The Horse Whisperer (34 page)

“Ma’am, would you like to dance?”

Grace burst out laughing and Annie gave her a suspicious glance.

“This is entirely unprompted of course,” she said.

“Of course ma’am.”

“And not, by any remote chance, a dare?”

“Mom! That’s so rude!” Grace said. “What a terrible thing to suggest!” Joe kept a perfect straight face.

“No ma’am. Absolutely not.”

Annie looked again at Grace who now read her mind.

“Mom, if you think I’m going to dance with him to this music, forget it.”

“Then thank you Joe. I’d be delighted.”

So they danced. And Joe danced well and even though the other kids hooted, he didn’t turn a hair. It was while they were dancing that she saw Tom. He was watching her from the bar and waved and the sight of him gave her such a teenage thrill that at once she felt embarrassed because maybe it showed.

When the music stopped Joe gave a courteous bow and escorted her back to Grace who hadn’t stopped laughing. Annie felt a touch on her shoulder and turned. It was Hank. He wanted the next dance and wouldn’t take no for an answer. By the time they’d finished he had Annie laughing so much her sides ached. But there was no respite. Frank was next, then Smoky.

As she danced, she looked over and saw Grace and Joe were now doing a jokey kind of dance with the twins and some other kids, jokey enough anyway to allow Grace and Joe the illusion that they weren’t really dancing with each other.

She watched Tom dance with Darlene, then Diane, then more closely with some pretty, younger woman Annie didn’t know and didn’t much want to know. Perhaps it was some girlfriend she hadn’t heard about. And every time the music stopped, Annie looked for him and wondered why he didn’t come and ask her to dance.

   He saw her making her way across to the bar after she’d danced with Smoky and as soon as he could do so politely he thanked his partner and followed. It was the third time he’d tried to reach her but someone always got there first.

He weaved his way behind her through the hot crowd and saw her wipe the sweat from her brow with both hands, back through her hair, just as she’d done when he met her out running. There was a dark patch on her back where the fabric of her dress had grown wet and clung to her skin. As he got near he could smell her perfume mixed with another more subtle and potent that was all her own.

Frank was back serving behind the bar and he saw Annie and asked her over other people’s heads what she wanted. She asked him for a glass of water. Frank said sorry there wasn’t any, only Dr Peppers. He handed her one and she thanked him and turned and Tom was standing right there in front of her.

“Hi!” she said.

“Hi. So Annie Graves likes to dance.”

“As a matter of fact I can’t stand it. It’s just that here no one gives you the choice.”

He laughed and decided therefore that he wouldn’t ask her, though he’d looked forward to it all evening. Someone pushed between them, cutting them off from each other for a moment. The music had started up again so they had to shout to make each other hear.

“You obviously do,” she said.

“What?”

“Like to dance. I saw you.”

“I guess. But I saw you too and I reckon you like it more than you say.”

“Oh, you know, sometimes. When I’m in the mood.”

“You want some water?”

“I would die for water.”

Tom called to Frank for a clean glass and handed back the Dr Peppers. Then he put a hand lightly on Annie’s back to steer her through the crowd and felt the warmth of her body through the damp dress.

“Come on.”

   He found a path for them among all the people and all she could think of was the feel of his hand on her back, just below her shoulder blades and the clasp of her bra.

As they skirted the dance floor, she chided herself for telling him she didn’t like to dance, for otherwise he’d surely have asked and there was nothing she wanted more.

The great barn doors stood open and the disco lights lit the rain outside like a bead curtain of ever-changing color. There was no longer any wind but the rain fell so hard it made a breeze of its own and others had gathered
in the doorway for the cool Annie now felt on her face.

They stopped and stood together on the brink of shelter and peered out through the rain whose roar made distant the music behind them. No longer was there reason for his hand to be on her back and though she hoped he wouldn’t, he took it away. Across the yard she could just make out the lights of the house like a lost ship where she assumed they were headed for her drink of water.

“We’ll get drenched,” she said. “I’m not that desperate.”

“I thought you said you’d die for water?”

“Yes, but not in it. Though they say drowning’s the best way to go. I always thought, how on earth do they know that?”

He laughed. “You sure do a lot of thinking don’t you?”

“Yep, always fizzing away up there. Can’t stop it.”

“Kind of gets in the way sometimes, don’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Like now.” He saw she didn’t understand. He pointed toward the house. “Here we are, looking out through the rain and you’re thinking, too bad, no water.”

Annie gave him a wry look and took the glass from his hand. “Kind of a forest-and-trees situation, you mean.”

He shrugged and smiled and she reached out into the night with the glass. The pricking of the rain on her bare arm was startling, almost painful. The roar of its falling excluded all but the two of them. And while the glass filled they held each other’s eyes in a communion of which humor was only the surface. It took less time than it seemed or than either seemed to want.

Annie offered it first to him, but he just shook his head and kept watching her. She watched him back over the rim of the glass as she drank. And the water tasted cool and pure and so purely of nothing that it made her want to cry.

G
RACE COULD TELL SOMETHING WAS GOING ON AS SOON
as she climbed into the Chevy beside him. The smile gave it away, like a kid who’d hidden the candy jar. She swung the door shut and Tom pulled away from the hack of the creek house and headed down toward the corrals. She’d only just got back from her morning session with Terri in Choteau and was still eating
a
sandwich.

“What is it?” she said.

“What’s what?”

She narrowed her eyes at him but he was all innocence.

“Well, for a start, you’re early.”

“I am?” He shook his wristwatch. “Darn thing.”

She saw it was a lost cause and sat back
to
finish her sandwich. Tom gave her that funny smile again and kept driving.

The second clue was the rope he picked up from the barn before they, went down to Pilgrim’s corral. It
was
much shorter than the one he used as a lasso and of a
narrower gauge, plied in an intricate crisscross of purple and green.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a rope. Pretty, isn’t it?”

“I meant, what is it for?”

“Well, Grace, there’s no end of things a hand could do with a rope like this.”

“Like swing from trees, tie yourself up . . .”

“Yep, that kind of thing.”

When they got to the corral Grace leaned on the rail where she usually did and Tom went in with the rope. Away in the far corner, as usual too, Pilgrim started snorting and trotting to and fro as if marking out some futile last resort. His tail, ears and the muscles on his sides seemed wired to a convulsive current. He watched Tom every step of the way.

But Tom didn’t look at him. As he walked, he was doing something with the rope, though what, because his back was to her, Grace couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, he went on with it after he stopped in the center of the corral and still he didn’t look up.

Grace could see Pilgrim was as intrigued as she was. He’d stopped his pacing and now stood watching. And though every so often he tossed his head and pawed the ground, his ears reached out at Tom as if pulled by elastic. Grace moved slowly along the rails to get a better angle on what Tom was doing. She didn’t have to go far because Tom turned toward her so that his shoulder masked what he was doing from Pilgrim. But all Grace could see was that he seemed to be tying the rope into a series of knots. Briefly, he looked up and smiled at her from under the brim of his hat.

“Kinda curious, ain’t he?”

Grace looked at Pilgrim. He was more than curious. And now that he couldn’t see what Tom was doing, he
did what Grace had done and took a few small steps to get a better look. Tom heard him and at the same time moved a couple of steps farther away, turning too, so that now he had his back to the horse. Pilgrim stood awhile and looked off to one side, taking stock. Then he looked at Tom again and took a few more tentative steps toward him. And Tom heard him again and moved off so the space between them stayed almost but not quite the same.

Grace could see he’d finished tying the knots, but he went on pulling them and working at them and suddenly she saw what it was he’d made. It was a simple halter. She couldn’t believe it.

“Are you going to try and get that on him?”

Tom gave her a grin and said in a stage whisper, “Only if he begs me.”

Grace was too involved to know how long it took. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes, but not a lot more. Every time Pilgrim came nearer, Tom would move off, denying him the secret and fueling his desire to know it. And then Tom would stop and with every stop reduce by a fraction the gap between them. By the time they’d twice circled the corral and Tom had worked his way back to the center, they were only some dozen paces apart.

Now Tom turned so that he stood at right angles, still calmly working away at the rope and though once he looked up at Grace and smiled, never did he look at the horse. Thus ignored, Pilgrim blew and looked to one side then the other. Then he took two or three more steps toward Tom. Grace could see he expected the man to move off again but this time he didn’t. The change surprised him and he stopped and looked around again to see if anything else in the world, including Grace, could help him make sense of this. Finding no answer, he stepped closer. Then closer still, blowing and craning
his nose to get a whiff of whatever danger this man might have up his sleeve and balancing the risk against a now overwhelming need to know what he had in his hands.

At last he was so close that his whiskers almost brushed the brim of Tom’s hat and Tom must have felt the snuffling breath on the back of his neck.

Now Tom moved away a couple of steps and though the movement wasn’t sudden, Pilgrim jumped like a startled cat and nickered. But he didn’t go away. And when he saw Tom was now facing him, he calmed. Now he could see the rope. Tom was holding it in both hands for him to have a good look. But looking wasn’t enough, as Grace knew. He’d have to get a smell of it too.

For the first time, Tom was now looking at him and he was saying something too, though what, Grace was too far off to hear. She bit her lip as she watched, willing the horse forward. Go on, he won’t hurt you, go on. But he needed no urging other than his own curiosity. Hesitantly, but with a confidence that grew with every step, Pilgrim walked to Tom and put his nose to the rope. And once he’d sniffed the rope, he started sniffing Tom’s hands and Tom just stood there and let him.

In that moment, in that quivering touch between horse and man, Grace felt many things connect. She couldn’t have explained it, even to herself. She simply knew that some seal had been set on all that had happened in the days just passed. Finding her mother again, riding, the confidence she’d felt at the party, all this Grace hadn’t quite dared trust, as though at any second someone might snatch it all away. There was such hope however, such a promise of light in this tentative act of trust by Pilgrim that she felt something shift and open within her and knew that it was permanent.

With what was plainly consent, Tom now slowly moved one hand to the horse’s neck. There was a quiver and for a moment Pilgrim seemed to freeze. But it was only caution and when he felt the hand upon him and realized it brought no pain, he eased and let Tom rub him.

It went on a long time. Slowly Tom worked his way up until he’d covered the whole of his neck and Pilgrim let him. And then he let him do the same on the other side and even feel his mane. It was so matted it stood like spikes between Tom’s fingers. Then, gently and still without hurry, Tom slipped the halter on. And Pilgrim did not balk nor even for a moment demur.

   The only thing that bothered him about showing this to Grace was that she might make too much of it. It was always fragile when a horse took this step and with this horse it was more than fragile. Not the eggshell but the membrane within it. He could read in Pilgrim’s eyes and in the quiver of his flanks how close he was to rejecting it. And if he rejected it, the next time—if there was one—would be worse.

For many days Tom had worked for this, in the mornings, without Grace knowing. He did different things when she was watching in the afternoons, mainly flagging and driving and getting the horse used to the feel of a thrown rope. But working toward the halter was something he wanted to do alone. And until this very morning he hadn’t known whether it would ever happen, whether the spark of hope he’d told Annie about was truly there. Then he’d seen it and stopped, because he wanted Grace to be there when he blew on it and made it glow.

He didn’t have to look at her to know how much it
moved her. What she didn’t know, and maybe he should have told her before instead of being such a smartass, was that it wasn’t all now going to be sweetness and light. There was work to come that might make Pilgrim seem cloaked yet again in madness. But that could wait. Tom wasn’t going to start now. This moment belonged to Grace and he didn’t want to spoil it.

So he told her to come in, as he knew she must long to. He watched her prop her cane against the gatepost and come carefully with only the slightest sign of a limp across the corral. When she was nearly up to them, Tom told her to stop. It was better to let the horse come to her than her to him and with barely a nudge on the halter rope he did so.