Here on Earth (14 page)

“Take him down the road, then into the barn. It’s too cold to keep him out all night anymore.”

Now that her ability has been put in question by the boy, Gwen ignores the way the older, bossy guy is ordering her around. She’s dealt with bullies before, and she knows you can’t win an argument with his type. She leads the horse down the road, and Tarot follows, mild as milk, all the way back to Guardian Farm. The air is silvery and sharp; Gwen is shivering, but she wouldn’t think of complaining, not about the cold and not about how far they have to walk to reach the Farm.

All the dogs begin to bark when they reach the driveway.

“If you want to ride this horse, that’s fine,” Hollis says. “But make sure you use the right equipment, and put him back in his stall when you’re done.”

Hank is shocked by this magnanimity, it’s not at all like Hollis but he isn’t about to ask any questions. Gwen is trying her best to keep her euphoria in check. It will be just as if the horse really belonged to her.

“Show her where to put him,” Hollis tells Hank.

Gwen follows Hank to the barn, and waits while he opens the door to the first stall.

“He’s hard to get in there,” Hank warns. “He broke one of the dogs’ backs last year, so watch out.”

Gwen pats the horse, and Tarot goes into his stall, as calm as any lamb.

“How did you do that?” Hank asks, following her out of the barn.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Gwen uses her snippiest tone.

“That’s why I asked,” Hank says, confused. “I would like to know.”

Gwen laughs. “Are you for real?”

She’s ready to laugh again, but then she sees the way he’s looking at her. He’s extremely real, she sees that now, and he’s not like anyone she’s ever met before. Most people are so guarded, but what he feels is right there in his face. He’s not hiding his interest in her, and what Gwen doesn’t know is that he couldn’t hide it even if he tried.

“Let’s go,” Hollis says. He’s in the truck with the engine running, that same old pickup of Mr. Cooper’s Hollis refuses to get rid of, though he could surely afford far better. “I’ll give you a ride home.” Hank and Gwen both approach the truck, which gives Hollis a chuckle. This boy’s got it bad. “You don’t need a ride home,” Hollis tells Hank, who’s hanging around this girl like a lovesick pup, and is left to mope in the driveway when they make the turn onto the road.

The truck smells like gasoline and it rattles when it goes over inclines and through ditches. All the way to Fox Hill, Hollis asks Gwen questions. She figures it’s like an interview. After all, she’ll be responsible for his horse. No, she doesn’t know how long they’re staying, and her father isn’t with them. he’s a professor with too many deadlines to be here, and all her mother’s been doing is looking through mementos from the past.

The way Hollis sees it, this girl is going to assist in keeping March in town until they’re together again. She’s going to be his little helper, and she won’t even know it. She wants that old horse? Fine. Let her have it, if that’s what it takes to get March to stay.

When they get to the top of the hill, and the house is in sight, Hollis pulls over. “I’d appreciate it if you gave your mother a message from me,” he says, in that strange, inhuman voice he’s got.

“Sure,” Gwen says. This guy gives her the creeps, but she supposes that the least she can do in return for riding his horse is to deliver his stupid message.

“Tell her I’ve been waiting.” Hollis nods at his own words. Sometimes he feels as though he’s been waiting forever, as if it were his occupation or his trade.

“You being?”

“She’ll know. Just tell her.”

Gwen nods and opens the rusty truck door. She doesn’t like this guy one bit, plus she’s freezing; once she’s out of the car she races up to the house.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been running all this time,” March says when Gwen comes through the door. She’s been worried sick and has already called Lori’s and Chris’s moms, and has had to hash over old times from their school days even though all she wanted to know was whether or not they’d seen Gwen.

“Actually, I’ve been riding.”

“Don’t get funny with me.”

“Down the street. At that farm place. There’s a horse I’ve been riding.”

March has been sitting on the rag rug in front of the fire, sorting through old picture postcards her father mailed home from business trips. Now, she stands to face her daughter.

“You’ve been going there? Without permission?”

“I got permission.” Gwen doesn’t know why her mother has to be so upset about this. “The guy over there said I can ride whenever I want.”

“Oh, really.” March has the funniest feeling along the backs of her knees, of all places. It’s as though she has pins and needles, only worse. She felt certain he would never come to her, he has too much pride for that. She told herself all she had to do to be safe was avoid him, but maybe that isn’t the case.

“He told me to say he’s been waiting.”

Gwen watches her mother carefully. After all, March could forbid her to go see Tarot—she knows the horse’s name now, and it suits him—and then she’d have to have a major temper tantrum, which she’s really in no mood for. But for once, March doesn’t seem concerned about possible dangers.

“Did he say anything else?” March asks.

“Yes, and all of it was boring.”

For as many questions as March asks, Gwen does nothing more than shrug; finally she excuses herself and goes up to bed. Sister is at the door, scratching to be let out, refusing to be ignored, so March goes to the closet for the leash and clips it on. “Don’t you dare bite me,” she warns the dog, when it curls its lip.

By now, the moon is in the center of the sky. She made her choice years ago, didn’t she? She left and didn’t come back, not even when he called her, and yet here she is, on this dark night; here, and noplace else. There are still bullet holes in some of the apple trees in the orchard from the time open hunting was declared, the year that Hollis left. Six hundred and fifty-two foxes were killed in a single season. Boys hung fox tails from the handlebars of their bicycles and Hal Perry, who owns the Lyon Cafe, offered a free draft and a photograph taken and hung on the wall to anyone who brought in two pelts in the same day. Every once in a while, a fox is sighted and people get all fired up; the story always gets printed up in
The Bugle,
and for a night or two, the rabbits may tremble, but the very next evening they’re back, fearless as ever.

Tonight, for instance, there’s a rabbit calmly chewing chives, who doesn’t budge when March comes out of the house. Sister starts barking and tugs at the leash. When the dog realizes it can’t get to the rabbit, it sits down and whines. The dog sounds pitiful, and so March. who’s been cooped up all day and now feels light-headed just thinking about Hollis, docs something she really shouldn’t. She reaches down and unclasps Sister’s leash. Sister looks up at March, then takes off after the rabbit, who darts into a thicket of wild raspberries.

Looking up, March feels as though she’s never seen the moon before, or at least, not for a very long time. She walks along the road a bit, but it’s only when she reaches the crest of the hill that she sees a truck pulled over onto the side of the road. March holds the dog’s leash in one hand. She can still hear Sister running after the rabbit. She can hear branches snapping in the woods.

Hollis would never sit in a beat-up old truck with the headlights turned out. He would never come to her like this. He’d wait for her; he always did. It must be a stranger parked there, and knowing she’s being watched makes March turn and hurry back into the yard. Sister is already up on the porch, yipping to be let in. It won’t be until tomorrow that March will find the rabbit on the far side of the garden, its neck bitten through by the terrier’s sharp teeth. That’s when she’ll have the nerve to walk up and inspect the roadside, but of course in the morning the truck will be gone, and there won’t be a single sign to show that he’s ever been here, except for the tire tracks which lead directly to Guardian Farm.

O
n Founder’s Day the wind rises up from the Marshes and shakes the leaves from the trees. The night is so black it seems to Gwen that if she reaches into the air she’ll wind up with a fistful of coal dust. She let Lori and Chris talk her into going to the dance at the high school, and now her mom and Susie Justice have driven her over to Lori’s house, even though Gwen would much rather be down at the barn; blustery weather like this makes Tarot nervous, and now she’ll be worrying about him all night long.

Actually, she has a good excuse to stay home; her teachers have sent a huge manila folder full of school work she has to make up, since she’s been absent for two weeks. But Gwen’s mom seemed so excited that Gwen was doing something as normal as going to a school dance, what could she do? Gwen has to act the good girl and do as she’s told if she wants to achieve her goal: stay in town and buy Tarot. This objective has caused her to go easy on the eye makeup and spiked-up hair; it’s the reason why she’s heading into the windy night with two girls she’s not even sure she likes very much, en route to a high school she doesn’t even attend.

“My father’s in there,” Chris says casually as they pass the Lyon Cafe, which is overflowing with people in various stages of inebriation. “Drunk as a skunk.”

Chris is seriously pretty, with a rope of blond hair and creamy, pale skin, but now she goes right up to the window and makes a supremely goofy face. Lori and Gwen both peer in through the glass as well, and that’s when Gwen sees that Hollis is inside. Only Hollis isn’t at the bar, where there’s a party atmosphere and bowls of plum pudding, supposedly the Founder’s favorite treat. He’s over at the last table, drinking a Coke, speaking to no one. He glances up, and maybe he sees the girls peering in the window, but if he does he looks right through them. Seeing him from this distance, Gwen realizes that he really is handsome, surprisingly so, because there’s definitely something peculiar about him; Gwen is always relieved to find he’s not around when she goes to get Tarot. He seems cold-blooded, somehow; someone you’d want to avoid.

“Let’s get out of here,” Gwen says.

“Definitely,” Lori agrees.

They stagger through the night, tilting into the wind, their coats blowing out behind them; they can’t help but laugh at the effort it takes to walk two blocks.

“Oh, God, look at us,” Lori cries after they’ve reached the high school and have gone to the girls’ room to comb their hair. It takes a while before they’re ready to present themselves to the world at large, and Gwen decides to put on mascara and eyeliner, although in her opinion, nothing will make her look good compared to beautiful Chris and trendy Lori, who is wearing a short red velvet dress and silver beads threaded through her dark braids.

The gym has been hung with crepe paper, like something out of the fifties, and it’s so noisy you have to yell to be heard.

“I can’t believe it,” Chris says. “Hank’s actually here.”

Gwen looks toward the refreshment table and there he is, with a group of the boys who are clearly the most popular, since they all look so pleased with themselves. All except for Hank, who appears to be rather anxious, and who is wearing a new white shirt he got at the discount shop in the basement of the Red Apple supermarket and boots he spent over an hour polishing.

“He never comes to these things,” Chris confides. “He’s always working or something.”

At first, Gwen and Hank avoided each other whenever they ran into each other at the barn, but they don’t do that anymore; now, they actually talk. Usually, it’s impossible for Gwen to let down her guard, but it was too hard not to be nice to Hank. He said they were related somehow, which made it okay for her not to be nasty. Though she’d never admit this, Gwen feels good just being around him, and this is not the way she ordinarily feels when confronted with human life-forms. But all that may change. Hank may prove himself to be nothing more than another jerk, after all. Here he comes, and Gwen is fairly certain that Chris is the one he’s after.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here.” He’s walked right up to Gwen, and either he’s nervous or he’s choking, because he keeps putting his hand into his collar, as though he needed more air.

Gwen glares at him fiercely. What is his comment supposed to mean? That she doesn’t belong here?

“I thought you hated people.” Hank goes for a joke, but it falls flat. Gwen blinks her heavily mascaraed eyes and looks blank. “Well, anyway,” Hank says—what the hell, he has nothing to lose—“you look great.”

Chris and Lori elbow each other, and then they elbow Gwen too, who suddenly seems to be dead on her feet. She looks like hell, with her horrible haircut, a pair of black jeans, and an old white sweater she borrowed from her mother. What is wrong with Hank? Is he stupid or blind or what? No one says things like that, especially not if they mean it, and from the way Hank is staring at her, he appears to be sincere.

“Thanks.” Gwen says. “So do you.”

She must be out of her mind. She has never been this civil in her entire life. She’d never say a thing like that to a guy, and certainly not in front of her friends. But here she is, smiling, agreeing when he asks her to dance. As soon as he circles his arms around her, she feels like she’s having a heart attack. She doesn’t even know if this is possible for someone her age, but by the end of the dance she’s certain that she’d better take a break.

“I have to go outside,” she tells Hank, and who can guess what he thinks, although he follows her through the door and stands there watching while she takes a few deep breaths of fresh air.

They’ve both left their coats inside the gym, but they don’t notice the low temperature or the wind from the Marshes. The weird thing is, Gwen had sex with her last two boyfriends on their first dates, if fucking someone in his father’s car can be considered a date. She’s always been wild, she’s never given a damn, and she’s the one who’s currently a wreck. Her hands are sweating, and her heart continues to go crazy; she’s in the middle of thinking she might as well give up, just leave the dance and walk home by herself, when he kisses her. He kisses her for a really long time, and even though her heart is still pounding, she no longer feels she is suffering from some sort of attack. She’s seen the way he looks at her when she comes to take Tarot out to the field; all along she’s been wondering if he was attracted to her or if he was merely an idiot. She’s genuinely shocked by the depth of her pleasure now that she knows the answer.