USUALLY IT WAS the three kids who would burst into the Thomas house bustling with energy and pleading for something to eat, but this time it was Liz, chasing Tye. “Let me, please! I want to try it.”
Tye seemed quite adamant. “I told you. You can’t. It’s not allowed.”
“What do you mean, it’s not allowed? It’s your truck. You drive it.”
Tye put his coat on a peg in the mud room and waited patiently for Liz to take hers off. “Okay, first thing, it’s not my truck. It belongs to the company. I am hired by the company to drive it. And secondly, there are all sorts of insurance and company regulations preventing the wife of a tractor-trailer driver from operating it just for the hell of it.”
“I think you’re afraid I can handle it. Probably better than you do.” Liz took her winter boots off.
“Hey, you want to take a few truck-driving classes, go ahead. The company is always looking for a few more women drivers. We have a handful, and it always looks good for publicity reasons.” Tye stopped talking and looked around, appearing puzzled.
“What?”
“It’s quiet.”
Liz looked around too, suddenly aware of the silence. “School’s out, right?”
“Yeah, a while ago.” Together they walked into the living room, and not for the first time, Tye had the uncomfortable feeling that the Horse’s eyes were following him. While he did not share his family’s growing obsession with the drawing, there was something captivating about it.
In the living room, the parents came upon an unusual sight. Three children, one on the cusp of teenageness, sitting in an array of armchairs and couches, their faces buried in books. For a brief half a second, Liz debated whether she should poke the bear and possibly disturb the rare calm of the house. “Ah, hello?”
All three looked up at the same moment.
“Hey, Mom. Dad.”
“Hi.”
“When’s dinner?” said William.
Curious, Liz took the book from Shelley, opening it. She showed it to her husband, whose furrowed brow revealed a certain amount of confusion. Tye decided to poke the proverbial bear a little more. “You guys are quiet. I don’t trust you. What’s up?”
All three shrugged, but Ralph answered. “Just trying to figure things out.”
Liz gave Shelley back her book and then glanced at the two boys’ books. “More stuff about horses, I see?”
“Painted horses,” added William. “We took the other books back to the library and got these out instead.”
Tye sighed. “Is it my imagination or have you three become kinda fixated on horses ever since what’s-her-name drew that thing on our wall?”
“Her name is Danielle, Dad, and she was here again today.”
Liz leaned into the kitchen to look at the sparse Everything Wall. “Really? It looks the same.”
“It is. That’s the problem, Mom,” said Ralph. “She was disappointed.”
“More than disappointed. I’d say she was hurt that it was still there,” added Shelley. “It made no sense.”
“Shelley and Ralph wanted to try and figure this out, so I offered to help.” William turned the page of his book and tried as hard as he could to indicate he was deep in thought.
Shelley rolled her eyes. “Some help.”
Tye picked up one of the books and casually leafed through it. “Don’t you think you guys are taking this interest in her and horses a little too far?”
Liz kissed Shelley on the head. “I think it’s admirable. It shows inquisitive minds. Let us know if we can help.” Liz entered the kitchen, still speaking. “I’m gonna start supper. And Tye, your boots are still on. You’re leaving a mess through my freshly cleaned house.” It was true. Tye’s snow boots were still on his feet, and there was indeed a trail of half-melted snow leading into the living room.
“Oops.” Tye managed a decent mea culpa face that brought a smile to the faces of his children and their friend. Tiptoeing back into kitchen in an overly exaggerated manner, he grabbed a mop stored next to the boots for just such an emergency. Off came his boots and down went the mop. In a low voice, but loud enough for the kids to hear, Liz admonished her partner. “And what is wrong with you? Those kids are reading books on art and animals, actual non-fiction books with facts and information.”
“I’m just saying …”
“Well, don’t.”
All three kids exchanged slightly amused glances. Between mop sweeps, they heard Tye sighing.
Louder this time, their mother addressed them from the other room. “So, any idea why that poor little girl just left like that?”
Tossing her book on the coffee table, Shelley got up, stretching her legs. “Nah, I think maybe we got the wrong books. These just show us pictures. I mean paintings and drawings of horses. Nothing really about why people draw them.”
From the far end of the couch, William’s voice shouted out. “I found some really cool ones that cave people drew. They’re amazing. Who knew? Cavemen! They look more real than a lot of paintings I’ve seen on walls. I might start drawing like that.”
“Makes sense. You are a caveman. No, Mom, we’ve been trying to figure it out since it happened. She looked so … I don’t know … wounded … like we’d done something to her on purpose.”
Still leafing through a book, Ralph shook his head. “No, not wounded. Like you said earlier. Disappointed. Yeah, like she was sad to see it still here. She wasn’t expecting it to be still on the Wall. In fact, she didn’t want it to be here at all.”
“Honey, you missed a spot.”
The kids heard the mop stop its swishing sound. “Was the floor always this dirty?”
“Just since you got home. So, have you three geniuses come up with any idea of what and why?”
“She’s crazy. That’s why.”
For that comment, Liz stuck her head back into the living room, aimed directly at the only non-blood member of her family. “Now, William, that’s no way to talk about a frightened little girl.”
“Sorry.” Chastened, he ducked down behind his book.
Back in the kitchen, Liz started slicing up some lettuce. Salad was on the menu for dinner. William would not be happy.
“And you’re sure nobody said anything that upset her. Nothing?”
Shelley shook her head. “Nothing. Honest, Mom. As soon as she saw it, she started getting upset. Really, I tried to —”
Out of nowhere, Ralph remembered the intense look on Danielle’s face as she’d finished up the details of the Horse. He started leafing back through the pages of his book, trying to find a reference he had skimmed over. It was a comment at the bottom of an ancient carving that had caught his interest. After a few seconds he found it. The caption made perfect sense to him. Perhaps the reason for the young girl’s actions. He interrupted his sister as the ideas took form. It was so obvious but, at the same time, so bizarre. “I think I might know.”
His sister, his friend, and his mother peered at him. Even his father, mop still in hand, glanced around the door frame at his son. They all waited expectantly.
“Yeah? We’re listening,” said Tye, now curious.
Realizing he might have spoken too quickly, having only developed a half-conceived idea, he was nonetheless committed. Getting up from his big comfy chair, he went to the dining room table, which was actually in the living room, and opened up his book. There, on the page, was the image of a deer carved into an antler bone. All crowded around it.
“She was trying to draw a moose and it came out as a horse?” William’s contribution to the discussion was not addressed.
“It’s not the picture of the Horse itself that’s important to her. Not the Horse that’s up there now.” They all looked at him, confused. “You see, it’s the drawing of the Horse that’s important to her.”
For the second time, confusion danced upon the faces inhabiting the Thomas house. “Ralph, honey, I don’t understand. And I don’t think Shelley or William do either.”
Tye spoke. “Well, if we’re taking attendance, let’s make it unanimous.”
Ralph turned the page to show another large, impractical piece of primitive artwork. This time a whale. “It’s drawing the Horse that she likes, not the actual finished Horse. When she’s creating it, chalk in her hand, putting it on the Wall, I guess she’s imagining it to life, that’s what she wants. Do you see what I mean? That” — Ralph indicated the Horse — “means nothing to her now. She wants to draw a new one, create a new Horse, and couldn’t because this one, the one she drew last time, was still here. Danielle needs it to be gone so she can draw it again.” They all turned to look at the Horse. And it looked back.
“That is so warped.”
“You should know.” Shelley tried to wrap her brain around what her brother had said. “Imagining it to life.” She liked how that sounded, and it made her think of something. “You know, this year in school we learned that some cultures do things like that. They carve or make things that have no logical purpose in their lives, they do it just to set free something inside. Like why a lot of what anthropologists call ‘primitive people’ carved so much when they were nomadic people and carrying around a whole bunch of carved soapstone or bones or things like that wouldn’t be so smart. In fact, it would weigh them down. Literally.”
“Yeah, yeah. And model airplanes,” said William.
“What?”
Intrigued by what was being said, William spoke up, grasping the idea in his own unique way. “Model airplanes or boats. Kind of the same principle. It would be a lot easier to buy a finished plane or boat, but some people really prefer putting the things together. There’s no point in getting one if it’s already finished. Know what I’m saying?”
“Crossword puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. Nobody wants a finished one.” Now Liz was seeing the big picture. Even Tye was nodding, once again gazing at the Horse out of the corner of his eye. He, for one, would not be unhappy if it was decided it was time for the Horse to meet its demise via a bucket of soapy water. This was a good step in that direction.
The mystery had been solved, they hoped. For a few seconds, the entire family looked at the Horse. They knew the problem, and they also knew the solution. The Horse they were all fascinated by was yesterday’s news. It had to go. It had achieved its purpose, but now it was time for the Horse to go to where all chalk horses must eventually go. Artistic oblivion.
Ralph stated the obvious. “I think we have to get rid of it. If we want Danielle to come back.”
“But it’s so pretty. Washing it away would be such a shame. A waste.” Shelley looked close to tears.
“Shelley, if what Ralph is saying is true, and we wash it away, Danielle will bring it back again. That’s what you’re saying, right, Ralph?” The ten-year-old boy whose only intellectual claim to fame up until that point had been a strong understanding of how long it would take for a train leaving Winnipeg, travelling at a hundred and forty kilometres an hour, to arrive in Montreal, blinked at his mother’s question.
“I think so.”
Nodding with the conviction that only the mother of two children can possess, she left the half-chopped lettuce on the counter. “It makes sense to me. Tye?”
“I guess.”
“And I think we’re all in agreement that we would all want to see that Horse again, in whatever form.” Both Ralph and Shelley nodded, definitely hoping this wasn’t the last time they would see the Horse.
Under his breath, William registered his growing disagreement with the popular opinion of the house. “Christ, it’s just a stupid horse.” Nobody heard him. Liz was busy getting a small bucket from the closet, and Shelley was already running the hot water in the sink.
“Now?! You’re gonna do this now?” Once again, Tye, the father, had lost the thread of intention within his family.
“No time like the present. Only take a moment. Shelley, can you get me that sponge?”
Tye, still holding the mop, had to jump aside to make way for Liz and her three-quarters-full bucket heading past him for the Wall.
The daughter did as she was told, she, too, almost sideswiping her father as she rushed past. Ralph, Shelley, and Liz stood in front of the Horse, water slopping over the edge of the bucket and onto the floor. Tye and William stayed back, not really feeling the moment.
“Everybody, say your goodbyes.”
Silently, Ralph and Shelley paid their respects to Danielle’s soon-to-be-gone creation. Liz said a simple, “Bye, Horse” before condemning it to a soapy death. Anybody not familiar with recent events would have thought the farewell to a chalk image seemed unusually emotional. The first part of the beautiful beast to go was the tail. A wet and soapy sponge of death wiped it out of existence. Then came the rump and hind legs. Slowly, the creature they had all admired was being dissolved into dirty water that ran down the Wall and spread across the kitchen floor.
“So much for me mopping the floor.”
“The beauty of the situation is you can always mop it again.”
Next, Liz erased the flanks and back, followed by the front legs, the mane, and the neck. All that was left was the head, with those disturbing eyes. Liz found this the hardest part of the Wall to cleanse. But one swipe of the sponge of death and the Horse no longer existed. At least on the Thomas wall.
The Everything Wall was open for business once again.
As he watched the Horse disappear, William shook his head, not understanding the emotionality of things around him.
“Geez, it’s not like it’s the Mona Lisa or anything.”
Frustrated, he stormed into the living room. In front of his favourite spot on the couch was one of the horse books. He kicked it away with his foot. The Thomas house wasn’t as much fun for William this evening as it had been before.
THE NEXT DAY at school, Ralph kept his eyes open for Danielle, but she didn’t make an appearance. Shelley did the same, with the same results. Danielle was a no-show for the whole day. As usual, William didn’t really notice or care. It wasn’t until the day after that Ralph caught sight of the little girl, walking into the schoolyard. She seemed to be limping, favouring her right foot. A few minutes early for school, he ran up to her, eager to share his news. At first, when she saw him approaching, it looked like she was ready to flee, a look of panic quickly crossing her face, but as Ralph got closer, Danielle seemed to recognize him and was less fidgety. She welcomed him with a slight smile.
“There you are! We’ve been looking for you!”
Danielle looked surprised. “Me? You were looking for me? I didn’t do anything.” The look of fear returned to her face, and, upon seeing it, Ralph instinctively tried to calm her.
“No, no. Everything’s okay. It’s just about the Everything Wall. We’ve washed it. No more Horse. You can come and draw on it again. If you want.”
They stood in the schoolyard, talking, almost like normal kids do, thought Danielle. Other kids from the village passed them by, intent on getting to school on time. A few wondered why Ralph was talking to that strange little Gaadaw girl. They weren’t related and had no reason to socialize. And many others still couldn’t believe that little girl in the odd-fitting clothes had managed to create the Horse they’d all seen staring back at them from the Thomas kitchen wall. But once out of sight, the thought of Danielle quickly evaporated from their consciousnesses as the reality of school and its normal stresses grew closer.
Danielle struggled to meet Ralph’s eyes. “I’m sorry I was so rude. I shouldn’t be. You and your family are very nice. It’s your Everything Wall. I’m sorry.” Danielle looked down at the ground again, still unwilling to meet the boy’s eyes, expecting a flood of criticism and anger at her earlier actions. Instead, he laughed. Not at her, but at what she’d said.
“You call that rude?! Wow, I wish everybody was that rude. Forget about it.”
Off in the distance, a dog barked. A recent bylaw requiring Otter Lake residents to keep their dogs penned or on a chain had not gone over well with local canine residents.
“So, you gonna come over?”
Behind Ralph, the school bell rang, signalling the start of a new day of education. All around them kids began running, not wanting to be late for another lacklustre day of sitting in a room, listening to their teachers drone on about insignificant facts and formulas.
“Well?” asked Ralph.
At first, Danielle wasn’t sure she had heard properly. “You want me to come over?”
Ralph nodded, like it meant nothing.
“Okay then.” She managed another smile, a bigger one this time, one of almost pride and a certain amount of eagerness. “I will! I will!”
“Great. I’ll let my sister and mother know. Better hurry. You don’t want to be late for class.” Delighted, Ralph started trotting towards the school, knowing William was somewhere inside waiting for him.
It had been a long time since Danielle had been invited anywhere, so she was quite excited. The second bell rang, indicating there would be no more bells. Danielle sped up, smiling to herself and feeling oddly pleased. She would get to draw the Horse again, and, almost as amazingly, she might actually have friends. Her left hand was already twitching at the thought of picking up that chalk again. She almost didn’t feel hungry now.
The day passed slowly with class periods of geography, history, and science. But finally the end of the day came, and, like water from a ruptured container, all the children of Otter Lake spilled out of the one-storey school en masse, making their way home, where family, television, and homework awaited them — not necessarily in that order. This flood of Aboriginal adolescents included William, Ralph, and Shelley, making their way down the frozen streets of the village.
“She’s coming over? Today? Did she say today? What time?” Shelley was anxious to see the little girl in action.
“I didn’t ask specifically.”
“Oh, Ralph. You can be so useless sometimes. I could have gone over to Julia’s this afternoon instead of walking home in the cold with you two, but I thought you said Danielle was coming over this afternoon. Brothers!”
“She is! She told me she was.”
Trailing about a foot behind, William seemed oddly uninterested in the conversation. “I’m bored.”
Used to his friend’s occasional moody moments, Ralph tried to engage him in the banter. “How come you’re not excited about seeing Danielle draw her Horse?”
“It’s just a stupid horse.” The memory of what had so dazzled the young boy had evaporated over the last few days. Personally, he hoped he’d never see the Horse again. After all, it wasn’t that amazing. Boats could go a lot faster than horses and were far more amazing. “I don’t know why you want to see it now. You didn’t last time.”
“Last time we didn’t know. What’s wrong with you, anyway?”
William shrugged. Idly, he picked up an icy chunk of snow and threw it at the stop sign, missing. Picking up another one, he noticed Shelley was smiling. “What?” This time he flung it harder, and it hit the sign with a palpable bang, exploding in a shower of snow and ice.
“It’s because she’s better than It. I bet that’s why It’s acting all funny like this. It’s jealous of the way Danielle can draw and all the attention we’re paying to her.”
“Stop calling me It!” William lashed out, pushing Shelley’s shoulder, knocking her into Ralph, who grabbed her instinctively. At the same time, both siblings let out a “Hey!” He had pushed Shelley. All their squabbling over the years, all the fights, all the disagreements had never resulted in any form of physical interaction. This was new, and they all recognized that it was something different. Shelley and Ralph stared at their so-called friend, still processing the push. Realizing he had crossed a line, William tried to explain his actions.
“I’m not jealous of that little weirdo. So she can draw a stupid horse. Big deal. There’s more to life than drawing a horse.”
Shelley faced the boy, equally angry. “Then let’s see you draw one like hers,” she said, still smiling, but this time a little more coldly. Shelley’s attitude and physical stance seemed to dare him.
“Shut up!” William was fairly sure he wasn’t jealous. That was for kids. But he wasn’t sure how he felt or why he had pushed his best friend’s sister. This was all new territory for him.
For practically everybody.
Once again the mediator, Ralph was relieved to see that just a dozen feet or so ahead was their house. Refuge from the present group friction might not be total, but at least it would be warm, with refreshments.
“Stop it, both of you. Geez, sometimes I don’t get you two. Everything I know about brothers and sisters says me and Shelley should argue and fight the way you two do. I don’t get it.”
Once more William shrugged. “Whatever.” He let himself inside the Thomas house first.
“And he calls Danielle weird. I don’t know why he’s your friend, Ralph.” Shelley disappeared into the house, following William.
Ralph, alone on the steps, mumbled to himself, “Sometimes I don’t know either,” before entering and closing the door behind him.
With their boots and coats removed, William and Ralph lost themselves in some reruns on the television in the living room. Disagreements such as the one that had occurred on the way home from school were frequently forgotten in the search for distractions. Still keeping her distance from William, Shelley caught up on her homework at the kitchen table.
Almost an hour passed before Liz Thomas came home.
“Your father won’t be home till later tonight. He’s going to some junior hockey thing in Baymeadow. So it’s just us.” Her news elicited a round of grunts. “I see the village school system is doing an excellent job teaching you the fine art of communication.” Once more a series of grunts acknowledged her observations.
“William, are you staying for dinner?”
Shelley mumbled to herself, well aware all could hear her. “Well, duh!”
“Yes, ma’am!” William’s train of logical thought followed with an immediate, “What are we having?”
“Well, let’s see … somehow I knew you might be staying, so I got us some —” Liz was interrupted by a soft knocking at the door. She paused for an instant, not sure if she had indeed heard what she’d heard. “Did somebody just knock?! I’m not sure …” Instantly, Shelley and Ralph’s heads turned towards each other, then to the door on the other side of the Everything Wall.
On the far side of that same door stood an excited Danielle, fidgeting in her boots. She was here at her friends’ house! It was so odd to think that. She had friends. And on top of that, she was here to draw her precious Horse. She knew her mother wouldn’t miss her if she came home late. She seldom did. And this place was always so warm and smelled so nice. Danielle definitely liked coming here. The only problem was that eventually she had to leave.
The door opened in front of her, and there on the other side, smiling, was somebody new, not Shelley, not Ralph, not even that mean-looking kid. But a woman who, for some reason, seemed delighted to see her.
“You must be Danielle. I have been so looking forward to meeting you. Oh, sweetheart, we loved your Horse.”
One by one, Shelley and Ralph came up behind the woman. “I’m Liz, the mother of those two, and welcome.” Liz opened the door wider and ushered in the little girl, who was clearly unprepared for such a welcome.
“Th … th … thank you.”
“Hey, Danielle,” said Ralph and Shelley in unison.
Danielle nodded as her jacket was suddenly and forcibly removed from her back by an enthusiastic Liz, almost lifting the tiny girl off her feet. Noticing the worn quality of the young girl’s coat, Liz made a mental note to see if she still had any of Shelley’s outgrown coats in the basement. Looking around, Danielle noticed William a distance away, leaning against the archway separating the kitchen from the living room. He had a nasty look to him, like he smelled something bad. Quickly, she decided not to look at him anymore. That was probably the best thing to do. If she pretended he wasn’t there, he might go away. The opposite of the way she called her Horse. She pretended it was there and it came.
To her right, she noticed the Everything Wall, clean and pristine except for small, unimpressive drawings scattered around its edges. The centre, a good three-quarters of the Wall, was empty. That was where the Horse would be. That’s where it had been before and where she would call it forward again. Danielle could almost feel it right now, nudging her to begin.
“Would you like something to drink first or do you want to draw?! I think we have some ginger ale?!” Shelley pulled out a can from the fridge. “It’s diet?! Want that?!”
Not really knowing the difference in ginger ales but nodding appreciatively, Danielle took the can. Liz couldn’t help thinking that perhaps she should buy some fully sugared drinks specifically for Danielle. If there was ever anybody who needed the extra calories, it had to be the tiny waif who stood in front of her. Her fingers looked as skinny as the pieces of chalk. But for now, her daughter was acting as an excellent host, and the mother decided to let the rest of the afternoon play out by itself.
Opening the can of ginger ale, Danielle noticed everybody was looking at her. This made her uncomfortable. She froze, unable to drink. There was a little tremble to her frame, but not so little that Liz didn’t notice it.
“All right, everyone, let’s let the girl alone. I’m sure she doesn’t want us all looking at her, do you, hon? When you are ready, the chalk is there in the box on the shelf.”
They all went back to what they’d been doing. Supposedly. Liz disappeared upstairs while the two boys went back to the television. Shelley sat herself back at the table and turned her attention to the math book lying open before her. Algebra — the math from hell. If A equals algebra, and B equals Shelley, then C must equal all the lost hours in her life that she’ll never get back. Why would somebody invent this and teach it to Native kids? Shelley found herself mumbling her father’s favourite phrase as she sat there, waist-deep in algebraic formulas: “White people sure are strange.” But between logarithms and equations, the corner of her eye still wandered over to where Danielle stood in front of the Everything Wall.
Soon only the muffled sound of the television in the other room could be heard, along with the occasional turning of a page and the glug-glug of pop being drunk. Though Danielle couldn’t see her, Shelley was smiling. Good, she thought, and I’ll have to make sure she eats something before she leaves. She was so thin! Too thin. Shelley Thomas had a remarkably developed mother instinct even then, barely a year after puberty.
Sipping her pop and now relatively alone, Danielle turned her attention to the Wall before her. Scouting the borders of available space, the girl gingerly picked up the container full of chalk, a multitude of different colours with which to explore the universe. Today, she felt the Horse wanted more blue. She never knew what the colours meant in the creation of the Horse, but the Horse knew and that was good enough for her.
Putting the box on the floor near the Wall, she picked up a white chalk stick first, then looked at the flat surface in front of her. She didn’t move for five seconds, a look of deep concentration taking shape on her face as her imagination spread across the black paint. Her focus was so deep she didn’t hear the small sound of a twelve-year-old girl turning slightly in her chair to look over her shoulder. Or a slightly younger boy getting up off the couch in the other room to hover just outside the entrance to the kitchen, or the huskier boy who followed him. They were all silent, waiting, wanting to see the creation of the Horse and learn how such artistic magic was accomplished.
Danielle wrapped the fingers of her left hand around the chalk. Putting the pop on the floor to her right, she gripped the chalk between her thumb and index finger. Clenching her right hand and resting it against the Wall, she used it to balance herself as she crouched into position. Her hand opened and, for a second, expanded against the wall itself, as if to feel it.
Then she began. Deep in her mind, she called. Almost immediately, she knew the Horse was waiting. Coming.
One individual’s creation is often hard for others to witness and appreciate, let alone understand. Michelangelo was supposedly once asked how he could carve such beautiful sculptures, to which he replied that he simply imagined what he wanted to create deep inside a block of marble and then removed everything that didn’t resemble what he had envisioned. Coming from such an artist, the process sounded surprisingly easy.
What Danielle saw on that Wall, or perhaps even behind it, none of the other kids could fathom. They could only watch, gathering a hint of what she was doing. She sketched the outline of the creature, moving sometimes swiftly, other times so delicately and precisely that the observers were left aching for more active and broad creation. After the red came more white, then the blue, and finally the brown. She used yellow to highlight certain areas of the Horse’s body. She used her hand to blend the colours together by smudging them in just the right way. Somehow this added shadow and depth, texture and grain. Minute by minute, the Horse took shape on the Thomases’ wall in Otter Lake. It was like a portal that magnificent creatures would pass through, granting those precious few a brief audience.
How a ten-year-old girl could know the detailed musculature and anatomy of a horse in such detail was surely a mystery. Even if asked, it was doubtful Danielle would give a sufficient answer. She just did what was necessary. The hooves were delicate, as were the ears and the nostrils, flared, expelling air. She spent ten minutes on the mane alone, making it seem like the Horse was running in full gallop, perhaps down a beach somewhere with an ocean gale chasing it, as in those photographs in the book they had seen the other day. Danielle saved the eyes for last, which many philosophers believed were the windows to the soul. Tongues and ears might lie, but never the eyes. And like the version that had been created last week, they were fierce and protective, almost as if they were warning people away from both him and Danielle.
All three children watched the creation from start to finish, never uttering a word. At one point, her neck hurting, Shelley turned completely around on her chair, but Danielle didn’t hear her or the creaking furniture; she was too busy communicating with the being on the Wall. Her body was here, but everything that made Danielle Danielle was somewhere on the other side of that black plywood. Shelley’s breathing gradually became shallower, almost as if she was afraid her very breath would disrupt the little girl’s act of creation. The only time she’d ever felt remotely like this had been a year ago at the arena in town, where her parents had taken her to see some figure skating. Seeing a beautiful young girl, dressed so pretty, dancing on the ice as if gravity and friction were figments of the imagination had made her briefly imagine a world where she could be that graceful and talented. Here, now, in front of her, was something completely different yet so similar. Danielle’s hand, gliding across the plywood wall, creating things that ninety-nine percent of the population could never imagine, never mind create.
Shelley felt honoured to be able to watch.
The two boys, with differing opinions on the girl, shared a mutual amazement at what they were witnessing. William watched Danielle’s hands like a hawk, hoping against reality that he might be able to, in the way young children (and a few adults) believe is possible, re-create or imitate what the little girl was doing. He had hands. He had imagination. He had chalk and a flat surface to draw on. But that was where the similarity ended. His sense of astonishment was slowly turning into something darker: envy.
Ralph, on the other hand, could almost see where Danielle’s hand was going to flow. It was like he could see what part of the Horse she was going to draw next. The Horse was taking shape, and he could almost see it three-dimensionally. Even though he didn’t know how, Ralph understood that Danielle felt the Horse was real. And, for that short period of time, the young boy didn’t think he could argue against the young girl’s belief. Each chalk mark was a caress, each straight line was a map Ralph followed to aid him in understanding what was happening on his kitchen wall.
Now familiar with her medium, Danielle incorporated more of the environment in her conception. There was a mild warping in the wood that Danielle used to her advantage by placing where the head joined the neck of the Horse over the dent. The result was that the head seemed to follow Ralph when he moved. Had somebody taught her that, or was that something instinctive? Or maybe it was in reality part of the Horse, not the Wall.
It may seem exaggerated to describe the sense of captivation the diminutive girl had on the other three children in the room. After all, in the larger context of the world, this was just a small girl drawing on a wall with chalk. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, children had got in trouble for simple variations of this very same act. But all three were somehow aware that Danielle was taking them someplace, using some power that very few had access to. And they knew they were privileged to be along for the ride.
It was Ralph who, once again, had been fully enveloped by Danielle and her chalk Horse. In ways he was not able to describe, he thought he could see the little girl riding atop that Horse, somewhere in a land far away — the creature carrying her, she holding on tight and caressing its powerful neck. He saw them, horse and girl, together, interacting as more than a drawing and its drawer should. Perhaps there was indeed a crack between the worlds, and somehow he was peering between the two, looking at what Danielle was seeing. Had Ralph Thomas been able to express himself at that moment, he would have said, “It was truly weird.” But in a positive sense.
Danielle began to slow down. She was adding finishing touches, details in the tail and around the shoulder to indicate motion. More to the nostrils to make them seem like they were actually quivering in exertion as it ran faster than could be imagined.
Twenty-seven minutes passed in the universe known as the Thomas family kitchen, and then there it was once again, as amazing as last time. Maybe more. The Horse on the Everything Wall looked remarkably similar to what they had seen only a few days ago, except it wasn’t a carbon copy. There were subtle differences that marked it as changed. None of the three who’d been watching Danielle surreptitiously could say what exactly the differences were, but they all were certain that the Horse was different, somehow changed; had it grown or metamorphosed in some manner? Were its ears keen to hear an imagined sound? Were its eyes communicating something the previous drawing hadn’t been aware of? Had Danielle imbued it with a consciousness that wasn’t present before? Had Danielle’s talent evolved? Had the Horse?
Danielle made one last adjustment to the tail, roughing in some yellow with two fingers, making it appear to be moving along the wall towards the doorway. Satisfied, she stood up, let out a deep breath, backed away from the wall, looked at her work, and was finished. The Horse was there, and her job was done. Danielle leaned back, assessing what she had created. All was good. He was here. Concluding that she had done everything she had come to do, she replaced the chalk pieces neatly back in the plastic container and put it on the shelf.
Nobody in the kitchen moved as she did this. As she put on her jacket, she said a pleasant yet perfunctory thank-you that concluded the tiny girl’s third visit to the Thomas house. “And I liked the book very much. Very pretty.” Then Danielle walked through the kitchen to the door, an actual skip in her step, stopping briefly to slip her boots on.
All was silent as the two doors closed behind her. The three usually rowdy and rambunctious children were not so rowdy and rambunctious. In fact, only the hum of the refrigerator and distant growl of the furnace below them could be heard. A few seconds later, Liz entered the room, the only sound and movement.
“Did I hear the door close? Why is everybody so quiet? Something wrong?” Turning around, she saw that the Horse had returned to the Everything Wall. Then it was Liz Thomas’s turn to be quiet. Only for a moment. “Wow,” was all she could utter.
“Yeah,” added William. Shelley and Ralph didn’t speak.
ON HER WAY home, Danielle hummed to herself, not feeling the cold winter wind. This had been a good day for her. A very good day. Though she was tired — she hadn’t slept well because her mother and her mother’s boyfriend had been fighting all night — the only word to describe how she felt was “positive.” Very positive. That was a phrase one of her teachers frequently used, telling students that they should always try to make each and every day positive in some manner. For the first time in a long while, Danielle felt she had managed to do just that. She had friends now, not just the Horse. Going home didn’t seem to matter so much today. Having someplace to look forward to was better than having nothing to look forward to.
She could see her house down at the end of the street. Her mood darkened as she approached the rundown mobile home that seemed it had only ever been at the end of this lane. There had been far worse days, her ten-year-old mind reasoned, so she struggled to keep the smile on her face. For the rest of that day and night, until she left for school in the morning, she would think of her Horse.
The Horse was a lot more than many kids had, she told herself.
WHEN TYE GOT home from the game that night, the house was as dark and silent as the woods around it. It had been a fun night. His team, peopled with half a dozen cousins, had won. A good time had been had by all. Though far past his prime as an athlete, he still frequently got requests to join this and other teams. He was in good enough shape, and most of the other players were of the same age and definitely of a heavier calibre. But his erratic schedule on the road made commitments like that difficult. As a result, he would go out and support the team when he could, always making his apologies when he couldn’t put on the necessary skates and gear.
Someday, when his trucking days were over, he’d have to figure out how to slip back into being a permanent resident of Otter Lake, provided his body would allow him to. But for now he was going for quality, not quantity of representation. Tye had told his wife he would be home a good hour earlier, but the international laws of male companionship dictated two more beers and other stories that absolutely needed to be told that night, or they would not be responsible for what happened to the world. Tye returned to his dark home feeling a little guilty at having robbed his family of an hour of quality time, but he would make it up to them — the battle cry of all late-arriving or absent parents.
Turning the lights and the engine off, Tye coasted into the driveway. No need to wake any of his family. If he was lucky, and that Williams kid hadn’t eaten up all the dinner, there might be something in the fridge for him to gobble on, courtesy of his loving wife. Sometime down the road, he was going to have to do something about William. Not that there was anything wrong with the boy, but he spent so much damn time at their house. Tye knew the Williams house was a loud, raucous place, and his son’s best friend was just one log in a boom of other Williamses, but he was at the Thomases’ house so much that one of the guys at the game had asked if Tye was going to build on an extra bedroom for the boy.
Entering his home was like being enveloped by a warm and comforting blanket. The night and the pickup’s temperamental heater had been cold, so for a few brief seconds Tye stood just inside the doorway, enjoying the warmth of his home, in several different meanings of the word. It was a good home, and he and Liz had worked hard to provide for everybody. He knew the time he spent away was difficult, but work that paid really well was rare on the reserve, and he was glad to have something like this to provide for everybody.
Bonus! There, covered in plastic wrap, was a sizable plate of spaghetti. A traveller of the world, or at least Canada, Tye knew spaghetti seldom tasted better than at midnight in an empty kitchen. Everybody knew that. Seasoning it with salt — Liz was awfully stingy with the salt — and pepper and some extra parmesan cheese, Tye sat down front and centre at the kitchen able to enjoy his wife’s culinary creation. Tomorrow would be his turn in the kitchen, and he had to think of something chicken-related to make. Maybe in the slow cooker.
The first forkful of pasta, however, never quite made it to his mouth. Still sitting in the dark for the most part, the kitchen lit primarily by a street lamp some twenty metres away, Tye saw the Horse. It was back where it had been only a few days before. It was staring at him. The creation on the Wall unnerved the man. There was no reason it should. Tye was a seasoned horror movie fan. He had seen all the Alfred Hitchcock classics and he’d read all of Stephen King. He had survived the horrific experience of being with his wife during the birth of their two kids, though his eyes had been closed most of the time. There was nothing left to scare him. But this image was doing a good approximation of causing him to experience a queasy kind of fear.
It looked at him.
The Horse, as everybody called it, had been drawn by a ten-year-old girl who weighed barely more than his boots. It was made of chalk. There was absolutely no reason why that creation should give Tye the willies. Refusing to back down in front of something only a few grains of chalk in depth, Tye put his plate down and leaned forward in his chair to examine it. The way the light from the streetlamp cascaded through the window and onto the Everything Wall gave the Horse a unique glow.
The girl had talent for sure. There was no denying that. Tye tried to remember the last time he’d seen little Danielle. Must have been sometime just before her father had died. Or maybe at the funeral. Stupid tragedy … but then, most tragedies are. Tye had been on the road as usual but had heard about it from his cousin who worked with Albert at the construction site. A water filtration system was being installed. Albert, with two other men, had been pouring cement into what would be the foundation. The ground on which Albert stood suddenly gave way. Danielle’s father was instantly covered by both earth and cement. His coworkers were there in an instant, digging at the wet cement and dirt, calling his name. But the man had hit his head in the fall. The dual weight of soil and cement suffocated him before he could be pulled from the hole.
As Tye remembered, Danielle had to be looked after by a distant cousin because Hazel was too grief-stricken to be of any use to her daughter. Many would argue little had changed in that department. Hazel still grieved, albeit in a harsher fashion.
It was the eyes, Tye thought. That’s what it was. He’d seen eyes like this on a documentary he’d come across in some forgotten hotel room in a forgotten truck stop, about that painting, the Mona Lisa. Supposedly, that Italian artist had done such a good job painting that woman’s portrait that if you walked across the room, her eyes would follow you. Just like in some photographs.
Whatever the answer was, Tye didn’t care. His appetite lost, he haphazardly tossed the plastic wrap over the spaghetti and placed it into the fridge. William can eat it tomorrow, he thought. He left the kitchen, relieved at leaving the room now dominated by the Horse and its eyes, eager to find solace anywhere else in his home. Horses hadn’t much interested Tye in the past, and what curiosity he might have had in them was rapidly evaporating in his house’s current environment.
The man shuddered at the thought of that thing becoming a permanent resident of his home. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the Horse; it was just that it unnerved him. Little girls shouldn’t be able to draw things like that. And the things that little girls drew shouldn’t unsettle him, which of course, because it did, unsettled him more. It was a vicious circle.
The other thing that was so puzzling was the blind sense of amazement the rest of the family and, he might as well admit, a good measure of Otter Lake’s junior population held for the thing. A handful of adults had been through the house in the past week, and they had had much the same reaction. It wasn’t just the children. Tye was very aware that when it came to things like art and non-sports pastimes, he walked a different path than his wife.
William was right. Simply put, it was weird. Everybody seemed to see the beauty, the majesty, but for Tye, something more was struggling to come out of the Wall through the Horse. He didn’t know what, but it was there. And possibly, if logic followed a predictable path, it would seem it was somewhere in Danielle. But this was all silly. He was imagining things. That little girl … it was just a drawing. That’s all it was. Tye climbed the stairs to bed.
IN THE KITCHEN, all was quiet. Twenty-one minutes later, Ralph entered. He had heard his father climb the stairs and, after a brief visit to the bathroom, crawl into bed. Though there was a good second level of a house between him and the Horse, he could feel it through the floor panels. Creeping as delicately as the forty-year-old house would let him, Ralph had no idea why he was returning to the kitchen. He wasn’t hungry. With the heat turned down for the night, his feet were rapidly becoming cold on the unheated floor. Not wanting to wake anybody, Ralph resisted the impulse to turn the overhead lights on. Instead, he flicked on the light above the kitchen stove, hoping that would provide enough illumination for him to see the Horse.
Sitting on a kitchen chair, his feet tucked up underneath him, Ralph stared at the Horse. And it stared back. Upstairs, the remaining members of the Thomas family tossed and turned while Ralph remained silent and still. As did the Horse. The boy didn’t understand why he was here. Both Shelley and William were amazed by the Horse, as was he, but that’s where it stopped for them. For Ralph, the relationship continued. It was something deeper. Instinctively, he knew Danielle saw things he couldn’t, that it was more than a series of chalk lines on a kitchen wall. It was alive for her. It was alive for Ralph, too, though not as strongly as for Danielle. He, in some way, knew there was more to this than what everybody else saw. And he wanted more.
Was it possible to draw something into existence? Sure, he’d learned in school that big-time designers and architects drew pictures of cars and planes and buildings that eventually came into creation. Was that the same? Ralph didn’t think so. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking.
Ralph sat alone in the family kitchen for another twenty-two minutes, wondering if he could somehow see what exactly it was Danielle saw. Every once in a while, for a second, he thought he saw something fleeting in the Horse, but just as quickly it flickered and was no longer there, leaving him unsure if the flash he was sure he’d perceived had just been his imagination. But wasn’t that what all this was about — imagination?
The more Ralph thought about it, the more confusing it got. Eventually, he returned to bed, leaving the Horse and all its secrets still, biding its time on the kitchen wall.
ACROSS THE VILLAGE, William lay asleep in a fetal position on his bed. On the other side of the room, his brother Jimmy slept, still in his track pants, mouth wide open, appearing to be in the middle of a silent scream. Underneath William’s bed, buried deep in a notebook beneath a week’s worth of dirty laundry, were sheets of paper testifying to a dozen different attempts at drawing a horse. All were half finished, most with an angry line or two through them.