Nobody's Angel

13

INTERMITTENTLY BEHIND THE CORRUGATED TRUNKS OF THE cottonwoods Patrick could discern a sedan with an in-line trailer behind it. He was replacing planks on the loading chute, ones that had been knocked loose while he was gone; and he could see down to the road from here, to the sedan, the dust from the trailer and the changing green light on the metal from the canopy of leaves overhead. Cole Younger was the first dog to detect the car turning in, and his bellowing bark set Alba and the hysterical Zip T. Crow into surrounding the outfit. Patrick left the spikes and hammer at the chute and started down the hill. Once past the orchard he could hear the horse whinny inside the trailer and he could read the word “Oklahoma” on the plates. Was that Sooner, Hoosier or Show Me? The door of the sedan was open, but glare on the window kept him from seeing. He could make out one dangling boot and nothing else. Claire kicked Zip T. Crow very precisely and without meanness as the dog stole in for a cheap shot.

The car looked like it could pull the trailer a hundred in a head wind. Patrick had a weakness for gas gobblers; and a rather limited part of him, the part that enjoyed his seventy-mile-an-hour tank, had always wanted to rodeo out of a Cadillac like this one. He took a hard look: oil-money weird, no doubt about that. Like Australians, loud with thin lips, hideous Protestant backgrounds, unnatural drive to honky-tonk as a specific against bad early religion and an evil landscape: bracing himself against Claire.

She got out wearing knee-high boots, washed-out Wranglers, a hot-pink shirt and a good Ryon’s Panama straw. Long oak-blond hair disappearing between the shoulder blades in an endless braid.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you, Claire?” The dumb grin forms. No drool in the mouth corners yet.

“Just right,” she said. “And you, Patrick?” There was sweetness in her inquiry. Claire just kind of stood there and let the sun hit her, only her thumbs outside her pants.

“What do we have in the back?” asked Patrick.

“Got Tio’s horse.”

“Aged horse?”

“Four.”

“Is he broke to ride?”

“He is,” she said, “but he’s rank.”

“What’s he do good?”

“Turn around,” she said. “He’s real supple.”

“What’s he do bad?”

“Bite you. Fall on you. Pack his head in your lap. Never has bucked. But it’s in him.”

“How do you like him shod?”

“Just double-ought plates. Had little trailers in the back. We skipped that. He’ll run and slide. He’s still in a snaffle bit. You do as you like. But don’t thump on him. He can get right ugly.”

“Why didn’t you take the horse to one of the guys around Tulsa?”

“We’re gonna be here most years. We wanted to be able to see how the horse was going. Plus Tio wanted someone who was staying home with his horses.” The advent of the husband into the conversation dropped like an ice cube on a sunbather’s back. Could Claire have known the extent to which the horse was part of the arranging?

“How come you call him American Express?”

“Tio billed him out as ranch supplies. We named him after the card.”

“Right …”

“Tio would give you what you wanted for your mare. You could go on and bill the accountants in Tulsa.”

“She’s just not for sale. But I appreciate it.”

“How’s she bred?” Claire asked.

“Rey Jay.”

“That can’t hurt.”

“The only way blood like that can hurt you is if you don’t have it.”

You had to reach through to get the butt chain, past the dust curtain and the levered doors. Through the interstices of a green satiny blanket, the horse’s color could be seen: black and a mile deep. Looked to be fifteen hands. Squeezing his butt back till the chain indented a couple inches: a bronco. She said, “This colt can look at a cow.” She said “cow” Southwestern style: “kyao.”

“I believe I’ll unload him, then, and put a saddle on him and put him before a very kyao.”

She said, “If he don’t lock down, give him back.” Patrick thought: I won’t give him back if all he can do is pull a cart.

The stud unloaded himself very carefully, turned slowly around on the halter rope and looked at Patrick. A good-looking horse with his eyes in the corners of his head where they’re supposed to be; keen ears and vividly alert.

Claire looked at her watch. “Y’know what? I’m going to just let you go on and try the horse. If I don’t get back, Tio’s going to pitch a good one.”

“Well, call me up and I’ll tell you how we got along.” A rather testy formality had set in. The electric door at closing time.

She scribbled the accountants’ address in Tulsa for training bills and then she was gone, the clatter of the empty trailer going downhill behind the silent anthracite machine to the great space toward town. Patrick tried to conclude something from the aforegoing, rather cool, rather unencouraging conversation, then suddenly grew irritated with himself, thinking, What business is this of mine? I’m just riding a horse for a prosperous couple from Oklahoma. Nobody else even knows I’m out of the Army. I shall do as instructed and bill the accountants in Tulsa.

Patrick absentmindedly led the horse toward the barn, trailing him at the end of the lead shank, the horse behind and not visible to him. And in an instant the horse had struck him and had him on the ground, trying to kill him. Patrick cradled his head and rolled away, trying to get to his feet, the stallion pursuing him and striking down hard with his front feet until Patrick was upright, hitting him in the face with his hat. Patrick stood him off long enough to seize the rake leaning up against the tack shed and hold the stud at bay. The horse had his ears pinned close to his head, nostrils flared, a look of homicidal mania that will sometimes seize a stallion. It was Patrick’s fault. He was in pain and he blamed himself. The horse’s ears came up and he began to graze: He had no recollection of the incident. Patrick picked up the lead shank and led him correctly to the barn, the horse snorting and side-passing the new shapes in its interior, until Patrick turned him into a box stall and left him.

He hobbled toward the house, and Mary, who had heard or sensed something, came out. Patrick knew it was less than serious injury; but it hurt to breathe and he wanted to know why.

“What in the world happened?”

“New stud got me down.”

“What’s wrong with your voice?”

“Can’t get my breath. You take me to town?”

Mary drove the Ford while Patrick scanned the road for potholes. She had some theory, some fatal Oriental notion, that this horse represented an intricate skein of influences which had already demonstrated itself to be against Patrick’s best interests. Patrick couldn’t help thinking that it was the horse Tio sent him.

“Mary, you haven’t even seen the horse.”

“That horse is employed by the forces of evil. You watch. The X-rays will show something broken.”

Patrick sat on the bench outside the X-ray room, his green smock tied behind. Mary had gone on and on about the horse and its relationship to Patrick and the universe; and about how Patrick had to think about these things and not just go off and drive tanks or break any old horse or see the wrong people. Patrick sorted through his incomplete knowledge of the world’s religions and, as he awaited his X-rays, tried to think just what it was she was stuck on this time. He began with the East, but by the time the nurse called him, he had it figured out: Catholicism.

The doctor, staring at the plates, said, “Four cracked ribs.”

They taped Patrick and sent him home. In the car Mary said, “Now do you understand?”

“No,” he said.

“There-are-none-so-blind-as-those-who-will-not-see.”

“Yeah, right.”

Patrick, apart from hurting considerably, disliked the monotonous pattern he had long ago got into with Mary, bluntly resisting what he saw as signs of her irrationality. He had to think of another way, though the burdens of being an older brother impeded his sense. And something about his own past, the comfort of the Army, the happy solitude of bachelorhood, the easy rules of an unextended self — some of that came back with the simple pain, the need to hole up for a bit. For instance, a friendly hug would kill him.