* * *
Back at Hopeful Farm, two men stood in the Black’s empty stall, their faces stricken with grief.
“He took the Black with him, Henry, that’s some comfort,” Alec’s father said. He was much taller and several years younger than the trainer. Henry was leaning heavily against the wall of the stall as if too confused to trust his bowed legs to hold him.
“When did you first learn he hadn’t gone to Paris?” Henry asked.
“Yesterday, when Hank came to my office and asked if the Black was with you at Aqueduct. I’ve been trying to get hold of you since then.” He paused to regain his train of thought. “I went to Alec’s office and found his packed bag and plane ticket. I knew something was wrong, but it wasn’t until I found the newspaper in the snow and saw his tracks …” His gaze turned away from the trainer. “He must have fallen often in the snow, Henry,” he went on finally. “The imprint of his body was all the way to the Stallion Barn.”
“He read of Pam’s death in the paper,” the trainer said sadly. “I know how he must have felt.”
“Do you?” Mr. Ramsay asked, not unkindly. “Do any of us really know?”
“He needed to see her,” the old trainer explained. “I could tell that by his riding. He was under a lot of strain.”
“We’ve all been under a lot of strain, too much strain.”
“I pushed him too hard,” Henry said regretfully. “I should have known better.” Placing his hand on the taller man’s arm, he added, “But I was afraid he was going to get hurt, Bill. I was worried for him. Maybe he thought different, but I knew he could be killed out there if he made many more mistakes. It’s hell …”
“It wasn’t the way Alec wanted it,” the taller man said, “but that’s all behind us now. I’ve already decided we need help to find him, Henry, professional help.”
“The state police, you mean. Have you notified them? He can’t just disappear, not driving a truck and trailer, not with a horse like the Black.”
“I’ve been advised to be careful, very careful about what we do.”
“Advised? By who?” Henry asked. “What we should do is call the state police right now! He’s been gone two days already.”
“I had Dr. Warson over to the house last night, and we talked about what we should do to find Alec.”
“Your friend, the psychiatrist? That’s crazy!” Henry said, concerned and angry. “What good is he?”
“He’s a close friend of the family,” Mr. Ramsay said patiently. “He’s known Alec a long time, ever since he was a little boy. It’s important, David said, that we understand what’s happened to Alec so we don’t make things worse than they are, even lose him.”
“Lose him?” Henry bellowed, unable to keep his voice down. “How could we lose him when he’s hauling the Black behind him?”
“I—I meant something more drastic, Henry,” Mr. Ramsay said quietly. “David pointed out to me that despite Alec having been so successful with his life, he’s been under great strain a long, long time. Oh, I don’t mean just the recent pressures, Henry, our need for more capital to operate the farm, all of which have added to the strain. It goes further back than that, David told me.
“He said we must realize what Alec has gone through since he first found the Black in that horrible shipwreck, which almost cost him his life. Then he had to spend all those months on that remote island until he was rescued. David said Alec’s been through several traumas, and it was a wonder to him, as a medical man, that Alec has been able to cope with his life as he’s done. It most certainly has not been any kind of a normal life for anybody, let alone a young man. Since he’s had the Black, he’s experienced one grim adventure after another.”
“He seemed able to cope with his life to me,” Henry said, “even enjoying it.”
“David said it would appear so to anyone who didn’t know. But there was turmoil within him.”
“I thought his turmoil was his love for Pam,” Henry said.
“No, Pam actually helped him. David told me that Alec’s love for Pam was what he has needed all along. She was light and kind and happy, and she loved him very much.”
“She was all that,” Henry admitted.
“David said the truth of the matter is that Alec’s capacity to love is greater than other people’s, partly because of all he’s been through and his need for a love as deep as his own.”
“He’s always had the Black and us,” Henry said. “He knew he was loved.”
The tall man smiled wanly. “It’s different, Henry. You know that as well as I do, and with Pam he had a love that was very special. Her loss was more tragic to him than we can imagine. It may have triggered what David thinks could be a total collapse.”
“So what does Dr. Warson think we should do?” Henry asked impatiently. “Sit still? Do nothing? Wait for him to come back?”
“Something on that order,” Mr. Ramsay said gravely. “We can make quiet inquiries, but we can’t notify the state police or the press and conduct a manhunt on a national scale. David is afraid that Alec is in deep shock and, perhaps, still deeper depression. If the police were to pursue him, and he became frantic, the results could be tragic.”
“Tragic?” Henry repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Death,” Mr. Ramsay said barely in a whisper. “Alec could be driven to believing that life isn’t worth living without Pam.”
WESTWARD, EVER WESTWARD
6
The second day on the road, Alec set the pattern for the rest of the trip. He slept only after he had walked the Black in some unpopulated area. He would return to the truck, wrap his arms around the steering wheel and doze off, ready to leave again as soon as his eyes opened and he could see the road. He lost weight rapidly and his muscles, hardened by years of riding, started to become slack and weaker. Dark shadows blackened his eyes and the skin of his face was drawn tight by his illness. He looked gaunt and suddenly old, twice his age; his face that of one who was retreating from life.
“Pam is gone,” he said leadenly. His voice was like nothing he’d ever heard before. It didn’t matter. He really didn’t care, and that was the trouble. Nothing mattered anymore.
Alec continued driving, sinking ever deeper into melancholy as the miles passed beneath the wheels of truck and trailer. He lost all track of time. There were moments when he struggled to come to terms with his terrible sadness, but such moments were only when he stopped the truck to see to the Black. The thought of food for himself revolted him but he had to feed his horse.
Mechanically, like a robot, he cared for the Black as he would have done during any of their more pleasant times on the road. Each stop he let his horse rest for thirty minutes, standing still in the trailer. He cut down the stallion’s normal feed to one third, so there would be no possibility of “road founder.” But he gave him all the hay he would eat, and he put electrolyte tablets in his water so any water during the long trip would be familiar to him. And whenever it was time to walk his horse, he was as careful as he would have been at home, the lead chain going through all three rings of his halter so he had full control of the great stallion.
When Alec drove on again, it was apparent, too, that the Black was kept somewhere in his tormented mind, for he slowed the truck at any kind of intersection and stopped and started slowly. But most of the time his mind was racked by horrible thoughts, and he could not rid himself of them.
With Pam gone there was nothing between him and the end of his life but empty time. Her youth reminded him that death was no mere jackal preying on the weak and defenseless. Nobody had been stronger and more alive than Pam. He felt she had been too locked into life to ever lose it. She had died as if her enthusiasm and joy for life had tempted fate—and she had lost.
Alec struggled again to come to grips with his mind, to think clearly, to see life as Pam saw it. Was it better to live one’s life without ever running the risk of death? That was not to live at all. Did he himself not face death daily
in his every ride at the racetrack? And would he have changed it? No. No more than Pam had done.
Alec called her name over the noise of the truck’s engine. He was red-eyed, exhausted physically and emotionally, but his rational thoughts slowly helped him become a little calmer.
By the second night Alec was in the mountains of Georgia. Hunger finally made him stop when he saw the lights of a small restaurant ahead. He drove the truck to the back of it and went inside.
Alec ordered a bowl of soup and took it to a rear table. He ate as fast as he could, the spoon clattering against his teeth because he had no control over his hands. He got up and left the restaurant.
Hours later a northern snowstorm overtook him. The heater stopped working and he had to halt often to clear the ice from the windshield so he could see. All this he did automatically without thought of stopping and seeking shelter. He drove on, skidding on the icy road, but always pushing ahead, the powerful engine whirring down the mountainside. He didn’t mind the cold of the cab. He felt nothing, nothing at all.
When daybreak came, the snow turned to a drizzling rain, and he hunched over the wheel, gunning the engine on the straight road. There was no traffic and his desire to move faster burned his brain.
The truck rolled down the coastal plain of Alabama, leaving the snow and dirty weather behind. He removed his goose-down jacket and felt the warmth of the southern sun on his body. He found a pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment and wondered why he’d ever left them there.
When night fell again, he stopped the truck to get out and walk the Black. Together in the darkness of wooded pines, they smelled the fragrant sweet odors of green grass and fresh manure. Somewhere in the area grazed cattle and horses. He heard the rush of a stream and led the Black toward it, taking deep breaths, trying to clear his head, to understand what he was doing and what was happening to him.
Reaching the stream, he removed his denim shirt while the Black drank beside him. The sound of a locomotive howling its way through the night reached him as he lowered his head into the swift, rushing waters, hoping their icy shock would revive him to the point where he could think straight again.
Back on the road, he leaned over the wheel and rolled on, traveling beneath the stars, knowing that somewhere beyond the swamps of Louisiana, the plains of Texas, he would find peace. Was it a vision of Pam he followed or the real girl? Where was he going anyway? He had no answer.
With the first streaks of daybreak, the landscape turned green and rolling. Soon afterward he reached a coastal highway, running along the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. He turned on the radio, and crazy, mad jazz flooded the cab. Then a disc jockey was telling him, “Nothin’, man, we got nothin’ to worry about today! Jus’ listen to my music, man, and live, man, live!” Alec turned off the radio.
At dusk he passed the humming streets of downtown New Orleans, glad for the elevated highway that swept him swiftly through the city. It wasn’t until he crossed the Mississippi River, its flooding, brown waters rolling down from mid-America, that he turned off the highway onto a narrow two-lane road.
In the purple darkness he drove past bayou villages where little children waved to him as they played. He didn’t wave back. Getting away from people, even little people, was what he wanted. He wanted to see no one, no one at all.
He stopped once during the night, going into a small grocery store for gas and bread and cheese. No one bothered him. No one even noticed. He filled the gas tank himself and continued through a country turned strange and very dark. The road was elevated over Louisiana swampland, filled with inky water on both sides. There was no place for him to stop and rest.
He drove on through the night until dawn broke and ahead he saw huge structures in the dim light, oil tanks and refineries. He knew he was in Texas and drove ever faster, wanting to put the immense tanks behind him and smell the Texas cow towns and ranches and manure that lay miles beyond.
Rain came upon him again by midmorning, splashing down in great torrents. But there were ranches on either side of the highway now, and men on horseback to prod him on his way, their ten-gallon hats and jackets dripping under the downpour. The truck slipped often, its wheels spinning in the mud, but he was always able to bring it under control again.
Across the Texas plains, he drove for several hundred miles. Westward, ever westward into the sun. The next day he crossed the border into New Mexico and saw the mountain peaks beyond. Was that where he needed to go? America’s wilderness? All that was left for him was in the West, the great open spaces for a lonely man.
When night came again, he drove through the inky darkness, stopping only to care for his horse, then going on. All alone on the road, he had endless thoughts as he held the truck to the white center line. Where was he going? Would he find out? When?
By dawn the truck was zooming across Arizona deserts, great dry stretches leading north to the cliff towns of the Arizona mountains. Every bump in the road, every stretch of it, increased his longing for his Promised Land, wherever it was, whatever it was. The stones of old Indian ruins were all he saw on either side of the road. No people. No people at all.
Finally he turned off the state highway, again without question, and drove over a narrow gravel road that took him across a flat desert with ghostly shapes of yucca cactus on either side. It was wilder country than he’d known before. For a moment he closed his eyes in the heat of the sun coming through the windshield and pounded the wheel with his fists, uttering, “Why? Why? Why?”
Hours later he passed through a small Indian town, its streets full of holes. He slowed the truck while barefoot children watched him from the street and their families stood in doorways of dilapidated huts. No one waved or spoke to him as he carefully drove by.
On the outskirts of the town, burros walked with packs on their backs, their handlers usually straw-hatted old men with switch sticks in their hands. Only one spoke to him as he went by. “Where you go?”
Alec wished he knew. He bent over the wheel and went on, leaving the village behind.
Great mountains rose snow-capped in the distance, and he drove toward them, not knowing why but not questioning, not caring. Soon the truck began climbing, leaving the desert and gopher holes and cactus and mesquite behind. The air became cool as he drove ever upward through a narrow pass with sheer walls of stone on either side of him. He met nobody on the high road as the truck climbed until, finally, he reached a vast plateau at the top. Still beyond were the snow-capped peaks, but on either side of him were red mountainsides with long valleys.
Alec spent hours driving across the great plateau, occasionally seeing strange Indians in tattered rags, walking along with knives hanging from their belts. But they paid little attention to him as he drove by, watching with no expression on their beaten, brown faces. He knew his own eyes were as empty as theirs. At last he had found people as lost as himself.
The road became rutty, making the truck and trailer bounce as never before. He slowed until he was barely moving, avoiding the ruts as much as he could, thinking of his horse.
At sunset he began climbing again into the heights of the mountain range before him. He passed another village as he climbed higher, the Indians wearing heavy shawls and watching him closely from under wide hatbrims. Some turned their eyes up to him as he passed close by, their eyes like hawks’, their hands outstretched. Was it in friendship or for alms? He didn’t know. Their world was dark, ancient and, he knew, where he’d wanted to be all along. How else had he found his way here?
Alec kept going, ever upward. The last rays of the sun were golden on the high peaks, and the air was keen and blue and cold. He stopped the truck to put on his warm goose-down jacket again. All that he knew of his world was far behind him now. What lay ahead? He didn’t know. But soon, yes, very soon, he would have the answers to all his questions. His mind told him so.
In the jeweled, star-studded sky of early evening, he came to the end of the dirt road and stopped the truck.
Stretched before him, between two mountain ranges, was another vast, arid plain. He felt the cold snap of night in the air as he gazed at the high plateau, which appeared to him as a great, empty sea. He was looking at a far, far country and yet it had a familiar, dreamlike quality. It was here he wanted to be. But why?
“All right,” he told himself, “think. You must have answers.”
He found he had none. His mind wandered between reality and a dream. What had brought him here was not real to him. Neither was his own self nor his own past. Half of himself had been left behind at Hopeful Farm and the other half was still ahead of him. He knew only that he wanted something and that he resented something. He resented what he had become and the cruelty of a world that had taken Pam from him.
Alec left the truck to care for his horse. Then, totally spent, he stretched out in the straw beside the great stallion. In the chilly dark he huddled in his warm jacket and hoped for sleep. At last he was far away from everything he had known except his horse.
In the dead silence of the night he felt the Black’s warm breath on his face. It seemed to say to him, “Don’t worry. Go to sleep. I’ll look after you.”
It was as if life flowed from the stallion’s nostrils into his own tortured body and mind. For the first time Alec relaxed and felt safe. He began to go to sleep, really to sleep.
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
7
Alec awakened and looked east into the sun. The morning light was intensely strong, all fine gold and flooding the dry earth. He turned to the high mountains in the west and they, too, seemed to be melting in the fierce rays of the rising sun.
His mind felt at peace for the first time, and he knew that this day was to be like no other. He had come to the end of the line, and perhaps that’s what he had wanted all along.
With no thought of his own physical needs or well-being, he cared for his horse as he had done every other morning. Then, when the Black had finished his feed and water, Alec backed him out of the trailer.