Presence: Stories

  They wanted now to move the noose higher up on the mare’s neck because it had fallen on her from the rear and was tight around the middle of her neck, where it could choke her if she kept pulling against the weight of the tire. They had learned from previous forays that they could not leave a horse tied that way without the danger of suffocation, and they wanted them alive until they could bring a larger truck from Bowie and load them on it.

  Gay was the best roper so Perce and Guido stood by as he twirled a noose over his head, then let it fall open softly, just behind the forefeet of the mare. They waited for a moment, then approached her, and she backed a step. Then Gay pulled sharply on the rope, and her forefeet were tied together. Then with another rope Gay lass’d her hind feet, and she swayed and fell to the ground on her side. Her body swelled and contracted, but she seemed resigned. The colt stretched its nose to her tail and stood there as the men came to the mare and spoke quietly to her, and Guido bent down and opened the noose and slipped it up under her jaw. They inspected her for a brand, but she was clean.

  “Never see a horse that size up here,” Gay said to Guido.

  Guido stood there looking down at the great mare.

  Perce said, “Maybe wild horses was all big once,” and he looked to Guido for confirmation.

  Guido bent and sat on his heels and opened the mare’s mouth, and the other two looked in with him. “She’s fifteen if she’s a day,” Gay said, and to Perce he said, “She wouldn’t be around much longer anyway.”

  “Ya, she’s old,” Perce agreed, and his eyes were filled with thought.

  Guido stood up, and the three went back to the truck. Perce hopped up and sat on the truck bed with his legs dangling, and Gay sat in the cab with Guido. They drove across the lake bed to the stallion and stopped, and the three of them walked toward him.

  “Ain’t a bad-lookin’ horse,” Perce said.

  They stood inspecting the horse for a moment. He was standing still now, heaving for breath and bleeding from the nostrils. His head was down, holding the rope taut, and he was looking at them with his deep brown eyes that were like the lenses of enormous binoculars. Gay got his rope ready in his hand. “He ain’t nothin’ but a misfit,” he said, “except for some kid. You couldn’t run cattle with him, and he’s too small for a riding horse.”

  “He is small,” Perce conceded. “Got a nice neck, though.”

  “Oh, they’re nice-lookin’ horses, some of them,” Guido said. “What the hell you goin’ to do with them, though? Cost more to ship them anywhere than they’d bring.”

  Gay twirled the loop over his head, and they spread out around the stallion. “They’re just old misfit horses, that’s all,” he said, and he flung the rope behind the stallion’s forelegs, and the horse backed a step, and he drew the rope and the noose bit into the horse’s lower legs, drawing them together, and the horse swayed but would not fall.

  “Take hold,” Gay called to Perce, who ran around the horse and grabbed onto the rope and held it taut. Then Gay went back to the truck, got another rope, returned to the rear of the horse, and looped the hind legs. But the stallion would not fall.

  Guido stepped closer to push him over, but the horse swung his head and showed his teeth, and Guido stepped back. “Pull on it!” Guido yelled to Gay and Perce, and they pulled on their ropes to trip the stallion, but he righted himself and stood there bound by the head to the tire and his feet by the two ropes the men held. Then Guido hurried over to Perce and took the rope from him and walked with it toward the rear of the horse and pulled hard. The stallion’s forefeet slipped back, and he came down on his knees and his nose struck the clay ground and he snorted as he struck, but he would not topple over and stayed there on his knees as though he were bowing to something, with his nose propping up his head against the ground and his sharp bursts of breath blowing up dust in little clouds under his nostrils.

  Now Guido gave the rope back to young Perce Howland, who held it taut, and he came up alongside the stallion’s neck and laid his hands on the side of the neck and pushed, and the horse fell over onto his flank and lay there; and, like the mare, when he felt the ground against his body he seemed to let himself out, and for the first time his eye blinked and his breath came now in sighs and no longer fiercely. Guido shifted the noose up under the jaw, and they opened the ropes around the hoofs, and when the horse felt his legs free he first raised his head curiously and then clattered up and stood there looking at them, from one to the other, blood dripping from his nostrils and a stain of deep red on both dusty knees.

  For a moment the three men stood watching him to be sure he was tightly noosed around the neck. Only the clacking of the truck’s engine sounded on the enormous floor between the mountains, and the wheezing inhale of the horse and his blowing out of air. Then the men moved without hurrying to the truck, and Gay stored his two extra ropes behind the seat of the cab and got behind the wheel with Guido beside him, and Perce climbed onto the back of the truck and lay down facing the sky, his palms under his head.

  Gay headed the truck south toward where they knew the plane was, although it was still beyond their vision. Guido was slowly catching his breath, and now he lighted a cigarette, puffed it, and rubbed his left hand into his bare scalp. He sat gazing out the windshield and the side window. “I’m sleepy,” he said.

  “What you reckon?” Gay asked.

  “What you?” Guido said. He had dust in his throat, and his voice sounded high and almost girlish.

  “That mare might be six hundred pounds.”

  “I’d say about that, Gay,” Guido agreed.

  “About four hundred apiece for the browns and a little more for the stallion.”

  “That’s about the way I figured.”

  “What’s that come to?”

  Guido thought. “Nineteen hundred, maybe two thousand,” he said.

  They fell silent, figuring the money. Two thousand pounds at six cents a pound came to a hundred and twenty dollars. The colt might make it a few dollars more, but not much. Figuring the gas for the plane and the truck, and twelve dollars for their groceries, they came to the figure of a hundred dollars for the three of them. Guido would get forty-five dollars, since he had used his plane, and Gay would get thirty-five including the use of his truck, and Perce Howland, if he agreed, as he undoubtedly would, would have the remaining twenty.

  They fell silent after they had said the figures, and Gay drove in thought. Then he said, “We should’ve watered them the last time. They can pick up a lot of weight if you let them water.”

  “Yeah, let’s be sure to do that,” Guido said.

  They knew they would as likely as not forget to water the horses before they unloaded them at the dealer’s lot in Bowie. They would be in a hurry to unload and to be free of the horses, and only later, as they were doing now, would they remind themselves that by letting the horses drink their fill they could pick up another fifteen or twenty dollars in added weight. They were not thinking of the money any more, once they had figured it, and if Perce were to object to his smaller share they would both hand him a five- or ten-dollar bill or more if he wanted it.

  Gay stopped the truck beside the plane at the edge of the lake bed. The tethered horses were far away now, except for the mare and her colt, which stood in clear view less than half a mile off. Guido opened his door and said to Gay, “See you in town. Let’s get the other truck tomorrow morning.”

  “Perce wants to go over to Largo and sign up for the rodeo tomorrow,” Gay said. “Tell ya—we’ll go in and get the truck and come back here this afternoon maybe. Maybe we bring them in tonight.”

  “All right, if you want to. I’ll see you boys tomorrow,” Guido said, and he got out and stopped for a moment to talk to Perce.

  “Perce?” he said. Perce propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at him. He looked very sleepy. Guido smiled. “You sleeping?”
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  Perce’s eyelids almost seemed swollen, and his face was indrawn and troubled. “I was about to,” he said.

  Guido let the reprimand pass. “We figure about a hundred dollars clear. Twenty all right for you?”

  “Ya, twenty’s all right,” Perce said, blinking heavily. He hardly seemed to be listening.

  “See you in town,” Guido said and turned and waddled off to the plane, where Gay was already standing with his hands on the propeller blade. Guido got in, and Gay swung the blade down and the engine started immediately. Guido waved to Gay and Perce, who raised one hand slightly from the truck bed. Guido gunned the plane, and it trundled off and into the sky, and the two men on the ground watched as it flew toward the mountains and away.

  Gay returned to the truck, and as he started to climb in behind the wheel he looked at Perce, who was still propped up on one elbow, and he said, “Twenty all right?” And he said this because he thought Perce looked hurt.

  “Heh? Ya, twenty’s all right,” Perce answered. Then he let himself down from the truck bed, and Gay got behind the wheel. Perce stood beside the truck and wet the ground while Gay waited for him. Then Perce got into the cab, and they drove off.

  The mare and her colt stood between them and the sage desert toward which they were heading. Perce stared out the window at the mare, and he saw that she was watching them apprehensively but not in real alarm, and the colt was lying upright on the clay, its head nodding slightly as though it would soon fall asleep. Perce looked long at the colt as they approached, and he thought about how it waited there beside the mare, unbound and free to go off, and he said to Gay, “Ever hear of a colt leave a mare?”

  “Not that young a colt,” Gay said. “He ain’t goin’ nowhere.” And he glanced to look at Perce.

  They passed the mare and colt and left them behind, and Perce laid his head back and closed his eyes. His tobacco swelled out his left cheek, and he let it soak there.

  Now the truck left the clay lake bed, and it pitched and rolled on the sage desert. They would return to their camp and pick up their bedrolls and cooking implements and then drive to the road, which was almost fifteen miles beyond the camp across the desert.

  “Think I’ll go back to Roslyn’s tonight,” Gay said.

  “Okay,” Perce said and did not open his eyes.

  “We can pick them up in the morning and then take you down to Largo.”

  “Okay,” Perce said.

  Gay thought about Roslyn. She would probably razz them about all the work they had done for a few dollars, saying they were too dumb to figure in their labor time and other hidden expenses. To hear her, sometimes they hadn’t made any profit at all. “Roslyn goin’ to feel sorry for the colt,” Gay said, “so might as well not mention it.”

  Perce opened his eyes, and with his head resting on the back of the seat he looked out the window at the mountains. “Hell, she feeds that dog of hers canned dogfood, doesn’t she?”

  Gay felt closer to Perce again and he smiled. “Sure does.”

  “Well, what’s she think is in the can?”

  “She knows what’s in the can.”

  “There’s wild horses in the can,” Perce said, almost to himself.

  They drove in silence for a while. Then Perce said, “That’s what beats me.”

  After a few moments Gay said, “You comin’ back to Roslyn’s with me or you gonna stay in town?”

  “I’d just as soon go back with you.”

  “Okay,” Gay said. He felt good about going into her cabin now. There would be her books on the shelves he had built for her, and they would have some drinks, and Perce would fall asleep on the couch, and they would go into the bedroom together. He liked to come back to her after he had worked, more than when he had only driven her here and there or just stayed around her place. He liked his own money in his pocket. And he tried harder to visualize how it would be with her, and he thought of himself being forty-six soon, and then nearing fifty. She would go back East one day, he knew, maybe this year, maybe next. He wondered again when he would begin turning gray and how he would look with gray hair, and he set his jaw against the picture of himself gray and an old man.

  Perce spoke, sitting up in his seat. “I want to phone my mother. Damn, I haven’t called her all year.” He stared out the window at the mountains. He had the memory of how the colt looked, and he wished it would be gone when they returned in the morning. Then he said, “I got to get to Largo tomorrow and register.”

  “We’ll go,” Gay said.

  “I could use a good win,” he said. He thought of five hundred dollars now, and of the many times he had won five hundred dollars. “You know something, Gay?” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m never goin’ to amount to a damn thing.” Then he laughed. He was hungry, and he laughed without restraint for a moment and then laid his head back and closed his eyes.

  “I told you that first time I met you, didn’t I?” Gay grinned. He felt the mood coming on for some drinks at Roslyn’s.

  Then Perce spoke. “That colt won’t bring two dollars anyway. What you say we just left him there?”

  “Why, you know what he’d do?” Gay said. “He’d just follow the truck right into town.”

  “I guess he would at that,” Perce said. He spat a stream of juice out the window.

  They reached the camp in twenty minutes and loaded the gasoline drum onto three bedrolls and the aluminum grub box in the truck and drove on toward Bowie. After they had driven for fifteen minutes without speaking, Gay said he wanted to go north very soon for the hundreds of horses that were supposed to be in the mountains there. But Perce Howland had fallen fast asleep beside him. Gay wanted to talk about that expedition because as they neared Bowie he began to visualize Roslyn razzing them again, and it was clear to him that he had somehow failed to settle anything for himself; he had put in three days for thirty-five dollars, and there would be no way to explain it so it made sense, and it would be embarrassing. And yet he knew that it had all been the way it ought to be even if he could never explain it to her or anyone else. He reached out and nudged Perce, who opened his eyes and lolled his head over to face him. “You comin’ up to Thighbone with me, ain’t you?”

  “Okay,” Perce said and went back to sleep.

  Gay felt more peaceful now that the younger man would not be leaving him. He drove in contentment.

  • • •

  The sun shone hot on the beige plain all day. Neither fly nor bug nor snake ventured out on the waste to molest the four horses tethered there, or the colt. They had run nearly two hours at a gallop, and as the afternoon settled upon them they pawed the hard ground for water, but there was none. Toward evening the wind came up, and they backed into it and faced the mountains from which they had come. From time to time the stallion caught the smell of the pastures up there, and he started to walk toward the vaulted fields in which he had grazed; but the tire bent his neck around, and after a few steps he would turn to face it and leap into the air with his forelegs striking at the sky, and then he would come down and be still again.

  With the deep blue darkness the wind blew faster, tossing their manes and flinging their long tails in between their legs. The cold of night raised the colt onto its legs, and it stood close to the mare for warmth. Facing the southern range, five horses blinked under the green glow of the risen moon, and they closed their eyes and slept. The colt settled again on the hard ground and lay under the mare.

  In the high hollows of the mountains the grass they had cropped this morning straightened in the darkness. On the lusher swards, which were still damp with the rains of spring, their hoofprints had begun to disappear. When the first pink glow of another morning lit the sky the colt stood up, and as it had always done at dawn it walked waywardly for water. The mare shifted and her bone hoofs ticked the clay. The colt turned its head and return
ed to her and stood at her side with vacant eyes, its nostrils sniffing the warming air.

  [1957]

  Glimpse at a Jockey

  It’s like this saloon, it’s the best in New York, right? You can’t even sit down in the can here without a hundred-dollar bill in each ear, look over there at that gray-hair loafer with the broad, getting himself loaded to put the wife out of his mind and for what? So he can make it with that Sue he paid anyway. I love them all. I bequeath myself to this world, life, the whole skam.

  I’m happy here talking to you. Why is that? Who knows why you cross the bridge to some people and not to others? I’m absolutely happy right now. They underrate the whole nature of loyalty between men, it’s different than with a woman, the kind of challenge. I’d win sometimes and be ashamed because the friggin’ horse had me bobbling around coming over the finish line, instead of stylish. I could get down closer to the horse than any son of a bitch ordinarily, but sometimes you draw some broken-legged horse and you bump in like a trussed flounder on a no-spring truck. You ride for the other jocks, for their admiration, the style. My last race I went through the fence in Argentina, wired, screwed, and welded twenty-two bones, and after three months in the hospital the flowers stopped. A jock is like a movie star, the whole skam’s night and day, the broads drooling your name printed on your friggin’ forehead. Nothin’. Except two guys, mostly Virgil, that loyal son of a bitch, I’d die for the bastard.

  Who understands that any more? I went to see this Doctor Hapic last year, what a sweet old starch, the greatest according to what you hear. And I lay down on the broken-down old couch and he looks around in the bins and comes up with a racing form! I figure I’m in for homosexuality because that’s the hinge if men move you so much, and here’s old Al diggin’ me for a line on the sixth race, askin’ me who’s an honest bookie and all. I put in three hours with him, he canceled one appointment after another, and when I left he charged me for half an hour! But how the hell do I know who’s goin’ to win? Even when I was riding I didn’t know. Chrissake, the horse didn’t know! Why can’t they leave it alone, I mean the analyzing? Everybody I know who went come out a friggin’ judge. I admit it, the whole skam is pistils and stamens, all right I surrender. But Jesus, give me room, let me die laughing if I’m goin’ to die. I’m ready. If I slide off a snowbank under a cab outside there I’ll cheer death. I love her, my wife, married eighteen years, and my kids, but you draw a line somewhere, someplace, before there’s no room left for the chalk down in the corner. The men are scared, did you see it where you been around? They keep makin’ little teeny marks but they can’t draw the line. Nobody knows any more where he begins or ends, it’s like they pied the maps and put Chicago in Latvia. They don’t allow nobody to die for loyalty any more, there’s nothin’ in it to steal.