Blind Your Ponies Page 21

  “I can’t sing,” Dean said in a squeaking voice.

  “Yes, you can, Dean,” Sam said, smiling at the freshman. “You make magnificent music, as if you are singing, when you play basketball.”

  Completely bewildered, Dean looked at his teammates to see if they knew what in a rat’s ass their coach was talking about. Dean knew he couldn’t sing a note and he couldn’t play basketball worth a chicken turd. The coach was always talking funny like that and he wanted to pretend he knew what the coach was saying. Maybe if he practiced harder he’d understand, and he was willing to try this trans end stuff, but what bothered him most was that the other boys seemed to know exactly what the coach was talking about.

  CHAPTER 34

  That night there was constant traffic at Sam’s door, though not the traffic he’d hoped for. First, Tom showed up around nine with an uncharacteristic look on his face. Sam was halfheartedly studying basketball on the VCR and he invited Tom to join him. Sam thought he caught a whiff of beer on Tom’s breath as the cowboy settled on the sofa. It had always confused Sam why the self-confident cowboy image was so intertwined with alcohol when the last thing a drinking man had was self-confidence.

  “I’m sorry about my dad chasing you,” Tom said, glancing quickly into Sam’s eyes.

  Taken by surprise, Sam’s anger rose in his throat.

  “Your dad tried to kill me.”

  “He’s in jail for thirty days,” Tom said.

  “A man like that needs to be locked away from a sane society.”

  “It’s the damn alcohol,” Tom said. “I hate him when he drinks, the things he does. I’m glad he’s in jail.”

  “I know it must be hellish for you and your mom.”

  “Yeah … at least he doesn’t hit her.”

  “How about you?” Sam said.

  Tom looked away and shrugged.

  “Maybe the jail time will turn him around,” Sam said.

  “That’ll be the day.”

  Sam fought off the intense sadness in the room. “You want a Pepsi?”

  Tom ignored the offer and went on as if he didn’t want to leave it at that.

  “I saved my money for three years, bought a beautiful buckskin gelding—two year old. I brought him along, trained him, worked with him for hours every day. Called him Horse. He followed me around like he thought I was his daddy or something. The summer he was five my dad wanted to take him to Three Forks and ride him in the rodeo parade. Finest looking horse we’d ever had. I told him No. I knew he’d be drinking. I was only thirteen. I was down in Ennis that day baling hay with the Donaldsons. My dad took Horse to the rodeo.

  “We baled until after dark and I didn’t get home until around eleven. Horse was gone and I knew my dad had taken him. I took our old Chevy and drove for Three Forks. When I got to Willow Creek, there was a patrol car sitting off the blacktop just past the elevator. Its lights were twirling and there were a few people standing around. It felt like I had a horseshoe in my stomach. I thought of my dad immediately. I didn’t have a driver’s license yet but I pulled over and got out.

  “The patrolman was trying to get the story straight. Several people had reported a pickup and trailer dragging a horse down the blacktop. I felt sick, I couldn’t breathe. The patrolman turned his flashlight on the pavement. There was a bloody smear trailing off onto the gravel. No one had been able to get a license plate number or recognize the pickup and they couldn’t find the carcass. I knew instantly it was my father.”

  “Oh, God, Tom, how awful, how horrible.”

  “My dad hid out until noon the next day when the alcohol would be out of his blood. Then he showed up, said it had been a terrible accident. Said he’d gotten something to eat after the rodeo and then got in the pickup and drove for home. He forgot he’d tied Horse to the back of the trailer rather than loaded him. I couldn’t sleep for weeks, running along in my mind behind that trailer with Horse, through Three Forks at a trot, then speeding up out of town, trying his damnedest to keep up at a full run and, finally, falling, hitting the blacktop with his hide, screaming, forty-five, fifty miles an hour, burning the hide off him, the incredible pain, the shock, wondering why this man was doing this to him.”

  Sam felt his throat go dry, his heart race, the perspiration breaking out all over his body. It was the madness.

  “I couldn’t sleep for weeks,” Tom said, “reliving Horse’s last minutes being dragged to death, praying he died quickly before his organs were spilling out on the highway. There was a bloody smear from just outside Three Forks, all the way into Willow Creek. I wish I’d never seen what was left of him. My dad showed the sheriff the ditch where he’d dragged him that night. I wish I’d never seen his frozen brown eye still screaming from his slaughtered head.

  “The sheriff couldn’t prove squat. It passed for a terrible accident. But I knew my dad was drunk. I knew he came out of some bar and drove away drunk. I hate him and his goddamn alcohol. He can rot in jail for the rest of his life for all I care. Lock him up and mail the key to the moon and the world will be a better place!”

  Tom wiped at his eyes and stared into the TV. They sat there in an utter silence despite the noise from the basketball game.

  Someone knocked at the door and Sam was thankful, momentarily, off the hook. His heart was fluttering on the way to the door, but he attempted to keep the disappointment off his face as Carter, Louella, Olaf, and Pete bounded into the house a little after ten, back from a movie and hamburgers in Bozeman and looking for other ways to bring in the New Year.

  “Having a big night?” Sam said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Pete said. “We’ve been down at the river listening to the ice crack.”

  “Great,” Tom said, seeming to have thrown back the horror. “Now we can go out to my place and play cow pie.”

  “Cow pie?” Pete said.

  “Yeah. We each put a buck in the pot and pick a cow. The one whose cow shits first wins.”

  They talked Sam into turning off basketball and finding A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 at which they could hoot and shriek. Sam found two frozen pizzas in his freezer, and Pete scrambled back to his grandmother’s to scrounge what pop he could. Louella insisted on going along, in case he couldn’t carry it all.

  The new year approached and they found pots and pans and other objects with which to make noise. Another knock at the door convinced Sam that Diana had made it back from California in time. After rushing to the door, his disappointment exposed itself when he found Rob and Mary on the dark front porch.

  “Saw Carter’s truck. Didn’t know you were having a party,” Rob said as he and Mary bustled in.

  “I didn’t either,” Sam said, closing the door and trying to keep the heartache at bay.

  They brought in 1991 together, and Sam attempted to hide his loneliness and find comfort in their company.

  “Olaf,” Rob called from the kitchen, “Carter and Louella want to know how hard…”

  Louella and Carter sprang off the sofa where they flanked Olaf and ran into the kitchen screaming.

  “… the tundra is in Norway,” Rob shouted before the girls got to him. They played poker, sang the school fight song—sounding like Notre Dame alumni—ate everything that wasn’t locked away, and the party broke up shortly after two in the morning.

  When he was finally in bed, Sam could hear the wind that had eaten the Christmas snow and had left Willow Creek bare and dry. Sam shivered under his blankets. He kept seeing the bloody smear on the blacktop all the way from Three Forks, kept trying to evade the image of George Stone-breaker attacking him with his truck. Could he ever forgive the violent rancher, the Hamm’s Beer truck driver, the monster with a shotgun?

  A sudden sadness assaulted him and he strained to recall the scent of lavender soap.

  CHAPTER 35

  Diana called Sam on New Year’s Day, back from San Diego. She suggested they go for a drive and made only two demands: they could not even skirt the topic of basketball, and he should brin
g a swimsuit and towel. He told her how Stonebreaker had put his Ford in the shop and her voice became hesitant, as though she were contemplating canceling the invitation if Sam couldn’t drive.

  “Would you mind driving my car?” she said in an apologetic tone, “I’m really beat from all the driving.”

  “No, not at all. Always wanted to drive a Volvo.”

  When they hung up he grew excited at the thought of being with her in their bathing suits. He scrounged through drawers, closets, and overstuffed boxes, unable to recall if he owned one or not, finally discovering a scant silk red-and-white Speedo he remembered buying a few years ago at Krazy Days in Bozeman. But though it had been a good deal for a couple bucks, he wasn’t sure he’d have the courage to wear what there was of it.

  Since he started running, his waist had diminished noticeably, but as he tried on the Speedo in front of the bathroom mirror he could see that he filled it completely and that it left little to the imagination. He quickly put on clothes over the swimsuit.

  Diana pulled up in front of Sam’s house and stepped out of the black Volvo. The car looked road-weary, with dirt and winter scum streaking its fenders and wheels. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and kiss her but she quickly danced around the car and slid into the passenger seat. He settled in the stylish leather bucket seat beside her and smiled.

  Wearing jeans, a pink sweater, and a light pink-and-blue ski jacket, and with her long hair flowing free, she unsettled him to such a degree that he made a horrendous noise with the starter, engaging it when the engine was already running. She grimaced.

  “Hello. How was the trip?” he asked quickly in an effort to cover his embarrassment.

  “Fine up till now.” She laughed.

  “Sorry about that. The engine’s so quiet I thought—”

  “It’s all right.”

  He drove tentatively out of Willow Creek and tried to use his memory of Amy to mortar some kind of defense. But he knew a desolate part of him ached to fall in love with this delectable woman.

  “Why a Volvo?” he asked, searching for a normal heartbeat.

  “It’s the safest car on the road.”

  “That’s it? No thoughts of resale value, gas mileage, affordable parts?”

  “It’s the safest,” she said emphatically. “The other things don’t mean much if you’re dead.”

  They cruised along the grandstanding Jefferson River, through its twisting cavernous gorge, and out into the magnificent valley south of Whitehall. More and more Sam felt at home in the mountains, where their permanence gave him a sense of security.

  He brought her up to date on Willow Creek’s adventures while she was gone, including Hazel’s raucous behavior with the Chippendale dancers, at which Diana hooted.

  “They ought to lock him up and burn down the jail,” she said with bitterness when he filled in the details of George Stonebreaker’s berserk highway assault. “Next time he’ll come with a gun.”

  Startled, he glanced over at her, as if for an instant she knew. He stared back at the highway and calmed himself.

  Next time he’ll come with a gun.

  Thankful for the reminder, he gained his balance and got his feet back on the ground. He would not fall in love with her. Maybe they could be good friends, even lovers, but he would keep his heart out of it. Oblivious to the turmoil boiling in him, Diana seemed to be transfixed by the magnificent mountain landscapes.

  Suddenly, she grabbed his arm.

  “Stop! Pull over, please, quickly!”

  Sam pulled the black sedan to the shoulder and stopped. She unbuckled the seat belt and got out. He watched her in the rearview mirror walking back down the highway. Then he got out and followed her. She stopped and was kneeling over something at the edge of the blacktop. It was a large jack rabbit, fluffy white in its winter coat. It lay on its side in a peaceful pose, except for the dried blood on its muzzle.

  She picked it up gently and walked down into the ditch and over to a fence line where there was a thick bed of dried grass. She knelt and carefully laid the animal in a soft winter bed.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asked.

  “Would you leave the body of a person lying alongside the highway?”

  “Of course not.”

  “We slaughter creatures such as this one without a thought,” she said, gazing down at the pure white animal. “We kill them for sport, we destroy their living space and consider them a nuisance to be trapped and poisoned, and yet they’re our fellow residents of this earth. Our future and theirs is irrevocably intertwined. The least we can do is to show them our respect.”

  She stood, glanced once more at the rabbit, then turned for the car.

  Sam followed her, wondering what would be next with this woman.

  Through Twin Bridges, they followed the Ruby River Valley to Sheridan and then on to Virginia City as a sallow January sun ducked behind the foothills far to the southwest.

  “I think we’re going to lose Peter,” he said.

  “Ah, ah, ah.” She shook a finger. “None of that.”

  They stopped to eat in Ennis, and she insisted on paying for their food.

  “My idea, I buy the chow.”

  He fumbled for his wallet and left an overly generous tip in an effort to even things up, recognizing her attempts at keeping things light, friendly, anything but a romantic date.

  Out the door into the sudden winter darkness she said, “Want to go hot potting?”

  “Where?” Sam’s mouth went dry.

  “Norris, Beartrap Hot Springs, you’ve never been there?”

  “No.”

  BLEACHED WHITE FROM sun and steam, a rough wooden fence enclosed the hot spring and appeared as though it hadn’t changed since the miners and railroad men soaked their weary bodies in the soothing flow a century ago. The dressing room was a wooden shack tacked on the west edge of the pool, where frayed curtains covered cockeyed doorways and one bare light bulb illuminated the interiors. Sam hurried, wanting for him and his Speedo to be in the water before Diana appeared.

  When he came out, she was nowhere in sight. He stepped down the wide stairs until he was waist deep into the clear, steaming water. One low-watt spot halfheartedly illuminated the rustic bathing hole, allowing him to detect the few people who were soaking in the wooden pool, which appeared to be about thirty foot square.

  He could scarcely make out a young couple lurking in the far left corner. Three middle-aged men to the right of the stairs drank beer and prattled in tones that implied an alcohol-induced loosening of the tongue. A family of five played on the left side, where a pipe shot water high into the air and allowed it to fall back into the pool like a small waterfall.

  With the satin-smooth water covering him, Sam glided over the water-logged timbers and settled in the far, unoccupied corner. From there he could hardly even see the others lounging in the tingling, blissful bath, and he was left to anticipate the vision he expected to emerge from the women’s dressing room.

  Finally, Diana stepped out into the dim light, her bright yellow bikini stretched as snugly as her San Diego tan. Her long, dark hair spilled over her shoulders as she descended the rough wooden steps and let the water lap against her rib cage. The three men became silent, unconsciously lowering their Bud cans, gaping at her across the steamy pool. Even the male half of the couple in the corner allowed himself a direct stare.

  She stepped close and half-whispered from her natural pout: “I figured I might as well wear the bikini. I mean, it isn’t as though you haven’t seen me before.”

  “It’s not that.” Sam swallowed. “Why don’t I want other men seeing you in it?”

  “I don’t know, but I think I like that.”

  He settled on the submerged bench that ran along the edge, leaving him chest-deep in the soothing water, and she stood, between his knees now, her hands on his shoulders. With hungry eyes, he shamelessly traced her sumptuous body. Then he glanced up into her mischievous eyes, overcoming his reluctance and
nervousness by allowing his hands to grasp her willowy waist.

  “How long will Stonebreaker be in jail?”

  He broke eye contact and glanced over her shoulder, catching the three men ogling her, men, he imagined, who were aching inside and wondering what a goddess such as her was doing with him. It was, he knew, a common male response.

  Tenderly she brushed aside his damp hair and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

  “Thirty days… ah, twenty-six now,” he said with his lips on her ear.

  She turned and sat in his lap, his hands still around her waist.

  “A monster like that should be put away permanently,” she said, leaning her head back on his shoulder so they were cheek to cheek, gazing out over the steaming pool.

  “It’s funny you should use that word,” he said

  “What word?”

  “‘Monster’… I ran into one of them a long time ago…”

  “What happened?” she said.

  “I suppose you could say he’s the reason I’m in Willow Creek.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I’ve never told anyone.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  He held on to her, his arms tightly around her waist as though fearing he might be blown away by a sudden wind. Then something gave way in him and, soaking in that primitive hot spring somewhere in the mountains of Montana, he told Diana Murphy about Amy, about their love for each other, about her sudden, shattering death, about his flight from the sadness, about his clinging to something he couldn’t name.

  “I grew up with the illusion there was someone out there who would love and cherish me,” he said, “in the way commercials and movies and love songs promised. After years of searching and meeting flaky people, I gave up. I realized there was no one like that out there. It was all a romantic illusion. Then I met Amy.”

  Diana didn’t speak, but he felt her shudder and tremble in his arms.

  “Why didn’t I know?” Sam said so loudly some of the other soakers turned his way. “There had to be a warning of the madness as we approached that terrible force field.”