The Whip (6 page)

Sixteen

It was dawn of the following day. Charlotte was dressed in some of Jonas’ old clothes, a wrapping of bandage around her hand. She stood there for a moment watching Jonas, who was humming a soft tune as he brushed Beelzebub. With great care, she cut a wide berth around them, moving from stall to stall feeding the horses just as Jonas had instructed her. She finished with the last horse, placing the feed bucket down and touched her wounded hand, flinching. Seeing all of this out of the corner of his eye, Jonas stopped his work and went to her.

“Alright now Charlotte, if you are going to be around horses you got to understand something. When a horse don’t know you yet, never stare ’em in the eye. And make sure when you offer your hand to a horse, it’s curled into a soft fist with your palm facing down. He led her over to Ginger, a good natured mare and demonstrated.

“Why do you have to do that? she asked.

“Otherwise, the horse might think your hand is a claw…that you are being aggressive towards her. That’s what old Beelzebub must have thought. That’s why he bit you. Horses are just looking for safety. If they feel safe, then you’re safe. When you approach them, you must be calm, always respectful and have the horse’s well-being in mind. They’re just like people.”

Charlotte wanted to feel the mare’s soft coat. She closed her eyes to calm herself and thought of what Jonas had just said. She took a deep breath and began to pat Ginger’s neck.

Jonas stopped her. “No, not that way Charlotte. Horses hate to be patted. What you need to do is rub on them firmly; stroke them following their hair. They like that.”

Charlotte’s small hand copied Jonas’ strong stroking movement. The horse began licking and chewing.

“There you go. Old Ginger’s relaxing. That’s how horses show they’re comfortable; they lick their mouths and chew.”

Charlotte began to giggle, “It’s like she’s smiling, isn’t it?”

How easy it was to make a horse smile Charlotte thought…to make them happy. Easier than people. She grabbed a handful of oats and held it up to Ginger. The horse nuzzled Charlotte when finished…pushing her lips against her with great eagerness, almost knocking her over.

“Now what’s she trying to tell you, that mare?” asked Jonas.

The horse’s mouth was still inspecting Charlotte’s hand. “Oh, she wants more,” she said.

She gave her another handful of feed and stood there breathing along with Ginger. The mare raised her head and smelled Charlotte breathe, her huge nostrils working like soft bellows.

“See there. You’re doing right,” said Jonas. “You know, everything in God’s creation has a language, and its own ways. Animals, crops, people—even the stars in the sky—all of them, shouting out their secrets every minute to anyone got eyes to see and ears to hear with. Trick is you got to pay attention. It’s like, how can you tell if that dried up old prune of a headmistress is mad at you?”

“Well…her lips go together in a straight line, and her eyes go kind of pink all around like a rabbit, and her nose, her nose goes out like this. And she starts her sniffing.” Charlotte imitated her as best she could.

Jonas laughed. “You got it right, much as I know. I seen her look like that as well. Now, would you go up and give her a pat on the cheek if she looked at you like that?”

“No.”

Jonas nodded. “Well, that’s what you did with old Beelzebub last night. He was telling you plain as day he’s not no easy friend. You just couldn’t read the signs, because they was in horse.”

“Can you teach me horse?”

“Well, I don’t know. Some things can’t be taught. Some you have to be born with. And some of it Charlotte, is up to the horse.”

So Charlotte stayed under Jonas’ tutelage—for a day, then a month, and another, and another, until a year had passed.

She approached Beelzebub with trepidation at first—learning to read him, letting him read her, allowing her body to tell him she was his friend…that she was safe. Given both their histories, that took time.

Seventeen

Another Sunday morning and another church service Charlotte had been able to elude. Jonas came back from his church to find Charlotte brushing Beelzebub in his stall.

“Hey missy. You didn’t go to church again this morning did you?”

“Nope I didn’t. Much prefer the company of horses than Miss Haden and the stupid tattletale girls. Don’t believe in that stuff anyways.”

“You don’t believe in God?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t figure out who God is anyway. The minister says that he’s up there in the sky…looking down on us, taking care of us. I don’t believe him. Otherwise, Lee and I would have parents. And awful things wouldn’t happen…like Lee being tied to the tree. How come you believe in God?”

“Well, I just do I guess. Always have…makes me feel safe. It’s called faith.”

“Why did my mama leave me then? Was I bad? Was that God punishing me because I did something wrong?”

“I don’t know why those things happen Charlotte…why your mama did what she did. That was a terrible thing. But I bet it didn’t have anything to do with you. She must not have felt like she had a choice. Everybody is just trying to do the best they can with what they got. I think God sometimes gives us trials and tribulations to see what we do with ’em. But I don’t believe for a second that God punishes you.”

“Well maybe he doesn’t, but that’s what it feels like. I wish I could feel safe like you.”

“You know Charlotte, God isn’t just up in the sky. He’s down here too. I see him in my horses. I see him in you. That’s what makes me feel safe.”

Charlotte scrunched up her nose. “That’s funny. You see God in me? In Beelzebub? What about in old Miss Haden? Do you see God in her?

Jonas chuckled. “Well, maybe not Miss Haden. But even when we don’t like someone, we gotta treat them with respect. With compassion. Humans and otherwise.”

“I’ll never respect Miss Haden. Not ever.”

“All comes down to treating people the way that you want to be treated. It’s the old do unto others…like the Bible says? Miss Haden doesn’t understand that. Maybe you will though someday…Come on now missy, guess you just got your church for today. Let’s wash up for lunch.”

Eighteen

Two years later Charlotte was still at the stable, waking in the cold mists of the morning, washing herself in the frigid water of the barrel, mucking out the stalls, exercising the horses, currying them, feeding them. She’d learned to ride. She could ride Beelzebub now; she could ride him with effortless grace—stallion and girl, one coursing creature.

The horse had tested her and found in her a likely student of himself, and then with a delicacy and mystery, he’d instructed her. In the end there was a deep and wordless communion between them, borne out of a hard-won trust. Jonas saw it come to life out of nothing. He watched it. It deepened and widened and then swirled around the two of them so palpably that you had to stand back if you were not to be pulled into the powerful vortex of it.

And Miss Haden? Any inkling of a thought about the boyish girl approaching and she willed her mind to go blank. Let her stay in the stable and sling the horse manure. If that’s what she wanted her life to be, then so be it. She was Jonas’s problem. The same could not be said of Lee…that wretched boy was still hanging around the main house. Headmaster Meade had inexplicably given him a job as handyman. She was sure that damn man gave him the job just to spite her.

And Lee? Lee never stopped thinking of Charlotte. At seventeen his thoughts had been murky and sultry. At eighteen they grew precise. They grew urgent.

One afternoon, Lee was leaning against the stable door, watching Charlotte ride up on Beelzebub.

“Let me get on,” he said as she approached.

“I don’t think so. You’ll get hurt.” She swung down in a dismount.

Lee grabbed the reins from her.

Beelzebub whinnied in protest, tossing his head.

“No,” shouted Charlotte, grabbing the reins back. “Don’t pull on him like that. You’ll wreck his mouth.”

“What do you know?”

“A horse’s mouth is very sensitive, just like yours or mine.”

They were standing very near each other. Lee leaned into Charlotte, his gaze traveling down the curve rising in the front of her shirt, then up to Charlotte’s lips. “Oh?”

“Yes,” she answered. “You should always ride with more legs than hands. If you yank too hard on the bit it hurts him. He won’t feel the feel anymore. His mouth can get numb and pretty soon he’s no good because he won’t respond to the reins. ‘Cold mouth,’ is what Jonas calls it.”

“Your mouth ain’t cold…is it?”

“Stop it, Lee. I’m busy.”

She stepped back. She could feel the rough stable wall behind her.

“You weren’t too busy last week for it. Let me see if your mouth can follow the feel.”

Lee stepped forward to kiss her. He was staring at her mouth as if hypnotized by it. Charlotte turned her head away and licked her lips. She saw its effect on him: a wild agitation that seemed to flicker all through his body. Curious to test her powers, she licked her lips again, slower this time. He seized hold of her wrists with a pincer grasp.

“Charlotte,” he groaned.

She tore her arms away from him. “Stop. You’re hurting me.”

Jonas heard Charlotte cry out. He appeared from inside the barn, taking it all in.

“You come to help today, Lee?” he asked.

“Nah.” Lee turned and shuffled away, pausing to give Charlotte one last quick glance over his shoulder. She met eyes with him and for a moment they stared at each other. Then he turned his head down, spat on the ground and left.

Nineteen

That night, Charlotte slept as she always did
,
with Beelzebub. She slept under a blanket on a small pile of hay in one corner of the stall. The stallion snorted from time to time. Under his lids his eyes were moving back and forth, back and forth. Charlotte’s sleep was also restless that night; something in her dreams of Lee kept not happening.

Just short of midnight she woke to the sound of a low melodious whistle nearby. She opened her eyes and saw light. Looking down at her over the front of the stall, grinning his lopsided grin, was Lee, lantern in hand. She realized at that moment that she was not surprised. Hadn’t she been waiting all night for him? Hadn’t she known he was coming?

Awake now, Beelzebub’s nervous hooves started to dance towards Charlotte’s head.

“Beelzebub,” she hissed. She rolled out of reach just in time to avoid being stepped on by the stallion. She let herself out of the stall.

“What are you doing here?”

Lee placed the lantern on the ground. She saw he had a small bundle with him, tied together with rope. He gave her a wan champion’s smile.

“They finally kicked me out. No more work here. Let’s go,” he said.

“Go? Where?”

“Anywhere.”

Charlotte slumped against the stall, her blanket wrapped around her.

“I’ll take care of you,” he said. “Didn’t I always take care of you?”

“I can’t,” she said in a tiny voice. It had all just washed over her, the dreams she’d had, what she’d thought of doing with him.

“Why not?”

“I can’t leave Jonas and Beelzebub and the horses,” she added.

“Who the hell cares about them?”

“I do. I’m not going to run away.”

Lee turned around and punched the stall door hard with his hand. The stallion pinned his ears and whinnied. For a moment it looked as if Lee might hit Charlotte too. But instead the intensity drained from his face and was replaced by an icy casualness. He leaned in very close to her. “You owe me,” he said.

He reached out his hand and pushed it under the blanket and touched her long nightshirt, an old man’s nightshirt, where one of her breasts strained against the fabric. At this he sucked in his breath. When he released it, it was a moan. “Oh, Char—”

He took her shirt and ripped it all the way down the front. He put his hands on her naked body and began to knead her breasts.

“No, no,” he muttered. “You’re not a girl.” Then he brought his mouth to her nipples, sucking so hard it hurt her.

She could feel his rough lips moving across her skin. She felt her breath, her body, her will, snap into a paralyzed stillness. She felt herself watching it all from far away.

He lifted his head and met her eyes. “Oh, you’re gonna get it now.”

Holding her eyes he dropped his hands to his belt and began to undo the buckle and the buttons on his pants. “Gotta do it Char—gonna break your cherry.”

He pushed himself between Charlotte’s legs, slamming her against the stall door. She could feel the hardness of him pushing inside her. It was starting to hurt. But she didn’t resist.

At that moment Beelzebub began to squeal and scream, trumpeting biblically on his hind legs. Then the whole stable was in an uproar—horses whinnying, neighing, thrashing. Beelzebub, king of them all, continued to rear and pound his feet on the ground. He lunged at the stall door with pinned ears, mouth open, head shaking and teeth glistening.

The sound was tremendous; the whole stable reverberated with it. Lee lost his grip and Charlotte fell to the ground. He scuttled backwards.

Pushing open the stable door in alarm, Jonas was shouting, “Charlotte…what the hell is going on?”

He covered the distance to her in a moment. She was pulling herself up from the hay-strewn floor. She pulled her torn nightshirt together as she stood up…breathing hard, her body, her breath, her will, crashing back into her. Lee had vanished.

“Are you alright Charlotte? What happened?”

But it had all been such a blur; Charlotte, not certain herself, could not say.

Twenty

Charlotte sat next to Jonas on the wagon as
they
rode into town the following morning. He seemed distracted, lost in his own thoughts with a rare angry expression on his face. What was it he was feeling? She could not make it out. Something she had not felt from him before. His face was closed and his manner was stern. She wished he would talk to her now about the horses, the weather, or her chores. She wished he would scold her, though he seldom did that. She wished he would hum a little song to the horses or sing to her, like he always did. Anything. Anything to keep her mind off the events of last night.

Last night…she hadn’t known what to say to Jonas. Thank God he hadn’t pushed the matter. He had just made her some tea while she cleaned herself up. But this morning she felt embarrassed, sitting there next to him, still not knowing what to say.

Jonas flicked his wrist and the whip unfurled over the heads of the horses with a reverberating snap. As they approached a crossroad, he stopped the wagon. He turned his head toward Charlotte. In the sunlight, it somehow looked to her as though there had been tears in his eyes. She felt her heart make a jump in her chest that pained her. He must have seen this because he smiled at her, a spark of familiar mischief lighting up his face. She sighed with relief. She must have been mistaken; it was going to be alright—he was going to be playful.

They entered the crossroads and with little effort, Jonas played the four reins, guiding the team of horses into a perfect ninety degree left turn.

“Now how did I do that?”

“You didn’t do anything,” she teased. “The horses know the road, is all.”

“That so?” He laughed.

He turned the team around in the middle of the road, then handed her the reins. “You do it, then.”

“Sure.” She gave a confident sidelong look at Jonas. This was not the first time he had asked her to do something new and when she did it well—and if it had to do with horses she just about always did it well—he would shake his head in mock amazement. “You beats all, missy,” he’d say.

She took the four reins in her left hand, cracked Jonas’ whip with her right and yelled out at the team just as he had. She gave the reins a confident shake. They were off. The team started to move back toward the crossroad. She glanced over at him. He sat there staring straight ahead, his face a mask. This she expected—it was part of the game—and she smiled to herself at the anticipation of his rueful praise: “Dang it Charlotte, can’t nobody beat you as far as horses is concerned. What a girl.”

She shuddered with a sudden recollection: Lee last night saying to her, “you’re not a girl.” Why would he say that then? She didn’t understand him anymore. When they were younger, they knew each other always with a look, a smile, a whistle, without words. It was like they were the same person somehow. Now he was a stranger. Like he was… .

She needed to focus. Which rein had Jonas used to turn the team around? They were tangled in her hand. The lead horses had already passed the midpoint, and she hadn’t started the turn yet. Impulsively, she yanked on one of the reins hard and the left lead horse turned, crashing into its team mate. The right wheel horse, confused and frightened, began snorting, neighing and kicking at the lead horse in front of him. For one of the few times with the horses, she didn’t know what to do. She yanked hard on the reins.

Jonas started to turn his head, about to say something to her, but the little wagon at that instant hit a jagged rut in the road. It lurched and teetered and, with a great gasp of wood, tipped over onto its side. Charlotte cried out. The horses came to an abrupt, confused halt. Charlotte and Jonas were dumped into the dust.

“You alright? You hurt yourself?” Jonas asked as he picked himself up.

Charlotte was already getting up on her feet. She was alright. The horses were all right. The wagon seemed alright too, even if out of commission—it’s wooden wheels spinning in the air.

“Why didn’t you help me?” she shouted. “You let it happen.” Tears were coming to her eyes.

“Now you know this was your doing, Charlotte. I don’t have to tell you that. You know you weren’t concentrating. You weren’t studying how I drove, like you usually do. Your mind was other places. When you’re working with horses, you got to be thinking only of them. You got to be here with them, breathing with them…and tears is not going to help set this wagon straight.”

Charlotte rubbed the tears hard from her face with her fist. He was right. She had let herself be distracted. She would never let that happen again.

Jonas walked over to the horses to check on them. He stopped and looked back at her.

“Life’s going to do that to you missy. Gonna upset your wagon, not just once but many times. And you got to choose who’s sitting next to you. Someone you can trust…or not.”

Someone you can trust or not? He was talking about Lee, she thought with amazement. He knew her so well. He seemed to always know what she was thinking. Her eyes lighting with love and trust, she went to him. Together they moved among the horses, calming them. Then together they righted the little wagon.

When that night Lee came to her again, she would not let him touch her.