“What can it mean?”
The Captain’s question cut through the otherwise still morning air. His voice came from just the other side of the stable wall.
I was crouched in the last stall. I’d come to visit the kittens, which had lately begun wobbling around on splayed legs. Their teeth were coming in, too; Agrippina would let them nurse only a little while now before she’d use her hind paws to push them off her teats. Then she’d saunter off to be alone. Whenever she did this, her kittens would strike up a miniature lament. Their mews made me think of a crank-handle music box: tiny pins plinking against a tiny metal drum.
Then I would try to comfort them with stories about themselves. “Once upon a time there was a little black kitten who cried for its mother,” I’d whisper. “Suddenly, the calico kitten climbed right on top of its back—and crossed over—only to tumble into the apricot kitten.” It was a kind of game, guessing what they’d do next. Trying to say it just before it happened. As if my storytelling was what created their actions.
“A bugle—there!” The Captain’s voice sounded again. “Don’t you hear it?”
An answering grunt. That would be the caretaker.
“No?”
The caretaker must have shaken his head.
I myself did not know what he was talking about, either.
Moments later the Captain came striding into the stable. I made myself perfectly still, as if I mustn’t be caught. I don’t know why. I wasn’t being naughty. But—as if we, too, were playing a game—I stayed hidden. He went to the only stall that held an actual horse and, with a word of greeting to Genoveva, who nickered back, began tacking her up. Brush, blanket, saddle: I could follow his movements from the sound each made. Tuneless song of bristle and wool, leather and metal. Then it grew quiet. Genoveva was quiet, too.
For a long moment, although I strained for some clue as to what he was doing, I heard nothing. Only the mourning doves in the eaves. I wanted to peep over into the next stall, but I remained where I was. Listening to the nothing. Listening to him listening. Was he hearing a bugle still?
I had the idea he was serene. Or really—this is strange to say—happy.
When the Captain led Genoveva out, I stepped into the stableyard behind them, no longer making any effort to remain unseen. In fact, now it was the opposite. His failure to notice me felt unnerving. I wondered where he was going.
When he mounted the horse and rode toward the gate, I trotted after, crunching noisily over the pea stones.
Five winters had passed since my mother and I set out from our home in the snow. Five thaws had come since I collapsed, alone, on the hill that led up to this stableyard. Five years I had remained in this place and many times seen the Captain go out riding. Never had it caused in me the peculiar feeling I had now.
The caretaker was in his usual spot, reclining on the tractor seat of an old plow. It was just the seat. I had never known it to be part of anything larger. He wore his fur-lined hat. Had his grizzled chin angled toward the sun. His eyes shut tight, as if concentration would help him receive its warmth. The early-spring light was thin as foremilk.
As Genoveva drew level with him, she let out a plummeting breath. You could see the misty staircase of it hang in the air.
The caretaker opened one eye. “Where’re you offta?”
“Away from here,” the Captain said. “Only—away from here. Always away. Only so will I reach my destination.”
It was more riddle than answer.
The caretaker must have thought the same. He opened the other eye. “So you know your destination?”
“Yes. Didn’t I say? Away-From-Here, that is my destination.”
The caretaker’s arms came uncrossed. He maneuvered himself more upright on the tractor seat and objected, almost as if taking offense. “You have no provisions with you.”
“I need none,” the Captain said. “The journey is so long that I must die of hunger if I don’t get anything on the way.”
It wasn’t only his words that were strange. It was the formal way he spoke them. As if they were stamped in gold. “No provisions can save me. For it is, fortunately, a truly immense journey.”
This was so preposterous I thought he meant to be funny, and I laughed.
At last he turned. He seemed neither surprised nor bothered to find me there. On the contrary, he lifted his hat in greeting. I had the impression—perhaps wrong—that his smile held regret.
Now the caretaker, who rarely moved faster than a yawn, scrambled to his feet.
But the Captain only clucked his tongue and Genoveva resumed her leisurely pace. They passed through the gate—it was always left open—and went down the road.