“Uncle,” I said, and he released me.
I crawled off Fender’s body and lay on my back beside him. I pulled the front of my T-shirt out of my cut-offs and wiped the sweat from my eyes.
“You’re taking up all the air,” Fender said quietly.
The hair under his armpit brushed my neck as he slipped his arm under my head.
I slid my hand down the front of my jeans, pausing to be sure he was watching. As I stared up at the sky, I made small circular movements with my hand. The birds chirped and Fender was silent as he watched. I thought of the young girl in the barn, the day she had showed me. She’d laid down in the hay stall one afternoon and spread her legs. She was wearing a pair of thick white tights with one of those circular crotches. Her hand moved around inside it.
Afterward, I went over to the tree where I’d hidden the rucksack. As I bent over to readjust my hair, I felt a sting on the back of my legs where Fender flicked me with the wet part of his T-shirt.
“Got yah,” he said, sprinting past me up the trail out of the marsh.
When we emerged onto the road Otto was having it out with The Sheik in front of the barn. The Sheik had witnessed a great fright in his youth. The sound of water in a gutter ten feet off made him stop short. Otto was trying to train the nervousness out of him. There was a thick sheen to The Sheik’s coat. His legs frothed under his tail. Otto spurred him forward, trying to get the horse to stand with his hooves on the grate in front of the barn where the runoff from the mountain emptied out into the sewer.
I admired Otto for the way he rode with his hair gleaming. Helmets, he said, were for novices and women. I’d heard him tell Father that saddling a horse was like taking out the mother of your children. You combed your hair and dressed for the occasion. Rumor had it, Otto’d trained horses for the Kennedys once.
The Sheik stared unflinchingly at the sewage grate across the road as we approached. His front legs were squared. Otto let him have it on the head with the blunt end of the whip.
“Flighty devil,” Otto said, stroking The Sheik on the withers once the horse was straddling the grate. A thin sweat had broken out on Otto’s brow. He dabbed at the moisture with his hankie.
As Otto dismounted, Callie made her way down the drive.
“Jesus, Houser,” Callie called. “You break my balls just watching.”
“Why don’t you take this flighty little Arab out jumping while he’s good and greased,” Otto called to her. “He’d fly over a barrel of burning petrol if you asked him.”
“He’s more of a lady’s ride anyway,” Father said.
“The old show boat,” Otto said. “Sides of iron. Soft as hell in the mouth. Doesn’t like other men hanging on his beauty.”
“You know what they say, baby,” Callie said, gutting the foam from the corners of the horse’s mouth where it had gathered around the bit. “A feather in the saddle is a bird in the hand.” She smiled at Father.
“I’ll give you a leg up,” he offered.
I remember the rise and fall of Callie’s bottom as she trotted off down the road toward the far pasture where Otto had set the jumps. It was that time of the day where the shadows grew long and dusky. What was left of the sun existed somewhere between the curve of Callie’s behind and the saddle. We all stood there admiring it for a moment.
“Haven’t known a horse that hasn’t taken to her,” Otto said.
As we turned the bend toward the paddock, Birdie came up the road. She carried a small metal tray lined with Dixie cups. Watching her approach in the setting darkness, it seemed the world would swallow her whole. She’d spent the day at the Starlings’ under the care of their eldest daughter who was trying to convince her suit, the one in pharmaceuticals, to give her a baby. In the meantime, she was borrowing other people’s children to show off her skills.
“What have we got here?” Otto said, kneeling down to examine Birdie’s tray.
“Mouthwash,” Birdie said. “Two for a dollar.”
“Well now,” he said.
Birdie put the tray down in the road and reached into her pocket. She produced a wad of bills.
“Where did you get those?” Father said.
“Ray’s daughter sent me out with them,” she said. “She said I could keep a dollar for every ten.”
We stood there staring at the wad of green in Birdie’s fist wondering if Ray’s daughter was back on coke and needed money.
I looked down at the rows of Dixies. The mouthwash had saturated a few. A thick blue liquid seeped onto the tray.
“Well I’m no stranger,” Otto said, reaching into his billfold and handing Birdie a ten dollar bill. “I’ll buy you out. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Otto took a cup from the tray and shot the liquid into his mouth, swishing for a minute before spitting into the grass.
“Not bad,” he said to Father. “Toothpaste and club soda.”
Callie was making the rounds by the time we reached the gate.
“Jumped three foot fences since the first time I threw her in the saddle,” Otto said watching. “I’ve never seen a woman more alive with her feet off the ground.”
“Some people just aren’t made for walking,” Father said.
“Never was. Never will be,” Otto said. “Problem is, she doesn’t have an eye for a husband that can hold her anywhere but half way down his nose.”
“Well,” Father said. He looked at me for a moment before pulling me to his side. “You know better than all that,” he said. “Tell me you know better than all that.” Father’s eyes were glassy. He was talking about the Dixies and the coke and he was talking too about the light under Callie’s rear and how much he both feared and admired it.
We stood watching Callie jump until there was enough dusk in the air that the oxers had lost their color.
14
After all the light had faded, Fender and I bore our hides. The phone rang as I was clearing the dishes.
“It’s hot up here,” Fender said.
We met at the Starlings’ pool.
I raced him there panting and gleaming. I’d given myself a good scrub in the shower, looking for some ugliness to shed. What I found was a mound of flesh at the top of my thighs and Mother’s plastic razor rusting in the corner of the stall.
It took me a while to figure out which way to go with the hair, to shave against the grain.
Fender hurdled the fence. I climbed the chain-link hand over foot. Once, I thought I saw a light go on in the Starlings’ kitchen when I rattled the links.
“Stick close to the shadows,” Fender said. “And don’t let your mind get the better of you.”
“OK, Senator,” I said. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Our stripping off was a hurried embarrassment. There wasn’t much glamour in us. Mostly that part of him just looked like something best left under his trunks. His shoulders were everything. Broad and smooth and tapered, they anchored an acreage of muscle which moved easily under his flesh.
Once we were in there wasn’t much to do but move around. The water was cool. The willow which overlooked the fence cast a shadow on the surface. We kept what parts of ourselves we could submerged to avoid drawing attention should anyone come to a window. Every now and again I felt the pull of Fender’s body as he swam by. There was something confident in his small undulations.
“I wish we could go sliding,” he said, looking up at the big blue plastic shoot next to the pool.
Eventually I got out to shake off. There was nothing to do but drip. I stood there with my arms out. The night was warmer than the water. I leaned over and wrung out my hair. A puddle formed around me on the concrete. Fender paused under the willow.