On the phone was Stu Gilcrest from down the road. He said, “Your girl was just by here.”
That’s how good neighbors behaved. Theirs was a community where people kept tabs on one another’s loved ones. Randall told him that, come July, Lisa would be around a lot more.
“All summer?” Stu marveled. “She’s become a lovely little lady. You must be very proud.” Something in his tone sounded subdued. He was keeping something back.
Randall thanked him. Sensing there was something else, he waited.
Over the phone, Stu said, “I see she’s got herself a new horse.”
Randall explained about Sour Kraut dying and bragged how he’d looked far and wide for a replacement. He waited for Stu to exclaim about the Arabian. Its beauty. The gentle manner of it.
When Stu spoke he’d lost his friendly, neighborly tone. “Nobody hopes I’m wrong more than I do.” His words dropped to almost a growl. “But if I’m not mistaken, that’s Red Sultan’s Big Boy, isn’t it?”
Randall was taken aback. A chill of dread embraced him. He ventured, “That there’s a fine, fine horse.”
Stu didn’t respond, not that instant. He cleared his throat. He swallowed. “Randall,” he began, “we’ve been neighbors since way back.”
“Since three generations,” Randall agreed. He asked what was the matter.
“All I’m saying,” Stu spat the words, “is that you and Lisa will always be welcome on our place.”
Randall asked, “Stu?”
“It’s none of my business,” his neighbor stammered, “but Glenda and I would much appreciate you not bringing that animal onto our property.” This sounded as if it hurt to say.
Randall asked if he meant the horse. Had Lisa or the horse done anything to offend? The Gilcrests had a couple of girls near to Lisa’s age. Girls could take offense and catfight and patch things up faster than a bolt of August heat lightning. They loved the drama.
The phone line clicked. A female voice joined the conversation. Stu’s wife, Glenda. Randall pictured her on the extension, sitting on their bed. She said, “Randall, please understand. We can’t have our girls anywhere near your place. Not until that horse is destroyed.” Against Randall’s protest, they both said good-bye and hung up.
Over the next four hours, almost all of the neighbors called. The Hawkins. The Ramirezes. The Coys and Shandys and Turners. It was clear that the group of riders was making a slow circuit of the district, taking County Road 17 to Boundary Lane, after that moving west along Sky Ridge Trail. They were paying calls at every girl’s house or the home of a relative. It was this series of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins who were telephoning in quick succession. After a few strained words of hello, each caller asked if Lisa wasn’t in fact riding Red Sultan’s Big Boy. And when Randall told them, yes, that was the case, to a person they informed him that the horse was unwelcome in the future. Furthermore, none of them would be calling at his place if the horse was on the property.
Lisa had been forced to ride the last leg of the circuit alone. By midafternoon, all her girlfriends had been forbidden to ac-company her another step. Even as she trotted up to the house, abandoned by her friends, she didn’t seem daunted. Her head held high, her back straight, if anything, she seemed smug. Triumphant, even.
The phone calls left Randall prepared for the worst. He expected to find the horse hostile and skittish, but the Arabian was gentle. As placid and sweet-natured as ever. As she ran a curry mitt over his flanks, Lisa said he was responsive to commands. His gait was smooth. Nothing, not passing cars or barking dogs or low-flying crop dusters, nothing spooked him. No one had said anything unkind. She seemed unfazed by everyone’s reaction. They’d looked at the horse, but none of the girl’s relatives had come forward to touch him. They’d simply ordered their girls to dismount and go no farther.
That night, after dinner, as Randall and his daughter washed dishes, a car stopped on the road, near the far end of their drive. The day’s events had him nervous, and Randall listened for it to drive away. Instead, the living room front window burst. Footsteps retreated down the gravel to the car, and tires squealed into the distance. Amid the shards of glass on the carpet was a dark, curved shape. A horseshoe.
Lisa regarded the weapon, her lips bent into a little smile.
The next Saturday, they loaded Red Sultan’s Big Boy into the trailer and set off for the Merriwether stables. Enid Merriwether had been teaching dressage to comers since Randall was a boy. The paddock parking lot was mobbed with females, mostly mothers and daughters and their horses. When Lisa swung open the gate of their trailer, the din of chatter fell to silence.
A girl giggled. The ladies glared the giggler into silence.
A voice said, “Well, if it isn’t Red Satan’s Bad Boy…” All heads turned to regard Enid Merriwether as the great horsewoman herself approached. The leather of her riding boots creaked. The sun glinted on the buttons of her tailcoat. In one hand swung a dressage whip. Her gaze took in the crowd of stewing, sullen women. Turning to Lisa, she said, not without sympathy, “I’m sorry, but we seem to be a little overenrolled for the season.”
Randall stepped forward, saying, “I’ve seen more riders than this many.” Not counting mothers, only counting girls and horses, it didn’t appear to be more than an average turnout.
As if she hadn’t heard, Lisa was leading the Arabian down the trailer ramp. Enid stepped back. Enid Merriwether, who’d never backed down from the most cantankerous beast, she eyed that Arabian and motioned for the crowd to give the horse more room. She brought the whip up, ready to use it. “I’ll thank you to load that animal right back in your rig and remove him from these premises.” The onlookers drew their breath.
Lisa, with a defiance that her father had never heard in her voice, his daughter shouted back, “Why?” Her face wasn’t just flushed. She was the red a person sees when he looks at the sun with his eyes shut.
Miss Merriwether barked a laugh. “Why?” She looked at the crowd for agreement. “That horse is a killer!”
Lisa nonchalantly examined her manicure, saying, “He’s not.” She put her cheek against the horse’s cheek and said, “Really. He’s a lover boy.”
The great horsewoman motioned to enroll the crowd. “He’s worse than a killer. And everybody around these parts knows it.”
Lisa looked at her father. Randall was dumbstruck. The stallion lifted his head, stretching his neck to sniff new air. The horse yawned.
Compassionately, even piteously, Enid Merriwether looked at the smirking girl. “Lisa Randall, you know darned well that horse is evil.”
“He’s not!” Lisa purred. She kissed him. The crowd of mothers flinched.
That night Randall banged together some boards to cover the busted front window. In the dusk he could see, out in the yard, where he’d mounded up some earth and planted a cross, two boards nailed crosswise, painted white and lettered with the name “Sour Kraut.” He’d told Lisa her horse was buried there, but the truth was a flatbed had trucked the poor dead beast to a rendering plant across the state line in Harlow. As he watched, Lisa picked a bunch of daisies from a flower bed his mother’s mother’s ma had planted. She brought the bouquet to the fake grave and knelt. The evening breeze carried snatches of her prayer. She was talking about how much she loved her old horse, and how much she loved the new Arabian. Listening, it occurred to Randall that the love people feel for animals is the purest form of love. Loving an animal, a horse, cat, or dog, was always a romantic tragedy. It meant loving something that would die before you. Like that movie with Ali MacGraw. There was no future, just the affection of the present moment. You didn’t expect a big payoff, someday.
The fading light made it harder to see her in the yard, but Lisa’s words were clear. She said how much she was enjoying her summer. She said how beautiful Red Sultan’s Big Boy was and how much everyone loved him. When she said, “I love you, Mom,” Randall realized she’d been talking on her phone.
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Before she came inside, he heard the phone ring in the kitchen. The Caller ID said, “Private Number.” He picked up.
The voice was no one he’d ever spoken with in his life. No, he’d have remembered this voice. The wheezing quality. The breathless panting. In a voice he’d never forget, a stranger asked, “Am I correct in understanding that you currently possess the Arabian stallion known as Red Sultan’s Big Boy?”
Randall braced himself for a stream of verbal abuse. He listened for Lisa walking up the porch steps.
Unbidden, the voice continued, “Please know that I am prepared to offer you the sum of five hundred thousand dollars for the animal in question.”
A voice asked, “Who’s on the phone, Dad?” It was Lisa, standing at his elbow.
“Nobody,” Randall said and hung up.
That week, on a hunch he drove over the state line to the rendering plant in Harlow. It was no place folks went on a whim, the proverbial glue factory. The smell alone could knock a man down. He followed the road along a chain-link fence until he came to a locked gate. A travel trailer sat just inside, and Randall honked his horn and waited. A man came out of the trailer and asked his business, and Randall explained about shipping Sour Kraut’s body a couple weeks back. Without unlocking the gate, the man brought forth a clipboard. Leafing through the pages, he stood with just the fence between them. “A pinto gelding, you say?”
Randall asked, “Do you have any record?”
A lot of pages deep, the man said, “Here we go. The hide was fine. The bones. The hooves.” Clearly, they didn’t waste a thing.
Randall asked, “Any sign of what killed him?”
The man said, “County makes us test for spongiform encephalitis.”
Randall waited. Big in his head was the image of Sour Kraut collapsed on the stable floor. His neck stretched out, and his head fallen in a puddle of bloody foam.
The man turned the clipboard for him to see. His fingertip tapped a line where the word “atropine” was written. “Heart attack,” the man said. “Chances are your horse got into some nightshade or a patch of potato vine.”
Randall asked, “How long’s it take?” Every muscle of him felt weak, as if he’d stepped out of a too-hot shower.
“Not long.” The man shook his head. “That horse would’ve died where he ate it.”
That same week, there came more of those strange telephone callers, each one offering to buy the horse. Among them was the broker who’d sold them the Arabian. Calling Thursday night, he wanted to buy back the horse. “Not for myself, mind you.” The broker sounded defensive. “I’m acting strictly as the agent for a third party.” He opened with a price of twelve thousand. Twice what Randall had paid. Flat out, Randall asked him what all the fuss was about. The broker asked, “You’re saying you truly don’t know?”
Wary, Randall shook his head. He remembered being on the phone and asked, “Know what?”
“You haven’t seen the video?” The broker said, “Since it went viral, I’m getting inquiries from as far away as Kingdom Come.”
Before Randall could hang up, he heard the broker say, “Your little girl’s already called me and told me to field offers, but you’re the fellah what holds the papers.”
Up to then the worst Randall had ever seen was a classroom movie called Signal 30. Mr. O’Connor had made his class watch it in sixth grade, to make them more careful around railroad crossings and wearing seat belts. The memory was like bronzed baby shoes or the wad of cotton folks used to find in a bottle of aspirin: almost forgotten. The school movie showed black-and-white photos of wrecked cars and people speared through the chest by gory steering columns. Windshields were punched with cannonball holes made by blasting-out babies. The blood and motor oil had the same quality of inky black. That made it difficult to tell if a puddle on the pavement beside a crumbled sedan was from a cracked block or someone bleeding to death. A kid in class fainted, Logan Carlisle, maybe Eva Newsome fainted. An ominous storyteller’s voice had stitched the nightmares together, asking, “The next time you think you can outrun a freight train, think again!” A train horn had blared, followed by sound effects of breaking glass and crashing metal, and the movie would flash the photo of dead teenagers strewn around a jalopy mashed to scrap by a Southern Pacific locomotive.
The booming voice asked, “Think it’s safe to pass a stopped school bus? Well, think again!” Filling the movie screen would be some two-lane rural highway scattered with the mangled bodies of children.
The other worst thing Randall had seen was at a barbershop, where they used to keep a stack of true crime magazines under the Playboys. Page after page of sex crime photos. Atrocities. Like a naked woman, pretty except for having her arms and legs hacked off with a meat cleaver, packed into an open suitcase with a black bar superimposed across her eyes to protect her dignity. One was a woman on the flowered rug in an olden-times hotel room, strangled by the cord of a rotary-dial telephone. On the coarse, yellowing pages was woman after woman, naked and dead in different ways, but all with black rectangles to keep their eyes secret.
Compared to Signal 30 and the barbershop magazines, what Randall found on the Internet was worse. A person might as well eat poison as download this clip. He didn’t have to watch more than a couple minutes to recognize his horse. What Red Sultan’s Big Boy was doing to a naked, bent-over man was the ultimate abomination. An image Randall would be burdened to carry to his grave.
If nothing else, it felt comforting to know he was the last among his friends and neighbors to be stained by watching this strange, sad outrage. It was equally galling to imagine what others were imagining, him hosting the purebred under his roof. But where they saw sin, he recognized loneliness. A brand of loneliness that heretofore Randall hadn’t known existed.
He hit Enter and watched the video clip play a second time.
It could be what occurred in the video wasn’t about pleasure as much as it was about surviving the real version of what life did to you every day. Randall reasoned, it was about subjecting oneself to a greater power. Whether it was a pleasure or a physical test, it wasn’t cluttered up with ideas of romantic love. More a religious love. Taking place was a penance or an act of contrition.
Randall conceded a longing to not be the master, to stop being in control. A want to please some brand of huge, weighty god. To feel its crushing approval.
He hit Enter to replay the experience.
It scared him to think the opposite. To consider that it might be a pleasure, a pleasure beyond anything most people would ever know, a pleasure worth dying for. A physical rapture.
From the recorded grunts and groans, the man under the horse thought he was having a grand old time. He must’ve known he was on videotape. None of that mattered, judging from how the man arched his back, and the eyes-closed smile on his face. It was strange to see someone that happy who wasn’t pretending. On the computer screen, the man bent his knees deeper, thrusting his backside against the bucking hips of the stallion. Something dark, a shadow or blood, ran down his leg.
Randall hit Enter and the adventure began, anew. This time he watched the horse.
In retrospect, Randall recognized that the shadow running down the back of the man’s leg had been semen. Too much to be human.
He hit Enter once more. He still had the front window to replace. He hit Enter all night. He muted the sound, but continued to watch when his phone rang. “As you might know,” the caller began, “the horse has certain talents that make it extraordinarily valuable to a select group of buyers.” It was the voice from a few nights back. “I feel duty-bound to warn you. Those people won’t hesitate to use violence to their ends.”
Randall watched the video until it was Friday night and time to pick up his daughter for the weekend.
They’d moved to the home place after Randall’s father had died. The three of them, Lisa just a baby. Randall’s pa had spent the last two years of his life in a care center, in town, where they’d go t
o see him almost every day. At the same time, the house had sat like a time capsule. The piano stood where it always had. There was a history attached to every plate or hammer. Nothing could be got rid of. Every throw pillow cued a long sermon to explain its every stain or the stitches where it had been mended. If Randall’s wife had moved a carving fork from one drawer to another he’d moved it back. She bought green paint to redecorate the upstairs bedroom, and he’d made her return it. Randall’s aunt had hung the wallpaper in that room. Every stitch in every quilt was sacrosanct. Every notch scratched in the kitchen door frame marked the growing up of someone now long dead. They’d become curators. Finally his wife had moved herself back into town. What all he saw as his legacy, Estelle took to be a curse.
Lisa came to visit, resentful and bored, until he’d bought her Sour Kraut. She’d cared for that horse with the same intensity that he’d cared for the house and farm. Neither of them could resist something helpless.
At Estelle’s house, Lisa tossed her overnight bag into Randall’s backseat. She was talking on her phone as she slid into the front seat beside him. She was saying, “Not my problem. If you think you can find another horse that will do the job don’t waste my time.” She snuck a glance at Randall and winked, telling the phone, “We’ve got other offers on the table.”
Without looking at her, he asked, “Is it real?”
Lisa touch-screened her phone. “Is what real?” Then, with a laugh, asked, “Are you talking about the video?”
It was obscene. An atrocity.
Rolling her eyes, Lisa reasoned, “Paris Hilton. Kim Kardashian. Pam Anderson. Rob Lowe. Who hasn’t made a sex tape?” She laughed. “Daddy, it’s a scream.”
Randall gripped the steering wheel tighter. “So you’ve seen it?”
It was an Internet classic, like a myth they’d read in school, she said. Leda and the Swan. Her friends had never seen anything more funny.
Randall said it wasn’t funny. It was tragic.