April Smith - Judas Horse

“Now is not the time,” Donnato tells his wife. “Can’t you take the kids to school?” Then to me: “Hi, I’m back.” “What’s the matter, pal?”

“Pressure.”

“How’s her dad?”

“Not good.”

I can hear his tension, but it is nothing compared to the sound of the tractor, like a raging alarm through my nervous system. I am pacing, keeping a lookout through the open doors in both directions. Stone, wearing the battered straw hat, keeps on going back and forth.

I don’t like it. I don’t believe it. Why would Stone give it all up to plod the same rectangle day after day? Why, after those mint-issue Los Angeles mornings, when everything is possible, would you cut yourself off from success? Twenty-five years old, freshly shaven, wearing a starched white shirt and tie, he had to have felt like a hero about to be made — the Smith & Wesson in the shoulder holster, draping his coat on the seat back, Mr. Cool, hanging the handcuffs over the brake pedal in case he had to make a quick move out of the Bu-car.

Why did Dick Stone, “eager to be led in the right direction,” renounce it all and quit, so bitter he went over to the other side? Catching sight of the rig, precisely arcing in the turning space beyond the trees, I am certain of one thing: A cop does not surrender his weapon. Not ever.

“Mike? Are you there?”

Donnato and Rochelle are still squabbling. “All right, I’ll take them. Do they have their lunches?” Sirocco’s head is hanging lax, eyes shut. I brush her back. Dust rises. My eyes are on the furrows made by the bristles, the way the buckskin hairs line up glossy and flat; I’m concentrating my impatience on this small but solvable task. Faintly, a screen door slams. Inside the house, they are awake and moving.

“Damn it, Mike! I am in a covert situation here.” Sirocco wakes up and shimmies her neck like a dog with fleas. She stamps and backs up quickly, squashing me against the corner of the stall. Over her spotted rump, the shape of Dick Stone is looming against the light.

“Who are you talking to?”

I flip the Oreo phone shut and enclose it in the palm of my hand.

“Sirocco,” I say, petting her. “Right, girl?” Dick Stone’s face is sweaty and his breath comes hard. Pieces of straw and a fine spray of dirt he must have kicked up marching through the barn at the sound of my voice are floating in the backlight. I can’t believe I was not alert to the fact that the drone of the tractor had cut off. It is quiet now all right.

“You scared her,” I say.

Drawing the brush along Sirocco’s spine the way Megan showed me, maintaining contact with my hands on her coat, I slip around to the other side, keeping her body between us, and slide the phone into my underpants and, with one quick thrust, up into that place where the sun don’t shine — well, not usually.

Stone, mocking: “I scared her ?” “Coming up suddenly like that.”

Sirocco’s ears flick and she swings her hindquarters.

Dick Stone levels a dead-on stare into my eyes. Alone and close, his male scent is strong, like my grandfather’s, like the old-fashioned Vitalis that Poppy used to put in his hair.

“Where’d you grow up, Darcy?”

I squeeze my thighs in order not to drop the phone.

“Southern California.”

“Where?”

“The Valley.”

“Are you with someone?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I was.”

“Ever been married?”

“Nope.”

“No exes? No boyfriends?” He appraises me. “I can’t believe that.” My mouth is dry as the straw dust suspended in the air. “Yes, boyfriends. But I left them in L.A.” “Don’t you have anyone in the world?” he presses. “Besides your dad, who lives in Florida?” I pay attention to the distrust spreading through my body, core to fingertips.

Go on the attack. Get right back in their face.

“Why are you so interested in my dad? You want to send him a Father’s Day gift?” “Up to you.”

What does that mean, Up to you?

“Where is your father living?” I counter. “I’d like to send him a card.” Dick Stone’s left eyelid twitches. “I haven’t thought about my father in forty years. I can’t remember the sound of his voice.” “Tell me.”

He snorts derisively. “About my father ?” You are pushing it. Get him out of here.

“You know what I did with all that?” Stone continues bitterly. “Wrapped it up in plastic, looped it around with tape, tied it up with rope real good, and shipped it the hell out of here.” He turns, expecting me to follow, but I have picked up a broom.

“I’ve got to finish.”

If I move, I’ll give birth to a communications device.

Dick Stone walks out of the barn. But then, in the wide square of daylight, he turns.

“Why’d you come here, Darcy?”

“To kick the government’s ass,” I say while holding my breath. “I came for action, not sweeping up horse shit.” “Uh-huh. Well you just muck out the stalls and feed the rabbits, and we’ll see about action.” “We lost another rabbit—”

Shut up and let him go.

“I saw this morning,” I continue perversely. “I can’t figure how they’re getting out.” “Nobody locks the cage,” says Stone.

I am awakened by gunfire. Crossing the rough floorboards of the attic room I share with Sara, I snap the roller shade. The tattered paper rises lazily, enough to let in a warm current of air perfumed with blackberries that hits me like the delighted slap of a baby on both of Mommy’s cheeks. My brain lights up like a scoreboard. The sharp cracks coming from a distance are definitively shots. Who is killing whom in this pastoral psycho ward?

After feeding the animals that morning, I lay down again and fell into a doze. Now everyone is gone, I discover on this gorgeous summer morning as I hop around the house, pulling on shorts and sandals. Stone and Megan may have gone over to the grange, I remember; if so, they’ve taken Slammer to help load the hay. Sara’s bed is empty.

Dick Stone has bad habits. If he’s not out on the tractor, he’s generally asleep. He has a lot of ailments. Megan keeps a slew of Chinese herbal remedies for his back, knees, and spleen. In the murky hours of the afternoon, after his morning nap, he will hobble downstairs and someone will be waiting to try to talk him out of his usual lunch of sweet rolls and cheap champagne.

But Stone is not in the disheveled bedroom, or the orchard, and the crackling shots have started up again.

I follow the sound, going out the kitchen door, past the rank old goats, the rabbits and ducks, into the barn to retrieve the Oreo phone, then out the back, running through high grass bordered by rampant blackberries. There is a vineyard of dead vines with unkempt half-assed spurs, and stakes in the ground that mark an abandoned garden. Watch out for the hose and rusty wires. Dick Stone keeps his orchard groomed; but behind the house, where nobody can see, everything runs wild.

Breaking into open field, I sprint past a marsh with a silver oval of groundwater in which you can just make out the vertical stance of a great white heron. Megan says that in her grandfather’s day the acreage was used for wheat. She has given it back to migrating birds. I’ve found a trail through the cottonwoods and speed-dial Donnato in Los Angeles, wanting him to know I am heading into an uncertain situation. The sky is clear and the clouds are white and racing — there should be good reception, but the screen says, No Service. Even Rooney Berwick isn’t perfect.

There’s a streambed and I stumble through it, thrashing up the other side. I cannot say I am a woods person; always seem to pick the route with the most thorns. But now I’ve hit a maze of dirt roads and the going is easier and the shots are nearer. Tall cottonwoods have given way to a wasteland of scrub manzanita, crossed by an overhead grid of high electric wires. I’m in some kind of power station. The air changes. Fetid. Septic. Flies are buzzing an overflowing garbage can of trash — beer bottles and a recently disposed-of diaper.