Funerals for Horses (retail) Page 16

  I press the sharpened end of the spit through the thickest curve of venison, thread it through like a needle. I set it into the cradle of its holder, hoping dinner will somehow ease the fact that I have failed to find my brother Simon and bring him home.

  I sit with the rifle across my knees. I’m strong enough now to hold it and keep it, to use it to protect my horse and to protect myself. We are all that matters now. We are all we have left. I hope we will prove to be enough.

  Just to be sure we will be, I go into the cave, bring out five cartridges, and teach myself to load and fire the gun. The shots fly up into the still air, maybe come down somewhere. I don’t know. I just know I can shoot if I have to.

  I stare out onto Yozzy’s grazing land, which is intermittently obscured by rising smoke. Fat and meat juices begin to drip, causing flashes of grease fire, causing sparks, like little angels, or devils, splitting like atoms, maybe into some of each.

  The dusk comes to settle. It’s a strange sense of peace.

  Then the haunch of my dinner drops off into the flames, because I only pretend to know how to cook a haunch of deer at an open fire. Because the outer layer has cooked, and only the outer layer was threaded onto the spit. I try to brush off the dirt and ash, but it’s too hot to touch. I burn my hand pulling it out of the pit.

  I sit quiet and hungry while it cools, watching coyotes line up in the distance. Watching them gather, shift, sit, stare. Sniff. I know they smell my dinner, but between the devils and my dinner is my horse, and I know I’ll have to do something about that. I jump down to the dirt below, not realizing how much it will hurt until I land on my feet. I take the rifle with me to fetch Yozzy.

  The coyotes react to my presence, my approach. They jump, circle and sit a few feet further back. Angry at their refusal to scatter, to run from me outright, I raise the rifle scope to my eye and aim at them. This they seem to understand. I watch their haunches and tails rise and fall as they lope off into the night. I feel better now. I need to inspire fear in the devils. I need to be at least that strong.

  I lead Yozzy with one hand against her neck, and she picks her way onto the rock at a low place I indicate. I have found a place where she can climb up onto the base of the stone mesa. It’s probably not good for her, to spend the night on rock. But to spend the night out in an unprotected open space with those hungry devils—the rock couldn’t hurt her more than that.

  The coyotes move close again, mill beneath us in a kind of slow motion. They respect my weapon, but also their own skill and resources. Stealthy and hungry and smart enough to be frightening. Sleep will be out of the question.

  We pick our way back to the fire.

  I go in after my sleeping bag, open it out and spread it on the rock, in case she needs to collapse. As she has been prone to do lately. She steps onto it, sinks to her knees and lies like a foal, her legs tucked underneath her. I sit on the edge of the bag, lean back against her barrel.

  The meat has cooled sufficiently, so I thread the spit through much deeper this time, almost to the bone. The rough stick scrapes my palm, and the pressure needed for the task makes my hand ache. But I am able to set my dinner back over the fire to cook. My hands are smeared with charcoal and dirt. I wipe them on my jeans.

  I need this dinner.

  I wish I could offer Yozzy part of it, share my hot meal with her. But a horse has no use for a deer haunch. I feel the warmth of her barrel against my back. I wish I could graze on scrubby grass and grow strong enough to travel home. I envy her that.

  I wonder if she is disappointed because we failed. She doesn’t feel disappointed where we press together.

  I’ve never eaten venison before. The outer layer is burned and gritty, but I like it. The inside is raw; I’ll have to set it on the spit again when I’ve eaten what little is cooked. I try not to think of the color of the raw meat when I skinned it, or the sound of the neck bone cracking.

  As I eat, I think about the ritual of apologizing to the soul of the animal, as I’ve read that Native Americans do. It strikes me as a form of grace. Saying grace. Or just being grace. I am still on the Navajo Nation, wishing Navajo grace traveled with me on this land, or that Everett had packed some with my dried beef. But I don’t go so far as to complete the ritual. I say a word or two of apology out loud, but my voice only reminds me that I am not a Navajo. Just a temporary squatter on this land. Everett would just have to understand.

  I hear the growling of coyotes, fighting over the deer’s head and skin below.

  When I’ve eaten my meal to the bone, I throw the leftovers down, like a ransom. This is what you came for, now go. Taking their prizes, the dark animals run off into the night.

  I say to Yozzy, “We drank the last of the water. I’m sorry.”

  She seems unconcerned. We are rested, watered, fed. We are armed against our enemies, coyote and human. We have water bottles. And a strong rain has come through to replenish the land. There is water within our reach. We only have to reach for it.

  I can’t sleep anyway, until the coyotes leave with the sunlight. And night is the time for any kind of travel. Even a white woman from the city knows that.

  I cut off a strap of the wild man’s overall bedding, with my own knife, Earl’s knife. The one I’ve owned for twenty-five years. I use the strap to lash the necks of the two bottles together. I keep the rifle with me at all times. I am that unsure. I load my jeans pocket with cartridges before setting off.

  Yozzy stands when she sees I’m ready to go.

  I throw the blanket across Yozzy’s back, set the bottles on either side of her withers. We pick our way across the rocks, and I let her climb down alone, and she circles back to allow me to ease off the plateau onto her, and we ride east.

  We find a wash in the moonlight, though we ride far to reach it. It’s marked by a ribbon of trees, and tall, live vegetation. Yozzy walks out into the running coolness, dips her head to drink.

  I slip down, remove my boots, tie them together, stuff my socks inside and sling them across her back, and she holds them for me. My feet are bare, unbandaged, cold, partly healed. I squat, like Everett, rifle across my knees, and drink from my hands. Maybe I can fool the land into thinking I belong here. Maybe if I look and act strong enough, Yozzy and I will make it home.

  I fill the bottles half full in the shallow wash and set them on the bank, and sit beside them with my feet in the cool flow, and watch Yozzy graze on real grass. I know the dry scrub she’s subsisted on is low in nutrition. I have often wished I had more to offer her. Now I do.

  I want to ride back now because I’m afraid the wild man will come. I want to jump onto Yozzy’s back and ask her to find Sam Roanhorse’s house again. I hope she can, because I doubt I can. And now that Simon’s survival is no longer at issue, I feel more concerned with my own. It makes me want to move, to act.

  But I can’t bring myself to begrudge Yozzy her first good meal in days. My belly is full and warm, and I owe her no less.

  I watch Yozzy graze until sunrise.

  THEN:

  Four and a half months before his disappearance, my brother Simon came to visit me on short notice, as always. I never minded. We ordered a pizza, then sat out on the front stoop of my courtyard apartment, staring up at the sky, or down the steep, landscaped stairs to the street.

  He took a flask of tequila from his pocket, opened it and offered it to me. I shook my head.

  “Gives me a headache.”

  That wasn’t the reason. It did give me a headache, but if it had also given me a feeling I enjoyed, I don’t suppose I would have minded. The truth was I felt quite uncentered enough on my own, with no outside assistance. And watching Simon’s gradual progression into that bottle made me just as sick. Which I didn’t say. It was his life.

  As he held it out, I noticed that all of his fingernails were bitten deeply past the quick, and the skin around them looked swollen and sore.

  He recapped the flask, then broke out the harmonica, as always. T
he one Mrs. Hurley had given him for his eighteenth birthday. The one that used to belong to her freeman grandfather.

  “Do you remember those cookies she used to make for your school lunch?”

  “Will you stop, Simon?”

  His words brought me a familiar queasiness. Of course I remembered, as soon as it was mentioned. Nothing from that time lay buried too deeply.

  Much as I loved his visits, Simon had a bad habit of getting drunk and talking about Mrs. Hurley.

  “Look, you’re thirty-six years old, Ella. Don’t you think it’s time you could remember something as simple as a cookie?”

  Simon’s reference involved a big sugar cookie she baked when she felt particularly cheery, which was mostly postbrandy each evening. Sometimes, when packing my school lunch, she’d use an icing tube to write, “Hi, Ella,” on its big, flat face, in red gel icing that hardened, and didn’t smear when she wrapped it.

  In my paranoia, I always wondered if the other Columbus schoolkids stared at me, and thought I should be happier, friendlier, better, coming from such obviously ideal surroundings.

  I said, “I don’t see what age has to do with this.”

  He snorted his disgust, played “Red River Valley,” filtering bent notes through the echo chamber of his hand.

  Then he stopped playing, just as suddenly as he had started, and tried to make me remember the nightly games of Chinese checkers, our reward for dishes well done.

  Odd person out would play the winner, jumping colored marbles over their opponent’s, and my marbles were always blue. Winner of the winner had to clean up after the game.

  “Look, Simon, it’s a choice I make, not to remember. If I wanted to, I would.”

  He leaned back until his chair touched stucco, hands folded behind his head, staring up at the stars.

  “Now why on earth,” he said, “would you purposely choose not to remember the happiest year of your entire life?”

  “Kind of hard to explain.”

  Which was a lie. I couldn’t imagine anything easier to explain; in fact, I couldn’t imagine why something so simple and obvious should even require explanation.

  “If you can’t explain it to me, Ella, then you couldn’t very damn well explain it to anybody.”

  I sighed, leaned my head back and picked out the Little Dipper and Cassiopeia. “Because then every single day I’m alive I’d have to feel the lack of it.” He never answered, just played “The City of New Orleans,” a little slower and more mournful than usual.

  He stopped in mid-song and apologized for doing such a lousy job of bringing me up.

  I had to consider that a minute before answering.

  “I thought you did pretty okay, actually.”

  “But I was never there. After Mrs. Hurley’s house, I was never there.”

  That was impossible to argue; in fact, I could have added that even when he was there he wasn’t there, but of course I didn’t. Still, it seemed on a par with me apologizing to Simon for growing up unstable. What else could we have been for each other? We were only dealt certain cards from which to form a hand.

  “You did good for a kid,” I said.

  This talk brought up a kind of restlessness, an unfinished feeling, and I thought I needed to change the subject.

  So I said, “Do you ever wish you’d been an astronomer instead, Simon?”

  And he said, “Every single day I’m alive.”

  For the first time since my talk with Virgil, over fifteen years earlier, I felt lucky to have no dreams. Because I knew I’d feel the lack of them, every day I’m alive.

  WALKING BACK ALONE

  We arrive back at the cave to find coyotes. At least a dozen of them, gnawing the bones of last night’s kill, the remains of my dinner. Their heads shoot up to watch us; Yozzy dances but I quiet her with a hand on her shoulder.

  They stare out of narrow eyes, lick greasy flews. Their legs seem foolishly thin beneath their great ruffs of mane. They do not run away. They wait to decide. I slide down from Yozzy’s back, stand with the rifle butt against my thigh, flip off the safety and fire a round into the metallic sky of morning. I’ve decided for them. They run.

  I reload immediately, pull a loose cartridge from my pocket, slam it into the chamber as a bold female circles around behind Yozzy and nips at her heels, as if testing. Will you kick, or allow yourself to be hamstrung?

  Yozzy strikes out with her hooves, and the aggressor arcs and tries a second pass. I shoot a round aimed in her direction, but low. For a split second I think the kick of the rifle will raise the shot, and I will take her. It’s not my intention, but I’ll live with it.

  Dirt explodes a foot in front of her, spraying into her face and eyes. She yelps as if shot, which she isn’t, and runs to join her pack. They move fifty or so feet away, then sit watching.

  I walk Yozzy onto the rock plateau outside the cave.

  I spread out my sleeping bag for Yozzy, but she no longer seems interested in collapsing. I take that as a good sign. We are more rested now. She stands, as horses normally will, and I lie back on the bag, my back against the stone of the mesa, and watch the coyotes.

  I think, it’s morning, you vampires. Fly away home. I tilt my hat down against the rising sun.

  In time I wake. I sit up and see Yozzy far away on the plain. I see the coyotes have given up and gone.

  I fall asleep again with the rifle still resting across my knees. Night is the time to travel. Tonight we must give up and go home.

  When the sun goes down, I decide to take the full water bottles along. Nothing is more important than water. Nothing will ever erase, or allow me to forget, watching Yozzy nearly die for the lack of it. We are no longer on a brave quest, with the entire universe supposedly lined up at our backs in support and awe. We are simply walking back.

  Of course, I would not ask Yozzy to carry all that water and me. She has done enough already, sacrificed too much for too little. She stands below the rock ledge and I fold the blanket several times to form a pad, to protect her from the cloth strap that holds the necks of the two bottles together. Then I carefully settle the bottles across her withers.

  We set off on foot.

  We walk for most of the night. I follow Yozzy. I walk beside her, but I bend as she bends; I let her take us where she wants us to go. She is not heading straight back the way we came, as far as I can tell. She seems to be veering east, toward the wash. This is probably good thinking. The water on her back is nearly gone. A few gallons of water is nothing, if you are a horse. I wince with every step, take it anyway, and I project ten steps ahead. I know I’ll never make it. A few miles down, I think. Probably three dozen to go. I can’t keep track anymore. I need sleep.

  An hour later I see the trees of the wash in the far distance, water, shade. I feel almost as though we might survive this journey; to have believed otherwise, in the first few miles, seemed a frightening omen.

  The sun rises again as we walk toward that ribbon of green. It is farther away from us than I allowed myself to believe.

  I stop and give Yozzy the last of the water, pouring it into my hat and offering it to her. I take only a swallow for myself. Now I believe it’s fair to ask her to carry me again.

  I use a rock to mount, and I hold the sleeping bag against my left thigh; the rifle droops against my right. The reins lie untouched across Yozzy’s shoulders, and she navigates.

  I feel a great relief, my feet dangling comfortably.

  Heat rises in shimmery waves, disturbing the continuity of the landscape, and I begin to fear the green trees are only a tease, a mirage, but we do reach them, and they’re real.

  I slide down, pull off my shoes, and we stand in the cool water together, me in my wet socks, Yozzy on sore hooves; then I lie down and roll around, soaking my clothes.

  I fill my hat, turn my face to the sky and pour water over my head.

  I lean back on a tree trunk, in its scant but blessed shade. I have to sleep. We have to stay here, Yozzy standi
ng with her feet in the cool water of the wash, already shallower than it was the night before. We can’t walk now until sundown. I fear I cannot walk at all, yet I know we’ll have to load up on water again, at some point, and I’ll have to set out on foot. In the meantime I need to sleep. I can only avoid it for just so long. I sit with my knees drawn up, the rifle across them, watching Yozzy nibble and drink.

  I wake because a voice tells me to. It’s not my voice. It’s not the voice of anyone I know. It’s only words in my head.

  Wake up.

  The voice conveys such a sense of panic that I grab for the rifle across my knees, but it isn’t there. I look at the ground, feel the ground all around me, but I didn’t simply drop the rifle. It’s gone. The sun beats into my eyes from directly overhead; I hope this is all part of a dream.

  Then I see him. Lying on his belly in the wash, his beard in the cool water, his blanket cape moving slightly with the pull of the wash toward home. He has taken his rifle back, pressed his eye to the sight; he is aiming, ready to fire. But not at me. I try to leap to my feet, but my hips have stiffened in sleep, I have painful sores on the insides of my thighs from riding, my feet have been bleeding again, and the dried blood has cemented my soles to my socks. But, out of necessity, I do make it to my feet.

  I look up the wash in the direction his rifle is pointing, and I see Yozzy, grazing a few dozen yards upstream. He is aiming to shoot my horse.

  I move without thinking. I move faster than any thinking process would allow. I must pitch forward through the air at some point because I could swear I land on his back before my feet touch the water. The rifle goes off, and in my peripheral vision I see Yozzy spook sideways and canter a few yards away.