THE BOTTOM LINE

“LISTEN TO THIS,” said Kip from behind the Rutland Herald. One hand reached with blind but sure instinct for the coffee cup.

“‘Cooper’s herd of forty-five milking Saanens’—a Saanen is apparently some kind of goat—’Cooper’s herd of forty-five milking Saanens have paid for themselves for the past two years.’ Paid for themselves, James!”

James rubbed the old toothbrush over the lip strap he was cleaning. The last crust of chewed, dried grass came away, and he looked up. “Pretty good!”

“Whaddaya mean, pretty good? The guy’s been at it fifteen years! About time he started breaking even!”

“Well, calm down,” said James. The long legs stretching across the space between Kip’s chair and the one beside his own had stirred passionately, slopping the grayish water in James’s quart yogurt container. He snatched it up as Kip, paying no attention, started to swing his feet down. “Hey, watch it! You almost spilled this!”

A face appeared above the newspaper. Dark eyes flashed scornfully at the yogurt container. “Disgusting! Throw it away and let’s go do something!”

“Nothing to do.” Kip, his roommate from boarding school, had come to visit and to ski, but it was thirty degrees out and raining steadily.

“No, come on! What do you do here all winter?”

James sighed and scraped the toothbrush over the golden bar of glycerin soap. If Kip wasn’t here, he might be riding in the indoor ring with Tom and Marion. He might be in Woodstock with Gloria, getting groceries and stopping for a cup of coffee. He might be in his room, studying for his microbiology course. Or he might be writing a poem, trying to get down once and for all his understanding of the art of horsemanship.

“Not much,” he said.

Kip swung to his feet and moved restlessly to the window, looking out at gray sky and sodden snow. He made an elegant figure, tall and thin in his jeans and cranberry-striped, button-down shirt. Très prep! James glanced down with a slight sense of surprise at his own sweatshirt; moldy-looking from an encounter with the bleach, speckled with grease and suds. His lap was wet where he had laid the straps and rubbed the sponge along them. He smelled of saddle soap.

As if sensing an opening, Kip looked back over his shoulder. “So,” he said, “when are you coming back to the real world?”

“I’m not,” said James quickly. Then he shook his head, angry with himself for accepting Kip’s premise. “Or rather,” he said, “I’m in it.”

An irrepressible smile broke through Kip’s obvious effort to contain it. He primmed his mouth to keep the smile from spreading. “The eighties, James! We live in the eighties. Dropping out is out!”

James felt his breath begin to come more quickly. He concentrated on the strap in his hand, rubbing the toothbrush over it until the soap foamed grayish-brown with dirt. “I haven’t dropped out.”

“Oh, James. James, James, James.”

“Look, Kipper, if the place is so far from reality, you didn’t have to come!”

“My point, Jimbo! Fine for a weekend—but you’re not really going to spend the rest of your life here!”

James didn’t know, and didn’t answer. He dumped the soapy water down the sink, reached under the chair for his soft piece of worn-out undershirt, and opened the bottle of Neat’s Foot Oil.

“I think you ought to come back soon, Jimmy, before your brain turns to mush.”

“My brain is doing just fine, thank you!”

“James, a guy starts to break even with his goats after fifteen years, and you think that’s pretty good! You think you can make money with horses in a backwater place like this, where the only people with bucks are the out-of-staters! Come on! If you absolutely have to do this, at least you could go to real horse country. And even then—”

“Kip—”

“Even then the chances are a million to one against you. People don’t make money with horses, they just spend. Nobody gets rich.”

“Kip—”

“And now you’re going to tell me you don’t want money. Well, to hell with that, James! To hell with it!” “Kip—”

“Jimmy, I’m gonna call a guy I know at Dartmouth and see if we can find something to do. You want to come along, you’re welcome!”

“No,” said James. “I’ll just sit here and wait for the hospital to call. Better carry our phone number someplace they can find it!”

Half an hour later he stood at the window, watching the friend’s Plymouth slither down the long drive. It was a day when none but the foolhardy or the flatlander would venture forth. Gloria was out, but she had the four-wheel-drive. She ought to be back any minute.

The Plymouth disappeared around the corner. James sighed. The house was empty, chill, and damp. He could have gone with them, laughing wildly as they spun over the icy spots, cracking jokes, looking out the window as the white hill country rolled past.

Instead, he hung up the clean, oiled noseband and reached for something else from the pile of leather by the wood box. He came up with a piece of harness.

They were always going to train one of the horses to drive, but it hadn’t happened yet. The harness came in every winter to be cleaned, and otherwise hung molding in the tack room.

Could try it on Robbie, thought James. He’d make a cute driving horse. He dreamed ahead to a couple of driving competitions, a couple gold cups. Soon people would be wanting MacLiesh-trained driving horses and would be willing to pay fat sums.…

No, they wouldn’t. Not enough of them.

Could get a few thoroughbred mares and breed them to Ghazal—start a new strain of warm-bloods. The New England Sport Horse? The Vermont Warm-blood?

Nah.

He glanced at the ticking clock. Gloria should be back now. He wished she were. Gloria was good for taking away thoughts like this. She did her work, and then she sold it. The one activity never seemed to get tangled with the other.

“Damn you, Kipper!” He dropped the piece of harness. Suddenly he was full of schemes, and a dozen sums jostled in his head; addition, multiplication. Yet how ridiculously small the figures were! He remembered Kip last night, talking about his stock portfolio. A sophomore in college, for God’s sake!

The strong, assertive engine of the four-wheel-drive pickup sounded in the yard, and a minute later a heavy door slammed. James hurried to the kitchen door and opened it as Gloria skidded onto the step, arms full of grocery bags.

“Awful driving!” Her cheeks and eyes were bright, as if she had enjoyed it. “Hey, I thought I saw your friend Kip helping some guy dig out of a snowbank. It was on a really bad hill, so I didn’t stop.”

“Green Plymouth?”

“Green something.” She had the refrigerator door open. “Hand me the milk, James?”

“Yeah, that was Kip.”

“Hand me the milk, James?” Gloria looked back around the refrigerator door, and James wiped the smile from his face.

“Sure. Here. Want some water on for tea?”

“Yes. And then I have to go right into the darkroom.” She started to unpack the bags.

“Any gossip?”

“Oh! Yeah! There’s a for-sale sign on that quarter horse farm.”

“Really? They’ve only been there a year and a half!”

“Wicked mortgage, I heard. They thought they’d make enough selling young stock to pay it off, but it costs too much to raise ’em. Plus, nobody around here’s into quarter horses.”

“Boy, that’s too bad!”

Gloria shrugged. “They were doing all right till they decided they had to make a living at it.”

“That’s right; they used to have that little place on the corner, didn’t they?”

“Yes. They sold two or three colts every year and supported their habit. But they’re pretty bitter about the whole thing now, or so I hear. They’re selling everything.”

“Too bad!”

“Well, I don’t know.” The kettle was whistling, and Gloria poured her tea. “If people get greedy, I don’t have much sympathy for them.”

She swished the tea bag three or four times through the hot water, plopped it into the wastebasket, and headed for the darkroom.

James slowly mixed himself a cup of instant hot chocolate, reading the list of repellent ingredients on the back of the package as he stirred. Then he wandered to the window, to look out at the dreary yard.

He liked the thought of Kip in his loafers, digging the Plymouth out of a snowbank.

Kip would smile knowingly if he heard about those quarter horse people, and give James that triumphant look. He would think he understood all about it.

But Kip didn’t understand, and James thought that Gloria probably didn’t, either. Wasn’t she herself making every effort to earn a living—if not now, then someday—from doing the thing she loved best? Weren’t they all, here at MacLiesh Farm? How could you fault someone else for trying? The most you could honestly say was that the attempt had been injudicious.

Musing and looking out at the yard, he saw Tom and Marion leave the barn together. Marion was draped in a long gray-green rain poncho that concealed her almost entirely. All James could see were her hands out in front; waist-high, clenched in light fists with the thumbs uppermost. Clearly they held an imaginary set of reins. By certain indefinable motions within the poncho, James understood her to drive the horse forward onto the bit, while her hands braced delicately against him. She was speaking to Tom all the while, with a shining face that at this distance seemed almost as young as Gloria’s.

He didn’t have to stay in the house anymore, James realized. With Kip gone, he was free to go to his work again. He set his half-empty mug in the sink and went out to the mudroom to pull on his riding boots.

The rich, pleasant barn smells greeted his nostrils: good hay that they had gotten in this summer by the sweat of their brows; clean horses; pine shavings; and manure. A few heads looked at him over stall doors, with mild interest. He went straight to the white, noble head of his own horse, Ghazal.

“Hi, buddy. Wanna do some work?”

Ghazal would consider it. He dropped his silver moleskin muzzle into James’s palm, blowing his breath out gustily.

“Sorry. Treats later.” He slipped the black leather halter over Ghazal’s bony head, buckled loosely, and led him out to the cross ties in the aisle. Ghazal wore an ugly yellow-plaid blanket, rumpled and stained.

Beneath the blanket he was fairly clean, but James ran a brush over him anyway, for once not tempted to skimp. He spent several minutes on the long silver tail, combing until all the hairs were separate, and swished silkenly. Then he saddled and led Ghazal to the indoor ring.

It was empty and quiet. Ghazal’s hoofbeats, even muffled in the sand, were loud. His breath, and James’s, puffed white in the dimness. Ghosts shadowed them on every wall; four repeated figures, dark young riders on white horses, moving silently in the mirrors. At every corner James approached himself, then paralleled himself, then left himself behind.

Trot trot, Ghazal—smooth and regular and strong.

He strove to remember, warming up, what it was that he wanted to work on. Transitions, he thought, and did a few; trot to walk, walk to canter, canter to trot to walk …

The reins flapped loose. Ghazal wandered at will.

What in hell am I doing this for?

Kip was upwardly mobile. James knew that he himself was likely moving down. He would never again have the degree of affluence he’d enjoyed in his father’s house; the certainty of new, expensive cars and far-flung vacations, the easy choice of an expensive restaurant dinner, an expensive education. In the eighties you wanted those things; so they told you.

And who am I to play holier than thou?

Ghazal walked to the door and stopped with his nose to the latch, breathing a sigh. When James did nothing, he nudged the latch suggestively. Here’s how you do it, buddy!

“Sorry, fatso. At least you’re gonna get some exercise.” He turned Ghazal away from the door. Eight or ten laps, and then they’d go back, having accomplished nothing.…

No, he knew himself, and as soon as he felt Ghazal’s uncommitted, shambling trot, he pushed scoldingly with his legs. No response. He tapped with the whip. A startled surge of power told him he’d gotten through.

This was a good trot, with plenty of impulsion. Impulsion—the energy from the rear that comes forward into a rider’s hands and gives him something to work with; like breath support for the singer, turgor pressure for the stalk of celery; like the current that floats the little boat or the wind that fills the sail; like drive and purpose and commitment in the human character. When Ghazal’s hindquarters were engaged, so that his hind feet stepped well forward under his body and he carried himself, not pushing himself like a wheelbarrow, and when the fresh energy flowed up his relaxed spine and neck and down onto the bit and submitted gladly to James’s hands, then beauty happened, and James was in it. He didn’t need the mirrors then.

He could have shouted at the unexpected joy. Instead, he resumed the dull transition work. Ghazal’s impulsion changed it to a dance. They danced together.

Then James pushed harder, to find the limits where Ghazal’s softness turned to strain. The limits were too narrow still. Gently James nudged against them a couple times, bumped them back maybe a little. Then back to the dance. Then rest—plain old tired walking.

“Good boy! Good boy!” You were supposed to praise your horse after good work. But James felt funny about it. It oversimplified the relationship between horse and rider and work. Ghazal knew his own goodness, and his goodness was his reward. His correct and joyous motion was his pleasure. He only needed James to stimulate him to the effort; then to support him and step out of his way. Ghazal’s was the body with the power and the knowledge. Ghazal should be the one to utter condescending praise.

Now the magic moment was past. James dismounted, ran up the stirrups, and began to walk cool his sweaty white horse. Once again they were a couple of ordinary mortals of different species, eyeing one another across a gap of ignorance.

Later, as he buckled on the ugly yellow-plaid blanket, James caught himself dreaming. The dream was a montage of international flags against a blue sky, Olympic TV clips, magazine photos, and Rolex advertisements. Those were for all the parts he knew nothing about.

At the center of the dream, though, was the feeling of the ride just now. He noticed that even in the dream, he shut out everything else to concentrate on that feeling, and to ride as if he were alone.

So I’m already doing my dream, he thought. It’s not only for the future. It’s now.

He turned Ghazal into his stall and brought him a handful of sweet feed, rich with molasses. He laid his hand on the yellow blanket and felt the warmth of the horse come through. A sudden, clear thought came.

I don’t do this for money. I do it because I want to.

It was so simple that he wondered why he hadn’t said it to Kip, in so many words. There isn’t money in horses, or not much. If it were money he wanted most, he’d be doing something else.

He thought of the guy in the paper, with the herd of milk goats who paid for themselves. The understanding Kip had scattered with his attack returned.

If a guy has been doing all that work for fifteen years before it begins to pay, then he’s doing it for its own sake, not for money. Money is great, money is necessary, but it’s nothing in itself. It’s for things—food and shelter and education, and the freedom to do what you want.

And how many of the things people want to do ever pay for themselves? Not skiing, certainly. No, you pay to ski, and pay plenty. Some people get rich, but not you, Kipper, old man! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Kip returned at chore time, flushed in the cheeks and very amusing about the snowbank episode. Time and hot buttered rum had wrought a change of view, James thought. But he was glad to have Kip in better humor.

The evening’s chosen amusement for the MacLieshes was a wobbly home video of a three-day event in Pennsylvania. James would have liked to see it, but being a good host he played cribbage with Kip in the kitchen, so the TV couldn’t draw his eye.

Even here, though, he could hear the self-conscious voice of the narrator—Tom’s ex-student Jennifer—giving the names of horses and riders and points to note. Only once her voice warmed to normalcy, as she gave a rider’s name and then exclaimed, “What a hunko!” In the living room, Marion and Gloria whistled and clapped; Uncle Tom harrumphed.

Kip smiled slightly and pegged fifteen. “Great entertainment, eh, Jimbo? You’re gonna get skunked!”

“Guess so,” said James, pegging four. He must see this film later, if only to discover what kind of guy Jennifer would call a hunko.

“Beer?” asked Kip, getting up and going to the refrigerator.

“Okay,” said James without thinking. He was looking at Kip, who had taken over the role of host where the beer was concerned with his customary ease. He was measuring himself against Kip and remembering that nothing was certain in this world, wondering if Kip could be wrong about things when he looked so right.

Kip twisted off the caps and flipped them one by one into the wastebasket. He handed a beer to James and roamed a little way across the kitchen, nursing his own bottle against his chest. At last he took a long swig and turned to face James.

“Guess I’ll be heading back tomorrow,” he said, “if you can drive me to the bus.”

“Wait and see what it’s like in the morning,” James suggested, because he was ashamed of his own relief.

Kip shook his head. As he stood there, reared back a little on his long legs, he looked more serious than James could ever remember.

“Come back with me, Jimbo,” he said. “Go to school.”

This was not the young male challenge of this morning, the half-laughing struggle for dominance. This was the old good friendship that lay buried so deep beneath the games, they had nearly forgotten it.

“I don’t want to,” said James.

“Why not?”

James opened his mouth to say the things he’d thought that afternoon. They had seemed clear and simple. He had felt sure of them. Now, facing Kip across the kitchen, he realized he was sure of his ideas, but unsure of himself. The truth was there, but would he be true to it? And wasn’t it, after all, only part of the truth? There were so many other things in life; things, maybe, that Kip knew about and he did not.

For instance, what if he wanted a place of his own someday? How would he afford it? How would he afford the superb, expensive horses he would someday need to carry him to the top of his chosen profession? Would he ever again hop on a plane for that winter week or two in Bermuda? Money was freedom, he knew, at least in material things. He didn’t know how he would react when he came up against the barrier of not having enough.

No, he couldn’t open his mouth and preach to Kip about money and satisfactions. Still, something must be said, and the right thing. He could never explain all that was in his heart. He must speak in code and trust Kip to understand.

“Kip …” he began helplessly, because the silence had stretched too long. “Kip …”

Kip laughed a little, looking down at his beer. “Stubborn old Jimmy,” he said. “Well, go for it, then! Go for it!”

His voice was rough and reluctant, his reservations imperfectly concealed. Time, James knew, might dispel the reservations, or it might give them the remembered ring of prophecy. Or things might always be like this; always reservations on both sides and never a clear judgment by fate or fortune.

Raucous shouts and whistles broke from the other room. “Oh, my God!” cried Tom in a revolted voice.

Gloria said, “I’m calling her up!” She reached through the doorway and snatched the phone from its table.

Suddenly it seemed imperative to James that he rejoin his family and his real life, and give up being separate here with Kip. He stood up from the table. “I’ve gotta see this.”

Kip slanted an amused glance at the cribbage board, where James’s peg lagged far below the skunk point. “Okay, Jimmy,” he said, and followed James into the living room to join the others.