Paulette Jiles - Stormy Weather

“A horse?” Winifred’s eyes widened and she smiled slightly. “A horse?”

“He’s a racehorse,” said Jeanine.

“I see.” Winifred for the first time seemed somewhat interested. “Why do you have a racehorse?”

Elizabeth said, “My late husband liked to match race. And when he died we were left with the horse.”

“What happened to your husband?” Winifred said. “I am used to being nosy. I have no reluctance about being intrusive. My concern is with the patient and the entire emotional and social environment that affects the patient. Was it a communicable disease?”

“No, sour gas,” said Elizabeth.

“And he gambled. On horses.”

“Yes.”

Winifred pressed her thin lips together. She was taking mental notes. “Why did Bea fall down the well?”

“Well, she was leaning over the well curb and it gave way.”

“Is that your water source?”

“No, we’re using the windmill water.”

Winifred stood up. “You two.” She pointed to Jeanine and Mayme. “Come and help me bring in the supplies.” She pulled on her gloves. “I must tell you that you are three women and a seriously injured child with little income on an isolated farm. I want you to keep in mind that there is a very good home established for dependent and neglected children who are not orphans but whose parents are unable to care for them. Buckner’s Home for Children in Dallas is known worldwide. If and when you find yourselves out of money and out of food supplies, and in need of yet another operation for Bea, you will keep that in mind. Were they to take her in, the operations would be paid for.”

They went out to Winifred’s blue Chevrolet and packed in the relief supplies, cans and sacks and a gallon tin of Lysol. Jeanine felt obligated to place it in a stack beneath the window away from the Hamilton safe. She hated herself for being submissive, for not grasping Winifred by her jacket lapels and flinging her out of the house.

The next morning very early Mayme opened the cookstove door to check on the corn bread and then took it out and left it on the sink to cool. It sent up steam against the window and the winter stars. Jeanine carried a lamp downstairs, the light bobbing down the steps. Her clothes hung on the back of a chair in front of the stove to warm. She pulled on a shirt and her Levi’s and then her tweed jacket. She scraped a bit of her lipstick from the tube with a hairpin. It was almost gone. She sat the dark green fedora on her head as if it were armor, a miner’s helmet. In the kitchen she took a wedge of hot corn bread and spread butter on it, wrapped it in a piece of newspaper, and gave her sister a hug for good-bye. Then she went out to back the truck up to the trailer, and then to catch Smoky.

He seemed to know he was leaving. He read her intentions in her hands and her nervous walk, the strain in her voice. She could not catch him for an hour, he bolted from the graveyard fence through the peach orchard, he roared through the little grove of live oaks and darted into one end of the barn and out the other. Finally he stood beside the gate, trembling and breathing hard, watching her come for him with the halter.

Then it took her another thirty minutes to get him loaded. He balked and fought the lead rope. He didn’t want the hubcap full of oats that sat inside the trailer. It was only after she sat down on the trailer fender in despair to think what to do that he became quiet. Jeanine rubbed her rough hands together and asked why he had to make it so hard for her. She didn’t know who she was asking. After a moment he cocked his ears and stretched out his nose toward her.

She got to her feet slowly and threw the lead rope over his neck and said, Load . And he gave up and walked into the trailer. It took her another fifteen minutes to start the truck. She didn’t get away until noon.

She left Highway 80 at Rising Star and drove into Comanche County. It was the time of year when deer came into rut, and a large stag bearing his antlers like a troublesome crown stood staring at her truck before he sprang over the roadside fence. She drove with the cracked window rolled down. People were burning cedar and the smoke stung her eyes.

She stopped at a gas station and asked for directions and then went on toward the sale barn. It was nearing sundown. The sale barn was empty; outside a crowd of men in the unlit grounds, their faces shadowed by hats, their horses tied to trailer slats.

Jeanine got out of the truck. She brushed out her short hair and stood before the side mirror to tie on her silk scarf, with the point down in front, clipped on the round gold-colored earrings. In the mirror she saw a man standing behind her, his hat down and his coat collar standing up. She turned around.

“Mr. Everett?” she said. She walked toward him.

He lifted his hat. “You’re talking to him.” His chore coat was made of a heavy, wooden canvas. “Do you have that horse?”

“Yes, sir. He’s right here. In the trailer.”

“Let’s get him into a pen.”

The bulked shadow of the auction barn flooded outward over the gravel, reaching out to the stock pens. He walked up to the horse in the trailer. He regarded Smoky’s blunt, prehistoric head and the wired stand of mane, his thick neck.

“This is Smoky Joe Hancock?”

“Yes, sir.”

Smoky lifted his blunt nose to take in the news that the wind brought to him. Jeanine slipped the halter on him.

She said, “How are your wife and little boy?”

“She’s dead.” Ross Everett pushed his hat back by the brim. “He’s alive. He’s over there with the men.”

“Oh, Mr. Everett.” Her mouth opened and she put her hand to her lips. Her heart seemed to stop for a moment and she tried to think of something to say, but he seemed to be made of a kind of private granite. Jeanine finally said, “She’s dead?”

“She died of pneumonia during that dust storm in ’35. They called it dust pneumonia.” Everett turned to watch a horse being unloaded from a long stock trailer. “And she had asthma.”

Jeanine was silent for a space of time. He searched his coat pocket for his truck keys. “Well, that’s terrible, Mr. Everett. I’m so sorry.”

He nodded. “Let’s see about your horse.” She shrugged up her jacket around her shoulders. The wind slapped the silk scarf against her collar with small rippling sounds. “Get him unloaded and let him buck it out.”

Ross Everett and two other men stood watching her swing up onto the trailer fender. She untied the horse where he stood, riding backward. One of the men came forward to offer to help but Ross Everett motioned to him to leave her alone. He watched as she shoved the gate open, and Jeanine and the horse both jumped down from the trailer at the same time, side by side. She took firm hold of his halter rope as the dark horse charged around against it.

Everett said, “All right,” and then walked straight on past her toward the livestock pens. She hurried to catch up.

Smoky Joe galloped around the small pen in short rushes. He stopped for a moment and stood stiff-legged and called to the mares in a violent shivering whinny. He bucked himself into the air with all four hooves off the ground and landed and hurled himself into the air again, shaking off all the hard miles.

Jeanine shook out the leather halter to straighten it. “I guess you still want him?”

Everett stood with his hands in his pockets and watched the horse.

“We got a match race going here, Miss Stoddard. Let’s see how he does.” His voice was hoarse from smoking.

“You said three hundred.” She reached out and grasped the canvas sleeve of his chore coat.

He glanced down at her hand. “I know I did. I also said I wasn’t tied to it.”