Marvel and a Wonder (38 page)

The boy piloted the truck across the center of the road, the vehicle fighting through the unmowed grass, and then sped in the opposite direction, back toward an off-ramp they had just passed. The grandfather was quiet, trying to catch sight of the horse, but it was already moving again, trotting from the field toward a small town that sprung like a gash among the heavy acreage of trees.

Soon the animal was rushing along a narrow main street, past a liquor store, then a motel, then an abandoned movie theater. From there, the horse disappeared down a side street, the pickup truck speeding in pursuit. Stopping at a street corner, the boy stared through the early-morning light for any sign of white. In a wide lot, there were several pieces of laundry hanging along two lines, and for a moment the boy thought it was the mare, and then blinking, leaning forward, he thought they might also be ghosts. On the third blink, he saw them for what they were, and asked, his voice a whisper, “Where did she go?”

“You drive down that way,” the grandfather murmured. “I’ll walk from here.”

“But what about—”

“Go on now. We don’t got time to argue.”

The old man pulled himself out of the cab, fixed his hat straight on his head, and marched with an awkward limp down the main street, whistling a little, clucking softly with his tongue. The pale-blue pickup pulled away from the curb, its red taillights tracing the arc of its path down a narrow side street.

* * *

The girl huddled in the underbrush, hidden by the high sweep of brambles, arms folded across her chest, lips chattering, entire body trembling, not from fear or shock but the shape of the shadow crossing before her, pistol in hand. It was him. She could smell him, the dank odor: like a rat’s den, oily, nervous. She could hear him groaning a little to himself, snarling as he pushed his way through the weeds, passing only a few feet from where she was now crouching, her eyes closed tight, hands folded fiercely in prayer against her left cheek, Rick West’s figure pausing there for a second before it strode on, disappearing into the lightening shadows, traveling down the declination of meadow, heaving itself over a low barbed-wire fence. When she was sure he was gone, when she had crouched there for as long as she could, daring to think she was safe, she darted out from the thicket and made her way toward a pair of headlights as they approached down the highway, arms raised before her in a plea. It was an elderly couple, an old man and an old woman, in an ancient Ford station wagon. The car stopped, and the girl—fleeing from the night and whatever she’d been—climbed inside.

* * *

The grandfather loped on a little farther and was surprised when he saw the horse standing there, grazing in front of a small white church. It had its muzzle buried in an azalea bush and was nipping at its leaves, ears flattened along its narrow skull, teeth working over the fibrous twigs, breath pluming from its nostrils in twin puffs. Jim slowed his gait, striding with his hand upraised, still clucking, kissing the air slightly, stopping about ten feet from where the horse was feeding. Suddenly, it lifted its great neck, blinked its long, feminine eyelashes, then turned quickly from where it was standing and galloped off once more.

“Son of a bitch.” The old man watched the animal dazzle away into the dark, a flash of lightning curving along the horizon, shooting west down an ever-widening street.

* * *

The shape hurried on, pistol in hand, left leg dragging a little, as the ribs and thighbone on his left side felt desperately sore. His forehead had stopped bleeding and so he folded his handkerchief back into his jeans, pausing to look up at the small unlit town, shades and curtains drawn, inhabitants still asleep. Rick spat something from his mouth, trying to get rid of the taste of blood, and then moved on, finding no sign of the horse, nor any other semblance of life. And then, like another lost soul gleaming before him, the horse came around the corner and made a wild dash through an abandoned lot, clods of dirt rising. Rick fired blindly, shooting at wherever it had just passed.

* * *

The boy pulled the pickup to a halt at the end of a brick-paved alley, glimpsing the horse with its head in a dented silver garbage can standing in a long row of other silver garbage cans. It snuffled at some trash and then raised its eyes, hearing the squeak of the pickup’s brakes. Quentin hurried from the vehicle, leaving the door open and the engine running. The horse lifted its small ears, looking alarmed.

“It’s me,” the boy said, no longer moving.

The horse shifted backward when the boy slowly held his hand out.

“Don’t you remember? It’s me.” He took another step forward, thinking if only he were to touch it, if only he were able to get close enough, if only he could place his hand along the side of its neck, then there’d be no reason left to doubt.

One more step, he smiled and put the flat of his palm against the animal’s soft throat. Feeling it tremble, feeling its pulse, he thought,
It’s going to be all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of
. Then there was a gunshot and the horse fled again.

* * *

The grandfather huffed a little as he limped his way over the sidewalk, past a gray slate parking lot belonging to a rundown funeral home. Directly behind him, the steeple of the church clanged to life; he could hear the bell in the tower begin to toll, the sun’s brightness now visible in the easternmost edge of the sky, parked cars, windowpanes, leaves of trees all suddenly beginning to glow with light. The bells behind him chimed one, two, three, four, then five, though in their reverberations what the grandfather heard was unfamiliar, distant, frightening. Instead of the clangor of the blue-bronze clapper against the blue-bronze bell, it was an exhortation, an appeal for the old man to stop his clumsy advance across the parking lot; one, two, three, four, then five, the echo of the Sunday-morning chimes no longer a far-off sound but now altogether an immutable sort of voice. The old man trudged on regardless, marching past the funeral parlor—multicolored caskets displayed indiscreetly in its window—here was a gold one, a bright blue one, trimmed in bronze, one all white—the pearly handles, the silk cushions, the filigree shapes like harps and angels. He trotted past their mute, rectangular shapes and spied the horse at the end of the street, drinking softly from a yellow fire hydrant that had sprung a leak. He held his hand out against a blue mailbox a moment, observing the horse leaning there in the early light, its rear flank bloodied, its foreleg badly bent, a silver lather having gathered along its muscular shoulders and neck. He held out one hand toward the animal, trying to call to it, but it did not heed him, only lapped at the trickling water before galloping on.

It was standing in the center of a used-car lot by the time the grandfather caught up with it again, the animal resting gallantly between several rows of rusty vehicles. Jim could see its sides heaving, its nostrils trembling. There were colored plastic flags flying in the air overhead, red and orange and yellow and green, and behind him an enormous banner of the stars and stripes. He could hear the flags whipping above his head, the horse standing there, huffing at the air, whiter than white, the skin around its muzzle gray and pink, like some imaginary creature, breathing hard among the columns of Toyotas and Fords, former competitors parked side by side. The grandfather limped forward, raising his hand, reaching out toward the horse, pausing, afraid to spook it, afraid to find it no longer standing there. He placed a hand upon the horse’s nape, feeling the lather gathered there, the heat of the animal’s skin, its blood coursing beneath his own, palm against neck, flesh against flesh. It was like meeting an old friend; and so he smiled a little, seeing that it did not startle, only stood there, foreleg split, blood sparkling along its shin.

Then there was a hot feeling along the back of the old man’s neck, as if someone was standing behind him, and when he glanced over, he saw that he was not alone; it was the same yellow-eyed man from the wrecked pickup, the one who had been on the side of the road. He looked like he had been lashed; his black hair was plastered up against his sweaty forehead with a swipe of blood. He was standing gingerly, leaning against one of the used cars, balancing himself with the fingers of his left hand, the right holding a pistol. The grandfather’s eyes did not shift, locked upon the other man’s, the horse motionless now.

The two of them—the grandfather and horse—stood like an old-time photograph or pulp illustration, white hat tipped back upon the old man’s head, a grim expression on his face. The stranger pushed off the hood of a car, then inched forward. He stumbled from the front end of one vehicle to the front end of another, the gun still upraised. The grandfather studied the stranger’s eyes, seeing the pain in the man’s wrenched-up features, noticing the desperate glare in the mark of his lip, and watched as the intruder slipped some, catching himself on a weather-beaten Chevrolet. The stranger steadied himself, moaning; and it was then that the grandfather went for his own sidearm, clumsily lifting it from the back of his pants, the gun wavering before him like a flag, some indistinct warning, though the stranger kept on coming.

The grandfather could see the fearlessness, the nerve in the other man’s face, and held his own weapon out, tightening his grip, knowing it would do no good, seeing the inevitability of what was coming like night and day; the other’s shadow inched closer, now only a couple of feet away, the horse standing beside the grandfather with an air of exhaustion, quivering, both of them struggling to remain upright. Grimacing, the stranger pointed the gun at the grandfather’s stomach, the old man finding himself too tired to fight, his arm feeling heavy, the pistol now dangling uselessly before him.

The stranger said something Jim did not hear but understood the import of. The grandfather shook his head. The stranger said whatever he had to say again, taking a final step forward. The old man ignored this and looked over at the animal. He put a weak hand out, touching its shivering white flesh.
If it is God; if it is only a test; if it is a message; if.
Then the old man thought,
To give in; to come so far; to just let go;
and lowering his hand to his side, he thought,
Go
. Then again,
Go
.

Unspeaking, the grandfather pointed the gun toward the sky and jerked the trigger, the gunshot an eruption of both sound and light, the mare rearing up, tossing back its great neck, front hooves rising upward then crashing against the pavement, flying off once more, a blur of steaming silver-white, the grandfather having done all he could, all there was to do, seeing the animal vanish as it rounded a corner down the street, the stranger holding the gun out before him, infuriated, mouth slightly agape, discharging the pistol directly at the old man’s middle, a flash of muzzle fire, the grandfather there for a moment, swaying, legs going weak, collapsing to his back along the uneven blacktop, the stranger pausing, glaring down into the old man’s face with a look not of remorse nor guilt but one of pity, then disappearing, the stranger moving off in an clumsy hurry, away from where the horse had just fled, having given up now too, creeping back between the parked cars, his shadow replaced by the shadow of some other shapeless moving thing. The old man lay there as drapes quickly unparted, shades pulled open, the sound of gunfire traveling through the town’s sleep and dreams, the horse’s advancement along the town’s street reporting like the bell tolling once again, then growing fainter, beautiful, indistinct. He peered up into the sky and tried to catch his breath, placing his hand upon the thudding cavity of his chest. Now he could sleep and there would be no horse nor highway nor town nor trees. He smiled and saluted with his eyes the colored flags snapping in the breeze.

_________________

The boy heard both gunshots and ran off in their direction. Before him, kneeling in an open lot of mottled grass and broken pavement, was the horse, its ribs appearing and disappearing between short breaths; then it was falling onto its side, head impassive, heavily lidded eye opening and closing with difficulty. The boy knelt beside it, careful of its bloody foreleg. There was also blood from somewhere near its front quarters and somewhere else along its back. He placed a hand on its throat and looked down, watching the eyelid blink, the sun streaming across the horse’s skin with an unjust light.

Forty yards away he saw his grandfather’s legs jutting out from beside a row of used automobiles. The boy ran toward the worn-looking boots just as a state trooper’s vehicle and a local squad car pulled up behind him. Ten minutes passed before an ambulance from the neighboring town of Coldwater arrived. The two paramedics got his grandfather on a stretcher and loaded him headfirst into the back of the ambulance, the old man’s eyes closed, mouth agape behind a plastic oxygen mask, pulse failing. Everything then—the sun, the stars, his grandfather’s face—had gone white.

_________________

Over the muddy fields, the meadow grass bowing beneath the platinum hooves—horseshoes flashing like gunfire, like silver in a mine, one after another, brief points in a distant sky—thrashing over the sodden earth, on and on, the horse moving so fast it looked like it had climbed directly into the firmament, the grandfather and boy standing against the snake-rail fence, their twin shadows reaching away from the sun, the two of them silent, their mouths drawn, their hands too far to touch, the sun beginning its descent, the two shadows at the fence shifting toward one another, becoming a single figure of blackness, the horse a third shadow racing against itself with a violent, unassailable abandon, the two of them, grandfather and grandson, together against the fence rail, dreaming of other things.

_________________

By the time Jim came to, he found he was flying, a silver gurney stretched out beneath him, feet pointed skyward, the two paramedics lifting him headfirst onto the emergency room bed. The boy was beside him then, face appearing like a globe in the corner of the old man’s eyes. The grandfather blinked as a sign of recognition, of appreciation. The boy stood in silence near the open curtain as the doctors and nurses worked, seeing the old man’s chest rise then fall, rise then fall, rise then fall. His grandfather’s eyes looked softer than anything the boy had ever seen before. The boy took a step forward and held the old man’s hand, the fingers callused, the palms full of blisters, and saw his grandfather’s face staring back obscured by the oxygen mask, eyes full of fear and something else unfamiliar. Beneath the plastic mask, there was a weak smile. The boy tried to smile back. The electronic monitor began to drone, the old man’s heart failing, the doctor placing his white-gloved palms on the old man’s bare chest, pushing anxiously, counting out the compressions, the monitor repetitive in its static lull, then there was a cough, then a gasp, the electronic alarm wailing, the boy looking down at the darkened, yellowed half-moons of the grandfather’s fingernails, the old man’s hand in his own hand becoming the most important thing in the world, the contours of the grandfather’s uneven lips, the map of his wrinkled neck, all of it too important to shut your eyes to.