Unsaid: A Novel (19 page)

“Looks like we do this the hard way.” Jaycee reaches in and pulls Cindy toward her. With a groan, she lifts Cindy out of the enclosure and into her arms. She holds the chimpanzee as you would a child, her two arms making a bridge under Cindy’s bottom.

Jaycee heads back toward the window with Cindy, struggling under her weight. At the same time, the two security guards begin their routine perimeter check. Jaycee finally manages to pull Cindy back out through the window as one of the guards spots Jaycee’s Jeep near the gap in the fence. He immediately radios his partner and then the police.

Cindy begins to stir in Jaycee’s arms at the worst possible time. “It’s okay, Cindy. It’s me. We’re getting out of here.” Jaycee’s words, however, only seem to make Cindy more animated.

The first guard is about to commence a building-to-building search when he notices movement and sound in the darkness. He takes off in Jaycee’s direction, radioing his partner as he runs.

Jaycee is five hundred feet from the perimeter fence when the first guard spots her. “Stop where you are!” Jaycee ignores him and runs toward the fence.

“I’m armed, Dr. Cassidy,” the guard shouts. “This isn’t a tranquilizer gun.” Jaycee hesitates at the use of her name, but only for a moment.

“This is your last chance,” the guard yells. “Stand where you are and lower the specimen to the ground!” Jaycee keeps moving.

A shot rings out, and Cindy jerks in Jaycee’s arms.

It was a warning shot, fired into the air, but it brings Jaycee back to reality. She looks to the fence and her Jeep even farther beyond. In that moment, she knows that she won’t make it, and even if she makes it to the Jeep, she won’t get far. The second guard comes into view on the other side of the fence with his handgun drawn and confirms her conclusion.

Jaycee stops and slowly tries to lower Cindy. But by this time, Cindy is awake enough to recognize her rescuer and refuses to let go of Jaycee’s neck. “It’s okay, Cindy,” Jaycee tells her and tries to break the chimpanzee’s powerful grip.

With his handgun out, the first security guard carefully approaches Jaycee. “I said to lower the specimen.”

“I’m trying.”

“Do it, or I’ll do it for you.”

“Don’t hurt her, please,” Jaycee begs.

“Lie facedown on the ground.”

I begin to hear the police sirens. They’re coming for Jaycee.

Jaycee does as ordered, and Cindy loosens her grip. The chimpanzee turns toward the first guard and shrieks in terror.

The second guard grabs Cindy by the arm and begins to pull her away from Jaycee. Cindy fights against him. She bites the guard’s hand and draws blood.

He screams and then backhands Cindy in the face. She falls to the ground, momentarily stunned by the blow. Cindy quickly gets
back to her feet and, howling like a creature from the mythology of nightmares, makes a straight line for the guard who hit her.

This time there is no mistaking where the guards are pointing their weapons.

Jaycee screams and then dives toward Cindy, tackling her. Jaycee tries to pin Cindy’s body with her own, both shielding Cindy and preventing her from rising.

Jaycee signs the same words over and over again until Cindy stops struggling beneath her.

I recognize the words—
Forgive me
.

David awakens with a start to the rolling credits of
Homeward Bound
and the sound of whining. When I see the look on his face, I know that he has dreamed and that he has not dreamed well.

He checks his watch—only eleven thirty
PM
—and quickly reorients himself. Skippy is still asleep on his lap, but Bernie and Chip, the source of the whining, clearly both need to go out. David gently lowers Skippy to the floor—an act Skippy accepts with great annoyance—and rises from the chair.

“Come on, guys.” Still groggy, David moves slowly toward the front door. Chip and Bernie follow him. Skippy watches them for a moment and then decides to join.

David reaches the door as the dogs begin to bark in anticipation. He swings the door open and the dogs instantly bound out and down the front stairs. They give chase to something in the darkness, something huge and vaguely familiar.

“Wait! Wait!” David yells at the dogs, but it’s a useless gesture. David squints into the night, trying to make out the shapes. “What the hell is that?”

Then he hears Arthur’s angry whinny.

David throws on a pair of shoes and runs after the dogs. He finds them by their barks and by the sound of hard hooves pounding on frozen ground.

The dogs playfully run in and out of Arthur’s legs, oblivious to the fact that Arthur isn’t playing.

I finally catch sight of Arthur’s eyes, and what I see makes me very afraid.

Arthur is no longer angry.

Arthur is no longer my horse.

Arthur is now simply prey. He is chased by wolves, or monsters, or whatever primordial demons horses fear the most. With the darkness taking away his ability to see an escape, Arthur stomps, kicks, and bucks at the smaller creatures underfoot. David yells for the dogs to come back to him, but they’re having too much fun.

It is here that David makes a critical error in judgment. Dogs have an almost inexplicable ability to avoid a horse’s hooves. They dodge, spin, and duck out of harm’s way with eyesight and reflexes that are so much better than ours, they make us seem like caricatures of animate objects. Dogs generally can fend for themselves even among the most panicked of horses; not so humans.

David enters the fray grabbing for any dog collar he can find, still calling for them to come to him.

I hear the blow in the darkness—hoof against flesh—followed by a sharp gasp of pained breath. It is a sound I’ve heard before, a lifetime ago, on a dark and winding Ithaca road.

B
y the dawn of the following day, David has twelve stitches and a huge bruise on his right cheek and a stomach full of painkillers. He is as down as I’ve ever seen him. No one was at the hospital with him to hold his hand, no one was waiting for him when he got home, no one tenderly kissed his stitches.

By the late morning, two men are at the house attempting, without success, to force Arthur out of the barn and toward a truck and horse trailer. The men, whom I now recognize as employees of the large horse farm in town, are pulling hard on the two lead ropes attached to Arthur’s halter. They succeed only in moving him a few feet out of the barn. Then Arthur rears up in panic, pulling the men with him. I’m torn between willing Arthur to fight this abduction and to surrender peacefully.

Sweet, gentle Alice screams for her stablemate from her stall. The dogs, watching from behind the backyard fence, bark continuously at the noise and activity.

David turns away from the pandemonium. He doesn’t notice Sally’s car pull up the driveway.

Clifford is out of the car in seconds, racing toward Arthur with his eyes squeezed shut and screaming, “They are killing him! Stop them!”

Sally runs after him. “Clifford, stop. You’re going to get hurt.”

Clifford is about to run right into Arthur when David reaches out and grabs him by his shirt, bringing him as gently as possible to the ground. Clifford continues to struggle. “Stop them! Stop them!”

Fearing for Clifford’s safety, the workers allow Arthur to retreat completely into the barn and his stall. One of the men quickly steps forward and locks the stall door.

Arthur and Alice, united once again, nuzzle each other quietly, while Clifford whimpers on the ground. David and Sally help him to his feet. “I’m sorry,” David says. “I thought he was going to get trampled.”

“I know,” Sally answers while hugging her boy. “What’s going on here? And what the hell happened to your face?”

“I’ll explain later. Why don’t you take Clifford inside? Skippy’s waiting for him.”

“Don’t let them take the horse, Mama,” Clifford pleads, his words filled with all the inflection and desperation so often missing from his speech. “They’re going to kill him, Mama.”

“Nobody’s going to kill anything, Cliff. Don’t you worry about that. Right, David?”

My husband doesn’t lie. “I think you should take Clifford inside.” His tone has the beginning of an edge to it.

The boy finally opens his eyes. “They are going to kill that horse. It’s in my head, just like before. I saw it, Mama,” Clifford says.

“That’s not going to happen,” Sally tells him, but I can see that she is less certain now. “You go into the house so I can speak to these men, okay?”

“You promise?”

Sally hesitates, but there is no other way to get Clifford into the house. “You bet.” Clifford walks stiffly toward the backyard without looking back. The dogs greet him joyfully and follow him into the house.

One of the men approaches David. “I don’t know what the hell just happened here, but that kid has got to learn he can’t just run up to an angry horse like that. He could’ve been hurt.”

“That kid,” Sally snaps, “is my son and he is disabled, so maybe you can back off a little.”

David turns on Sally. “These men are doing me a favor, okay?”

“I’m sorry, miss,” the man says. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. But, Mr. Colden, I think it’d be safer if we tranquilize him to get him into the trailer.”

“Why are you trailering him?” Sally asks.

“Give us a minute,” David tells the man, who moves to a respectful distance, leaving David and Sally alone. “Arthur almost killed me last night. I can’t deal with him anymore.”

“What are those men going to do with him?”

It’s as if David doesn’t even hear the question. “It’s all hard enough without having to worry about being trampled to death, you know?”

“Where are they taking him?”

“Away. They’re taking him away. They’ll find him a home someplace else, maybe someone who can work with him.”

“That’s a lie and you know it. Who’s going to take that horse the way he is now?”

“Actually, I don’t really give a rat’s ass where they take him or what they do with him, as long as he’s not here.”

“Please, David. You’re angry now, but it’s got nothing to do with this. Don’t do this. We can still figure something out.”

David shakes his head. “I’m really done trying to figure things out. I’m just done, okay? I thought I could do this, but I can’t.”

“Just let me help you.”

“Why do you suddenly care so much about this horse anyway?”

“It’s not about the horse at all,” Sally says. She struggles for a moment to find her next words, but when they come, they come fast. “Sometimes, I try to think of what it must be like to see the world as Clifford does—nothing filtered or distorted by grief or envy or anger or inadequate words, everything is exactly what you see and what you see is exactly what everything is. It must be frightening and overwhelming, yes, but also so beautiful.” Sally puts her hands on David’s shoulders and turns him—but not gently—so he faces the barn. She points at the horses. “Can you see it?”

The two horses face each other across their stalls, their necks almost touching.

“Look, I’m not Helena. I can’t be her. I don’t need to be reminded.”

“You still don’t get it.”

“Then try talking in English.”

“Last week you asked me about grief, about how long it takes to recover. I should’ve told you then, but I just couldn’t. You’re asking the wrong question. It’s not the recovery you should be worrying about. It’s the decisions that are born out of your grief that will haunt you. Some decisions, once you make them, you can’t make any better—”

“Don’t try to tell—”

“Please let me finish,” she barks at him. “You just live their consequences again and again. That’s why grief is so damn powerful—it has one fierce ally and that ally is regret. Before you know it,
you’ve become that bitter shadow that people who used to love you cross the street to avoid. It’s not about horses, or Helena, or Clifford, or me. This is all about you—just you.”

“Really, mind your own damn—”

“So I’m asking you—please—to look right there, look into that barn and tell me the truth. What do you see?”

Before David can answer, the man returns. “Mr. Colden, I hate to interrupt, but we’re on a tight schedule here.”

David nods to him to proceed and then turns toward Sally, his face red with barely controlled rage and frustration. “I see a horse. Just one stupid, angry, miserable horse. You’re not my conscience, you’re not my therapist, and you’re obviously not my friend. So please go into the house and do what it is I pay you for.”

Sally gasps as if she’s been slapped in the face. “You know what I think, Mr. Colden?” Sally asks through clenched teeth.

“No, surprise me, Miss Hanson.”

“I think you’re a damn liar and a coward.” Then, with her head down and fists clenched, Sally moves toward the house.

I follow Sally. I just can’t be near David right now.

Thirty minutes later, I find David sitting on a bale of hay next to the barn, his head in his hands. David holds Arthur’s old halter in his lap.

The truck and trailer slowly pass me as they head down the driveway. I try to steel myself for a final good-bye to my damaged Arthur.

But the trailer is empty.

Once the truck and trailer are gone, David, pale with exhaustion and pain, gets into his car and drives away.

Sally watches David’s departure from the kitchen window. When she is certain he’s gone, Sally begins to pack the few belongings she and Clifford had brought to the house. Her movements bear witness to the same fatigue I saw in David moments ago, except I imagine that Sally’s weariness emanates from that place near the heart where hope is temporarily shielded against harsh reality.

Clifford comes up behind her. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

Sally drops to one knee so she can be sure that she has Clifford’s attention. When she speaks, her voice is firm but warm. “You never need to apologize for trying to save something that deserves saving. Not ever. You understand me, son?”

“Yes, Mama, I understand,” Clifford says as he struggles to maintain eye contact. “But I don’t know how to save anything.”

“Well, maybe you just did.”

After leaving our house, David ends up at the Bronx Zoo a few hours before closing. He still holds Arthur’s halter and has that bewildered look of someone suddenly aware that he has gotten to someplace on his own power, but with no recollection of how it happened.