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Chapter 4 The silent old man didn’t see the girl so much as feel the ground move beneath the horse that she was on. The night was late and he was deep in sleep, half in this world, half in the dream place that often took him in the dark or in the day whenever he just drifted off as old men do. Dirt’s moving, his dream said. “That you, Dory?” he muttered, yearning for his vanished wife, “that you come riding home?” Then the dream fell silent and still and old man Riley heard the sound of water and knew the dream was gone. He opened his eyes and still it was there, the whoosh of seawater racing back to the sea. Someone was there. Again. Thomas Riley got out of bed and went to look outside. The wind gusted hard against his face and his cheek twitched. There in the shadow stood a horse, a chestnut mare, and by it stood a slender girl like his wife Dolores with small white hands, stroking its mane, letting the water from the pump pool in her palm for the horse leaning into her, taking short hard gulps of water still warm with the desert heat. “Oh Tom,” he heard Dolores say as the sea trickled through her hands, “Just feel how warm the water is.” Riley felt a warmth rush through him and his heart lifted and hovered in his mouth. He stared at the girl and mare, standing there like all the other travelers in the night who’d lost their way. Border crossers, most of them. Runaways, the rest. Here and there a hired hand, stumbling home drunk from town. Men mostly, but this one was a girl. She bent and washed herself and Riley heard a sound, a tiny cry. His heart slowed and fell as he watched them, the girl and mare, breathing hard, their bodies calling out for air and water and the soft, sweet sureness of home. This ain’t right, he said at last to himself, and silently he left the open door and went out into the desert night toward them. Not to worry, little one, is what he knew to say, you rest yourself on this here mare, just rest yourself. And stay. But all he did was raise his hand and touch the pale child once lightly on her shoulder. Startled, the girl jerked away from the wet chin of the mare and Riley saw the wildness there, deep inside the girl’s eyes, and it stopped him cold. The look of fear. She grabbed the reins and pulled herself up on the horse and in a twinkling she was gone, back out into the desert riding stiff kneed and alone. Poor child’s gone off chilled, thought Riley, and he ran his hands across the wet handle of the pump and felt the girl’s fear pass over him and settle in his heart. He looked out to where the girl had gone but saw only darkness filled with stars. Something squeezed inside his chest, and Riley waited. “How many you think there are, Tom?” she asked. “How big you suppose God’s heaven is?” Riley had taken her hand in his and curled his fingers over the veins that ran like rivers through her thin bones and that had quieted her even though the tears rolled down her face and she wiped them with her hand. “Which one is she, Tom,” she said to the sky. “Which one is our baby gone by?” The night wind stirred and Riley suddenly felt cold, and knew he was alone again. He went back inside his room and put on his boots. Tall ones made of hide. Man’s no better than his strongest boots. He remembered that from war. He walked outside again and went out behind to his hole, the room he’d dug to hold his words beneath the desert ground. “There was a girl come riding up, Dolores,” Riley said, talking fast once inside his secret place. “Pretty little lost-looking thing, she was Dory, pretty like you, long brown hair color of the mare, riding up out of the desert on Ted Calder’s chestnut mare, I swear it was, even if Calder’s dog wasn’t with it like she always is. Girl stole his, I guess. Calder don’t give nothing away, and sure don’t give his mare.” Not this mare, he thought, not the one that rancher’d raised up from a foal, fragile, sick little thing, spawn of a long line of Calder steeds.. “Girl was scared, Dolores. Something after her. Wasn’t nothing there, of course, No Calder. Nothing eyes could see. Whatever it was had got itself inside of her and chilled her with fear, like her blood had gone away, left her standing there empty and dry for all to see. “Girl looked empty and dry like that, Dory,” Riley said. “She never said nothing. Stood there over by the pump, washing herself and watering that horse, laying hands on it like it was hurt. You always did that, Dory, after every ride. Horse don’t mind. Of course. Just stood there drinking. Shoot, Calder’s mare been treated worse.” Riley paused and fixed the lantern’s flame. His heart was still beating fast. He sat, waiting for it to slow, and thought about man and beast and the deal they’d made in life. He had a sense about horses, Riley did. Always had. Something about them made the hairs at the back of his neck lie flat and straight the way they ought, the way they had when he was just a boy, lying half asleep in his daddy’s field, watching the horses’ tails swish across their backsides shooing flies, him guessing where they’d land next, and telling stories to himself. A boy’s game. “Durn fool little gal,” Riley said. “Rode off on a fresh-watered horse, headed up toward town. Something real bad happened, Dory, it was in her ride.” Riley could tell things about a rider looking at his ride. Ted Calder’s men knew that. They’d come riding up off Calder’s land and Riley’d be there watching. He could tell which one of them was slumped with pain or sickness, which one had a sorrow deep inside. They’d buy a pack of smokes or lukewarm Coke and Riley’d sit there waiting, watching the beads of sweat roll off their faces, waiting for their stories to begin. Tales of old man Calder and his son Ted, his only child. The old man had died suddenly a few years ago and now Ted Calder was in charge. “Don’t no one come down your road no more, old man,” one of Calder’s hands would say to Riley. “Yep, Ted Calder cut them off this time.” “Built that road of his.” “Yeah, the state’s money for that road followed him home from Austin, bossman says, like Mary’s little lamb.” “Little lamb my ass,” said one. “Little lamb be damned.” The men would laugh and tell Riley about Ted Calder’s latest plans. Some new spawn of cattle, make up for his own barreness, the men said, his and the missus, and the dying Calder name he talked so much about. His legacy. Ted Calder made his men ride the range on horseback still, said it linked him to his legacy, the Calder legacy, wild as it was. Sometimes Ted Calder himself would ride up, drunk or sober, and come inside. “Give me a pack of Dentyne, pop,” he’d shout, and Riley would sell him one pack of gum from a box he kept hidden under the counter for Calder alone. Reserved for the bossman, one might say, though one might as well just say it was Ted Calder’s due, great grandson of the famous Earl and keeper of their Texas flame. Riley hurried out of his hole and went back inside. He sat down at his table still jittery and stared out the side window at the night sky for a long, long time. Then he picked up the salt shaker and turned it over in his hand. The salt fell out until it made a tiny mound of whiteness there and only then did he stop. Only then did Thomas Riley lick one callused fingertip and tap it gently on the salty pile and touch it to his tongue. He closed his eyes and the salty sting called to him. “Dolores,” it said, “Dory, come on, darling, come on in and taste it. Come and let the sea wash over you, ain’t nothing like it, darling, come join me, honeychild.” Dolores had done that, all those years ago, she’d left the white baked sand of Padre Island and come out into the water with her husband. And there they’d stood, the newlyweds, in saggy swimwear, tasting their first pure taste of life’s beginning. It was their beginning too, this place, this bare stretch of beach in the Gulf of Mexico—the beginning of all they held for each other and they kissed one another right there in the water and let the salt-filled waves pound over them like the baptism of love it was.
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