The Horse Whisperer (17 page)

“God, doesn’t anyone clean him out?”

“We’re all too scared,” Mrs. Dyer said quietly.

Tom gently opened the top part of the door and leaned in. He saw Pilgrim through the darkness, looking back at him with his ears flattened and his yellow teeth bared. Suddenly the horse lunged and reared, striking at him with his hooves. Tom moved swiftly back and the hooves missed him by inches and smashed against the bottom door. Tom closed the top and rammed the bolt shut.

“If an inspector saw this, he’d close the whole damn place down,” he said. The quiet, controlled fury in his voice made Mrs. Dyer look at the ground.

“I know, I’ve tried to tell—” He cut her off.

“You ought to be ashamed.”

He turned away and walked back toward the yard. He could hear an engine revving and now the frightened call of a horse as a car horn started blaring. When he came around the end of the barn he saw one of the colts was already tied up in the trailer. There was blood on one of its hind legs. Eric was trying to drag the other colt in, lashing its rear with the whip while his brother, in an old pickup, shunted it from behind, honking the horn. Tom went up to the car, flung the door open and dragged the boy out by the scruff of his neck.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” the boy said, but the end of it came out falsetto as Tom swung him sideways and threw him to the ground.

“Wyatt Earp,” Tom said and walked right on past toward Eric who backed away.

“Hey listen cowboy . . .” he said. Tom grabbed him by the throat, freed the colt and took the whip out of the boy’s other hand with a twist that made him yelp. The colt ran off across the yard, saving itself. Tom had the whip in one hand and the other still clamped on Eric’s throat so that the boy’s frightened eyes bulged. He held him there in front of him, their faces not a foot apart.

“If I thought you were worth the effort,” Tom said, “I’d whip your no-good hide from hell to breakfast.”

He shoved him away and the boy’s back thumped against the wall, knocking the wind clean out of him. Tom looked back and saw Mrs. Dyer coming into the yard. He turned and stepped around the side of the trailer.

As he came through the gap, a woman was getting out of a silver Ford Lariat parked beside the waiting taxi. For a moment he and Annie Graves were face to face.

“Mr. Booker?” she said. Tom was breathing hard. All he really registered was the auburn hair and the troubled green eyes. He nodded. “I’m Annie Graves. You got here early.”

“No ma’am. I got here too damn late.”

He got into the cab, shut the door and told the driver to go. When they reached the bottom of the driveway he realized he was still holding the whip. He wound down the window and threw it in the ditch.

I
T WAS
R
OBERT WHO FINALLY SUGGESTED GOING TO
Lester’s for breakfast. It was a decision he’d worried about for two weeks. They hadn’t gone there since Grace started school again and that unspoken fact was starting to weigh heavily. The reason it hadn’t been mentioned was that Lester’s excellent breakfast was only part of the routine. The other part, just as important, was taking the crosstown bus to get there.

It was one of those silly things that had started when Grace was much younger. Sometimes Annie came too but usually it was just Robert and Grace. They used to pretend it was some grand adventure and would sit at the back and play a whispered game in which they took turns elaborating fantasies about the other passengers. The driver was really an android hitman and those little old ladies rock stars in disguise. More recently, they would just gossip but until the accident it had never occurred to either of them not to take the bus. Now neither was sure if Grace would be able to climb onto it.

So far she had been going to school two and then
three days a week, mornings only. Robert took her there by cab and Elsa collected her by cab at noon. He and Annie tried to seem casual when they asked her how it was going. Great, she said. Everything was great. And how were Becky and Cathy and Mrs. Shaw? They were all great too. He suspected that she knew full well what they wanted to ask but couldn’t. Did people stare at her leg? Did they ask her about it? Did she see them talking about her?

“Breakfast at Lester’s?” Robert said that morning, in as matter-of-fact a voice as he could muster. Annie had already left for an early meeting. Grace shrugged and said, “Sure. If you want to.”

They took the elevator down and said good morning to Ramon, the doorman.

“Get you a taxi?” he said.

Robert hesitated, but only for a beat.

“No. We’re getting the bus.”

As they walked the two blocks to the bus stop, Robert chattered away and tried to look as if it was natural to be walking this slowly. He knew Grace wasn’t listening to him. Her eyes were locked on the sidewalk ahead, surveying its surface for traps, concentrating hard on placing the rubber tip of the cane and swinging her leg through behind it. By the time they got to the stop, despite the cold, she was sweating.

When the bus came, she climbed in as though she had been doing it for years. It was crowded and for a while they stood near the front. An old man saw Grace’s cane and offered her his seat. She thanked him and tried to decline but he wouldn’t hear of it. Robert wanted to scream at him to let her be but didn’t and, blushing, Grace relented and sat down. She looked up at Robert and gave him a little humiliated smile that smote his heart.

When they walked into the coffee shop, Robert had a sudden panic that he should have called and warned Lester so that no one would make a fuss or ask embarrassing questions. He needn’t have worried. Perhaps someone from the school had already told them, but Lester and the waiters were their normal brisk and cheerful selves.

They sat at their usual table by the window and ordered what they always ordered, bagels with cream cheese and lox. While they waited, Robert tried hard to keep the conversation going. It was new to him, this need to fill the silences between them. Talking with Grace had always been so easy. He noticed how her eyes kept drifting off to the people walking past outside, on their way to work. Lester, a dapper little man with a toothbrush moustache, had the radio on behind the counter and for once Robert felt grateful for the constant, inane babble of traffic news and jingles. When the bagels arrived Grace barely touched hers.

“Like to go to Europe this summer?” he said.

“What, a vacation you mean?”

“Yes. I thought we could go to Italy. Rent a house in Tuscany or somewhere. What do you think?”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

“We don’t have to.”

“No. It’d be nice.”

“If you’re good, we might even go on to England and visit your grandmother.” Grace grimaced on cue. The threat of dispatching her to see Annie’s mother was an old family joke. Grace glanced out of the window then back at Robert.

“Dad, I think I’ll go in now.”

“Not hungry?”

She shook her head. He understood. She wanted to get into school early, before the lobby was crowded
with gawking girls. He knocked back his coffee and paid the check.

Grace made him say good-bye on the corner rather than walk her down to the school entrance. He kissed her and walked away, fighting the urge to turn and watch her go in. He knew that if she saw him look, she might mistake concern for pity. He walked back to Third Avenue and turned downtown toward his office.

The sky had cleared while they had been inside. It was going to be one of those icy, clear blue New York days that Robert loved. It was perfect walking weather and he walked briskly, trying to drive away thoughts of that lonely figure limping into school by thinking of what he had to do once he got into work.

First, as usual, he would call the personal injury lawyer they’d hired to look after the convoluted legal farce Grace’s accident seemed destined to become.

Only a sensible person would be fool enough to think the case might boil down to whether the girls were negligent in riding on the road that morning and whether the truck driver was negligent in hitting them. Instead of course, everybody was suing everybody: the girls’ health insurance companies, the truck driver, his insurance company, the haulage company in Atlanta, their insurance company, the company that the driver had leased the truck from, their insurance company, the manufacturers of the truck, the manufacturers of the truck’s tires, the county, the mill, the railroad. No one had yet filed suit against God for letting it snow, but it was still early days. It was pure plaintiff-attorney paradise and it felt odd to Robert to be looking at it from the other end.

At least, thank heaven, they’d managed to keep most of it away from Grace. Apart from the statement she’d given in the hospital, all she’d had to do was give a
deposition under oath to their lawyer. Grace had met the woman socially a couple of times before and hadn’t seemed troubled by again having to go over the accident. Again she had said that she could remember nothing after sliding down the bank.

Early in the new year the truck driver had written them a letter, saying he was sorry. Robert and Annie had discussed for a long time whether or not to show it to Grace and in the end decided it was her right. She’d read it, handed it back and said simply that it was nice of him. For Robert, just as important a decision was whether or not to show it to their attorney who naturally would seize upon it gleefully as an admission of guilt. The lawyer in Robert said show it. Something more human in him said don’t. He’d hedged his bets and kept it on file.

In the distance now, he could see the sun glinting coldly on the towering glass of his office building.

A lost limb, he’d read recently in some learned legal journal, could nowadays be worth three million dollars in damages. He pictured his daughter’s pale face, looking out of the coffee shop window. What fine experts they must be, he thought, to quantify the cost.

   The school lobby was busier than usual. Grace did a quick scan of the faces, hoping she wouldn’t see any of her classmates. Becky’s mom was there, talking to Mrs. Shaw, but neither of them looked her way and there was no sign of Becky. She was probably already in the library, on one of the computers. In the old days that’s where Grace would have headed too. They would fool around, leaving funny messages on each other’s E-mail and would stay there till the bell rang. Then they’d all
race up the stairs to the classroom, laughing and elbowing each other out of the way.

Now that Grace couldn’t manage the stairs, they would all feel obliged to come with her in the elevator, a slow and ancient thing. To spare them the embarrassment, Grace now went straight up to the classroom on her own so that she could be sitting at her desk when they arrived.

She made her way over to the elevator and pressed the call button, keeping her eyes on it so that if any of her friends came by they’d have the chance to avoid her.

Everyone had been so nice to her since her return to school. That was the problem. She just wanted them to be normal. And other things had changed. While she’d been away, her friends seemed to have subtly regrouped. Becky and Cathy, her two best friends, had gotten closer. The three of them used to be inseparable. They would gossip and tease and moan about each other and console each other on the phone every evening. It had been a perfectly balanced threesome. But now, although they did their best to include her, it wasn’t the same. But how could it be?

The elevator arrived and Grace went in, thankful that she was still the only one waiting and would have it to herself. But just as the doors were closing two younger girls came hurtling in, laughing and gabbling away to each other. As soon as they saw Grace they both went quiet.

Grace smiled and said, “Hi.”

“Hi.” They said it together but said nothing more and the three of them stood awkwardly while the elevator made its laborious, cranking ascent. Grace noticed how the eyes of both girls examined the blank walls and ceiling, looking everywhere except at the one thing
she knew they wanted to look at, her leg. It was always the same.

She’d mentioned it to the “trauma psychologist,” yet another expert her parents made her visit every week. The woman meant well and was probably very good at her job, but Grace found the sessions a complete waste of time. How could this stranger—how could anyone—know what it was like?

“Tell them it’s okay to look,” the woman had said. “Tell them it’s okay to talk about it.”

But that wasn’t the point. Grace didn’t want them to look, she didn’t want them to talk about it. Talk. These shrink people seemed to think that talk solved everything and it just wasn’t true.

Yesterday the woman had tried to get her to talk about Judith and that was the last thing on earth Grace wanted to do.

“How do you feel about Judith?”

Grace had felt like screaming. Instead, she said coldly, “She’s dead, how do you think I feel?” Eventually the woman got the message and the subject was dropped.

It had been the same a few weeks ago when she’d tried to get Grace to talk about Pilgrim. He was maimed and useless, just like Grace, and every time she thought of him, all she could see were those terrible eyes cowering in the corner of that stinking stall at Mrs. Dyer’s. How on earth could it help to think or talk about that?

The elevator stopped at the floor below Grace’s and the two younger girls got out. She heard them immediately start talking again as they went off down the corridor.

When she got to her own classroom it was as she’d hoped, nobody else had yet come up. She got her books
out of her bag, carefully concealed her cane on the floor under the desk, then lowered herself slowly onto the hard wooden seat. In fact it was so hard that by the end of the morning her stump would be throbbing with pain. But she could handle it. That kind of pain was easy.

   It was three days before Annie was able to speak to Tom Booker. She already had a clear enough picture of what had happened at the stables that day. After watching the taxi go away down the driveway, she’d gone into the yard and got most of the story just from the faces of the two Dyer boys. Their mother had told Annie coldly that she wanted Pilgrim out of the place by Monday.