The Horse Whisperer (21 page)

“Excuse me saying it, ma’am,” he said. “But you sure as hell don’t like taking no for an answer.”

“No,” Annie said simply. “I suppose I don’t.”

   Grace lay on her back on the floor of the musty bedroom, doing her exercises and listening to the electronic bells of the Methodist church across the street. They didn’t just chime the hour, they played whole tunes. She quite liked the sound, mainly because it was driving her mother crazy. Annie was down in the hall, on the phone to the real estate agent about it.

“Don’t they know there are laws about this sort of thing?” she was saying. “They’re polluting the air.”

It was the fifth time she had called him in two days. The poor man had made the mistake of giving her his home number and Annie was ruining his weekend, bombarding him with complaints: the heating wasn’t working, the bedrooms were damp, the extra phone line she’d asked for hadn’t been installed, the heating still wasn’t working. And now the bells.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if they played something half decent,” she was saying. “It’s ridiculous, the Methodists have all the good tunes.”

Yesterday when Annie went out to the ranch, Grace had refused to go with her. After Annie left, she went out exploring. There wasn’t much to explore. Choteau was basically one long main street with a railroad on one side and a grid of residential streets on the other. There was a dog parlor, a video store, a steak house and a cinema showing a movie Grace had seen over a year ago. The town’s only claim to fame was a museum where you could see dinosaur eggs. She went into a couple of stores and the people were friendly but reserved. She was aware of others watching as she walked slowly back down the street with her cane. When she got back to the house she felt so depressed, she burst into tears.

Annie had come back elated and told Grace that Tom Booker had agreed to Come and see Pilgrim the following morning. All Grace said was “How long have we got to stay in this dump?”

The house was a big, rambling place, faced with peeling pale-blue clapboard and carpeted throughout in a stained, yellow-brown shagpile. The sparse furniture looked as if it had been picked up in a yard sale. Annie was appalled when they first saw the place. Grace was delighted. Its glaring inadequacy was on her side, a perfect vindication.

Secretly, she wasn’t as opposed to this mission of her mother’s as she made out. It was a relief in fact to get away from school and the tiring business of putting on a brave face all the time. But her feelings for Pilgrim were confused. They frightened her. It was best to block him right out of her head. Her mother however made this impossible. Her every action seemed to force Grace to confront the issue. She’d taken this whole thing on as if Pilgrim was hers and he wasn’t hers, he was Grace’s. Of course Grace wanted him to get better, it was just
that . . . It struck her then, for the first time, that maybe she didn’t want him to get better. Maybe she blamed him for what had happened? No, that was stupid. Maybe she wanted him to be as she was, forever maimed? Why should he recover and not her? It wasn’t fair. Stop it, stop it, she told herself. These whirling, crazy thoughts were her mother’s fault and Grace wasn’t going to let them get a hold in her head.

She redoubled the effort in her exercises, until she felt the sweat trickle down her neck. She lifted her stump high in the air, again and again, making the muscles ache in her right buttock and her thigh. She could look at this leg now and accept at last that it belonged to her. The scar was neat, no longer that angry, itching pink. Her muscles were coming back nicely, so much so that the sleeve of her prosthetic leg was starting to feel a little tight. She heard Annie hang up.

“Grace? Have you finished? He’ll be here soon.”

Grace didn’t reply, just let the words hang there.

“Grace?”

“Yeah. So what?”

She could feel Annie’s reaction, picture the irked look on her face giving way to resignation. She heard her sigh and go back into the drab dining room which, as a first priority of course, Annie had transformed into her office.

A
LL
T
OM HAD PROMISED WAS THAT HE WOULD GO
and have another look at the horse. After she had come all that way, it was the least he could do. But he’d made it a condition that he would go alone. He didn’t want her looking over his shoulder, putting pressure on him. She was pretty good at that, he already knew. She had made him promise to drop by afterward and give her his verdict.

He knew the Petersen place, just outside Choteau, where she had Pilgrim stabled. They were nice enough people, but if the horse was as bad as when Tom last saw him, they wouldn’t put up with him for long.

Old man Petersen had the face of an outlaw, three days of grizzled beard and teeth as black as the tobacco he always chewed. He showed them in a mischievous grin when Tom pulled up in the Chevy.

“What’s it they say? If you’re looking for trouble, you’ve come to the right place. Damn near killed me getting him unloaded. Been kicking and hollering like a banshee ever since.”

He led Tom down a muddy track, past the rusting
hulks of derelict cars, to an old barn, lined either side with stalls. The other horses had been turned out. Tom could hear Pilgrim long before they got there.

“Only fitted that door last summer,” Petersen said. “He’d have had the old one down by now. Woman says you’re gonna sort him out for her.”

“Oh she did?”

“Uh-huh. All I can say is, make sure you go see Bill Larson for a fitting first.” He roared with laughter and slapped Tom on the back. Bill Larson was the local undertaker.

The horse was in even sorrier shape than when Tom last saw him. His front leg was so badly wasted, Tom wondered how he even managed to stand, let alone keep up the kicking.

“Must have been a nice-lookin’ horse once,” said Petersen.

“I reckon.” Tom turned away. He’d seen enough.

He drove back into Choteau and looked at the piece of paper on which Annie had written her address. When he pulled up outside the house and walked up to the front door, the church bells were playing a tune he hadn’t heard since he was a kid in Sunday school. He rang the doorbell and waited.

The face he saw when the door opened startled him. It wasn’t that he’d been expecting the mother, it was the open hostility in the girl’s pale, freckled face. He remembered the face from the photograph Annie had sent him, a happy girl and her horse. The contrast was shocking. He smiled.

“You must be Grace.” She didn’t smile back, just nodded and stepped aside for him to come in. He took off his hat and waited while she shut the door. He could hear Annie talking in a room off the hallway.

“She’s on the phone. You can wait in here.”

She led the way into a bare, L-shaped living room. Tom looked down at her leg and the cane as he followed, making a mental note not to look again. The room was gloomy and smelled of damp. There were a couple of old armchairs, a sagging sofa and a TV playing an old black-and-white movie. Grace sat down and went on watching it.

Tom perched himself on an arm of one of the chairs. The door across the hallway was half open and he could see a fax machine, a computer screen and a tangle of wires. All he could see of Annie was a crossed leg and a boot that bobbed impatiently. She sounded pretty worked up about something.

“What! He said what? I don’t believe it. Lucy . . . Lucy, I don’t care. It’s got nothing to do with Crawford, I’m the bloody editor and that’s the cover we go with.”

Tom saw Grace raise her eyes to the ceiling and wondered if it was for his benefit. In the movie, an actress whose name he could never remember was on her knees, hanging on to James Cagney, begging him not to leave. They always did this and Tom could never understand why they bothered.

“Grace, will you get Mr. Booker a coffee?” Annie shouted from the other room. “I’d like one too.” She went back to her phone call. Grace flicked the TV off and got up, clearly irritated.

“It’s okay, really,” said Tom.

“She just made it.” She stared at him as if he’d said something rude.

“Okay then, thank you. But you keep watching the movie and I’ll get it.”

“I’ve seen it. It’s boring.”

She picked up her cane and went off into the kitchen. Tom waited a moment then followed. She shot him a
glance when he came in and made more noise than she needed to with the cups. He walked over to the window.

“What does your mother do?”

“What?”

“Your mother. I wondered what line of work she was in.”

“She edits a magazine.” She handed him a cup of coffee. “Cream and sugar?”

“No thanks. Must be a pretty stressful kind of job.”

Grace laughed. Tom was surprised by how bitter it sounded.

“Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

There was an awkward silence. Grace turned away and was about to pour another cup but instead she stopped and looked at him. He could see the surface of the coffee in the glass pot trembling from the tension in her. It was plain to see she had something important to say.

“Just in case she hasn’t told you, I don’t want to know anything about this, okay?”

Tom nodded slowly and waited for her to go on. She’d good as spat the words at him and was a little thrown by the calm reaction. She abruptly poured the coffee but did it too fast so that she spilled some. She clunked the pot down on the table and picked up the cup, not looking at him as she went on.

“This whole thing was her idea. I think it’s totally stupid. They should just get rid of him.”

She stomped past him and out of the room. Tom watched her go, then he turned and looked out into the forlorn little backyard. A cat was eating something sinewy by an upturned garbage can.

He had come here to tell this girl’s mother, for the last time, that the horse was beyond help. It was going
to be tough after they had come all this way. He had thought a lot about it since Annie’s visit to the ranch. To be precise, he’d thought a lot about Annie and the sadness in those eyes of hers. It had occurred to him that if he took the horse on, he might be doing it not to help the horse but to help her. He never did that. It was the wrong reason.

“I’m sorry. It was important.”

He turned to see Annie coming in. She was wearing a big denim shirt and her hair was combed back, still wet from the shower. It made her look boyish.

“That’s okay.”

She went to get the coffee and topped up her cup. Then she came over to him and did the same to his without asking.

“You’ve been to see him?”

She put the coffeepot down but stayed standing in front of him. She smelled of soap or shampoo, something expensive anyway.

“Yes. I just came from there.”

“And?”

Tom still didn’t know how he was going to break it to her, even as he started to speak.

“Well, he’s about as wretched as a horse can get.”

He paused a moment and saw something flicker in her eyes. Then over her shoulder he saw Grace in the doorway, trying to look as if she didn’t care and failing miserably. Meeting this girl just now had been like seeing the last picture of a triptych. The whole had become clear. All three—mother, daughter and horse—were inextricably connected in pain. If he could help the horse, even a little, maybe he could help them all? What could be wrong with that? And truly, how could he walk away from such suffering?

He heard himself say, “Maybe we could do something.”

He saw the relief surge into Annie’s face.

“Now hold on, ma’am, please. That was only a maybe. Before I could even think about it, I need to know something. It’s a question for Grace here.”

He saw the girl stiffen.

“You see, when I work with a horse, it’s no good just me doing it. It doesn’t work that way. The owner needs to be involved too. So, here’s the deal. I’m not sure I can do anything with old Pilgrim, but if you’ll help, I’m prepared to give it a go.”

Grace gave that bitter little laugh again and looked away as if she couldn’t believe he could make such a dumb suggestion. Annie looked at the floor.

“You have a problem with that Grace?” Tom said. She looked at him with what was no doubt meant as contempt but when she spoke, her voice quavered.

“Isn’t it like, obvious?”

Tom considered this for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope. I don’t think it is. Anyway, that’s the deal. Thanks for the coffee.” He put his cup down and walked toward the door. Annie looked at Grace who turned away into the living room. Then Annie came hurrying after him into the hall.

“What would she have to do?”

“Just be there, help out, be involved.”

Something told him he shouldn’t mention riding. He put his hat on and opened the front door. He could see the desperation in Annie’s eyes.

“It’s cold in here,” he said. “You ought to get the heating checked out.”

He was about to step out when Grace appeared in the living room doorway. She didn’t look at him. She said something but it was so low he couldn’t catch it.

“I’m sorry Grace?”

She shifted uncomfortably, her eyes flicking sideways.

“I said okay. I’ll do it.”

And she turned away and went back into the room.

   Diane had cooked a turkey and was carving it as if it deserved it. One of the twins tried picking a piece and got his hand slapped. He was supposed to be ferrying the plates over from the sideboard to the table where everyone else was already seated.

“What about the yearlings?” she said. “I thought that was the whole idea of not doing clinics, so you could work with your own horses for a change.”

“There’ll be time for, that,” said Tom. He couldn’t understand why Diane seemed so riled.

“Who does she think she is, coming out here like that? Just assuming she can force you into it. I think she’s got one hell of a nerve. Get off!” She tried to slap the boy again but this time he got away with the meat. Diane raised the carving knife. “Next time you get this, okay? Frank, don’t you think she’s got a nerve?”

“Oh hell, I don’t know. Seems to me it’s up to Tom. Craig, will you pass the corn please?”