Dream Wheels (34 page)

“Worried?” Johanna asked.

“No,” Victoria said. “Awed some but not worried.”

“Me neither.”

“I wonder about her, though.”

“Claire?”

“Yes. I wonder what there is for her in all this. Something beyond the way a mother’s supposed to feel when her young find a way to fly.”

“That’s not enough?”

“Generally. But she found us for a reason. A reason beyond the boy, beyond a dream of horses, and I’m perplexed. It’s all so clear. Everything but that.”

Johanna arranged the dishes in the sink for washing later. She ran the water until the last edge of porcelain bobbed under, then eddied it with her finger, watching the bubbles stir, break and disappear. “When you talk to her she drinks everything in. Like she’s open,” she said. “And that could fool you some, make you think she’s got all the blocks arranged. Like
she’s formed and you’re only adding to the foundation. But there’s a hole there.”

Victoria nodded. “Shame. She’s so beautiful. Strong, smart, independent. Like a horse. But she’s hobbled somehow. You can see it.”

“She has a way with them, the horses, a gentleness you can’t teach, as though she understands a bit between the teeth.”

“That’s it,” Victoria said, snapping her fingers. “It’s what I never recognized.”

“What?” Johanna asked.

“I never seen a horse put the bit on itself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she hasn’t let herself run for some time now. Free, all out, natural. She’s the one who hobbled herself. For the boy. Everything’s been for the boy. She drinks everything in because she’s thirsty, she wants it to fill her like you said.”

“Fill her with what, Mother?”

Victoria smiled and laid a hand on Johanna’s wrist. “Recollection. The remembering of what it’s like to be a woman—free, all out, natural. Generally, women are my age when they get to that, and it’s just age that eases things away. Young ones like her make a choice not to celebrate themselves.”

The two women continued to look out the window, and when Claire entered the kitchen they turned together and greeted her warmly, knowingly.

He’d spent the morning mucking out stalls and the afternoon whitewashing the rails on the back corral while his mother enjoyed a long ride up the ridge behind the ranch. Now, as late afternoon came, he was tossing hay bales into the stock pens. The two-handed motion made the muscles in his back and shoulders ache. They felt bruised. The forking, shovelling and
painting hadn’t seemed like much in the beginning, but he could feel the effects now with even the smallest movement. The ache itself angered him, and he worked harder, faster, determined to show his resilience. Joe Willie had appeared every now and then throughout the day to watch him work, and it galled Aiden to see the smug satisfaction on the cowboy’s face as he sweated through the chores. Now he could see him approaching from the main barn with his mother, who was leading a horse.

“You want to talk to them when you do that,” Joe Willie told him.

“Why?”

“They like it.”

“I’m supposed to rap to a steer because he’ll like it?”

“Strange but true, greenhorn.”

Aiden mumbled something about figuring slavery had ended a long time back while he pitched the next bale over the rail. Amazingly the steers bawled back. Or at least it sounded like they did. He shook his head and hurried to finish.

“So what’s chow tonight?” he asked. “I’m so hungry I could eat one of these buggers raw.”

“We’ll find that out when we get there. Grandma’s gonna keep it warm for us,” Joe Willie said.

Aiden turned from the corral and stared at him. Then he shifted his gaze to Claire, who stood quietly with her hand on the horse’s neck. “Why am I not liking the sound of this?” he asked. “What are we doing if we’re not having supper?”

“Going for a walk.”

“What’s the horse for?”

“I’m carrying water,” Claire said. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

“See that peak up there?” Joe Willie pointed to a sheer rock cliff facing west.

“Yeah,” Aiden said carefully.

“We’re walking up to that peak.”

“You don’t walk up a mountain.”

“We do.”

“Why?”

“Because you only worked the top part of you today. Now we’re gonna work your legs and your lungs. Walking up that mountain’s the best thing for them,” Joe Willie said.

“There’s gotta be something illegal about that kind of cruelty,” Aiden said. “Look at that thing. It’s almost straight up.”

“That’s why I have the horse,” Claire said.

“Three of us can’t ride that horse,” Aiden said.

“Only her,” Joe Willie said. “I wouldn’t ask a woman to try to walk up that sumbitch. It’s not polite.”

“But asking me to is real mannerly?” Aiden asked.

“You can’t train for bulls like anything else, kid. You can’t lift weights for strength. What you need is long, wiry muscle built for endurance but tough as steel. Walking up that mountain will build those legs up.”

“I’m not climbing that thing.”

“Scared?”

“No. Sensible.”

Joe Willie nodded. “Scared.”

“Look, I’m not scared. It’s just crazy.”

“You calling me crazy?”

“No.”

“That’s good, because I do it every night. As much as I can stand, anyway. But you’re right, it’s probably too much for you. You wouldn’t be able to handle it. I’ll think of something else a little easier for you.”

“I could do it,” Aiden said. “I could do that easy.”

“Nah. You don’t have the focus. You’re a city kid, a greenhorn. Forget it,” Joe Willie said. He turned to Claire. “Do you mind riding along behind me tonight while I do it?”

“No. It’s probably really nice on horseback,” she said with a smile.

“It is. It’s really a horse trail. A trail like that is only meant for horses. Way too steep and the footing’s too loose for two-leggeds. It goes up awhile then sweeps back down then up again so that we’ll have to stop and recinch that saddle for you. The inclines pull your weight either forward or back and she’ll get loose real quick. Kinda dangerous riding. You got yourself an endurance saddle there. Lighter. Easier on the horse in that kinda terrain. Generally only horses and mountain goats get up there, but it’s beautiful. Especially when you get to the cliff.”

“You made it that far?” Aiden asked.

Joe Willie rubbed his bad leg and grimaced slightly. “Not yet. But I will. It’s in my head to do it and I’ll get there. And it’s how
you
start earning the right to rig up on a bull.”

“The tests of Hercules?” Aiden asked.

“Something like that.”

“Well if you can do it, then I sure can.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Joe Willie said.

“Damn straight,” Aiden said.

The trail, if it could even be called that, was a rounded, twisting, gravelly seam that climbed up through the trees and boulders. The angles were severe in places and the footing was hazardous, the clumps of rock and sand made every placing of a foot a challenge, and Aiden often found himself reaching for shrubs, overhanging branches or the trunks of trees for anchor.
He could hear the rattle and grate of sliding detritus behind him every time he pushed upward another step. It was a mountain-goat trek as far as Aiden could determine, and pushing up it was an agony of the sort he’d never encountered. Each step called for a push with the thighs and the butt, and now and then he had to straddle his legs out wide to find the purchase to keep climbing. He felt the strain on muscles he’d never known he had. His lower back ached from being hunched over, and each reaching back with the elbows pulled severely at his shoulders. Breathing became a challenge. Only the horse seemed able to navigate without any discomfort, and Claire rode cautiously but steadily in the saddle.

After a few hundred yards the trail levelled out some into a shady stretch of rock bits and pine needles, and they eased up the pace. The trail continued to climb but it was lazier here, easier walking.

Joe Willie signalled to Claire and she handed down a pair of canteens. The two of them leaned on trees to drink and douse their heads. The sun flooded the slope with rose and orange hues. Somewhere birds twittered and the sound of the wind against the brush and bramble was like a hushed whispering. Looking out to the west they could see the ranch below them, the outbuildings given a hard glow by the intensity of the setting sun.

“It shines,” Claire said.

“It’s mighty pretty,” Joe Willie answered.

“Is this your favourite view?” she asked.

“No. Up there,” he said, hooking a thumb up at the cliff that towered over them. “Can see it all from there. There’s a meadow I used to ride to all the time to watch the sun go down. It’s like a balcony overlooking the world.”

“Will we see it tonight?”

“No,” Joe Willie said. “It’s a hell of a climb.”

“You saying I’m not up to it?” Aiden asked.

“What I’m saying is that it’s a hell of a climb. What you just experienced is only the first push. There’s more like it. Harder, even. I been trying for a while now and I ain’t walked up it yet.”

“But I have two legs,” Aiden said.

Joe Willie straightened and looked up at the peak. When he turned to Aiden his features were hard and set, chilling in their dangerous aloofness. Despite himself Aiden looked down.

“This mountain will teach you a lot if you let it,” Joe Willie said. “Mostly it’ll teach you that in the bigger scheme of things, you ain’t shit. This mountain can beat you all on its own. Add a little rain, some wind, fog, cold and you’re screwed. Screwed outright.

“But for you, kid, tonight and the nights to follow, it’s gonna teach you that it’s not your legs that’ll carry you up this mountain. Only your heart can get you there. Only the strength of it, the sheer will of it to win. Your legs will push you up, but it’s your heart that’ll carry you—and I got one of those.”

“I didn’t mean …” Aiden began.

“I know what you meant,” Joe Willie said harshly.

“Sometimes Aiden doesn’t think before he says things,” Claire said. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

“Still.”

“Still nothing.”

They stood in awkward silence. Aiden watched Joe Willie as he took small, measured sips from the canteen, then a handful he wiped across his brow and around his face and up through his hair. He did it with the left. He flexed his fingers
when he finished. Then he straightened his back and stretched, both arms pressed high above his head, twisting at the waist then bending to touch his toes. Aiden copied him. When he stood, Joe Willie was looking right at him, measuring him.

“What?” he asked.

“Ready for more?”

“Bring it.”

Joe Willie allowed himself a small grin. They handed the canteens up to Claire, and while she tied them to the saddle the two of them looked up along the snake of the trail. The sun was lower suddenly and the shadows deepened in the trees. There was a profound calm and a moist quality to the air that spoke of coming rain. The horse nickered at it, and somewhere in the trees off the trail a branch snapped as some animal passed. The wildness of it all sent a thrill through each of them but none of them acknowledged it to the others. Instead, Joe Willie nodded once, short and sharp, huffed out a breath and pushed up along the trail. Aiden followed one step behind. Claire watched them go. She sat on the horse and looked around her at the sepulchral majesty of tree and rock and sky and breathed, pulling all of it deeply into her, feeling the swell of it pushing against her ribs, pressing her diaphragm like a hand. She closed her eyes, tried to see all of it with her mind’s eye, sealing it within her being, and moaned luxuriantly. Then she nudged the horse lightly with her heels and moved up the mountain after the shadowed figures of her son and the cowboy.

He poked the last of the wrangler’s fire with a long stick of alder, stoking the embers until they glowed hot orange again. Then he added wood shavings, chips and chunks thrown from the axe
and watched the lazy lick of flame work its way upward. When he’d gotten it going good he sat back on one of the long, peeled cedar logs
they’d
dragged in for benches. The leg throbbed where it was pinned but he welcomed it with a certain satisfaction. The
boy
had done better than Joe Willie had expected. He’d figured the city muscle to play out quickly, maybe even have to double him up on the horse with his mother on the way back, but the kid had showed grit and pushed himself a good long ways. Still, the mountain had asserted itself finally, and they stopped in a hump of boulders near where he’d seen the bear. When he’d looked at him the kid was breathing hard but expectant as a pup waiting for command. They’d had a good long drink and allowed the horse to lead them back through the gathering dark. He’d showered, sat in the old girl awhile and then, feeling tired but exhilarated, he’d come to the fire once he’d heard the boys head off for the bunkhouse.

It was late and the sky in the sheen of the quarter moon was sprayed with stars. Against the horizon the mountains ran southward in a long, undulating line, all edges removed by the hand of the darkness so that they seemed to him less precipitous, less daunting and more like a series of low, rolling hills seen from a narrow band of coast. He shook his head. Such images came infrequently to him, and he was always charmed and spooked by them at the same time. He’d never had a head for poetry beyond the usual rhyming scheme of a country song or the rowdy cowboy ballads he’d heard around fires just like this one in his life on the road. But he found himself gazing contentedly at the smudge of mountain against the purple stain of night.

“Do you mind some company?”

Claire stood at the edge of the light, a blanket about her shoulders. He stood awkwardly and removed his hat.

“No,” he said. “Just sitting here thinking is all.”

“Thanks,” she said and seated herself on the log opposite him. She held her hands out toward the flames. Her teeth glowed white against the backdrop of dark pasture and mountain, and her eyes sparkled in the light of the fire. “I couldn’t sleep and I saw the fire out my window. It’s nice. So far away from the city.”