influence.
David is frozen in place by the vision of Arthur and forgets the phone. He forgets Chris, motions in limine, and even, I think, me. Horse and human stare at each other, radiating hostility. I can imagine what they see: David sees in this animal an unknowable adversary composed of an incomprehensible combination of flesh, blood, and bone, while Arthur sees in this human an unknowable adversary composed of an incomprehensible combination of muted color and ungainly appendages.
Arthur shakes his giant shaggy head from side to side as if trying to erase the image. This movement seems to bring David back to his immediate situation. He runs into the barn, quickly fills a plastic bucket with feed, grabs a lead rope, and jogs back outside.
Holding the lead rope behind him and out of view, David takes a few tentative steps toward Arthur as he shakes the bucket, rattling the food inside.
“Come on, buddy,” David says in a poor attempt at a soothing voice as he inches toward the horse. “I’ve got a snack for you.” Arthur’s eyes never leave David.
David continues to creep forward a few steps at a time until he’s within five feet of the horse. Then David slowly lowers the bucket of food to the ground and, keeping eye contact with Arthur, makes a large loop out of the lead rope behind his back.
I have absolutely no idea what David thinks he’s going to be able to do. A horse isn’t a dog; it’s not like you can throw a leash around it and drag it against its will. Still, David appears to have a plan, or at least he thinks he does.
Arthur isn’t having any of it and he springs backward out of David’s reach. Startled by Arthur’s sudden movement, David stumbles and almost falls to the ground. In frustration, he kicks the food bucket and it takes flight, spraying grain everywhere before it lands
on its side fifteen feet away from him and directly in front of the horse.
Arthur takes the final few morsels of grain from the bucket, careful never to lose sight of David. The bucket rocks back and forth under the pressure of Arthur’s insistent mouth.
Over the creaking of the bucket, I hear a different noise echo off the trees. At first I can’t place the sound—it is too low, too soft, like a whisper. Then I begin to discern syllables. There are three. I finally recognize my own name—“He-le-na.”
David calls for me, repeating my name over and over, the volume growing in rage and desperation until my name becomes a curse. Finally, mercifully, David shouts out my name one final time into the darkness where it breaks into something weak and mournful.
Exhaustion finally overcomes him. He trudges back up to the barn, leaving Arthur where he stands. At the entrance, David turns toward the horse, gives him the finger, and slowly drops to the ground.
David awakens on the hard, cold ground two hours later to see that Arthur has returned to his stall. Holding his breath, David walks up to the stall, closes the door, and slides the bolt all the way this time.
Only after David secures the bolt with a clip for good measure does he allow himself to exhale and make eye contact with Arthur. He mutters one word—“bastard”—and then retreats to the house.
Horse 2, David 0.
T
he next morning, David rises in shadows, races through the chores (he throws Collette’s food over her fence and leaves the horses in their stalls with enough hay and water for the day), and starts his drive to the office. It’s as if he’s trying to escape our house as quickly as possible to get to his real home—his law firm.
It is still dark when David turns onto an empty Route 33. Route 33, the local road that connects our little town to the major highway south to Manhattan, is surrounded by deep woods on both sides for about ten miles until the highway junction. It is ridiculously winding and unlit, but nevertheless has an unreasonable posted speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour. It is this confluence of woods, winding, darkness, and speed that has made Route 33 famous in our community as “Route Road Kill.” Deer, coyotes, rabbits, opossums, raccoons, foxes, dogs, cats, and turtles all regularly find a violent end on this particular piece of road.
Sometimes, they aren’t quite yet dead. Ever since that deer strike in Ithaca the night we met, David knew that I had one rule
when I was in the car either as the driver or the passenger: If it was still moving and if I could get it in the car, it was coming with me. Period. David didn’t argue with the rule (although I did hear him once or twice pray for the road to be clear). I mean, seriously, how could he argue? What’s the importance of making it to a movie on time compared with ending the suffering of a raccoon with a broken back?
What did David do when I wasn’t in the car with him? I’d often reminded him about Route 33 because he usually drove on it before the sun had risen or long after it had set. He would nod at me obediently. But when I would take Route 33 to my own office a few hours later, I couldn’t help but wonder whether any of the mangled carcasses I saw were the product of David’s inattention or distraction. Even worse, had any been alive when David drove past? He never said and I never asked him.
As David searches the radio stations for this morning’s traffic report, I hear the small, tragic
thump
.
David quickly checks his rearview mirror. An opossum lies in the road.
“This isn’t happening,” he says and stops the car. He waits there on the deserted road, his eyes glued to the rearview mirror. The opossum twitches. Once, twice. The animal is probably still alive and in need of medical attention and now David knows it.
“Sorry,” he mutters as he shakes his head. David takes his foot off the brake and drives away.
I don’t believe what I’m seeing. David just drives away. My David. If there is more concrete proof of the inconsequence of my life on this earth, I cannot think of it.
I can’t even bear to look at David anymore as he continues on to the lone traffic light before the highway junction.
When the light turns green, David slams his hand against the dashboard and then does a screeching U-turn. He drives until he returns to the spot in the road where he last saw the injured animal.
The opossum is gone.
David puts on his hazards, takes a flashlight from the glove compartment, and exits the car. He walks a few steps down the center of the road, swinging the flashlight in a slow arc. “C’mon. Where are you?” he grumbles. There is no blood or fur on the road.
An oncoming car slows and flashes its brights at David. He waves it on.
In the restored quiet, David turns his flashlight toward a rustling among the fallen branches on the shoulder. Yellow eyes gleam back at him.
“You okay, pal?”
In apparent answer, the opossum scampers into the brush and then climbs the nearest tree with ease.
David finally allows himself a smile, gets back into his car, and drives off.
Ninety minutes later, David walks under the bright lights of the hallway leading to his office. Although he wears an expensive suit and a tie that would pay for a month of pig feed, the overall effect is wrong; his cheeks are too hollow, the circles under his eyes are too dark, his hair barely brushed. He looks rumpled from the inside out.