T. Boyle: San Miguel

Nellie was just outside the gate, where Freddie had left her. She was lathered and her sides were heaving. Herbie took one look at her and swung round on Freddie. “You take this animal up to the barn and rub her down. And then you feed and water her, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goddamn you, you better.”

In the next moment Freddie had turned to lead the horse to the barn and she was following her husband along a sheep path through the dunes and chewed-over scrub. Nichols Point was less than two miles off and mostly downhill and they moved quickly. “You think it’s bad?” she asked, but he never turned round and never bothered to answer. He was worked up, she could see that, and she almost felt sorry for Reg — almost, though whatever he had coming to him he’d brought it on himself.

When they got close she could see the horse framed in the distance against an ocean the color of soapstone and a sky that went just a shade lighter. It was misting and the wind had cut off altogether. Reg was standing off to one side, his hands in his pockets. The horse — Buck — had his head lowered, but he wasn’t cropping grass, and he was favoring the left front leg.

“I don’t know what happened to him,” Reg sang out when they were still a hundred feet away. “I was just riding him along the bluff here, looking for the enemy, you know? And he pulled up lame.”

Herbie ignored him. He went up to the horse and patted his shoulder to calm him. With an effort, Buck raised his head, but the motion staggered him so that he had to put weight on the bad leg, just for an instant, and that staggered him again. Herbie knelt beside him to run a hand over the injured foreleg, taking his time, feeling for a break. Then he rose to his feet and still he said nothing.

Reg was cupping his hands to light a cigarette. “Well?” he said. “What do you think?”

“Get out of my sight,” Herbie spat.

“But I didn’t do nothing. You yourself said he was old—”

“Just go. Go on, get!”

They both watched the sailor adjust his shoulders and start back across the wet field, trailing smoke and sauntering as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“It’s broken, isn’t it?” she said. He didn’t answer. “Mon amour,” she said. “Parlez moi.”

He just shook his head. Buck set his hoof down, then jerked it back again so that it hung limp in the air. “We’re going to need to move him twenty feet or so — to the edge of the bluff there,” Herbie said finally. “Can you grab hold of his halter while I take the saddle off him?”

It came clear to her then. “You’re not going to bury him?”

His voice was hard, as if he weren’t talking to her at all but to Reg or Freddie or the Japanese in the white coat who’d had the effrontery to sit there in their living room like an authentic human being: “You want to dig the hole? Christ, it’d take a week.”

And then the saddle lay in the dirt and Buck moved under her hand in a series of three-legged jerks, a foot at a time, until he stood poised there on the verge of the cliff that gave onto the bay below. He was a horse, only a horse, and he’d outlived his time, she understood that, told herself that, but when Herbie pulled the black snub-nosed pistol — the gift — from his pocket and pressed it to the animal’s head, she felt as if she were dying herself.

All that was left was the report of the pistol — two reports, in quick succession — and Herbie jumping aside as the failing legs kicked out and the big roan body hit the ground and the ground shifted and it was gone.

So he was angry, so he was furious, and the whole way back to the house he kept muttering and cursing and he never thought to offer her his hand or put an arm round her shoulders, as if her feelings counted for nothing, as if she hadn’t been as attached to the horse as he. Buck had been a good gentle animal and if he’d ever been hard to break or as skittish as his name implied, it was before their time. They didn’t even know who’d named him or what he’d been like as a colt — he was just a presence on the ranch, already middle-aged when she came up the hill from the harbor that first time — and though she knew he’d have to be replaced eventually it was a thing she didn’t like to think about. Or hadn’t liked to think about. And now she’d had to take the shock of seeing him hurtle off the cliff to the rocks below, useless and abandoned, fit only for the ravens and the gulls and the big red crabs that swarmed in on the tide. She followed her husband’s rigid back up the long gradual rise to where the barn and house came into view, and she wouldn’t cry over a horse, she wouldn’t let herself. Just as she hadn’t let herself look over that cliff either — for all she knew Buck had sprouted wings like Pegasus and glided off on the breeze or landed in a deep surging pool and swum away to wherever horses go when they die.

Pomo wasn’t there to greet them when they came in the gate — he would have been out in the schoolhouse with the girls. She’d already determined not to say a word about what had happened till the girls were done with their lessons, and then, later, perhaps after dinner, she’d tell them Buck had died. Though not how and not where. The last thing she wanted was for them to go looking for the remains and if they asked she’d say they’d buried him on the spot. She could already hear Marianne asking, Where? Where? Out there, she’d say, and point in the opposite direction altogether. In a week there’d be nothing left on the rocks at Nichols Point, not with a good high tide — and the moon was full, wasn’t it? With any luck the bones themselves would be lifted off the rocks and swept out to sea. And she’d talk up the fact that they’d have to get a new horse now — Bob Brooks would just have to cough up the money or bring one out from his place in Carpinteria — and how nice it would be to have a new animal here, one they could maybe even name themselves and ride as much as they wanted without having to worry.

That was what she was thinking as she slipped up on the schoolhouse so furtively even the dog didn’t know she was coming. She eased herself onto the doorstep, held her breath, counted three and whipped open the door like a magician, expecting to catch the girls out. But they weren’t chattering or doodling or wasting their time at all: they both had their heads down, absorbed in their lessons. They looked up in unison and Pomo slapped his tail twice and sprang up to greet her. “Good, girls,” she said. “Good for you. You just finish up your reading now and I think we’ll go ahead and postpone the essays till tomorrow, okay?”

The room was warm still, but she went straight to the stove Herbie had installed in one corner, pulled open the cast-iron door and laid a knot of ironwood on the diminished coals. She had a story all ready for them and when Marianne asked where she’d gone she told her that two of the lambs had fallen into a hole and couldn’t get out so their father had asked her to come help him rescue them. Which she’d done. And the lambs were fine, just a little thirsty that was all — and their mothers were right there waiting for them.

“Why couldn’t Reg help him? Or Freddie?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” she said. “They’re busy patrolling. And they’re not used to ranching and such — and I am, so your father asked me. It was nothing, really. If I wasn’t here, you could have helped him.”

“Where would you be if you weren’t here?” Betsy asked.

“I was just saying — theoretically. You know what ‘theoretically’ means?”

“Reg and Freddie took the horses,” Marianne said. “Reg was on Buck.”