The Horse Whisperer (37 page)

   How long they kissed, Tom could only guess from his own changed shadow on her face when they stopped and moved apart a little to look at each other. She gave him a sad smile then looked up at the moon in its new place and trapped pieces of it in her eyes. He could still taste the sweet wetness of her glistening mouth and feel the warmth of her breath on his face. He ran his hands down her bare arms and felt her shiver.

“Are you cold?”

“No.”

“I’ve never known a June night so warm up here.”

She looked down then took one of his hands in both of hers and cradled it palm upward in her lap, tracing the calluses with her fingers.

“Your skin’s so hard.”

“Uh-huh. It’s a sorry hand for sure.”

“No it’s not. Can you feel me touching it?”

“Oh yes.”

She didn’t look up. Through the dark arch made by her falling hair he saw a tear run on her cheek.

“Annie?”

She shook her head and still didn’t look at him. He took hold of her hands.

“Annie, it’s okay. Really, it’s okay.”

“I know it is. It’s just that, it’s so okay I don’t know how to handle it.”

“We’re just two people, that’s all.”

She nodded. “Who met too late.”

She looked at him at last and smiled and wiped her eyes. Tom smiled back but didn’t answer. If what she said was true he didn’t want to endorse it. Instead, he told her what his brother had said on a night much the same yet under a thinner moon so many years ago. How Frank had wished that now could last forever and how their father had said forever was but a trail of nows and the best a man could do was live each one fully in its turn.

Her eyes never left him while he spoke and when he’d finished she stayed silent so that suddenly he worried she might have taken his words amiss and seen in them some self-serving incitement. Behind them in the pines, the owl began to call again and was answered now, far across the meadow, by another.

Annie leaned forward and found his mouth again and he felt in her an urgency that wasn’t there before. He tasted the salt of her tears in the corner of her lips, that place he’d yearned so long to touch and never dreamed he’d kiss. And as he held her and moved his hands on her and felt the press of her breasts against him, he thought not that this was wrong but only concern that she might come to feel it so. But if this were wrong, then what in the whole of life was right?

At last she broke away and leaned back from him, breathing hard, as if daunted by her own hunger and where it would surely lead.

“I’d better go back,” she said.

“You’d better.”

She kissed him gently once more, then laid her head on his shoulder so that he couldn’t see her face. He
brushed his lips on her neck and breathed the warm smell of her as if to store it, perhaps forever.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“What for?”

“For what you’ve done for all of us,”

“I’ve done nothing.”

“Oh Tom, you know what you’ve done.”

She disengaged herself and stood in front of him with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. She smiled down at him and stroked his hair and he took her hand and kissed it. Then she left him and walked to the island tree and crossed the stream.

Once only did she turn to look at him, though with the moon behind her, what look it was he could but guess. He watched her white shirt go back across the meadow, its shadow trailing footprints in the gray of the dew, while the cattle glided about her, black and silent as ships.

   The last glow had gone from the fire by the time she got back. Diane stirred but only in sleep, Annie thought. She quietly slipped her wet feet back into her sleeping bag. The owls soon ceased their calling and the only sound was Frank’s soft snoring. Later, when the moon had gone, she heard Tom come back and didn’t dare look. She lay for a long time looking at the reasserted stars, thinking of him and what he must be thinking of her. It was that hour when routine doubt would settle heavily upon her and Annie waited to feel shame at what she’d just done. But it never came.

In the morning, when at last she found the courage to look at him, she saw no betraying trace of what had passed between them. No secret glance, and, when he spoke, no layer laced beneath his words for her alone to
understand. In fact his manner, like everyone else’s, was so seamlessly and happily the same as before that Annie felt almost disappointed, so utter was the change she felt in herself.

As they ate breakfast, she looked across the meadow for the place where they had knelt, but daylight seemed to have altered its geography and she couldn’t find it. Even the footprints they’d made had been scuffed by the cattle and soon were lost forever under the morning sun.

After they’d eaten, Tom and Frank went to check the adjoining pastures while the children played over by the stream and Annie and Diane washed up and packed. Diane told her about the surprise she and Frank had lined up for the kids. Next week they were all flying down to L.A.

“You know, Disneyland, Universal Studios, the works.”

“That’s great. They don’t have any idea?”

“Nope. Frank was trying to get Tom to come too, but he’s promised to go down to Sheridan to sort some old guy’s horse out.”

She said it was about the only time of year they could get away. Smoky was going to keep an eye on things for them. Otherwise the place would be empty.

The news came as a shock to Annie and not just because Tom had failed to mention it. Maybe he expected to have finished with Pilgrim by then. More shocking was the message implicit in what Diane had said. In kinder words, she was clearly telling Annie that it was time to take Grace and Pilgrim home. Annie realized how, for so long now, she had deliberately avoided confronting the issue, letting each day pass untallied in the hope that time might return the favor and ignore her too.

By midmorning they were already down below the lowest pass. The sky had clouded over. Without the cattle, their progress was quicker, though in the steeper parts descent was harder than the climb and crueler by far to Annie’s battered muscles. There was none of the exhilaration of the day before and in their concentration even the twins grew quiet. As she rode, Annie reflected long on what Diane had told her and longer still on what Tom had said last night. That they were just two people and that now was now and only now.

When they broke the skyline of the ridge up which Tom had wanted her to ride with him, Joe called and pointed and they all stopped to look. Far away to the south, across the plateau, there were horses. Tom told her they were the mustangs set free by the hippie woman, the one Frank called Granola Gay. It was almost the only thing he said to her all day.

It was evening and starting to rain when they reached the Double Divide. They were all too tired to talk as they unsaddled the horses.

Annie and Grace said their good-nights to the Bookers outside the barn and got into the Lariat. Tom said he’d go and check that Pilgrim was okay. His goodnight to Annie seemed no more special than the one he gave to Grace.

On the way up to the creek house, Grace said the sleeve of her prosthetic leg felt tight on her stump and they agreed to have Terri Carlson take a look tomorrow. While Grace went up for the first bath, Annie checked her messages.

The answering machine was full, the fax machine had spewed a whole new roll of paper over the floor and her E-mail was humming. Mostly the messages expressed varying degrees of shock, outrage and commiseration. There were two others and these were the only ones
Annie bothered to read in full, one with relief and the other with a mix of emotion she had yet to name.

The first, from Crawford Gates, said that with the greatest possible regret he must accept her resignation. The second was from Robert. He was flying put to Montana to spend the coming weekend with them. He said he loved them both very much.

T
OM
B
OOKER WATCHED THE
L
ARIAT DISAPPEAR OVER THE
ridge and wondered, as he had so many times before, about the man Annie and Grace were going to collect. What he knew of him he knew mainly from Grace. As if by some unspoken consent, Annie had talked of her husband only rarely and even then impersonally, more of his job than of his character.

Despite the many good things Grace had told him (or perhaps because of them) and despite his own best efforts to the contrary, Tom could not fully dislodge a predisposed dislike that was not, he knew, in his nature. He’d tried to rationalize it, in the hope of finding some more acceptable reason. The guy, after all, was a lawyer. How many of them had he ever met and liked? But of course, it wasn’t that. There was sufficient cause in the simple fact that this particular lawyer was Annie Graves’s husband. And in a few short hours he would be here, openly possessing her again. Tom turned and went into the barn.

Pilgrim’s bridle hung on the same peg in the tack room where he’d put it the day Annie first brought the
horse out here. He took it down and looped it over his shoulder. The English saddle too was on the same rest. There was a thin layer of hay dust on it which Tom wiped away with his hand. He lifted the saddle off with its rug and carried them out and down the avenue of empty stalls to the back door.

Outside the morning was hot and still. Some of the yearlings in the far paddock were already seeking the shade of the cottonwoods. As Tom made his way down toward Pilgrim’s corral, he looked at the mountains and knew from their clarity and a first wafting of cloud that later there would be thunder and rain.

All week he had avoided her, shunning the very moments he had always sought, when he might be alone with her. He had learned from Grace that Robert was coming. But even before then, even as they rode down from the mountains, he’d decided this was what he must do. Not an hour had gone by that he hadn’t remembered the feel and smell of her, the touch of her skin on his, the way their mouths had melded. The memory was too intense, too physical, for him to have dreamed it, but he would treat it as if he had, for what else could he do? Her husband was coming and soon, in a matter of days now, she would be gone. For both of their sakes, for all of their sakes, it was best that until then he keep his distance and see her only when Grace was there too. Only thus might his resolve endure.

It had been sorely tested the very first evening. When he dropped Grace back at the house, Annie was waiting out on the porch. He waved and would have pulled away but she came toward the car to speak to him while Grace went off inside.

“Diane tells me they’re all going to L.A. next week.”

“Yes. It’s all a big secret.”

“And you’re off to Wyoming.”

“That’s right. I promised a while back I’d go visit down there. Friend of mine’s got a couple of colts he wants starting.”

She nodded and for a moment the only sound was the impatient rumble of the Chevy’s engine. They smiled at each other and he felt she was equally unsure of the territory they had stepped into. Tom tried hard to let nothing show in his eyes that might make things difficult for her. In all likelihood she regretted what had happened between them. Maybe one day he would too. The screen door banged and Annie turned.

“Mom? Okay if I call Dad?”

“Sure.”

Grace went in again. When Annie turned back to him, he saw in her eyes that there was something she wanted to say. If it was regret, he didn’t want to hear it so he spoke to stem it.

“I hear he’s coming out this weekend?”

“Yes.”

“Grace is like a cat with ten tails, been going on about it all afternoon.”

Annie nodded. “She misses him.”

“I’ll bet. We’ll have to see if we can lick old Pilgrim into shape by then. Get Grace up there riding him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Don’t see why not. We’ve got some hard work this week but if things work out, I’ll give it a go and if he’s okay with me, Grace can do it for her daddy.”

“Then we can take him home.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tom—”

“Of course, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Just because we’re all away, doesn’t mean you have to leave.”

She smiled bravely. “Thank you.”

“I mean, packing up all your computer and fax and all’s going to take a week or two.” She laughed and he had to look away from her for fear of betraying the ache in his chest at the thought of her leaving. He shoved the car into gear and smiled and bade her goodnight.

Since then Tom had done better in avoiding being alone with her. He’d thrown himself into the work with Pilgrim with an energy he hadn’t been able to summon since his earliest clinics.

In the mornings he worked him on Rimrock, moving him around and around the corral until he could go from a walk to a lope and back again as smoothly as Tom was sure he once had and until his hind feet fit faultlessly the prints of his fore. In the afternoons Tom went on foot and worked him on a halter. He worked him in circles, stepping in close and turning him, making him roll his hindquarters across.

Sometimes Pilgrim would try and fight it and back away, and when he did this Tom would run with him, keeping in the same position until the horse knew there was no point running because the man would always be there and that maybe after all it was okay to do what was being asked of him. His feet would come still and the two of them would stand there awhile, drenched in their own and each other’s sweat and leaning on each other and panting, like a pair of punched-out boxers waiting for the bell.

At first Pilgrim had found his new urgency puzzling, for even Tom had no way of telling him there was a deadline now. Not that Tom could have explained why he should be so determined to make the horse right when in so doing he would deprive himself forever of what he most wanted. But whatever he made of it, Pilgrim seemed to draw on this strange and relentless new
vigor and soon he was as much a party to the endeavor as Tom.

And today, at last, Tom would ride him.

Pilgrim watched him shut the gate and walk to the middle of the corral carrying the saddle with the bridle looped over his shoulder.