It was so dark out. Before I left, I set down my thermos of coffee and my camera. Near the leg of that piano, there was a mark in the floor; it was still there, the place Nash gouged in her nails in grief. I knelt down and ran my fingers across it. My own life, my story, my time at the ranch, even—it all seemed so ordinary compared to this.
“Oh, you,” I said to Tex. He wanted to come along. He told me that with his eyes and the way he sat, especially well behaved, by the door. Hugo could manage this sort of thing only for a few moments before he’d turn big circles of excitement. He was a bit of a bull in a china shop, the beast, but that’s who he was, and you loved him for it. “You have to stay,” I said to Tex. “I’m sorry. I apologize.”
The ranch and the entire valley looked so different before the sun came up. It stretched out and beyond into darkness and more darkness. It could make you afraid of falling, and wisely so. Falling should be feared, or at least done with caution.
I followed the directions to the Flat Creek Trailhead, where we visitors would meet before driving up in the bureau truck to the designated viewing site. That was the plan. When I arrived, the truck was already there, parked with its headlights still on. A man leaned against the door and sipped from a travel mug.
“Morning!” he said. His breath made puffs in the cool predawn air. He cupped his hands around his mouth and nose and huffed briefly to warm them. I’d have recognized that shiny head anywhere.
“Steve Miller,” I said. “Cowboy and musician.”
“I can play the fool, that’s about it.”
“Where is everybody?”
“You’re it. Had a tourist couple from Colorado coming, but she’s not feeling well. Drinking and losing too much money gambling can bring on a case of the flu.”
“Too bad,” I said, though I was glad to be on my own. I was never good at making morning small talk. Bed-and-breakfast weekends were something Thomas and I avoided. We both needed more coffee before listening to stories about the other guests’ children and their recent bike trip to Santa Fe.
“We were supposed to go to this nice, safe little spot a good half mile away. That’s so no one runs out to take a photo and gets trampled by wild animals. Or so that no protesters leap in front of the chute and get themselves killed, let alone jeopardize weeks of work and tens of thousands of dollars. But you don’t strike me as a runner or a leaper, in spite of that camera you got.”
I held my hand up in a promise. “I am not a runner or a leaper.”
“Then follow me,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“As close as you can get without a horse and a hat.”
Morning dawned, casting a golden glow over the rangeland. The tenderness of the light was shocking, and each hill looked poetic. Everything felt full of hope from that magic trick of a new day. Steve Miller escorted me to the side of the chute where the horses would be led in, and we knelt behind a long panel of orange netting. There? Really? It all seemed unwise—Steve Miller could lose his job, and I could lose my life in that spot, ground level with those pounding hooves. Still, Steve Miller knew those horses better than I did, and even though I was flushed with nerves, I could see how eager he was. I could feel the anticipation in the air.
I wondered where everyone was. It seemed like we were the only two people even awake. But then I looked closer. There was Lorraine on Cactus, waiting at a discreet distance; a few other BLM guys, too. Each was in place.
Steve checked his watch. “The helicopter should be coming any minute.”
“Where is it now?”
“Not far, I’m guessing. The pilot floats around out there for a bit first, getting an idea of where the different bands are. By now he’s probably moved them together, and they’re likely heading in our direction.”
“How does he move them together?”
“Positioning the helicopter, getting close, hanging back a little. Pretty much after that, they’ll come forward on their own. When they get near the site, though, he’ll close in—”
I heard it before I saw it. The helicopter rose over the hill, like the bad guy in a movie, or maybe like the hero, just before the world might end. And then I saw the horses themselves, cresting the hill and barreling down. They stampeded, manes flying, tails whipping behind them, their group a single mass as they surged forward. There was the wup-wup-wup of the helicopter, and the blows of hooves, and what it sounded like most was a cataclysmic storm, and what it looked like most was beauty and more unfathomable beauty. I gripped Steve Miller’s arm as the helicopter swooped low as a hawk.
“Here’s Kit,” he said, and then I saw him. It was fast—all movement and muscle. Kit ran out, leading Jasper, and then he crouched at the ready beside him, right in the center of the open wings of the chute. I grabbed Steve Miller’s arm again, looked at him for confirmation that this was the intended plan. It couldn’t be, could it? He was sure to be trampled. But Steve Miller’s gaze was fixed. His eyes were on Kit, and so I dared to watch.
The horses charged forward, and the very second before they reached him, Kit leaped out of the way and let Jasper go, and that pilot horse took over like the leader he was. Kit flung himself away and lay flat on the ground, as the mustangs followed Jasper in.
The horses galloped down the chute. They were right next to us, close enough that the dust spit toward our faces as the immense bodies stormed past. The noise was mammoth. So much noise that even their heavy breathing sounded mighty and mythical. I held my own breath. Their eyes were wild, and I forced my own frightened eyes open. They were a cyclone of nature, both primitive and evolved, and as I huddled there, I felt like a creature of the earth, the same as they were. They were dirty and rough, strangers to the shiny, well-bred animals you saw on a racetrack. I could smell them. These horses were worn and life-wise, and when they arrived at their shocking destination, they banged against the holding pen with mighty crashes; iron against iron as the gates clanged with the weight. They vocalized with their high-pitched brays: Ee-e-ee-eee. They were beautiful but not, suffering but saved, victims and perpetrators, defeated yet triumphant in the way they were still there, full of fury and will.
“Watch,” Steve said, and I turned my attention to where he directed, back to the open rangeland. Two mustangs had broken from the pack, and they ran frenzied figure eights just beyond the entrance. Out of nowhere came a man I’d seen before at the site: the old guy with the big belly. He was on his horse and had a rope looped around his arm, which he spun in a circle in the air; then there was another familiar face doing the same, and they worked the two stray horses closer until they, too, veered in and headed past us.
The helicopter whipped up and then disappeared back over the hill. It was all, every bit of it, the most magnificent and unreal thing I had ever witnessed. It had gathered me up, too; I hadn’t taken a single picture. It would all have to remain right there in my own changed heart and mind, same as the earthquake fault that day, same as a thousand other critical junctures that had no photographic proof.
In the corral, the mustangs twitched and settled themselves or else continued to bang their huge bodies against the gates in protest. Some looked afraid, just as I’d worried they would, yet some already seemed settled into the fate the day had brought. Mostly I saw their raw, intense energy, and that energy filled me, too. I felt euphoric.
A gloved hand gripped my arm where I stood, and I spun around. Kit was there beside me, and he lifted me off my feet. I could feel his own elation. He spun me around, midair.
And there, right then, was where we might have kissed. I felt the electric possibility of it. I would have put my mouth on his and he would have held me hard, and it would have been a mad and a passionate kiss, a kiss of the sun rising and setting, a kiss with all the frightening risk and glorious rewards of being alive. We would have knocked Kit’s hat to the ground. We would have looked at each other and seen the future.
But that’s not what happened. Something immeasurably more remarkable and important occurred instead. He set me on my feet, and my tricky, secret heart revealed itself, because there I was once again, wishing that my stupid, infuriating Thomas, my own husband, the one I loved, had been beside me to see what I just had. Oh, I was much, much more of a romantic than I ever knew. And that unknown part of me, the fact that it existed at all, well, it filled me with joy. Look at that. I believed in things that lasted.
Around us, around Kit and me, there was the scuff and scrubble of activity, the need for action. I could feel the raw, animal force, the vitality. Kit put his hands on the sides of my face, and our eyes locked. I looked at him for a long moment, and in that moment I gave him everything I was able to give. I could feel him do the same.
“Just this,” he said. “Just for this one second.”
“And I’ll never forget it,” I said.
That morning I’d thought that my story was insignificant, but once again I’d been proven wrong. No life was ever ordinary, and no story of love was, either, not even mine. Whether tragic or commonplace, each attempt at the damn thing, each shot at love and life itself, was brave. Every effort at it was flawed and messy, complicated, oh, yes, occasionally triumphant, often painful, because how else could it be? Look at the mission we were given, look at the stunning, impossible mission—imperfect love in the face of loss. Any sane person with the facts would turn their back on a mission like that. And yet we loved; of course we did. We kept at it; we added our thread to the design. The courage that took—there was nothing ordinary about that.
“Hit the gas a little,” I said from the passenger side. “There’s no need to be afraid.”
“Yeah, just because you’re an old lady doesn’t mean you have to drive like one,” Shaye said from the back. She seemed lighter since her visit to the lawyer. A decision could be deadweight lifted. I hadn’t heard the details, only Shaye’s complaint about writing a fat check.
“All right, all right,” Nash said, adjusting her rear end in the seat. She was lighter, too. A revealed secret could also be a deadweight lifted. When I told her about the gather earlier, the well-orchestrated beauty of it, she’d only pressed her eyes closed for a moment before saying, Get the keys. Now we’d been on the dirt road leading to the Tamarosa arch for a good hour. After all the lessons regarding brakes and mirrors, we’d progressed only about a hundred feet.
“At this rate it’ll take you six weeks to get to Los Angeles,” I said.
“Step on it,” Shaye said.
This is exactly what Amy said from the backseat when I was teaching Melissa to drive. My most beautiful daughters, my babies. They’d grown up so fast. Every parent heard this warning. People said it frequently enough that it ended up having no meaning whatsoever until one day it did. No matter what happened or hadn’t happened my whole life long, them being in it had made it all worth it.
And then Nash did exactly what Melissa had also done. She gave it too much gas, and we lurched ahead, and the car went hurtling down that road. Shaye squealed in the back and even ducked a little.
“Take it down a notch, Nash.” I tried to keep the alarm out of my voice.
“Whoo-ee!” Nash said.
We flew, hitting the ruts in the road hard enough to make my teeth clatter. “Ease up just a bit,” I said.
“Nash, slow it down,” Shaye cried. Up ahead, Rob, who’d been grazing peacefully by the roadside, made a lumbering run for it. “Apply the brakes, damn it!”
Nash came to a stop. She spun out a little. I swear, I smelled the heat of screaming brake pads and tires. “My, that felt good.”
Shaye was laughing hard back there. “Oh, God, I’m going to wet my pants. You scared the shit out of both me and that buffalo.”
“Who knew he could move that fast,” I said. “How do you know if you’ve had a heart attack?” We were cracking ourselves up.
“Look at that. I haven’t forgotten a thing,” Nash said.
“Turn down the air conditioner,” Shaye said. “It’s like the arctic back here.”
This cracked us up more—who even knows why. Nerves and the relief of being alive. Nash turned off the engine and we sat for a moment.
“Where is Jack, anyway?” I asked. “Did he leave the ranch after what happened?”
“Nah. He stayed for a long while. Then he got a job managing some rich rancher’s property in Montana. Married the daughter, though she’s gone now. He’s still up there.”
“Hey! Second-chance time?” Shaye said.
Nash scoffed. “Jack was always better as an idea.”
“Why didn’t you ever marry Harris? He’s clearly devoted to you,” I asked.
“It goes both ways. You know why? He can love a strong woman, and that’s a rarity. But I like to live alone. I’ve always liked it,” she said.
“You know what else you never told us?” Shaye said. “That director. How’d he end up in the river?”
“Reckless fury,” Nash said. She looked downright smug after just burning rubber.
“I want to know why Grandma Alice had to go rescue our mother,” I said.
“That’s probably when she had that pregnancy scare,” Shaye said.
“What are you talking about? What pregnancy scare?”
“She never told you? Some boy she met at a gas station.”
“She never tells me anything.”
“She tells me entirely too much,” Shaye said.
“Well.”
“She probably just forgot. Like the way she told you twice about her party at Anthony’s Home Port and didn’t tell me at all.”
“I guess everyone has their secrets,” I said.