THREE WEEKS TO THE DAY FIELDING WAS UNPACKING THE final box in his bedroom. A few things of Sara’s he decided to hold on to. A lock of hair tied with a pale blue ribbon. Her wedding ring. A bottle of perfume. He laid them out on the bed and crossed his arms and compared them to the austere Western tones he had surrounded himself with and he wondered what the hell he was even doing out here. In this place so far from Iowa.
Nearing the end of October and he still hadn’t caught sight of the mountains. Day after day they were tucked away, folded up in the oily clouds. Betsy was right, he said out loud, it does rain all the time.
His routine was simple and unencumbered. He cooked meals and washed the dishes. He started a fire and drank a little whiskey. Sometimes he read, sometimes he watched television. He got a heeler, named it Tito. At night when the rain was pounding down and the fire was warm the dog would curl into him. And every day in the last desperate moments of light Fielding would put on his hat and waxed coat and go out and see to the horses.
He had two. One was a stocky pack mule, the other an Appaloosa with a chestnut blanket and good blood. He gave the handle of Buckshot to the mule and Snake, lovingly, to the Appaloosa. Snake’s proud bloodline didn’t mean much to Fielding when he purchased him, but the horse’s dalmatian pattern on its croup and quarters did and that, along with the striped hooves, was one of the prettiest things Fielding had ever seen.
He would wake early and pull his pants from the trunk at the foot of the bed and a snap shirt from the closet and go out to the living room and turn on a lamp and dress by the faint warmth of the stove and go into the kitchen and microwave a day-old cup of coffee. While the coffee spun on its mindless carousel he would regard his own face in the plastic window and wonder about the old man looking back. He would open the microwave door a few seconds before the timer went off out of habit because Sara had hated the sound of the beeping. Then he would put on his coat and his hat and take his coffee into the rain, covering it with one hand until he reached the barn, and switch on the lights to find Snake and Buckshot staring at him.
Under the electric light Fielding would pitchfork hay onto the floor of the stable as Snake watched with eyes so dark they seemed all pupil. Eyes so deep and pure Fielding saw his reflection in them. So pure he saw himself looking out from within.
Through the open bay doors to the west, where the sky was still full of night, the rain would fall with drops big as marbles. The yellow light of the barn would spill out into the darkness and catch the rain and hold it in place.
There was a tack room in the barn but he didn’t really know what tack was other than it was associated with horses. In the tack room was a nice saddle with the leather horn so worn and smooth it could reflect the stars. There was ornate tooling in the seat and fenders and the silver of the conchos were dull with age and going black in places. Fielding had a vague idea of how the saddle might fit on the Appaloosa but knew that once it was laid over the animal’s back and the billet strap cinched it would look like a pearl in the ear of a good-looking woman.
Once all his morning chores were out of the way he’d let the horses out to pasture to stretch their legs. Walking back to the house he’d turn and see Snake following him at a distance through the grass. Fielding would click his tongue and Snake would start into a trot and once he caught Fielding, he would shake his head and Fielding would rub the spot between his eyes.
Gonna catch yer death standin in the rain, Fielding would say, and he didn’t know if he was speaking to himself or to the horse.