Bonnie Nadzam: Lamb

She leaned back into the pillows and looked at him over the rim of the little cup, where he sat on the edge of his own bed.

“This is a good moment. Far from the city. In our neat little twin beds and the clean night air outside the window. It’s like camping. Or like we’re brother and sister, sharing a room.”

She snorted. “You’re the big brother, I guess.”

“No, I’m not. I’m the little brother. You’re the big sister. The tall one. The smart one. Right? And you’ll help me learn all the things about the world that I need to know.”

“Gary.”

“Yes, dear.”

“I think I maybe want to call my mom.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“In the morning?”

“Sure.”

“What do you want to tell her?”

“Just that everything is okay, and I’m okay, and don’t worry.”

“Do you think she’ll probably worry anyway?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think a phone call might make her worry more?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should think about that.”

He took the cup from her hands and set it on the nightstand and turned out the lights. He shifted his heavy body to his own bed, his head piled up in his arms, his voice a soft static.

“You know that old horse I was telling you about?” Her hair rustled against the pillows. “In this story, he’s red. Do you want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“When our girl, the one in this story, found him, he was on the one thousand and eleventh floor of a tall glass building, in a cold and crowded city. All the people in the building had small glass offices, and everything was covered in mirrors. The ceilings were mirrors, the walls too. Every man in a pale shirt and a dark tie and every woman in a straight blue pencil skirt and each of them casting a trillion reflections of themselves deep into the walls and floors and ceilings about them. Can you picture that?”

“Mmm.”

She watched him talking, leaning sideways on the bed, propped up on one elbow, one boot stacked upon the other.

“It made the red horse dizzy and our girl could tell. He was stuck up there, staring down the long fractured silver hallway. Our girl was in a yellow dress, just exactly the color of fresh butter, and she led the red horse toward the mirror-faced elevator and rode him into the car and down they went. Down ten floors and her heart rose up in her chest and the pelt of the warm horse lifted against the palm of her hand and down faster, faster they went. Are you listening?”

“I’m sleepy.”

“Good. Down ten more floors. A hundred. Down, down, down. Her heart rising up into her throat from the speed of it. Her head pounding like birds’ wings and her limbs were heavy, heavier and heavier. Suddenly the doors opened on the seventy-seventh floor. Trillions of reflections, arms filled with papers and green file folders, and they all stared at the girl and the horse, but then the elevator doors winked shut and the car hurtled down again, the girl’s butter-colored dress rising up to her knees and up to her hips and up over her head and then suddenly it was over. The doors opened, and they stepped out.”

“Thank God,” the girl murmured from her sleep.

He laughed. “Yes. That’s right. But outside on the street was even worse. Steel cars and concrete and noise and the girl leaned over the horse and she promised to get him home. You don’t belong here, she whispered to him. And neither do I. Are you awake?”

“Sort of.”

“She led him between the rows of black and blue cars and out of the city. They rested behind a gas station, slept on the flat, hard dirt glittering with bits of broken glass and shreds of gum wrappers and foil. By the time they reached Iowa, they were both sleepy and famished.”

“They were so tired.”

“Yes. They were.” He reached across the space between them and pinched her arm. She yelped. He was surprised by how much it quickened him to do it. “Stay awake,” he said. “We’re almost there. The sun was going down in Iowa. Everything looked so soft. Stems of tall weedy flowers bending this way and that, the grass was green and leaves on the bur oaks were green, all of it darkening, green to blue to black as the sun went down. Shadows of narrow tree trunks fell across the ground, and way, way off the highway was a tiny house with square windows yellow in the growing dark. The girl slipped down off the horse’s soft damp back. Her yellow dress was dirty, her arms and cheeks sunburnt. The horse followed her through the high wet grass toward the house. She turned back to see that he was following, and he nuzzled her beneath the chin.”

“Hey.” The girl suddenly sat up a little. “What kind of messed-up story is this?”

“What? Messed up?” Lamb made a face like he’d been wounded and he held his hands over his heart. “Where would you get such an idea?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do. And out on the Old El Rancho Road there will be no TV. None.”

“I like TV.”

“No you don’t. You just think you do.”

“That’s not true.”

“Did you ever live in a house without one?”

“No.”

“Then what makes you think it wouldn’t be better?”

She was silent.

“Listen, Tommie. It’s a beautiful story, okay? It isn’t messed up at all. If you’re expecting it to be, I’ll just stop now. Maybe you don’t want to hear it.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to know what happens next?”

“Just tell it.”

“Our girl went up to the windows and looked into the dark kitchen. The horse helped her in over the sill. When she came out she was carrying a bag of soft white bread, and she and the horse crossed the field again, lumbering, crossed the highway, and settled beneath a maple tree all black and blue in the twilight. The girl leaned her body against the horse. He was warm. She opened the bag and one soft white pillow at a time fed herself, and then the horse, both of them chewing, happy because they’d escaped, but heavy and slow because they were so, so tired. The horse could hardly keep his beautiful red face up, and the girl could scarcely keep lifting the bread to his mouth. A breeze pulled the ends of her hair and all the trees turned into night trees. And there they slept, so soundly that the whole night passed in a single perfect moment.”

Tommie started out of sleep. “I still have both pillows.”

“I know.” He smiled. “You looked so good sleeping on them. You looked just like a sleepy freckled pig. I was watching you. I was watching your round belly rising under the blankets, and watching you hog all the pillows. You were snoring!”

“I wasn’t even asleep.”

“You were.”

“I’m sorry. Here.” She pushed one of the pillows at him, and the other. “Have both.”

“Uh-oh. She wanted to turn him into a pig too. But he wasn’t having any of that. Besides”—he pointed at the green curtains drawn across the little frame window—“it’ll be daylight soon. We got to get out and catch the morning. I’ll step outside while you get dressed.” He was up on his feet.

“Did we sleep?”

“What a question.”

“You slept with your boots on.”

“I guess I did.”

“What time is it?”

“Don’t you worry about the time. Don’t you worry about a thing, little miss piggy. I’ll watch the calendar for us both, okay? The Mondays and the Tuedays and the Wednesdays.” He looked at her bare arms and shoulders above the polyester edging on the wool blanket, then opened the door and stepped out into the dark.

Let’s say there were none of those truss towers of galvanized steel lining the highway this next day. No telephone poles. No wires. Say that Lamb’s truck and the highway were the only relics of the actual world. The road was overcome with native grasses and aromatic flowers, with wild onion and pussytoes. Soft gaping mouths of beardtongue, and mountain lover, and buckbush and drowsy purple heads of virgin’s bower. Say it was like this that they crossed the Midwestern line beyond which the sky spreads itself open—suddenly boundless, suddenly an awful blue.