Passion Play

  Fabian waited a few minutes, carefully guiding the foal away from the heaving body of the mare, then, even though he was fearful that he might be cutting a source of life, he severed the umbilical cord boldly. The foal was on its own now.

  Trembling to its feet within minutes, shaking but steady enough to keep its balance, it staggered about, oblivious of Fabian; confused, the foal broke into its first walk around the mare, then, exhausted, lay quietly at its side, waiting. In the morning, Fabian would run to his master’s house to bring the news of the new life in his barn.

  Later, with the mare resting and the foal surprised by its first sleep outside the womb, Fabian would lie in the straw, pondering the birth he had just witnessed. With a rush of envy and apprehension, he thought about the place that the foal had so heedlessly abandoned in the mare, its stall of warmth and safety, now bartered for the hazard of whip.

  He warmed at the thought of the mare and how he would have liked to nest inside it, alone there, well fed, its flanks his walls, its withers and croup his roof, its legs absorbing the shock of uneven terrain, and how he would be free to peek out at the hostile world merely by lifting the mare’s tail, a curtain he might raise or lower on an uncertain stage.

  It was then, when still a boy, that Fabian saw a horse die. The animal might have been grazing at pasture or hauling a plow or even resting in the barn. He remembered how, stirring to a portent of menace that seemed an alien odor invading its muzzle, the horse bolted, its head erect, its eyes hurtling to and fro, desperate to locate the lurking terror.

  Unable to make out its enemy, to move swiftly from the threat, powerless to flee its sense of foreboding, confused, the animal faltered in a spasm of panic and pain, betrayed by its own body, its breathing easy no more, its heartbeat, once so measured, broken now, erratic. It heaved its head about, instinctively searching out the presence of a herd, for others like itself, who, in this last moment of life, would offer a confirmation of continuing existence, copious and teeming.

  But there was no herd within its field of vision, no others to offer support, to draw sustenance from. Dread fusing with pain, the animal for whom earth had been a field over which to range and race, found that it could move no more, its muscles, tendons, ligaments withered, refusing to answer the summons of life that still nettled in its brain. It nodded instead to another signal, the drifting call of gravity, nature’s last.

  Fabian watched as the great bridge of the horse buckled, the useless pillars of its legs slipped sideways, the boom of its neck twisted, the head, an empty bucket, pitching down.

  In a moment, the horse’s power to breathe and to run, the license to continue in life, had been snatched from it, a merciless abolishment as arbitrary as the generosity with which life had been offered once to that newborn foal quivering under Fabian’s eyes. Now he saw that the body, which only a little while before had commanded the earth with matchless speed and endurance, was a heap of bone and meat, wrapped still and again, as at the beginning, in a steaming sac of skin.

  In life, the horse had always appeared to Fabian fleet and airborne, almost weightless as it skimmed the ground, gracefully springing back from the surface with the ricochet of its hoofs. Now, in death, it lay slack, the plane of its flank level with the earth, dense and resistant, dragged at the end of a thick chain by a sluggish ox, the horse’s legs floundering each time its body passed over a freshly plowed furrow.

  It was often Fabian’s task to gut the dead horse. In the barn, an ax handy, his knives sharpened on a whetstone, he would start by cutting open the main arteries, letting the blood from the severed vessels drip into a heap of desiccated hay. He then opened the base of the stomach, its entrails still hot, and started to disembowel the horse, piece by piece, organ after organ, mindful not to discard the edible delicacies of liver, heart, kidneys and tripe, or to soil them with the noxious colon and bloated cecum; unlike the rabbits, sheep and pigs he had often gutted, a horse had no gall bladder that, when carelessly cut, would spill its bile. He would then dump the offal and carrion into a corroded barrel and roll it down a small hill toward a pit he had dug, leaving the barrel open there, a feast for crows, dogs and rats.

  If the work did not sicken him, the poring over the spongy mass, his hands and clothes bloodied, the mingled smells of blood, excrement and half-digested food, it was because he would always think of the supple grace and fluent perfection of the horse in motion, its muscles surging to pull a cart, flexing in a walk, stretching and thrusting at a gallop.

  The flesh was gone now, the choicest hunks of meat hacked out by the farmer and stored in the icy pits under the main house. Only the skeleton remained before Fabian, its bones soon to be smashed and scattered at the edge of the forest, far from the pasture and fields that had been the horse’s domain. Above all other abandoned, useless and decaying parts of the dead horse’s body, the skeleton bothered Fabian most. Unlike the animal’s skin or blood, the intestines, lungs, nerves or muscles, each a forge of moisture and heat, a furnace of life, the skeleton, with its two hundred and more bones that Fabian had once counted, seemed no more complex than the crude pillars, posts, joints and frames that made up the barn—and no more mysterious.

  If the skeleton was the bony soul, the hardened essence of the horse, it appeared, when juxtaposed with the living mass of the animal, rather as its opposite, a caricature supplanting pliancy with rigor, fluency with brittleness, motion with stillness. What would have happened to the horse, Fabian wondered, if, throughout its life, instead of relying on its instinct, the animal had sought support only from its skeleton?

  Later in life, domesticated in his VanHome, Fabian would pass at random across the border of California and Nevada, stopping, when the impulse took him, at Dante’s View, a point of observation from which his gaze could sweep out over the panorama of Death Valley, a shallow, arid basin of rocks and flats, the floor of the continent he traveled incessantly, that rose at its farthest rim to the snowy drifts of Mount Whitney, climbing the grizzled slopes until it came to rest on the peak needling the sky.

  Posted above that parched and hazy sheet of Death Valley, he would marvel at the tolerance of nature, its indifferent generosity that permitted springs and streams, a lake and swamp, fish and other creatures native only to this measureless vacancy, in the midst of heat sometimes unmatched by any other on earth.

  Having left his VanHome miles away in the safety of a motel parking lot, he would descend into the valley, then take refuge on an islet in a sudden grove, an oasis of surprise, bending, marshy rushes fringing the edge of its trickling stream. There he would lie down, the sandy heat kneading his back, Big Lick and Gaited Amble nuzzling him or heaving to rest at his side, the shield of his eyes a screen for dreams and thought, the film of his imagining broken only by a need as rude as thirst or hunger.

  In the ceaseless rhythm of the stream, the darting flicker of a snake, the visit of a suddenly startled heron, the brooding of his horses at the shallow dunes, Fabian saw his solitude and his flight beyond the boundaries of time known and time yet to be forayed, testament to his joy and his lamentation, harbingers of a voyage whose destination he could not ever know.

  It was here, riding one day, that Fabian saw, far away on the flats, a herd of wild horses, their spotted hides a camouflage, their run kicking a screen of dust against the darkened hills and mountains.

  He started to follow the herd, prompting Gaited Amble into a smooth gallop, and when she began to pant, spent with heat, he vaulted easily to Big Lick, the horses’ gait unbroken. Soon he was close enough to make out the wild mustangs cantering loosely in a moving heap. Several mounted men chased the herd, hooting and slapping their thighs, slashing their whips at the slower horses, while a dozen or so dogs darted round the flanks of the mustangs, nipping at them.

  Fabian followed the dusty, pounding blur. A massive corral suddenly loomed in the distance, row upon row of trenches scooped deeply out of the crumbling soil like open scars in the parched landscape, waitin
g to heal. Perched high above the corral, he watched, binoculars magnifying the sight, as the men and dogs tightened their trap around the herd, the wild ponies still frenzied though buckling in the surge of sun and sand and their sweating multitude. He heard the first shot ring out, and then the volley of rifles, mixed with the faint neighing of the panicked horses as the mounted men steered the herd toward the ditches. Some animals collapsed where they stood, others were dragged down by the force of their own speed and weight, keeling into the trenches, their necks and heads straining high in terror, gouging their last breath of air in the valley of death, halting abruptly as they rammed into each other, muzzles smashing against ribs as they tripped and toppled, heaving to stay erect, some trampled already, others clawing from below, rearing from under the stampeding herd, only to be felled by a bullet or by the melee about them, sliding back into the ditch, a few still struggling hopelessly to leap out.

  The onslaught subsided; the ditches began to swell with the seething mass of horses, their neighing a distant tide in the vast-ness of sand and rock. Soon only a few mares were left to roam the corral aimlessly. Now the mounted men abandoned the easy pleasures of the gun for the challenge of lasso and the illusion of the hunt. Mad with terror, the mustangs hurtled through the net of their trappers, yet one by one, the whirling noose of rope brought each mare down, strangling it into submission, to be dragged headlong toward the swollen trenches, the dogs howling, the mounts of the men, inflamed with blood and death, now as terrified as the animals they hauled.

  Fabian watched as the riders searched the horizon intently, to ensure that they had felled all the wild horses; then they made a last tour of the heaving trenches, huddled flesh still quivering and steaming in the great open gashes of earch. He noticed how quick, almost furtive, the men were about it, aware that the grassy plain they had cleared of wild mustangs was public land. The prosperous ranchers they worked for would soon bring their private cattle there to graze, the scarcity of grass no longer a threat. With the dogs in yapping pursuit, the men galloped away from the corral, heading toward their bunkhouses, their reward, chili, beans and beer. Slowly, Fabian descended to the plain, Big Lick’s nostrils twitching, quick with apprehension as it picked its way toward the mass graves, Gaited Amble reluctant to follow, sniffing the air, its head tossing.

  A curtain of dust hung in the air, drifting lightly over the valley, masking the rocks and flats with a grainy film. At Fabian’s approach, a thin, whistling moan rose from the ditches, a sigh of desolation. Panicked, Big Lick thrust sideways, almost unseating Fabian and jerking Gaited Amble at the end of the lead rope. Fabian calmed the animals with his voice and hand, and the three of them continued to make their way along the ditches.

  The tableau of massacre opened before him in all its grotesque composition. Cramped in heaps in the narrow furrows of the mass graves, most of the animals were dead; some twitched, a last flicker of life. Settled at the brink of the spilling trough, Fabian saw the mound of dead and dying mustangs as an infernal creation: meshed and intersecting heads, shoulders, hocks, erupting muzzles, ribs and tails, twisting coils of a monstrous snake that burrowed greedily through the stony ground of the valley, its scattered eyes blinking, its venomous mouth open, ready to strike, indicting earth and sky.

  Suddenly, Big Lick gave out a vast neigh, all its power and strength of life in the cry, sundering the deathly calm of the valley. Before it could rebound in echo, from one of the ditches came an answering shriek, muted yet still firm, the last voice of life calling to life. But before it dissolved into echo, Gaited Amble called out, a third cry shivering the sky, the voice of a temporary victor in the battle of life, rallying the vanquished.

  As if at a signal, Fabian tightened his legs and threw Big Lick into a gallop. With Gaited Amble abreast, the curtain of dust veiling them still, he moved past the corral, across the mesa, through the plains and peaks, the valleys of Nevada.

  Early in the fall, after he had been idling on the road for about a week, he crossed into Arkansas and reached the Double Bridle Stables in Totemfield. As he drove up, the late afternoon sun was cresting over a string of spindly pine trees, their pointy tips like wooden arrows shafting the air, poised against the sky. Through the tracery of wood, the shell of an old mill hulked like a skull. Tiny cones of hemlock and spruce, a tangle of roots, littered his path. A drowsing melancholy invaded Fabian. Time always altered, rarely improved: the place looked shabby, not as he remembered it. He wondered if, in the intervening years, he had aged as gracelessly. He felt degraded by his poverty, which had brought him here now, for the second time; he wondered at the obsession that had once driven him here for the first. The obsession had been Vanessa.

  He remembered her, a student in his riding class, waiting for him at the paddock or riding off with him into the woods. The place had been filled with young riders, parents, instructors—a confusion of horses, cars and bicycles. Because of her, in their midst he had seen himself as a figure of charm, authority and influence. Then he had thought that one day he would return to claim her; now, the more he looked around, the more uncertain he was of himself and of her.

  What remained for him was the short walk to the office, where he would confront another woman from his past—but not to claim her.

  He parked his VanHome just beyond the main buildings, near the pond, where, sheltered by trees, it would not obstruct a view of the stables. As he swung down from the cab of the VanHome, he caught sight of three Hackney foals gamboling in the paddock, whinnying in the quiet.

  Fabian found Stella in the office. She looked well, the dash of her riding breeches a sweep of black, setting off the burnished gilt of her softly coiling hair, her skin even creamier than he had remembered. She had known when to expect him—he had telephoned a few hours earlier—but even so, he could not discern whether her allure was intended for him or for others.

  Face to face with her, Fabian felt a rush of withered emotion; he could not plagiarize a past self, was unwilling to pretend that the sight of her touched him.

  He took off his jacket and sat across the desk from Stella. A handwritten calendar hung on one dirty wall, a schedule of riding classes scribbled all over it in red pencil, and tacked above it were a row of yellowing photographs: Stella jumping bareback, Stella on the cover of The Tennessee Walking Horse, Stella exhibiting a two-year-old stallion, a champion of the Spring Jubilee, Stella with members of the Walking Horse Breeders Association at Shelbyville, Stella accepting an award from the American Legion Saddle Club. In one snapshot, Stella, poised against a graceful black mare, was visibly in her teens. The picture could have served for a poster of a Southern belle posing with her favorite Tennessee Walker. Had the photographer moved his camera one inch to the right, the snapshot would have included Fabian, for the picture had been taken only a few days after Fabian met Stella for the first time, after she had attended his horsemanship classes.

  Now, as then, it was common for him to be at a horse show, as a spectator, or judging a competition, and suddenly hear his name called out: he would turn and face a young woman, vibrant, fresh and lovely, one of his former students. As she threw her arms about his neck, reminded him of who she was, where they had met, what had happened, how well she remembered what he had taught her and the stories he used to tell her, Fabian registered the force of her transformed presence, her command of age and time. Yet he was trapped by uncertainty, what to say or do, conscious of the crossroads before which he stood, his dilemma sometimes observed by the young boyfriend, manly and handsome, whom the woman had discreetly left in the background. In her embrace, the return of her voice, Fabian sought the outline of the young girl he had once known, tempted to know if she might consent to a fresh bond he could devise for the two of them. But he was aware that the same process of time that had carried her to maturity had made of him a man in midlife.

  Closing in on youth—a young woman, a girl—Fabian could not resist its spell; he was compelled, his instinct honed by anguish. He would
fix with an intensity almost clinical, bordering on obsession, on the sheen of a girl’s eyes, the deep color that washed pupil and iris, each filament of hair that streamed from her head, the taut yet resilient skin that blanketed her bones and veins, the buoyancy of her flesh, its scent and feel not yet probed by another. All these were for him counters to the steady waste of time and age that raced between them. In that relentless flow, his age a constant subtraction, Fabian saw himself as the heir of time, an unransomable hostage to a past that was the only gift at his command. He saw himself appearing in a girl’s life as time’s agent, unbidden, indifferent to the drama of her destiny. He contemplated aligning himself next to her, unyoking their bodies to all that was spontaneous, involuntary—his flesh rising, erect, hers hardening, enfolding him as he sundered it, seed in its flood.

  Fabian was convinced that in first love, a young girl gave her love to her lover; in later loves, love merely came to her. But he knew that just as he should not expect a pony to bend to the curb, to the rein and the spur without prior schooling and cultivation, neither should he expect a young woman, healthy and beautiful, to come to him, a man more than twice her age, his home the road, his house a thing on wheels, a man of undistinguished looks and without obvious charm, with no riches to seduce, no particular skill to enthrall, and no profession that enhanced—above all, a man outside of permanence, able to offer only a few hours, days, weeks of his presence. For this reason, he had to find a girl while she was still susceptible to a man of his experience, a mentor, even if he could offer her no more than adventure in place of advice, weariness instead of wisdom. Usually the girl would still be in high school, still be living with her parents. In singling her out, cultivating her, arranging their first encounter alone, Fabian wished to initiate her, to keep a hold on her will and emotions, to leave his brand.

  He could not meet with the girl too many times without attracting unwanted attention, the notice of her fellow students, the teachers and staff of her school, often her parents. To avoid collision with the caprices of local laws, he would arrange no more than four or five meetings with the girl, some at public events, others in his VanHome. He saw to it that each meeting was intense enough to leave its mark for good.