If Wishes Were Horses (7 page)

Slipping the whiskey bottle down onto the seat, Johnny started the engine and set his mind to forming a way to discuss the money he was owed. The best course seemed to be to ease up on it by getting a general conversation going. After all, he had always been good with talking to women.

He started by suggesting she roll up the window, since it was getting awfully chilly with evening coming on, and didn’t that sky to the north look like it could bring in rain? They really needed rain, the grassfires being so bad lately.

She rolled up the window without saying anything, obviously not getting the idea of conversation at all.

He tried again, remarking that Chickasha appeared a pleasant town and that this was his first visit to it. “I guess you could say Fort Worth is my hometown,” he said, “but I spend most of my time out in the country. All over Texas and in Oklahoma some, too. I train and sell horses.”

The gal continued to look out the passenger window, or down at her hands in her lap, turning her wedding ring set around and around. It was a fancy set, with a cluster of diamonds raised up. It looked a little big for her finger. It looked well worth Johnny’s eight hundred dollars.

“I met your husband down in Fort Worth,” he said, beginning to get a little irritated. “I sold a couple of horses for him at the stock show.”

“You missed the turn,” she said.

“What?”

“You missed the shortcut. It’s okay . . . you can catch the road up here a couple of miles.”

Johnny lost his train of thought then about his money and began to worry that he would end up driving all over the county in trying to get the gal home. He asked her what highway he was looking for and peered for signs. When he came to the highway and turned, he felt relieved and once more began to think of how to broach the subject of his money. By then he was getting pretty frustrated with the entire situation.

Then she suddenly said, “Could you turn in up here?” in an anxious tone of voice.

“What? Here?”

She was pointing at the cemetery, and Johnny quickly pulled in. Then he stopped the truck and looked at her.

She bit her bottom lip. “If you wouldn’t mind . . . I’d like to see my husband’s grave without all the other people around.”

Johnny took a deep breath, shifted down, and headed along the narrow lane. He had not joined the procession to the cemetery, but he instinctively headed for the fresh grave with the flowers piled on it. A lot of flowers, he thought as he pulled to a stop on the gravel and cinder lane. He looked at them and recalled when his mother had been buried. So many years ago that it no longer hurt, but it made him sad to remember because the only flowers had been those he’d brought and those of a good friend.

Before he could get around the hood to open the door for her, Mrs. Rivers was out of the truck. She headed up the slope to her husband’s grave. Johnny leaned on the front fender and rolled himself a cigarette. As he stuck it in his mouth, he watched the gal. Then feeling awkward, as if he needed to give her privacy, he half-turned and looked at the clouds growing in the northwest. The wind was on the rise, and evening was coming early as the clouds darkened and blocked out the setting sun. The spring storm he’d noticed growing earlier was gathering steam.

When he looked back at Roy Rivers’s grave, the gal had gone down on her knees. He could hear her crying. He figured it was a natural thing, but the crying still perturbed him. The next instant, Mrs. Rivers was up and yelling things and kicking and throwing the flowers every which a-way.

Shocked, Johnny watched for long seconds, torn between thinking it was none of his business and concern that she might hurt herself. Concern won out, and he hurried up the hill to the grave.

“Missus Rivers?”

She was sobbing and yelling something about her husband having been too good to have thrown his life away like he did, no matter what his mother had told him. Johnny winced, uncomfortable with hearing private matters.

Then she was looking right at Johnny, with tears streaming out of her beautiful blue eyes.

“He threw it all away—himself and me, and for what?” she demanded. “God, that woman is pitiful. All the time I kept thinkin’ I could save him.. I did everything I knew to do, but you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. And I just let him take me, too. I just couldn’t let go."

Johnny stared at her. The north wind was blowing her hair and tugging at Johnny’s starched shirt.

“Well now, ma’am., I guess I don’t have an answer for you—except that there is a storm comin’. I think we should get out of it.”

“Are you like that?” she asked him. “Are all y’all men like that—so stupid as to throw yourselves away on trashy women and gamblin’ and craziness?”

“Well now . . . I can’t answer for all men,” Johnny said uncertainly, caught in a predicament he didn’t understand one bit. “I guess men are people, and people can be confused.”

“Oh, good Lord, I’m carryin’ on a ridiculous conversation with a handsome heartbreak cowboy.”

Johnny watched her shake her head. He gathered his breath and said, “Ma’am, we need to get you home.”

At that the gal covered her face and went to sobbing for all she was worth. Johnny bent and took hold of her arm and pulled her to her feet.

“Come on. I may be a man, but I’m all you got right this minute.”

She kept her head averted from him as he put an arm around her and led her back to his truck and got her up into the seat. As he slammed the door closed, she leaned forward into her hands.

Johnny went around and slipped behind the wheel. He put his hand on the key to start the truck, paused, and looked over at the gal. She was mumbling something he couldn’t understand. He had the awful thought that such hard crying could shake the baby loose. He felt he had to get her to stop crying.

“Ma’am . . . Missus Rivers.” When he shifted his rear, he felt the whiskey bottle. He took it up, and threw his hat out of the way on the dash, and slipped closer to the gal. “Here . . . take a bit of this.” He uncapped the bottle of Jim Beam and put it in front of her face, hoping to give her a whiff, but she kept her hands firmly over her face, giving forth sobs that set Johnny’s nerves twanging.

At last he put a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Ease up, gal, before you shake yourself to pieces.”

Then, somehow, he had her in his arms and was patting her back and stroking her silky hair and murmuring soothing things he really had no idea of. “Easy now, easy . . . slow up . . . here now.”

She felt so small and fragile. He tried to hold her together until she could hold herself together, and people didn’t have to know each other to do that. In his lifetime he’d held a lot of horses and a few women and even a couple of men during his army days. His mother had taught him; she’d held a lot of people in her life. She had always maintained that being held was the most important need of the human race, which was why she could make money at it.

Roy Rivers’s wife gripped Johnny’s shirt and soaked it with her tears. Her shoulders were bony and shaking beneath his arms. Gradually her warmth and fragrance came to him, too. Her hair was soft as silk, drawing his hand. He stroked her hair, again and again, and felt vaguely like he should not be feeling things he was feeling but not denying he felt what he did.

Her sobs slacked up, and he felt her become aware of her position. She pushed away.

“Please,” she said in a ragged whisper, “I’d like to go home.”

Johnny thought that a fine idea and started the truck. Unfortunately he had to go around and back past Roy Rivers’s grave. The gal looked out the window, saw the grave, and started crying again.

Totally at a loss and ever more fearful her violent sobs might tear loose the baby right there in the cab of his pickup, which was already overcrowded, Johnny pressed the accelerator and headed along at a good clip for her house. He sure hoped he would not take a wrong turn and was extremely relieved when he saw the driveway of the Rivers farm up ahead.

When he pulled in front of the house, he saw the yard was now empty of cars. By instinct, he kept going to the back door, where he’d seen the gal appear earlier that day. As he came to a stop, a tall Negro woman came out of the house.

Hopping from the truck, Johnny cast her way, “I got Missus Rivers. She’s pretty upset.”

He went around to open the passenger door. The Negro woman came pushing around him and started pulling the gal out, saying, “Come here, honey. Law, I figured you’d gone to her. Didn’t you know it wasn’t gonna do you no good? I thought you knew that,” welcoming and scolding all in a melodious, soothing tone. The two women, the younger one leaning on the older, went across the brown grass and up the cracked steps and disappeared into the house, leaving Johnny standing there in the empty yard with the sharp evening hovering over him.

He stared at the closed door a full minute, at the red print curtains showing through the glass. Then he went around and got back behind the wheel of his truck. He leaned forward to turn the key and stopped, setting back.

He didn’t know where he was going to go.

He had eight dollars, and it was too late to try to pawn something. The eight dollars would buy him either gas or a meal or a room, but not all three. And he was about to run out of whiskey, he thought, as he took up the bottle.

While he considered his predicament, dark clouds rolled overhead and wind buffeted the truck. He listened to the tree branches knocking together overhead and watched the mane and tail of the red horse blow as the horse pranced in the fast fading light. Then he happened to look down and see the china plates still sitting on the seat.

The silver fork had slipped down in the crack, prongs upward, and he had to fish it out.

Gathering the dishes and fork, he got out of the truck and went up to the back door. His knee hurt considerably, echoing the coming damp and cold. He knocked and listened to the muffled music from a radio inside while he waited. He noticed that the house trim could use a coat of paint. Thinking about the money Roy Rivers owed him, he felt a little sick.

There came the sound of heavy footsteps, and the door opened. The tall, handsome Negro woman stood there.

“May I help you?” she asked through the screen door.

“Yes, ma’am. I’d like to return these.”

She opened the screen and snatched the dishes out of his hands. “Thank you.”

“Uh . . . ma’am,” he said quickly, as she was pulling back behind the door, “I’d like to know if someone could settle up a bill Roy Rivers owed me. I have it right here in his own handwritin’.” He quickly produced it from his jacket pocket and held it up at the screen. “I would not intrude on a day like today, ma’am, but I need the money.”

The woman glanced at the paper and said, “Well, I guess you have Roy Rivers’s signature, but he is dead.” She started to shut the door, then stopped. “There’s a room and a bed in the barn, if you’d like to use it.I thank you for bringin’ Miz Etta home . . . although it would have been better if you had not taken her off.”

She shut the door.

Johnny leaned a hand on the door frame for about sixty seconds in which he considered smacking the glass out of the door.

The urge passed, and with a defeated sigh, he turned and went back to his pickup and started the engine. Raindrops hit the windshield. He began to turn the pickup to leave, thinking to go find a roadhouse and give over his last dollar to the constant tugging of demon liquor, when his gaze fell on the wide entry to the barn. As if drawn by a force, he drove the truck toward it and just as he pulled into the barn’s gapping darkness, the rain came down outside in full force. He got out of the pickup, helping his knee along. It was aching considerably now.

He smelled the familiar scent of cold dampness seeping into the wood and manure and earth, sweet smells to him. He walked over and peered into the small sleeping room. He entered and pulled the string on the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. That the light came on surprised him. Glancing around, he saw the narrow bunk with a dirty, lumpy mattress, wooden crate beside it, old three-drawer chest against the wall, and a mass of bottles and tins atop it. Vet medicines—and among them a half-filled bottle of whiskey.

Well now
. . .

He tugged off the light, returned to his truck, and spread his bedroll in the back. He knew where the dirt in his truck came from and preferred it to the dirty mattress. The whiskey eased the pain of his bad knee and lack of money considerably.

Etta stood in her filmy white cotton gown, in the room lit only by the hall light, and gazed through the sheer window curtains. Through lingering tears she couldn’t seem to stop and the curtains and the raindrops on the glass, she saw the cowboy standing in the barn entrance, in the glow of the pole lamp. Pushing aside the sheers, she got closer to the window. The man remained in the doorway, leaning against the side of it, smoking a cigarette.

Latrice’s footsteps sounded from the hall and entered the room. She said, “Here, honey. I’ve brought you some hot Co-Cola and a bit of cream of wheat. It’ll help you sleep.”

Etta, still looking out the window, said, “That cowboy is still out there . . . he’s in the barn.”

“Yes, I saw that. He needs a place to stay.” Latrice turned on the bedside lamp, and its reflection made seeing outside more difficult.

“Roy owed him money,” Etta said, turning from the window as Latrice pressed the hot cola at her. “I was very rude to him. I didn’t even ask his name, and he drove me to town and everything.”

“We would have been better off if he hadn’t done that,” Latrice said, her lips forming a disapproving line. “You do not need to be runnin’ around, making a spectacle of yourself. Roy Rivers managed enough of that, embarrassin’ us. You don’t need to do more.”

“Embarrassin’ us? Is that what you’re worried about?”

Latrice gazed at her. “Roy Rivers is dead. We have to go on livin’. Goin’ to talk with that woman doesn’t do nothin’ but keep stirrin’ everything up.”

“God forbid we stir anythin’ up,” Etta said, the anger coming swiftly from where it had been ready to spring. “Let it lie . . . and that’s all it’s been, big lies to each other and to ourselves.”