The Horse Whisperer (38 page)

“That’s right old pal, that’s what it is. But don’t you take my word for it.”

Tom laid the saddle down on the grass and stepped away from it. Pilgrim looked off to one side for a moment, pretending it was no big deal and he wasn’t interested. But he couldn’t stop his eyes from coming back to the saddle and after a while he stepped forward and walked toward it.

Tom watched him come and never moved. The horse stopped about a yard away from where the saddle lay and reached out almost comically with his nose to sniff the air above it.

“What d’you reckon? Gonna bite ya?”

Pilgrim gave him a baleful look then looked back at the saddle. He was still wearing the rope halter Tom had made for him. He pawed the ground a couple of times then stepped in closer and nudged the saddle with his nose, With an easy movement, Tom took the bridle off his shoulder and held it in both hands, sorting it. Pilgrim heard it clink and looked up.

“Don’t you go looking all surprised. You saw this coming a hundred miles away.”

Tom waited. It was hard to imagine this was the same animal he’d seen in that hellish stall in upstate New York, severed from the world and all that he was. His coat gleamed, his eyes were clear and the way his nose had healed gave him a look that was almost noble, like some battle-scarred Roman. Never, Tom thought, had a
horse been so transformed. Nor so many lives around one.

Now Pilgrim came to him, as Tom knew he would, and gave the bridle the same ritual sniffing he’d given the saddle. And when Tom undid the halter and put the bridle on him, not once did he flinch. There was still some tightness and the faintest quivering in his muscles, but he let Tom rub his neck and then move his hand along and rub the place where the saddle would go and neither did he step away nor even toss his head at the feel of the bit in his mouth. However fragile, the confidence and trust Tom had been working for were set.

Tom led him around with the bridle as they’d done so often with the halter, circling the saddle and stopping eventually right by it. Easily, and making sure Pilgrim could see his every move, he lifted it and placed it on the horse’s back, soothing him all the while with either hand or word or both. Lightly he fastened the cinch, then walked him to let him know how it felt when he moved.

Pilgrim’s ears were working all the time but his eyes showed no white and every now and then he made that soft blowing sound that Joe called “letting the butterflies out.” Tom leaned down and tightened the cinch, then laid himself across the saddle and let the horse walk some more to know his weight, all the time soothing him. And when, at last, the horse was ready, he eased his leg over and sat in the saddle.

Pilgrim walked and he walked straight. And though his muscles still trembled to some deep untouchable vestige of fear that perhaps would always be there, he walked bravely and Tom knew that if the horse sensed no mirrored trace of it in Grace, then she might ride him too.

And when she had, there would be no need for her or her mother to stay.

   Robert had bought a travel guide to Montana at his favorite bookstore on Broadway and by the time the
FASTEN SEAT BELTS
sign pinged on and they started their descent into Butte, he probably knew more about the city than most of the thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-six people who lived there.

A few more minutes and there it was below him, “the richest hill on earth,” elevation five thousand, seven hundred and fifty-five feet, the nation’s largest single source of silver in the 1880s and of copper for another thirty years. The city today, Robert now knew, was a mere skeleton of what it then was, but “had lost nothing of its charm,” none of which, however, was immediately apparent from the vantage of Robert’s window seat. It looked like someone had stacked luggage on a hillside and forgotten to collect it.

He’d wanted to fly to Great Falls or Helena, but at the last minute something had cropped up at work and he’d had to change his plans. Butte had been the best he could do. But even though it looked on the map a huge distance for Annie to drive, she’d still insisted on coming to meet him.

Robert had no clear picture of how the loss of her job had affected her. The New York papers had slavered over the story all week,
GATES GARROTES GRAVES
, one of them blazed, while others gave new spin to the old gag, the best of which was
GRAVES DIGS ONE FOR HERSELF
. It was odd to see Annie cast as victim or martyr, as the more sympathetic pieces had it. It was even odder how nonchalant she had been about it on the phone when she got back from playing cowboy.

“I don’t give a damn,” she’d said.

“Really?”

“Really. I’m glad to be shut of it. I’ll do something new.”

Robert wondered for a moment if he’d called the wrong number. Perhaps she was just putting on a brave face. She said she was tired of all the power games, and the politics, she wanted to get back to writing, to what she was good at. Grace, she said, thought it was terrific news, the best thing that could have happened. Robert had then asked about the cattle drive and Annie said, simply, that it had been beautiful. Then she’d handed him over to Grace, fresh from her bath, to tell him all about it. They would both be there to meet him at the airport.

There was a small crowd of people waving as he walked across the asphalt, but he couldn’t see Annie or Grace among them. Then he looked more closely at the two women in blue jeans and cowboy hats who he’d noticed laughing at him, rather rudely he thought, and saw it was them.

“My God,” he said as he came up to them. “It’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid!”

“Howdy stranger,” Grace drawled. “What brings you into town?” She took off her hat and threw her arms around his neck.

“My baby, how are you? How ARE you?”

“I’m good.” She clung so tight Robert choked up with emotion.

“You are. I can see. Let me look at you.”

He held her away from him and had a sudden memory of that limp, lusterless body he’d sat watching in the hospital. It was hardly credible. Her eyes brimmed with life and the sun had brought out all the freckles on
her face. She seemed almost to glow. Annie looked on and smiled, clearly reading his thoughts.

“Notice anything?” Grace said.

“You mean apart from everything?”

She did a little twirl for him and he suddenly got it.

“No cane!”

“No cane.”

“You little star.”

He gave her a kiss and at the same time reached out for Annie. She too had taken off her hat now. Her tan made her eyes seem clear and so very green. She, too, seemed transformed. More beautiful than he could ever recall. She stepped in close and put her arms around him and kissed him. Robert hugged her till he felt he had control of himself and wouldn’t embarrass them all.

“God, it seems a long time,” he said at last.

Annie nodded. “I know.”

   The journey back to the ranch took about three hours. But though she was impatient to show her father around and let him see Pilgrim and introduce him to the Bookers, Grace enjoyed every mile of it. She sat in the back of the Lariat and put her hat on Robert’s head. It was too small for him and looked funny, but he left it perched there and soon had them laughing with an account of his connecting flight to Salt Lake City.

Virtually every other seat had been taken by a touring tabernacle choir who had sung the entire way. Robert had sat squeezed between two voluminous women altos with his nose buried in his Montana guidebook while everyone around him boomed “Nearer My God to Thee.” Which, at thirty thousand feet of course, they were.

He got Grace to rummage in his bag for the presents he’d bought for them both in Geneva. For her, he’d got a massive box of chocolates and a miniature cuckoo clock with the strangest-looking cuckoo she’d ever laid eyes on. Its call, Robert conceded, was more like a parrot with piles. But it was absolutely authentic, he swore; he knew for a fact Taiwanese cuckoos, especially hemorrhoidal ones, looked and sounded precisely like that. Annie’s presents, which Grace also unwrapped, were the usual bottle of her favorite perfume and a silk scarf all three of them knew she’d never wear. Annie said it was lovely and leaned across and kissed him on the cheek.

Looking at her parents, united side by side before her, Grace felt true contentment. It was as though the final pieces of her fractured jigsaw life were falling back in place. The only space that remained was riding Pilgrim. And that, if all had gone well today at the ranch, would soon be filled too. Until they knew for sure, neither she nor Annie was going to mention it to Robert.

It was a prospect that both thrilled and troubled Grace. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to ride him again but that she knew she must. Since she’d been riding Gonzo, no one seemed to doubt that she would do so—provided, that is, Tom thought it safe. Only she, secretly, had doubts.

They were not to do with fear, at least not in its simple sense. She worried that when the moment came she might feel fear but was fairly sure that if she did, she would at least be able to control it. She worried more however that she might let Pilgrim down. That she wouldn’t be good enough.

Her prosthetic leg was now so tight it gave her constant pain. On the last few miles of the cattle drive it
had been almost unbearable. She hadn’t told a soul. When Annie noticed how often now she left the leg off when they were alone, Grace had made light of it. It had been harder to pretend to Terri Carlson. Terri could see how inflamed the stump was and told her she urgently needed a new fitting. The trouble was, nobody out west did this type of prosthetic. The only place it could be done was New York.

Grace was determined to hold out. It would only be a week or two at most. She would just have to hope that the pain wouldn’t distract her too much and make her less good when the moment came.

It was the cusp of evening when they left Route 15 and headed west. Before them the Rocky Front was stacked high with thunderheads which seemed to reach out over the gathering sky toward them.

They drove through Choteau so that Grace could show Robert the dump they’d first lived in and the dinosaur outside the museum. Somehow he’d come to seem neither as big nor as mean as he had when they arrived. Nowadays Grace almost expected him to wink.

By the time they reached the turn off 89, the sky was vaulted with blackening cloud like a ruined church, through which the sun found fitful access. Cruising out along the straight gravel road to the Double Divide, they all fell silent and Grace began to feel nervous. She wanted so much for her father to be impressed by the place. Perhaps Annie felt the same way, because when they came over the ridge and saw the Double Divide open up before them, she stopped the car to let Robert take in the view.

The dust-cloud they had stirred from the road overtook them and drifted slowly ahead, dispersing gold on a stark burst of sun. Some horses grazing down by the
cottonwoods that fringed the nearest bend of the creek raised their heads to watch.

“Wow,” Robert said. “Now I know why you guys don’t want to come home.”

A
NNIE HAD BOUGHT THE FOOD FOR THE WEEKEND ON
the way to the airport and should, of course, have done it on the way back. Five hours in a hot car had done the salmon no good at all. The supermarket in Butte was the best she’d found since coming to Montana. They even had sun-dried tomatoes and small pots of rooted basil which had wilted badly on the journey home. Annie had watered them and stood them on the windowsill. They might just survive. Which was more than could be said for the salmon. She took it to the sink and ran it under cold water in the hope of washing away the ammonia smell.

The rush of water drowned the constant low rumble of thunder outside. Annie doused the fish’s sides and watched its loosened scales shiver and twirl and disappear with the water. Then she opened its gutted belly and sluiced the blood from its clotted membranous flesh till it glistened a lurid pink. The smell became less pungent, but the feel of the fish’s flaccid body in her hands brought such a wave of nausea that she had to leave the
fish on the draining board and go quickly through the screen door out onto the porch.

The air was hot and heavy and brought no relief. It was almost dark, though long before it should be. The clouds were a bilious black veined with yellow and so low they seemed to compress the very earth.

Robert and Grace had been gone almost an hour. Annie had wanted to leave it until morning but Grace had insisted. She wanted to introduce Robert to the Bookers and let him see Pilgrim right away. She hardly gave him time to look inside the house before getting him to drive her down to the ranch. She’d wanted Annie to come along too, but Annie said no, she’d get supper and have it ready for when they got back. Tom meeting Robert was something she’d rather not see. She wouldn’t know where to look. Even the thought of it now made her nausea worse.

She’d bathed and changed into a dress but already felt sticky again. She stepped out onto the porch and filled her lungs with the useless air. Then she walked slowly around to the front of the house where she could look out for them.

She’d seen Tom and Robert and all the kids piling into the Chevy and watched the car go by below her on its way up to the meadows. The angle was such that she could only see Tom in the driver’s seat as they passed. He didn’t look up. He was turned talking to Robert who sat beside him. Annie wondered what he made of him. It was as though she herself were being judged by proxy.

All week Tom had avoided her and although she thought she knew why, she felt his distance like a widening space within her. While Grace was in Choteau seeing Terri Carlson, Annie had waited for him to call as he always did to ask her to go riding,
knowing in her heart that he wouldn’t. When she went with Grace to watch him working with Pilgrim, he was so involved he barely seemed to notice her. Afterward, their conversation had been trivial, polite almost.

She wanted to talk to him, to say she was sorry for what had happened, though she wasn’t. At night, alone in her bed, she’d thought of that tender mutual exploring, taking it further in fantasy until her body ached for him. She wanted to say she was sorry simply in case he thought badly of her. But the only chance she’d had was that first evening when he had brought Grace home. And when she’d started to speak he’d cut her off, as if he knew what she was going to say. The look in his eyes as he drove away had almost made her run calling after him.