Nobody's Angel

21

BY FRIDAY, PATRICK THOUGHT HE’D MENDED ENOUGH TO RIDE Tio and Claire’s stud. He had him in an open box stall with an automatic waterer and a runway. The horse had been on a full ration of grain all week with very little exercise. Patrick expected him to be hot. This young stallion spent most of his day looking out on the pasture in hopes of finding something to fight. When any other horse came into view, he’d swing his butt around against the planks and let out a blood-curdling, warlike squeal. So Patrick went into his stall cautiously. The stud pinned his ears at Patrick, bowed his neck and got ready for trouble. Patrick made a low, angry sound in his throat and the horse’s ears went up. Patrick haltered him, took him out to the hitching rack and saddled him. He was a well-put-up horse but he looked even better under saddle. His neck came out at a good angle; he was deep in the heart girth and in the hip. Patrick bridled him with a Sweetwater bit, put on his spurs and led the horse away from the rack, got on and took a deep seat.

He rode up to a round wooden pen sixty feet across. Inside it, a dozen yearling cattle dozed in a little cluster. When Patrick rode in and closed the gate, the yearlings stood up, all Herefords, about five hundred pounds each. The stud was kind of coarse-handling, no better than cowboy broke. He smiled to think it was Claire who put this using-horse handle on him. But Patrick cut himself a cow and drove it out around the herd. The yearling feinted once and ran across the pen. The stud tried to run around his corner instead of setting down on his hocks and turning through himself. So Patrick just stopped, turned him correctly and still had time to send him off inside the cow. He set him down again in correct position. The stud reached around, tried to bite Patrick’s foot and lost the cow he was supposed to be watching. Patrick didn’t think he liked this horse. Nevertheless, he galloped him hard to get the nonsense out of his mind. That took two hours. This time the stud, having soaked through two saddle blankets, paid attention to his job. Patrick worked him very quietly, never got him out of a trot, but did things slow and correct.

In a sidehill above the house was a root cellar made of stone and with a log-and-sod roof. A horse fell through into the cellar one winter and Patrick built another roof, dragging cottonwood logs into place with the Ford gas tractor. He used it as a wine cellar and sometimes as a place to put vegetables if someone maintained the garden that year. In Germany he had raised tomatoes in nail kegs, and the big, powerful red tomatoes sunning on his balcony often touched his lady friends, who found the plants too piquant for words in a NATO tank captain. “You grew these?” “Yes, I did.” “How sweet. You are sweet.” At that point Patrick would know this was no dry run; post-coital depression was already in sight, no bigger than a man’s hand on the horizon. Once Patrick picked up the nail kegs to make room for the lady, now keen to sunbathe, and midway through the effort, his face in tomatoes and vines, he said, “I’m homesick, homesick, homesick. I’m just homesick. Montana has a short growing season, but I’m homesick, just homesick …” After he’d done this for a while, the lady sought her dress and departed. “I don’t want to see you again,” she said. “Ever.”

“It’s fair.”

Anyway, Mary headed for the root cellar to avoid a conversation, just at the moment, with the grandfather. When Patrick found her, she was moving down the rack, giving each bottle a half-turn to distribute the sediment, an almost aqueous shadow play on the ceiling, the sun reflecting on the orchard grass that grew to the cellar door. A narrow foot trail wound down the hill to the house.

“Grandpa isn’t drinking that stuff, is he?”

“Once in a while. I’ve been cooking for him. He’ll drink a little then. He seems to be taking the cure.”

“Let’s have a bottle of champagne.”

“Very well.”

Patrick found a bottle of Piper Heidsieck and uncorked it. They sat on crates in the half-light and passed it back and forth. It was nearly empty before either spoke. Mary sighed continually. Patrick felt that junkie light go up his insides.

“I’m sick of going around with my nerves shot.”

“I get mad.”

“Well, I get the creeps. I get bats in the belfry.”

More silence. Patrick examined the sod and rafters. He decided he’d done a good job.

“Why did Grandpa try out for a movie?” Mary asked.

“He wants to be better known, I guess.”

Mary said, “That’s more nails on the blackboard.”

“I myself would like to be extremely famous, larger than life, with souvenir plaster busts of me available at checkout counters.”

“I’d like to be ravishing. I’d like to put on the dog.” Her hands were shaking.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Whew … uhm … whew.”

“What?”

“… speechless …”

“Here. Don’t try. Have some more of this.” She took the champagne. “Horse fell through. Up there. Didn’t find him for two days. He ate a hundred pounds of potatoes.” Mary’s breathing was short and irregular. “He didn’t want to leave. Then he heard the irrigating water and gave in. Didn’t I build a good roof?” Mary nodded rapidly. “Anything I can do?” She shook her head. “Be better if I leave you alone?” She nodded her head, tried to smile. Patrick left. He wanted to be quiet going down the hill. God Almighty, he thought, she is a sick dog.