April Smith - Judas Horse

“The strategy for tonight has changed.” I’m looking at a hand-drawn map Bill Fontana has given us. “We’re taking three vehicles and leaving them in a turnout at Needle Gorge, highway marker two twenty-four, just east of the corrals.”

“I’ll inform the SWAT team. Don’t worry. Once you’re in, nobody’s getting out of the compound,” Donnato assures me. “Be safe.”

“You, too.”

“Roger that.”

Ihaul out of the Civic and for the second or third time during that long day wander into the Big River Stage Stop and poke through cans of motor oil and beef stew on the sparsely stocked shelves.

There are many interesting things to look at, such as three different color portraits of John Wayne, and a collection of old snow globes with dried-up brown insides — a gorilla, a golfer, a steamboat. In a booth at the rear I find Megan and two other activists — Lillian, a seventyish bird-watcher, and her friend Dot. They are now stripped of their thick parkas, and their mousy white hair and plain wire glasses, their thin shoulders and veined hands reveal two elderly women, defenseless as nuns. How will they keep up with us in the dark?

I wait for some acknowledgment in order to join them. They are talking about migrating birds. Spread across this surreal landscape, there are wetlands that provide sanctuary for hundreds of species. I hover at the edge of the conversation, drawn back to the banishment from the pack by my former friend Barbara Sullivan at the Los Angeles field office; boys may be stupid, but girls rip the heart out of you. Or is it that our hearts are already broken by the clumsy swipes of careless mothers? The undercutting remark, the florid slap across the face. Too jealous, too deranged, or, like my own mother, gone too early to make repairs.

When the bird-watchers report they have seen three trumpet swans sailing along by the side of the road, I jump in with “Oh my God, how exciting!” and am finally invited to sit down.

Now they are talking about rocks. Lillian and Dot turn out to be retired high school teachers with a lot to say — not only about birds but also about the joys of collecting minerals. Underneath her yam-colored parka, Megan is wearing a fuzzy sweater knitted with ropes of purple; her hair bursts out from tortoiseshell clips. Her eyes are bright and interested. The proprietress brings four coffees. When she is gone, Megan reaches into her knapsack and pulls out a silver flask. Dot reacts, all fluttery, but Lillian is eager and Megan matter-of-fact. I think about the empty wineglasses that littered the table at Omar’s.

Megan pours a dark liquid into my cup. “Going to be cold out there tonight.”

It is bourbon.

“Wow, this helps,” I say gratefully. “I am so stressed.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Lillian says. “Whatever you do, when they arrest you, don’t resist.”

Dot taps her teeth. “The police broke my bridge in Atlanta.”

I swallow the bourbon-flavored coffee. “No, not about freeing the horses. I mean I’m stressed about my life. I’m being kicked out of my apartment in Portland. I have to find another place.”

Angelo said, “Make sure they know Darcy needs a place to stay.”

Lillian laughs and waves her wrinkled fingertips. “Vasanas,” she says dismissively.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a Sanskrit word for things of this earthly life,” Lillian says. “Bad habits. Mental bondage.”

“Well, excuse my French.” I pout, and Lillian pats my hand.

We pull into the total darkness of the turnout at Needle Gorge. The weather has cleared and it is as if the curtains of civilization have been drawn aside to show us the stars, lush and impenetrable, as they looked 200 million years ago from this same naked plateau. Our breath forms as soon as we are out of the cars. Immediately, there is giggling. Someone has to go to the bathroom. Someone else flicks on a small red beam to check the map.

We follow the highway. I wonder what Fontana’s alibi would be if a sheriff saw us walking along in the dark single file. But for Darcy, this is the most thrilling thing she has ever done. I grip the sleeve of the conspirator in front of me with exhilaration. “Your first time?” whispers the woman kindly. “Stay by me. You’ll be okay.”

We shuffle down a steep driveway, causing a small slide of pebbles. Two lights are shining from posts near the entrance to the site. Between them is a gate secured by a circle of heavy chain. Fontana snips the links with a pair of bolt cutters and we’re in.

No more giggling now. Ahead is the compound of corrals, lit by a single lamp over the barn. I am shivering with cold, small tremors close to the bone. Suddenly, a spotlight appears above us, a circle of white around a huge fat owl in a tree. Its markings are beautiful, the eyes glossy black. There are shushes and rasping shouts. “Great horned owl!” And the flashlight snaps off. Lillian and Dot. The bird-watchers. Oh my God.

The wide barn door is open. Inside, it smells of horse stink and hay. We creep past a system of green metal chutes, and then a box stall in which a spotted mustang mare and her foal are resting on a bed of straw. Even in the dimness, the up-close colors of their coats — their wild aliveness — makes your heart beat faster. There are muffled gasps from the group. The foal’s front legs are wrapped in bloody bandages from being run by the helicopter over the coarse gravel plain. Determinedly, we urge one another on, not suspecting this touching nativity scene may have been set up for that very purpose.

We hurry through another open doorway and find ourselves in a maze of log railings twelve feet high, way over our heads. The lengths of the runs and the height of the fences are much greater than they looked on Fontana’s sketch. You can feel a ripple of uncertainty: This is the United States government. We are small; this is big — maybe overwhelming. The lighting is poor. The far corrals blend into country darkness. Our boots sink into dry mulch that muffles sound. And then we see the horses.

The mustangs are completely silent. They circle their enclosures like fish, heads low, shoulder-to-shoulder in slow undulating patterns of chestnut and dun. A few break off and form other groups, and then they all flow together again. There is no nickering, no alarm at being captive, no rebellious kicking of heels — because the stallions and foals, I learn, have been separated from the rest. Leaderless, childless, the silence of the mares is haunting: a plaintive, voiceless female rebuke. Heard by whom?

Heard by us.

We surge forward to our assigned corrals to wait while Fontana moves down the line with the bolt cutters. It is hard to gain traction in the mulch and I feel like I am running in slow motion, but that is also because I am aware of other forces at play in the wings of darkness — armed officers speaking softly into body mikes, and invisible snipers on the barn roof. I jog past Megan, already posted at pen number four, where twenty or thirty slack-necked mares slink unconcerned toward the center. I am climbing the logs of the gate to grasp the padlock with stiff, cold fingers. I’m about ten feet up when the crack of a rifle shot echoes off the mountains.

I think it is Fontana, gone crazy, but then I realize the shot came from the darkness to the east, and Fontana is standing frozen like everyone else in the middle of the runs, having whipped around toward frantic shouts from the barn. My first thought: Where is Donnato? Is he in the line of fire? From my vantage point halfway up the fence, I see a black-suited SWAT officer toboggan sideways down the corrugated iron channels of the roof, then drop off the edge.