Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

“If you know how,” she said, twisting her hair around her finger.

“So you've done it?”

“Sure,” Lila said. “At first it seems scary. I've gotten thrown a few times. It's weird; you feel like you're flying, then you smack on the ground. Everything's quiet till the ponies gather around and laugh.”

“I think I could ride them,” Eddie said. Lila smiled but seemed to ignore him. He'd never seen a girl like her. The high school girls he knew in Tennessee were always combing their hair and giggling over the basketball players. Lila could talk regular and there was something kind of fierce about her.

“Last summer I could fit in my father's crab trap,” Lila said. “They used to call me chicken because I was so bony.”

“No way,” Eddie said, slightly embarrassed.

“This spring I put all my old toys, dolls, puzzles, that kind of stuff, in a box, taped it up, and wrote childhood on every side. Clever, huh? It's up in my closet next to my globe.”

It seemed a funny thing to admit, Eddie thought, and he watched her stir her Coke with her fingers. He didn't know what to say. “Is the island on that thing?”

“At first I thought it was a little dot like a speck of pepper,” Lila said, shaking her head. “But it's not even on there.” He thought of the island, the Victorian sea captains’ cottages around the inlet and the sea oats that curtained the beach. She leaned her face closer to his. “When I was a kid,” she said, “I used to wonder where hell was on globes.”

“That's funny,” Eddie said. He liked the way her throat trilled when she laughed. She smiled and brought her cheek down close to her shoulder and rubbed it slowly against her shirt. Eddie had a feeling he was watching something private.

The small arcade was separated from the dining room by a half wall and was darker than the rest of the bar. The pinball machine played “Pop Goes the Weasel” in tiny notes, its light concentrated like a camp fire.

There was something about the big blonde dressed like a soldier on the glass back that he liked. She looked similar to the girls in the X-rated comics he'd seen back home and she reminded him of his friends there. The woman was barely clothed, with one leg straddled over her motorcycle. There were rats in uniform around her feet, all grinning so their spiked teeth showed.

Eddie put quarters in the thin slot and the numbers, set inside the woman's chest, cleared to zeros. The silver ball shot down past the motorcycle men with raised clubs. He flipped the ball up and it pinged on a rat with a handgun and then to an army nurse in a short dress. He caught the ball, balanced it on a flipper, and asked if she wanted to take over.

Lila moved her body in back of his, reached her arms around, and pressed down on his fingers resting on the knobs. She flipped the ball back and Eddie ducked under her arms. He leaned against the side of the lighted scoreboard, watching as her eyes narrowed on the game. She pressed right up against the edge. “This machine's been here for ten years. I remember my father telling me those rats were rabbits.” Eddie saw her move her neck like a swan bending to water. She missed and the silver ball slid past the flippers and down into the machine's inner organs.

Lila swung the flashlight to the beaten grass around the wooden stakes. “They must be down by the water, grazing in the swamp.” She pulled herself over. Eddie scaled the fence and followed. Light illuminated their feet along the dirt path. Above them the sky was purple-blue with a smattering of stars. He stumbled a little and tried to hide it by bending over to retie his shoe. Now that he was here, he wasn't sure he wanted to ride the ponies. But he couldn't think of any excuse.

They were clumped together. The light made their eyes blink lazily like cows. Eddie'd heard about them for years. His mother had told him that men once wanted them for polo ponies because they were petite, elegant, and strong. He'd caught a few glimpses of them from car windows, their loping manes moving down by the sound, and once the ponies had been grazing by the highway. Their quick retreat had sent up dust so that to him they hadn't seemed real.

“Looks like they're talking,” Lila said. Eddie watched her study the blue-gray shades of their fur. “I bet they're talking about the old days when they ran everywhere.” Eddie knew the story — they were pirate horses. The only survivors of a shipwreck. Lila pointed the flashlight on a gray mare who whinnied loudly. “See how their backs bow?” Lila said. “My father says that's from scurvy.”

She put the end of the flashlight into the sandy earth. Its circle of light immediately drew gnats and tiny white moths. The horses stirred. “We have to sneak up on them,” Lila said, squeezing her hands into fists.

“I wish we had some rope,” Eddie said.

“You can't tie ‘em up; they'd go crazy. Just hold on with your legs.”

She put her finger to her lips, grabbed his hand, and they crept to the group of horses. Lila whispered now and she ran toward the darkest of the bunch. Eddie's heart pounded in his head as he grabbed the mane of a smaller one and pulled himself over. He'd ridden horses before, but none as lively as these. The horse bucked up, threw its back legs out like a rodeo bronco, and whined as though it had been shot.

“Talk to it,” Lila said. She cooed at her own tussling animal. His horse turned its head and tried to bite his leg. “Dig your heels in,” Lila yelled. Eddie did this, and the horse eased the struggle and began to run at an awful jumping clip. It wanted him off. He was jerked and the stars in front of him blurred across the sky. “Do you have him?” she yelled back.

“I think so,” Eddie said.

Lila steered her horse away. “I know,” he heard her say, “I wouldn't want nothing riding me either.”

Eddie's pony followed Lila's toward the fence. He listened to the wet hoof sound in mud. She crouched, grabbed deeper into the mane, and gave her horse a sharp kick in the shank. He watched how her body lifted with the horse, heard it humph and then the sound of its hoofs on the grass. His pony was less angry now, cantering toward the fence. Eddie tried to breathe evenly and think how great it was going to be to ride on the beach with Lila.

“What are you waiting for?” she called to him from the other side.

He couldn't see her, just the bare stakes of the pen. “Over,” he said and kicked the horse with his heels. It reared back, pitching its front legs into the air.

“Hit it on the neck,” Lila said.

He did and the horse tried the fence. Eddie's head burst big red blossoms. He heard the hoof catch and the horse cry out. Then the crunch, the sound of a huge branch snapping: Eddie was falling, breathing the horse, face pressed to fur, head vibrating on the ground. He sprawled so near he could touch the belly and hear its quivering breath. The pony lay just over the railings, body twisted: back right leg stuck between the wooden rungs, front legs bent under, a visible gash at the knee, protruding bone.

“Get up,” Lila screamed.

He heard her feet thud on the ground and her horse gallop off toward the beach. Standing, he saw silver minnows on the edge of his vision.

“It's in shock,” Lila said.

“We have to get someone,” he said loudly, looking toward the dark ribbon of highway and then to Lila. He knew an injured horse would be shot.

“Calm down,” she said. The pony blinked a watery eye. “Once it gets light, the birds will eat its eyes out.” The animal's breath steadied. Eddie's legs felt shaky, the air around him throbbed.

“Get the flashlight. We'll drag it to the water.”

Eddie walked toward the hum of light. He wanted to run hard toward the beach and look back to see the horse sprout wings — thick, feathery, and muscular as a duck's — and fly toward the stars. The faded lights of the sky reminded him of the ovals and longer-shaped cuts that scattered his mother's face — there was something about those cuts, they seemed to hold a charged and tingling energy. And there was something also around the pony that reminded Eddie of his mother. Both threw the same invisible hurt and wobbly arrows. His mother's eye paired, in his head, with the pony's.