Moses had been hanging around for the last two weeks, working, weeding, eating—holy crap could he eat—and generally getting on my nerves because he was so unsettling. He didn’t do anything wrong, exactly. He just made me jittery. He didn’t talk to me, which I convinced myself was his only redeeming quality. That and his cool eyes. And his muscles. I flinched, slightly repulsed at myself. He was weird. What was I thinking?
“Have you ever ridden a horse?” I asked, trying to distract myself.
Moses seemed to tear himself away from the daydream that had him standing and staring off at nothing.
His eyes re-focused on me briefly but he didn’t respond. So I repeated myself.
He shook his head.
“No? Have you ever been close to one?”
He shook his head once more.
“Come on. Come closer,” I said, nodding toward the horse. I was thinking maybe I could help Moses with some equine therapy, just like Mom and Dad. I’d seen them work. I thought maybe I could do what they did. Maybe I could fix his cracked brain.
Moses stepped back like he was afraid. In the weeks he’d been working on the farm he’d never gotten close to the animals. Ever. He just watched them. He watched me. And he never talked.
“Go ahead. Sackett’s the best horse ever. At least give him a pat.”
“I’ll scare him,” Moses responded. I was startled once more. It was the first time I’d heard him speak and his voice wasn’t two-toned like my foster brother Bobbie’s and so many other boys, as if it was hovering between the steps that would eventually take him to the basement, squeaking and shifting, before finally sinking into position. Moses’s voice was deep and warm and so soft it tickled my heart a little as it settled on me.
“No you won’t. Sackett doesn’t get excited about anything. Nothing scares him or makes him nervous or anything. He would sit here all day and let you hug him if you wanted to. Now, Lucky, on the other hand, might bite off your hand and kick you in the face. But not Sackett.”
Lucky was a horse I’d been wooing for months, a horse someone had given my dad as payment for services they couldn’t afford. My dad didn’t have time for Lucky’s attitude, and he had turned him over to me and said, “Be careful.”
I had laughed. I wasn’t ever careful.
He laughed too, but then warned, “I’m serious, George. This guy is named Lucky for a reason. You’ll be lucky if he ever lets you ride him.”
“Animals don’t like me.” Moses’s voice was so faint I wasn’t sure I heard him right. I shook off thoughts of Lucky and patted my faithful companion, the horse that had been mine for as long as I had been able to ride.
“Sackett loves everyone.”
“He won’t like me. Or maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s them.”
I looked around in confusion. There was no one in the barn but Sackett, Moses, and me. “Them who?” I asked. “It’s just us, dude.”
Moses didn’t answer.
So I stared at him, waiting, raising my eyebrows in challenge. I stroked Sackett’s nose and down the side of his neck. Sackett didn’t move a muscle.
“See? He’s like a statue. He just soaks up the love. Come on.”
Moses took a step forward and raised his hand tentatively, reaching toward Sackett. Sackett whinnied nervously.
Moses dropped his hand immediately and stepped back.
I laughed. “What the hell?”
Maybe I should have listened to Moses about animals not liking him. But I didn’t. I guess I didn’t believe him. Wouldn’t be the last time.
“You’re not going to wimp out are you?” I taunted. “Touch him. He won’t hurt you.”
Moses leveled his golden-green eyes at me, considered what I had said, and then reached forward once more, taking another step as he stretched out his fingers.
And just like that, Sackett reared up on his hind legs like he’d been hanging around Lucky too long. It was completely out of character for the horse I’d known all my life, the horse who hadn’t bucked once in all the years I’d loved him. I didn’t have a chance to scream or shout or even reach for his halter. Instead, I got a hooved foot in my forehead, and I went down like a sack of flour.
Blood stung my eyes when I opened them and stared up into the rafters of the old barn. I was laying on my back and my head hurt like I’d been kicked by a horse—I realized suddenly that I had been kicked by a horse. By Sackett. The shock was almost greater than the pain.
“Georgia?”
I focused blearily on the face that suddenly loomed above me, cutting off my view of crisscrossing beams and dust motes dancing in the streaky sunlight peeking through the cracks along the walls.
Moses held my head in his lap, pressing his T-shirt to my forehead. Even in my dazed state, I still noticed the naked shoulders and chest and felt the smooth skin of his abdomen against my cheek.
“I need to get help, okay?” He shifted, moving my head to the floor, still holding his shirt to my bloody forehead. I tried not to look at the amount of blood on that shirt.
“No! Wait! Where’s Sackett?” I said, trying to sit up. Moses pushed me back down and looked at the door as if he had no idea what to do.
“He . . . bolted,” he answered slowly.
I remembered that Sackett hadn’t been tied off. I’d never needed to restrain him before. I couldn’t imagine what had gotten into my horse to make him rear up and then go tearing out of the barn. My eyes found Moses again.
“How bad is it?” I tried to sound like Clint Eastwood or someone who could handle a devastating head wound and still not lose his cool. But my voice wobbled a little.
Moses swallowed sympathetically, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his brown throat. His hands were shaking too. He was as upset as I was. It was easy to see.
“I don’t know. It isn’t wide. But it’s bleeding a lot.”
“Animals really don’t like you, do they?” I whispered.
Moses didn’t pretend not to understand. He shook his head. “I make them nervous. All animals. Not just Sackett.”
He made me nervous too. But nervous in a good way. Nervous in a way that fascinated me. And even though my head was pounding and there was blood in my eyes, I wanted him to stay. And I wanted him to tell me all his secrets.
As if he felt the shift in me and didn’t welcome it, Moses was up and running, leaving me with his T-shirt pressed to my head and a sudden insatiable interest in the new kid in town. It wasn’t long before he returned, my mom trotting behind him, Moses’s grandma bringing up the distant rear. Alarm was stamped across her face as well as my mom’s, and seeing their concern made me wonder if the wound was worse than I thought. I experienced a flash of female vanity, a new experience for me. Would I have a big scar running down my forehead? A week ago I might have thought that was cool. Suddenly, I didn’t want a scar. I wanted Moses to think I was beautiful.
He stood back, way back, letting the adults fuss and swarm. When it was determined that I could probably get by without an expensive trip to the ER and a couple butterfly bandages were applied to hold the gash together, Moses slipped away. Equine therapy wasn’t going to heal the cracks in Moses Wright, but I promised myself that I would worm my way into those cracks and corners if it was the last thing I did. Summer had just become a rainforest.
Georgia
ABOUT A WEEK AFTER MOSES spooked my horse and I got kicked in the head, Dad and I discovered a mural on the side of our barn. Sometime during the night, someone had painted a stunningly realistic depiction of the sun setting over the western hills of Levan. Against the rosy-hued backdrop, a horse that looked like Sackett stood with his head cocked, a rider sitting comfortably in the saddle. The rider was in profile and the fading sun left him in shadows, but he looked familiar. My dad stared at the picture for a long time with a wistful look on his face. I thought he would be mad because someone had used the side of our barn as a canvas . . . kind of like what I imagined gangs did in big cities. But these weren’t
geometric gang signs or bubble letters in bold colors. This was kind of cool. This was something you would pay for. Something you would pay a lot for.
“It looks like my dad,” my father whispered.
“It looks like Sackett, too,” I added, not able to tear my eyes away.
“Grandpa Shepherd had a horse named Hondo, Sackett’s great-grandpa. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“Yeah. You were too little I guess. Hondo was a good horse. Grandpa loved him as much as you love Sackett.”
“Did you show him a picture?” I asked.
“Who?” Dad turned toward me, puzzled.
“Moses. Didn’t he do this? I heard Mrs. Wright telling mom that Moses was sent to juvie for vandalism or destruction of property or something. He likes to paint stuff, apparently. Mrs. Wright said it’s compulsive. Whatever that means. I just thought you decided to put him to work.”
“Huh. No. I didn’t ask him to paint the barn. But I like it.”
“Me too,” I agreed wholeheartedly.
“If he did this, and I don’t know who else it could be, he’s got serious talent. Still, Moses can’t go painting wherever and whatever he feels like. The next thing you know the house will have an Elvis mural on the garage.”
“Mom would love that.”
My dad laughed at my sarcasm, but he hadn’t been kidding around. That evening he announced that he was heading over to visit with Moses and Kathleen Wright, and I begged to go along.
“I want to talk to Moses,” I said.
“I don’t want to embarrass him, George. And having you there while I get after him will definitely embarrass him. This conversation doesn’t need an audience. I just want him to know he can’t be doing stuff like that, no matter how talented he is.”
“I want Moses to paint something on my bedroom wall. I’ve got some money saved up and I’ll pay him. So you tell him he can’t paint wherever he wants and then I’ll give him a place where he can. Would that be all right?”
“What are you going to have him paint?”
“Remember that story you used to tell me when I was little? The one about the blind man who turned into a horse every night when the sun went down and turned back into a man when the sun rose?”
“Yeah. That’s an old story my dad used to tell me.”
“I keep thinking about it. I want the story on my wall—or at least the white horse running into the clouds.”
“Ask your mom. If it’s okay with her, it’s okay with me.”
I sighed heavily. Mom would be a harder sell. “It’s just paint,” I grumbled.
Surprisingly enough, Mom was fine with the paint, but she was a little worried about Moses in my room.
“He’s intense, Georgie. He scares me a little. I don’t know how I feel about you two being friends, honestly. I know that’s not very generous of me. But you’re my daughter, and you have always been drawn to danger like a moth to a flame.”
“He’ll be painting, Mom. And I won’t be in there in a lace negligee while he does. I think I’ll be safe.” I winked.
My mom swatted my butt and gave in with a laugh. But truthfully, Mom was wise to warn me away. She was right. I was absolutely fascinated by him, and I didn’t see the fascination dying anytime soon.
And so Dad and I were off, knocking on Kathleen Wright’s back door a little after sundown. Moses was at the kitchen table eating the biggest bowl of Cornflakes I’d ever seen, and his grandmother sat across from him, peeling an apple in one long, curling red ribbon. I wondered suddenly how many apples she’d practiced on in her eighty years to hone the skill.
“I won’t ever paint on your property again,” Moses said sincerely after my dad gently told him that painting on our property without permission wasn’t acceptable. Kathleen seemed a little upset until my dad reassured her that the painting was beautiful and he didn’t want Moses to cover it up. She relaxed after that, and I seemed to be the only one who noticed that Moses hadn’t promised not to paint on someone else’s property ever again. Just ours.
“You captured a good likeness of my father,” my dad added, almost as an afterthought. “He would have liked your painting.”
“I was trying to draw you,” Moses said, his eyes not quite meeting my dad’s. For some reason I was sure he was lying, but didn’t know why he would. It made a whole lot more sense that he had used my dad as an inspiration. He certainly hadn’t known my grandpa.
“Actually, Moses,” I inserted myself into the conversation, “I wondered if you could paint a mural on my bedroom wall. I’d pay you. Probably not as much as you’re worth, but it’s something.”
He looked at me and looked away. “I don’t know if I can.”
His grandma, my dad and I stared at him, dumbfounded. Proof that he definitely could was plastered all over the side of our barn.
“I have to . . . to . . . be . . . inspired,” he finished weakly, throwing up his hands, almost as if he were trying to push me away. “I can’t just paint anything. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Moses would love to, Georgia,” Kathleen interrupted firmly and leveled a warning gaze at her great-grandson. “He’ll come by tomorrow afternoon to see what you want done.”
He pushed his empty bowl away and stood up abruptly. “I can’t do it, Grandma.” Then he addressed my dad. “No more paint on your property, I promise.” And with that, he left the room.
IT WAS TWO WEEKS BEFORE Moses and I ran into each other again, though the circumstances were even more unpleasant than the first time. The Ute Stampede in Juab County is bigger than Christmas for most of the people who live here. Three days and three nights of parades, the carnival, and, of course, the rodeo. I counted down the days each year; it was always the second weekend in July, and it was the highlight of the summer. To top it off, this year I had qualified to compete in the barrel racing. My parents said I had to wait until after high school to join the circuit, but they told me I could do all the statewide events I qualified for. I’d won Thursday night which had gotten me back into the Saturday night Championship round. I’d won that too. First night as a professional cowgirl, and I’d won it all.
Afterwards, I’d decided to hang around at the carnival to celebrate the night. But my friend Haylee who lived in Nephi, about fifteen minutes north of Levan, was with her boyfriend Terrence, who I didn’t especially like. He was always pulling mean pranks and instead of a cowboy hat, he wore one of those trucker caps perched way too high on his head.
“You wear it like that because it’s the only way you’re taller than the girls,” I told him.
“Tall girls aren’t my type,” he replied, and gave me a little shove.
“Well, then. I’ve never been more thankful that I was a tall girl.”
“You and me both,” he said.
“I couldn’t go out with you anyway, Terrence. Everyone would think you were my little brother,” I teased, tossing his stupid hat into a nearby trashcan and patting him on his sweaty head.
After that, he kept throwing nasty comments my way, and I could tell Haylee was wishing we would stop fighting. I was bored anyway, so I took off by myself, pleading hunger and the need for taller men. I found myself wandering away from the carnival toward the chutes and the nearby corrals that housed the animals during the three consecutive days of the stampede.
It was dark and there was no one else around, but I wanted to get a better look at the bulls. I’d always wanted to ride one and I was sure I could. I climbed the first rungs of the fence and braced myself against it once I was high enough to look down into the stalls separating man from beast. The arena was still lit and although the corrals were in shadows, I could easily make out the heavily muscled back of the bull Cordell Meecham had ridden just hours before. It had been a 90 point ride. He’d won the night and it had been a picture-perfect performance—knees high, heels digging, back bowed, right arm pointed to the heavens as if reaching for the stars would make him one. And it had made him one tonight. The
crowd had screamed. I had screamed. And when the bull named Satan’s Alias finally threw Cordell free, the buzzer had already sounded and the bull had been bested. I smiled at the memory and imagined it was me.
Barrel racing was the only thing cowgirls did, and I loved it. I loved flying down the arena on the home stretch, head low, hands fisted in Sackett’s hair, like I’d caught the current and was letting it take me back to shore. But I wondered sometimes how it would feel to ride an earthquake instead of a wave. Up and down, side to side, bucking, shaking, riding an earthquake.
Satan’s Alias wasn’t interested in me. Neither were the other bulls crowded in the enclosure. The manure was fresh and so was the straw. I breathed in, not minding the smell that had others wrinkling their noses as they passed the livestock. I stayed a moment longer, watching the animals, before I stepped down from my perch on the fence. It was late. I needed to find Haylee and get my butt home. It rankled that I had a curfew at all, and my thoughts were immediately filled with the future when I wouldn’t have to answer to anyone but myself.
When the shadowy figure separated himself from the darkness, I wasn’t scared. Not at all. I’d never had reason to be afraid of a cowboy. Cowboys were the best people in the world. Go to any rodeo, anywhere in America, and you’d get the sense that the men and women who attend them could single-handedly save the universe. Not because they are the smartest, the richest, or the most beautiful people in the world. But because they are good. They love each other. They love their country. They love their families. They sing the anthem and they mean it. They take off their hats when the flag is raised. They live and love with devotion. So, no. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t nervous until I was pushed face first into the dirt, freshly churned by the hooves and heels of both men and beasts.