Nicholas Evans - The Horse Whisperer

'Who cares if I have a limp?' Grace said.

'I do,' Annie said, so that was it.

In fact, Grace enjoyed the sessions here more than in New York. First they did the workout. Terri had her doing everything. On top of all the exercises, she strapped velcro weights on her stump, got her sweating on the arm bicycle, even had her disco dancing in front of the mirrors that lined the walls. That first day she'd seen Grace's expression when the tape came on.

'You don't like Tina Turner?'

Grace said Tina Turner was fine. Just kind of…

'Old? Get outta here! She's my age!'

Grace blushed and they laughed and from then on things were fine. Terri told her to bring in some of her own tapes and these had now become the source of much joking between them. Whenever Grace brought in a new one Terri would examine it, shake her head and sigh, 'More gloom from the tomb.'

After the workout, Grace would relax for a while and then get to work on her own in the pool. Then, for the last hour, it was back in front of the mirrors for some walk practice or 'gate training' as Terri called it. Grace had never felt fitter in her whole life.

Today Terri had pressed the pause button on her life story and was telling her about an Indian boy she visited each week up on the Blackfeet Reservation. He was twenty years old and proud and beautiful, she said, like something out of a Charlie Russell picture. That was, until last summer when he'd gone swimming in a pool with some friends and dived headfirst into a concealed shelf of rock. It had clean snapped his neck and now he was paralyzed from there on down.

'First time I visited with him, boy was he angry,' she said. She was working Grace's stump like a pump handle. 'He told me he didn't want anything to do with me and if I didn't go then he'd go, he wasn't sticking around to be humiliated. He didn't actually say "by a woman," but that's what he meant. I thought, what does he mean "go"? He wasn't going anywhere, all he could do was lie there. But you know what? He did go. I got to work on him and after a while I looked at his face and he was - gone.'

She saw Grace didn't understand.

'His mind, his spirit, whatever you care to call it. Just upped and gone. Like that. And he wasn't faking it, you could tell. He was away somewhere. And when I was through, he just kind of came back. Now he does it every time I visit him. Over you go now honey, let's do a few Jane Fondas.'

Grace turned on her left side and started doing scissor lifts. 'Does he say where he goes?' she asked. Terri laughed.

'You know, I asked him that and he said he wouldn't tell me 'cause I'd only come busybodying after him. That's what he calls me, Ol' Busybody. Makes out he doesn't like me, but I know he does. It's just his way of keeping his pride. I guess we all do that some way or other. That's good, honey. A little higher now? Good!'

Terri took her to the pool room and left her there. It was a peaceful place and today Grace had it to herself. The air was laced with the clean smell of chlorine. She changed into her swimsuit and settled herself to rest awhile in the small whirlpool. The sun was angling down from the skylight onto the surface of the swimming pool. Some bounced back to dance in shimmering reflection on the ceiling, while the rest slanted through to the bottom of the pool where it formed undulating patterns, like a colony of pale blue snakes that lived and died and were constantly reborn.

The swirling water felt good on her stump and she lay back and thought about the Indian boy.

How good to be able to do that, to leave your body whenever you wanted and go off somewhere. It made her wonder about when she was in the coma. Perhaps that's what had happened then. But where had she gone and what had she seen? She couldn't remember a thing about it, not even a dream, only the coming out of it, swimming through the tunnel of glue toward her mother's voice.

She had always been able to remember her dreams. It was easy, all you had to do was tell someone about them the moment you woke, even if it was only yourself. When she was younger, in the mornings, she used to climb into her parents' bed and snuggle under her father's arm and tell him. He'd ask her all ; sorts of detailed questions and sometimes she'd have to invent things to fill in the gaps. It was always only her father because by that hour Annie was already up and out running or in the shower yelling for Grace to get dressed and go do her piano practice. Robert used to tell her she should write all her dreams down because she'd have fun reading about them when she was grown up, but Grace could never be bothered.

She had expected to have terrible, bloody dreams about the accident. But she hadn't dreamed about it once. And the only one she'd had about Pilgrim was two nights ago. He was standing on the far side of a great brown river and it was odd because he was younger, little more than a foal, but it was definitely Pilgrim. She'd called him and he'd tested the water with his foot then walked right in and started to swim toward her. But he wasn't strong enough for the current and it started to sweep him away and she'd watched his head getting smaller and smaller and she felt so powerless and filled with anguish because all she could do was keep on calling his name. Then she was aware that someone was standing beside her and she turned and saw Tom Booker and he said she shouldn't worry, Pilgrim would be okay, because downstream the river wasn't so deep and he would be sure to find a place to cross.

Grace hadn't told Annie about Tom Booker asking if she'd talk about the accident. She feared Annie might make a fuss or resent it or try and make the decision for her. It was none of Annie's business. It was something private between her and Tom, about her and her horse and it was for her to decide. And she realized now that she had already decided. Although the prospect daunted her, she would talk to him. Maybe she would tell Annie later.

The door opened and Terri came back in and asked her how she was doing. She said Grace's mom had just called. Diane Booker would be there at midday to pick her up.

They rode up along the creek and crossed at the ford where they'd met the other morning. As they moved up into the lower meadow the cattle stepped lazily aside to let them pass. The cloud had broken away and scattered from the snow-covered tops of the mountains and the air smelled new, of roots uncoiling. There were pink crocus and shooting star already showing in the grass and a first hint of leaf hung like a green haze on the cotton woods.

He let her go before him for a while and watched the breeze in her hair. She'd never ridden western before and said the saddle felt like a boat. Back at the house she'd got him to shorten Rimrock's stirrups so they were now more the length you'd ride a cutting horse or if you were roping, but she said she felt more in control that way. He could see she was a rider from the way she held herself and from the easy way her body moved with the rhythm of the horse.

When it was clear she had the feel of it, he eased alongside and they rode together, neither one of them speaking except when she asked him the name of some tree or plant or bird. She'd fix him with those green eyes of hers while he told her and then nod, all serious, storing the information away. They rode past stands of aspen which he told her they called quakin' asp on account of the way the wind fluttered in their leaves and he showed her the black scars in their pale trunks where in the winter foraging elk had stripped away the bark.

They rode up a long, sloping ridge, strewn with pine and potentilla, and came to the rim of a high bluff from where you could look down the twin valleys that gave the ranch its name and there they stopped and sat the horses awhile.

'That's quite a view,' Annie said. He nodded.