“Sure,” Frank said. “Someday.” But the woman had shifted her attention to Ian.
She held out her hand, and Ian took it.
“I’m Claudia,” she said. “Hello.”
Ian said, “Hi.”
Heat that had nothing to do with the growing mugginess of the blue May evening flooded Frank’s face. Miles off in a cloudless sky, lightning winked.
“Are you okay?” said Claudia.
“I’m fine,” said Frank, sitting down on one of the benches. He asked Ian, “What did you say?”
“I said hi to her,” Ian told him. Although this was impossible, Frank recognized Ian’s light voice with his drawn-out, nasally Aussie vowels. The boy added, “I want those horses, please.”
“He hasn’t ever talked,” Frank said to Claudia.
“I know.”
“Marty told you?”
“Marty said you adopted him after his parents were killed and that you never heard him speak.”
“Could I have those horses?” Ian said. It took Frank a moment to figure out that Ian didn’t mean living horses; he meant the little rubber racing horses on the wedding cake.
“Yes, after they cut the cake.”
“Can I go find the grandma?” Ian said.
“Not now. She’s having a nap.”
“Then, can I go play with Patrick?” Ian said.
“No.”
“Do I have to sit here?”
Frank surveyed the flat ground near the vast renovated antique barn. A deejay had pulled up, and his crew was carting sections of dance floor and speakers into the barn no more than twenty yards away. “You can go watch them.” Ian grinned. Then Frank said, “Wait a minute. Can’t you tell how surprised I am? Could you talk always?”
Ian stared at the ground.
“Could you always talk?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever talk?”
“I talk to the horses. And I talk at night. I talk to Sally.”
A drinking pal of Patrick’s, who lived with his grandparents just down the road from Tenacity, had given Patrick a border collie called Sally. Even Frank had to admit that she had terrific manners, although she loped nearly constantly and ate the rest of the time. Sally was a good dog, and a farm needed a dog, and she adored Ian extravagantly. She never barked unless an unfamiliar car approached, and then she whined, nervously, for about two minutes before anyone else heard its approach. Under Sally’s unwavering gaze, the little paint filly no longer bit the other horses. She let Farmer Frank be his bemused self.
“Okay,” Frank said. “Well, you can go now. Look at me and yell when you get there.”
“I will.” Ian ran off. Another little boy just slightly bigger seemed to have been waiting and fell into step with him.
Frank turned to the woman called Claudia. “Can you explain that?”
“Because I’m a doctor? Not really.”
“I thought we were going to have to get him a computer with a voice synthesizer when he got old enough to type. Do you have a professional opinion?”
“Sometimes stuff like that just happens.”
“That’s your professional opinion? Stuff happens?”
“Well, my professional opinion and my personal opinion are the same. Sometimes stuff like that just happens. I’m glad it happened for a good reason, and I mean by that a positive reason. Maybe he didn’t have a good enough reason to talk until now.”
“But what’s the reason now?”
“You would have to ask him, and he wouldn’t be able to tell you in a way that would make sense, I don’t think. It was the right time for him.”
Frank laughed. “Do you think it’s good?”
“It’s pretty great. How could it be bad?”
“The world falls open for him and me. I hope that’s a good thing.”
“There’s no going back.”
“I can ask him how he thinks about things now.” Frank thought, I can ask him who his real parents are, and if that woman in the van was his mother. But if, more likely, they’re still alive, and have a million acres of cattle land in the vast Northern Territory, and their own airplane, then I have to bring him back, which means going to prison for life, with my pal Charley.
Come down off the ledge, Frank scolded himself. Ian was not yet four. His real parents’ names would be “Mummy” and “Daddy.” If Ian’s living parents were jackaroos and he longed for them, Ian would not act the way he did. Even Frank, whose sum total of hours with a kid he could count on both hands before Christmas Day, knew that. I could lose him, Frank thought. No. How could he lose Ian? He’s mine, Frank thought. And then, He’s not mine. He belongs to someone else. He’s someone else’s boy. I was only ever supposed to protect him from getting caught in the tidal pull of the human flood that came after the real flood, just until I found the people he really belonged to.
So why didn’t you look for them?
“I wouldn’t expect big ponderings from him. He’s a little guy,” said Claudia. “You knew his family?”
“Only slightly.” For about ninety seconds. “Anything at all would be big.” Frank’s guts squeezed, in sync with his temples. Like the deepest throat of a cello, a note of despair opened.
“You seem to already know how he thinks about things,” Claudia said, then stopped. “If I had to guess, I would say he wanted those rubber horses on the cake more than anything else in the world. Kids, they think differently. If something’s too big for them to think about, they won’t think about that. But a small thing to us gets really big to them.”
“Do you want a drink?” Frank asked. “I’m buying.”
Marty Fisher’s mother and father had brought out the champagne. It was now on ice in wheelbarrows—a good use for wheelbarrows, Frank observed. Marty’s college-age twin sisters were dancing silently to music piped through their earbuds.
“That’s an iconic twenty-first-century sight,” Claudia said as the girls swirled and gyrated on the grass in their ballet flats, to the tune of apparent silence. “I’ll bet they were IVF twins. You think?”
Frank had no idea what the woman was talking about. He stared at her. A drink might help . . . or do nothing. He wanted to take Ian and go home to Tenacity and lock the doors. But it was Eden’s wedding day; and he was just a father, so everyone thought, a new and somewhat tragic father whose own story, thankfully, did not bear much examination. He should sound normal. So he concentrated on what he would have said if his mind hadn’t been a damaged boat heeling around his skull.
Frank said, “Marty and Eden hired a string quartet for now and for the ceremony, but they called this morning. One of them had a headache. I don’t know if you’re from Madison, but . . . you know, he had a headache.”
Claudia said, “I’m from there now. I know exactly what you mean.”
“They were hired six months ago. And he had . . . a headache.”
“You’d think there would be a violinist standing by.”
“I liked the guitar, though. That is my mother’s favorite song,” Frank said.
“I think it must be everyone’s mother’s favorite song.”
Claudia smiled in a big, unaffected way at odds with her precise but somehow Mediterranean prettiness. Frank fought to relax. His leg and his wrist now pounded with every pulse of his heart.
“Is it the shock of him talking?” Claudia asked. “You’re sweating.”
“I guess it is. I thought that would happen, some quiet way, or some huge, dramatic way, years from now. I don’t know why I thought that.” Frank wished the sun would fall already and he could stop squinting, feeling untented without his ever-present sunglasses, which Eden forbade him to wear today. He would call Patrick and ask him to bring back his sunglasses, but there Patrick was, his hair still wet from the shower, flirting with one of Marty’s sisters. The girl must be eighteen. Frank hoped she was twenty. Ah, well. “I hurt my wrist not long ago. It acts up sometimes.”
“I’ve got some aspirin,” Clau
dia said, and reached into her pocket. “You fall off a horse enough and some things just don’t get their lube back. So I’m always packing acetylsalicylic acid.”
A blue-jeaned bartender offered them flutes of champagne. Claudia was thoughtful and pleasant: Frank tried to smile, despite the enormous net drag of grief stirred up by the wedding day. On a day this bright, he’d promised a future with Natalie. And now, there was joy that Ian might finally be able to articulate both his process and his provenance, and so his future, which wouldn’t include Frank. He needed a psychiatrist. Here was a psychiatrist. Why didn’t he just talk about it?
If he did that, he’d need a psychiatrist and a lawyer, too.
“I’m a widower,” he said.
“I know,” the woman replied.
“And this is a wedding.”
“I see. Everybody feels all sorts of mixed-up stuff at a wedding, sadness and loss along with joy. Even if they’re not widowers.”
“And Ian talked.”
“Well, he’s not going to tell you why. Maybe in twenty years.”
What if he didn’t know Ian in twenty years? What should he say to this woman that wouldn’t entail ornamenting the tunic of lies he wore? He smiled again.
Hope was back, her gray silk replaced with a long flowered skirt and ruffled vest. From across the long verge of grass, she shrugged at Ian, who was jabbering to everyone, dancing with a collective of little girls and big girls, like a heron in a spasm. Hope motioned Frank over. Now in thunderous pain, Frank extended his arm and he and Claudia walked over to the dance floor.
“I don’t know what to say,” Hope told Frank. She turned to Claudia. “Hello, I’m Hope Mercy, Eden’s mom. I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet earlier.”
“I’m from the groom’s side of the aisle. I was one of Marty Fisher’s supervising professors. I’m Claudia Campo.” Claudia extended her hand and took Hope’s. “I’m trying to talk Frank here into helping me and my horse train for the World Cup, and maybe the Olympics. What do you think of that?”
“I think that if you could talk him into it, you wouldn’t find anyone within a thousand miles, maybe more, who could do that better. I’m also sure there’s no way you could talk him into it.” Hope turned and nodded at Ian. “The disco king over there has taken our lives over a bit.”
“I’m going to have to try to grab a dance with Mr. Ian tonight. But I haven’t given up yet. I know from Marty that your husband trained some remarkable champions.”
“He did, and Jack, that’s Frank’s grandfather, trained Midsummer Night’s Dream . . .”
“The horse that won the gold for the 1952 Olympic team. I know. And also Rough Magic, the great mare who fell at the end of a perfect round.”
“I’m impressed,” said Hope. “She wasn’t disqualified, but she was hurt, and no one ever got on her back again. She made some beautiful babies for DuPree Farms. They bought her from Jack, right there. On the spot.”
“Babies like Twelfth Night. I know all about it. My own horse, Prospero, is descended from Twelfth Night. So, you see, it absolutely has to be Frank Mercy who trains this horse. And this rider. Well, along with my other coach. He has shelves of international trophies. But I trust my gut.
“Well,” said Hope. “You make a compelling case.”
“Except I don’t do that work,” said Frank. “I haven’t trained anybody for much of anything yet. I don’t have a gift.”
“I heard you did. In Australia?”
“Some. In Australia. But here, I’m just a farmer, ma’am. Those days are over. If they aren’t over, they haven’t started yet. Now, I hate to spoil this particular midsummer night’s dream, but if I’m going to dance with the bride tonight, I really have to go home and get something stronger than aspirin for my leg, Mom. You’ll take over with Ian, right? Claudia, please excuse me. Maybe it’s that the storm is coming, but my leg is now killing me,” Frank said, grateful that the wrist no longer ached. “The storm and old age, of course.”
“Well, yes, you’re spry for a senior citizen. Do you have some hydrocodone back there?”
“I do.”
“Well, at least don’t take it until you get back to Hilltop here. How far away is Tenacity Farms?”
“Five minutes, really,” Frank said.
“Well, why don’t I go with you? I’ve been wanting to see it. Marty said you might have room, at least, to board Prospero. You can take your medication and be ready to dance with the bride, and I’ll drive us back.”
Frank laughed, and the laugh exploded the wedge in his chest into a fine mist. “I’m driving a pickup truck from the farm. I had to drive the trailer, too, with my mother’s horse, Bobbie, in it.”
“Is the trailer still on the truck?”
“No.”
“I’m fine with driving a truck. I am a rider. And I am a single woman. I drive my truck with Pro in it all over. In fact, I drove it all the way from North Carolina when I came to Madison.” Claudia, obviously knowing how to do it, switched on the high beams behind her brown eyes and let the thickness of blond hair flip forward. She was used to getting what she wanted. “Please, let me come. Marty has told me so much about the farm. Even if you won’t train my horse and me.”
“That’s fine,” Frank said evenly, working hard to avoid seeing his mother’s eye roll. He hoped nobody could tell that he was going through life in a robotic state—since planning was beyond him. Every night, he lay down to read to Ian, and then planned to connect the dots. Then it was dawn. He was too spent to decide anything. He knew this was by design. He knew it had to stop.
Claudia opened the door to the cab.
“Do you need a hand?” Frank said as Claudia gathered her long pants up in a fist over smooth-calved and tight-muscled rider’s legs.
“I’m just fine,” she said.
Just as Frank was about to turn the key, he heard Ian calling, and saw the boy tearing across the parking lot in a way that put a knot in Frank’s throat.
“Doesn’t seem to want to be too far away from you,” said Claudia.
“Not that much,” Frank said. He scooped Ian up, clutching him against his chest. In his ruined, muddy tuxedo, the boy smelled of burned grass. How could Frank have even considered leaving Ian behind, even for five minutes, on the day he first spoke? Disengaging the airbags, Frank buckled Ian into his car seat between him and Claudia. They rode in silence for a minute or two before both of them noticed that Ian was asleep. Frank said, “I’ll grab some clean clothes for him. No reason to wake him.”
When they swung into the long driveway, it was not quite dark, and Frank felt it right away.
There was no sound, but somehow, a disturbance: then he heard Sally, or another dog, barking, far off. He put the truck in park and opened the door, slowly. “Stay here for a moment,” he told Claudia. “I think someone’s messing around up there. My grandfather is ninety-six, and he and the day helper are there. She’s a young girl, Filipino, and she doesn’t know much English. She probably has the TV on loud.”
Frank began walking away from the house, out toward the big pasture, so that he could walk down toward the barn unseen. Then he turned back and spun the lock on the box behind the cab. “Paranoid farmers,” he said as he lifted out his old service shotgun, the Remington pump-action twelve-gauge he’d kitted out for himself more than twenty years ago. Although he’d never fired it except in practice, he believed that the simple sound of that gun loading, and the sight of his big horse, Tarmac, bearing down on a punk with steam streaming from his nostrils like a preview of the Apocalypse, were more effective than any dozen warning shots from his Glock. Limping by then, Frank covered the half mile down the road up onto the slight ridge in a few minutes. He could see the unfamiliar double trailer parked at the barn’s open door. Then he stood amazed as he saw the kid from down the road, who’d given them the dog Patrick called Sally, coming out of the barn holding one end of a long rope. And then Frank heard mayhem. He began to run, as best he could.
Somehow, the kid had managed to get a halter on Glory Bee, but she was straining and cantering in place, pawing at him with one hoof, hauling him along at the end of the snap rope. The guy was holding on as if the horse was a rogue sail in a storm.
“Stop!” Frank yelled. The kid looked straight at him. Dropping the rope, he let Glory Bee take off at a dead run, and fumbled in his pocket for what Frank could vaguely see was some kind of shitty little no-name automatic the kid would use to blow an ugly hole in Frank and in his own already fucked-up life. Frank loaded his shotgun, that deadly cash-register sound, and prepared to walk down the hill toward the kid. How old was he? Twenty-one? Twenty? He was shaking so hard he had to grip one hand with the other in the parody of a military crouch. Unbelievably, he took aim at Frank. “Put it down!” Frank yelled again.
“No, you! You put yours down! Get out of my way! I’ll kill you! All I want is the horse! Move now!” The guy was screaming. He kept looking down at the gun and shaking it, poking at it, and then, in the next moment, remembering his life-and-death confrontation, furrowing his brow and turning back to Frank. When he looked away, his absorption in the gun was so complete, reminding Frank of the way Ian concentrated on his Legos, that Frank was sure that if he rushed him, he could knock him off balance.
Frank was about to move, when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that trapped his breath. Holding the rope, Glory Bee following him, Ian was making his way back to the barn. In the shrieking silence, the kid turned the gun on Ian. “Stop!” the young man yelled. “I’ll shoot you.”
The kid went into his stupid crouch again. Ian kept walking. Then he stopped, dropped the rope, and, so quickly Frank wasn’t sure he saw it, swung his two hands, left, right. He said, “Be nice. Please.”
The kid with the gun seemed to glower, and to somehow grow bigger. Frank didn’t want to fire the first kill shot of his life, but before he could, the kid threw his gun down and sank to the ground, sobbing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”