“Susie’s dead, Hunt.”
“Well, that’s it. I blame myself.” I didn’t want to talk about my dead wife, but had to once the topic surfaced. I realized I had more than one reason to talk about her. I needed to work through it all myself. “Susie was afraid of a lot of things,” I said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that. I didn’t understand and I’m not sure I really know now what it was like for her. It made her real negative about stuff and I guess her negativity started to make me irritable.”
“Hunt.”
“Let me finish,” I said. “Susie would say something and I’d feel myself start to shut down. I’m sure she saw it. She was smart. I believe she began to think I didn’t like her.” I sat on the ground and stared at my house, at the corral where Susie had been killed. Morgan sat beside me. “I honestly think she was trying that horse so I would see her as brave.”
“That’s crazy,” Morgan said.
“Maybe,” I said. “All I know is I hated the way I’d cringe when she said anything for a while. I would anticipate the complaint or the fear. Made me feel like shit. I started not liking myself. I reckon I’m still not too fond of me. Anyway, Morgan, I really appreciate the way you just spoke up.”
“Appreciation noted.”
I looked north at the clouds holding steady over the mountains.
“What do you say we ride back?” Morgan said.
We did, loping again across the meadow. We led the horses with loosened girths the last quarter-mile. The air was feeling a little more humid and I could smell the hay. At the barn, we tied up the horses and took off the bridles and saddles. Morgan and I reached for the same hoof pick.
She snatched it away and said, “Hey, cowboy, get your own.”
We were standing close to each other. Before the moment became deadly and irrevocably awkward, I leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.
A rustling at the edge of the barn gave us a start. Then we saw Gus walking back toward the house. He said, without looking back, “About goddamn time.”
I got in some more of my hay the next morning. I was covered with dust and my dust mask was still hanging around my neck. I sat on the edge of the water trough beside the house and rested. I took off my shirt, turned around and splashed myself with the water. I sat back down and closed my eyes. I must have drifted off because I suddenly felt Gus standing next to me.
“You’re awfully quiet for an old man,” I said, my eyes still closed.
“Learned it from my grandfather,” Gus said. “He was a full-blooded Seminole Indian.”
“So, you’ve told me.” The phone rang inside. I opened my eyes and looked at Gus. “I suppose I’m going to answer that,” I said.
Gus nodded. “It’s for you. I can feel it.”
“You can feel it, eh?”
“In my bones.”
I groaned as I pushed myself to my feet. I walked up the steps and into the kitchen where I picked up the wall phone.
“John?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Howard.” Howard Thayer was a friend from college, the only one I’d managed to keep. We hadn’t been in touch for over a year.
“Hey, poke,” I said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. You ranching it up out there?”
“You bet. How are Sylvia and the kids?” The heat of the sun through the window was making me perspire again. I grabbed a towel from the counter and wiped my neck. It was damp and felt good.
“Actually, I’m calling about one of the kids,” Howard said. “David.”
I untangled the cord and pulled the phone over to the table and sat. “Is he all right?”
“He’s fine.”
“How old is he now?”
“He’s twenty,” Howard said.
“God, that means you’re old.”
“Tell me about it,” he said. “Hey, Davey’s going to be up in Highland and I was wondering if you could look in on him. Take him to lunch or something. Just so he has a friend, you know.”
“Of course. What’s he doing up here?”
Howard paused briefly as if doing something away from the phone. “I don’t know exactly. He’ll be staying at the Rusty Spur Motel. Is that place okay? Is it a fleabag?”
“Yes, but it’s a quaint fleabag.”
“He arrives there on Friday,” Howard said. “Driving out with a friend. So, what’s it like out there?”
“Beautiful. Always beautiful,” I told him. “How’s Chicago?”
“Crowded, dirty, disgusting,” he said. “It’s hot and ready to turn cold. You should visit.”
“So, David is twenty,” I said. “Last time I saw him he was fifteen, I think.”
“Yeah, fifteen. He’s grown up some.”
“Any possibility of you and Sylvia making it up here?”
“I don’t think so,” Howard said. “John, Sylvia and I split up. We’re divorced now.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, not knowing if I thought that or not. “Are you all right?”
“Everybody’s okay,” he said. “These things happen. What can I say? Listen, I’d better run. Thanks for looking in on my boy.”
“Sure thing.”
“Talk later,” Howard said.
“Bye.” I hung up.
Gus came in and snatched the damp towel off my shoulder. “What are you, some kind of heathen? I’ll bet you were going to put that right back on the counter, weren’t you?”
“I hadn’t thought that far,” I confessed.
“Well, of course you hadn’t. Heathen.” He sighed. “Who was that on the telling phone?”
“My friend Howard. You remember him. I went to college with him. His kid’s going to be in town this weekend.”
“Are you hungry?” Gus tossed the soiled towel onto the big pile in the laundry room.
“Not yet. I’ve got some more work to do.”
I went out to the barns and checked all the animals. I probed around the corners and between the stacks of bales of hay trying to flush out any late-season rattlesnakes. Then I made sure the extra chain was fastened onto the paddock gate where I kept Daniel White Buffalo’s mule. The damn thing was an escape artist. Fortunately, he hung around and never did anything more than nibble at the hay and visit the other horses and get them agitated.
I went back into the house and told Gus I didn’t need dinner.
“That’s fine with me,” he said.
“I’m going to ride up and camp in the cave.”
“You’re an odd fellow, John Hunt.”
“See you in the morning.”
I saddled the Appy and rode out. Zoe went with me. Gus didn’t mind not cooking. He was always happy with just cereal.
At the cave, I unrolled my bag and got a fire going. I cooked a couple of hot dogs, tossing a couple pieces on top of Zoe’s dry food. “I don’t know,” I said to her, “this might make you a cannibal, a dog eating a hot dog.”
Zoe didn’t laugh.
The fire threw light and my shadow against the wall.
I put on my headlamp and walked deeper into the cave. Zoe was good to have along because I trusted her to be able to find her way out, even if I couldn’t. Still, I used light sticks every thirty yards or so and at every bend. I had a sack of thirty. I didn’t plan to go exploring deep into the unknown parts, only to visit the big cavern. The room was big relative to the rest of the cave, about the size of a small church, not that I had had much experience with churches. It was nothing like the big caverns at Carlsbad or the ones I’d seen in photographs. It was perhaps forty by forty feet with a ceiling of thirty at its highest point. Zoe stayed close by my leg and that was fine with me. My lantern didn’t throw a lot of light and my headlamp threw less and only where I looked. Giant stalactites hung from the ceiling and stalagmites popped up from the floor, various shapes, sizes, and colors, yellow to red, some ghostly white. I sat and turned off my lights, keeping a hand on Zoe. The only light then was the green glow of the stick I’d broken and left near the entrance to the room. I tried not to touch the stalagmites near me. I’d read how people could damage the surfaces with oils from their skin. I listened to the quiet, interrupted only by the steady, random drips, the drips that came from the mountain above and left infinitesimal amounts of calcium carbonate to make and lengthen the stalactites. I decided I was a trogloxene, a creature that lives outside the cave, but returns frequently. I’d seen sign of small mammals near the entrance on occasion, but never deep within. I’d seen a couple of daddy longlegs, and knew there were probably other spiders. And there had to be something the spiders were eating. I imagined that there were some blind, colorless insects roaming about, but I wasn’t educated enough to find them.