Make Something Up (6 page)

It's like forever later when the game show host gets up too close, standing at your elbow, and he hisses, “You can't do that.” The host hisses, “You have to play this game to win…”

Up close, his host face looks cracked into a million-billion jagged fragments only glued back together with pink makeup. Like Humpty Dumpty or a jigsaw puzzle. His wrinkles, like the battle scars of playing his same TV game since forever started. All his gray hairs, always combed in the same direction.

The big voice asks—that big, deep voice booming out of nowhere, the voice of some gigantic giant man you can't see—he demands, can you please repeat your bid?

And maybe you don't know what you want out of your life, but you know it's
not
a grandfather clock.

A million, trillion…you say. A number too big to fit on the front of your contestant desk. More zeroes than all the bright lights in the game show world. And probably it's the Hello Kitty, but tears slop out both your eyes, and you're crying because for the first time since you were a little kid you don't know what comes next, tears wrecking the front of your red T-shirt, turning the red parts black so the Greek omega deals don't make any sense.

The voice of one Zeta Delt, alone in all that big quiet audience, somebody yells, “You suck!”

On the little screen of your phone, a text message says, “Asshole!”

The text? It's from your mom.

The sweatshirt grandma, she's crying because she won. You're sobbing because—you don't know why.

It turns out the granny wins the snowmobiles and the fur coat. She wins the speedboat and the beefsteaks. The table and chairs and sofa. All the prizes of both the showcases, because your bid was way, way too high. She's jumping around, her bright-white false teeth throwing smiles in every direction. The game show host gets everybody started clapping their hands, except the Zeta Delts don't. The family of the old granny climbs up onstage—all the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids of her—and they wander over to touch the shiny sport-utility vehicle, touch the supermodels. The granny plants red lipstick kisses all over the fractured pink face of the game show host. She's saying, “Thank you.” Saying, “Thank you.” Saying, “Thank you,” right up to when her granny eyes roll up backward inside her head, and her hand grabs at the sweatshirt where it covers her heart.

The horse looked huge, at least eighteen hands at the withers. A bigger issue was Lisa. She had her heart set on it: a purebred Arabian three-year-old the red-brown of polished mahogany. From its bloodlines, the horse had to be priced thousands out of their reach. Randall asked if it wasn't too much horse for a little girl.

“I'm thirteen, Daddy,” his daughter stated indignantly.

Randall said, “But, a stallion?” That she'd called him “Daddy” wasn't lost on him.

“He's very gentle,” she assured. She knew this from the Internet. She knew everything from the web. They were standing outside the rail that enclosed a paddock. As they watched, a trainer worked the Arabian, using a rope to guide him in circles and figure eights. Beside them, a livestock broker looked at his wristwatch, waiting for a decision.

The horse's name was Red Sultan's Big Boy. Sired of Red Sultan and the dame Misty Blue Spring Meadows. Lisa's own horse, a pinto gelding, had died the week before, and Lisa hadn't stopped crying until moments ago. She coaxed her father. “He's an investment.”

“Six thousand,” interjected the livestock broker. The man seemed to be sizing up Randall and Lisa as if they were a couple of hayseeds who wouldn't have two dimes to rub together. The broker said that since the housing boom had tanked, people were scuttling cabin cruisers or setting them adrift because they couldn't afford mooring costs. The price of hay was sky-high, and boarding fees were making a horse something plain people could no longer afford.

Randall had never seen the ocean, but the broker's statement brought to mind a flotilla of yachts and cabin cruisers and speedboats. People's dreams and aspirations, all cast adrift. A Sargasso of abandoned pleasure craft, banding together in some empty expanse of open water.

“I've seen a lot of deals,” the broker added, “but six grand is dirt cheap.”

Randall was no expert in horse flesh, but he knew a deal. The stallion was so docile it ambled over and let Lisa stroke its muzzle. Using her thumb, she lifted its lips and inspected its gums and teeth—the horse equivalent of kicking the tires. Randall's common sense told him to keep looking. To check as far afield as Chickasaw County, visiting breeders and stables, and to keep looking at teeth. Compared to what he'd seen in his life, this horse ought to sell for thirty thousand dollars, even in a depressed market.

Lisa tested the smoothness of its coat against her cheek. “He's the one from the video.”

If she meant the
Black Beauty
video or the
Black Stallion
or
National Velvet,
Randall couldn't decide. There were so many sappy stories about girls in love with horses. As of late, she'd acted so grown-up. It felt nice to see her excited, especially since her horse, Sour Kraut, had taken sick so fast. She'd been riding the pinto only the weekend before. Cherry leaves could poison a horse, too many of them, with their arsenic. Or eating nettles. Even wet, red clover. During the week Lisa lived with her mother in town. Weekends, she came out to his place for visitation. The pinto had looked fine Sunday night. Monday morning, when Randall had gone to feed him, poor Sour Kraut had been collapsed, foam gushing from his mouth, dead.

Lisa didn't say as much, but her father suspected that she blamed him. She'd called Tuesday, a pleasant surprise. She almost never called midweek. He had to tell her the gelding was dead. She didn't cry, not at first. Probably on account of the shock. On the phone she'd sounded quiet and faraway, maybe angry. Already hating him. A teenager desperate to place blame. Her silence worried Randall more than sobbing would have.

The next Friday, he'd driven into town to collect her, and by then she was full-out bawling. Little girl wailing. Halfway back to his place, she'd dashed away her tears and brought out the phone from her overnight bag. She'd asked, “Tomorrow, can we go to the Conway Livestock Brokers? Please, Daddy?”

Lisa didn't waste anybody's time. Saturday morning, she made him hook up the trailer to his rig. Before they'd even seen a horse, she'd nagged him to drive faster, demanding, nonstop, “Do you have your checkbook? Are you sure? Let me see it, Daddy.”

The Arabian didn't toss its head or paw the ground. In the paddock, it stood passively as Randall and the broker walked around it, lifting and inspecting each hoof. It seemed so even-tempered, Randall had to wonder if it was drugged. It seemed depressed. Almost defeated. To his way of thinking, they needed a vet to check out the animal. An Arabian this subdued had to be sick. Lisa didn't want to wait.

The divorce settlement had left him with the home place, which was only right because it had belonged to his family ever since the land had belonged to anyone. He'd gotten the acreage, the barn and corrals. He had Lisa on weekends. And until last week, he'd had Sour Kraut to look after. Randall would've paid thirty grand to see his child this giddy. Lisa glanced from the horse to him and back, back and forth, speechless. She was so clearly smitten.

Randall wrote the broker a check while Lisa was already leading the horse into their trailer. Red Sultan's Big Boy was theirs. Hers. The stallion followed her with the tame obedience of a loyal dog.

This was the first time in a long time Randall had felt like a good father.

If the stallion was drugged or sick, they'd find out soon enough.

That first weekend, Lisa was happier than he'd seen her since before the divorce. She'd signed up for dressage lessons at the Merriwethers' stable down the road. Randall's neighbors lived in houses barely visible to one another across vast, dark green fields of alfalfa. School was out, and cliques of teenage girls rode their horses together along the gravel shoulders of the quiet county roads. Meadowlarks sang atop fence posts. Dogs trotted along at the horses' heels, and the irrigation sprinklers tick-ticked long rainbows of water through the sunshine. When such a group arrived at his door, Randall stood on the porch and watched his daughter join up. Red Sultan was beautiful, and Lisa was obviously proud, preening. She'd braided the stallion's mane, and it had stood, patient and steady, while she'd threaded a blue-satin ribbon through the braids.

The girls clustered around the stallion, in hushed awe, lightly touching him as if to prove to themselves that he was for real. The scene reminded Randall of his own childhood. In those days, every couple of years a traveling sideshow outfit would roll into town towing an enclosed auto trailer. Painted down both sides of the trailer in old cowboy writing like twisted ropes were the words “See it! The Bonnie and Clyde Death Car!” They'd set up in the parking lot of Western Auto, or they'd off-load the car near the carnival midway at the county fair. It was a rusted two-door coupe riddled with little holes, streaked with rust, the windows busted out. The flat tires shot to shit. Headlights exploded. For the price of two bits, Randall would go shiver at the sight of bloodstains on the seats and stick his fingers in the bullet holes. That grim relic from the darkness of history. Somewhere, he still had a photograph of himself standing next to the car with Stu Gilcrest, both of them the age Lisa was now. Him and Stu, they'd argued over which caliber each of the little punched-in holes represented.

The car was evil. But it was okay because it was a piece of American history. That part of the big, real world had come into his life to prove the lessons he'd been taught were true. The wages of sin were death. Crime does not pay.

Today, the girls swarmed the horse just as Randall and his pals had swarmed the Death Car. One year had brought the James Dean Death Car or the Jayne Mansfield Death Car. Another time, it was the JFK Death Car. People flocked to touch them. To snap pictures. To prove to their friends they'd touched something terrible.

While the local girls came to crowd around her, Lisa pulled her phone from her back pocket, saying, “Of course it's him. I'll prove it.” She keyed something. From the porch, Randall could hear a few tinny sounds from the phone. The girls watching with Lisa exploded in groans and laughter.

Whatever they'd just witnessed, now they were petting the red-brown muzzle and flanks. They sighed and cooed. They held their own telephones at arm's length and snapped selfies of their faces, their lips puckered, kissing the horse's cheeks.

The group wasn't gone two hours before his phone rang. He was in the kitchen checking email, watching the progress bar on his monitor not budge. Their service provider was a satellite company, but lousy Internet access wasn't tragic, not when a single keystroke could bring all the filth and degradation of the world into a person's peaceful, bright kitchen. These days it took real effort to keep purity in a child's life. High-speed connectivity wasn't worth Lisa's innocence. That was a fact her mother wouldn't accept. One of many.

On the phone was Stu Gilcrest from down the road. He said, “Your girl was just by here.”

That's how good neighbors behaved. Theirs was a community where people kept tabs on one another's loved ones. Randall told him that, come July, Lisa would be around a lot more.

“All summer?” Stu marveled. “She's become a lovely little lady. You must be very proud.” Something in his tone sounded subdued. He was keeping something back.

Randall thanked him. Sensing there was something else, he waited.

Over the phone, Stu said, “I see she's got herself a new horse.”

Randall explained about Sour Kraut dying and bragged how he'd looked far and wide for a replacement. He waited for Stu to exclaim about the Arabian. Its beauty. The gentle manner of it.

When Stu spoke he'd lost his friendly, neighborly tone. “Nobody hopes I'm wrong more than I do.” His words dropped to almost a growl. “But if I'm not mistaken, that's Red Sultan's Big Boy, isn't it?”

Randall was taken aback. A chill of dread embraced him. He ventured, “That there's a fine, fine horse.”

Stu didn't respond, not that instant. He cleared his throat. He swallowed. “Randall,” he began, “we've been neighbors since way back.”

“Since three generations,” Randall agreed. He asked what was the matter.

“All I'm saying,” Stu spat the words, “is that you and Lisa will always be welcome on our place.”

Randall asked, “Stu?”

“It's none of my business,” his neighbor stammered, “but Glenda and I would much appreciate you not bringing that animal onto our property.” This sounded as if it hurt to say.

Randall asked if he meant the horse. Had Lisa or the horse done anything to offend? The Gilcrests had a couple of girls near to Lisa's age. Girls could take offense and catfight and patch things up faster than a bolt of August heat lightning. They loved the drama.

The phone line clicked. A female voice joined the conversation. Stu's wife, Glenda. Randall pictured her on the extension, sitting on their bed. She said, “Randall, please understand. We can't have our girls anywhere near your place. Not until that horse is destroyed.” Against Randall's protest, they both said good-bye and hung up.

Over the next four hours, almost all of the neighbors called. The Hawkins. The Ramirezes. The Coys and Shandys and Turners. It was clear that the group of riders was making a slow circuit of the district, taking County Road 17 to Boundary Lane, after that moving west along Sky Ridge Trail. They were paying calls at every girl's house or the home of a relative. It was this series of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins who were telephoning in quick succession. After a few strained words of hello, each caller asked if Lisa wasn't in fact riding Red Sultan's Big Boy. And when Randall told them, yes, that was the case, to a person they informed him that the horse was unwelcome in the future. Furthermore, none of them would be calling at his place if the horse was on the property.

Lisa had been forced to ride the last leg of the circuit alone. By midafternoon, all her girlfriends had been forbidden to ac-company her another step. Even as she trotted up to the house, abandoned by her friends, she didn't seem daunted. Her head held high, her back straight, if anything, she seemed smug. Triumphant, even.

The phone calls left Randall prepared for the worst. He expected to find the horse hostile and skittish, but the Arabian was gentle. As placid and sweet-natured as ever. As she ran a curry mitt over his flanks, Lisa said he was responsive to commands. His gait was smooth. Nothing, not passing cars or barking dogs or low-flying crop dusters, nothing spooked him. No one had said anything unkind. She seemed unfazed by everyone's reaction. They'd looked at the horse, but none of the girl's relatives had come forward to touch him. They'd simply ordered their girls to dismount and go no farther.

That night, after dinner, as Randall and his daughter washed dishes, a car stopped on the road, near the far end of their drive. The day's events had him nervous, and Randall listened for it to drive away. Instead, the living room front window burst. Footsteps retreated down the gravel to the car, and tires squealed into the distance. Amid the shards of glass on the carpet was a dark, curved shape. A horseshoe.

Lisa regarded the weapon, her lips bent into a little smile.

The next Saturday, they loaded Red Sultan's Big Boy into the trailer and set off for the Merriwether stables. Enid Merriwether had been teaching dressage to comers since Randall was a boy. The paddock parking lot was mobbed with females, mostly mothers and daughters and their horses. When Lisa swung open the gate of their trailer, the din of chatter fell to silence.

A girl giggled. The ladies glared the giggler into silence.

A voice said, “Well, if it isn't Red Satan's Bad Boy…” All heads turned to regard Enid Merriwether as the great horsewoman herself approached. The leather of her riding boots creaked. The sun glinted on the buttons of her tailcoat. In one hand swung a dressage whip. Her gaze took in the crowd of stewing, sullen women. Turning to Lisa, she said, not without sympathy, “I'm sorry, but we seem to be a little overenrolled for the season.”