Juliet in August (18 page)

He jumps back from the fence and walks quickly away down the alley. How could he be so stupid, like a kid drooling for candy, and how could he be even stupider and look back just in time to see her grab her music player and run into the house, dragging the red extension cord after her, as though she were being chased by some kind of creepy pervert? The cord catches and she yanks it free, and then the screen door to the Vass house slams shut and Shiloh feels like the whole town is slammed shut. It's not his town. He's just a farm kid. His parents don't raise money for hockey rinks, and they don't have a cabin for summer holidays, and he doesn't have a backyard with a deck and flowerpots.

He breaks into a run, and when he gets to the end of the alley he turns up the street toward the swimming pool, still running. When he gets to the swimming pool he'll tell Vicki they have to go home
right now
and do the beans like Blaine said. He runs along the sidewalk with the memory of Brittney Vass and her red extension cord chasing him, and when he gets to the pool he has to stand under a tree and catch his breath. He can see his brothers and sisters—four of them, anyway—in the blue water, and now he's so hot and sweaty that the water looks inviting, and he thinks maybe he should go for a swim, just a quick one to cool off, and he realizes that he's left his backpack somewhere. The schoolyard. He'll have to go back for it.

His life has turned out to be so crappy, he thinks. It damn well better improve before school starts again. If it doesn't, he'll quit school and move. He hates this dump. Anywhere else would be better.

SOLO

 

Cool Water

Lee is amazed that the horse goes forward so willingly in the late-morning heat across a seemingly endless tract of low dunes and sand flats. Creeping juniper stands out here as an oddity, a sprawling evergreen shrub where tall cactus would be more expected. The breeze—not strong enough to provide any relief—sends wisps of sand snaking their way across the surface. Little snakes of sand. Lee wonders if that's how the hills got their name. He watches the surface shift before his eyes, fine wavy patterns appearing and then vanishing again.
You could stand out here and watch your own footprints disappear,
he thinks.

Out of curiosity, he asks the horse to stop, and he watches the sand blow into the hoofprints, feathering the edges and slipping into the holes. As Lee looks back the way he came, he sees his trail becoming less distinct and then disappearing not far from where he's standing, so that it looks as though the horse emerged out of nowhere. He asks the horse to move forward again and they create new prints, sharp-edged for only seconds.

Besides feeling the effects of the sun, Lee is now feeling the effects of over thirty-five steady miles on horseback. He's thirsty and saddle sore, and he wishes he'd thought to put a cap on his head when he started out. He reaches behind the cantle where he tied his jacket and loosens the saddle strings, planning to use the jacket as a makeshift head covering, but it slips out of his hands and slides to the ground. He doesn't bother stopping to pick it up. It's an old jacket, ripped around the pockets and not much good anymore without Astrid to patch it. He looks back and watches it settle in the sand, and wonders how long it will be before it's completely covered. He thinks again of Willard's camel, wonders if her remains are buried out here somewhere. He pictures a dead camel with clouds of sand blowing over its body, creating a mound, the beginnings of a new dune. Is this how the ancient Egyptians came up with the idea of the pyramids, after watching the wind build massive sand monuments over the dead bodies of camels and horses?

As the sand soaks up the sun's heat and discharges it back at him like a giant furnace, he stands in the stirrups to try to take some pressure off the tender places, tries to readjust what Lester referred to as his “equipment.” He remembers when Lester first said to him, “Don't get your equipment in a knot,” and Lee understood then that Lester thought he was old enough to talk a certain way when they were out of the presence of women. There's no adjusting that relieves all the sore spots—taking the pressure off one puts more on another—and he feels an inkling of regret that he made such an impulsive decision to cross this desolate strip in the heat of the day. But it's too late now. He must be more than halfway to the Catholic church, and it would be crazy to turn back. There's a good well in the churchyard, or at least there used to be. He closes his eyes for a few seconds and thinks of water, cool water, like in the old cowboy song that Lester had on a vinyl record. Lee sings for a while, only half remembering the words, something about a cowboy lost in the desert with a horse or a mule named Dan, their throats parched and their souls crying out, but then Lee decides singing takes too much energy, and anyway, the song is depressing and it's just making him thirstier.

“Dan,” he says out loud. “That's a good name for you.” The horse turns his ears in Lee's direction.

The beating sun adds a silvery sheen to the gray-gold color that stretches as far as Lee can see. The horse steps without hesitation into the shimmering hot sand, his head high, moving forward, keeping up the same steady pace. He's an efficient machine, Lee thinks jealously, built for distance, while the man on his back is miserable and about to die of thirst, or at least that's how he feels.

Until finally Lee sees a road to the northwest, and then the old war memorial comes into view, which means the church is not far ahead and, more important, the well. He turns toward the road and travels westward in the shallow ditch. Sweet clover tempts the horse and he tries to snatch at it, but Lee keeps him moving past the stone memorial and toward the church. Another half mile and he can see it, a small fieldstone building with white trim, the wooden steeple and cross reaching into the sky. Across the road from the church is George and Anna Varga's home quarter. The sun reflects brilliant green off the distant poplars and caragana hedges of the Varga yard. Lee knows, without a doubt, the relief that real desert travelers feel when their instincts or their animals successfully lead them to an oasis.

When he reaches the churchyard with its mowed grass and neat picket fence, Lee slides to the ground and carefully lets his body absorb its own weight. Without having to look, he knows the insides of his calves are chafed. He hobbles into the churchyard leading the horse and latches the gate behind him. The roof of the church has an overhang and Lee makes for the shade it creates and removes the saddle and bridle. The saddle pad is soaked with sweat. As soon as the horse is free, he's into the dry grass edging the church's foundation.

Lee heads for the well and takes a long drink directly from the pump, and then splashes water on his head and back, soaking his shirt. There's a bucket hanging on the pump, which Lee fills for the horse. He lets him drink a bit, and then he splashes water on the horse's neck and chest to rinse off the sweat and cool him down. The horse shivers as the cold water hits him and moves away from it. Lee fills the bucket again and this time he lets the horse drink what he wants, and then he drinks some more himself before stretching out in the shade. He thinks of food and is tempted to go rummaging in the church for something to eat, but he closes his eyes instead. As he nods off, ripples of sand pass endlessly in his head and then turn into waves of water lapping gently against the shore of a sandy beach.

*   *   *

H
e wakes from a sound sleep to find old George Varga staring down at him.

“So, young Torgeson,” George says, holding out his hand to help Lee to his feet.

As he gets up, Lee tries to hide the fact that his body is sadly hurting. He's glad that George recognizes him so he doesn't have to explain who he is.

The horse is nowhere in sight.

George sees Lee looking and points around the side of the church. “Damn bugger's eating my grass,” he says. Then George waves his hand in dismissal and adds, “Saves me mowing.”

Lee senses George waiting for an explanation, so he offers, “I came across the sand.” As he says it, he realizes it's not much of an explanation.

“From your place?” George asks.

Lee nods, expecting disbelief, but George says, “Well, better come on over to the house, have some lunch. Fill the belly before you go. Long way back home, long ride ahead of you.” The words
long ride
resonate but are quickly replaced by thoughts of food.

Lee follows George through the churchyard gate and across the road to the original Varga homestead, where he knows George lives with his sister Anna. As they pass through the trees, Lee sees a mobile home with a framed porch built onto the side and a carefully tended flower bed in front. The old farmhouse is still standing, but it's badly weathered and not in use anymore. It's rumored that George is filthy rich, but you'd never know it from the twenty-year-old pickup truck parked in the yard. Lee takes note of the tow hitch and looks around for a stock trailer, thinking about a ride home, but he doesn't see one.

George takes Lee into the porch, which turns out to be a summer kitchen, calling out to Anna that they have a visitor from down south, young Lee Torgeson—remember him, Lester's boy? “Get the boy something to eat, Anna,” George says. “He's come all this way on a horse, just like the old days.”

Then Anna speaks to George in Hungarian. It's intimidating, having her speak without Lee knowing what she's saying. She could be telling George to get him the hell out, for all he knows. But no, she's sending him into the trailer and down the hall to the washroom, and when Lee gets back she's already got food on the table: bread and cheese and cold meat, pickles and sliced tomatoes. A plate filled with cookies and cake squares.

“Sit, sit,” Anna says in English. “All that way on a horse. You must be hungry.”

“Like the Perry cowboys, eh,” George says to Anna.

Lee isn't sure what George means, something to do with the legendary ranch, he supposes, how everything was done on horseback in those days. Much of the pastureland in the district had been part of the original Perry lease, and there are old black-and-white photographs in the town hall. Lee shifts his weight on a wooden chair, trying to relieve the pressure on his bruises and saddle burns. His mouth is watering, but he waits until Anna offers him the plate of cheese and cold cuts. When she does, he digs in.

“We ate already,” George says, although he takes a piece of cake in his big farmer's hand. Lee notices that he's missing a finger.

“So,” George says, his mouth full of cake. “You're doing the hundred-mile ride, just like Ivan Dodge. Hundred miles on the same horse. Have to be. No fresh horse for you here.”

Lee is hardly listening. He's busy making himself the best-looking sandwich he's ever seen, the kind Astrid used to call a Dagwood.

“You know the story, I suppose,” George says.

Lee looks at him then, and George can tell he doesn't know what he's talking about.

“Lester never told you about that race?” George asks. “Before I was born. The riders changed horses—one of them, anyway—right out there where the church is.”

Lee tries to remember, but he doesn't think he's heard anything about such a race. He would have remembered a story with horses in it.

So George tells him. Anna knows the story, too, and nods throughout the telling. How a cowboy named Ivan Dodge and another hand from the ranch came through the dunes and Ivan Dodge was well ahead of his competitor, and they were supposed to switch to fresh horses, but Ivan shook his head when one of his crew led his change horse up and then he loped off on his Arab horse and rode his way to victory. How the other cowboy's horse tied up and he couldn't finish the race.

“There was betting that day,” George says. “Not many won money. Only those with horse sense. They say that's inherited, horse sense. My old man traveled all the way to watch the finish out by your place, by that old buffalo stone. He didn't like to admit he bet on the wrong horse, but that's what he did. He had no horse sense.”

“Get the book, George,” Anna says. “Show him the picture.”

Anna takes away Lee's empty plate and gets him a teacup. “Tea is good on a hot day,” she says. “You wouldn't think so, but it is.”

For some reason, Lee tells her about the Bedouins and their tea ceremony. “They drink it sweet,” Lee says, “and if they're outside they pour a few drops in the sand. It's a gift to the desert.” Once he's said it he feels embarrassed, but Anna looks interested.

“Is that so?” she says. “They sweeten with honey, I suppose.”

George returns with an old photograph album filled to bursting with newspaper clippings, scraps of paper, and photographs. He lays it on the table and flips through the pages, some of them falling free of the binding, and searches for something. He holds a magnifying glass over the pages as he looks. He shows Lee pictures of dead people in their burial attire, taken, George says, so their families could remember them. “Most dressed up they'd ever been,” he says, “so good time for a picture.”

“History,” Anna says, indicating the book. “Varga history.”

George points out a photograph of the stone foundation of a building. “The church,” he says. “Soon as my old man got the house done, he started on the church. The house will be gone soon, next big wind, I suppose, but the church is still there. Better building. Or maybe God looks after it, eh?”

As George flips through the scrapbook, Lee imagines the rash of activity that must have gone into building a community from scratch.

George finds what he's looking for, a newspaper article. He slides the book toward Lee, indicating that he should take the magnifying glass as well.

“His eyes are young, he doesn't need that,” Anna says, but Lee takes it anyway because the article is faded.

It relates the details of the race: the two cowboys, the hundred-mile horse, said to be an Arab.
It is rumored,
the article says,
that money exchanged hands, although no man is owning up to either winning or losing, perhaps because of the local women's well-known disapproval of gambling.
The way the article is written reminds Lee of Lester's old books. He studies the grainy picture of Ivan Dodge, who resembles a movie cowboy with his young good looks, his hat, and his fringed chaps. Lee examines the faces of the people standing around him, men in old-fashioned clothing, looking as though they're dressed for church. He wonders if one of them might be Lester's father, but none looks familiar. He scans the article until he finds the name of the other cowboy, the one who lost, Henry Merchant. He doesn't recognize either name, Dodge or Merchant. They'd had their moment of fame, he supposes, and then left the district like so many others.

Anna takes Lee's empty cup from the table and carries it to the sink.

“George,” she says, “when are you going to get me that dishwasher?”

“Waiting for a sale,” he says. He leans toward Lee conspiratorially and says, “I already got a good dishwasher.”

“What's he saying there?” Anna asks.

Lee laughs and decides it's time to go. “Thanks for the lunch,” he says, and pushes himself away from the table. George rises, too, and Anna comes to see him out the door. He's thinking that George must have some kind of trailer for hauling animals and is about to ask—not because of the long ride, he'll say, but because he has work to do—when Anna warns, “You be careful on that horse. Look in the graveyard across the road. Pete Varga. Died when he got bucked off and hit his head on a rock.” Anna shakes her head. “Such a tragedy.”