Owen Sheers - I Saw a Man

―

When Daniel had first come to work for Sally he hadn’t been sure what to make of her. She was gruff, short-tempered, fiercely independent. Years of living on her own had made her terse, as hard-worn as her sun-leathered skin. How she’d managed to run a guesthouse all these years he couldn’t tell. But she had. And not just any guesthouse, but one of the most highly regarded in all Sonoma County.

At some point there’d been a husband, but he’d left her, years ago. Daniel still didn’t know the circumstances, only that because of his leaving, Sally, now in her seventies, needed help through the high season — with the garden, the maintenance, and all the other jobs she’d rather leave to someone else while she worked with her horses.

“No, it ain’t fucking horse whispering,” she’d said to him when he’d first asked her about it. “Just common sense, that’s all. Listening, looking. Just taking some goddamn time to stop thinking all human for once. Realise ours isn’t the only way of being, of talking.”

Daniel had driven down her track from the nearby town of Sebastopol just a few days before. A simple handwritten sign had prompted him to turn off the road. HELP WANTED , written in red-marker capitals. Above it was another sign, painted and faded— West Valley Guesthouse & Equine Harmony Centre. It was early in the season, February. Which is why, Sally had been quick to tell him, she’d taken him on. Because he’d been the first one to drive down that track. One mistake, she’d told him as she’d led him to his quarters — a spare room with a single bed and a hotplate — and he could drive right back up it again.

But Daniel hadn’t made any mistakes. Not anymore. So now, five months later, in July, as Sally guided him through her techniques, he felt secure in his position. Over the months the two of them had got into a rhythm. He thought they understood each other. Maybe, even, that they were growing to like each other.

―

“Okay, that’s far enough,” Sally said, raising her hand. “Now turn back around. Nice and slow.”

Daniel followed her instructions and turned to find the mare close behind him, her head low, her flanks shivering under the touch of morning flies.

“Now walk to your left,” Sally said from the fence. “Still nice and steady, now. That’s it.”

Daniel did as she said, slowly walking up the slope of the field. The mare turned with him and walked on beside him as if tethered, nodding into the incline. He went to say something, but at his intake of breath Sally cut him off.

“Don’t talk,” she commanded. “Just walk. Walk and feel her beside you. That’s it. She’s with you now. She’s with you.”

As Daniel walked on with the mare he thought how much Sarah and Kayce would have loved to have seen this. And Cathy, too. But they were all still in Las Vegas. It was one of the things he’d found hardest to get used to. Not being able to turn to his wife or his daughters and share a sight, a thought. But for the last year, apart from one single day, that’s how it had been, ever since he’d reversed out of their drive in Centennial Hills and driven west to leave them.

―

After those first few days on the Sonoma coastline Daniel had decided to stay. To keep the sea close. But at the same time he’d had to keep moving, too, so he’d carried on driving. He couldn’t go any farther west so he’d travelled the coast road instead, as far north as Florence, Oregon, and as far south as San Diego. As he’d travelled he’d avoided newspaper stands, bars with TVs, radio stations with regular bulletins. He soon realised, however, there was no need to be so careful. In a matter of weeks the story that had so ruptured his life had already slipped from the media’s interest, surfacing again only when the inquiry reached its conclusion. “Accidental killing”—that’s what they called what he’d done. It had been an accident. People had died. She had died. A couple of columns on page three or four. An item on the occasional news channel. Even in Australia and Britain the Pentagon statement had been little more than acknowledged. The world had moved on. To other stories, other deaths, feeding its hunger for now, not then.

Through it all they’d managed to keep his name out of the press. Whether Agent Munroe had deployed suppressing tactics or the juggernaut of military protocol had just taken over, in the eyes of the world the drone had remained unmanned.

But so had he. In those first months travelling the coast, tracing its cliffs and fishing towns, Daniel had been unable to settle. His nerves were raw and his sleep, unless he drank enough, was cursory and restless. He’d known he couldn’t return to Las Vegas while he was like that. But he also couldn’t bear stopping anywhere for long. He was still getting by on his discharge pay, so with no job to root him, he’d drifted the Californian coast like a sixties throwback, exiled from his vocation, in possession of a home, but unable to return there. That home was, though, still his final destination. He was sure of that. Not the house in Centennial Hills itself, but Cathy and the girls. They were his home, and why he was staying away from them now, so that one day in the future they might continue to be so.

Although part of Daniel’s agreement with Cathy had been to give her space, they’d still kept in regular contact. Weekly phone calls, emails. He’d Skyped the girls regularly too, close-shaving in guesthouse bathrooms to maintain his previous military smoothness. As far as Sarah and Kayce were concerned, their father’s work had taken him away again. Which in a manner of speaking, Daniel had convinced himself, was true. It wasn’t a difficult story for them to accept. Over the years of his service his absence had become as familiar to them as his presence. But even when on tour he’d always got leave, so a few months ago with Cathy’s consent, he’d travelled back to Las Vegas to see them.

He’d been with them for only a day. Cathy had said it would be too disruptive — for her and for the girls — if he’d stayed for any longer, or come to sleep at the house. So instead he’d arrived the night before, checking in to a serviced MGM apartment just off the strip. As usual, he hadn’t been able to sleep, so he’d spent much of the night strolling the covered malls and the casinos, watching the gamblers feed the machines.

They met over breakfast at one of the Paris restaurants, a foot of the Eiffel Tower planted through the ceiling above them. Seeing the girls had almost been too much for Daniel. But he knew Cathy would be watching him, weighing his responses, his behaviour, so somehow he’d held himself together, suppressing his desire to just take them in his arms and hold them. As he’d paid the bill Cathy had thrown him a look, one in which the wife he’d known and the wife he was coming to know both seemed to be imploring him to understand how fragile this was, to understand what he held.

That evening Daniel took the girls to Disney on Ice, but before that they’d had a whole day together. They’d spent most of it walking the strip, Daniel pushing Sarah in her stroller, Kayce holding his hand. Between shopping in the malls and eating snacks they’d seen New York, Paris, Venice, Egypt; dwarf versions of the Empire State, the Arc de Triomphe, the Pyramids. Later, on their way to the show that evening they’d stopped to watch the choreographed fountains in the lake before the Bellagio, their towering plumes shooting from shadow into light.

After his months in the wine country and coast of Sonoma, the city felt heavily present to Daniel, and yet film-set ephemeral too. He’d never noticed before how there was music piped everywhere on the strip. From the lampposts, potted plants, all along the fake cobbled malls. Even the walkways above the highway felt like themed zones of homelessness, these being, as far as he could tell, the only places where the city’s beggars were allowed to ply their trade.