The Wake Up Page 18

  And then suddenly the older man changed his tack.

  “Okay, girl,” Harris Delacorte said. “I thought you could do this on your own, but I get the message.”

  Aiden leaned in, transfixed.

  He watched his stepfather take a firm grasp of something solid inside the ghostly bag. The mare seemed to understand. Aiden could feel her gear herself up for one gigantic push.

  With a deep groan that Aiden could feel all the way from his throat down to his groin, like a tingling pain, the mare pushed, and Harris Delacorte pulled.

  Everything came out in a rush. Things Aiden had never seen before and never cared to see again. The solid, ghostly bundle. Blood, and other fluids he did not understand. Torn and stretched long threads of the whitish covering. It all flowed out, just like that.

  The mare pulled to her feet and stepped away.

  Harris Delacorte moved in at once and used both hands to tear at the white covering. Where he ripped it and pulled it away, Aiden saw something amazing. Something he would never forget. An equine head. Its eyes were open, its ears perfectly shaped. Aiden could even see its markings. Patchy blond and white markings.

  It was alive. It was perfect. It was real. And a split second ago, it hadn’t existed in the world, not in any way Aiden could grasp. And now here it was. This new living thing.

  “It’s a little paint,” Harris Delacorte said.

  As he spoke, he ran his thumbs down both sides of the baby’s long face. Down to the nostrils and a little bit beyond. As if the foal had a stuffy nose and Harris Delacorte was helping to clear its passages.

  Then his stepfather tore away more of the covering.

  Aiden could see the baby’s front legs. They were bizarrely long. Impossibly long. The hooves looked soft and barely formed. The baby had its front legs together and braced against the straw of the stall floor, knees up toward the sky, as if ready to attempt to stand.

  Aiden moved closer and looked into the foal’s eyes, and the foal looked back. And saw him. And was not afraid as far as Aiden could tell. They just looked at each other. And Aiden was shocked, because the foal was so fully formed and so aware. Nothing like the baby puppies he had once seen, limbs thrashing, eyes squeezed closed, searching to nurse at their mother by feel. This animal was open eyed and fully aware—and still looked for all the world as if it were about to struggle to its feet.

  “It’s a colt,” he heard Harris Delacorte say.

  “Well, of course it’s a colt,” Aiden said, still staring transfixed into the baby’s intelligent eyes. “What else would it be?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. Of course it’s a foal. Any baby horse is a foal. But a colt is a boy. A filly is a girl.”

  “Oh,” Aiden said, but to the colt and not to the man. “You’re a boy.”

  The colt’s mother came back. Came around with her head low, and bumped the baby with her muzzle, several times. All over.

  Aiden reached out and touched the colt’s neck. It was wet, and the strange fluid coated his hand, but he didn’t care.

  “You can go back in and go to bed if you want,” his stepfather said. “I just wanted you to see that moment when life begins.”

  Aiden ignored the substance of the comment completely.

  “He looks like he’s trying to get up,” Aiden said. Even though he was sure such a thing was impossible.

  It was maybe an hour later. Time had become liquid and strange, a hard thing to judge.

  “He is trying to get up.”

  “Doesn’t he know he was just born?”

  “That doesn’t matter with horses. They stand up pretty much straightaway.”

  The colt lay with his front hooves dug into the straw, knees up at a sharp angle out in front of his face, and tried to lever itself up with those brand-new limbs. But he was still too far over on his hip in the back, hind legs sprawled out forever, and it seemed impossible that he could ever harness those spindly hind limbs and pull them underneath his body. Make them work for him.

  And who said he should even try? Aiden thought, though perhaps not in words, or at least not in those exact ones. How about a minute to get used to being alive?

  Still he stared into the big, dark pools of the animal’s brand-new eyes. Now and again he was sure the foal looked back at him. Really saw him. Without fear. Without fear in either one of them.

  The mare moved in a slow circle around her foal, forcing Aiden to scramble out of her way. She reached down and used her long, bony face to nudge the foal’s back end, literally push in a series of little urgings until the foal was more centered over his own hips.

  In one sudden, rickety, lurching movement, the foal was standing, comically long legs skewed out at ridiculous angles. Aiden gasped out loud. Then the foal nearly lost his balance and fell, but he caught himself, thanks in large part to the support of his mother’s well-placed head. The baby took a clumsy step or two, as if on brand-new stilts, and bumped underneath his mother’s belly with his wet nose.

  “What are you going to name your colt?” Harris Delacorte asked.

  The words startled Aiden. He had been deep in concentration and not expecting them. Then, when they came along, he didn’t let them in or fully understand them.

  “What colt?” he asked, as if in a dream.

  “What do you mean, what colt? The one right in front of you.”

  “He’s not my colt.”

  “What if he was, though?”

  “But he’s not.”

  “You’re not getting what I’m saying, boy. I’m saying he’s your colt now.”

  Aiden looked away from the animal for the first time since his knowing eye had emerged from that ghostly sack. He looked at his stepfather in the lantern light, but the man’s face lay in shadow. Whatever lived there was beyond Aiden’s ability to see.

  “You’re giving him to me?”

  “I think I am, yes.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. You don’t trust me with your horses.”

  “But this isn’t one of my horses. This is your horse. I’m counting on that to make a difference. I’m banking on the fact that you’ll love him and be proud of him because he’s yours. It’s different when they’re yours. When you take care of your own horse, maybe you’ll love him and understand him in a different way. That’s my gamble, anyway. I’ve thought about it and thought about it, and I just now decided. I’m taking a chance on you, boy. That you’ll take good care of this colt and not let me down. Or at least not let him down.”

  Aiden’s mind and gut swam with a panicked uncertainty.

  “But I don’t know how to take care of a colt.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’ll teach you. I’ll show you everything you need to know. All you have to do is care. You need to have the heart for the job. I’ll make sure you have everything else you need. Think you can step up to that?”

  Truthfully, Aiden wasn’t sure. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to step up to a task with his heart. But that liquid-eyed, brand-new colt could be his now. And so he just would. He would not miss a chance like this. He would do it even if it was the hardest thing he had ever done. Even if it was impossible, he would defeat impossibility and manage somehow.

  “Yes, sir,” Aiden said. “I’ll take real good care of him if you’ll show me how.”

  “Good. Now come on back to bed.”

  “No, sir. Please. I’d like to stay here with my colt a little longer.”

  His stepfather clapped a hand onto Aiden’s down-padded shoulder and then left him alone. And yet not alone. Because he had his magic new companion, and the baby’s devoted mother.

  He had more than he’d ever had before in his life.

  It almost hurt to try to take it all in.

  When Aiden woke in the morning, his mother and stepfather were standing over him. Standing hand in hand, staring down at him as he slept.

  He was on his side on the straw bedding of the foaling stall, one arm thrown over his magic colt,
who slept with his head thrown over Aiden’s side. The weight of that head felt uncomfortable on his ribs, and the hard dirt of the barn floor felt cold and pinching against his hip, but he would have stayed in that position all day long and at least another night if such an opportunity presented itself.

  “Come in for breakfast now, honey,” his mother said.

  “I can’t yet. I have to feed my colt.”

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Yeah, but he must be hungry, too. You have to take care of your horse first. And then yourself. I learned that. I know that part of taking care of a horse already.”

  “You don’t have to feed him,” his stepfather said. “He’s nursing. His mother will feed him for now. Later, when he’s ready to be weaned, I’ll show you how to feed him. Your mother’s right. The colt is fine. Come in for breakfast.”

  “Okay,” Aiden said. “In a minute. I just want to say goodbye to my colt.”

  Though, truthfully, he could not imagine where he would find the courage to tear himself away.

  They walked off and left him in the stall, where Aiden struggled to his feet. The colt took it as an invitation to struggle to his own hooves as well, and they stood side by side for a couple of minutes. Aiden wrapped his arms around the colt’s now-dry neck, and the colt bumped at Aiden’s side with his muzzle, and played at grabbing Aiden’s jacket with his lips.

  “I’ll be back right after breakfast,” Aiden said. “You go get breakfast from your mom. Then I’ll be right back.”

  But still he could not step away. Not in that moment.

  Without thinking it out in words or sentences, Aiden flashed back to the previous night—the bad part of it. That long, cold walk out to the barn, when he’d thought his stepfather might have been about to kill him.

  He had thought his life was over. That he was about to die. But it was just the opposite. He could feel it. Instead, his life had begun.

  Just as surely as his colt, Aiden had been born.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Aiden at Age Eight

  Aiden was on his way out to the barn to feed his yearling when he saw them. Aiden’s new father was warming up his pickup truck in the predawn dark, his friend Teddy Flannigan in the passenger seat beside him.

  Aiden moved closer.

  They didn’t see him, so he rapped on the window. Both men jumped, then laughed out loud at themselves. As if it were a source of amazement and humor that something could startle them.

  Aiden’s father rolled down the window. As he did, Aiden saw that the gun rack in the back of the cab, which normally sat empty, held two rifles.

  “What’re you doing up so early, boy?”

  “Going to feed Magic.”

  “Why don’t you stay in bed and wait another half hour or so and the ranch hands’ll do it? They feed all the horses, you know.”

  “Yes, sir. I know they do. But Magic isn’t their yearling. He’s mine. So his feed should come from me. That’s what I think, anyway.”

  “Suit yourself, son. Say good morning to Teddy Flannigan.”

  “Morning, Mr. Flannigan.”

  Teddy tipped his hat to Aiden. The man had a smile on his face that suggested everything Aiden did was funny to him. Getting up early. Feeding his own horse. Being eight. It was all a big joke to Teddy Flannigan.

  “Where’re you guys going?” Aiden asked, trying to keep the longing out of his voice. It didn’t work.

  For nearly a year, Aiden had been following his stepfather around like an old dog. Wanting in on everything. Any time Aiden caught the man doing something that left him on the outside, it brought a desperate physical pain down the middle of Aiden’s chest. Like a sword swallower, but without whatever trick they used to make sure it didn’t hurt. Assuming they had a trick.

  Or maybe they just hurt, like Aiden.

  “We’re going hunting,” his father said.

  “I want to go hunting!”

  It came out sharp and loud. And too high. Almost like a girl to his ears. Or maybe like an excited boy, but definitely not the man he was trying so hard to be.

  In that moment, Aiden had never meant anything more. Even though he knew in some part of himself that it was a ridiculous thing for him to want to do.

  But Harris Delacorte went hunting. So Aiden wanted to go hunting, too.

  “You?” His stepfather exchanged a silent glance with the man in the passenger seat. “You want to go hunting?”

  It burned Aiden’s face and made his guts tingle, to be so shamed. Probably no shame had been intended. But still Aiden felt as though his claims to manhood were being negated, shredded before his eyes and ears.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I thought you didn’t like to see anything get hurt. Your momma told me you were real sensitive about stuff like that.”

  “No, sir. I mean, that was before. You know. Back when I was dumb. I was just a little kid.”

  The men laughed at him. Not in a mean way, but as though Aiden had told a good joke. They both got it and he didn’t.

  “Oh, I see,” his father said. “Before you were all grown up like you are now.”

  “Yes, sir. I can go hunting.”

  “No you can’t.” Then Harris Delacorte seemed to notice the pain this conversation was causing his stepson. Because he softened his tone and changed his conversational tack. “I mean, not this morning, you can’t. Because you’ve never handled a firearm before. And you don’t have a license. You need a license to hunt. But . . . tell you what. While we’re gone today, you think extra hard on whether this is really something you want. And can manage. You know. On the emotional side of things. And if you’re sure, I’ll start teaching you to handle a gun safely. And how to shoot clean and true. And then we’ll have to enroll you in a hunter safety class. You got to have that in this state to get your license. And then if you want to see it through all the way to the licensing phase of things, then yes. I’ll take you.”

  It helped and it didn’t help. To an eight-year-old, it was something like having been told, “Yes, I’ll give you what you want. Sometime next century.”

  But the news must have softened Aiden’s face some, because his father smiled at him in the dim light, and tousled Aiden’s hair through the open truck window.

  “Now go feed that nice-looking paint yearling of yours.”

  That formed a painful sword, too. It hurt both ways, both times—when he was left out, when he was loved. Both sliced down through his chest. But at least that was the only place, the only manner, in which he felt any pain.

  As he walked away toward the barn, he heard his father and Teddy talking. The truck window was still down. Their voices carried.

  “Thought that boy was all shut down where you couldn’t get to ’im.”

  “Not now, Teddy. Not anymore. Not since I gave him that paint colt. Now he wants nothing more than to be just like me. Why, he’d climb right into my boots if I’d let him.”

  The men didn’t really sound all that critical of the situation. But it made Aiden’s face burn all the same. Until he paused slightly, and strained his hearing, and tuned in to catch Harris Delacorte’s next words.

  “It’s kinda nice. Kinda warms your heart, you know?”

  That was the moment, at least as far as Aiden was concerned, when his obsession with his new father morphed into a reciprocal bond.

  “Hey, Magic,” Aiden said when he stepped into the barn.

  Magic answered him. Magic always answered him. It was the most wonderful greeting in the world, the best sound Aiden knew. A deep, satisfied nicker, throaty and rumbly.

  Aiden pulled a flake of alfalfa hay off an opened bale and tipped it into his horse’s feeder.

  It was still dark, and there was no electricity in the barn. But Aiden’s eyes had adjusted to the dimness, and he could see as much of his colt as he needed to see.

  Magic was tall now, his withers coming up to about Aiden’s nose. And he was beginning to fill out. He was getting a chest, and
hindquarters. Not the ones he would have as an adult horse. But he wasn’t a spindly foal who couldn’t seem to control his own legs. Not anymore. He ran like a flash flood when turned out in pasture, and his blond-and-white painted coat was furry and long for winter. He wore a green rope halter at all times because he was just learning to lead and tie, and it could be hard to catch the colt to put it on.

  Aiden let himself into the stall and draped his arms over the yearling’s spine as he ate his hay. Leaned his weight on that warm back, lightly.

  “So, I’m going hunting,” he told his horse.

  Magic swung his head around, jaw working with his chewing. He seemed to look at Aiden curiously, but that was probably reading too much into the situation. After all, it was dark. And Magic was a horse.

  Then he turned back to his hay.

  “I know it doesn’t sound quite right. But it’ll be okay. My dad does it, and he gave me you. So if he does it, it must be a good thing to do. But don’t worry. I would never hurt a horse. It’s different with a deer. It’s just all different.”

  Aiden was grateful that Magic didn’t swing his neck around again. He would have hated to be called upon to explain why it was so very different.

  When Aiden stepped back into the house after his first firearms lesson, his sister, Valerie, was standing in the front parlor. Shooting daggers at him with her eyes.

  He ignored her and walked into his room.

  In his head he could still hear and see everything. The crack of the rifle, leaving his ears ringing and mostly deaf for several seconds afterward. The ping of the soda can when Aiden finally hit it. The way it jumped slightly, popped up off the fence before falling. The little whoop his father made when he did it right.

  He stood looking out the window at the cattle grazing in the north pasture, and ran the moments over and over in his head. He picked up his baseball glove, because it was something his father had given him. Took the ball out of it and smacked it back into the glove again and again, enjoying the hard impact of it. Imagined his father giving that little whoop because he had caught a high pop fly in a big, important game.