Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

Devereux’s horse was a hands-down winner. It came clambering spiritedly up the trampled mud of the ford, the only stretch of riverbank for several hundreds of yards where steep cutbanks did not overhang the water, Devereux clinging to its back like a leech, his shoulder-length black hair and drooping moustache strewing water, sopping buckskins moulded to his lean body. Cantering his wild-eyed horse around the grinning men he shouted, “Frenchie Devereux! He run the buffalo, he! He run the river, he! Goddamn son of a bitch, eh?”

“Goddamn catfish, he!” Hardwick yelled back at him, pointing to Devereux’s moustache. “Goddamn Missouri salmon, he! If the whores in Benton got a look at you now, Frenchie, they wouldn’t have you in their beds. They’d have you buttered in the frying pan!” All the men hooted and roared with laughter as Hardwick crooked his thumb across the river to Scotty, jaybird-naked in the hot afternoon sunshine. “A whore don’t care for no limp catfish whiskers,” he said. “She’s after the bait old Scotty’s dangling.”

Just then the Scotchman leapt up on his thoroughbred and rode it bareback into the river, for all the world a Schoolbook myth, rider on the frieze of the Parthenon, gleaming white and confident, head of his horse with cocked ears and distended nostrils parting the brown water like a brave figurehead on a brave ship, Hank following gingerly in his wake. Halfway across the river the Scotchman even slipped off the horse, playfully grasped its tail, and was taken in tow for several yards before letting go and swimming the last ten yards to shore, white arms rising and falling in radiant spray as he pulled himself confidently through the brown water.

Meanwhile, Hank’s horse had balked in the shallows, swinging its head from side to side in dismay, snuffling the water as the hired man whipped its flanks and drummed its barrel with his heels. Slowly, step by step, the old white horse reluctantly allowed itself to be goaded into the stream, whinnying to the horses on the far bank as the water lapped its belly and chest. Then, suddenly, the riverbed dropped off, throwing the white horse headlong into the current with a mighty splash. For an instant, only the heads of horse and man could be seen, bobbing in the grip of the current like flood debris; then the arched neck of the horse, the chest of the man broke upward, awash in filthy water and fear.

Scotty, reaching the opposite bank, turned, the blue-white marble gleam of his body sheathed in a coat of silt. The Englishman’s boy stood in his stirrups for a better look. Devereux swore an oath in French.

Each time Hank swung the horse in the direction of the knot of men waiting on the bank, the plug would flounder vainly for a few moments, then surrender to the current and be swept further downstream. Already rider and horse had been carried past the ford to where cutbanks stooped over the river, sheer faces of eroded clay and exposed tree roots clawing the air, precipices too steep for a horse to scramble up them and out of the water.

The Englishman’s boy knew it for bad, deep trouble. Hank knew it too. He kept trying to jerk his horse around and abreast the stream, back to the landing spot. But its head kept swinging downriver like a compass needle north, back to the path of least resistance.

Lifting a white and stricken face to the riverbank Hank called imploringly, “God Almighty, boys! Help me or I’m a goner!”

Devereux, Hale, and the Englishman’s boy booted their horses to the river’s edge but they shied and reared; having swum it once, they would not take it again. The other ponies, spooked by the rearing horses, trampled about in confusion and balked at entering the stream. One last time, Hank tried to turn the white horse, failed, and despairingly flung himself out of the saddle, chopping the water with short frantic strokes. The Englishman’s boy guessed all Hank’s swimming had been done in a rain barrel. He was using himself up fast.

Hale shook out a rope and spun a loop into the river. It didn’t come near reaching the failing swimmer. Ed Grace and Charlie Harper struggled through the confusion of horses and shoved off in one of the rafts, but in their hurry they upset it and spilled into the shallows, had to watch the clumsy craft spin out of reach.

They all froze in silence. Watched Hank giving out, his arms feebly clawing the river, his tipped face smeared by a glaze of water and sun. Watched the white horse, now under the overhang of the cutbank, squealing and desperately pawing the face of crumbling clay, sliding back down the slippery slope and crashing back into the river. The whole sluggish dream of doom, blind face gasping for breath, sharp burst of birdsong in the willows, heat trembling trapped between cutbanks, the overpowering, sickly-sweet odour of blooming wolf willow, cousin to the musky, cunning, creeping smell of death. The whole slow playing-out of man’s bitter nightmare portion.

Then they heard a splash to their right. Saw Scotty in the water, swimming hard. Saw Hank go completely under, all but for one hand scrabbling and tearing at the air for a hold, then shoot back to the surface, buoyed by the last desperate kick of panic, pale exhausted face disbelieving and bewildered. Saw Scotty grab him from behind as he was sinking for the second time, forearm under the jaw, rolling the dead weight on to its back, heading for the bank, shouting, “Kick, man, kick!” Coming on in jerks, slowly, struggling in the unforgiving grip of whatever clutched their ankles, whatever dragged them down, whatever poured water into their gaping mouths, stopped their nostrils, wrapped their limbs in lead and futility. They were ten yards from touching bottom and it was a coin toss. Four men waded out as far as they could and stood tensely waiting. In the terrible expectant stillness they could hear the hollow panting, the groans racking the swimmers, sounds like a woman labouring to give birth. They beckoned, whispered encouragement under their breath as the small waves slapped against them. “Go it, Scotty,” they whispered. “That’s the lad.” “Just a bit more.” “Come on, sport.”

And then the two were almost within reach, half-under, sunk like water-logged timbers, rolling in the wash. Devereux leaned out, Ed Grace clutching his belt, and snatched a sleeve.

Half-carried, swooning with exhaustion, the swimmers sloshed through knee-deep water. Scotty set foot to solid ground, took three shaky steps and sank to his haunches, sat with head hanging between knees, arms hugging shins. Hank staggered on a little further, arms slung over Devereux’s and Grace’s shoulders, then dropped to his hands and knees, retched, crawled away from his puke, retched again, and fell on his face, hugging the earth, knotting his fingers in the short grass.

Vogle came riding to the ford along the top of the cutbank, towing the white horse back upstream with a lariat dallied to his saddlehorn. While it had battered itself against the steep bank like a fly against a windowpane, he had managed to toss a noose around its neck. He pulled ashore the stumbling, spent, mud-smeared horse. Hardwick ran his eyes over it quickly, shouldered himself through the gang clustered around Hank, halted over the sprawled figure. He nudged him with his boot, but the farm hand squirmed against the soil, mewling like a baby somebody was trying to pluck from its mother’s breast. Hooking a toe under him, Hardwick turned him turtle and Hank lay blinking up into the sun, teeth chattering between blue lips.

“Three blind mice, three blind mice,” Hardwick began to croon, bending over Hank like a mother bends over a cradle. “See how they run, see how they run, / They all run after the farmer’s wife, / Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.” The men threw uneasy, surprised glances to one another as Hardwick sang in a mocking falsetto to the man spread-eagled on the ground. His voice kept rising higher and higher. “Did you ever see such a sight in your life / As three blind mice?” Then, as abruptly as he had begun, he broke off, peered hard into the face of the man whimpering with fear and rubbing the back of his hand back and forth across his blue lips.