Nobody's Angel (11 page)

“How’s she bred?” Claire asked.

“Rey Jay.”

“That can’t hurt.”

“The only way blood like that can hurt you is if you don’t have it.”

You had to reach through to get the butt chain, past the dust curtain and the levered doors. Through the interstices of a green satiny blanket, the horse’s color could be seen: black and a mile deep. Looked to be fifteen hands. Squeezing his butt back till the chain indented a couple
inches: a bronco. She said, “This colt can look at a cow.” She said “cow” Southwestern style: “kyao.”

“I believe I’ll unload him, then, and put a saddle on him and put him before a very kyao.”

She said, “If he don’t lock down, give him back.” Patrick thought: I won’t give him back if all he can do is pull a cart.

The stud unloaded himself very carefully, turned slowly around on the halter rope and looked at Patrick. A good-looking horse with his eyes in the corners of his head where they’re supposed to be; keen ears and vividly alert.

Claire looked at her watch. “Y’know what? I’m going to just let you go on and try the horse. If I don’t get back, Tio’s going to pitch a good one.”

“Well, call me up and I’ll tell you how we got along.” A rather testy formality had set in. The electric door at closing time.

She scribbled the accountants’ address in Tulsa for training bills and then she was gone, the clatter of the empty trailer going downhill behind the silent anthracite machine to the great space toward town. Patrick tried to conclude something from the aforegoing, rather cool, rather unencouraging conversation, then suddenly grew irritated with himself, thinking, What business is this of mine? I’m just riding a horse for a prosperous couple from Oklahoma. Nobody else even knows I’m out of the Army. I shall do as instructed and bill the accountants in Tulsa.

Patrick absentmindedly led the horse toward the barn, trailing him at the end of the lead shank, the horse behind and not visible to him. And in an instant the horse had struck him and had him on the ground, trying to kill him. Patrick cradled his head and rolled away, trying to get to his feet, the stallion pursuing him and striking down hard
with his front feet until Patrick was upright, hitting him in the face with his hat. Patrick stood him off long enough to seize the rake leaning up against the tack shed and hold the stud at bay. The horse had his ears pinned close to his head, nostrils flared, a look of homicidal mania that will sometimes seize a stallion. It was Patrick’s fault. He was in pain and he blamed himself. The horse’s ears came up and he began to graze: He had no recollection of the incident. Patrick picked up the lead shank and led him correctly to the barn, the horse snorting and side-passing the new shapes in its interior, until Patrick turned him into a box stall and left him.

He hobbled toward the house, and Mary, who had heard or sensed something, came out. Patrick knew it was less than serious injury; but it hurt to breathe and he wanted to know why.

“What in the world happened?”

“New stud got me down.”

“What’s wrong with your voice?”

“Can’t get my breath. You take me to town?”

Mary drove the Ford while Patrick scanned the road for potholes. She had some theory, some fatal Oriental notion, that this horse represented an intricate skein of influences which had already demonstrated itself to be against Patrick’s best interests. Patrick couldn’t help thinking that it was the horse Tio sent him.

“Mary, you haven’t even seen the horse.”

“That horse is employed by the forces of evil. You watch. The X-rays will show something broken.”

Patrick sat on the bench outside the X-ray room, his green smock tied behind. Mary had gone on and on about the horse and its relationship to Patrick and the universe; and about how Patrick had to think about these things and not just go off and drive tanks or break any old horse
or see the wrong people. Patrick sorted through his incomplete knowledge of the world’s religions and, as he awaited his X-rays, tried to think just what it was she was stuck on this time. He began with the East, but by the time the nurse called him, he had it figured out: Catholicism.

The doctor, staring at the plates, said, “Four cracked ribs.”

They taped Patrick and sent him home. In the car Mary said, “Now do you understand?”

“No,” he said.

“There-are-none-so-blind-as-those-who-will-not-see.”

“Yeah, right.”

Patrick, apart from hurting considerably, disliked the monotonous pattern he had long ago got into with Mary, bluntly resisting what he saw as signs of her irrationality. He had to think of another way, though the burdens of being an older brother impeded his sense. And something about his own past, the comfort of the Army, the happy solitude of bachelorhood, the easy rules of an unextended self—some of that came back with the simple pain, the need to hole up for a bit. For instance, a friendly hug would kill him.

14

THE
NORTHBRANCH
SALOON
IS
A
GRAND
SPOT
IN
THE
AFTERNOON
, thought Patrick. There will be no one there, there will be the sauce in the bottles and that good jukebox. And he could start getting Claire off his mind and just sit at the bar and think about her;
then
go about his business without this distraction with her
off
his mind and his
mind thereby liberated for more proper business. At this point he knew his father would have asked, “Like what?”

“Hello, Dan,” he said to the bartender on duty. “George Dickel and ditch, if you would.” There was a TV on top of the double-door cooler. The host was getting ready to spin the roulette wheel. A couple from Oregon stared, frozen, at his hand. Patrick gripped his drink and looked up at the “North Dakota pool cue” overhead—it had a telescopic sight; he preferred it to the “North Dakota bowling ball,” which was simply a cinderblock. Claire puts her hands in her back pockets. Around the top of the bar are boards with names and brands on them. American Fork Ranch, Two Dot, Montana. There’s a machine that will play draw poker against you. Hay Hook Ranch. Raw Deal Ranch. Bob Shiplet, Shields Route, Livingston, Montana. Clayton Brothers, Bozeman, Montana. I also don’t think she is being accorded treatment commensurate with her quality by that Okie hubby. And what’s that ailment he’s supposed to have?

She could be the queen of Deadrock, like Calamity Jane, an early Deadrock great. She could be Calamity Claire. Maybe not such a good idea. Maybe bad. There were three views of the original Calamity on the north wall. In one she is dressed as an Army scout. In another she leans on a rifle and wears a fedora on the back of her head. The last is an artist’s rendering on the cover of a dime novel, a Victorian heroine of the kind Patrick was crazy about.

DEADWOOD
DICK
ON
DECK
,
OR
CALAMITY
JANE
,
THE
HEROINE
OF
WHOOP
-
UP

Oh me oh my. “Make that a double, Dan.” Dan moves past the cross-buck saw, the set of Longhorns, the old-time
handcuffs, the horse hobbles, singletrees, ox yokes and buffalo skulls; and fetches the big bourbon. I thought whoop-up meant to get sick to your stomach. Patrick declines to order a Red Baron pizza. He looks out on the empty dance floor, the drums and amplifier, wagon wheels overhead with little flame-shaped light bulbs. Romance. Lost in the crowd, we dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Hear that, Mamas? Don’t let the sonofabitch happen. Lost souls on the big sky. Hell in a hand basket.

Ease past the L. A. Huffman photos of the old chiefs toward that jukebox, now. Get something played, vow not to stay here too long and fall down. No sick-dog stuff.

Jack Daniels, if you please!
Knock me to my knees!

“Dan, triple up on that, would you?”

“Sure about that, Pat?”

“Damn sure. Got troubles.”

“Well, get the lady back.”

“Never had the sonofabitch. I’m just panning for gold.”

“Beats wages. Beats havin’ your thumb up your ass.”

“You haven’t dragged that triple up to me yet.”

“Not going to.”

“Oh dear …”

“Come back tonight when there’s some company to drink with.”

“Oh, piss on it. Is that how it is?”

“That’s how it is. You’re on the allotment.”

“Well, goddamn you anyway.”

“See what I mean?”

“Go fuck yourself.” The front of Patrick’s brain was paralyzed with anger.

“Tried all my life.”

“Good-bye, Dan, you sonofabitch. I’ll see you.”

Patrick pulled off into the IGA parking lot, suspended in the heat against distant mountains with a special, silly desolation. He got out and walked toward the automobiles, four rows deep, clustered around the electric glass doors with labels protecting the unwary from ramming their faces.

He squeezed between a new low Buick with wire wheels and a big all-terrain expeditionary station wagon when suddenly a great malamut–German shepherd crossbred cur arose behind the glass to roar in Patrick’s ear. He thought his heart had stopped. Then his head cleared. He leaned inches from the window: fangs rattled against the glass, spraying the inside with slobber. Patrick looked around and crawled up onto the hood, growling and knocking his own teeth against the windshield wipers. The monster tore around the interior in an evil frenzy, upending thermoses, a wicker picnic basket, a jerry can, clothing, backpacking gewgaws and a purse. Patrick clambered over the car until the beast’s eyes were rolling; then he went inside to buy a six-pack, feeling happy among the pregrown ferns, vanilla extract and Mexican party favors. The summery youngsters seemed especially healthy as they gathered around the newest rage—alfalfa sprouts—heaped cheerfully next to the weigh-out scale, plastic bags and wire ties. As if to confirm his good fortune, he went through the six-items-or-less line with nobody in front of him but without having had any success in guessing the identity of the dog owner. So he sat on the curb and tipped back a can of Rainier while he watched the expedition vehicle. He felt a criminal tickle at the base of his neck.

In a moment an extraordinarily well groomed couple
came out with one bag and a magazine, the man in the lead, and went straight to the car. He opened it, yelled “MY GOD!” and quickly shut it. The beast arose once again in the windshield, revealing a vast expanse of whitening gum, and sized up his owners.

“Are you sure that’s your car?” Patrick called out in a friendly voice.

The husband whirled. “Absolutely!” he shouted. His magazine fluttered to the pavement.

“I’d let that old boy simmer down,” Patrick suggested unoffendably. The wife pertly noted that sled dogs were a little on the high-octane side.

“I can see that!” Patrick cried like a simpleton.

Something about that challenged the husband, and he pulled open the door of the car. The rabid sled dog shot between the two and landed huge and spraddled in front of Patrick, gargling vicious spit through his big, pointed white teeth.

I must be close to death, thought Patrick, feeling the Rainier run down the inside of his sleeve. I always knew death would be a slobbering animal, I knew that in Germany and I knew that upon certain unfriendly horses bucking in the rocks. It is every last thing I expected.

He did not move his eyes. The owner was coming up slowly behind the dog, murmuring the words “
Dirk, easy, Dirk
” over and over. And death passed by like a little breeze: Very slowly the lips once more encased the teeth while Dirk, double-checking his uncertain dog memory, seemed to lose his focus. The owner reached down and gently seized the collar with a cautious “Attaboy.”