recited these words have believed they were being kind. What makes a person love another? That’s what Richard wonders, as March tells him that she’ll be staying on, and that she never meant to hurt him. Are March’s dark eyes the element that always gets to him? Is it the way her beautiful mouth twists to one side when she smiles?
Richard goes upstairs to grab a few hours of sleep in March’s bed. When he wakes, the bright sunshine which blasts through the ice-covered windows is blinding. He gets his suit, having draped his trousers and jacket over a chair so he will appear presentable when he goes to the cemetery. He wants to look as though nothing is wrong when he goes downstairs and kisses his daughter good morning, when he speaks cordially to March and asks if he can use the Toyota in her driveway to run his errands. March has been crying; her face is all puffy and her eyes are red. Looking at her, knowing that she’s been with Hollis and will continue to be with him, brings Richard immense sadness.
What would another man do? Carry her off, make demands, beat her until she gave in to him, stand there and cry? Richard Cooper is the same man he was before this happened to him. He’s the man who leaves a check on the kitchen counter because he worries that his wife will run out of cash. He’s the man who brings flowers to the graves of his loved ones, and says a silent prayer for each one. It’s the same Richard Cooper who trades stories with Jimmy Parrish about racehorses who’ve been dead a quarter of a century or more over lunch at the Lyon Cafe, who calls for another round of beers and some chili-cheese fries, then makes certain he grabs the check before Jimmy can reach into his pocket for his own leather wallet. He’s the man who drives to Guardian Farm late in the day and parks in the driveway where he has a good view of the house where he grew up, despite the uncertain November light.
When he sees Hollis slam through the front door, on his way to collect bills and circulars from a mailbox set out where Richard’s mother’s roses used to grow, Richard doesn’t step on the gas and careen through the fence to run his rival down. Instead, he watches as some Canada geese pass by, high overhead. In the pastures there are still a few red dragonflies, the kind Richard used to collect when he was a boy. He used to keep them in a jelly jar, until he realized that whenever he caught one he damaged its wings, which marked it for death. That’s what he thinks about now as he watches Hollis, who has lifted one hand to shade his eyes against the sun as he tries to figure out who’s there, parked in March’s car. By the time Hollis does understand who it is in his driveway, Richard will have already made a U-turn. There’s no point in staying any longer. He’ll leave a note for Gwen if she’s not at the house when he stops to drop off this car, then call Ken Helm for a ride. He intends to trade in his tickets for a plane that leaves tonight. He’d just as soon sleep somewhere in midair, high above Chicago or soaring over the Rockies, as he would in someone’s easy chair.
Gwen is in the barn when the Toyota makes that U-turn. She knows that her father will be gone before she gets back to Fox Hill. Standing there. watching him, she feels like crying. Maybe she should have insisted on going on his errands with him; maybe she should have tried to talk her mother into leaving. Gwen now considers herself to be a guilty party. She didn’t say,
The footing is too slippery for riding, but Gwen doesn’t care. She’s completely unschooled and does everything wrong, but it doesn’t matter with a horse like Tarot. He makes his way over the ice, then onto the packed dirt in the driveway. Gwen feels sure enough of him to give him his head, and let him take charge of matters. When he goes into the woods, right before the devil’s corner, Gwen doesn’t protest. Tarot walks quickly over brambles and fallen leaves; when they pass under low branches, Gwen ducks and rests her face against his neck. She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He’s like a dragon, ancient and fearless. He doesn’t spook at anything, not when pheasants fly out of the bushes, not when they come upon a deer, drinking from an icy stream.
Gwen can only guess what they must have done to this horse to make him mean enough to kill two men. He was a machine, a winning machine. Hay in, shit out, and run like hell. Run so fast they can never catch you. She has seen marks in Tarot’s flesh. He’s been beaten, long ago, in another life that will always be a mystery. History is personal, Gwen understands that now. All you are seeing is what’s before you, the rest is guesswork. Still, she believes that he was beaten with a chain, at least once. There’s a circular indentation on his flank, and each time she runs her hand over that wound, Tarot throws his head back in a move so serious, so potentially killing, that Gwen’s respect for him is renewed.
Now, as he jumps a fallen tree, Gwen holds on for dear life. She tells herself riding Tarot isn’t any more dangerous than being on the back of Josh Krauss’s out-of-control Honda roaring down the El Camino at midnight. All the same, she closes her eyes when they come to the thickest part of the woods, and when she opens them again, the Marshes are before her, all gold and brown. Herons rise from the grass. Ice covers the inlets. They’re trotting through frozen mud now, over hermit crabs and minnows. Maybe it’s the old apple tree which calls to the horse, or maybe it’s the wild berries; either way, Tarot has come to graze in the Coward’s front yard.
“Not here,” Gwen tells the horse. “Let’s go.”
When Tarot refuses to move, Gwen kicks him, but she hasn’t the heart to do anything more than tap, and Tarot doesn’t even notice her boots against his flanks. He’s come upon a pile of frozen apples, and Gwen had better settle down, since he’s not leaving anytime soon.
The Coward sees the girl as she slips off the horse, and for a moment, he thinks it’s Belinda out there, who used to ride this same horse when she came to visit him. Other people brought food and clothes-Judith Dale, of course, and Louise Justice occasionally-but Belinda brought him what he truly yearned for. Photographs of his son. School papers. Spelling tests. Paintings of boats and of starry nights. The first tooth his boy lost, which the Coward still keeps in a saltshaker beneath his bed. Locks of pale hair, retrieved from the kitchen floor after a haircut.
Belinda used to sit on his porch and cry sometimes; once, she spent the night, curled up on a blanket on his floor. She had hair the color of roses, and on the night when she stayed with him her lip was split open; it hurt too much for her to drink the water the Coward offered her. Although he knows that Belinda died years ago, she seems to have reappeared beneath his apple tree. The Coward pulls on his boots and hurries outside. He’s ready to greet Belinda with a hug, but when she turns around he sees it’s only the girl who was here before, the one who left him the old compass he was given on his twelfth birthday, when there was still hope for him.
“I’m not trespassing,” Gwen says quickly. Maybe she’s been crying about her father and maybe she hasn’t been. This bright sunlight could bring tears to anyone’s eyes. “It’s this horse. He loves apples.”
“All right,” the Coward says in a surprisingly mild voice. Now he sees, there are indeed tears on this girl’s cheeks. “Let him eat.”
The Coward sits on the rickety front steps of his porch. The ice makes everything in the distance shine like diamonds. The Coward blinks in the light. He has always believed that if vodka looked like anything, it would look like ice. Gin, on the other hand, was pure, clean snow.
“You don’t know me.” the girl says.
She has come to sit beside him on the steps, which cannot be a pleasant experience, the Coward is certain, since he can’t remember the last time he bathed. But in fact, his odor is no more offensive than marsh grass or old apples, slightly vinegary.
“I’m Gwen,” the girl says. “My father is Richard Cooper. My mother is March.”
The Coward appraises her. His niece, if what she’s saying is true. Well, she does have the Cooper nose, straight and narrow, and those pale blue eyes.
“I don’t take after my mother, if that’s what you’re thinking. But you’re my uncle all the same.”
“For all the good it will do you,” the Coward says.
Gwen laughs. “Screwed-up family.”
“You have no idea,” the Coward tells her.
Gwen rests her chin on her hand and watches Tarot munch apples. It’s actually beautiful out here, if you don’t mind the isolation. If loneliness isn’t a factor. Before she can say another word, the Coward has risen from the steps and is already heading for his house. He can’t take too much of people. Five minutes is just about tops.
“Where are you going?” Gwen asks.
He doesn’t want to think about his family. That’s sorrow, plain and simple, and besides, he’s got better things
