A Kingdom in a Horse (2 page)

David was awakened, like so many times before, by the staccato beat of hoofs echoing from the buildings and the macadam pavement of the main street. He jumped out of bed to watch the horses pass under his hotel window. Each time he saw the parade of rodeo horses his throat would tighten. Soon he would be riding his own horse to the arena.

There was a dust storm that day out in the plains beyond the town, and the gray-yellow of the blowing sand seemed to encircle the town in a sort of a prison. His father was putting on makeup that would make his face like a mask, unrecognizable; and David suddenly felt an impulse to tell him about the horse he intended to buy. There was something about the dust storm, and his father’s whitening face, that made him want to share this secret with his father. But he decided against it. He too was superstitious. He did not want to endanger the dream by talking about it.

David was standing at the rails, alone as was his habit, not talking to anyone, when the bull riding started. Most rodeos limit a man to one bull ride, and only one bull is released at a time. To have two bulls and two riders come out at the same time was even more dangerous than the Texas “mad scrambles,” during which ten riders, ten bulls, and ten clowns are turned out at the same time. But David knew that his father was not worried. This was August 13, and thirteen was Lee’s lucky number. The two riders would not worry even if it were not the thirteenth. “With Lee Earl as the rescue man,” the saying went, “you’re as safe as in your own bed.”

The bellowing bulls could be heard long before they came out of the chutes. They emerged, two of them, big and mean, with riders seated precariously on their huge backs. Each rider held the unbuckled rope with one hand, using the other for balance against the bull’s high kicks. Within what seemed a split second, the bulls collided one against the other. Lee had torn off his skullcap and held it as a lure in his left hand, while with his right he waved the dunce cap. At the moment of the collision he was so close to the animals that their impact sent him sprawling.

Even before the people began to laugh at the sight of the clown in the dust, David knew that this was not part of the act, that his father did not mean to fall. He had vaulted the railing and was running toward his father who was already on his feet.

“Get back! “ Lee shouted to David.

But at that instant both riders were unseated. It happened so very fast that no one could later tell for sure whether the riders were midway coming down or still going up. Lee was caught, not by one animal but by both simultaneously. A horn of each bull tore into him and he was not tossed; rather he seemed to be ripped apart as the bulls separated with pieces of his clothing on their horns.

David was on his knees at his father’s side when two shots rang out, and the two bulls were down and dead within seconds of their angry exit from the chutes.

The arena filled instantly with people. Someone was pulling at David’s arms and he did not know whether he was being lifted or carried, but he struggled against the hands that held him, wanting to see, to reach his father. Tears obscured his vision and his own angry shouts of “Let me go!” were loud in his ears.

In the ambulance as he sat at his father’s side he did not dare look at the white face below him but stared out of the rear window of the screaming vehicle at the dust storm moving closer to town.

“I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t seeing it,” the fat doctor said. David was just inside the door, not wanting to see what the blood was hiding. “The horns hit the hip bones on both sides and seemed to have bounced back.”

An intern and a nurse were bending down over his father, and the doctor kept pointing his fat finger.

“About fifteen inches of flesh torn clear from the bone!”—he gave a low whistle—”on both sides! And the bones are just fine. All we need to do is clean the wounds and stitch the flesh back together.”

And that was that. A miracle, some said. David thought it had more to do with that day being the thirteenth of the month.

Within three hours he was permitted to go into the room and talk to his father.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“As if someone had tickled me,” his father said and tried to laugh. David knew the pain was bad, in spite of everything the doctor said. He had seen that look of pain before. But this time there was something new in his father’s eyes, a light he had never seen there.

“They say you’ll be all right,” David said.

“You and I. Both of us will be all right,” his father said.

And with that he turned his face to the wall. It was not until the next day that David understood what his father meant.

“As soon as they let me get up,” his father told him, “we’re taking off for Vermont.”

“Vermont?” That was the end of the world. Up north, in the east, where there are no horses, no rodeos, nothing.

“Your mother came from there,” his father was saying. “Once I promised her a house. I’ve been paying for one ever since you were born. I didn’t tell her about it because I wanted it to be a surprise. And now it’s ours.”

“What for? What do we need with a house?” David said, shivering. He had never before felt a premonition of disaster. Now he felt it in the unfamiliar weakness in his knees, in the tightness of his throat, and in that strange light in his father’s eyes.

“We’ll live in that house,” his father said.

“But why? Why would we want to live in a house, in Vermont?” he shouted angrily.

“Because—” his father began softly, but then his voice rose also in anger—”because I don’t want us to end up like the rest in some forsaken grave! ”

It couldn’t be, the boy thought, it couldn’t be that his father had forgotten all about his promise. His father reached his hand to touch him, but David moved away from the bed.

“When I first started to pay for this house,” his father said quietly, not looking at his son but toward the open window, “I was only thinking of your mother. But this last year I often thought that the two of us ought to belong somewhere. Normal people don’t live like we do. They greet each other on the streets by name. They walk into a store, and the owner knows what they came to buy. It’s a fine kind of life and you’ll love it—”

“I’d hate it!”

“You’ve got to understand,” his father said firmly, “everything’s changed now. I’ll never go back into that arena. Never again.”

David ran out of the hospital, away from his father’s words, away from that light in his eyes, away from the sickeningly sweet smell of that room. The town was quiet now, with the rodeo gone and the dust settled somewhere else. He sat on a log, for hours, until darkness came, trying to figure things out. At first he thought that his father had turned into a coward, but he dismissed that thought. Why, then? All he knew was that his father had broken his promise to him. He had waited until he was almost thirteen to tell him that the waiting was for nothing. His life now was finished. There was to be no future for him. And what he had to learn now was to forget the past.

He hated everything—the town, the house, the school, the children, Vermont, and most of all he hated his father. In the first month he tried running away twice. He was going to go west, join a rodeo on his own; he would change his name and become a bronco rider, the best who ever lived. He would get himself a horse that would make old Baldy look like a donkey. There would be nothing in his life except that horse of his, no friends, no family, no memories. No one would be able to hurt him because he would never trust anyone; he would never count on anyone. A horse could not cheat you out of a dream; a horse would never lie to you.

Both attempts at running away ended in failure. The first time he hitchhiked a ride. The truck driver seemed to him like a trustworthy sort of a man, and he told him his last name and almost confided to him that he had run away. They stopped for breakfast, and the driver must have called Lee. Within half an hour David was back home. What was so humiliating about that attempt was the fact that until the truck driver called, his father was unaware of David’s disappearance.

The very next week David bought a second-hand bicycle with some money he had and tried running away again. This time his father caught up with him before night fell. And once again David felt humiliated. He was hungry and cold and pitying himself when his father found him.

“I don’t want you to try running away again,” his father said on the way back. “I tried to make you understand why it is that I had to quit the rodeo. It would never have worked for us.” He paused and put an arm around David’s shoulders. “That was a dumb promise I made you. One day you’ll forgive me because you’ll understand that sometimes dreams have to end. I had a dream too, us, working together. It ended the second I saw you inside the arena.”

The explanation didn’t mean anything to David. He grew more bitter after that. He decided to wait until he was sixteen and then leave. Openly, not sneaking away. Whatever would happen to him between now and then wouldn’t matter. At sixteen he would begin to live again.

But again time seemed to stand still. The day of his thirteenth birthday came, and he tried not to think about the past or what this day was once to mean to him. He was glad his father had forgotten it was his birthday.

“I’d like you to drive with me to Burlington this evening,” his father said after dinner that day.

“Do I have to? I’ve got homework to do,” David said, getting up from the table.

“I thought you’d finished it. I saw you shut the last book, and you sighed.”

“I was going to study ahead for the test,” David said impatiently.

“I need you to come with me. Get your coat.”

Since they moved to Vermont his father had worked at all sorts of odd jobs, but blacksmithing was the thing that he did well, often, and enjoyed most. David would go with him whenever he had difficult horses to shoe or so many that his help was needed.

They had pulled up in front of the complex of buildings where the monthly horse auction took place. When his father got out of the truck without taking his tools with him, David suddenly realized that his father had not forgotten his birthday, and that they had come here to look for a horse. He felt tricked and angry.

“I don’t know if I ever told yon,” David said coldly to his father as they walked through the parking lot already beginning to fill up with cars, “but I really hate horses. I wouldn’t have one for a million dollars.”

He watched his father’s face as he said it, and by the dim light he saw it change. The look of pain came over it, and he turned his eyes away.

“That couldn’t be true,” his father said calmly. “You’ve always loved horses.”

“I used to love a lot of things,” David said, and once again he looked up at his father.

His father’s eyes blinked and then hardened. They walked silently, side by side, each feeling himself a stranger to the other.

David did not mean to look at the horses, and he stayed back at the entrance of the great barn as his father walked the length of it looking over the animals. What caught David’s attention was a chestnut mare which stood in the passageway between the stalls. She was held by a man with a cane. There was nothing particularly special about her; she did not look well cared for, and her limpid blue eye, “the watch eye,” was not that unusual in a western horse. She has as much quarter horse in her, he thought, as she has thoroughbred. Her conformation was good, her legs strong, yet as thin and long as a race horse’s. Her neck would look better if the mane were either cut shorter or let grow. Whoever had cut the mane had done an equally bad job on the tail. It fell less than half way to the ground. The mare’s hips were outlined, the bones pressing against the dirty coat. He liked the wide white mark running from her eyes and narrowing slightly at the nostrils. And more than that, he liked the way the mare looked at him, with the soft brown eye and the very light blue one. It seemed to mock him, that look.

During his years with the rodeo David learned to ride and he learned about horses. There was a certain look among horses which he came to recognize as the look of the kind of horse he wanted for himself, the look of independence. He had argued several times about that particular look, with men who did not agree with him that it made for a good horse. On the contrary, most of the men insisted that a horse who looked self-reliant was an indiffèrent mount, one hard to control and difficult to teach. Yet he was always attracted by a horse whose expression seemed to say to him, “I don’t need you.” And the chestnut mare seemed to be saying exactly that to him.

David moved away from the mare, angry at himself for having been attracted to her. The stable was at least four hundred feet long, and he noticed his father still walking away from him.

“Hey, kid,” a voice behind him said, and he turned around. The man with the cane was addressing him. “If you’re looking for a horse for yourself, this here mare’s the best of the lot.”

“I’m not looking for a horse,” he said curtly and walked on. The stalls, about forty feet wide and deep, were filled with animals—full-grown saddle horses and ponies. Beautifully groomed ones were standing next to others that looked pitifully thin, more dead than alive. There were many hack horses, old slaves that were going to be bought by riding stables and summer camps, who had spent all of their lives shuttled between incompetent riders and cruel masters.