The Coldest Night Read online

“Easy as pie,” he said, his face to her cheek, and told her it was time for him to get going.

  He pulled up his collar and stepped into the wet haze. He could see the lights in the city below and the lights on the river, sparkling like wire-­strung jewels, the boats and barges and all the little boathouses. There was a flowery smell in the air, strange and sourceless, and from the stables the occasional tromp of slow bodies shifting hooves. He thought it would be a pretty night with the stars coming on.

  Somebody was calling his name. Walter helloed again, slammed the door to his truck and leaned against it.

  “What’s the good news?” Henry called out.

  “There’s a devil on my shoulder whispering in my ear.”

  “What’s he sayin’?”

  “Life’s a game and it’s rigged. What’s your story?”

  “I ain’t got one.”

  “Dirty weather,” Walter said grimly when Henry came up. “Ain’t good for bid’ness. Keeps the money away.”

  “That all he says?”

  “That’s enough.”

  Walter’s face was pale white and his lips were shaded blue. He had the arthritis bad and a twitchy airway. His respiration was slow and irregular. He quietly gasped when he breathed and conversation was difficult for him. Always about him was the smell of mentholatum.

  “Chores done?”

  “Yessir,” Henry said.

  “Come in for coffee?” Walter said.

  “No thanks.”

  “I was going to have some for myself and I am asking you if you’d like some.”

  Henry followed Walter inside to the tack room where he’d cut a door into the adjacent stall and fashioned a two-­room apartment. He had a hot plate, kerosene heater, an icebox, and he’d installed a Murphy bed. He walked painfully, each step a decision. During the early days of the first war his unit was bombed and his knee shattered and he’d been shot in the eye. There were pink scars on his cheeks and he had medals he kept in a cigar box. The one eye was now glass and his good eye turned inward toward his nose.

  “What’s for dinner?” Henry said.

  “Oh, I’ll stodge up something,” Walter said.

  The windows were open, but the damp shut out the air and the room smelled of the barn: hay, manure, sweat, leather, and oats.

  “How’s your mother?” Walter said.

  “She’s good.”

  Most days Walter wore overalls and a blue and gold Legion cap, but today he was hatless, his skull bald and gaunt, and he wore creased khakis, a pressed blue chambray shirt, and tennis shoes.

  “She is good,” Walter declared. “She is an angel walking the ground. I gave up women years ago, but she’s a good one.”

  “How do you know she’s good?”

  “I seen her today.”

  “Where’d you see her?”

  “Down at the VA. She looked good.”

  Walter set out two mugs. He splashed rye whisky into his and held up the bottle. His good eye wet and glittering. Henry shrugged and Walter splashed some in his mug too and then he filled both mugs with coffee from a vacuum bottle.

  “The main thing is to keep a woman busy,” Walter said.

  Walter carried his mug to a splintered sideboard where he fixed a plate of ham, boiled eggs, bread, and butter.

  “Baseball starts soon,” Walter said.

  Henry held up his hands, his fingers spread.

  “Ten day,” Walter said, tossing him an egg.

  “Ten,” Henry said, catching the egg.

  They drank quietly, Henry waiting patiently for what Walter had to say. He knew there was no point in hurrying him. He worked his thumb inside the eggshell and peeled it away.

  At last Walter said, “I have to go into hospital. They are going to take care of this leg and tuther one.”

  Henry’s first thought was the horses, their feed, water, and care, and whatever small business there was, who would conduct it.

  “I have been praying for a long time it wouldn’t come to this.”

  “What about the bid’ness?” Henry said.

  “The bid’ness is not lost on me.”

  “I can stay here.”

  “That’s what I’m wantin’ to ask you,” Walter said.

  “I can do that.”

  “What about school and baseball and your good mother?”

  “I will explain it to them.”

  “That would be a great service to me.”

  “When do you go?”

  “Now,” Walter said.

  “You going to make it?”

  “I am not about to lay down and die, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Walter’s powers of endurance seemed extraordinary. There were days he could not mount a horse because of the pain and once on he rarely dismounted for fear of not being able to step back into the stirrup.

  “It was first the one,” Walter said, “and now both knees burn like hell.”

  He never complained, but there were whole days his face was the tight mask of pain and the cast of his spirit one of torment and suffering.

  “They say you use more butter when it’s soft than when it’s hard. How can that be?”

  “I never thought about it,” Henry said.

  “What’s yor’ blood type?”

  Henry shrugged.

  “That’s something you ought to know.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “I don’t ’member,” Walter said. He finished buttering a slice of bread and folded it in half. He worked up his quid of tobacco, spit it into his hand, and tossed it aside.

  “Someday,” Walter said, waving his fold of bread in the air, “there will be giant mechanical brains to cook and take dictation.” With a flourish, he stuffed half the folded slice into his mouth, closed his eyes, and chewed.

  “That will be something to see,” Henry said.

  “All my troubles,” Walter said, “come from the fact that my ’magination is a little more active than those of others.”

  Walter pulled himself erect, and then hobbled over to a cupboard, its door hung with a cracked mirror. He paused and looked into the mirror.

  “You look like shit,” he said.

  From the cupboard he removed a white glass jar and a pair of tweezers and returned to the table.

  “I am afraid my life is vanishing,” he said. “Do you ever feel that way?”

  “No,” Henry said. “Sometimes.”

  “I need a swallow of the strong,” Walter said, and took another drink of the whisky and coffee he favored. He unbuckled his belt and let his khakis fall to the floor before sitting down. Then he loosed the bale on the white glass jar and slid open the top. He went inside with the tweezers and came out with a bee in their gentle pinch.

  “How bad is it?” Henry said.

  “What?”

  “The pain.”

  “You won’t know until it happens to you.”

  Walter held the bee’s abdomen to his bony knee. His eye flashed brightly and his nostrils widened. “Oh,” he said with each pull of the barb. “Oh.” His face reddened, his leg shook, his forehead broke with sweat. “Oh,” he said, releasing the bee. “Oh,” he said, closing his eyes and letting his head go back.

  After a brief time, he discarded the bee and went into the jar for another. He gritted his teeth and administered to his other knee, receiving the venom as if a secret current of life. His shoulders drooped and he breathed slowly, carefully.

  They sat for another spell, the stables silent, Walter in his skivvies, his trousers stacked at his shoe tops and Henry straddling a chair.

  When Walter looked up again his face was red and drenched with sweat and he was laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Henry said.

  “You know what they said? It is shrapnel rising to the surface. After all these years, little pieces less the size of needles floating around inside my legs.”

  Walter closed his eyes again. He swabbed at the wetness with his shirt cuff and breathed until
the rasp in his throat softened.

  He rested again and then he reached for his trousers pooled at his ankles and in a single motion he stood and pulled them up.

  “You’re not the kind to leave someone in the lurch,” he said.

  Walter nodded to the bottle and Henry poured him half a mug.

  “Good idea,” Walter said, and with trembling red fingers he lifted the mug and took a drink. He packed another chaw and fed it into his mouth.

  “I will now see the Gaylen horse,” Walter said.

  Henry fetched the wheelbarrow. He tipped it forward and Walter settled into its barrel, his legs dangling over the front. Henry levered the handles and when he did he made a groaning sound.

  “How much you weigh these days?” Henry said.

  “A hunnerd and sixty pound.”

  “That all?” Henry said, wheeling him to the door.

  “Not a ounce more.”

  “Then you must sit pretty heavy.”

  The sound of Walter’s laughter, coarse and harsh, brought the horses from their feed and water. They stood at their stall doors where they curved their necks and shook their heads. They stepped in place, nickering and whinnying, anticipating Walter’s arrival.

  Chapter 3

  THE GAYLEN HORSE MOVED up slope with increasing confidence and speed, exercising the strength in her hindquarters. Henry thought how when he reached ridgeline he could ride this horse from the face of the land and into the sky and to the sliver of the pale moon just hung.

  The world was black and blue with the silver light of the stars come down to earth and silent except for the leather creak, the shake of the horse, the muffled rattle and stretch of tack, the lunging breaths, as they made the ridgeline and traversed the darkling landscape. There was the smell of pine and cold and horse and the wax smell of Henry’s leather boots.

  For three nights he’d ridden the horse on this mountain trail. They traveled to the edge of the forest, the swart green pines a wall into the night. Up here he felt by particle and thread the fluence that rode the cold air.

  All day long he’d been at the stable when he should have been in school. The two-­storied brick building was a place of half-­rolled shades and smudged blackboards, the Encyclopaedia Britannica kept under lock and key. He actually liked school and he did well. He especially liked playing baseball, but knew he wouldn’t be going back again. He knew it was just killing time until he’d be leaving for Chicago, Detroit, Gary: stockyards, car factories, steel mills.

  He fished a Lucky Strike from his breast pocket. The cherry ember hissed and crackled. To the west were the distant tin-­walled warehouses, the Union Carbide plant. On the wind came the sulfurous exhaust from the smelting furnaces and rolling mills. Mixed in the air it smelled like noxious violets and disappeared.

  There was no spirit world that lived in the pitchy night, just him and this horse. And when morning came the ground fog burned slowly off the paddocks and leaf shade quaked on the ground. Then early that evening there was a moment before darkness when the sun became apparent and slanted rays hit his face. It was going to be another long night at the rundown stables above the river and he wished it would not end.

  He’d parcel out the oats and flakes of hay. He’d water and then telephone his mother and then turn on the radio and listen to the baseball broadcast. He’d let himself imagine for the time these were his horses and this was his stable.

  But he was not foolish.

  It’ll last as long as it lasts, he thought, and touched with his heels and pressed with his legs and Gaylen tossed her head and was spurred into flashy motion.

  In chill and moonlight they returned to the stables. Parked in the yard was an automobile, the engine shut down, the glare of headlights still hung in the stirry mist. He tightened his legs on Gaylen’s barrel as he crossed through the light and then dismounted. The low mist covered the ground and he could not see his feet. He walked Gaylen over to the automobile.

  It was Mercy parked at the white-­rail fence. She stood next to the automobile waiting for him. She wore her hair in a tight knot at the back of her head and a wide strawberry-­colored scarf about her neck and shoulders. She carried her head on a tilt, her mouth like a soft flower. She stood with her hands on her hips as if she’d been waiting too long and he was late.

  “Cut your lights,” Henry said, “or you will empty your batt’ry.”

  “What’s going on here?” she wanted to know.

  “Not much.”

  “Where’s Walter?”

  “He is in the hospital recovering from an operation.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “That’s none of my business,” Henry said, and turned on his heel and led Gaylen back through the paddock and through the wide door and into the long gallery of the board and batten barn. He cross-­tied the horse and removed her saddle and fleece pad. Outside, the automobile engine dragged and started and roared. There was a sweep of headlights and Mercy was gone.

  He put his face to Gaylen’s coat and let his weight lean into her side. He did not want to let go her infinite sweetness. He bathed the horse with warm water and toweled her dry. He shook out hay and then in the tack room he pulled off his boots and took off his jacket and shirt and lay down.

  The next day after school, Mercy returned again. She brought a can of coffee and a sack of crullers. She had apples for the horses. In a sack she handed him there was hard candy and he took one and slipped it into his mouth. As he went back to his chores, she groomed and saddled and haltered Gaylen and then led her into the ring.

  Henry tied a red bandanna across his forehead and over that he wore a broad straw hat. He left off his chores to stand at the rail in the late sunlight.

  “It’s quite a good day,” she called out, and he nodded in agreement.

  Gaylen was mesmerizing to watch. She was a forward-­moving animal with an elliptical stride, picking up her feet and reaching for distance with the action of her knee, but nobody rode her like Mercy. She was a pretty rider, consonant with the horse’s every motion.

  Henry ducked between the rails and moved to the center. He turned in place while the horse and rider made their revolutions. Mercy’s hands were quiet and held close to the neck, her legs resting along the horse’s sides and held still. She looked up and ahead. Then he spoke.

  “I want you to take a holt of your reins and push up into the bridle with your legs.”

  Mercy did as he suggested. Gaylen’s head set and stayed as if in a frame, both horse and rider looking up and ahead.

  Henry stepped from the center and walked a smaller circle beside them.

  “Keep her moving along at a brisk trot,” he said, and then, “Lift your hand a little so that she keeps her head up. You don’t want her head so low.”

  Mercy lifted her hands. She held her shoulders back, her elbows bent at her sides and the line from her shoulder through her elbow, hip and ankle was straight as an arrow.

  “Canter,” Henry said.

  Mercy pressed the horse into canter and the horse joyfully stepped into the three-­beat gait. Mercy sat back in her saddle, keeping the horse slow and steady, keeping her in frame.

  “Keep her light. Keep your leg on her,” Henry said. “Don’t let her pull the reins out of your hands.”

  Mercy and Gaylen circled him in harmony, light and cadenced as if made for each other.

  She returned every day that week. On Friday she stayed and helped him finish up with his chores and afterward they made coffee and ate the sugary crullers she brought and took their coffee outside to drink, the mugs warming their hands. Some distance from the stables he sat down on the ground and she sat beside him.

  “Want a smoke?” he asked, but she declined and then neither of them spoke or moved.

  “I’ve not been here at night so late before,” she said. “It is so quiet. You must sleep well.”

  “Quietness scares away sleep,” he said, feeling foolish for the pith of such a comment.

/>   “I won’t quarrel with that,” she said.

  Moonlight shone on them, cast through the trees and thin as glassy water. He fought how suddenly aware he was of her presence.

  “My father says I should ride at the new stable.”

  “Why don’t you?” he said, though it hurt a little to say.

  “He says if I do he’ll buy me a horse.”

  “Sounds like a good deal.”

  “He tried to buy Gaylen, but Walter said she wasn’t for sale.”

  His blood slowed. He’d not known her father tried to buy Gaylen. Why should he know? He was just a hired man.

  “There’s a lot of other horses for sale.”

  “But I don’t want a horse.”

  “Every girl wants a horse.”

  “I am not every girl.”

  There came the plangent call of a whippoorwill deep in the forest and they listened to its cry. He whistled up its call and he went back and forth with the bird for the longest time.

  “What do you do with yourself?” he said. “When you’re not riding.”

  “I study a lot. What about you?”

  “I like to play baseball.”

  “They say you are very good.”

  “Who says that?”

  “People.”

  Her blue eyes held a certain transparency and at times were passionate and at other times becalmed, but rarely were they at peace. She was wearing blue jeans and a red wool sweater and smelled of hand soap. Her abundant hair was combed exactly down the middle and tied back.

  “What about you?” he said. He was asking questions purely for the sake of it.

  “I am going to the university in the fall.”

  He was suddenly aware in his flannel shirt of the smell of old sweat. His chest tightened and he squinted his eyes. Beyond the mountain there was no light and was as if the bottom of darkness.

  “Can you feel that?” she said.

  “What?”

  “I am touching your shadow.”

  “My shadow,” he said, turning quickly as if to catch a glimpse of fleeting presence.

  “Your moon shadow.”

  He made a sound and then he lit another cigarette. He wanted her to leave and go home and be left alone. Their worlds were too different and he barely understood his own.