The Horse Whisperer (24 page)

It had struck him as odd that the first thing Annie should want to do in this new place, before unpacking,
before even seeing where she was to sleep, was to set up somewhere to work. He could tell from the look on Grace’s face as she watched that to her it wasn’t odd at all. It had always been like this.

Last night before he turned in, he’d walked out, as he always did, to check on the horses and on the way back he’d looked up at the creek house and seen the lights on and wondered what they were doing, this woman and her child, and of what if anything they spoke. Seeing the house standing there against the clear night sky, he’d thought of Rachel and the pain those walls had encased so many years ago. Now pain was encased there again, pain of the highest order, finely wrought by mutual guilt and used by wounded souls to punish those they love the most.

Tom made his way past the corrals, the frosted grass scrunching under the soles of his boots. The branches of the cottonwoods along the creek were laced with silver and over their heads he could see the eastern sky starting to glow pink where soon the sun would show. The dogs were waiting for him outside the barn door, all eager. They knew he never let them go in with him but they always thought it worth a try. He shooed them away and went in to see to the horses.

An hour later, when the sun had melted black patches on the barn’s frost-veneered roof, Tom led out one of the colts he’d started the previous week and swung himself up into the saddle. The horse, like all the others he’d raised, had a good soft feel and they rode an easy walk up the dirt road toward the meadows.

As they passed below the creek house, Tom saw the blinds of Annie’s bedroom were now open. Farther on he found footprints in the frost beside the road and he followed them until they were lost among the willows where the road crossed the creek in a shallow ford.
There were rocks you could use as stepping-stones and he could see from the wet criss-cross marks on them that whoever it was had done just that.

The colt saw her before he did and, prompted by the pricking of its ears, Tom looked up and saw Annie running back down from the meadow. She was wearing a pale gray sweatshirt, black leggings and a pair of those hundred-dollar shoes they advertised on TV. She hadn’t yet seen him and he brought the colt to a stop at the water’s edge and watched her come nearer. Through the low rush of the water, he could just make out the sound of her breathing. She had her hair tied back and her face was pink from the cold air and the effort of her running. She was looking down, concentrating so hard on where she was putting her feet that if the colt hadn’t softly snorted, she might have run right into them. But the sound made her look up and she stopped in her tracks, some ten yards away.

“Hi!”

Tom touched the brim of his hat.

“A jogger, huh?”

She made a mock haughty face. “I don’t jog, Mr. Booker. I run.”

“That’s lucky, the grizzlies around here only go for the joggers.”

Her eyes went wide. “Grizzly bears? Are you serious?”

“Well, you know, we keep ’em pretty well fed and all.” He could see she was worried and grinned. “I’m kidding. Oh, they’re around but they like to stay higher. You’re safe enough.”
He
thought about adding, except for the mountain lions, but if she’d heard about that woman in California she might not think it too funny.

She gave him a narrow-eyed look for teasing her, then grinned and came closer so that the sun fell full on
her face and she had to shield her eyes with one hand to look up at him. Her breasts and shoulders rose and fell to the rhythm of her breathing and a slow steam curled off her and melted in the air.

“Did you sleep okay up there?” he said.

“I don’t sleep okay anywhere.”

“Is the heating okay? It’s been a while since—”

“It’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s really very kind of you to let us stay out here.”

“It’s good to have the old place lived in.”

“Well, anyway. Thank you.”

For a moment, neither of them seemed
to
know what to say. Annie reached out to touch the horse, but did it a little too suddenly so that the animal tossed his head away and took a couple of steps back.

“I’m sorry,” Annie said. Tom reached down and rubbed the colt’s neck.

“Just hold your hand out. A little lower, there, so he can get the smell of you.” The colt lowered his muzzle to Annie’s hand and explored it with the tips of his whiskers, snuffling it now. Annie watched, a slow smile starting, and Tom noticed again how the corners of her mouth seemed to have some mysterious life of their own, qualifying each smile for its occasion.

“He’s beautiful,” she said.

“Yeah, he’s doing pretty good. Do you ride?”

“Oh. A long time ago. When I was Grace’s age.”

Something in her face changed and at once he regretted asking the question. And he felt dumb because it was clear that in some way she blamed herself for what had happened to her daughter.

“I’d better get back, I’m getting cold.” She moved off, giving the horse space as she passed, squinting up at Tom. “I thought it was supposed to be spring!”

“Oh well, you know what they say, if you don’t like the weather in Montana, wait five minutes.”

He turned in the saddle and watched her make her way back across the stepping-stones of the ford. She slipped and cursed to herself as one shoe went briefly under the icy water.

“Need a lift?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“I’ll come by around two o’clock and collect Grace,” he called.

“Okay!”

She reached the far side of the creek and turned to give him a little wave. He touched his hat and watched her turn away again and break into a run, still not looking at what lay around her or ahead of her, but only where she placed her feet.

   Pilgrim burst into the arena as though fired from a cannon. He ran straight to the far end and stopped there, sending up a splash of red sand. His tail was clenched and it twitched and his ears moved back and forward. His eyes were wild and fixed on the open gate through which he’d come and through which he knew the man would now follow him.

Tom was on foot and had in his hands an orange flagstick and a coiled rope. He came in and shut the gate and walked to the middle of the arena. The sky above him rushed with small white clouds so that the light shifted constantly from gloom to glare.

For almost a minute they stood there, quite still, the horse and the man, assessing each other. It was Pilgrim who moved first. He snorted and lowered his head and took some small steps back. Tom stayed like a statue, with the tip of his flag resting on the sand. Then at last
he took a step toward Pilgrim and at the same time lifted the flag in his right hand and made it crack. Immediately the horse launched off to the left and ran.

Round and round the arena he went, kicking up the sand, snorting loudly and tossing his head. His cocked and tangled tail splayed out behind him, flicking and swishing in the wind. He ran with his rear skewed in and his head skewed out and every ounce of every muscle in his body was clenched and focused only on the man. Such was the angle of his head, he had to strain his left eye backward to see him. But it never strayed, held there by a line of fear so enthralling that, in his other eye, the world was but a circling blur of nothingness.

Soon his flanks began to shine with sweat and flecks of foam flew from the corners of his mouth. But still the man drove him ever on and every time he slowed, up the flag would go and crack, forcing him forward and forward again.

All this Grace watched from the bench Tom had set up for her outside the rails of the arena. It was the first time she’d seen him work like this on foot and there was an intensity about him today that she’d noticed right away when he came by in the Chevy on the stroke of two to drive her down to the barn. For today, they both knew, was when the real work with Pilgrim was to start.

The horse’s leg muscles had grown strong again with all the swimming he’d been doing and the scars on his chest and face were looking better by the day. It was the scars inside his head that now needed seeing to. Tom had parked outside the barn and let Grace lead the way down the avenue of stalls to the big one at the end where Pilgrim now lived. There were bars on the top half of the door and they could see him watching them
all the way. When they reached the door, he always backed away into the far corner, lowering his head and flattening his ears. But he no longer charged when they came in and lately Tom had let Grace take in his feed and water. His coat was matted and his mane and tail filthy and tangled and Grace longed to get a brush on him.

The far wall of the stall had a sliding door which opened onto a bare concrete lobby where there were doors both to the pool and the arena. Getting him to and from either one was a matter of opening the appropriate door and crowding him so that he bolted through. Today, as if sensing some new plot, he hadn’t wanted to go and Tom had had to get in close and slap his hindquarters.

Now, as Pilgrim went by, for maybe the hundredth time, Grace saw him turn his head to look square at Tom, wondering why all of a sudden he was being allowed to slow without the flag being raised. Tom let him come right down to a walk and then stop. The horse stood there, looking about, blowing. Wondering what was going on. After a few moments Tom started to walk toward him. Pilgrim’s ears went forward, then back, then forward again. His muscles quivered in wavelike spasms down his sides.

“You see that, Grace? See those muscles all knotted up there? You’ve got yourself one hell of a determined horse here. Gonna need a whole lot of cooking, old fella, ain’t you?”

She knew what he meant. He’d told her the other day about an old man called Dorrance from Wallowa County, Oregon, the best horseman Tom had ever met, and how, when he was trying to get a horse to unwind, he’d poke his finger into its muscles and say he wanted to check if the potatoes were cooked yet. But Grace
could see Pilgrim wasn’t going to allow any such thing. He was moving his head to one side, assessing the man’s approach with one fearful eye and when Tom was about five yards away, he broke away in the same direction as before. Only now Tom stepped in and blocked him with the flag. The horse braked hard in the sand and swerved to the right. He turned outward, away from Tom, and as his rear end swung past, Tom stepped smartly in and whacked it with the flag. Pilgrim lunged away forward. And now he was circling clockwise and the process began all over again.

“He wants to be alright,” Tom said. “He just doesn’t know what alright is.”

And if he ever gets to be alright, Grace thought, what then? Tom had said nothing about where all this was leading. He was taking each day as it came, not forcing things, just letting Pilgrim take his time and make his choices. But what then? If Pilgrim got better, was it she who was expected to ride him?

Grace knew quite well that people rode with worse disabilities than hers. Some even started from scratch that way. She’d seen them at events and once she’d even taken part in a sponsored show-jump where all the money went to the local Riding for the Disabled group. She’d thought how brave these people were and felt sorry for them. Now she couldn’t bear the idea that people might feel the same about her. She wouldn’t give them the chance. She’d said she would never ride again and that was that.

Some two hours later, after Joe and the twins had come back from school, Tom opened the arena gate and let Pilgrim run back into his stall. Grace had already cleaned the place out and put new shavings down and Tom stood guard and watched her bring in the bucket of feed and hang up a fresh net of hay.

As he drove her back up the valley to the creek house, the sun was low and the rocks and limber pine on the slopes above them cast long shadows on the pale grass. They didn’t speak and Grace wondered why silence with this man she’d known so short a time never seemed uncomfortable. She could tell that he now had something on his mind. He circled the Chevy to the back of the house and pulled up by the back porch. Then he cut the engine off, sat back and turned to look her right in the eye.

“Grace, I’ve got a problem.”

He paused and she didn’t know whether she was supposed to say something, but he went on.

“You see, when I’m working with a horse, I like to know the history. Now most times the horse can tell you pretty much the whole deal just by himself. In fact a sight better than his owner might tell it. But sometimes he can be so messed up in his head that you need more to go on. You need to know what went wrong. And often it’s not the obvious thing but something that went wrong just before that, maybe even some little thing.”

Grace didn’t understand and he saw her frown.

“It’s like if I was driving this old Chevy and I hit a tree and someone asks me what happened, well, I wouldn’t say, ‘Well, you know, I hit a tree.’ I’d say maybe I’d had too many beers or there was oil on the road or maybe the sun was in my eyes or something. See what I mean?”

She nodded.

“Well, I don’t know how you feel about talking about it and I can sure understand you might not want to. But if I’m going to figure out what’s going on in Pilgrim’s head, it’d help me a whole lot if I knew something
about the accident and what exactly happened that day.”

Grace heard herself take a breath. She looked away from him to the house and noticed you could see right through the kitchen to the living room. She could see the blue-gray glow of the computer screen ana her mother sitting there, on the phone, framed in the fading light of the big front window.

She hadn’t told anyone what she really remembered about that day. To the police, lawyers, doctors, even to her parents, she’d gone on pretending that much of what had happened was a blank. The problem was Judith. She still didn’t know if she could handle talking about Judith. Or even about Gulliver. She looked back at Tom Booker and he smiled. In his eyes there was not a trace of pity and she knew in that instant that she was accepted, not judged. Perhaps it was because he only knew the person she now was, the disfigured, partial one, not the whole she once had been.