Tom Booker watched the lariat 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 good-night.
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 round and round 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, 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.
'That's right old pal, that's what it is. But don't you take my word for it.'
Tom laid the saddle down on the grass and stepped away from it. Pilgrim looked off to one side for a moment, pretending it was no big deal and he wasn't interested. But he couldn't stop his eyes from coming back to the saddle and after a while he stepped forward and walked toward it.
Tom watched him come and never moved. The horse stopped about a yard away from where the saddle lay and reached out almost comically with his nose to sniff the air above it.
'What d'you reckon? Gonna bite ya?'
Pilgrim gave him a baleful look then looked back at the saddle. He was still wearing the rope halter Tom had made for him. He pawed the ground a couple of times then stepped in closer and nudged the saddle with his nose. With an easy movement, Tom took the bridle off his shoulder and held it in both hands, sorting it. Pilgrim heard it clink and looked up.
'Don't you go looking all surprised. You saw this coming a hundred miles away.'
Tom waited. It was hard to imagine this was the same animal he'd seen in that hellish stall in upstate New York, severed from the world and all that he was. His coat gleamed, his eyes were clear and the way his nose had healed gave him a look that was almost noble, like some battle-scarred Roman. Never, Tom thought, had a horse been so transformed. Nor so many lives around one.
Now Pilgrim came to him, as Tom knew he would, and gave the bridle the same ritual sniffing he'd given the saddle. And when Tom undid the halter and put the bridle on him, not once did he flinch. There was still some tightness and the faintest quivering in his muscles, but he let Tom rub his neck and then move his hand along and rub the place where the saddle would go and neither did he step away nor even toss his head at the feel of the bit in his mouth. However fragile, the confidence and trust Tom had been working for were set.
Tom led him around with the bridle as they'd done so often with the halter, circling the saddle and stopping eventually right by it. Easily, and making sure Pilgrim could see his every move, he lifted it and placed it on the horse's back, soothing him all the while with either hand or word or both. Lightly he fastened the cinch, then walked him to let him know how it felt when he moved.
Pilgrim's ears were working all the time but his eyes showed no white and every now and then he made that soft blowing sound that Joe called 'letting the butterflies out'. Tom leaned down and tightened the cinch then laid himself across the saddle and let the horse walk some more to know his weight, all the time soothing him. And when, at last, the horse was ready, he eased his leg over and sat in the saddle.
Pilgrim walked and he walked straight. And though his muscles still trembled to some deep untouchable vestige of fear that perhaps would always be there, he walked bravely and Tom knew that if the horse sensed no mirrored trace of it in Grace, then she might ride him too.
And when she had, there would be no need for her or her mother to stay.
Robert had bought a travel guide to Montana at his favorite bookstore on Broadway and by the time the Fasten Seatbelts sign pinged on and they started their descent into Butte, he probably knew more about the city than most of the thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-six people who lived there.
A few more minutes and there it was below him,'the richest hill on earth', velevation five thousand, seven hundred and fifty-five feet, the nation's largest single source of silver in the 1880s and of copper for another thirty years. The city today, Robert now knew, was a mere skeleton of what it then was, but 'had lost nothing of its charm', none of which however, was immediately apparent from the vantage of Robert's window seat. It looked like someone had stacked luggage on a hillside and forgotten to collect it.
He'd wanted to fly to Great Falls or Helena, but at the last minute something had cropped up at work and he'd had to change his plans. Butte had been the best he could do. But even though it looked on the map a huge distance for Annie to drive, she'd still insisted on coming to meet him.
Robert had no clear picture of how the loss of her job had affected her. The New York papers had slavered over the story all week. GATES GARROTS GRAVES, one of them blazed, while others gave new spin to the old gag, the best of which was, GRAVES DIGS ONE FOR HERSELF. It was odd to see Annie cast as victim or martyr, as the more sympathetic pieces had it. It was even odder how nonchalant she had been about it on the phone when she got back from playing cowboys.
don't give a damn,' she'd said.
'Really?'
'Really. I'm glad to be shot of it. I'll do something new.'
Robert wondered for a moment if he'd called the wrong number. Perhaps she was just putting on a brave face. She said she was tired of all the power games and the politics, she wanted to get back to writing, to what she was good at. Grace, she said, thought it was terrific news, the best thing that could have happened. Robert had then asked about the cattle drive and Annie said, simply, that it had been beautiful. Then she'd handed him over to Grace, fresh from her bath, to tell him all about it. They would both be there to meet him at the airport.
There was a small crowd of people waving as he walked across the asphalt, but he couldn't see Annie or Grace among them. Then he looked more closely at the two women in blue jeans and cowboy hats who he'd noticed laughing at him, rather rudely he thought, and saw it was them.
'My God,' he said as he came up to them. 'It's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid!'
'Howdy stranger,' Grace drawled. 'What brings you into town?' She took off her hat and threw her arms around his neck.
'My baby, how are you? How ARE you?'
'I'm good.' She clung so tight Robert choked up with emotion.
'You are. I can see. Let me look at you.'
He held her away from him and had a sudden memory of that limp, lusterless body he'd sat watching in the hospital. It was hardly credible. Her eyes brimmed with life and the sun had brought out all the freckles on her face. She seemed almost to glow. Annie looked on and smiled, clearly reading his thoughts.
'Notice anything?' Grace said.
'You mean apart from everything?'
She did a little twirl for him and he suddenly got it.
'No cane!'
'No cane.'
'You little star.'
He gave her a kiss and at the same time reached out for Annie. She too had taken off her hat now. Her tan made her eyes seem clear and so very green. She too seemed transformed, more beautiful than he could ever recall. She stepped in close and put her arms around him and kissed him. Robert hugged her till he felt he had control of himself and wouldn't embarrass them all.
'God, it seems a long time,' he said at last.
Annie nodded. 'I know.'
The journey back to the ranch took about three hours. But though she was impatient to show her father around and let him see Pilgrim and introduce him to the Bookers, Grace enjoyed every mile of it. She sat in the back of the Lariat and put her hat on Robert's head. It was too small for him and looked funny, but he left it perched there and soon had them laughing with an account of his connecting flight to Salt Lake City.
Virtually every other seat had been taken by a touring tabernacle choir who had sung the entire way. Robert had sat squeezed between two voluminous women altos with his nose buried in his Montana guidebook, while everyone around him boomed 'Nearer My God To Thee'. Which, at thirty thousand feet of course, they were.
He got Grace to rummage in his bag for the presents he'd bought for them both in Geneva. For her he'd got a massive box of chocolates and a miniature cuckoo clock with the strangest-looking cuckoo she'd ever laid eyes on. Its call, Robert conceded, was more like a parrot with piles. But it was absolutely authentic, he swore; he knew for a fact Taiwanese cuckoos, especially hemorrhoidal ones, looked and sounded precisely like that. Annie's presents, which Grace also unwrapped, were the usual bottle of her favorite perfume and a silk scarf all three of them knew she'd never wear. Annie said it was lovely and leaned across and kissed him on the cheek.
Looking at her parents, united side by side before her, Grace felt true contentment. It was as though the final pieces of her fractured jigsaw life were falling back in place. The only space that remained was riding Pilgrim. And that, if all had gone well today at the ranch, would soon be filled too. Until they knew for sure, neither she nor Annie was going to mention it to Robert.
It was a prospect that both thrilled and troubled Grace. It wasn't so much that she wanted to ride him again but that she knew she must. Since she'd been riding Gonzo, no one seemed to doubt that she would do so - provided, that is, Tom thought it safe. Only she, secretly, had doubts.
They were not to do with fear, at least not in its simple sense. She worried that when the moment came she might feel fear but was fairly sure that if she did she would at least be able to control it. She worried more however that she might let Pilgrim down. That she wouldn't be good enough.
Her prosthetic leg was now so tight it gave her constant pain. On the last few miles of the cattle drive it had been almost unbearable. She hadn't told a soul. When Annie noticed how often now she left the leg off when they were alone, Grace had made light of it. It had been harder to pretend to Terri Carlson. Terri could see how inflamed the stump was and told her she urgently needed a new fitting. The trouble was, nobody out West did this type of prosthetic. The only place it could be done was New York.
Grace was determined to hold out. It would only be a week or two at most. She would just have to hope that the pain wouldn't distract her too much and make her less good when the moment came.
It was the cusp of evening when they left Route 15 and headed west. Before them the Rocky Front was stacked high with thunderheads which seemed to reach out over the gathering sky toward them.
They drove through Choteau so that Grace could show Robert the dump they'd first lived in and the dinosaur outside the museum. Somehow he'd come to seem neither as big nor as mean as he had when they arrived. Nowadays Grace almost expected him to wink.
By the time they reached the turn off 89, the sky was vaulted with blackening cloud like a ruined church, through which the sun found fitful access. Cruising out along the straight gravel road to the Double Divide, they all fell silent and Grace began to feel nervous. She wanted so much for her father to be impressed by the place. Perhaps Annie felt the same way, because when they came over the ridge and saw the Double Divide open up before them, she stopped the car to let Robert take in the view.
The dust-cloud they had stirred from the road overtook them and drifted slowly ahead, dispersing gold on a stark burst of sun. Some horses grazing down by the cottonwoods that fringed the nearest bend of the creek raised their heads to watch.
'Wow,' Robert said. 'Now I know why you guys don't want to come home.'
Annie had bought the food for the weekend on the way to the airport and should, of course, have done it on the way back. Five hours in a hot car had done the salmon no good at all. The supermarket in Butte was the best she'd found since coming to Montana. They even had sun-dried tomatoes and small pots of rooted basil which had wilted badly on the journey home. Annie had watered them and stood them on the windowsill. They might just survive. Which was more than could be said for the salmon. She took it to the sink and ran it under cold water in the hope of washing away the ammonia smell.
The rush of water drowned the constant low rumble of thunder outside. Annie doused the fish's sides and watched its loosened scales shiver and twirl and disappear with the water. Then she opened its gutted belly and sluiced the blood from its clotted membranous flesh till it glistened a lurid pink. The smell became less pungent, but the feel of the fish's flaccid body in her hands brought such a wave of nausea that she had to leave the fish on the draining board and go quickly through the screen door out onto the porch.
The air was hot and heavy and brought no relief. It was almost dark, though long before it should be. The clouds were a bilious black veined with yellow and so low they seemed to compress the very earth.
Robert and Grace had been gone almost an hour. Annie had wanted to leave it until morning but Grace had insisted. She wanted to introduce Robert to the Bookers and let him see Pilgrim right away. She hardly gave him time to look inside the house before getting him to drive her down to the ranch. She'd wanted Annie to come along too, but Annie said no, she'd get supper and have it ready for when they got back. Tom meeting Robert was something she'd rather not see. She wouldn't know where to look. Even the thought of it now made her nausea worse.
She'd bathed and changed into a dress but already felt sticky again. She stepped out on to the porch and filled her lungs with the useless air. Then she walked slowly around to the front of the house where she could look out for them.
She'd seen Tom and Robert and all the kids piling into the Chevy and watched the car go by below her on its way up to the meadows. The angle was such that she could only see Tom in the driver's seat as they passed. He didn't look up. He was turned talking to Robert who sat beside him. Annie wondered what he made of him. It was as though she herself were being judged by proxy.
All week Tom had avoided her and although she thought she knew why, she felt his distance like a widening space within her. While Grace was in Choteau seeing Tern Carlson, Annie had waited for him to call as he always did to ask her to go riding, knowing in her heart that he wouldn't. When she went with Grace to watch him working with Pilgrim, he was so involved he barely seemed to notice her.
Afterward, their conversation had been trivial, polite almost.
She wanted to talk to him, to say she was sorry for what had happened, though she wasn't. At night, alone in her bed, she'd thought of that tender mutual exploring, taking it further in fantasy until her body ached for him. She wanted to say she was sorry simply in case he thought badly of her. But the only chance she'd had was that first evening when he had brought Grace home. And when she'd started to speak he'd cut her off, as if he knew what she was going to say. The look in his eyes as he drove away had almost made her run calling after him.
Annie stood with her arms folded, watching the lightning flicker somewhere above the shrouded mass of the mountains. She could see the headlights of the Chevy now among the trees up by the ford and as they leveled and headed down the track she felt a heavy drop of rain on her shoulder. She looked up and another smacked the center of her forehead and trickled down her face. The air was suddenly cooler and filled with the fresh smell of wet on dust. Annie could see the rain coming down the valley toward her like a wall. She turned and hurried back inside to grill the salmon.
He was a nice guy. What else did Tom expect? He was lively and funny and interesting and, more important, he was interested. Robert leaned forward to squint through the futile arc made by the wipers. They had to shout to make themselves heard through the drumming of the rain on the car's roof.
'If you don't like the weather in Montana, wait five minutes,' Robert said. Tom laughed.
'Did Grace tell you that?'
'I read it in my guidebook.'
'Dad's the ultimate guidebook nerd,' Grace yelled from the back.
'Well thanks sweetie, I love you too.'
Tom smiled. 'Yep, well. Sure looks like rain.'
He'd taken them up pretty well as far as you could comfortably go in a car. They'd seen some deer, a hawk or two and then, high on the far side of the valley, a herd of elk. The calves, some no more than a week old, sheltered beside their mothers from the thunder. Robert had brought along some binoculars and they watched for ten minutes or more, the kids all clamoring for their turn. There was a big bull with a wide six-point sweep of antlers and Tom tried bugling to it but got no reply.
'How much would a bull like that weigh?' Robert asked.
'Oh, seven hundred pounds, maybe a little more. Come August his antlers alone could weigh fifty.'
'Ever shoot them?'
'My brother Frank hunts now and then. Me, I'd sooner see their heads moving about up here than hung on some wall.'
He asked a whole lot more questions on the way home, Grace teasing him all the while. Tom thought of Annie and all her questions when he'd brought her up here those first few times and he wondered if Robert had gotten the habit from her or she from him or whether they were both like that by nature and just suited each other. That must be it, Tom decided. They just suited each other. He tried to think of something else.
Water was torrenting down the track up to the creek house. Around the back, the rain was gushing in spouts from every corner of the roof. Tom said he and Joe would bring the Lariat up from the ranch later on. He pulled up as close as he could to the porch so Robert and Grace wouldn't get drenched when they got out. Robert got out first. He shut the door and from the backseat Grace asked Tom in a quick whisper how it had gone with Pilgrim. Though they'd been to see the horse earlier, they'd had no time alone to speak.
'It went good. You'll be okay.'
She beamed from ear to ear and Joe gave her a little gleeful punch on the arm. She had no time to ask more because Robert opened the rear door for her to get out.
It should have occurred to Tom that the rain on the dust at the edge of the porch would have made it slippery. But it didn't, until Grace stepped out of the car and her feet went from under her. She gave a little cry as she fell. Tom leapt out and ran around the front of the car.
Robert was bent anxiously over her.
'God, Gracie, are you okay?'
'I'm fine.' She was already trying to get up and seemed more embarrassed than hurt. 'Dad, really, I'm fine.'
Annie came running out and nearly fell herself.
'What happened?'
'It's okay,' Robert said. 'She just slipped.'
Joe was out of the car now too, all concerned. They helped Grace to her feet. She winced as she took her own weight. Robert kept his arm around her shoulders.
'Are you sure you're okay, baby?'
'Dad please, don't make a fuss. I'm fine.'
She limped but tried to hide it as they took her into the house. Fearing they were missing out on the drama, the twins were about to come inside too. Tom stopped them and with a gentle word sent them back to the car. He could see from Grace's mortified face that it was time to leave.
'See you all in the morning then.'
'Okay,' Robert said. 'Thanks for the tour.'
'You're welcome.'
He winked at Grace and told her to get a good night's sleep and she smiled bravely and said she would. He steered Joe out through the screen door then turned to say good-night and his eyes met Annie's. The look between them lasted less than a moment but in it was contained all their hearts would utter.
Tom tipped his hat to them and said good-night.
She knew something had broken as soon as she hit the deck of the porch and in a moment of horror thought it was her own thighbone. Only when she stood up was she certain it wasn't. She was shaken and, God, so embarrassed but she wasn't hurt.
It was worse. The sleeve of the prosthetic was cracked from top to bottom.
Grace was sitting on the rim of the bathtub with her blue jeans dropped crumpled around her left ankle and the prosthetic in her hands. The inside of the cracked sleeve was warm and damp and smelled of sweat. Maybe they could glue it or tape it or something. But then she'd have to tell them about it and if it didn't work there was no way they'd let her ride Pilgrim tomorrow.
After the Bookers left she'd had to put on a major act to make light of the fall. She'd had to smile and joke and tell her mom and dad at least a dozen more times that she was okay. At last they seemed to believe her. When she thought it safe, she'd claimed the first bath and escaped up here to examine the damage behind closed doors. She could feel the damn thing move on her stump as she walked across the living room and getting up the stairs was really tricky. If she couldn't even do that with it, how on earth could she ride Pilgrim? Shit! Falling like that was so dumb. She'd gone and spoiled everything.
She sat and thought for a long time. She could hear Robert downstairs talking excitedly about the elk. He was trying to imitate the call Tom had made. It didn't sound anything like it. She could hear Annie laughing. It was so great to have him here at last. If Grace told them now what had happened it would wreck the whole evening.
She decided what to do. She stood up, maneuvered herself over to the basin and got a box of Band-Aids out of the medicine cabinet. She'd make as good a repair with them as she could and in the morning try riding Gonzo. If it felt okay she wouldn't tell anyone until she'd ridden Pilgrim.
Annie switched off the bathroom light and walked quietly across the landing to Grace's room. The door was ajar and creaked softly as she opened it wider. The bedside lamp was still on, the one they'd bought together in Great Falls to replace the broken one. The night it broke now seemed to Annie to belong to a different life.
'Gracie?'
There was no answer. Annie went over to the bed and switched off the light. She noted casually that Grace's leg wasn't propped in its usual place against the wall, but lay instead on the floor, tucked in the shadow between bed and table. Grace was asleep, her breathing so soft that Annie had to strain to hear it. Her hair lay swirled like the mouth of a dark river across the pillow. Annie stood for a while, watching her.
She'd been so brave about the fall. Annie knew it must have hurt. Then at supper and all evening she'd been so funny and bright and cheerful. She was an incredible kid. Before dinner, in the kitchen, while Robert was upstairs taking a bath, she'd told Annie what Tom had said about riding Pilgrim. She was buzzing with excitement, had it all worked out how she was going to surprise her dad. Joe was going to take him off to see Bronty's foal and then bring him back at just the right moment to find her on Pilgrim. Annie was not without qualms about it and nor, she guessed, would Robert be. But if Tom thought it safe, it would be.
'He seems like a real nice fellow,' Robert had said, helping himself to another piece of salmon, which surprisingly tasted alright.
'He's been very kind to us,' Annie said, as blandly as she could. There was a short silence and her words seemed to hang there as if for inspection. Mercifully, Grace started to talk about some of the things she'd seen Tom do this week with Pilgrim.
Annie leaned over now and kissed her daughter softly on the cheek. From some far-off place, Grace murmured a response.
Robert was already in bed. He was naked. As she came in and started to undress he put down his book and watched her, waiting for her. It was a signal he'd used for years and in the past she'd often enjoyed undressing before him, even been aroused by it. Now though, she found his silent gaze unsettling, almost unbearable. She'd known, of course, he would expect to make love tonight, after so long apart. All evening she had dreaded it.
She took off her dress and laid it on the chair and felt suddenly so acutely aware of his eyes on her and the intensity of the silence that she stepped over to the window and parted the blind to look out.
'The rain's stopped.'
'It stopped about half an hour ago.'
'Oh.'
She looked down toward the ranch house. Though she'd never been in Tom's room, she knew the window and could see the light was on. Oh God, she thought, why can't it be you? Why can't it be us? The thought filled her with a kind of yearning surge so near to desperation that she quickly had to shut the blind and turn away. She hurriedly took off her bra and panties and reached for the big T-shirt she normally wore to sleep in.
'Don't put it on,' Robert said softly. She turned to look at him and he smiled. 'Come here.'
He held out his arms to her and she swallowed and did her best to smile back, praying he couldn't read what she feared was in her eyes. She put the T-shirt down and walked to the bed, feeling shockingly exposed in her nakedness. She sat on the bed beside him and couldn't help the shiver of her skin as he slipped one hand around the back of her neck and the other to her left breast.
'Are you cold?'
'Only a little.'
He gently pulled her head down to him and kissed her, in the way he always kissed her. And she tried, with every atom she could muster, to blank her mind of all comparison and lose herself in the familiar contours of his mouth and its familiar taste and smell and the familiar cradling of his hand on her breast.
She closed her eyes but could not subdue the welling sense of betrayal. She had betrayed this good and loving man not so much by what she'd done with Tom but by what she longed to do. More powerfully however, and even though she told herself how foolish it was, she felt she was betraying Tom by what she was doing now.
Robert opened the sheets and shifted to let her in beside him. She saw the familiar pattern of russet hair on his stomach and the engorged pink sway of his erection. It slid hard against her thigh as she laid herself down beside him and found his mouth again.
'Oh, God, Annie, I've missed you.'
'I've missed you too.'
'Have you?'
'Shh. Of course I have.'
She felt the flat of his hand travel down her side and over her hip to her belly and knew he would stroke between her legs and would find how unaroused she was. Just as his fingers reached the rim of her hair, she slipped away a little down the bed.
'Let me do this first,' she said. And she eased herself over between his legs and took him in her mouth. It was a long time, years even, since she'd done it and the thrill of it made him take a sudden shuddering breath.
'Oh Annie. I don't know if I can take this.'
'It doesn't matter. I want to.'
What wanton liars love makes of us, she thought. What dark and tangled paths it has us tread. And as he came, she knew with a flooding sad certainty that whatever happened they would never be the same again and that this guilty act was secretly her parting gift.
Later, when the light was off, he came inside her. So dark was the night they could not see each other's eyes. And, thus protected, Annie at last was stirred. She turned herself loose to the liquid rhythm of their coupling and found beyond its sorrow some brief oblivion.
Robert drove Grace down to the barn after breakfast. The rain had cleared and cooled the air and the sky was a faultless wide curve of blue. He'd already noticed Grace was quieter this morning, more serious, and he asked her on the way down if she was okay.
'Dad, you've got to stop asking me that. I'm fine. Please.'
I'm sorry.'
She smiled and patted his arm and he left it at that. She'd called Joe before they left and by the time they got there he'd already fetched Gonzo from the paddock. He gave them a big grin as they got out of the Lariat.
'Good morning, young man,' Robert said.
'Morning Mr Maclean.'
'It's Robert, please.'
'Okay sir.'
They led Gonzo into the barn. Robert saw that Grace seemed to be walking with more of a limp than yesterday. Once she even seemed to lose her balance and had to reach for the gate of a stall to steady herself. He stood to watch them saddle Gonzo, asking Joe all about him, how old the pony was, how many hands, whether paints had a special kind of temperament. Joe gave full and courteous answers. Grace didn't say a word. Robert could see in the gathering of her brow that something was troubling her. He guessed from Joe's glances at her that he saw it too, though both knew better than to ask.
They led Gonzo out the back of the barn and into the arena. Grace prepared to mount.
'No hat?' Robert asked.
'You mean no hard hat?'
'Well, yes.'
'No, Dad. No hat.'
Robert shrugged and smiled. 'You know best.'
Grace narrowed her eyes at him. Joe looked from one of them to the other and grinned. Then Grace gathered the reins and, with Joe's shoulder for support, put her left foot in the stirrup. As she took the weight on her prosthetic leg, something seemed to give and Robert saw her wince.
'Shit,' she said.
'What is it?'
'Nothing. It's okay.'
With a grunt of effort she swung the leg over the cantle and sat in the saddle. Even before she'd settled he could see something was wrong. And then he saw her face screw up and realized she was crying.
'Gracie, what is it?'
She shook her head. He thought at first she was in pain, but when at last she spoke it was clear they were tears of anger.
'It's no damn good.' The words were almost spat. 'It's not going to work.'
It took Robert the rest of the day to get hold of Wendy Auerbach. The clinic had an answering machine with an emergency number which, curiously, seemed permanently busy. Maybe every other prosthetic in New York had cracked in sympathy or through some lurking defect whose time had suddenly come. When at last he got through, a weekend duty nurse said she was sorry but it wasn't clinic policy to give out home numbers. If however it really was as urgent as Robert said, which by her tone she seemed to doubt, she would try to contact Dr Auerbach on his behalf. An hour later the nurse called back. Dr Auerbach was out and wouldn't be home till late afternoon.
While they waited, Annie called Terri Carlson, whose number - unlike Wendy Auerbach's - was listed in the phone book. Terri said she knew someone over in Great Falls who might be able to rig up another kind of prosthetic at short notice but she advised against it. Once you'd gotten used to a particular type of leg, she said, changing to another was tricky and could take time.
Although Grace's tears had upset him and he felt for her in her frustration, Robert felt also a secret relief that he was to be spared what, it now emerged, was to have been a surprise staged specially for him. The sight of Grace climbing up on Gonzo had been nerve-racking enough. The thought of her on Pilgrim, whose calmer demeanor he didn't quite trust, was downright scary.
He didn't query it however. The failing, he knew, was his. The only horses he'd ever felt at ease with were those little ones in shopping malls that you slotted coins in to make them rock. Once it was apparent the idea had the backing not just of Annie but more crucially of Tom Booker too, Robert had set about salvaging it as though it had his full support.
By six o'clock they had a plan.
Wendy Auerbach at last called and got Grace to describe precisely where the crack was. She then told Robert that if Grace could get back to New York and come in for a new molding late on Monday, they could do a fitting on Wednesday and have the new prosthetic ready by the weekend.
'Alrighty?'
'Alrighty,' Robert said and thanked her.
In family conference in the creek house living room, the three of them decided what they'd do. Annie and Grace would fly back with him to New York and the following weekend they'd fly out here again for Grace to ride Pilgrim. Robert couldn't return with them because he had to go again to Geneva. He tried to look convincingly sad that he'd be missing all the fun.
Annie called the Bookers and got Diane, who'd earlier been so sweet and concerned when she heard what had happened. Of course it would be okay to leave Pilgrim here, she said. Smoky could keep an eye on him. She and Frank were getting back from L.A. on Saturday, though when Tom would be back from Wyoming she wasn't sure. She invited them to join them all that evening for a barbecue. Annie said they'd love to.
Then Robert called the airline. They had a problem. There was only one other seat on the return flight he'd booked himself on from Salt Lake City to New York. He asked them to hold it.
'I'll get a later flight,' Annie said.
'Why?' Robert said. 'You may as well stay here.'
'She can't fly back here on her own.'
Grace said, 'Why not? Come on, Mom, I flew to England on my own when I was ten!'
'No. It's a connection. I'm not having you wandering around an airport on your own.'
'Annie,' Robert said. 'It's Salt Lake City. There are more Christians per square yard than in the Vatican.'
'Mom, I'm not a kid.'
'You are a kid.'
'The airline'll take care of her,' Robert said. 'Look, if it comes to it, Elsa can fly out with her.'
There was a silence, he and Grace both watching Annie, waiting on her decision. There was something new, some indefinable change in her that he'd noticed first on the way back from Butte the previous day. At the airport he'd put it down simply to the way she looked, this new healthy radiance she had. On the journey she'd listened to the banter between him and Grace with a kind of amused serenity. But later, beneath it, he'd thought he glimpsed something more wistful. In bed, what she'd done for him was blissful, yet also somehow shocking. It had seemed to have its source not in desire but in some deeper, more sorrowful intent.
Robert told himself that whatever change there was doubtless stemmed from the trauma and release of losing her job. But now, while he watched her making up her mind, he acknowledged to himself that he found his wife unfathomable.
Annie was looking out of the window at the perfect late spring afternoon. She turned back to them and pulled a comic sad face.
'I'll be here all on my own.'
They laughed. Grace put an arm around her.
'Oh, poor little Mommy.'
Robert smiled at her. 'Hey. Give yourself a break.
Enjoy it. After a year of Crawford Gates, if anyone deserves some time it's you.'
He called the airline to confirm Grace's reservation.
They built the fire for the barbecue in a sheltered bend of the creek below the ford, where two rough-hewn wooden tables with fixed benches stood the year round, their tops warped and runneled and bleached the palest gray by the elements. Annie had come across them on her morning run from whose tyrannical routine she seemed, with no apparent ill effect, to have all but escaped. Since the cattle drive, she had only run once and even then was shocked to hear herself tell Grace she'd been out jogging. If she was now a jogger, she might as well quit.
The men had gone up earlier to get the fire going. It was too far for Grace to walk with her taped-up leg and resurrected cane, so she went with Joe in the Chevy, ferrying the food and drink. Annie and Diane trailed after on foot with the twins. They walked at a leisurely pace, enjoying the evening sun. The trip to L.A. had just ceased to be a secret and the boys babbled with excitement.
Diane was friendlier than ever. She seemed genuinely pleased that they'd sorted Grace's problem out and wasn't at all spiky, as Annie had feared, about her staying on.
'Tell you the truth, Annie, I'm glad you're going to be around. That young Smoky's okay, but he's only a kid and I'm not too sure how much goes on in that head of his.'
They walked on while the twins ran ahead. Only once did their conversation pause, when a pair of swans flew over their heads. They watched the sun on their earnest white necks craning up the valley and listened to the moan of their wings fading on the still of the evening.
As they drew nearer, Annie heard the crackle of firewood and saw a curl of white smoke above the cottonwoods.
The men had built the fire on a close-cropped spit of grass that jutted into the creek. To one side of it, Frank was showing off to the children how he could skim stones and earning only derision. Robert, beer in hand, had been put in charge of the steaks. He was taking the job as seriously as Annie would have predicted, chatting to Tom with one side of his brain while the other monitored the meat. He nagged away at it constantly, readjusting it piece by piece with a long-handled fork. In his plaid shirt and loafers, standing alongside Tom, Annie thought with affection how out of place he looked.
Tom saw the women first. He waved and came over to get them a drink from the cooler. Diane had a beer and Annie a glass of the white wine she'd supplied. She found it hard to look Tom in the eyes as he handed it to her. Their fingers touched briefly on the glass and the sensation made her heart skip.
'Thanks,' she said.
'So, you're running the ranch for us next week.'
'Oh, absolutely.'
'At least there'll be someone here smart enough to use a telephone if something comes up,' Diane said.
Tom smiled and looked confidingly at Annie. He wasn't wearing a hat and he pushed back a fall of blond hair from his brow as he spoke.
'Diane reckons poor old Smoke can't count to ten.'
Annie smiled. 'It's very kind of you. We've way outstayed our welcome.'
He didn't answer, just smiled again and this time Annie managed to hold his gaze. She felt that if she let herself she could dive into the blue of his eyes. At that moment, Craig came running up to say Joe had pushed him into the creek. His pants were soaked up to the knees. Diane yelled for Joe and went off to investigate. Left alone with Tom, Annie felt panic rise within her. There was so much she wanted to say but not a word of it trivial enough for the occasion. She couldn't tell if he shared or even sensed her awkwardness.
'I'm real sorry about Grace,' he said.
'Yes, well. We sorted it out. I mean, if it's okay with you, she can ride Pilgrim when you get back from Wyoming.'
'Sure.'
'Thank you. Robert won't get to see it but, you know, to have got this far and then not—'
'No problem.' He paused. 'Grace told me about you quitting your job.'
'That's one way of putting it.'
'She said you weren't too cut up about it.'
'No. I feel good about it.'
'That's good.'
Annie smiled and swallowed some more wine, hoping to diffuse the silence that now fell between them. She glanced toward the fire and Tom followed her look. Left to himself, Robert was giving the meat his undivided attention. It would be done, Annie knew, to perfection.
'He's a top hand with a steak, that husband of yours.'
'Oh yes. Yes. He enjoys it.'
'He's a great guy.'
'Yes. He is.'
'I was trying to work out who was the luckier.' Annie looked at him. He was still looking at Robert. The sun was full on Tom's face. He looked at her and smiled. 'You for having him, or him for having you.'
They sat and ate, the children at one table and the adults at the other. The sound of their laughter filled the space among the cotton-woods. The sun went down and between the silhouetted trees Annie watched the molten surface of the creek take on the pinks and reds and golds of the dimming sky. When it was dark enough, they lit candles in tall glass sleeves to shield them from a breeze that never came and watched the perilous fluttering of moths above them.
Grace seemed happy again, now that her hopes of riding Pilgrim were restored. After everyone had finished eating, she told Joe to show Robert the match trick and the children gathered around the adults' table to watch.
When the match jumped the first time, everyone roared. Robert was intrigued. He got Joe to do it again, and then again more slowly. He was sitting across the table from Annie, between Diane and Tom. She watched the candlelight dance on his face while he concentrated, scrutinizing every move of Joe's fingers, searching as he always did for the rational solution. Annie found herself hoping, almost praying, that he wouldn't find it or that if he did, he wouldn't let on.
He had a couple of attempts himself and failed. Joe was giving him the whole spiel about static electricity and was doing it well. He was about to get him to put his hand in water to 'boost the charge' when Annie saw Robert smile and knew he had it. Don't spoil it, she said to herself. Please don't spoil it.
'I get it,' he said. 'You flick it with your nail. Is that right? Here, let me have another go.'
He rubbed the match in his hair and drew it slowly up his palm toward the second one. When they touched, the second one jumped away with a crack. The children cheered. Robert grinned, like a boy who'd caught the biggest fish. Joe was trying not to look disappointed.
'Too darn smart these lawyers,' Frank said.
'What about Tom's trick!' Grace called. 'Mom? Have you still got that piece of string?'
'Of course,' Annie said. She'd kept it in her pocket ever since Tom gave it to her. She treasured it. It was the only piece of him she had. Without thinking, she took it out and handed it to Grace. Immediately she regretted it. She had a sudden, fearful premonition, so strong she almost cried out. She knew that if she let him, Robert would demystify this too. And if he did, something precious beyond all reason would be lost.
Grace handed the cord to Joe who told Robert to hold his finger up. Everyone was watching. Except for Tom. He was sitting back a little, watching Annie over the candle. She knew he could read what she was thinking. Joe now had the cord looped over Robert's finger.
'Don't,' Annie said suddenly.
Everyone looked at her, startled to silence by the anxious note in her voice. She felt the heat rising to her cheeks. She smiled desperately, seeking help among the faces in her embarrassment. But the floor was still hers.
'I - I just wanted to figure it out myself first.'
Joe hesitated a moment to see if she was serious. Then he lifted the loop from Robert's finger and handed it back to her. Annie thought she saw in the boy's eyes that he, like Tom, understood. It was Frank who came to the rescue.
'Good for you, Annie,' he said. 'Don't you go showing no lawyers till you've got yourself a contract.'
Everyone laughed, even Robert. Though when their eyes met she could see he was puzzled and perhaps even hurt. Later, when the talk had moved safely on, it was only Tom who saw her quietly coil the cord and slip it back into her pocket.
Late Sunday night, Tom did a final check on the horses then came inside to pack. Scott was in his pajamas on the landing getting a final warning from Diane who wasn't buying his story that he couldn't sleep. Their flight was at seven in the morning and the boys had been put to bed hours ago.
'If you don't cut it out, you don't come, okay?'
'You'd leave me here on my own?'
'You betcha.'
'You wouldn't do that.'
'Try me.'
Tom came up the stairs and saw the jumble of clothes and half-filled suitcases. He winked at Diane and steered Scott off to the twins' room without a word. Craig was already asleep and Tom sat on Scott's bed and they whispered about Disneyland and which order they'd do the rides, until the boy's eyelids grew heavy and he slept.
On his way to his own room, Tom walked past Frank and Diane's and she saw him and thanked him and said good-night. Tom packed all he needed for the week, which wasn't much, then tried to read awhile. But he couldn't concentrate.
While he was out with the horses, he'd seen Annie arrive back in the Lariat from taking her husband and Grace to the airport. He walked to the window now and looked up toward the creek house. The yellow blinds of her bedroom were lit and he waited a few moments, hoping he'd see her shadow cross, but it didn't.
He washed, undressed and got into bed and tried reading again with no greater success. He turned off the light and lay on his back with his hands tucked behind his head, picturing her up there in the house all alone, as she would be all week.
He'd have to leave for Sheridan around nine and would go up and say goodbye before he left. He sighed and turned over and forced himself at last into a sleep that brought no peace.
Annie woke around five and lay for a while watching the luminescent yellow of the blinds. The house contained a silence so delicate she felt it might shatter with but the slightest shift of her body. She must then have dozed off, for she woke again at the distant sound of a car and knew it must be the Bookers leaving for their flight. She wondered if he'd got up with them to see them off. He must have. She got out of bed and opened the blinds. But the car had gone and there was no one outside the ranch house.
She went downstairs in her T-shirt and made herself a coffee. She stood cradling the cup in her hands by the living-room window. There was mist along the creek and in the hollows of the valley's far slope beyond. Maybe he was already out with the horses, checking them one more time before he went. She could go for a run and just happen to find him. But then what if he came here to say goodbye, as he'd said he would, when she was out?
She went upstairs and ran herself a bath. Without Grace, the house seemed so empty and its silence oppressive. She found some bearable music on Grace's little radio and lay in the hot water without much hope that it might calm her.
An hour later she was dressed. She'd taken much of that time deciding what to wear, trying one thing then another and in the end getting so cross with herself for being such an idiot that she punished herself by pulling on the same old jeans and T-shirt. What the hell did it matter, for Christsake? He was only coming to say goodbye.
At last, at the twentieth time of looking, she saw him come out of the house and throw his bag into the back of the Chevy. When he stopped at the fork, she thought for an anguished moment that he was going to turn the other way and head off up the drive. But he nosed the car toward the creek house instead. Annie went into the kitchen. He should find her busy, getting on with her life as if his going was really no big deal. She looked around in alarm. There was nothing to do. She'd done it all already, emptied the dishwasher, cleared the garbage, even (heaven help her) put sparkle on the sink, all to pass the time till he came. She decided to make some more coffee. She heard the scrunch of the Chevy's tires outside and looked up to see him swing the car in a circle so it was pointing ready to leave. He saw her and waved.
He took his hat off and gave a little knock on the frame of the screen door as he came in.
'Hi.'
'Hi.'
He stood there turning the brim of his hat in his hands.
'Grace and Robert get their flight okay?'
'Oh yes. Thanks. I heard Frank and Diane go.'
'Did you?'
'Yes.'
For a long moment the only sound was the drip of the coffee coming through. They could neither talk nor even look each other in the eye. Annie stood leaning against the sink trying to look relaxed as she dug her fingernails into her palms.
'Would you like a coffee?'
'Oh. Thanks, but I better be going.'
'Okay.'
'Well.' He pulled a small piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and stepped closer to hand it to her. 'It's the number I'll be at down in Sheridan. Just in case there's a problem or something, you know.'
She took it. 'Okay, thanks. When will you be back?'
'Oh, sometime Saturday, I guess. Smoky'll be by tomorrow, see to the horses and all. I told him you'd be feeding the dogs. Feel free to ride Rimrock anytime.'
'Thanks. I might.' They looked at each other and she gave him a little smile and he nodded.
'Okay,' he said. He turned and opened the screen door and she followed him out onto the porch. She felt as if there were hands on her heart, slowly twisting the life from it. He put his hat on.
'Well, bye Annie.'
'Bye.'
She stood on the porch and watched him get back in the car. He started the engine, tipped his hat to her and pulled away down the track.
He drove for four and a half hours but he measured it not by time but only by how each mile seemed to make the ache deepen in his chest. Just west of Billings, lost in thoughts of her, he almost drove into the back of a cattle truck. He decided to take the next exit and go the slower route to the south, through Lovell.
It took him near the Clark's Fork, through land he'd known as a boy, though there was little now to know it by. Every trace of the old ranch was gone. The oil company had long taken what it wanted and pulled out, selling off the land in plots too small for a man to make a living. He drove past the remote little cemetery where his grandparents and great-grandparents were buried. On another day he would have bought flowers and stopped, but not today. Only the mountains seemed to offer some slim hope of comfort and south of Bridger he turned left toward them and headed up on roads of red dirt into the Pryor.
The ache in his chest only got worse. He lowered the window and felt the blast of the hot sage-scented air on his face. He cussed himself for a lovelorn schoolboy. He would find somewhere to stop and get himself back together.
They'd built a fancy new viewing place above the Bighorn Canyon since he was last there, with a big parking lot and maps and signs that told you about the geology and all. He supposed it was a good thing. Two carloads of Japanese tourists were having their pictures taken and a young couple asked him to take one for them so they could both be in it. He did and they smiled and thanked him four times and then everyone piled back into their cars and left him alone with the canyon.
He leaned on the metal rail and looked down a thousand feet of yellow and pink striated limestone to the snaking, garish green water below.
Why hadn't he just taken her in his arms? He could tell she wanted him to, so why hadn't he? Since when had he been so goddamn proper about these things? He'd conducted this area of his life till now with the simple notion that if a man and a woman felt the same way about each other they should act on it. Okay, so she was married. But that hadn't always stopped him in the past, unless the husband was either a friend or potentially homicidal. So what was it? He searched for an answer and found none, except that there was no precedent to judge it by.
Below him, maybe five hundred feet below, he saw the spanned black backs of birds he couldn't name, soaring against the green of the river. And, quite suddenly, he identified what it was he felt. It was need. The need that Rachel, so many years ago, had felt for him and that he'd found himself unable to return, nor felt for any being or thing before or since. Here at last he knew. He had been whole and now he was not. It was as if the touch of Annie's lips that night had stolen away some vital part of him that only now he saw was missing.
It was for the best, Annie thought. She was grateful -or at least believed she would be - that he had been stronger than she was.
After Tom left, she had been firm with herself, setting herself all sorts of resolutions for the day and the days to come. She would make good use of them.
She would call friends to whose faxed condolences she hadn't yet responded; she would call her lawyer about the tedious details of her severance and she would tidy all the other loose ends she'd left hanging last week. Then she would enjoy her isolation; she would walk, she would ride, she would read; she might even write something, though what she had no idea. And by the time Grace came back, her head, and possibly her heart, would be level.
It wasn't quite that easy. After the early high cloud had burned away, the day was another perfect one, clear and warm. But though she tried to be part of it, performing every task she set herself, she could not shift the listless hollow inside her.
At around seven, she poured herself a glass of wine and stood it on the side of the tub while she bathed and washed her hair. She'd found some Mozart on Grace's radio and though it crackled, it helped to banish a little of the loneliness that had crept upon her. To cheer herself further, she put on her favorite dress, the black one with the little pink flowers.
As the sun went behind the mountains she got into the Lariat and drove down to feed the dogs. They came bounding from nowhere to meet her and escorted her like a best friend into the barn where their food was kept.
Just as she finished filling their bowls she heard a car and thought it odd that the dogs paid it no attention. She put the bowls down before them and went to the door.
She saw him but a moment before he saw her.
He was standing in front of the Chevy. Its door hung open and its headlights behind him shone lambent in the dusk. As she stopped in the doorway of the barn, he turned and saw her. He took off his hat, though he didn't twist it nervously in his hands as he had this morning. His face was grave. They stood quite still, perhaps five yards apart, and for a long moment neither of them spoke.
'I thought…' He swallowed. 'I just thought I'd, come back.'
Annie nodded. 'Yes.' Her voice was fainter than air. She wanted to go to him but found she couldn't move and he knew it and put his hat on the hood of the car and came toward her. Watching him draw near, she feared that all that was welling within her would engulf and sweep her quite away before he got to her. Lest it did, she reached out like a drowning soul to grasp him and he stepped into the circle of her arms and circled her in his and held her and she was saved.
The wave broke over her, convulsing her with sobs that shook her very bones as she clung to him. He felt her quake and held her more tightly to him, burrowing his face to find hers, feeling the tears that streamed on her cheek and smoothing, soothing them with his lips. And when she felt the quaking subside, she slid her face through the pressing wetness and found his mouth.
He kissed her as he'd kissed her on the mountain, but with an urgency from which neither of them now would turn back. He held her face in his hands that he might kiss her more deeply and she moved her hands down his back and took hold of him below his arms and felt how hard his body was and so lean that she could lay her fingers in the grooved caging of his ribs. Then he held her in the same way and she trembled at the touch.
They leaned apart to catch their breath and look at one another.
'I can't believe you're here,' she said.
'I can't believe I ever went.'
He took her by the hand and led her past the Chevy, with its door still open and its lights now finding purchase in the fading light. The sky above them domed a deepening orange till it met the black of the mountains in a roar of carmine and vermilion cloud. Annie waited on the porch while he unlocked the door.
He didn't turn on any lights but led her through the shadows of the living room where their footsteps creaked and echoed on the wooden floor and penumbral sepia faces watched their passage from the pictures on the walls.
She had a longing for him so powerful that as they climbed the wide staircase it felt almost like sickness. They reached the landing and walked hand in hand past the open doors of rooms strewn like an abandoned ship with discarded clothes and toys. The door of his room was also open and he stood aside for her to go in then followed her and closed the door.
She saw how wide and bare the room was, not how she'd imagined it those many nights she'd seen the light at his window. Through that same window now she could see the creek house shaped black against the sky. The room was filled with a waning glow that turned all it touched to coral and gray.
He reached out and drew her to him to kiss her again. Then, without a word, he started to undo the long line of buttons at the front of her dress. She watched him do it, watched his fingers and then his face, the little concentrating frown. He looked up and saw her watching but didn't smile, just held her look as he undid the last button. The dress fell open and when he slid his hands inside it and touched her skin she gasped and shivered. He held her by her sides as before and bent his head and gently kissed the tops of her breasts above her bra.
And Annie leaned back her head and closed her eyes and thought, there is nothing but this. No other time, nor place nor being than now and here and him and us. And no earthly point in calculating consequence or permanence or right or wrong, for all, all else, was as nothing to the act. It had to be and would be and was.
Tom led her to the bed and they stood beside it while she stepped from her shoes and started to unbutton his shirt. Now it was his turn to watch and he did so as if from some reaching crest of wonder.
Never before had he made love in this room. Nor never, since Rachel, in a place that he could call his home. He had gone to women's beds but never let them come to his. He had casualized sex, kept it distant that he might keep himself free and protect himself from the kind of need he'd seen in Rachel and which now he felt for Annie. Her presence, in the sanctum of this room, thus took on a significance that was both daunting and wondrous.
The light from the window set aglow her glimpsing skin where her dress fell open. She undid his belt and the top of his jeans and pulled his shirt clear so she could roll it off his shoulders.
In the momentary blindness as he pulled off his T-shirt, he felt her hands on his chest. He lowered his head and kissed again between her breasts and breathed the smell of her deep into his lungs as if he would drown in it. He eased the dress gently from her shoulders.
'Oh Annie.'
She parted her lips but said nothing, just held his gaze and reached behind her back and unhooked her bra. It was plain and white and edged above with simple lace. She lifted the straps from her shoulders and let it fall away. Her body was beautiful. Her skin pale, except at the neck and arms where the sun had turned it a freckled gold. Her breasts were fuller than he'd thought they'd be, though still firm, her nipples large and set high. He put his hands to them and then his face and felt the nipples gather and stiffen at the brush of his lips. Her hands were at the zipper of his jeans.
'Please,' she breathed.
He pulled the faded quilt from the bed and opened the sheets and she laid herself down and watched him take off his boots and socks and then his jeans and shorts..And he felt no shame nor saw any in her, for why should they feel shame at what was not of their making but of some deeper force that stirred not just their bodies but their souls and knew naught of shame nor of any such construct?
He knelt on the bed beside her and she reached out and took his erection in her hands. She bent her head and brushed her lips around the rim of it so exquisitely that he shuddered and had to close his eyes to find some lower, more tolerable key.
Her eyes, when he ventured to look at her again, were dark and glazed with the same desire he knew glazed his own. She let go of him and lay back and lifted her hips for him to take off her panties. They were of a pale, functional gray cotton. He ran his hand over the soft bulge within them then pulled them gently down.
The triangle of revealed hair was deep and thick and of the darkest amber. Its curling tips trapped the last glimmer of the light. Just above it ran the paled scar of a caesarean. The sight of it moved him, though he knew not why, and he lowered his head and traced its length with his lips. The brush of her hair on his face and the warm, sweet smell he found there moved him more powerfully and he lifted his head and leaned back on his heels that he might catch his breath and see her more fully.
They surveyed each other now in their nakedness, letting their eyes roam and feed with an incredulous, suspended, mutual hunger. The air was filled with the urgent synchrony of their breathing and the room seemed to swell and fold to its rhythm like an enclosing lung.
'I want you inside me,' she whispered. 'I don't have anything to—' 'It doesn't matter. It's safe. Just come inside me.' With a little frown of need, she reached for the tilt of him again and as she closed her fingers on it, he felt she had possession of the very root of his being. He came forward again on his knees, letting her steer him in toward her.
As he saw Annie open herself before him and felt the soft collision of their flesh, Tom saw suddenly again in his mind those birds, wide-winged and black and nameless, soaring below him against the green of the river. He felt he was returning from some distant land of exile and that here, and only here, he could be whole again.
It seemed to Annie, when he entered her, that he dislodged in her loins some hot and vivid surge that swept slowly the entire length of her body to lap and furrow around her brain. She felt the swell of him within her, felt the gliding fusion of their two halves. She felt the caress of his hard hands on her breasts and opened her eyes to see him bend his head to kiss them. She felt the travel of his tongue, felt him take her nipple in his teeth.
His skin was pale, though not as pale as hers, and on his rib-furrowed chest the cruciform of hair was darker than the sunbleach of his head. There was a kind of supple angularity to him, born of his work, which somehow she had expected. He moved on her with that same centered confidence she'd seen in him all along; only now, focused exclusively on her in this new domain, it was both more overt and intense. She wondered how this body that she'd never seen, this flesh, these parts of him she'd never touched, could yet feel so known and fit her so well.
His mouth delved the open hollow of her arm. She felt his tongue slick the hair that since coming here she'd let grow long and soft again. She turned her head and saw the framed photographs on top of the chest of drawers. And for a fleeting moment, the sight of them threatened to connect her to another world, a place which she was in the act of altering and which she knew she would find sullied with guilt if she were to let herself but look. Not now, not yet, she told herself and she lifted his head between her hands and quested blindly for the oblivion of his mouth.
When their mouths parted, he leaned back and looked down at her and for the first time smiled, moving on her to the slow rasp of their coupled selves.
'You remember that first day we rode?' she said.
'Every moment.'
'That pair of golden eagles? Do you remember?'
'Yes.'
'That's what we are. Now. That's what we are.'
He nodded. Their eyes locked into each other, unsmiling now, in a growing preoccupied urgency, until at last she saw the flicker in his face and felt him quiver and then the spurt and flood of him within her. And she arched herself into him and at the same time felt in her loins a shocking, protracted imploding of flesh that rushed to her core then jolted and spread in waves to the furthest corners of her being, bearing him there with it, until he filled every place within her and they were one and indistinguishable.
He woke with the dawn and felt at once the sleeping warmth of her beside him. She lay along his body, nestled in the shelter of his arm. He could feel her breath on his skin and the soft rise and fall of her breasts against him. Her right leg was tucked over his. He could feel the gentle prickle of her belly on his thigh. The palm of her right hand lay on his chest above his heart.
It was that clarifying hour when normally men left and women wanted them to stay. He'd known it many times himself, the urge to slip away like a thief with the dawn. It seemed prompted not so much by guilt as by fear, fear that the comfort or companionship that women seemed often to want, after a night spent more carnally, was somehow too committing. Maybe there was some primordial force at work. You sowed your seed and got the hell out. If so, this morning, Tom felt not a trace of it. He lay quite still so as not to wake her. And it occurred to him that maybe he was afraid to. Never in the night, not once in the long hours of their tireless hunger, had she shown any sign of regret. But he knew that with the dawn would come, if not regret, some colder new perspective. And so he lay in the unfolding light and treasured the slack and guiltless warmth of her beneath his arm.
He slept again and woke the second time to the sound of a car. Annie had turned over and he lay now with his front molded to the contours of her back, his face tucked into the scented nape of her neck. As he eased himself away from her she murmured though didn't wake and he slipped from the bed and silently gathered his clothes.
It was Smoky. He'd pulled up beside their two cars and was inspecting Tom's hat which had stood all night on the hood of the Chevy. The worry on his face changed to a grin of relief when he heard the clack of the screen door and saw Tom heading out toward him.
'Hiya, Smoke.'
'Thought you was upped and gone down to Sheridan.'
'Yeah. There was a change of plan. Sorry, I meant to call you.' He'd called the man with the colts from a gas station in Lovell to say sorry he couldn't make it, but had clean forgotten about Smoky.
Smoky handed him his hat. It was damp from the dew.
'Thought for a minute there you'd been kidnapped by aliens or somethin'.' He looked at Annie's car. Tom could see he was trying to figure things out.
'Annie and Grace didn't go back east then?'
'Well, Grace did, but her mother couldn't get a flight. She's staying over till the weekend when Grace gets back.'
'Right.' Smoky nodded slowly but Tom could see he wasn't altogether sure what was going on. Tom glanced at the Chevy's open door and remembered the lights must have been on all night too.
'Had some trouble last night with the battery here,' he said. 'Maybe you could help me give it a jump?'
It didn't explain a whole lot but it did the trick, for the prospect of a task seemed to drive all lingering doubt from Smoky's face.
'Sure,' he said. 'I got some leads in the truck.'
Annie opened her eyes and took only a moment to remember where she was. She turned over, expecting to see him and felt a small leap of panic on finding herself alone. Then she heard voices and the slam of a car door outside and felt a larger leap. She sat up and swung her legs out from the tangle of sheets. She stood and walked to the window and, as she did so, had to stem the moist run of him between her legs. She felt a bruised aching there that was also somehow delicious.
Through a narrow gap in the drapes she saw Smoky's truck pulling away from the barn and Tom waving after him. Then he turned and headed back to the house. She knew he wouldn't see her if he looked up and, watching him, she wondered how the night might have changed them both. What now might he think of her, having seen her so wanton and shameless? What now did she think of him?
He squinted up at the sky where already the clouds were burning off. The dogs came bounding around his legs and he ruffled their heads and spoke to them as he walked and Annie knew that, for her at least, nothing had changed.
She showered in his little bathroom, waiting to be seized by guilt or remorse, but neither came, only trepidation at what he might be feeling. She found the sight of his few simple toilet things beside the basin oddly touching. She used his toothbrush. There was a big blue toweling bathrobe slung by the door and she put it on, wrapping herself in the smell of him, and went back into his room.
He'd opened the drapes and was looking out of the window when she came in. He heard her and turned and she recalled him doing the same that day in Choteau when he'd come to the house to give her his verdict on Pilgrim. There were two cups steaming on the table beside him. She could see the apprehension in his smile. 'I made some coffee.' 'Thanks.'
She went over and took the cup, casing it in her hands. Alone together in the big empty room, they seemed suddenly formal, like strangers arrived too early at a party. He nodded at the robe.
'It suits you.' She smiled and sipped the coffee. It was black and strong and very hot. 'There's a better bathroom along the way there if you—' 'Yours is just fine.' "That was Smoky dropped by. I forgot to call him.'
There was silence. Somewhere down by the creek a horse whinnied. He looked so worried, she was suddenly afraid he was going to say sorry, it was all a mistake and could they just forget it ever happened.
'Annie?'
'What?'
He swallowed. 'I just wanted to say, that whatever you feel, whatever you think or want to do, it's okay.'
'And what do you feel?'
He said simply, 'That I love you.' Then he smiled and gave a little shrug that almost broke her heart. 'That's all.'
She put her cup down on the table and went to him and they clung to each other as if the world were already bent on their division. She covered his lowered face with kisses.
They had four days before Grace and the Bookers returned, four days and four nights. One protracted moment along the trail of nows. And that was all she would live and breathe and think of, Annie resolved, nothing beyond nor nothing past. And whatever came to pass, whatever brutal reckonings were forced upon them, this moment would be there, indelibly written in their heads and hearts forever.
They made love again while the sun eased over the corner of the house and angled knowingly in upon them. And afterward, cradled in his arms, she told him what she wanted. That the two of them should ride again to the high pastures where first they had kissed and where now they might be alone together, with nothing but the mountains and the sky to judge them.
They forded the creek a little before noon.
While Tom had saddled the horses and loaded a packhorse with all they might need, Annie had driven back up to the creek house to change and get her things. They would both bring food. Though she didn't say and he didn't ask, he knew she would also have called her husband in New York to lay some pretext for her coming absence. He'd done the same with Smoky who was getting a little dazed with all these changes of plan.
'Going up to check on the cattle, huh?'
'Yes.'
'On your own or…?'
'No, Annie's coming too.'
'Oh. Right.' There was a pause and Tom could hear two and two coalescing in Smoky's mind.
'I'd appreciate it, Smoke, if you kept it to yourself.'
'Oh sure, Tom. You bet.'
He said he'd drop by as previously planned to see to the horses. Tom knew he could be trusted on both issues.
Before leaving, Tom went down to the corrals and put Pilgrim into the field with some of the younger horses he'd started to get along with. Normally Pilgrim would go running off with them right away, but today he stood by the gate and watched Tom walk back to where he'd left the saddled horses.
Tom was going to ride the same mare he'd taken on the cattle drive, the strawberry roan. As he rode up toward the creek house, leading Rimrock and the little paint packhorse behind him, he looked back and noticed Pilgrim was still standing alone by the gate, watching him go. It was almost as if the horse knew something in their lives had changed.
Tom waited with the horses on the track below the creek house and watched Annie come in long strides down the slope toward him.
The grass in the meadow beyond the ford had grown lush and long. Soon the contractors would be here for haymaking. It slushed against the legs of the horses as Tom and Annie rode through it side by side, with no other sound but the rhythmic creak of their saddles.
For a long time neither of them seemed to feel the need to talk. She asked no questions now about the land through which they passed. And it seemed to Tom that this was not because at last she knew the names of things, but rather that their names no longer mattered. It only mattered that they were.
They stopped in the heat of the midafternoon and watered the horses at the same pool as before. They ate a simple meal she had brought, of crusted bread and cheese and oranges. She peeled hers deftly in one unbroken curl and laughed when he tried to do the same and failed.
They crossed the plateau where the flowers had begun to fade and this time rode together to the crest of the ridge beyond. They startled no deer but saw instead, maybe a half-mile on toward the mountains, a small band of mustangs. Tom signed to Annie to stop. They were downwind and the mustangs hadn't yet sensed them. It was a family band of seven mares, five of them with foals. There were also a couple of colts, too young yet to have been driven away. The band stallion Tom had never seen before. 'What a beautiful animal,' Annie said. 'Yeah.'
He was magnificent. Deep-chested and strong in the quarters, he weighed maybe more than a thousand pounds. His coat was a perfect white. The reason he hadn't yet seen Tom and Annie was that he was too busy seeing off a more pressing intruder. A young stallion, a bay, was making a bid for the mares.
'Things get kind of heated this time of year,' Tom said quietly. 'It's the mating season and this young fella thinks it's time he had a go. He'll have been trailing this band for days, probably with a few other young studs.' Tom craned in the saddle to peer around. 'Yep, there they are.' He pointed them out to Annie. There were nine or ten of them another half-mile or so to the south.
'That's what they call a bachelor band. They spend their time hanging out, you know, getting drunk, bragging to each other, carving their names on trees, till they're big enough to go steal some other guy's mares.'
'Oh. I see.' Her tone made him realize what he'd said. She was giving him a look but he didn't return it. He knew exactly what the corners of her mouth would be doing and the knowing of it pleased him. 'That's right.' He kept his eyes firmly on the mustangs.
The two stallions were standing nose to nose, while the mares and foals and the challenger's distant friends looked on. Then suddenly both stallions exploded, tossing their heads and squealing. This was when the weaker one would normally concede. But the bay didn't. He reared up and screamed and the white stallion reared too, but higher, and thrashed at him with his hooves. Even from here you could see the white of their bared teeth and hear the thwack as their kicks struck home. Then, within moments, it was over and the bay scuttled off defeated. The white stallion watched him go. Then, with a glance at Tom and Annie, he ushered his family away.
Tom felt her eyes on him again. He shrugged and gave her a grin.
'You win some, you lose some.'
'Will the other one be back?'
'Oh yes. He's gonna have to spend some more time at the gym, but he'll be back.'
They built a fire by the stream, just next to the place where they had kissed. They buried potatoes as before in its embers and while these cooked they made a bed, laying their bedrolls side by side with the saddles for a headboard then zipping their two single sleeping bags together. An inquisitive huddle of heifers stood with lowered heads on the other bank to watch.
When the potatoes were done, they ate them with sausage fried in an old iron pan and some eggs Annie thought would never survive the journey. They mopped the dark yolks from their plates with the rest of the bread. The sky had clouded over. They washed their plates in the moonless stream and laid them on the grass to dry. Then they took off their clothes and, with the flicker of the fire on their skin, made love.
There was a gravity to their union which seemed to Annie somehow to befit the place. It was as though they'd come to dignify the promise here witnessed.
Later, Tom sat propped against his saddle and she lay folded in his arms with her back and head against his chest. The air had grown much colder. Somewhere high on the mountain above them there was the yip and wail of what he told her were coyotes. He draped a blanket over his shoulders and drew it around them, cocooning her against the night and all encroachment. Nothing, Annie thought, nothing in that other world can touch us here.
For many hours, staring into the fire, they talked about their lives. She told him about her father and all the exotic places where they'd lived before he died. She told him about meeting Robert and how he'd seemed so clever and dependable, so grown up and yet so sensitive. And he was still all of those things, a fine, fine man. Their marriage had been good, still was, in many ways. But looking back now, she realized that what she'd wanted from him was actually what she'd lost in her father: stability, security and unquestioning love. These Robert had given her spontaneously and without condition. What she had given him in return was loyalty.
'I don't mean by that I don't love him,' she said. 'I do. I really do. It's just that it's a love that feels more like, I don't know. Like gratitude or something.'
'For his loving you.'
'Yes. And Grace. It sounds awful, doesn't it?' 'No.'
She asked him if it was like that with Rachel and he said no, it was different. And Annie listened in silence while he told her the story. She conjured life in her mind from the photograph she'd seen in Tom's room, the beautiful face with its dark eyes and glossy tumble of hair. The smile was hard to reconcile with the sorrow Tom now spoke of.
It was not the woman but the child in her arms that had moved Annie most. It gave her a pang of what, at the time, she refused to acknowledge as jealousy. It was the same feeling she'd had when she saw Tom's and Rachel's initials in the concrete of the well. Oddly, the other photograph, of the grown Hal, gave full mitigation. Though he was dark like his mother, his eyes were Tom's. Even frozen in time, they disarmed all animosity.
'Do you ever see her?' Annie asked when he'd finished.
'Not for some years. We talk on the phone now and then, about Hal mostly.'
'I saw the picture in your room. He's beautiful.'
She could hear Tom smile behind her head. 'Yeah, he is.' There was a silence. A branch, white-crusted with ash, collapsed in the fire, hoisting a flurry of orange sparks into the night.
He asked, 'Did you want more children?'
'Oh yes. We tried. But I could never hold on to them. In the end we just, gave up. More than anything, I wanted it for Grace. A brother or a sister for Grace.'
They fell silent again and Annie knew, or thought she knew, what he was thinking. But it was a thought too sorrowful, even on this outside rim of world, for either one of them to utter.
The coyotes kept up their chorus all night. They mated for life, he told her, and were so devoted that if ever one were caught in a trap, the other would bring it food.
For two days they rode the bluffs and gullies of the high Front. Sometimes they would leave the horses and go on foot. They saw elk and bear and once Tom thought he saw, watching from a high crag, a wolf. It turned and went before he could be sure and he didn't mention it to Annie in case it worried her.
They came across hidden valleys filled with bear-grass and glacier lily and waded up to their knees through meadows turned to lakes of brilliant blue with lupine.
The first night it rained and he pitched the little tent he'd brought in a flat green field strewn all about with the bleached poles of fallen aspen. They got soaked to the skin and sat huddled together, shivering and laughing in the mouth of the tent with blankets over their shoulders. They sipped scalding coffee from blackened tin mugs while outside the horses grazed unbothered, the rain sleeking off their backs. Annie watched them, her wet face and neck lit from below by the oil lamp and he thought he'd never seen, nor ever would he see, any living creature so beautiful.
That night, while she slept in his arms, he lay listening to the drumming of the rain on the tent roof and tried to do what she'd told him they must, not to think beyond the moment, just to live it. But he couldn't.
The following day was clear and hot. They found a pool fed by a narrow twist of waterfall. Annie said she wanted to swim and he laughed and said he was too old and the water way too cold. But she wouldn't take no for an answer, so under the dubious gaze of the horses they stripped and leapt in. The water was so icy it made them shriek and they had to scramble right out and stood hugging each other, bare-assed and blue, jabbering like a couple of loopy kids.
That night the sky shimmered green and blue and red with aurora borealis. Annie had never seen it before and he had never seen it so clear and so bright. It rippled and spread in a vast luminous arch, trailing folded striations of color in its wake. He saw its crenelate reflection in her eyes as they made love.
It was the last night of their blinkered idyll, though neither gave it name, other than by the plangent joining of their bodies. By tacit compact forged only of their flesh, they took no rest. There was to be no squandering in sleep. They fed upon each other like creatures foretold of some dreadful, limitless winter. And they only ceased when the bruising of their bones and the raw traction of their coupled skin made them cry out in pain. The sound floated through the luminous stillness of the night, through shadowed pine and on and up until it reached the listening peaks beyond.
Some time after that while Annie slept, he heard, like some distant echo, a high primeval call which made every creature of the night fall silent. And Tom knew he'd been right and that it was a wolf he'd seen.
She peeled the onions then cut them in half and finely sliced them, breathing through her mouth so the fumes wouldn't make her cry. She could feel his eyes upon her every move and she found it curiously empowering, as if his watching somehow invested her with skills she'd never thought to possess. She'd felt it too when they made love. Maybe (she smiled at the thought), maybe that was how horses felt in his presence.
He was leaning back against the divider on the far side of the room. He hadn't touched the glass of wine she'd poured him. In the living room, the music she'd found on Grace's radio had given way to a learned discussion about some composer she'd never heard of. All these people on public radio seemed to have the same cream-calm voices.
'What are you looking at?' she said gently. He shrugged.
'You. Does it bother you?'
'I like it. It makes me feel I know what I'm doing.'
'You cook fine.'
'I can't cook to save my life.'
'That's okay, you can cook to save mine.' She had been worried when they got back to the ranch this afternoon that reality would come crashing in around their ears. But, strangely, it hadn't. She felt clothed in a kind of inviolable calm. While he'd seen to the horses, she'd checked her messages and found none among them to disturb her. The most important was from Robert, giving Grace's flight numbers and arrival time in Great Falls tomorrow. It had all gone alrighty, he said, with Wendy Auerbach - in fact Grace was so alrighty about her new leg she was thinking of putting in for the marathon.
Annie's calm had even survived when she called and spoke to them both. The message she'd left on Tuesday, that she was going to spend a couple of days up at the Bookers' mountain cabin, seemed to have stirred not the smallest ripple. Throughout their marriage she had often taken time on her own somewhere and Robert presumably now saw this as part of the process of getting her head back together after losing her job. He simply asked how it had been and, simply, she replied that it had been lovely. Except by omission, she didn't even have to lie.
'It worries me, all this back-to-nature, big-outdoors stuff you're getting into,' he joked.
'Why's that?'
'Well, soon you'll be wanting to move out there and I'll have to switch to livestock litigation or something.'
When they hung up Annie wondered why the sound of his voice or of Grace's hadn't plunged her into the sea of guilt she surely knew awaited her. It just hadn't. It was as though that susceptible part of her nature were in suspense, with its eye on the clock and mindful that she had owing yet some few, fleeting hours with Tom.
She was cooking him the pasta dish she'd wanted to make that evening they'd all come for supper. The little pots of basil she'd bought in Butte were flourishing. As she chopped the leaves, he came up behind her and rested his hands lightly on her hips and kissed the side of her neck. The touch of his lips made her catch her breath. 'It smells good,' he said.
'What, me or the basil?'
'Both.'
'You know, in ancient times they used basil to embalm the dead.'
'Mummies, you mean?'
'Daddies too. It prevents mortification of the flesh.'
'I thought that was about banishing lust.'
'It does that too, so don't eat too much.' She tipped it into the pan where the onions and tomatoes were already cooking, then swiveled slowly in his hands to face him. Her forehead was against his lips and he kissed her there gently. She looked down and slotted her thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. And in the sharing quiet of that moment Annie knew she could not leave this man.
'Oh Tom. I love you so much.'
'I love you too.'
They lit the candles she'd bought for the supper party and turned off the fluorescents so they could eat at the little table in the kitchen. The pasta was perfect. When they were through eating, he asked her if she'd figured out the string trick. She said according to Joe it wasn't a trick but in any case, no, she hadn't.
'Do you still have it?' 'What do you think?'
She pulled it from her pocket and gave it to him and he told her to hold up her finger and watch closely because he was only going to show her once. She did and followed every intricate maneuver of his hand until the loop circled and seemed trapped by their touching fingers. Then, as he slowly pulled the loop, the moment before it came free, she suddenly saw how it was done.
'Let me try,' she said. She found she could picture exactly the movements his hands had made and translate them in mirror image to her own. And sure enough, when she pulled, the cord came free.
He sat back in his chair and gave her a smile that was both loving and sad.
'There you are,' he said. 'Now you know.'
'Do I get to keep the cord?'
'You don't need it anymore.' And he took it and put it in his pocket.
Everyone was there and Grace wished they weren't. Such though had been the build-up to this moment, that a full turnout was only to be expected. She looked at the waiting faces along the rail of the big arena: her mom, Frank and Diane, Joe, the twins in their matching Universal Studios caps, even Smoky had come by. And what if it all went wrong? It wouldn't, she told herself firmly. She wasn't going to let it.
Pilgrim stood saddled in the middle of the arena while Tom adjusted the stirrups. The horse looked beautiful, though Grace still couldn't get used to the sight of him in a western saddle. Since riding Gonzo she'd come to prefer it to her old English one. It made her feel more secure, so that's what they were going to use today.
Earlier she and Tom had managed to weed out the last tangles from his mane and tail and they'd brushed him till he shone. Scars aside, she thought, he looked like a show horse. He'd always had a sense of occasion. It was almost a year to the day, she recalled, that she'd seen the first photograph of him, the one they'd sent up from Kentucky.
They had all just watched Tom ride him gently around the arena a few times. Grace had stood beside her mother and tried with deep breathing to subdue her fluttering stomach.
'What if it's only Tom he'll let ride him?' she hissed.
Annie gave her a hug. 'Honey, Tom wouldn't let you if it wasn't safe, you know that.'
It was true. But it didn't make her any less nervous.
Tom had left Pilgrim alone and was now heading over to them. She stepped forward. The new leg felt good.
'All set?' he said. She swallowed and nodded. She wasn't sure she could trust her voice. He saw the worry in her face and when he got to her he said, so no one else could hear, 'You know, Grace, we don't have to do this now. Tell you the truth, I didn't know there was going to be this kind of circus.'
'It's okay. I don't mind.'
'Sure?'
'Sure.'
He put his arm around her shoulders and they walked out to where Pilgrim stood waiting. She saw him prick up his ears as they came.
Annie's heart was thumping so loud she thought Diane, next to her, must be able to hear. It was hard to know how many of its beats were for Grace and how many for herself. For what was going on across the strip of red sand was too momentous. It was both a beginning and an end, though of what and for whom, Annie had no clear perception. It was as though everything were swirling in some vast, climactic centrifuge of emotion and only when it stopped would she see what it had done to them all and what was then to become of them.
'She's one brave kid, that daughter of yours,' Diane said.
'I know.'
Tom had Grace stop a short distance from where Pilgrim was standing, so as not to crowd him. He went the final few paces alone, stopped beside him then reached gently to take hold of him. He held him by the bridle and put his head beside Pilgrim's while he soothed the horse's neck with his flat of his other hand. Pilgrim never took his eyes off Grace.
Even from a distance, Annie could tell something was wrong.
When Tom tried to ease him forward, he resisted, lifting his head and looking down at Grace so that you could see white at the top of his eye. Tom turned him away and walked him in circles, as she'd seen him do on a halter, bending him, making him yield to pressure and roll his hindquarters across. This seemed to calm him. But as soon as Tom led him back toward Grace, he became edgy again.
Grace was facing the other way, so Annie couldn't see her face. But she didn't need to. She could feel from here the worry and hurt that had surely taken hold of the girl.
'I don't know if this is a good idea,' Diane said.
'He'll be alright.' Annie said it too quickly. It sounded harsh.
'I reckon,' said Smoky. But even he didn't seem too sure.
Tom took Pilgrim away and did some more circles and when that didn't work either he climbed up on him and took him a few times around the arena at a lope. Grace turned slowly, following them with her eyes. She looked briefly at Annie and they swapped a smile neither could make convincing.
Tom didn't speak or concern himself with anyone but Pilgrim. He was frowning and Annie couldn't tell if it was only in concentration or if there was worry there too, though he never showed worry, she knew, when he was with horses.
He dismounted and led Pilgrim again toward Grace. And again the horse balked. This time Grace turned on her heel and almost fell. As she walked back across the sand, her mouth quivered and Annie could see she was fighting tears.
'Smoke?' Tom called. Smoky climbed over the rail and went to him.
Frank said, 'He'll be okay, Grace. Just you hang on there a minute or two. Tom'll get him okay, you'll see.'
Grace nodded and tried to smile but couldn't look at him or anyone else, least of all Annie. Annie wanted to hug her but held off. She knew Grace wouldn't be able to take it and the tears would come and then she'd be embarrassed and angry at both of them. Instead, when the girl came near enough, Annie said quietly, 'Frank's right. It'll be okay.'
'He saw I was scared,' Grace said under her breath.
Out in the arena, Tom and Smoky were huddled, having some urgent, hushed discussion none but Pilgrim could hear. After a while Smoky turned and jogged over to the gate at the end of the arena. He climbed over it and disappeared into the barn. Tom left Pilgrim where he was and came over to where everyone was waiting.
'Okay Grace,' he said. 'We're going to do something now that I'd kind of hoped we wouldn't have to. But there's still something going on inside him that I can't reach in any other way. So me and Smoke here, we're going to try laying him down. Okay?'
Grace nodded. Annie could see the girl had no clearer idea of what this meant than she had herself.
'What does it involve?' Annie asked. He looked at her and she had a sudden vivid image of their joined bodies.
'Well, it's more or less how it sounds. Only I have to tell you that it's not always pretty to watch. Sometimes a horse'll fight it real hard. That's why I don't like doing it unless I have to. This fella's already shown us he likes a good fight. So if you'd sooner not watch, I suggest you go inside and we'll call you when we're done.'
Grace shook her head. 'No. I want to watch.'
Smoky came back into the ring with the things Tom had sent him to get. They'd had to do this a few months back at a clinic down in New Mexico, so Smoky pretty much knew the score. Quietly though, away from all those watching, Tom took him through the process again so there wouldn't be any mistakes and nobody would get hurt.
Smoky listened gravely, nodding now and again. When Tom saw he had it straight in his head the two of them went over toward Pilgrim. He'd moved away to the far side of the arena and you could tell by the way he worked his ears that he sensed something was about to happen and that it might not be fun. He let Tom come to him and rub his neck but didn't take his eyes off Smoky who stood a few yards off with all those ropes and things in his hand.
Tom unhitched the bridle and in its place slipped on the rope halter Smoky handed him. Then, one at a time, Smoky passed him the ends of two long ropes that were coiled over his arm. Tom fastened one under the halter and the other to the horn of the saddle.
He worked calmly, giving Pilgrim no cause for fear. The subterfuge made him feel bad, knowing what was to come and how the trust he'd built with the horse would now have to be broken before it could be restored. Maybe he'd got it wrong just now, he thought. Maybe what had happened between him and Annie had affected him in some way that Pilgrim sensed. Most likely all the horse had sensed was Grace's fear. But you could never be quite sure, even he, what else was going on in their minds. Maybe from somewhere deep inside him, Tom was telling the horse he didn't want it to work, for when it worked that was the end and Annie would be gone.
He asked Smoky for the hobble. It was made out of an old strip of sacking and rope. Smoothing his hand down Pilgrim's left foreleg, he lifted the hoof. The horse only shifted slightly. Tom soothed him all the time with his hand and his voice. Then, when the horse was still, he slipped the sling of sacking over the hoof and made sure it was snug. The other end was rope and with it he hoisted the weight of the raised hoof and made it fast to the horn of the saddle. Pilgrim was now a three-legged animal. An explosion waiting to happen.
It happened, as he knew it would, as soon as Tom moved away and took one of the lines, the halter one, from Smoky. Pilgrim tried to move and found himself crippled. He lurched and hopped on his right foreleg and the feeling scared him so badly that he jolted and hopped again and scared himself even worse.
If he couldn't walk, then maybe he could run, so now he tried and his eyes filled with panic at the feel of it. Tom and Smoky braced themselves and leaned back on their lines, forcing him around them in a circle maybe fifteen feet in radius. And round and round he went, like a crazed rocking horse with a broken leg.
Tom glanced at the faces that watched from the rail. He could see Grace had grown pale and that Annie was now holding her and he cussed himself for giving them the choice and not insisting they go inside and save themselves the pain of this sorry sight.
Annie had her hands on Grace's shoulders and the knuckles had gone white. Every muscle in their two bodies was clenched and jerked at each agonized hop that Pilgrim made.
'Why's he doing this?' Grace cried.
'I don't know.'
'It'll be okay, Grace,' Frank said. 'I saw him do this one time before.' Annie looked at him and tried to smile. His face belied the comfort of his words. Joe and the twins looked almost as worried as Grace.
Diane said quietly, 'Maybe you'd better take her inside.'
'No,' Grace said. 'I want to watch.'
By now Pilgrim was covered in sweat. But still he kept going. As he ran his hobbled foot jabbed the air like a wild, deformed flipper. His jolting gait sent up a burst of red sand at every step and it hung over the three of them like a fine red mist.
It seemed to Annie so wrong, so out of character, for Tom to be doing this. She had seen him be firm with horses before but never causing pain or suffering. Everything he'd done with Pilgrim had been designed to build up trust and confidence. And now he was hurting him. She just couldn't understand.
At last the horse stopped. And as soon as he did Tom nodded to Smoky and they let the two lines go slack. Then off he went again and they tightened the lines and kept the pressure on until he stopped. They gave him slack again. The horse stood there, his wet sides heaving. He was panting like some desperate asthmatic smoker and the sound was so rasping and terrible that Annie wanted to block her ears.
Now Tom was saying something to Smoky. Smoky nodded and handed him his line then went to get the coiled lasso he'd left lying on the sand. He swung a wide loop in the air and at the second attempt got it to fall over the horn of Pilgrim's saddle. He pulled it tight then took the other end to the far side of the arena and tied it in a quick-release to the bottom rail. He came back and took the other two lines from Tom.
Now Tom went to the rail and started putting pressure on the lasso line. Pilgrim felt it and braced himself. The pressure was downward and the horn of the saddle tilted.
'What's he doing?' Grace's voice was small and fearful.
Frank said, 'He's trying to get him to go down on his knees.'
Pilgrim fought long and hard and when at last he did kneel, it was only for a moment. He then seemed to summon some last surge of effort and stood again. Three times more he went down and got up again, like some reluctant convert. But the pressure Tom was putting on the saddle was too strong and relentless and finally the horse crashed down on his knees and stayed down.
Annie could feel the relief in Grace's shoulders. But it wasn't over. Tom kept the pressure on. He yelled to Smoky now to drop the other lines and come and help him. And together they hauled on the lasso line.
'Why don't they let him be!' Grace said. 'Haven't they hurt him enough?'
'He's got to lie down,' Frank said.
Pilgrim snorted like a wounded bull. There was foam spewing at his mouth. His flanks were filthy where the sand had stuck to his sweat. Again he fought for a long time. But again it was too much. And at last, slowly, he keeled over on his side and lay his head on the sand and was still.
It seemed to Annie a total, humiliating surrender.
She could feel Grace's body start to shake with sobs. She felt tears well in her own eyes and was powerless to stop them. Grace turned and buried her face in Annie's chest.
'Grace!' It was Tom.
Annie looked up and saw he was standing with Smoky by Pilgrim's prone body. They looked like two hunters at the carcass of a kill.
'Grace?' he called again. 'Will you come here please?'
'No! I won't!'
He left Smoky and headed toward them. His face was grim, almost unrecognizable, as though he were possessed by some dark or vengeful force. She kept her arms around Grace to shelter her. Tom stopped in front of them.
'Grace? I'd like you to come with me.'
'No, I don't want to.'
'You've got to.'
'No, you'll only hurt him some more.'
'He's not hurt. He's okay.'
'Oh sure!'
Annie wanted to intervene, to protect her. But so daunting was Tom's intensity that instead she let him take her daughter from her hands. He gripped the child by her shoulders and made her look at him.
'You've got to do this Grace. Trust me.'
'Do what?'
'Come with me and I'll show you.'
Reluctantly, she let him lead her across the arena. Driven by the same protective urge, Annie climbed unbidden over the rail and followed. She stopped a few yards short, but near enough in case she was needed. Smoky tried a smile but saw right away it was inappropriate. Tom looked at her.
'It'll be okay Annie.' She barely nodded.
'Okay Grace,' Tom said. 'I want you to stroke him. I want you to start with his hindquarters and rub him and move his legs and feel him all over.'
'What's the point? He's good as dead.'
'Just do as I say.'
Grace walked hesitantly to the horse's rear. Pilgrim didn't lift his head from the sand but Annie could see his one eye try to follow her.
'Okay. Now stroke him. Go on. Start with his leg there. Go on. Waggle it around. That's it.'
Grace cried out, 'His body feels all dead and limp! What have you done to him?'
Annie had a sudden vision of Grace in her coma in the hospital.
'He'll be okay. Now put your hand on his hip and rub him. Do it Grace. Good.'
Pilgrim didn't move. Gradually Grace worked her way along him, smearing the dust on his heaving, sweaty sides, working his limbs to Tom's instruction. At last she rubbed his neck and the wet, silky side of his head.
'Okay. Now I want you to stand on him.'
'What!' Grace looked at him as if he were mad.
'I want you to stand on him.'
'No way.'
'Grace…'
Annie took a step forward. Tom…'
'Be quiet Annie.' He didn't even look at her. And now he almost shouted, 'Do as I say, Grace. Stand on him. Now!'
It was impossible to disobey. Grace started to cry. He took her hand and led her into the curve of Pilgrim's belly.
'Now step up. Go on, step up on him.'
And she did. And with the tears streaming on her face, she stood frail, like a maimed soul, on the beaten flank of the creature she loved most in all the world and sobbed at her own brutality.
Tom turned and saw Annie was crying too but he paid no attention and turned back to Grace and told her she could now get down.
'Why are you doing this?' Annie begged. 'It's so cruel and humiliating.'
'No, you're wrong.' He was helping Grace to get down and didn't look at Annie. 'What?' Annie said scornfully. 'You're wrong. It's not cruel. He had the choice.' 'What are you talking about?' He turned and looked at her at last. Grace was still crying beside him, but he paid her no heed. Even in her tears, the poor girl seemed as unable as Annie to believe Tom could be like this, so hard and pitiless. 'He had the choice to go on fighting life or to accept it.'
'He had no choice.'
'He did. It was hard as hell, but he could have gone on. Gone on making himself more and more unhappy. But what he chose to do instead was to go to the brink and look beyond. And he saw what was there and he chose to accept it.'
He turned to Grace and put his hands on her shoulders. 'What just happened to him, laying down like that, was the worst thing he could imagine. And you know what? He found out it was okay. Even you standing on him was okay. He saw you meant him no harm. The darkest hour comes before the dawn. That was Pilgrim's darkest hour and he survived it. Do you understand?'
Grace was wiping her tears and trying to make sense of it. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I think so.'
Tom turned and looked at Annie and she saw something soft and imploring in his eyes now, something at last that she knew and could latch on to.
'Annie? Do you understand? It's real, real important you understand this. Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater. Annie, I know you understand this.'
She nodded and wiped her eyes and tried to smile. She knew there was some other message here, one that was only for her. It was not about Pilgrim but about them and what was happening between them. But although she pretended to, she didn't understand it and could only hope that the time would come when she might.
Grace watched them undo Pilgrim's hobble and the ropes tied to his halter and saddle. He lay there a moment, looking up at them with one eye, not moving his head. Then, a little uncertainly, he staggered to his feet. He shrugged and whinnied and blew and then took a few steps to see he was all in one piece.
Tom told Grace to lead him to the tank at the side of the arena and she stood beside him while he took a good long drink. When he'd finished he lifted his head and yawned and everyone laughed.
'There go the butterflies!' Joe called.
Then Tom put the bridle back on and told Grace to put her foot in the stirrup. Pilgrim stood still as a house. Tom took her weight on his shoulder and she swung her leg and sat in the saddle.
She felt no fear. She walked him first one way around the arena then the other. Then she took him up to a lope and it was fine and collected and smooth as silk.
It was a while before she realized everyone was cheering, just like they had the day she rode Gonzo.
But this was Pilgrim. Her Pilgrim. He'd come through. And she could feel him beneath her, like he always used to be, giving and trusting and true.
The party was Frank's idea. He said he had it from the horse's mouth: Pilgrim had told him he wanted a party so a party there would be. He phoned Hank and Hank said he was up for it. What's more, he said, he had a houseful of bored cousins up from Helena and they were up for it too. By the time they'd called everyone they could think of, it had gone from being a small party to a midsize party to a big one and Diane was having fifty fits wondering how she was going to feed them all.
'Hell, Diane,' Frank said. 'We can't let Annie and Grace drive two thousand miles home with that old horse of theirs without giving them a good send-off.'
Diane shrugged and Tom could see her thinking why the hell not?
'And dancing,' Frank said. 'We gotta have dancing.'
'Dancing? Oh come on!'
Frank asked Tom what he thought and Tom said he thought dancing would be fine. So Frank called Hank again and Hank said he'd bring his sound system over and they could have the colored lights too if they wanted. He was there within the hour and the men and the kids rigged it all up outside the barn while Diane, shamed at last to better humor, drove Annie down to Great Falls to get the food.
By seven, everything was ready and they all went off to clean up and change.
As he came out of the shower, Tom caught sight of the blue robe by the door and felt a dull lurching inside him. He thought the robe might still smell of her but when he pressed it to his face it smelled of nothing.
He hadn't had a chance to be alone with Annie since Grace came back and he felt their separation like some cruel physical excision. The sight of her tears for Pilgrim had made him want to run to her and hold her. Not being able to touch her was almost more than he could bear.
He dressed slowly and lingered in his room, listening to the cars arriving and the laughter and the music starting up. When he looked out he saw there was already a crowd. It was a fine clear evening. The lights were finding a glow in the fading light. Clouds of smoke drifted slowly from the barbecue where he should be helping Frank. He searched the faces and found her. She was talking with Hank. She was wearing a dress he hadn't seen before, dark blue and sleeveless. As he watched, she threw her head back and laughed at something Hank said. Tom thought how beautiful she was. He'd never felt less like laughing in his life.
She saw him as soon as he stepped out onto the porch. Hank's wife was going in with a tray of glasses and he held the screen door for her and laughed at something she said as she passed. Then he looked out and found her eyes at once and smiled. She realized that Hank had just asked her a question. 'Sorry Hank, what was that?'
'I said, I hear you're headin' home?'
'Yes, afraid so. Packing up tomorrow.'
'Can't tempt you city gals to stay, huh?'
Annie laughed, a little too loudly, as she'd been doing all evening. She told herself again to calm down. Across the crowd, she saw Tom had been hijacked by Smoky who wanted to introduce him to some friends.
'Jeez, that food smells good,' Hank said. 'How 'bout it, Annie, shall we get us some? You jus' come along with me.'
She let herself be led, as if she had no will of her own. Hank got her a plate and piled it high with chunks of blackened meat, then flooded it with a dollop of chili beans. Annie felt sick but kept on smiling. She'd already decided what to do.
She would get Tom on his own - ask him to dance if that's what it took - and tell him she was going to leave Robert. She would go back to New York next week and break the news. First to Robert and then to Grace.
Oh God, Tom thought, it's going to be like last time. The dancing had been going on for over half an hour and every time he tried to get near her either she got waylaid or he did. Just when he thought he was clear, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Diane.
'Don't sister-in-laws get to dance?'
'Diane, I thought you'd never ask.'
'I knew you never would.'
He took hold of her and his heart sank a little when the new number turned out to be a slow one. She had on the new red dress she'd bought in L.A. and had tried painting her lips to match but it didn't quite work. She smelled pungently of perfume with an undertow of booze that he could detect too in her eyes.
'You look terrific,' he said.
Thank you, kind sir.'
It had been a long time since he'd seen Diane drunk. He didn't know why, but it made him sad. She was pressing her hips into him and arching her back so much that if he were to let go of her she'd topple over. She was giving him a kind of knowing, teasing look he neither understood nor much liked.
'Smoky tells me you didn't go to Wyoming after all.'
'He did?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Well, that's right, I didn't. One of the guys down there got sick, so I'm going next week instead.'
'Uh-huh.'
'"Uh-huh". Diane, what is this?'
He knew, of course. And he chided himself for now giving her the chance to say it. He should have just closed the conversation.
'I just hope you were a good boy, that's all.'
'Diane, come on. You've had too much to drink.'
It was a mistake. Her eyes flashed.
'Have I? Don't think we haven't all noticed.'
'Noticed what?' Another mistake.
'You know what I'm talking about. You can good as smell the steam rising off the pair of you.'
He just shook his head and looked away as if she was crazy, but she saw it hit home because she grinned in victory and wagged a finger at him.
'Good job she's going home, brother-in-law.'
They didn't exchange another word for the rest of the number. And when it was over she gave him that knowing look again and went off, swinging her hips like a hooker. He was still recovering when Annie came up behind him at the bar.
'Pity it's not raining,' she whispered.
'Come and dance with me,' he said. And he took hold of her before anyone else could and steered her off.
The music was quick and they danced apart, only uncoupling their eyes when the intensity threatened to overwhelm or betray them. To have her so close and yet so inaccessible was like some exquisite form of torture. After the second number, Frank tried to take her away but Tom made a joke of being the older brother and wouldn't yield.
The next number was a slow ballad in which a woman sang about her lover on death row. At last they could get their hands on each other. The touch of her skin and the light press of her body through their clothes almost made him reel and he had for a moment to close his eyes. Somewhere, he knew, Diane would be watching but he didn't care.
The dust dance-floor was crammed. Annie looked about her at the faces and said quietly, 'I need to talk to you. How can we get to talk?'
He felt like saying what is there to talk about? You're going. That's all there is to say. Instead he said, 'The exercise pool. In twenty minutes. I'll meet you.'
She only had time to nod, because the next moment Frank came up again and took her away from him.
Grace's head was spinning and it wasn't just from the two glasses of punch she'd had. She had danced with almost everyone - Tom, Frank, Hank, Smoky, even dear sweet Joe - and the image she'd had of herself was thrilling. She could whirl, she could shimmy, she could even jive. She didn't once lose her balance. She could do anything. She wished Terri Carlson was here to see it. For the first time in her new life, perhaps even her whole life, she felt beautiful.
She needed to pee. There was a toilet at the side of the barn but when she got there she found a line of people waiting to use it. She decided no one would mind if she used one of the bathrooms indoors - she was family enough and after all it was her party, kind of - so she headed for the porch.
She came through the screen door, instinctively keeping her hand on it so it didn't slam. As she walked through the narrow L-shaped boot-room that led to the kitchen, she heard voices. Frank and Diane were having a row.
'You've just had too much to drink,' he said.
'Fuck you.'
'It's none of our business, Diane.'
'She's had her sights on him ever since she got here. Just take a look out there, she's like a bitch in heat.'
'That's ridiculous.'
'God, you men are so dumb.'
There was an angry clatter of dishes. Grace had stopped in her tracks. Just as she decided she'd better go back to the barn and wait in line, she heard Frank's footsteps heading for the open door to the boot-room. She knew she wouldn't have time to leave before he saw her. And if he caught her sneaking out he'd know for sure she'd been eavesdropping. All she could do was head on in and bump into him as if she'd just come in.
As Frank appeared in front of her in the doorway, he stopped and turned back to Diane.
'Anyone'd think you were jealous or something.'
'Oh give me a break!'
'Well you give him a break. He's a grown man, for Christsakes.'
'And she's a married woman with a kid, for Christsakes!'
Frank turned and came into the boot-room, shaking his head. Grace stepped toward him.
'Hi,' she said brightly. He seemed a lot more than just startled but he recovered instantly and beamed.
'Hey, it's the belle of the ball! Howya doing sweetheart?' He put his hands on her shoulders.
'Oh I'm having a great time. Thanks, for doing it and everything.'
'Grace it's a real pleasure, believe me.' He gave her a little kiss on the forehead.
'Is it okay if I use the bathroom in here? Just that there's a whole line of—'
'Course you can! You go right on in.'
When she went through into the kitchen there was no one there. She heard footsteps going upstairs. Sitting on the toilet, she wondered who it was they'd been arguing about and got a first uneasy inkling that perhaps she knew.
Annie got there before him and walked slowly around to the far side of the pool. The air smelled of chlorine. The strike of her shoes on the concrete floor echoed in the caverning darkness. She leaned against the whitewashed block wall and felt its soothing cool on her back. A sliver of light was spilling in from the barn and she watched its reflection on the dead calm water of the pool. In the other world outside, one country song ended and another, barely distinguishable, began.
It seemed impossible that it was only last night that they'd stood there in the creek house kitchen with no one to trouble them or keep them apart. She wished that she'd said then what she was going to tell him now. She hadn't trusted herself to find the right words. This morning when she'd woken in his arms, she had been no less sure, even in that same bed which only a week ago she'd shared with her husband. Her only shame was that she felt none. Still however, something had restrained her from telling him; and now she wondered if it was the fear of how he would react.
It wasn't that she doubted for one moment his love. How could she? There was just something about him, some sad foreshadowing that was almost fatalistic. She had seen it today, in his desperate intent that she should understand what he had done to Pilgrim.
There was a brief flooding of light now at the end of the passageway to the barn. He stopped and scanned for her in the darkness. She stepped toward him and at the sound he saw her and came to meet her. Annie ran the last few separating steps as if suddenly he might be snatched away. She felt in his embrace the same shuddering release of what all evening she had tried herself to contain. Their breathing was as one, their mouths, their blood as if pulsed through interlacing veins by the same heart.
When at last she could speak, she stood in the safety of his arms and told him that she was going to leave Robert. She spoke with such calm as she could muster, her cheek pressed to his chest, fearful perhaps of what she might see in his eyes were she to look. She said she knew how terrible the pain would be for all of them. Unlike the pain of losing Tom however, it was a pain she could at least imagine.
He listened in silence, holding her to him and stroking her face and hair. But when she had finished, still he didn't speak and Annie felt the first cold finger of dread steal upon her. She lifted her head, daring at last to look at him, and saw he was too filled with emotion yet to speak. He looked away across the pool. Outside the music thumped on. He looked back at her and gave a small shake of his head.
'Oh Annie.'
'What? Tell me.'
'You can't do that.'
'I can. I'll go back and tell him.'
'And Grace? You think you can tell Grace?'
She peered at him, searching his eyes. Why was he doing this? She'd hoped for validation and he'd proffered only doubt, thrusting at her immediately the one issue she'd dared not confront. And now Annie realized that in her deliberation she'd resorted to that old self-shielding habit of hers and rationalized it: of course children were upset by these things, she'd told herself, it was inevitable; but if it was done in a civilized, sensitive way there need be no lasting trauma; neither parent was lost, only some obsolete geography. In theory Annie knew this to be so; more than that, the divorces of several friends had proven it possible. Applied here and now, to them and Grace, it was of course nonsense.
He said, 'After what she's suffered—'
'You think I don't know!'
'Of course you do. What I was going to say is that because of that, because you know, you'll never let yourself do this, even if now you think you can.'
She felt tears coming and knew she couldn't stop them.
'I have no choice.' It was uttered in a small cry that echoed around the bare walls like a lament.
He said, 'That's what you said about Pilgrim, but you were wrong.'
'The only other choice is losing you!' He nodded. 'That's not a choice, can't you see? Could you choose to lose me?'
'No,' he said simply. 'But I don't have to.'
'Remember what you said about Pilgrim? You said he went to the brink and saw what was beyond and then chose to accept it.'
'But if what you see there is pain and suffering, then only a fool would choose to accept it.'
'But for us it wouldn't be pain and suffering.'
He shook his head. Annie felt a rush of anger now. At him for uttering what she knew in her heart to be right and at herself for the sobs now racking her body.
'You don't want me,' she said and hated herself at once for her maudlin self-pity, then even more for the triumph she felt as his eyes welled with tears.
'Oh Annie. You'll never know how much I want you.'
She cried in his arms and lost all sense of time and place. She told him she couldn't live without him and saw no portent when he told her this was true for him but not for her. He said that in time she would assess these days not with regret but as some gift of nature that had left all their lives the better.
When she could cry no more, she washed her face in the cool water of the pool and he found a towel and helped her mop the mascara that had swum from her eyes. They waited, saying little more, while the blotching faded from her cheeks. Then separately, when all seemed safe, they left.
Annie felt like some mudbound creature viewing the world from the bottom of a pond. It was the first time she had taken a sleeping pill in months. They were the ones airline pilots were rumored to use, which was supposed to make you confident about the pills, not doubtful of the pilots. It was true that in the past, when she'd taken them regularly, the after-effects seemed minimal. This morning they lay draped over her brain like a thick, dulling blanket she was powerless to shrug, though sufficiently translucent for her to remember why she'd taken the pill and be grateful that she had.
Grace had come up to her soon after she and Tom came out of the barn and said bluntly that she wanted to go. She looked pale and troubled, but when Annie asked what was wrong she said nothing was, she was just tired. She didn't seem to want to look her in the eyes. On the way back up to the creek house, after they'd said their good-nights, Annie tried to chat about the party but barely got a sentence in reply. She asked her again if she was alright and Grace said she felt tired and a little sick.
'From the punch?'
'I don't know.'
'How many glasses did you have?'
'I don't know! It's no big deal, don't go on about it.'
She went straight up to bed and when Annie went in to kiss her good-night she just muttered and stayed facing the wall. Just as she used to when they first got here. Annie had gone straight to her sleeping pills.
She reached for her watch now and had to force her muffled brain to focus on it. It was coming up to eight o'clock. She remembered Frank, as they left last night, asking if they'd be coming to church this morning and because it seemed appropriate, somehow punishingly final, she'd said yes. She hauled her reluctant body out of bed and along to the bathroom. Grace's door was slightly ajar. Annie decided to have a bath, then take in a glass of juice and wake her.
She lay in the steaming water and tried to hold on to the last lacing of the sleeping pill. Through it she could feel already a cold geometry of pain configuring within her. These are the shapes which now inhabit you, she told herself, and to whose points and lines and angles you must become accustomed.
She dressed and went to the kitchen to get Grace's juice. It was eight-thirty. Since her drowsiness had gone she'd sought distraction in compiling mental lists of what needed to be done on this last day at the Double Divide. They had to pack; clean the house up; get the oil and tires checked; get some food and drink for the journey; settle up with the Bookers…
As she came to the top of the stairs, she saw Grace's door hadn't moved. She tapped on it as she went in. The drapes were still closed and she went across and drew them a little apart. It was a beautiful morning.
Then she turned to the bed and saw it was empty.
It was Joe who first discovered Pilgrim was missing too. By then they'd searched every cobwebbed corner of every outbuilding on the ranch and found no trace of her. They split up and combed both sides of the creek, the twins hollering her name over and over and getting no reply but birdsong. Then Joe came yelling from down by the corrals, saying the horse was gone and they all ran to the barn and found the saddle and bridle were gone too.
'She'll be okay,' Diane said. 'She's just taken him for a ride somewhere.' Tom saw the fear in Annie's eyes. They both already knew it was something more.
'She done anything like this before?' he said.
'Never.'
'How was she when she went to bed?'
'Quiet. She said she felt a little sick. Something seemed to have upset her.'
Annie looked so scared and frail, Tom wanted to hold her and comfort her, which would have looked only natural, but under Diane's gaze he didn't dare and it was Frank who did it instead.
'Diane's right,' Frank said. 'She'll be okay.'
Annie was still looking at Tom. 'Is Pilgrim safe enough for her to take out? She's only ridden him the once.'
'He'll be alright,' Tom said. It wasn't quite a lie; the real issue was whether Grace would be. And that depended on the state she was in. 'I'll go with Frank and we'll see if we can find her.'
Joe said he wanted to come too but Tom told him no and sent him off with the twins to get Rimrock and their dad's horse ready while he and Frank went to change out of their church clothes.
Tom was first out. Annie left Diane in the kitchen and followed him out over the porch to walk beside him to the barn. They only had the time it took to get there for the two of them to talk.
'I think Grace knows.' She spoke low, looking straight ahead. She was trying hard to keep control. Tom nodded gravely.
'I reckon so.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Don't ever be sorry Annie. Ever.'
That was all they said, because Frank came running up alongside and the three of them walked in silence to the rail by the barn where Joe had the horses waiting.
'There's his tracks,' Joe called. He pointed at their clear outline in the dust. Pilgrim's shoes were different from those of every other shod horse on the ranch. There was no doubt the prints were his.
Tom looked back just the once as he and Frank loped up the track toward the ford, but Annie was no longer there. Diane must have taken her inside. Only the kids still stood there watching. He gave them a wave.
It wasn't till she found the matches in her pocket that Grace had the idea. She'd put them there after practicing the trick with her father at the airport while they waited for her flight to be called.
She didn't know how long they'd ridden. The sun was high so it must be some hours. She rode like a madwoman, consciously so, wholeheartedly, embracing madness and urging its return in Pilgrim. He'd sensed it and ran and ran all morning, mouth afoam, like a witch's nag. She felt that if she asked he would even fly.
At first she'd had no plan, only a blind, destructive rage whose purpose and direction were not yet set and might be turned as easily on others as herself. Saddling him and shushing him in the gathering light of the corral, all she knew was that somehow she would punish them. She would make them sorry for what they'd done. Only when she reached the meadows and galloped and felt the cold air in her eyes did she start to cry. Then the tears took over and streamed and she leaned forward over Pilgrim's ears and sobbed out loud.
Now, as he stood drinking at the plateau pool, she felt her fury not lessen but distill. She slicked his sweating neck with her hand and saw again in her head those two guilty figures slinking one by one from the dark of the barn, like dogs from a butcher's yard, thinking themselves unseen and unsuspected. And then her mother, with her makeup smeared by lust and still flushed from it, sitting there calmly at the wheel of the car and asking, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, why she felt sick.
And how could Tom do this? Her Tom. After all that caring and kindness, this was what he was really like. It had all been an act, a clever excuse for the two of them to hide behind. It was only a week, a week for Godsake, since he'd stood chatting and laughing with her dad. It was sick. Adults were sick. And everyone knew about it, everyone. Diane had said so. Like a bitch in heat, she said. It was sick, it was all so sick.
Grace looked over the plateau and beyond the ridge to where the first pass curved up like a scar into the mountains. Up there, in the cabin where they'd all had such fun together on the cattle drive, up there, that's where they'd done it. Soiling, spoiling the place. And then her mother lying like that. Making out she was going there all alone to 'get her head together'. Jesus.
Well, she'd show them. She had the matches and she'd show them. It would go up like paper. And they would find her charred black bones in the ashes and then they'd feel sorry. Oh yes, then they'd feel sorry.
It was hard to know how much of a start she had on them. Tom knew a young guy on the reservation who could look at a track and tell you how old it was, near as damn it, to the minute. Frank knew more than most about such things because of his hunting, a lot more than Tom, but still not enough to know how far ahead she was. What they could tell however was that she was riding the horse as hard as hell and that if she kept it up he'd soon be on his knees.
It seemed pretty clear she was heading for the summer pastures, even before they found his hoof-marks in the caked mud at the lip of the pool. From riding out with Joe, she knew the lower parts of the ranch pretty well, but the only time she'd been up here was on the cattle drive. If she wanted a bolt hole, the only place she'd know to head for was the cabin. That is, if she could remember the way when she got up into the passes. After two more weeks of summer, the place would look different. Even without the whirlwind that - judging by her progress - was going on in her head, she could easily get lost.
Frank got down from his horse to take a closer look at the prints at the water's edge. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. Tom got down too and held the horses so they wouldn't spoil what evidence there was in the mud.
'What do you reckon?'
'I don't know. It's kind of crusted already but with a sun this hot that don't say too much. A half-hour, maybe more.'
They let the horses drink and stood mopping their brows and looking out across the plateau.
Frank said, 'Thought we might get a sight of her from here.'
'Me too.'
Neither spoke for a while, just listened to the lap of the horses drinking.
'Tom?' Tom turned to look at him and saw his brother shift and smile uneasily. 'This is none of my business, but last night, Diane… well, you know she'd had a drink or two and, anyway, we was in the kitchen and she was going on about how you and Annie were, well… Like I say, it's none of our business.'
'It's okay, go on.'
'Well. She said one or two things, and, anyway, Grace came in, and I'm not sure, but I think maybe she heard.'
Tom nodded. Frank asked him if that's what was going on here and Tom told him he reckoned so. They looked at each other and some refraction of the pain in Tom's heart must have shown in his eyes.
Frank said, 'In pretty deep, huh?'
'About as deep as it gets.'
They said no more, merely turned the horses from the water and set off across the plateau.
So Grace knew, though how she knew he didn't care. It was as he'd feared, even before Annie had voiced the fear this morning. When they were leaving the party last night he'd asked Grace if she'd had a good time and she'd barely looked at him, just nodded and forced a token smile. What pain she must be in to have gone off like this, Tom thought. Pain of his making. And he took it inside him and embraced it in his own.
At the crest of the ridge they expected again to see her but didn't. Her tracks, where they could see them, showed only a slight slackening of pace. Only once had she stopped, some fifty yards from the mouth of the pass. It looked as if she'd pulled Pilgrim up short then walked him in a small circle, as if she was deciding or looking at something. Then she'd gone on again at a lope.
Frank reined to a halt just where the land began to tilt sharply upward between the pines. He pointed at the ground for Tom to look.
'What do you make of that?'
There were not one set of hoofmarks now but many, though you could read Pilgrim's clearly among them because of his shoes. It was impossible to tell whose were the fresher.
'Must be some of old Granola's mustangs,' Frank said.
'I guess so.'
'Ain't never seen 'em this far up before. You?'
'Nope.'
They heard it as soon as they reached the bend about halfway up the pass and they stopped to listen. There was a deep rumble which at first Tom took to be a slide of rocks somewhere up in the trees. Then they heard a high-pitched clamor of screams and knew it was horses.
They rode, fast but cautious, to the top of the pass, expecting any moment to come face to face with a stampede of mustangs. But aside from their upward tracks there was no sign of them. It was hard to tell how many there were. Maybe a dozen, Tom thought.
At its highest point, the pass forked like a pair of tight pants into two diverging trails. To get to the high pastures you had to go right. They stopped again and studied the ground. It was so churned with hooves in all directions, you could neither pick Pilgrim's among them nor know which way he or any other horse had gone.
The brothers split up, Tom taking the right and Frank the lower one left. About twenty yards up Tom found Pilgrim's prints. But they were heading down, not up. A little farther up was another great churning of earth and he was about to inspect it when he heard Frank call out.
When he reined up next to him, Frank told him to listen. For a few moments there was nothing. Then Tom heard it too, another frenzied call of horses.
'Where does this trail go?'
'I don't know. Ain't never been down here.'
Tom put his heels into Rimrock and launched him into a gallop.
The trail went up then down then up again. It was winding and narrow and the trees crowded so close on either side that they seemed to be whipping back the other way with a motion all their own.
Here and there one had fallen across the trail. Some they could duck and others jump. Rimrock never faltered but measured his stride and cleared them all without brushing a branch.
After maybe half a mile the ground fell away again then opened up under a steep, rock-strewn slope into which the trail had etched itself in a long upward crescent. Below it the ground fell sheer, many hundreds of feet, to a dark netherworld of pine and rock.
The trail led to what appeared to be some vast and ancient quarry, carved into the limestone like a giant's cauldron that had cracked and spilled its contents down the mountain. From this place now, above the hammering of Rimrock's hooves, Tom heard again the scream of horses. Then he heard another and knew,' with a sudden sickening, that it was Grace. It wasn't until he pulled Rimrock up in the cauldron's gaping mouth that he could see into it.
She was cowering at the back wall, trapped by a turmoil of shrieking mares. There were seven or eight of them and some colts and foals too, all running in circles and scaring each other more at every turn. Their clamor echoed back at them from the walls, only to redouble their fear. And the more they ran, the more dust they churned and the blindness only made them panic more. At the center, rearing and screaming and striking at each other with their hooves, were Pilgrim and the white stallion Tom had seen that day with Annie.
'Jesus Christ.' Frank had arrived alongside. His horse balked at the sight and he had to rein him hard and circle back beside Tom. Rimrock was troubled but stood his ground. Grace hadn't seen them. Tom got down and handed Rimrock's reins to Frank.
'Stay here in case I need you, but you're gonna have to make way pretty quick when they come,' he said. Frank nodded.
Tom walked to his left with his back to the wall, never taking his eyes off the horses. They swirled in front of him like a crazed carousel. He could feel the bite of the dust in his throat. It was clouding so thick that beyond the mares Pilgrim was only a dark blur against the rearing white shape of the stallion.
Grace was now no more than twenty yards away. At last she saw him. Her face was very pale.
'You hurt?' he yelled.
Grace shook her head and tried to call back to him that she was okay. But her voice was too frail to carry through the din and the dust. She'd bruised her shoulder and twisted her ankle when she fell but that was all. All that paralyzed her was fear -and fear more for Pilgrim than herself. She could see the bared pink of the stallion's gums above his teeth as he hacked away at Pilgrim's neck, where already there was the black glint of blood. Worst of all was the sound of their screams, a sound she'd heard only once before, on a snowy, sunlit morning in another place.
She saw Tom now take off his hat and step out among the circling mares, waving it high in front of them. They skidded and shied away from him, colliding with those behind them. Now they'd all turned and he moved in quickly behind them, driving them before him, away from Pilgrim and the stallion.
One tried to break away to the right but Tom dodged and headed it off. Through the dust cloud Grace could see another man, Frank maybe, moving two horses clear of the gap. The mares, with the colts and foals at their tails, bolted past and made good their escape.
Now Tom turned and worked his way around the wall again, giving space to the fighting horses, Grace supposed, so as not to drive them nearer to her. He stopped more or less where he'd been before and again called out.
'Stay right there, Grace. You'll be okay.'
Then, without any sign of fear, he walked toward the fight. Grace could see his lips moving but couldn't hear what he said over the horses' screams. Perhaps he was speaking to himself or maybe not at all.
He didn't stop until he was right up to them and only then did they seem to register his presence. She saw him reach for Pilgrim's reins and take hold of them. Firmly, but without any violent jerking of his hand, he drew the horse down off his hind legs and turned him from the stallion. Then he slapped him hard on his rump and sent him away.
Thus thwarted, the stallion turned his wrath on Tom.
The picture of what followed would stay with Grace till the day she died. And never would she know for sure what happened. The horse wheeled in a tight circle, tossing his head and kicking up a spray of dust and rock shards with his hooves. With the other horses gone, his snorting fury had dominion of the air and seemed to grow with each resounding echo from the walls. For a moment he appeared not to know what to make of the man who stood undaunted before him.
What was certain was that Tom could have walked away. Two or three paces would have taken him out of the stallion's reach and clear of all danger. The horse, so Grace believed, would simply have let him be and gone where the others had led. Instead, Tom stepped toward him.
The moment he moved, as he must have foreseen, the stallion reared up before him and screamed. And even now, Tom could have stepped aside. She had seen Pilgrim rear before him once and noted how deftly Tom could move to save himself. He knew where a horse's feet would fall, which muscle it would move and why, before it even knew itself. Yet on this day, he neither dodged nor ducked nor even flinched and, once more, stepped in closer.
The settling dust was still too thick for Grace to be sure, but she thought she now saw Tom open his arms a little and, in a gesture so minimal that she may have imagined it, show the horse the palms of his hands. It was as though he were offering something and perhaps it was only what he'd always offered, the gift of kinship and peace. But although she would never from this day forth utter the thought to anyone, Grace had a sudden, vivid impression that it was otherwise and that Tom, quite without fear or despair, was somehow this time offering himself.
Then, with a terrible sound, sufficient alone to ratify the passing of his life, the hooves came down upon his head and struck him like a crumbled icon to the ground.
The stallion reared again but not so high and only now to find some safer surface for his feet than the man's body. He seemed for a moment fazed by such prompt capitulation and pawed the dust uncertainly around Tom's head. Then, tossing his mane, he cried out one last time, then swerved toward the gap and was gone.