If Wishes Were Horses (10 page)

“This’ll be waitin’ for you, cowboy,” the man said, tucking a ten-dollar bill under a bottle of Jack Daniels on the shelf beneath the counter.

Johnny did the job that night, and two nights later the manager asked him to make a run up to Minco to pick up some home brew. The money was welcome, but between the day and night jobs, Johnny lost a lot of sleep. He had no idea why he kept doing it. He was no saint and had been known to have a wild spell now and again which landed him overnight in a jail cell, but quite possibly this was the first time he had knowingly gone against the law.

Still he continued, working cattle and mending fence by day and hauling bootleg around by night, making deliveries to private homes on the nights he didn’t meet a delivery truck. There were no other jobs waiting for him elsewhere. No home for him to go to, and no one at all in the world looking anxiously out a window for him. He began to feel a forgotten soul.

The days immediately following the funeral, Etta spent as much time as possible away from the house—the scene of her failure and perplexity, and where Roy kept calling out to her. Awakening well before the sun, she would dress in a long-sleeved thermal shirt that stretched tight around her bulging middle, a dark plaid flannel shirt, and baggy overalls. These were clothes she had saved in a cardboard suitcase secreted away in the attic, her own clothes, worn during the myriad of menial jobs before she became Mrs. Roy Rivers.

“Where in sweet mercy did you get those clothes?” Latrice asked in high surprise when Etta at last got dressed that first day. “I thought they were long gone.”

“Well, they weren’t.”

Latrice raised her eyebrow. Etta turned away, pushed through the screen door, and raced out to hail Obie Lee chugging passed in his old truck.

That day, and the rest of the week, Etta spent much time with Obie, checking the cattle and doctoring them. He was thoughtful not to make conversation, and he seemed totally comfortable with her silence. If he was uncomfortable when tears welled in her eyes, he didn’t reveal it.

When there was no work with the cattle, Etta would walk the rutted farm tracks beneath the wide blue sky and then return to work and groom Little Gus for hours on end. Being with the animals gave her a measure of peace, and she tried to wear herself out so that she could not think, an effort that proved impossible. Memories and regrets nagged at her, demanding understanding, or simply acknowledgment.

People had said that Etta Marie Kreger had married Roy Rivers for all she could get. This had been true. She had wanted it all: love and companionship, a lovely home and the ability to buy lovely things, and freedom from the constant struggle just to stay alive. It was interesting to note that people did not say that Roy married her for all he could get, which he had. His wants went along the same lines, if from a slightly different point of view. Etta had never yet known anyone who did not want at least some part of love, companionship, and a comfortable life. And to Etta’s mind, only fools and no-counts did not seek to better their lives. Certainly anyone with any sense, who had grown up as Etta had, would have wanted to change her life.

Etta’s life before Roy had consisted of a succession of rickety shanties in small, dusty towns around west Arkansas and south Oklahoma, and two parents who scarcely knew she existed. Her father was quite frequently absent, and her mother was even more frequently crazy.

Oddly enough, the one concrete thing Etta and Roy had in common was their lack of responsible mothers. Roy had said his mother had been “off the beam” since the death of her favorite son, his older brother. Etta had never known a time when her mother had not been lost in a melancholy madness.

The doctors—and by the time Etta’s mother had seen doctors she was nearly middle-aged and sent to a state home for evaluation—had attributed her mother’s mental instability to physical changes during her first pregnancy, which had not gone well, and the child had died at birth. Etta’s father had said this was when he had first noticed his wife beginning to behave strangely and that it had gotten worse after the second child, who had also died at birth.

Jory Kreger apparently never considered that his leaving his wife alone for months at a time, to worry about how she was going to live without any money or the man she loved, much less bear the babies he filled her with, while he was off rodeoing or training horses, always chasing the best horse that ever lived, might have contributed to her unbalanced state of mind. Etta thought that losing two babies at full-term births would tend to make a woman act strange and should have a little bearing.

Latrice, too, scoffed at the doctors’ theories. “Miz Ria just had too much intelligence and too much poverty. Her mind was sat on is what happened.”

It had been true that Wysteria Harlinger Kreger—a name Etta thought might contribute to craziness—had graduated with the highest honors of anyone ever in her rural Arkansas high school and received scholarships to several universities, which would have enabled her to pull herself up from the sharecropping farm society into which she had been born, when her wits deserted her for one week in May, and she ran away with a blue-eyed cowboy who possessed nothing but a good horse and strong hands. Then along came babies, only two of which had lived—Etta and an older brother, Kyle. With each pregnancy, Wysteria Kreger’s senses further deteriorated.

While growing up Etta had to endure hearing the neighbors gossip about her mother. This is how she learned about her mother trying to abort Etta herself.

“Is it true?” she asked Latrice. She was six.

Latrice gazed at her for a long moment, then took her hand, sat her down, and told her the truth of everything. “Your mama cannot help it,” she said, “no more than Mr. Ruggles can help smackin’ his gums or Missus Yoley can help talkin’ to her dead husband all night long. Your mama doesn’t know what she’s doin’. She doesn’t mean anything against you by it. She is angry at herself, not at you.”

“She’s crazy, and everyone talks about it. They hate us.”

“No, they don’t. They like Miz Wysteria because she smiles and is so pretty and gives them somethin’ to talk about other than their own pitiful troubles. People always talk. You have to ignore it. There’s nothin’ else to be done about it. Live with it, is all.” Then she touched Etta’s cheek. “I love you, baby.”

Etta looked at her. “I love you, too, Latrice, but I wish Mama loved me.”

She had also wished to have a family like other girls she knew or like ones she read about in books: mother, father, sisters and brothers, all eating supper and talking around a table at night. She would run home from school and try to draw her mother out of her madness. “Mama, look at the drawing I made for you in school today. I love you, Mama.”

Sometimes her mother would reach for her and say, “I love you, too, sweetheart,” in the most beautiful voice, and Etta’s heart would soar with hope of a mother like she saw in the Shirley Temple picture shows. Shirley always ended up living happily ever after with a lovely family in a lovely white cottage with a rose-covered picket fence.

Only time and again Etta was disappointed when her mother lost touch with reality. Inch by inch her hope for a storybook childhood, or even a passably normal one, died.

Her mother began spending all afternoon and evening at the movie theater, where she was content and totally occupied. Then, when Latrice brought her home, she would either repeat, word for word, the dialogue of the actors that day, or she would retreat into silence before her vanity mirror, where she would do her hair and makeup, trying her best to look like Carole Lombard. She had in fact resembled the actress to a remarkable degree, and she had also died in an unexpected accident, although not on an airplane but in an automobile in which she had absconded from the parking lot of a Bright and White Grocery, driven erratically down First Street, and run into a tree. She had just seen a movie in which the character had stolen a car.

Etta was thirteen when her mother died. Right after the funeral, older brother Kyle went away into the army, setting his sights to see the world. Etta went to see him off at the bus station. It was an awkward time for each of them because they barely knew each other.

“Goodbye, brother,” she said, wanting to kiss him but not seeing any invitation to do so.

“Goodbye, kid,” And he swung up into the metal stairs, was away with one wave.

As she stared at the rear windows of the departing bus, Etta wondered if she would ever see her brother again. She had not. Kyle saw Germany and Turkey before he ended up dying of a particularly virulent case of food poisoning.

Etta’s father, Jory Kreger, went off as he always had. Etta was so used to him going away for big blocks of time that she maintained she didn’t even miss him for a month after her mother’s death. That particular time he was gone for four months, returning as usual with a new horse and several buddies he expected Etta and Latrice to cook for. He would pay Latrice when he was home, if he had money.

When Etta was sixteen her father went off supposedly to a horse sale and never returned. Not too many months later, in January, Etta received word from authorities that he had died, frozen to death after falling drunk in a ditch in Amarillo. She read the letter on the porch and then went around back of the little shanty she and Latrice had moved to in Chickasha and finished helping Latrice hang the laundry that was keeping a roof over their heads.

With all the lack in her life, Etta was just ripe for everything Roy had to offer her. In the manner of a starving heart, Etta had thrown herself into loving Roy Rivers, a man all bright and shining and professing to give her all she ever wanted. She had been so enamored by this knight in shining armor and the glorious prospects before her that she had rushed headlong into a most wondrous love affair, the sort written about in books, despite all of Latrice’s warnings.

And warn Latrice had done. When Roy would come, tooting the horn of his sleek champagne-colored convertible, Latrice would stand and bar the front door. And when Etta, wisps of her fair brown hair flying loose in her haste, dashed out the back door and sped off in a cloud of dust with him anyway, she knew Latrice sat herself at the red Formica kitchen table and prayed for Etta to be released from the Devil’s spell.

The last thing Latrice said to her each night was, “He’ll use you up and use himself up, too. Get some sense, girl.”

To which Etta would reply, “I can’t.”

“You just don’t want to.”

"That, too."

Even now, remembering, she smiled and held the memory close, thinking that she had no regrets for rushing after the promises of glory. The love and high prospects at the beginning had been a very fine thing, both of them seeking the brass ring.

Only their reach had fallen far short, and everything Latrice had warned of had eventually proved out. Roy had used Etta up, and he had used himself up, too.

All these memories became windows into Etta’s soul, thrown open by the shock of Roy’s death. The regrets were heaviest. She did not regret marrying Roy, but she regretted not being all that he had needed her to be, regretted things left undone and unsaid.

Latrice said, “This is grief doin’ its work. Let the memories come and let them go. You cannot go on until you get the grievin’ out.”

Etta replied, “I’ve wasted enough time, and I’m ready to go on right now, thank you.”

She left Latrice watching television in the living room and slipped out into the twilight, onto the porch and then over to Little Gus in the corral, her body following the same pattern as her mind, trying to run when there was nowhere to run to. A person could not outrun failures and regrets.

As the fiery sun fell behind the horizon, the breeze dropped and all living things got very quiet, as if pausing in reverence. Very slowly and gently, Little Gus nosed Etta’s belly, and the baby inside her suddenly kicked, as if to answer the horse’s greeting. The kick was so vigorous that the horse jumped back and snorted.

Somewhat startled herself, Etta put her hand on her belly. “Oh, my gosh, Little Gus.” Then she ducked beneath the fence rail and hurried to the house, running and not thinking that she possibly should not run in such a fashion. She burst through the door and hollered for Latrice.

“My land, what’s happened?” Latrice said with some alarm.

“The baby . . . she really kicked hard. Oh, feel here, Latrice.”

Latrice felt and said that was the baby’s foot. Etta sat and stared at her belly, feeling and seeing the movements of the baby, who seemed to have suddenly decided she had not been accorded enough attention and had set out to remedy the fact. Etta got a pencil and began to list names for the baby.

“She will not be named Wysteria or Etta,” she said firmly.

On the Monday following Roy’s funeral, Leon Thibodeaux, the Rivers family lawyer and one of Roy’s true friends, came and drove Etta into town for a meeting with Edward Boatwright, Roy’s uncle and the director of the bank. He came politely to the door, with his hat in his hand.

“I’m sorry to be disturbin’ you at this difficult time,” he told Etta. “But there are some things we need to get straight. I’ll return her safe and sound,” he added to Latrice, as if he had just taken custody of Etta.

He took Etta’s arm and told her to be careful while they went down the steps, watching her as if he expected her to pitch forward at any moment.

Etta had always liked Leon, but sometimes his stuffy manner could be suffocating. Leon was a very proper sort who always wore a gray suit and tie and kept his shoes highly polished. Etta’s eye caught the gleam of those shoes as he slipped into the car behind the wheel, and she recalled Betsy at the funeral and thought that Leon should possibly pay more attention to wife than to his shoes.

As Leon headed his black Cadillac down the lane to the highway, he said, “You want to roll your window up, Etta? Isn’t that a bit much wind on you?”

Etta shook her head. “No . . . I like the air.” She had the urge to be obstinate—she had to be widowed, had to go where she didn’t want to go today; she supposed she would keep the window down if she wanted. No sooner had the thoughts come than she felt contrite. She kept the window down, though.