Marcia Muller: Burn Out

Which was what had started this horse thing.

We’d been sitting on bales of hay in the stable two nights ago when Ramon said, “You really should learn to ride.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Your people are good with horses. They acquired them, I think from the Apaches, in the seventeen-hundreds. Earlier than my people.”

“Well then, I’m a piss-poor Shoshone. I took riding lessons in my mid-twenties and did okay, but I quit because I discovered I hate the critters.”

Ramon shook his head. “You just don’t understand them, is all. What you need to do is show them that you’re in control, and that you respect them. Then comes the love.”

I eyed him skeptically.

“Take Lear out tomorrow morning.”

I shrugged.

“Dare you.”

“Oh, Ramon, come on…”

“Double-dare you.”

Ah, the games of our childhood…

“Double-dog-dare you.”

“You’re on.”

The next morning I’d shown up at nine for my ride. Lear raised his lip in a sneer while Ramon helped me adjust the saddle, bridle, and stirrups, but otherwise he’d walked peaceably enough around the nearby meadow. When I unsaddled him he twitched his tail impatiently.

“Ride him tonight,” Ramon suggested. “Let him get used to you. I’ve seen you walking on the mesa; let him take you there.”

I sighed, “Okay. But isn’t it dangerous to ride at twilight?”

He laughed. “Horse knows every inch of this ranch. He’ll get you there and back just fine. Bring him a piece of carrot as a reward.”

Lear had given me a disdainful look and tried to nip my fingers when he took the carrot, but otherwise the ride had gone well. And then tonight…

I took Ramon’s arm as we started walking back toward the cluster of ranch buildings. “Lear’s not getting the carrot I brought for him.”

“No, he shouldn’t. He knows he acted out.”

“And I’m not riding him again.”

Ramon was silent for a moment, and then he said softly, “We’ll see.”

Ten minutes later I let myself into the house through the door to the mudroom, hung the jacket on a peg, and went into the kitchen. It felt like stepping back into the fifties: black-and-white linoleum floor, yellow Formica countertops, old fridge and stove, porcelain sink, enameled cabinets with scalloped bottoms. A chrome-and-Formica table-yellow, with chairs upholstered in red vinyl-stood in a breakfast nook. I liked the kitchen and the fact that neither Hy nor Julie had attempted to remodel it. It spoke to me of continuity and an acceptance of the past.

And now if I can only learn to accept certain things in my past…

No philosophizing, I told myself. I was hungry.

I went to the fridge and peered inside. Bag of salad greens-wilted. Tomato-wrinkling. No eggs-I’d fried the last one for my lunchtime sandwich. Milk, but when I picked up the carton and sniffed it, it smelled bad. Ditto the sandwich meat. I’d used the last edible pieces of bread for lunch; the rest of it had turned hard as stone. And in the ice-clogged freezer-they didn’t self-defrost when this one was made, and I hadn’t bothered to do anything about it-I spotted a submerged package of lima beans that had perhaps been there since 2002.

This was what else could go wrong today.

Good God, what was wrong with me? Why hadn’t I noticed this lack of food earlier? I hadn’t come here to starve myself!

I investigated the pantry. Badly stocked, unless I wanted anchovies and garbanzo beans for dinner. No more wine, either.

That did it. In a minute I was back in the shearling jacket and out the door to Hy’s Land Rover.

The town of Vernon, on the shore of Tufa Lake, had changed little over the years since I’d first come there. The red-and-gold neon sign atop Zelda’s-a rustic tavern and restaurant where you could dance on the weekends to country-and-western bands-flashed far out at the end of the long point extending into the lake. The liquor store had a new name, and one of the off-brand gas stations was now a Union 76, but otherwise the small businesses in the strip malls along the main street remained: an insurance broker, real-estate agents, a pizza parlor, a bank, the post office, a haircutting salon, a florist, two bars, and various other establishments that provided the necessities of everyday life. The shabby motel on the lakeshore showed a NO VACANCY sign, which never would have been the case in the old days; but the marginally better and more scenic Willow Grove Lodge was closed and up for sale, following the death of its owner, Rose Whittington. I’d stayed there on my first visits to Vernon, and remembered Mrs. Whittington as a pleasant innkeeper with a passion for gardening and trucker movies.

As always, the Food Mart was doing a turn-away business.

I pulled into the lot, parked the Land Rover, and started for the supermarket. Its windows were brightly lighted, and through them I saw busy checkers, stacks of specials, and shoppers pushing carts along the aisles. The lot and the building’s plain white facade were well lighted too, but there was a pocket of darkness beyond where a soft-drink machine and some newspaper vending racks stood. With a city dweller’s conditioning, I glanced over there.

A young woman-a girl, really, she couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen-stood alone; from the way her gaze darted around the parking lot, I assumed she was waiting for a ride. She wore a thin cotton blouse and jeans and hugged herself against the cold. Her hunched posture reminded me of the victims of sexual and domestic violence to whom I’d taught a self-defense course at San Francisco City College last year. When she swung her head around, her long black hair flared out in the chill breeze; her features, I saw, were Indian. Probably Paiute.

The girl projected such an air of loneliness that I paused. The lights of a car pulling into the lot and waiting for a space focused on her, and she blinked at the glare, then looked away in my direction. Her eyes locked on mine, and I was close enough, the lights bright enough that I saw something besides loneliness: fear.

I wondered if I should go over to her, ask if she was all right. But then she began scanning the other side of the lot. I watched her for a few more seconds before I went inside. As I passed along the aisles, buying enough food to last a week, the Indian girl’s image stayed with me. When I left the store I looked for her, but she was gone.

For the greater part of the week after my outing to the Food Mart, I stayed on the ranch-reading, watching old movies on TV, sleeping, and steadfastly avoiding any thought of the future. And every evening, in spite of my vow, I returned to the same place on the bluff to watch the moon rise.

I didn’t ride Lear Jet again, but after a day I did go to the stables at the time that Ramon returned from exercising him. I’d watch while he groomed and fed the horse, sitting on a bale of hay in amicable silence.

Ramon, I knew, had made overtures to Hy about buying the ranch, but out of sentiment Hy didn’t want to sell. He’d grown up there, and it had been willed to him by his mother and stepfather. He’d returned there after a tumultuous stint as a charter pilot in southeast Asia. He’d lived there with Julie and eventually watched her waste away. He’d grieved there, and recovered there. And we’d first slept together there. While we didn’t visit often now, the moments we shared in the high desert were precious. Ramon had understood: sentiment ran thick in his veins too.

Sometimes when he was done with the horse, he’d join me and talk about our heritages. “You know, our tribes generally had good relationships,” he said one afternoon. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well, huh?”