Effigy (10 page)

HAVING SLEPT
through the breakfast bell, Dorrie has taken the unusual step of joining the family for the midday meal. A mess of cornbread, greens and gravy eaten in haste. She’s shuffling back to her barn when the sound of hoofbeats spins her on the spot. Along the track three riders bob into view. She moves into the privy’s slim shadow and looks out.

As always, Hammer rides in the lead. Behind him, Lal pinches the toffee-smooth gelding between his overgrown thighs. And behind Lal, a stranger.

Loose-waisted in the saddle, the new man sways. His horse looks to be a mare, heavily muscled about the haunches, built to go hard and far. Hip bones set too high make for a fair jolt in her gait—she’d be a bone-rattler to most, but the new man rides her mildly, a thin bird trusting its tree.

The mare is a chestnut, unusually dark. Dorrie knew another like it once.

Since forever—or at least since she emerged from the fevered landscape of her childhood illness and began the life she can recall—Mama had taken her to visit the horses in their stalls. In the beginning she went wrapped in the yellow blanket, carried
through blinding brightness to gentle gloom. As her strength returned, she began to cross the yard at Mama’s side. Once there, she would stand before one of the stalls and hold up a trembling hand, half a red apple wobbling on her palm—fingers flat, or the teeth might mistake one of them for an additional gift. “They’re like chisels,” Mama reminded her. “Not all the grass in this world is tender.”

The red-brown mare Papa called Shade was the tallest on the farm, long in the leg, almost spindly. Dorrie portioned out her favours to all—the muscle-bound paint she would later learn to ride, Pepper, the salt-coloured gelding that was Mama’s favoured mount—but in her heart of hearts she loved the gangly Shade best.

She remembers the dark eye descending, lips muscling over her apple-scented palm. She was thrilled almost to the point of terror the first time she stepped onto an upturned bucket to stroke Shade’s long face. She took great pains to avoid the vulnerable blind spot between the mare’s eyes, the white snip there Mama had warned her not to touch.

Heaven only knew where Shade came from, or even how long she’d been on the farm. Mama couldn’t seem to recall, and the first time Dorrie asked Papa turned out to be the last. He too had no answer for her, just a sudden stillness, a stiffening along his spine. He was balanced in a squat over the washing-up pail on the porch. When he finally did twist her way, he said only, “Fetch me a cloth.”

The next morning he saddled up Shade and led her prancing from the barn. Dorrie couldn’t help but feel pleased with herself—clearly her questions had reminded him it was high time he let the thin mare stretch her legs.

They heard the shot, she and Mama both. They were bent over a lesson in pie crust, the two of them white up to their elbows with flour. They thought nothing of it, or if not nothing then
a rabbit
,
maybe
, and Mama might have said something about setting aside a chunk of pastry in case they’d be making cottontail pie.

Papa broke the news as though it was nothing. Not when he first arrived, his dirty boots echoing over the porch, not even during the meal, but afterwards, when all three of them were full. He told it from behind his napkin, wiping his mouth as he rose.

“Shade bust a cannon bone.” He laid the soiled napkin over the plate he’d rubbed clean with a wedge of bread. “I had to put her down.”

For an instant Dorrie could read her own horror writ large on Mama’s face. But only an instant, for then Mama too was standing, reaching for the empty stew dish and clutching it to her chest. “What a shame.” She said it almost brightly, addressing a spot on the wall behind her husband’s back. Neither of them looked in Dorrie’s direction. Papa ducked away to the parlour. She could picture him in there, assuming the fat armchair, reaching for the month-old
Deseret News
.

“On your feet, miss.” Mama’s skirts brushed up against Dorrie’s dangling leg. “Help Mama clear away this mess.”

Dorrie did as she was told. Stacked up the greasy dishes, cutlery in a tangle on top. Dipped the rag and wrung it out and scrubbed the kitchen table’s planks. Not right away, though. Mama had stoked up the coals and set the washing-up water on to boil before Dorrie felt able to slide down from her chair and stand. It wasn’t her legs—thin though they were, they felt sturdy enough. It was her throat. There was something inside there, forcing its way up from below. Like a hand, but blunter. Furrier.

She swallowed it. Just as she swallows the ghost of it now. Just as Hammer’s stable swallows the rump of the new man’s mare.

Hammer’s horse barn is vast and dim. Riding in on the heels of the eldest son’s horse, Bendy Drown smells the way of things—piss-soaked straw, droppings left to grow mushrooms, here and there a furtive whiff of mouse. Sure enough, in the shadows of the second stall, a rodent-toned flash atop a sizable mound of manure. Feeding there. Plucking out seeds.

Hammer dismounts in the midst of things, seemingly unaware of the scuttlings now audible in the cessation of clattering hooves. Strange that a man who rides such a magnificent horse—a man known for having supplied mounts to those in the highest positions—should allow his animals to suffer such neglect. Hammer’s reputation had preceded him to the auction; Bendy caught wind of it before he ever set eyes on the black mare and its rider. At the time it seemed enough to single his new employer out from the press of ranchers offering him work.

He’d done little enough to warrant the attention of so many men. When a twitchy three-year-old had dumped its fourth rider in a howling heap, he’d jumped the gate, if only to save the colt from the other young men rising up at the fence rails. Approaching the colt at an even pace, he kept his eyes to the ground and mumbled a low refrain. He introduced himself before reaching for the reins, making sure to breathe a good part of his name into the animal’s flaring nostrils.
Here I am. Bendy. It’s only me
.

In the end the colt was willing enough—Bendy felt the fine back accept him the moment he took his seat. It was the crowd he didn’t like, the bellowed bids and queries, and in particular the auctioneer’s rapid-fire drone. Bendy compensated with a close-hugging ride, drawing the animal’s attention back to the red comfort of its own heart. He built up the steady counter-thrum of a trot, filling the spaces between hoofbeats with a guttural hum. Two turns of the corral and the colt was a champion. The bids flew thick and fast.

And now he’s here. Miles from where he woke this morning, stable hand on the Hammer ranch. The man who hired him lingers at the off side of the great black mare. The top of his hat scarcely crests her withers. It’s a wonder he can ride her at all.

The son and his horse make a better match. Dismounting with a sodden gracelessness unexpected in one so good-looking, Lal Hammer straightens to stand shoulder to shoulder with his flashy ride. The palomino sidesteps to put distance between them and commences sucking wind. Lal’s fist whips out to jab him in the barrel. The horse ceases gulping, but Bendy marks the glint of his rolling eye.

Swinging down from Stride’s back, he feels his every joint protest the hard fact of the floor. Now is not the time for the freakish, hyperextended stretches that will bring him relief. He contents himself with a discreet backbend of the knees, invisible within the denim bulk of his britches.

Nor, it seems, is it the time for questions. Hammer’s already on his way toward the gaping door. “Lal’ll show you the ropes. Come for supper at the bell.” Passing by closer than necessary—closer than is customary among men in the wide-open West—he cocks a black eyebrow. “Got a wife needs seeing to.”

For a short man he covers a good deal of ground in a few strides. The moment he veers left, disappearing from the door’s wide frame, the son clears his throat and spits. “You’ll bunk up top in the loft.”

“Right. Do the others sleep up there too?”

“Others?” Lal’s smile is slow, unfriendly. “His Indian’ll duck in of a winter night, but only when it’s really cold. He’s horse-shy.”

It takes a moment to sink in. All these stalls. Bendy reaches absently for the buckle of Stride’s girth.

“Uh-uh.” Lal crosses his arms. “You see to his horse first.” He’s younger than Bendy by perhaps three or four years. His eyes are impressive—huge in his well-shaped skull, cornflower bright. Only they can’t quite hold their ground.

“Okay.” Bendy lays a reassuring hand on Stride’s rump, then steps past Lal and the palomino to where Ink stands motionless. “Which stall is hers?” He takes a light, respectful hold on the big mare’s reins.

“Take a guess.”

Looking round, Bendy spies a double-sized enclosure down the far end. “You want me to do Bull next?”

“When I want something doing, I’ll tell you. I’ll be back directly.” Lal swivels and makes for the open door, leaving the palomino unsure, shifting on his overgrown hooves. Horse breath and echo. Then the sound of Hammer’s son pissing hard against the outside wall.

Bendy leaves the big mare, crossing quickly and quietly to Bull. The gelding is wary at first—neck levering up in answer to his firm hand taking hold of the reins—but the moment Bendy reaches down to loosen the over-cinched girth, the horse inside it seems to slacken and give.

“All right, boy. All right now.” A muttered accompaniment to the swift work of his hands. Reaching up under the saddle, he feels over the blanket, smoothing the thick crease that will have been a torture to Bull’s back. Next he shifts the whole rig forward up onto the withers, then eases it back, redirecting hairs that have lain the wrong way since early morning. Stride stands where he left her, looking on with what he can’t help but feel is an approving eye. He fixes the buckle of Bull’s girth two holes looser, his reward a double lungful of grassy breath that bottoms into a sigh.

He’s leading Ink back to her station when Hammer’s son calls
to him from the door. “Do Bull next. Then you can get started shovelling stalls.”

Feeling his heart begin to sink, Bendy fixes his attention on the animal in his care. Ink is oddly placid for such an enormous horse. She flows easily into her stall, headed for the few stray wands of hay still clinging to the rack.

Seated at her vanity, Thankful pinches blood into her cheeks. She has several pots of colour but none that achieves quite such a becoming hue. Of course it fades. And there’s the threat of bruising—she’s done it twenty times already today, imagining she’s heard hoofbeats in the distance.

This time he’s really home. She watched him ride up the track minutes ago with Lal and a new man following hard. A young, gangly man, undeserving of a second look.

As soon as Hammer can get past the first wife and her accounts book, he’ll be up to see her. She inspects her face in the mirror. How is it she inherited not one of her mother’s features? For such a bleeding-heart ninny, Eliza Cobbs was terribly selfish, hoarding those good looks to herself.
“Ninny.”
It helps a little to utter it aloud. A beauty like that. Her mother could have had any man in Chicago, but fell instead for a nobody who bred her the second he got her home from the church. Surprise, surprise—the landlord came calling and Daddy was never seen again.

Thankful pulls a grimace, lets it go slack. Nose too sharp, lips too thin, eyes too small, a nasty pebble-grey. All gifts from her long-gone father, polluter of his wife’s perfection. Eamon Cobbs.
Cobbs
—even the name he saddled them with is ugly. Her mother wept buckets for him over the years, long, wet lashes framing her
clear green eyes. She might have called herself a widow and married again, or at least taken a wealthy lover. Instead she took in laundry. Let her legs grow slack standing over a washboard, turned her hands into a pair of boiled puddings, built her right arm to bulging with the weight of the iron.

Thankful was seventeen the day she decided they could no longer get by on the pittance her mother earned. She’d passed the Limelight often enough; to effect the change she had only to turn and walk in. The theatre adored a beauty, but it required ordinary women too. The clever sisters, the maids-in-waiting, the nuns. All the better if those lesser players could fill a costume well.