Wash (26 page)

Richardson puts his hand on the latch and nods over at Wash. As Wash pours the water and then the grain through the slot, Richardson steps inside the stall. Two beats and he’s out again, bolting both latches as the horse erupts behind the wall. Richardson looks at Wash and then at the wall as squeals and thuds echo through the stud barn.

The small group of spectators falls away murmuring and Richardson runs his fingers through his hair, rubbing his scalp hard to make that tingling feeling go away. He opens the top door, telling Wash to watch the horse till he wears himself out and he’ll be back to check on them by dinnertime.

Wash

That damn fool stud started striking at the wall soon as he found out he couldn’t pull away from it. He headed right at it like it was a living thing. Cut his knees up from striking. Screaming then snaking his head down hard. And the whomp of his teeth hitting wood with splinters flying until chips and dents circled out from that hook in the wall like stars in the sky.

He broke a front tooth from striking at the hook and that tooth stuck straight out till his top lip kept catching on it. Seemed like the weight of his top lip pressing on that broken tooth bothered him more than those bigger cuts on his legs or the one over his eye.

I don’t know how long it went on. All I know is I went through hungry and back several times while he sweat new wet through layers of dry caked salt.

Every now and then, he’d stop for a minute. Stand there trembling. Leaning against the rope. Breathing hard, flashing bright pink inside his nose, with his top lip jumping to keep from pushing on that broken tooth. Blood dripping on the straw. A minute of quiet before it would start again.

In the end, it was tiredness that stopped his pulling. Wasn’t till then when he finally saw what we’d been trying to show him all along. Soon as he let up on the rope, the rope let up on him. Once he let that rope fall just a hair slack, it quit grabbing at him. He drew one long shuddering breath and let his head drop to the straw.

I stood there watching with my elbows hooked over the stall door. That horse carried every blow he ever took right along with him. He stayed mad at the ones he already took and madder still at the ones to come. The fine in him was pretty much buried by the time he got to Richardson’s, but still it flashed out some from the clean way he was put together and how he moved.

I remembered feeling that very same fine rising inside me back on the big, spread out Thompson place. Working with Rufus and feeling my knowing coming together inside me. All the girls clustering close and the boys looking up to me.

Then that one day when I decided I’d had enough. I heard the sound of my own voice telling those brothers what I knew for sure and I saw that hammer coming down on me, dark and blocking out the light. I felt the ground pressing up against me, with my mamma hovering over me and one brother saying to the other, damn, Eli, what you trying to do? Kill him?

And I felt myself struggling there by the fire in front of Rufus’s shop after my long peace of living in the woods. My mamma’s grip was hard round my head and I saw Rufus bringing the orange hot brand down to meet my cheek. And then getting dragged here, holing up in this barn, hating everything and Richardson the most. Finding my way back into life all over again, only to end up back in the field. Till finally I was headed right straight for him, hungry to wrap my fingers round his neck.

I saw myself rearing against the rope wrapped round my middle. I saw myself striking at that wall stretching out forever in front of me, till I finally saw the only thing giving was me, over and over, till finally it was plain old tiredness that rescued me. Taut turning to slack, and then my breath coming long and slow, carrying the trembling away and washing me clean while I stood in the quiet of Richardson’s barn.

At the end of that long day, I unlatched the door and went in. All that was left was a flicker in his eye so I moved closer, talking to him, letting my voice rise and fall, smooth as my hands running over his thick coat crunchy with dried sweat, saying well I’ll be damned, Mr. Big Man, what you think about all this now, hmm, what you think about this now?

I didn’t throw more grain in the bucket for a treat. Not yet. We’d have to deal with that tooth first. But my hands went for the places I knew felt the best. I stood at his shoulder, running my hand down his broad chest to scratch between his front legs then running my other hand up to his mane, crabbing my fingers together along the thick crest of his neck. Once he felt me scratching him, he started to relax.

I’m saying that’s better, hmm, this is better, it’s better from here on out. I’m leaning my forehead into his neck, tasting salt on my tongue and laughing to myself and to him, saying well I’ll be damned. I’ll be good goddamned.

I stood there for I don’t know how long, rubbing and feeling his muscles give under my fingers. It was much later when I started feeling him lean back into me. Just a little but he was doing it.

“All right now, Mr. Man, all right now, we’ll see.”

I turned to leave the stall, bringing my hand up from his chest to run it along the crest of his neck and then real light along his back where the saddle would sit if we ever got that lucky. My hand was rising across his rump and starting to drop to the top of his tail as I headed on past him for the door. Good thing my feet was moving slower than my hand and I was still standing at that horse’s midsection when his near hind foot sliced through the air right in front of my face.

All right, all right, we’ll see about that is what I told him and I steered clear on out of there.

Took me a while to learn. Young man I was didn’t know nothing and stayed trying to keep it that way. Looking back from here, I still don’t see how I didn’t get myself killed.

I couldn’t let nobody tell me nothing. But it eased off, that need to do like I say and nobody else. Ran smack up against my wanting to be here. Somehow, somewhere, and not just from my mamma, I always had the real strong feeling I came into this world to happen to something and I had to see how.

Turns out there’s a way to give in without losing. You got to find some slack in you. Just this side of your breaking point. Each of us got a different breaking point, according to who you are and the life you get born inside.

And if somebody shows you how, you might can move that breaking point from where it started out to where you need it to be. But sometimes, you can’t. Who you are and the life you get given won’t never fit together and you leave this world as quick as you came in.

A real hothead like I was won’t last long. And I wouldn’t have neither if my mamma hadn’t stayed steady working on me. Rufus had a pretty good go at saving me too. Not that I was much help to either of em. Soon as they got my breaking point buried deep, I’d drag it right back to front and center. They kept telling me hate cost too much but I didn’t want to hear em. I liked feeling my heart sharp as a blade cutting through the world. Itching for a fight. Problem was, there weren’t too many fights I got to have, much less win.

It’s a wonder I made it but I did. It was on that day, watching that horse, when I found my way to a place inside me where I could stand. I looked out at everything and it dawned on me just like morning. I wanted to be here, stick round for it, whatever it was. I wanted to see it come.

That was the day when I took over from my mamma working on me. That was the day I took hold of my own insides, moving everything where I needed it to be to stay safe.

Richardson was back by dinnertime to see about that horse. Telling me about him like I didn’t already know. Settling in on that fourth step, leaning his back against the side wall and smoothing that flask to shiny with his palm.

Seemed like he couldn’t hear himself think unless he was talking at me. Started out with the horse but then went on and on. That night and the next few. Enough of that flask and he’d get good and snagged on his last war, hashing and rehashing, no matter how many times he said he was through with it. He went over and over it. What he set out to do, what went wrong and all the ways it went wrong. How he tried and tried to straighten it out but now he’s starting to see some things never do get straightened out.

Watching him go round and round with his story, I remembered seeing that one red pullet behind Ben’s cabin, gone addled. Circled round and round, pecking after one spot. Going after grain that wasn’t there till her beak was bloody from hitting the ground. Then the rest of em got after her and that was the end of it.

Richardson kept saying Montrose doublecrossed him all the way from here to Sunday. Pushed him and his men right up against starving. And they were Montrose’s men to start out with, making it worse. Said that same damn bunch of Kentucky men had almost mutinied on him from wanting their old boss back.

Said he looked at them, gone pale to blue and knee deep in the snow, pulling their own sleds upriver after they already ate the horses, and thought about asking em did they want their old boss back now?

Said he never ceases to be amazed by what men will do when you push em hard enough, and sometimes even when you don’t. Guess we all got our blind spots.

He went on about how Montrose screwed him and kept on screwing him until he ended up behind bars all over again. Just like his first war, gunning for glory then locked up again, sitting on cold stone for years. Except this time, he was outside Detroit. Called it godforsaken Canada. Said he thought he’d die there.

I already knew this part of the story for myself. His being locked up so long was what left me with those Thompson boys and I thought I’d die there too.

How is it some things come so easy and others come so hard, Richardson always wanted to know. But he never did wait on an answer. Just kept on telling me how he hired that man Kendrick to write it right. If the government won’t give him his inquiry, then Kendrick’s book will set the record straight.

I held my mouth shut to keep from telling Richardson that man won’t set nothing straight. I saw it just by watching him walk across the yard and that was before he got in the liquor good. But Richardson didn’t come down here for my opinion. That much I knew for sure.

Folks will take hold of whatever story suits em best and nothing you can do. Don’t matter if it is your story, once they start in on it, you can’t never get it out of their mouth. No matter how hard you try. All you can do is find a way to hang on to knowing you know better.

But what I started to see was the more times he came down to that barn talking at me, the more I meant to him, whether he knew it or not. My mamma told me and she told me, but it wasn’t till this point when I looked and saw how right she was.

She always told me, even beat up and crippled like I was when they carried us into Richardson’s yard on that very first day, she said you’re worth something to him and don’t you let him forget it. Said it was her being his had sent her out to that island with old man Thompson, and it was my being his had kept those brothers from killing me.

If I meant something to him just by being in this world, then my being smart and strong and hardheaded raised my count. And all his talking at me did too.

Find you a way to be his money was what she kept telling me. Make yourself worth something to him and be sure to stay that way.

Everybody goes through being deaf to his mamma, no matter how much sense she’s making, but what she stayed steady telling me started to sink in. After watching that chestnut stud, I started hearing her better. More clear.

Used to be, I was my whole world. All I knew to steer by was this great big ocean inside me with all kinds of storms moving across it. Used to be I’d head right into a squall. But Rufus was right. Throwing yourself round just makes em feel more the man. Gives em the excuse they been hunting.

I finally started looking at the whole of it instead of just the storms inside me. Trying to get my bearings. It was taking hold of the big picture that helped me wrap my mind round Richardson putting me to this work.

It was just like Rufus always said but I didn’t see it till now. He was always telling me, doing this lets you have that. I couldn’t see what he was saying back then, but soon as that knowing clicked inside me, there was no stopping me. If this work was what gave me a steady pass, if this work was what let me go where I needed to go right when I needed to go there, then bring me the next one.

It was just as I was hitting full swing when my mamma was starting to fade and all she said about it was how some things turn out to be just a shadow of themselves and I needed to hang on. I jerked back from her at first, when she clutched me tight to her and sounded so fierce, talking about how all these little ones of mine gonna tear his house down in the end, but I did right like she taught me.

When Richardson sent me someplace, I did what I could to go easy on em, and I looked for my own coming up over there the next time. On all these places round here. Somebody didn’t like his list, they came to me and I’d see what I could do. They knew, just like I knew, won’t be much. I always said, if you don’t want eyes on her, then keep her dirty and skinny and out of the way.

And just like she was waiting on me, hanging on till I stepped up and took hold of myself, my mamma died with peace on her. She knew she was leaving me safe and going home. Told me I had everything I needed and I’d be fine.

I do wonder if she saw all I had coming down the road to me. Every single one of these little ones comes carrying some shade of her. Maybe that’s why I kept at it. Maybe I was doing some good, keeping her with me long after she was gone.