Borrowed Horses (38 page)

Dave said, “Nothing is sacred to you, is it?”

The heart, the surrounding fire, the chasm in my chest, the longing, the longing. “I want,” I started to say.

“Yes?”

I had no idea how to end the sentence. “I want…”

His eyes blazed up. “Exactly,” his voice was resonant with sneering. “You are wanting.”

He put my heart into his pocket and walked away, leaving only the echo of his footsteps in all that space.

I woke with a start and grabbed my chest. The cotton of my shirt was sweat-soaked. I gritted my teeth and shook the dream away.

On New Year’s Eve, my phone rang for the first time in over a month. The ring startled me with its unfamiliarity. It was late. I realized as I listened to it ring that I’d turned off the answering machine weeks before. I stared at the dust that had collected on the receiver, wondering how long it took for a telemarketer to give up: six rings? seven? At ten, I answered.

“Your apartment is not big enough for you to take that long to answer the fucking phone.” Only Dawn began phone conversations this way.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” I imagined her clicking her nails on the counter, trying to decide whether or not to scold me further. She decided against and said instead. “It’s been a while, what with the different barns and all. I thought I’d see if you wanted to grab a beer.”

“Sure,” I managed.

“Dick’s in fifteen minutes then.”

But she was pregnant. “You can’t drink.”

“I never said I was going to.” She hung up.

It seemed like something should have changed. I looked around the apartment, but the only difference was the blackness of absent dust where my hand had touched the phone. My mouth was dry and I drank water. Lately, I couldn’t drink enough water.

I wore dirty breeches and mud-strewn boots. My hair curled into crisp ringlets, salty with dried sweat, but I wasn’t out to impress anyone. I steered my pick-up down the highway to Dick’s.

Harold threw down his bar rag when he saw me come in. “Joannie Edson. You still drinking Newcastle Browns?”

“Whenever I can.” I smiled. Banter with Harold was easy. No matter how long it’d been, we could do this by rote. Red cardboard letters hung behind him spelling Happy New Year, their metallic sheen long since rubbed dull, the corners of the letters bent with age. Make all the resolutions you want, Dick’s was Dick’s.

He pulled the cap off a bottle. “You want a glass for this?”

“Nah. Someone might mistake me for someone with class.”

“So how come you don’t come see me more often? You’ve been home over a year now, and I’ve seen you, what, once?”

“You don’t flirt with me enough. Hurts my ego.”

Harold laughed and picked up his rag again. “You’re not my type, lucky for me. You’d break my heart if you were.”

“That’s my job.”

“I know—seen you do it.” Harold was smiling, but I couldn’t read his tone. “You’re a girl that men commit arson for.”

The smile fell from my face. “That’s not something to joke about.”

“No, I guess it isn’t.” He stopped wiping the counter. The rag was so dirty, that it seemed more likely to wipe on smears than wipe them away. “You’re not to blame, Joannie. The guy was crazy. You know that, right?”

I had no answer. I picked up my beer and found a table under the old neon Miller sign. Waiting for Dawn, I watched it now just as I’d watched it over the many years at Dick’s. Dormancy, illumination, dormancy. Life was a fucking Miller sign. How was it that so much could have changed—the introduction of Dave and Timothy, the loss of Foxfire—and that I could be sitting in the same place, at the end of another circle, dormant again?

Dawn slapped a tall glass of ice water on the table, startling me out of thought. Her teased hair stood high on her head and glowed in the neon bar light. She could still fit into her turquoise-colored Wranglers, I noticed, but they were now snug over the slight outward curve of her once washboard flat belly. With her pressed Western shirt and her lacquered nails, she still looked like a rodeo queen.

Dawn looked me in the eye, then sighed and leaned forward to pull a piece of hay from my hair. “You look like shit warmed over.”

“You know how it is.”

“Actually, I
don’t
know how it is. What the hell have you been doing with yourself?”

“Working every double shift I can get. Not spending a dime I don’t have to. Saving for a horse. Riding.” I watched her sip her water. “Everything O.K. with the baby?”

“Peachy. And Timothy?”

“What about him?”

“You haven’t called me once. I assume someone’s taking up all your time.”

“He split.”

“When?”

“Day of the fire. He said to call him when I was ready.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “I’m not ready.”

Dawn stared at me a minute, then laughed and shook her head. “I’ve known you long enough, I should’ve seen this coming, but I just don’t understand how a smart woman can be so damned stupid.” She reached over and stole one sip from my beer. “You always did think you could do it all on your own.”

I pulled my Newcastle back. “I
can
do it all on my own.”

“Bullshit.” Dawn kept her eyes on mine, her gaze as level as a battlefield. “You know, I was pretty damned hurt that you never called me after what happened.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”

“Well, you were wrong. As usual, I might add.” She tapped her nails along the edge of the table. “I knew I could call you, but I wanted you to call. It was your turn, damn it. After you didn’t tell me about Dave or any of that shit, you owed me that little bit of effort. I wanted just that much faith in our friendship. And instead, you disappeared.”

The Miller sign went dark. I said, “I was the last person anyone would want to hear from.”

“You don’t think any of us needed a friend?”

I was suddenly angry. “What kind of friend was I? A friend who lied, or at least hid the truth? A friend who made a man hate her so much he burned a barn, killed a horse and himself? That’s a nice kind of friend. I was a better friend to you by sparing you from me.” My anger was short-lived, spending itself out into self-pity. I checked myself.

Dawn drank a long, slow steady sip of her ice water. Her eyes were narrow but unmoving. She said, “We all needed a friend then. Any kind of friend.”

“Well, if you still need one, you’ve got one.”

“That’s all I need to know.” Dawn leaned back in her chair, slumping a little but keeping her eyes, softer now, on me. “You got one, too. Just don’t fucking forget it next time.”

We were silent for a few moments. The young guys at the bar nudged each other, and one rose to approach, then turned back to his friends. As usual, Dawn and I were the only women under forty.

Dawn’s nails were painted with stars and confetti for the new year, but now the polish had already began to chip. “You ditched Timothy and kept Zephyr. Good thinking there, genius.”

“We jumped three six yesterday.” I didn’t add that everything in between fences was uncollected sprawl and fighting. Looking away, I caught the stare of the boy at the bar. I glared, sending the message that I was not a nice girl. “Zephyr didn’t even hesitate. If she’ll show, she’ll be my best prospect.”

“If she’ll show?”

“You know Zephyr.”

The boy was at my elbow.

“Piss off,” I said, turning to him. “I’m talking to my friend.” My face, dead serious, wiped the shy smile off his face. He blinked twice and turned away.

Dawn spun her paper coaster with the bottom edge of her water glass, waiting for the boy to get out of earshot. “Damn, Joan. Too cold.”

“Like you wouldn’t have said the same.”

“He was just a kid.”

“He must not read the paper, or he’d know to stay the hell away.”

She gave the coaster three more spins, then slapped the water down to stop it. “What exactly happened with Timothy again?”

I looked away, silent.

“He gave up that easy?”

“I told him about Dave. What I’d done.” I dropped my voice. “I told him that I needed him, and he left. He said he didn’t want to be the scab I picked when this was over, or something like that. He said I was too strong to need anyone.”

“Shit, then. You’re both stupid.” She sat back and thought about this. “But at least you’re stupid along similar lines. He said to find him when you’re ready. You realize that he didn’t want to be your rebound man. That’s promising at least. He wants to be there for the long haul.”

“Funny way of showing that. Leaving.”

She blew me off. We sat in silence for some minutes before she asked, “So are you ready to call him now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Christ. You’re in worse shape than I thought. Obviously, you would fall all to shit if it weren’t for me.”

“I thought you said I didn’t need anyone.”

“You only hear what you want. I said you
think
you don’t need anyone. That’s your whole problem in a nutshell.”

“Well, I’m glad to know my problem is small enough to fit in a nutshell.”

“It’s a big fucking shell, Joannie.”

The Miller sign blinked on and off. Dormancy, illumination, dormancy. I could make it on my own. “Here’s the thing about love,” I said. “For love, you have to sacrifice, right? Well, I’m not sacrificing my shot at a grand prix, not even for Timothy. The last month, all I’ve done is horses, and it’s been enough. I haven’t caused anyone any pain, and I got Zephyr from barely jumping to clearing oxers over three six in a month because I was there every morning to lunge and every night to ride. That’s who I am. If I sacrificed that, I wouldn’t know myself anymore.”

Dawn closed her eyes. “Where do you get this shit?” Her fingernails tapped again, twice through, then stopped. “Yeah, you’ve got to sacrifice for love, but not yourself. No one’s asked you to throw yourself up on a cross. You think I ever gave up who I am for Russ? You think he ever asked me to? You think it’d be love if he did?”

“That’s Russ.”

“I never noticed you coming to the barn any less frequently when you were seeing Timothy. Of course, I didn’t know you were seeing him. All I knew was that you seemed happier than usual. Did he even once ask you not to ride?”

My silence was answer enough.

“That’s what I thought.” She sighed, exasperated but caring. “Love
is
sacrifice, Joannie—I won’t sell you a false bill of goods—but you choose your sacrifices. I sacrifice my afternoons to shovel shit so that I can keep Sunny without going broke but also so I can get Russ that antique Winchester he had his eye on. D’you know Russ gave up beer while I’m pregnant so he wouldn’t make me jealous? And don’t even get him started on the Saturday pancakes he’s missed for my trail rides. You work out your sacrifices together so that neither of you ends up sacrificing the things that make you who you are, the people who fell in love in the first place. That’s love.”

Dawn reached out and rubbed my arm. Her voice was softer now than I’d ever heard it. “I saw you ride Foxfire when you were tired, when your mom was sick. You rode him in snow and rain and heat. You sacrificed for him. I know you’ll say those days were more for you than him, but they weren’t always, Joan. You sacrifice for your parents, working their garden and bringing them shit. You even sacrifice for Zephyr, God knows why. Twice daily trips to the barn for that waste of pasture? The thing about sacrifices for love is that they don’t always feel like sacrifices. They just feel like life.”

I passed a finger over the sweating brown glass of the bottle and began to peel its label. Cinderella loved, but she had no strength. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty. All they did was fall into nonentity and happily ever after. I needed to be the solitary gunslinger: swaggering, clear-eyed, unencumbered.

On Main Street, the bars were filling with people in spangles and paper hats. They yelled wishes to one another as I drove home. The moon was cloaked in cloud, and the night’s darkness seemed to open it to ghosts. I passed a girl walking home, clutching her sweater around her for warmth, and for a moment, it was Mouse. She’d walked in that sweater from many an MHS basketball game, but when I slowed to pick her up, her hair turned grey, and the face was no longer Mouse’s. I pulled the truck to the side of the road, needing a moment to gather myself.