The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

  Willadee wanted to remind Samuel that, even though God is good, an awful lot of people seem to suffer from the cradle to the grave. But Samuel was trying to tell her something important, and she didn’t want to get him off the track.

  “You’ve got to wonder about it,” he went on. “I asked God to make the storm go around this house, and He did precisely that. The twister didn’t pick up on one side of the house and set down on the other. It didn’t head out in a whole new direction. It went around this house. It was real close. Real tight. Real obvious.”

  He traced the twister’s path on her bare stomach.

  “Like this,” he said. “It was coming straight at the house, and then it circled around like this, and then it headed out straight again. Like that. I’ll have to take you up there to the rise and let you see for yourself, because you can’t get the full picture down here.”

  Willadee sat upright in the bed and looked at him through the darkness. “What are you getting at, Sam Lake?”

  “What I’m getting at is—I think God gave me this thing today as a sign.”

  “What kind of sign?”

  “One I can look back on, and hold on to.” He was silent again for another moment, and then he said, earnestly, “He just made it so vivid, Willadee. Like He wanted to make sure I could never forget.”

  Chapter 15

  On the first Friday in July, Odell Pritchett called from Camden to ask Ras Ballenger how Snowman’s training was coming along, and Ras told him he’d never seen an animal so eager to please. Odell was tickled pea green to hear that, since his teenage daughter, Sandy, was pure-dee in love with that horse. She had watched him come into the world, and had claimed him immediately, and right now she was missing him something terrible. What Odell was thinking was, he’d like to bring Sandy over and let her watch Ras work with Snowman, and maybe Ras could give her some pointers for later on.

  Ras had a dozen reasons why he wasn’t about to let Odell bring his daughter over to watch him work with Snowman, not the least of which was that right now Snowman had angry, oozing welts all over his flanks from being worked over with Ras’s whip. Another few weeks, and the wounds would be healed up enough so that they could be explained away, but right now they looked like hell. Naturally, that wasn’t the reason Ras gave Odell.

  “Now, Mr. Pritchett,” he said, “you know I don’t allow owners on the place while I’m workin’ with their horses. It undoes their trainin’. Gets ’em all excited, and they forget what they’re supposed to be doing. Then we lose half the ground we’ve already made, and you turn out wastin’ money you could have spent buyin’ that little girl of yours a fancy saddle or somethin’.”

  Odell suggested that maybe he and Sandy could watch from a distance. Snowman would never have to know they were even on the place.

  “You just don’t know how smart that horse is,” Ras told him. He was always telling owners how smart their horses were, since that was the thing owners most wanted to hear. “You come within a mile of this place, and that boy is gonna know it. I swear, he can read my mind. He knows what I want before I even tell him.”

  That was music to Odell Pritchett’s ears. “You really think he’s that good a horse?”

  Ras said, “Well, I don’t like to exaggerate, but I’ve worked with a lot of horses in my time, and this one keeps on surprisin’ me.”

  That last part was true. Snowman had surprised him a couple of times by throwing him (which very few horses had ever managed to do), and he had surprised him several times by not cowing at the whip (which almost all horses did do). He had even surprised him once by rearing up and trying to stomp his ass (which was why Snowman now had the oozing welts all over his flanks).

  Odell argued and cajoled, but Ras stuck to his guns. He knew full well that controlling the owner was every bit as important as controlling the horse, sometimes more important, since unruly owners could ruin your whole operation by blabbing to other owners things you didn’t want or need to have blabbed. They could take the bread right out of your mouth, which was just plain wrong.

  Finally, Ras said, “Mr. Pritchett, if you don’t trust me to know what’s best for your horse, maybe you’d better find yourself another trainer.”

  He was taking a gamble, but it was one he had taken before. So far, nobody had ever called his bluff. This time wasn’t any different.

  “Aw, now,” Odell protested. “I didn’t say I don’t trust your judgment.”

  Ras said, “I reckon I was hearin’ things.”

  Odell hem-hawed around, saying how he knew Ras was the finest trainer in the country, everybody knew that, it was just that he hated to disappoint his little girl, her being so attached to Snowman and all. Ras told him he’d hate it a sight more if that horse forgot his manners and pitched the kid off and broke her neck, all because he’d had his training interrupted at the worst possible time.

  “It’s your call, though,” he said. “He’s your horse, and she’s your daughter, and I can’t tell you your business. As a matter of fact, the more I think about it, why don’t you just get on over here and pick him up. I wash my hands of the whole thing.”

  Well, Odell wasn’t about to come and get his horse after being told a thing like that. He backtracked, and stammered around, and finally asked, with the proper degree of humility, how long Ras would estimate it might take to get Snowman finished right. No shortcuts. He wasn’t asking for shortcuts, and he wasn’t pushing or trying to hurry Ras, he was just wondering.

  “End of August,” Ras snapped. “Just like I told you in the beginning.”

  Geraldine was ironing again. Lost in her own thoughts. When you get up before sunrise, and spend the day doing some other family’s ironing for money that you’ll never get to hold in your hand because you’re not the one in charge of the money, you have to find some way to occupy your mind. A lot of times, like today, Geraldine occupied her mind planning her husband’s funeral. She never really planned the way he would arrive at the point of being dead and she would arrive at the point of being a widow, although she frequently hoped that the last thing Ras saw in this world would be some horse’s hooves, flashing down like swords of justice. That would be fitting.

  She sometimes thought, for brief moments, when she allowed herself, that it would be even more fitting if she herself did him in with a number 10 Griswold cast-iron skillet. Just smack him upside his little bullet-shaped head. She’d never have the nerve to try it, though. Ras was too quick. Any attempt to do him in would backfire, and it would be her brains that wound up on the kitchen floor.

  Besides, how he came to be dead wasn’t important for the purposes of her daydream, and she told herself that she wasn’t even really wishing him dead. She was just thinking about what it would be like if it happened. There was nothing at all wrong with contemplating what life would be like if some certain thing happened.

  In her fantasy, she could see him all laid out, looking natural, and she could see herself wearing a nice black dress, crying silent tears, while the members of the little Church of the Nazarene they sometimes attended felt sorry for her, and held her up in case her strength failed, and sang shouting songs. She didn’t actually have a black dress, and didn’t know how she might get one, but the best thing about daydreaming was that every little detail didn’t have to be filled in. Maybe some kindly neighbor would lend her a black dress or, better yet, buy her one. Maybe she would find where Ras stashed his cash, and the kindly neighbor would drive her into town, and she’d buy her own black dress. She didn’t know where she’d get the silent tears, either, but she figured those would come on their own. Sometimes she got misty-eyed just thinking about it.

  “I suppose it would just be too damn much trouble to get me a cup of coffee,” Ras snarled, out of nowhere. Geraldine had been so deep into her reverie that she hadn’t noticed when he slammed down the phone and sauntered into the kitchen. Right now, he was plopped down at the table, mad as a hornet.

  Geraldine thudded back into
the world of reality, laid the iron over on its side, and hustled to the stove to get his coffee. It wasn’t going to be right, because nothing was ever right, but she measured sugar and milk into it, and handed it to him, and waited to hear what was wrong with it this time. Ras took an experimental sip.

  “How come you’re standin’ there lookin’ like a walleyed heifer?” he demanded. “Don’t you have anything else to do besides stand around lookin’ like a walleyed heifer?”

  So at least the coffee must be all right. Geraldine went back over to the ironing board and took up her work where she had left off. Ras kept sipping his coffee and glaring around the room—not at anything in particular.

  “Bastid thinks he’s gonna come on my place without bein’ invited,” he said.

  “Which bastard?” Geraldine asked. After all, you never knew. In Ras’s book, everybody was a bastard.

  “Odell Asshole Pritchett.”

  Geraldine mouthed a silent oh and put the shirt she’d just been ironing on a hanger, which she hooked over the top facing of the wide-open back door with several other freshly ironed garments.

  “Bastid might just get a phone call one night before long,” Ras said.

  What he meant, Geraldine knew, was that Odell Pritchett might get a phone call saying that his horse had foundered and had to be put down. Or that it had stepped in a hole and broken its leg and had to be put down. Or that any number of other things had happened to it, with the end result being that it had to be put down. Ras could always find an excuse to kill.

  He was bad about shooting hunting dogs that wouldn’t hunt to suit him, and he was bad about catching stray cats and throwing them to the hunting dogs. He poisoned rats, although you couldn’t blame a man for poisoning rats. He hunted squirrels and deer and rabbits for food, and raccoons and foxes and beavers for their hides, and wolves and coyotes and bobcats for the noble reason that, if he didn’t kill them, they’d kill somebody’s livestock. He had no qualms about killing armadillos and possums and skunks, because they didn’t have any reason for living anyway. He had never killed a customer’s horse. Yet. But then, he’d never hated a horse as much as he hated this one.

  Ras slapped his hand down on the table, signifying that he had just decided something. Then he got up and strutted out the door, slowing down enough to give Geraldine a vulgar, bruising goose as he went by.

  She didn’t react. She didn’t have to. Her fantasy was waiting. All she had to do was slide back into it. By the time Ras was off the porch, Geraldine could already see it all again. There he was, laid out and looking natural. And there she was, in her nice black dress, crying silent tears. All around her, the people from the Church of the Nazarene were feeling sorry for her, and holding her up in case her strength failed her, and singing shouting songs.

  Blade’s little brother Blue, at four and a half, was curly-headed and round as a teddy bear, and thought his daddy hung the moon. Probably, he wouldn’t have thought that if he got whacked and whipped as often as Blade, but he didn’t. Blade didn’t hold that against him. You can’t hold it against somebody that they’re not getting switched till the blood runs down their legs or that they’re not getting thumped on the head till they’ve got punk knots sprouting everywhere.

  Instead of resenting his little brother, Blade tried to figure out what Blue was doing right that he himself was doing wrong. He figured it must have something to do with the fact that Blue was smart, and he (Blade) was dumb. That was what their daddy had told them, time after time.

  “Blue, you’re smart as a whip and sharp as a tack.”

  “Blade, you are too dumb to know it.”

  Blade would have loved to be smart as a whip and sharp as a tack, like Blue, except that he couldn’t really see any way that Blue was all that smart. He still wet the bed, he still talked baby talk, he still sucked his thumb. One way he was smart, though, was that he tried at every opportunity to be just like his daddy. He walked like him. He talked like him. If Ras picked up a piece of straw and stuck it in his mouth and chewed on it, Blue would pick up a piece of straw and stick it in his mouth and chew on it. If Ras hitched up his britches and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, Blue would hitch up his britches and hook his thumbs in his belt loops. If Ras kicked one of the Catahoula curs out of his way as he was coming down off the porch, Blue would kick one of the Catahoula curs out of his way as he was coming down off the porch.

  Ras thought it was the funniest, cutest thing he had ever seen, that little chubby shaver trying to act like his old man. Every time he would see Blue aping him, he would shake his head and grin and tell anybody who might be listening that that boy was a caution.

  Blade didn’t want to be like his daddy, but he wanted his daddy to like him, so he tried once in a while to imitate him, just the way Blue did. It never worked out. Whenever Blade aped Ras’s gestures, Ras would ask him what he was being so cocky about, who did he think he was? Blade never had an answer for those questions, which just proved to Ras that he’d been right about his oldest son all along.

  “You ain’t right bright, are you, boy?”

  “Boy, you are Dumb, with a capital D.”

  “Blade, you are too dumb to know it.”

  When Ras came across the yard, Blade and Blue were out by the holding pen, watching Snowman through the spaces between the wooden rails. Blade felt awfully sorry for the horse—something he could never admit, because nothing infuriated Ras Ballenger quite so much as somebody who was Dumb with a capital D feeling sorry for an animal that he had been abusing. Blade had seen what happened the few times his mama dared to express her pity.

  Blue never felt sorry for the animals. In fact, he seemed to get a kick out of observing Ras’s methods, and he participated whenever his daddy let him. Ras never allowed him to mess with the horses, unless they were cross-tied, because he was little and the damn sonsabitches might hurt him. Cats were another situation entirely. They couldn’t very well hurt anyone, even a little kid, if they were tied up in a gunnysack, which they generally were when they were thrown to the dogs. Anytime a stray cat came around, Blue was always the first to tell Ras. It was a dog-eat-cat world at the Ballengers’, and Blue, at four and a half, sure knew how to score points.

  Ras came swaggering out to the holding pen, and leaned up against the rails, and eyeballed Snowman—who stood very still, trying not to attract attention. He was a proud horse, or had been a few weeks earlier. The pride was what had gotten him into so much trouble. A man like Ras Ballenger, who had killed filthy Germans (many of whom had not been in uniform) with a bayonet, couldn’t be expected to tolerate insolence from a horse. The German civilians had begged to be spared. Not that it had done them a speck of good. Ras had found that immensely pleasurable—having two-legged animals beg for mercy.

  Four-legged animals (horses, at least) do not beg. If you inflict pain on a horse, it will do one of three things. It will try to get away. Or it will take the abuse, and stand there quivering, willing to do anything that’s asked of it. Or it will try to fight back.

  Most of the horses Ras had worked with had started out with the try-to-get-away response and graduated rather quickly to the quivering,-willing-to-do-anything-that’s-asked response. Snowman had started out plumb ass-backwards, somewhat willing to do what Ras asked, but (when nothing he did was good enough, and everything he did brought on punishment of one sort or another) he had opted to fight back. It hadn’t done him any more good than begging had done the filthy Germans, but there was one difference. Snowman was still alive.

  Ras Ballenger didn’t have a license to kill another man’s horse, the way he had believed he had a license to kill another country’s people in the war. He couldn’t just bayonet this horse. To do in somebody else’s horse, and get away with it, you had to have a reason. You had to be saving the animal from some unspeakable agony that couldn’t be fixed. Or you had to find a way to let the horse die on its own.

  Everybody who knows anything much about horses knows that t
he surest way to get one to die on its own is also the simplest. You just leave the door to the feed room open, and you go off to town (if it happens to be daytime) or you go off to bed (if it happens to be night). A horse doesn’t know when to stop eating and doesn’t have the ability to throw up. That’s all right on the open range, or out in a pasture. Out there, the horse will just get a big grass belly, or it might get the squirts, but if it stands in one place and eats fifty pounds of grain, it will die a hard death.

  When horses are afraid of a person, they won’t look that person in the eye. It’s as if they think that, if they don’t see the danger, it has disappeared. Or maybe they just can’t stand the stress. Snowman was standing with his eyes turned away from the wiry little man who was leaning against the fence and grinning at him.

  Ras laughed out loud. “You best look away, you sonofabitch,” he cackled.

  “Best look ’way, sum’bitch,” Blue parroted.

  Ras laughed again, and informed Blue that he was a caution. Blue may or may not have known what a caution was, but he looked up at his daddy and told him that he was a caution. Ras laughed out loud again, and picked Blue up and set him on the top fence rail, and pointed to Snowman.

  “Do you know what you’re lookin’ at there?” he asked.

  “Horsee,” said Blue.

  “That’s right. Horsee. Dead horsee.”

  Blue’s eyes got wide with surprise, and Blade’s eyes got wide with horror.

  “Dead horsee,” Blue chortled.

  Ras sang out, “You hear that, Snowman? You’re a dead horsee.”

  Blade didn’t say a word. He just stood there holding on to the fence with both hands. Blue might be the one perched on the top rail, but Blade was the one who felt like he might fall if he let go.

  “Just as soon as those welts go down,” Ras said.

  “Soon’s whells go down,” echoed Blue.