The Pillow Friend (12 page)

He was waiting for her, just where she'd known he would be, a little ways into the woods, beside a fallen log. He tossed his head at the sight of her and whickered.

“Hiya, Snowy. Good boy.” She'd brought him an apple. She stroked his neck while he munched it. Then she used the log to mount him and they rode away.

The long, hot days passed in a dreamy haze. She rode him barebacked and barefoot and was soon more comfortable than she could have dreamed perched up so high, controlling his movements with a nudge of her heels in his sides, or a slap on his flank or neck. He was immensely sensitive and responsive to her, despite his great size, and as she came to appreciate how careful he was of her, she no longer feared falling off. He would not let her fall.

As they explored the area, keeping well away from the highway and Camptown itself, they never met anyone. Sometimes they would catch sight of a logging truck or hear men's voices, but no one ever saw them. Sometimes she would take a packed lunch and have a picnic on the shores of the pond, where she would swim and float for a long time, washing away the accumulated dirt and sweat of the morning and enjoying the beautiful silence. She swam naked rather than risk raising her aunt's suspicions by taking her bathing suit—that was something she had never done before, and it added to the illicit delight. It didn't take long to dry off when she emerged in the heat of the day. It was always hot; it never rained.

Marjorie never asked what she did with herself all day and Agnes didn't tell her. Neither of them ever mentioned the horse or the pond. In the evenings, after dinner, they fell into a quiet routine. After the dishes were done they would sit out on the front porch with their books and a hurricane lamp to read by. Marjorie would have her glass of wine; Agnes drank warm Dr Pepper or RC Cola. Sometimes Marjorie read aloud. It was always poetry. There were poems by T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wallace Stevens, D. H. Lawrence, Marianne Moore, W. B. Yeats. Often she did not understand what she was hearing, but still she was moved by the sound of the words. The horse and the pillow friend had come between them, but poetry drew them back together. Gazing at that familiar face in the lamplight while the magical words spiraled up and around them like scented smoke in the warm, dark air, she was possessed by longing, almost overwhelmed with love for this woman who was so close to her and so far away.

She wished that this was her life, that it would go on forever, but of course it was nearly over. On her last day she thought her heart would break when she said good-bye to Snowy. She had lain awake for hours the night before, fingers in her ears to block out the sounds from the next room, while she tried to think up a way around it. But even if she could make up some convincing story as to how she'd found him, even if she could convince her parents that he was her horse and talk them into financing his keep at a local stables—both tall orders—she couldn't believe it would work. She couldn't imagine Snowy with a saddle on his back, a bit in his mouth, the prosaic business of exercising him in some paddock or on a trail ride through Memorial Park with a bunch of other kids and their ponies. They belonged to each other and always would, but he wouldn't fit into her real world of school and parents, car pools and scheduled visits. He belonged here in the country, in the shadowy woodlands where she could only be a temporary visitor. After their last ride together she tried to think of some way of explaining herself, realized that she couldn't and, praying that he would understand this as he had seemed to understand everything else about her, she kissed him, slapped him sharply on the flank, and then ran away. Head down, half-blinded by her tears, she ran until she collided finally with her aunt.

“There you are! I was beginning to think you might miss your bus. We have to walk into Camptown, you know. I've packed your things—what's wrong? Why are you crying?”

“Oh, please, I don't want to go. Please, won't you let me stay here? I won't get in your way, honestly I won't. I'll be out every day, just like before, and I'll help with the housework, I won't be any trouble, I could go in to school on the bus, just like you and Mother used to and—”

“Don't be ridiculous. Of course you can't stay here. You're going home where you belong. What's gotten into you?”

“Please. Just another week, then, let me stay another week—”

“Stop it. Just stop it. I don't have time for this. Run on in and wash your face and use the toilet if you have to and then we're off. You're not going to miss that bus. Not after what I promised your mother.”

So she went back to Houston—what else could she do? It was just getting dark when she arrived, and at first when she stepped off the bus she could not see anyone she knew in the crowd. Then her father stepped forward and gave her a smile that looked like it had been borrowed from somebody else.

“Where's Mother?”

“What kind of greeting is that for your father? Don't I count?”

“Of course—I was just—”

“I thought I'd take you out to dinner. What would you like—barbecue or barbecue?”

Barbecue was always their special treat, just the girls and their father, because their mother didn't like it. He took her to his favorite place, a few blocks from the bus station. The air was tangy, rich enough to eat, and the sliced-beef sandwiches, the potato salad and pickles were as good as ever, but she didn't enjoy herself. It wasn't just that she was mourning the loss of Snowy Miles—and Marjorie, who had refused to make any promises or predictions about when she'd see her again—it was her father's attitude. He was unlike himself, remote and uncommunicative. He would reply if she asked him a direct question but otherwise he said nothing. She remembered how just before she had gone away he had seemed to avoid her, but this was worse. He didn't avoid her eyes now as he had then, but when her eyes met his there was no contact, no communication, nothing there.

Although she'd lost her appetite she wolfed the sandwich down and drained her glass of iced tea, eager to get home, back to her mother, to something like normality.

But her mother wasn't home when they got there.

“Where is she?”

“She's probably on her way.” He sounded unconcerned.

“But where . . . ?”

“Maybe you should ask her that.” His voice was even, uninflected, unemotional as it had been all evening, yet she heard something horribly grim and final in it. She suddenly didn't want to ask him anything more, and escaped upstairs to her room. When she had unpacked and put everything away, she stretched out across her bed with a book and sometime while she was reading, half-listening for the sound of her mother's return, she must have fallen asleep.

When she awoke the next morning her mother was there but her father wasn't. There might not have been anything unusual about that—even though her mother spent the day in her room with the curtains drawn—except that he didn't come home that evening, or any other.

He had moved out, into an apartment he must have rented while she was gone. He had already taken all his clothes, his collection of Texana, his leather recliner and a few other things he cared about—if she hadn't gone straight up to her room she might have noticed the things that were missing earlier—but what difference would that have made? He hadn't even taken the opportunity of his time alone with her to explain what he was doing, or why; to assure her that he still loved her and wanted to spend time with her; he hadn't said, like the father in a book she'd recently read, that he wasn't leaving her but only his wife—no, he had left them both, and if there was an explanation for why he'd gone she never heard it.

In the midst of the nightmare, while her mother was still alternately hysterical or heavily tranquilized, either making frantic plans for her new life or lying weeping in bed for hours, school started, and Agnes found it a relief to get away. But there was no escape.

Everyone at school seemed to know something about it, or wanted to, and she wasn't sure whether the questions or the sympathy were more annoying. Then came something worse: Nina told her that she'd seen her father strolling along holding hands with some girl out at Northwest Mall. After that she didn't feel much like talking to Nina.

She wished she could just forget it. She wished it had never happened. But wishing changed nothing.

One morning, instead of getting on the school bus, she took the city bus instead, and went downtown to the bus station. She had most of her summer's allowance still unspent, as well as the twenty-dollar bill her father had tucked into her book bag sometime before. It was far more than she needed for a one-way ticket to Camptown.

At the place in the woods where the dirt road split in two, one path leading to the house and one to the pond, the horse met her.

She felt fear at the sight of him, and then remorse. He'd gotten so thin! His ribs showed, his bloodshot blue eyes bulged from a long, bony skull, and his mane and tail were matted with burrs. He was the very picture of a neglected animal, and it was her fault, she knew, for abandoning him.

But that didn't make sense. Before, he had always looked well-groomed, well-fed—but
she
had not fed or groomed him—apart from picking occasional burrs out of his tail. She had given him apples and carrots to munch and once they had shared a box of vanilla wafers, but apart from that he must have survived on the grass and weeds he cropped everywhere they went. Not until now had she wondered where he went when he wasn't with her, where he sheltered at night. Not until now had it occurred to her that he might need food and shelter and that there was no one else to take responsibility for him but herself.

Easy tears sprang to her eyes. How could she have been so horrible? People who abandoned their pets, the helpless animals dependent on them, were the blackest of villains. She had never imagined she could be one of them. She hadn't thought, and that was her crime. She had wished without thinking, without understanding or accepting the consequences.

Marjorie had warned her.

But she'd come back. This time she would not let him down.

“Oh, Snowy, I've missed you so much!” She threw her arms around his neck and inhaled the dusty, salty, horsy smell of him, felt the muscles trembling beneath the skin, heard him snort, and knew beyond a doubt that he had missed her, too. Maybe it wasn't a warm stable, a pile of hay and a currycomb that he needed but only her presence to make him sleek and contented again. He was her wish . . . so what was she to him? Was she his creator, his god? It was a troubling thought, and rather than pursue it, she went with the horse to a nearby tree stump where she could mount him.

Immediately he took off running, flinging her forward onto his neck. But although she clung to him, frightened, for a moment, she soon found her seat, and the glory of his speed, his power between her legs, lifted her out of fear and worry and everything else. There was nothing but this moment, the wind drying the sweat on her face, the sunlight hot on her bare arms, the dusty, resinous smell of the woods and the all-encompassing rhythm of his gallop bearing her along, taking her out of herself, melding them into one creature, at one with the natural world around them.

Although it seemed that he ran for a very long time, eventually they ended up, as they always did, at the edge of the pond. When he put his head down and began cropping the grass she slipped to the ground. She was hungry, too, but she had brought nothing to eat. She had expected to have lunch with Marjorie. Yet now when she thought of confronting her aunt her mouth went dry. Her aunt wasn't going to let her stay; the fact that her parents had split up might win her a little sympathy, but not enough. Marjorie didn't want the responsibility—she'd made that clear enough. She'd send her straight back to Houston.

She stripped off her clothes and walked down to the water's edge. It was deliciously cool as she waded in, especially where the bottom dropped away and she had to swim. For a little while she could enjoy herself in the water and not think, but eventually, as she lazily dog-paddled, her eyes fell on Snowy Miles and the anxious guilt returned.

She couldn't just leave him here a second time; she would not. He might die over the winter without her. She wondered how long it would take to ride him to Houston—a couple of days? Three? She wondered where they would stay at night, and how she would manage to find her way home through the strange, traffic-filled streets once she reached Houston city limits. And then what would her mother say when she turned up with a horse? She'd probably have a fit. She'd never let her keep him. But she had to. She had to make her mother understand. . . .

She rolled onto her back and floated, staring up at the empty blue sky. She didn't want to think about all that, about how she was going to explain the inexplicable, how this horse might be incorporated into her new, fatherless life. If her parents really got divorced, they might be poor. There wouldn't be any money for extras like stabling a horse. How could she make her mother understand that Snowy wasn't an extra, wasn't a luxury, but a necessity, her responsibility? She wished she could just stay here. She didn't want to take Snowy into her own unhappy, complicated world, but to stay here with him in his. To extend those few summer weeks into a lifetime of riding through the woods in silent communion. Her idea of perfection.

So why shouldn't she wish for it? It was what she really wanted, more than anything else in the world, so it had to come true. At first her thoughts were chaotic, trying to marshal an argument, trying to think of all the little wishes she would have to make to build the edifice of the world she wanted, and then she decided not to bother. Snowy had come in answer to her wish without any logic to his appearance, so why shouldn't her life change just as simply?