The Horse Whisperer (16 page)

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s kind of the other way around. I help horses who’ve got people problems.”

They hadn’t gotten off to a great start and Tom regretted being a wise guy. He asked her what the problem was and listened for a long time in silence as she told him what had happened to her daughter and the
horse. It was shocking and made all the more so by the measured, almost dispassionate way she told it. He sensed there was emotion there, but that it was buried deep and firmly under control.

“That’s terrible,” he said when Annie had finished. “I’m real sorry.”

He could hear her take a deep breath.

“Yes, well. Will you come and see him?”

“What, to New York?”

“Yes.”

“Ma’am, I’m afraid—”

“Naturally I’ll pay the fare.”

“What I was going to say was, I don’t do that sort of thing. Even if it was somewhere nearer, that’s not what I do. I give clinics. And I’m not even doing them for a while. This here’s the last one I’m doing till the fall.”

“So you’d have time to come, if you wanted to.”

It wasn’t a question. She was pretty pushy. Or maybe it was just the accent.

“When does your clinic finish?”

“On Wednesday. But—”

“Could you come on Thursday?”

It wasn’t just the accent. She had picked up on a slight hesitation and was pushing hard at it. It was like what you did with a horse, pick the path of least resistance and work on it.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” he said firmly. “And I’m real sorry about what happened. But I’ve got work
to
do back on the ranch and I can’t help you.”

“Don’t say that. Please, don’t say that. Would you at least think about it.” Again it wasn’t a question.

“Ma’am—”

“I’d better go now. I’m sorry to have woken you.”

And without letting him speak or saying good-bye, she hung up.

   When Tom walked into reception the following morning, the motel manager handed him a Federal Express package. It contained a photograph of a girl on a beautiful-looking Morgan horse and an open return air ticket to New York.

T
OM LAID HIS ARM ALONG THE BACK OF THE PLASTIC
covered bench seat and watched his son cooking hamburgers behind the counter of the diner. The boy looked as if he’d been doing it all his life, the way he moved them around the grill and flipped them nonchalantly as he chatted and laughed with one of the waiters. It was, Hal had assured him, the hottest new lunch place in Greenwich Village.

The boy worked here for nothing three or four times a week in exchange for living rentfree in a loft apartment belonging to the owner, who was a friend of Rachel’s. When he wasn’t working here, Hal was at film school. Earlier he’d been telling Tom about a “short” he was shooting.

“It’s about a man who eats his girlfriend’s motorcycle piece by piece.”

“Sounds tough.”

“It is. It’s kind of a road movie but all set in one place.” Tom was about ninety percent sure this was a joke. He really hoped so. Hal went on, “When he’s
finished the motorcycle, he does the same with the girlfriend.”

Tom nodded, considering this. “Boy meets girl, boy eats girl.”

Hal laughed. He had his mother’s thick black hair and dark good looks, though his eyes were blue. Tom liked him very much. They didn’t get to see each other too often, but they wrote and when they did meet, they were easy together. Hal had grown up a city kid but he came out to Montana now and again and when he did, he loved it. He even rode pretty good, considering.

It had been some years since Tom had seen the boy’s mother, but they talked on the phone about Hal and how he was doing and that was never difficult either.

Rachel had married an art dealer called Leo and they’d had three other children who were now in their teens. Hal was twenty and seemed to have grown up happy. It was the chance of seeing him that had clinched the decision to fly east and look at the Englishwoman’s horse. Tom was going up there this afternoon.

“Here you go. One cheeseburger with bacon.”

Hal put it down in front of him and sat down opposite him with a grin. He was only having a coffee.

“You’re not eating?” asked Tom.

“I’ll have something later. Try it.”

Tom took a bite and nodded his approval.

“It’s good.”

“Some of the guys just leave them lying on the grill. You gotta work them, seal the juices.”

“Is it okay for you to take time out like this?”

“Oh sure. If it gets busy, I’ll go help.”

It wasn’t yet noon and the place was still quiet. Tom normally didn’t like to eat much at midday and he rarely ate meat nowadays but Hal had been so keen to cook him a burger he’d pretended he was up for it. At
the next table, four men in suits and a lot of wrist jewelry were talking loudly about a deal they’d done. Not the normal kind of clientele, Hal had discreetly informed him. But Tom had enjoyed watching them. He was always impressed by the energy of New York. He was just glad he didn’t have to live here.

“How’s your mother?” he asked.

“She’s great. She’s playing again. Leo’s fixed for her to give a concert at a gallery just around the corner here on Sunday.”

“That’s good.”

“She was going to come along today and see you but last night there was this colossal row and the pianist walked out, so now it’s all panic to find someone else. She said to give you her best.”

“Well you make sure to give her mine.”

They talked about Hal’s course and his plans for the summer. He said he’d like to come out to Montana for a couple of weeks and it seemed to Tom that he meant it and wasn’t just saying it to make him feel wanted. Tom told him how he was going to be working with the yearlings and some of the older colts he’d bred. Talking about it made him long to get started. His first summer for years with no clinics, no traveling, just being there by the mountains and seeing the country come to life again.

The diner was getting busy so Hal had to go back to work. He wouldn’t let Tom pay and came out with him onto the sidewalk. Tom put his hat on and noticed the glance Hal gave it. He hoped it wasn’t too embarrassing to be seen with a cowboy. It was always a little awkward when they said good-bye, with Tom thinking maybe he should give the boy a hug, but they’d kind of got into the habit of just shaking hands so today, as usual, that’s all they did.

“Good luck with the horse,” Hal said.

“Thank you. And you with the movie.”

“Thanks. I’ll send you a cassette.”

“I’d like that. Bye then Hal.”

“Bye.”

Tom decided to walk a few blocks before looking for a cab. It was cold and gray and the steam rose in drifting clouds from manholes in the street. There was a young guy, standing on a corner, begging. His hair was a matted tangle of rats’ tails and his skin the color of bruised parchment. His fingers spilled through frayed woolen mitts and with no coat, he was hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm. Tom gave him a five-dollar bill.

They were expecting him at the stables at about four, but when he got to Penn Station he found there was an earlier train and decided to take it. The more daylight there was when he saw the horse, he thought, the better. Also, this way maybe he could get a little look at the animal on his own first. It was always easier when the owners weren’t breathing down your neck. When they were, the horses always picked up on the tension. He was sure the woman wouldn’t mind.

   Annie had wondered whether to tell Grace about Tom Booker. Pilgrim’s name had barely been mentioned since the day she saw him at the stables. Once Annie and Robert had tried talking to her about him, believing it better to confront the issue of what they should do with him. But Grace had become very agitated and cut Annie off.

“I don’t want to hear,” she said. “I’ve told you what I want. I want him to go back to Kentucky. But you always know better, so it’s up to you.”

Robert had put a calming hand on her shoulder and started to say something, but she shrugged him off violently and yelled “No Daddy!” They left it at that.

In the end, they did however decide to tell her about the man from Montana. All Grace said was that she didn’t want to be up in Chatham when he came. It was decided therefore that Annie would go alone. She’d come up by train the previous night and spent the morning at the farmhouse, making calls and trying to concentrate on the copy wired by modem to her computer screen from the office.

It was impossible. The slow tick of the hall clock, which normally she found comforting, was today almost unbearable. And with every long hour that limped by she became more nervous. She puzzled over why this should be and came up with no answer that satisfied her. The nearest she could get was a feeling, as acute as it was irrational, that in some inexorable way it wasn’t only Pilgrim’s fate that was to be determined today by this stranger, it was the fate of all of them. Grace’s, Robert’s and her own.

   There were no cabs at Hudson station when the train got in. It was starting to drizzle and Tom had to wait for five minutes under the dripping iron-pillared canopy over the platform till one arrived. When it did he climbed into the back with his bag and gave the driver the address of the stables.

Hudson looked as though it might once have been pretty, but now it seemed a sorry sort of place. Once grand old buildings were rotting away. Many of the shops along what Tom supposed was its main street were boarded up and those that weren’t seemed mostly
to be selling junk. People tramped the sidewalks with their shoulders hunched against the rain.

It was just after three when the cab turned into Mrs. Dyer’s driveway and headed up the hill toward the stables. Tom looked out at the horses standing in the rain across the muddy fields. They pricked their ears and watched the cab go by. The entrance into the stable yard was blocked by a trailer. Tom asked the cabdriver to wait and got out.

As he edged through the gap between the wall and the trailer, he could hear voices from the yard and the clatter of hooves.

“Git in! Git in there, damn you!”

Joan Dyer’s sons were trying to load two frightened colts into the open back of the trailer. Tim stood on the ramp and was trying to drag the first colt inside by its halter rope. It was a tug-of-war he would easily have lost had Eric not been at the other end of the animal, driving it forward with a whip and dodging its hooves. In his other hand he held the rope of the second colt who was by now as scared as the first. All this Tom saw in one glance as he stepped around the side of the trailer into the yard.

“Whoa now boys, what’s happening here?” he said. Both the boys turned and looked at him for a moment and neither answered. Then, as if he didn’t exist, they looked away again and went on with what they were doing.

“It’s no fucking good,” Tim said. “Try the other one first.” He yanked the first colt away from the trailer so that Tom had to step quickly back against the wall as they went by. At last Eric looked at him again.

“Can I help you?” There was such contempt both in the voice and the way the boy eyed him up and down that Tom could only smile.

“Thank you. I’m looking for a horse called Pilgrim. Belongs to a Mrs. Annie Graves?”

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Booker.”

Eric jerked his head toward the barn. “Better go see my mom.”

Tom thanked him and walked away to the barn. He heard one of them snigger and say something about Wyatt Earp but he didn’t look back. Mrs. Dyer came out of the barn door just as he got there. He introduced himself and they shook hands after she’d wiped hers on her jacket. She looked over his shoulder at the boys by the trailer and shook her head.

“There are better ways to do that,” Tom said.

“I know,” she said, wearily. But she clearly didn’t want to pursue it. “You’re early. Annie’s not here yet.”

“I’m sorry. I got the early train. I should have called. Would it be okay if I had a look at him before she gets here?”

She hesitated. He gave her a conspirator’s smile that stopped just short of a wink, meaning that she, knowing about horses, would understand what he was about to say.

“You know how sometimes it’s, well, kind of easier to get a fix on these things when the owner’s not around.”

She took the bait and nodded.

“He’s back here.”

Tom followed her around the back of the barn to the row of old stalls. When she got to Pilgrim’s door, she turned to face him. She looked agitated suddenly. “I have to tell you, this has been a disaster from the beginning. I don’t know how much she’s told you, but the truth is, in everybody’s opinion except hers, this horse should have been put out of its misery long ago.

Why the vets have gone along with her I don’t know. Frankly, I think keeping it alive is cruel and stupid.”

The intensity took Tom by surprise. He nodded slowly and then looked at the bolted door. He’d already seen the yellowy brown liquid oozing from under it and could smell the filth beyond.

“He’s in here?”

“Yes. Be careful.”

Tom slid the top bolt and heard an immediate scuffle. The stench was nauseating.