Maggie Stiefvater: The Scorpio Races

Thomas Gratton watches soundlessly as Beech hands off the bucket to me and begins to indelicately butcher the corpse. It doesn’t seem like there should be an artful way to butcher a cow, but there is, and this is not it. For several long moments, I watch Beech carve jagged lines, grunting to himself all the while – I think he may be trying to hum. I am mesmerized by the utter unawareness of the entire process, the childlike pleasure Beech takes in a job ill done. Thomas Gratton and I catch each other’s eye.

“He learned his butchering from his mother, not me,” Thomas Gratton tells me. I don’t quite smile, but he seems gratified by my response anyway.

“If you don’t like how I do it,” Beech says, not looking up from his work, “I’d rather be at the pub, and this knife fits in your hand, too.”

Thomas Gratton makes a mighty sound that comes from somewhere between his nostrils and the top of his mouth; it is a sound that, to me, effectively proves the etymology of Beech’s grunts. He turns away from Beech and looks at the red-tiled roof of one of the buildings flanking the courtyard. “So I expect you’ll be riding in the race this year,” he says.

Beech doesn’t respond, because of course his father is speaking to me. I reply, “I expect so.”

Thomas Gratton doesn’t answer right away, just continues gazing at the evening sun lighting the roof tiles to brilliant orange-red. Eventually, he says, “Yes, I expect that’s what Malvern asks of you, then.”

I have worked in the Malvern Yard since I was ten, and some people say that I got the job out of pity, but those people are wrong. The Malverns’ livelihood and their name are under the roof of their stable – they export sport horses to the mainland – and they won’t have anything compromising that, far less something as humanitarian as pity. I’ve been with the Malverns long enough to know that the Grattons do not care for them, and I know that Thomas Gratton wants me to say something that will allow him to better despise Benjamin Malvern. So I allow a long pause to diffuse the weight of his question, and then I say, with a rattle of the bucket handle, “If it’s all right, I’ll settle the account for this later this week.”

Thomas Gratton laughs softly. “You are the oldest nineteen I’ve ever met, Sean Kendrick.”

I don’t reply, because he is probably right. He tells me to settle the account this Friday as usual, and Beech gives me a parting grunt as I leave the courtyard with the blood.

I need to be thinking about bringing the ponies in from the pasture and adjusting the thoroughbreds’ feed and how I will keep my little flat above the stable warm tonight, but I am thinking of the news Thomas Gratton brought. I am here on firm ground, but part of me is already down on the beach, and my own blood is singing I’m so, so alive.

That night, Gabe breaks the only rule we have.

I am unambitious with dinner, because we don’t have anything other than dried beans, and I’m sick of beans. I make an apple cake and feel rather virtuous about it. Finn is annoying me by spending the afternoon in the yard tinkering with an ancient, broken chain saw that he claims someone gave him but that he probably pulled out of someone’s rubbish because it had gears. I’m cross because I’m inside by myself, which makes me feel like I ought to be tidying, and I don’t want to tidy. I slam around a lot of drawers and cupboards while sort of messing over the eternally full sink, but Finn doesn’t hear me or pretends not to.

Finally, before the sun completely vanishes over the high ground in the west, I throw open the side door and stand there looking at Finn meaningfully, waiting for him to look up and say something to me. He is all buckled over the top of the chain saw, which lies dismembered in front of him, pieces spread tidily over the packed dirt of the yard. He wears one of Gabe’s sweaters that, while several years old, is still too large for him. He has the sleeves doubled back into fat, perfectly even cuffs, and his dark hair is mussed into an oily rooster tail. He looks like an orphan, and that makes me cross, too.

“Are you going to come in and eat the cake while it still remembers being warm?” I sound a little bratty, but I don’t care.

Finn says, without looking up, “In a minute.” He doesn’t mean a minute and I know it.

“I’m going to eat it all myself,” I say. He doesn’t reply; he’s lost in the mystery of the chain saw. I think, just for that moment, that I hate brothers, because they never realize when something is important to you and they only care about their own things.

I’m about to say something that I might be embarrassed about later when I see Gabe walking his bicycle through the dusk toward us. Neither of us says hi to him as he opens the yard gate, pushes his bicycle through, and closes it again, Finn because he is self-involved, and me because I am annoyed at Finn.

Gabe puts his bicycle away in the little lean-to by the back of the house and then comes to stand behind Finn. Gabe takes off his skullcap and holds it in his armpit, his arms crossed, wordlessly watching what Finn’s doing. I’m not sure Gabe can actually tell what it is that Finn has eviscerated in the barely there blue light of evening, but Finn rocks the body of the chain saw slightly to give Gabe a better view. This apparently tells Gabe everything he needs to know, because as Finn looks up, tilting his chin toward our older brother, Gabe just gives a little nod.

Their unspoken language both entrances and infuriates me. “There’s apple cake,” I say. “It’s still warm.”

Gabe removes his skullcap from his armpit and turns to me. “What’s dinner?”

“Apple cake,” Finn comments from the ground.

“And chain saw,” I reply. “Finn made a lovely chain saw to go with.”

“Apple cake’s fine,” Gabe says, but he sounds tired. “Puck, don’t leave the door open. It’s cold out here.” I step back so that he can walk into the house, and as he does, I notice that he stinks of fish. I hate it when the Beringers have him cleaning fish. He makes the whole house smell.

Gabe pauses in the door. I stare at him then, at the way he stands, his hand on the door frame, his face turned toward his hand as if he is studying his fingers or the chipped red paint beneath them. The way his face looks seems far away, like a stranger’s, and I suddenly want to hug him like I used to when I was small. “Finn,” he says, his voice low, “when you get that together, I need to talk to you and Kate.”

Finn looks up, his face startled, but Gabe is already gone, disappeared past me into the room he still shares with Finn despite our parents’ room being empty. Either Gabe’s request or his use of my real name has gotten Finn’s attention in a way that my apple cake couldn’t, and he begins to assemble the parts rapidly, dumping them into a battered cardboard box.

I feel unsettled while I wait for Gabe to emerge from his room. The kitchen has turned into the small, yellow place that it becomes at night when the darkness outside presses it smaller. I hurriedly wash off three plates that match and cut a fat piece of apple cake for each of us, the biggest one for Gabe. Setting them out on the table, three lonely plates where once there would’ve been five, depresses me, so I busy myself making some mint tea to go with them. As I arrange and rearrange the teacups by our plates, it occurs to me, too late, that mint tea and apple cake might not go together.

By then Finn has begun the process of washing his hands, which can take centuries. Patiently and silently he lathers his hands with the bar of milk soap, working between each finger and rubbing each line in his palm. He keeps doing it when Gabe emerges in fresh clothing but still smelling of fish.