TWENTY-SIX

It was almost winter before I was fit to go back to work at the ranch. And when I did, Mr. Benavidez called me in to see him right away. I thought he was going to fire me, but he didn’t. I guess I thought the whole world was mad at me, and maybe I was expecting to be punished. I don’t know.

I walked even more crooked than Tommy did from that snakebite, and the worst part about that was that it hurt me to run, which I tried to do the same day they took that cast off of me. But I didn’t care about the pain, I would run anyway.

And I didn’t blame Reno, either.

So maybe that horse medicine we all had that night at the edge of the pond worked at putting forgiveness in me, but I never saw myself as holding a grudge anyway. Especially against a horse.

“It’s nice to see you up and looking like your old self. Come in, Troy,” Mr. Benavidez said at the door to his office. He shook my hand, almost carefully, as I thought about what my old self must have looked like.

I was a little nervous, but I didn’t care anymore if he wanted to fire me, or even if he told me that I could never see Luz again, because I already knew what I was going to do; no matter what. I held my hat in front of me and limped over to the leather chair in front of his desk.

“I don’t want you to worry about anything, Troy. You seem nervous. I’ve talked with Gabriel and Luz. And, well, Gabriel thinks the world of you. I’m sure you know, he thinks of you as his brother.”

I looked down at my hands.

“I’m ready to work.”

“Then you should go.”

I stopped at the door, my back turned to Mr. Benavidez as he lit a cigar. “Your son saved my life. That’s all. We would’ve both died without him.”

I heard him puff that cigar. Without turning around, I left, closing the door behind me. And I thought, That old fool probably thinks his son did something wrong again. He doesn’t even know his own son. Or his daughter.

I hadn’t seen Luz in weeks, and I felt like it was making me sick. I hadn’t slept, and every time I thought about her my mouth would dry up and I’d get that lump in my throat. So I’d call her, but hearing her voice would even make me feel crazier about getting out, just so I could see her again.

And she was waiting for me just outside the front door of that big house. It was windy and clear and cold. The willows had lost nearly all of their leaves, scattered like yellow scales and feathers below them. I had buttoned up my coat and was straightening my hat when I saw her there.

“You look good,” she said.

“You look better,” I said. “It hurts sometimes. Like today.” I looked right at her. Her hair was down, the color of those willow leaves, spilling over the upturned collar of her coat. Her eyes were shining, smiling at me. “I miss you, Luz. I miss you so much. Being here with you. I hope everything’s gonna be okay now.”

She grabbed my hand. “Can I walk with you over to the barns?”

“I bet your dad’s watching.”

“I know he is,” she said. “I told him I’m going to see you. That’s all.”

We walked out the little gate, past the willows where Gabriel and I had dug that fort, holding hands. I could almost smell the cigar, feel his eyes on my back. And at that moment I almost wished the barns were a hundred miles away, just so we could walk like that, with him watching, wondering about me, wondering about what had happened; so I held on tight to his daughter’s hand and resisted the urge I had to glance back over my shoulder to the window where I knew he’d be.

“I’m coming back to school next week, Luz.”

“There go my grades.”

We were out of sight of the house now. “Can I kiss you?”

She grabbed my collar with both of her hands and pulled herself into me, combing her fingers through my hair, over the spot where I had all those stitches.

“It’s all healed,” I said. “But look, my hair’s shorter there. And it’s brown.” I took my hat off and turned around, and felt her fingers working through my hair, parting it to see the scar. She raised up on her toes and kissed me there.

“I need to talk to Gabey,” I said.

We started on toward the stables. “I want you to, Troy. He’s not doing good.”

“I knew it. I know. I’ll take him out on a ride. Maybe tomorrow after work. Will you tell him for me? Tell him to be ready, okay? Make him go.”

“He needs that.”

“So do I. I haven’t even been up on a horse …” I didn’t finish. Didn’t need to.

I took the truck and drove to Holmes that night.

After all, I did remember making that promise to Tom when we rode through that orchard of ghosts the night we came down from the mountain.

In his things, I’d found a picture of a horse he had drawn. It looked like that stallion he had taken from Rose. I could tell Tommy put a lot of work into it, and although I was scared about the tattooing, Tom’s drawing was beautiful. All in black, running, with his head down and his hooves all splayed out and stretching for the ground, like he was moving fast, his mane and tail spraying back behind him. It looked exactly like how that horse ran when we set him free.

They put that horse on my left rib cage, right below my heart, and it took almost two hours to finish. All the while, I felt Tommy sitting over me, grinning, as I stretched shirtless out on the table, watching the artist work with that vibrating bee-stinger needle, hearing Tom asking Does it hurt about a dozen times and spitting tobacco. I stared right up at the ceiling, counting the black marks on the rotting foam tiles there, and silently said no, no, because it didn’t hurt like my broken leg, like seeing Tommy dying, but it hurt pretty bad and the pain was worse the closer it got to being finished.

The artist taped clear plastic wrap over it when he was finished, and blood seeped from its edges. I looked at it in the mirror, dizzy and numb from that pain, like scraping the flesh away to my bones. I liked that horse even more than when I had seen it on the paper where Tommy had drawn it.

I paid and left. I’d stowed some cold beers in the truck and I drank two before starting back for home on that dark stretch of empty dirt road.

The angel is sleeping in the woods.

I left my shirt off so I wouldn’t get blood on it; and so I could admire that horse from time to time.

I had spent four months trying to figure out the sense in what had happened, but I never got close to knowing. I pulled the truck over in the dark, looked down at the horse inked into my body, and opened a can of tobacco.

Maybe some things you’re just not supposed to know. And you try to figure them out and you just get frustrated when you should just forget them and move on. ‘Cause you’ll never figure out why you have to see the people you love go away and disappear. I spit out the window, the icy night air raising bumps on my naked skin.

I tried to forget. I tried so hard not to ask why again.

Maybe sometimes a boy’ll throw a rock in the water, and the ripples that it makes will rock a boatful of fishermen on the other side of the world, and they’ll all look at each other and say, “What was that?”

And maybe every one of them will have a different explanation, but they’ll all be wrong. And who would know?

It was cold. I rolled the window up again.

One day, I told myself, I would tell my father the whole truth about me and Tommy and Gabe and Luz. But, months later, when he asked about it, about what happened to us all that day, I just said, “Nothing.”