“What man?” She pushed out her lower lip. “A man going by the name of Grant Courtland.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You know him?”
“I’ve heard of him. And guess what?”
“What?”
“He doesn’t know shit about horses.”
She tossed back her head and laughed.
They were coming to a bend in the road and well before they reached it both mares trimmed their ears and began snorting, swinging their heads into each other’s neck and careening bodily together, pinning the riders’ legs between them. Carmen worked her reins and said Whoa, whoa and the boy merely held on. Then they heard what the horses had already heard—the high, thin warbling of electric guitar, the deep air-throb of bass. The sound grew, and the animals pressed on, at war with themselves and with their riders until at last they all came around the bend and saw the car, and the mares drew up snorting.
He’d pulled onto the old road from the county blacktop, and he’d pulled in just far enough to make going around him difficult. Nor could they detour through the woods for the density of the trees. He’d left the car running and the window down, and leaning against the forward black fender in his black leather jacket he appeared a dark extension of the car itself, just as inanimate but for the motion of his thumb over the keypad of his phone.
Carmen looked at the boy, and then she sat forward in her saddle and said, “Hey,” and then louder, “Hey,” until without taking his eyes from the phone Billy raised his free hand in a silent appeal for patience. At last he lowered the phone and pocketed it and faced them benignly, ready now to learn what he might do for them.
Beneath the scales and bassbeats of the music was the low throb of the idling engine.
“We can’t get by,” said Carmen.
Billy cupped a hand to his ear and she repeated herself and he raised one finger and reached into the window and the music stopped, the engine stopped, and all was silent again but for the snorting of the horses and the restless stepping of their hooves.
“Afternoon,” Billy said. He smiled at them and the smile was friendly. “You two look like a postcard sitting on those horses.”
“We can’t get by,” said Carmen.
He glanced behind him and turned back to her and said, “Sure you can. There’s just room on this side here.”
“The horses won’t go around the car.”
“What do you mean they won’t go around the car?”
“I mean they won’t go around the car.”
“They’re horses, darlin. They do what you tell them to do.” He smiled at her and he looked at the boy who had so far said nothing. “It sure is nice to see everybody getting along so well, I have to say. Everybody so friendly. Know what I heard the other day?”
They said nothing. The horses tossed their heads.
“Heard that old man of mine humming a tune.” He shook his head. “Can you beat that?”
Carmen smiled thinly. She looked at the boy. Turned to Billy again.
“Are you going to back up and let us go by?” she said.
Billy held her eyes. Smiling still, but the smile nowhere now but in his lips. “Where you all been to, anyway?” He squinted at them. “You been up to that cabin, haven’t you. Old man Santiago’s cabin?” Mirth and lewdness playing in his face. “I knew this old boy one time went to the doc with a load of number five birdshot in his ass cheeks. Doc takes one look at the boy’s jeans all blood-soaked but not a hole in them and says, Damn, I thought old man Santiago passed on years ago.”
To the boy he said: “The way you sit that horse, I’d say maybe that old cuss has done kicked off after all.”
The boy said nothing.
Carmen said, “Are you going to move that car or not?”
Billy studied her. He tested the little patch of hair under his lip with the tip of his tongue and smiled again. “Why you gotta take that tone with me? Isn’t that my horse you’re sitting on?”
“It’s Emmet’s horse.”
“Wrong. That’s my horse between your legs, darlin.” He stepped toward them and the mares shied and stamped and he stopped. “Not that I’m proud of owning such a pair of contrarian nags.”
Carmen reined the horse and said, “Okay, this has been fun. Really. But I’m turning around and going back.”
“Going back?” said Billy. “With him?”
She was trying to back-step the horse so she could get it turned around but the horse only squatted and tossed its head and would not back-step.
Billy shook his head. “Pitiful.”
At last she curbed the horse violently and it reared and slammed against its sister and came down on its forehooves facing the way they’d come and she reined it to a standstill and looked at the boy and said, “Are you coming? She’ll turn around now.”
The boy sat watching Billy.
“Sean,” she said.
He slipped his off-boot from the stirrup and swung his leg over and stood down into the snow and looped the reins over the mare’s neck and held her by the cheek strap as she shook her head. When she was calm, he walked away from her toward Billy.
Billy waited with his arms loose at his sides, smiling placidly until the boy stopped and stood facing him.
“Well?” said Billy.
“Are you going to move that car?”
“Sure I am.”
The boy waited.
“You mean now? This second? No, I don’t believe I can do that.”
The boy walked on toward the car.
“Where you going?” said Billy, following.
The boy stepped to the driver’s side and reached for the handle.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
He lifted the handle and opened the door, and Billy stepped up and kicked the door with the heel of his boot, wrenching the door from the boy’s
grip and slamming it shut again. The sound echoed down the canyon of pines, and both horses reared and Carmen held on and said Easy, easy. She watched and the mares watched wild-eyed as Billy took the boy by his jacket and spun him around and pinned him against the fender and brought his face close to the boy’s and said, “Like father like son. What is it with you people? Don’t you know any better than to touch another man’s vehicle?”
The boy had not resisted being spun around and pinned to the car. Now with Billy’s face in his face and the feel of his spittle landing on his skin, he reached up and filled his hands with the leather lapels and shoved off against the car and spun around and pinned Billy, in turn, to the car.
“Stop it,” called Carmen. “Sean, stop it.”
“Best listen to her,” Billy said. “How you gonna tap that little brown ass if you can’t even walk?”
The boy let go of one lapel and swung but Billy turned his head and the blow only grazed his chin, and before the boy could swing again Billy pulled him close and fitted his head alongside the boy’s head jaw to jaw as if he wished to say something into his ear, and the boy tried to separate but Billy held him and said into his ear: “Too bad you weren’t so tough when you lost your sister.” And he drew back and head-butted the boy’s nose. There was a brittle sound and the boy felt the blood flow hot over his lips and Billy slipped away and stepped around him and punched him once, deeply, in the back, and of some command not his own the boy dropped to his knees in the snow.
Carmen tried to turn the horse again but it would not turn, and at last
she dug in her heels and the horse burst forward at a gallop and she looked back once to see that the other mare followed, and then she released the horse to its own desperate heart and it fled up the narrow way, the huge body rocking under her and her hat whipped from her head in the wind and lost behind her.
Watching her go, Billy did not see the boy get to his feet, or the swing that caught him in the temple and sent him stilt-legged toward the trees. He planted one hand in the snow, saving himself in this tripod fashion from a knockdown, and when the boy stepped forward to kick, Billy caught his swinging boot and held on to it and the boy went down and Billy let go and stepped away with a hand to his head. The boy scrabbled to his feet and turned to him again, came forward swinging poorly with his left. Billy sidestepped and shoved him away and said, “You dumb fuck, you broke your wrist on my head.”
The boy turned and came back, the left fist raised.
“Quit now.”
He swung and Billy deflected the swing and shoved him to the car facefirst, held him there squirming and spitting blood on the windshield.
“I said quit now, for fuck’s sake. She’s gone.”
The boy tried to pivot and Billy seized the injured hand in some extraordinary way and the boy pitched forward again, his lips peeled in a red grin of pain.
“I mean it,” Billy said.
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me? Really?” He torqued the boy’s wrist. “You gonna quit?”
The boy turned his face and shaped his lips and sent a mouthful of blood spraying over the windshield, and without another word Billy wrenched on the hand and he felt the bones give way like twigs and they each heard the snapping of the bones.
The boy relaxed and Billy let go and stepped away. The boy turned and slid slowly to his haunches, then sat hard on the snow, holding his right hand in his left.
Billy stood over him, panting. He spat into the snow and wiped his mouth. He looked up the path where the girl had gone and there was no sign of her or the horses other than the fresh hoofprints and the dark shape of hat in the snow.
He looked back to the county road and he looked at the boy again heaped against his car, blood running from his nose in a dark ooze.
Billy shook his head. “A man gets out of bed in the morning and he has no idea. Just no idea.” He looked up at the high teeth of the pines, the darkening lane of sky.
The boy sat coddling his arm. Before him at Billy’s waist was a silver oval with two ruby eyes and a red enamel fork of tongue. It was the bejeweled belt of the pugilist, and staring from its polished surface was his own bloodied, distorted face in miniature.
Looking good, Dudley.
Billy took out his phone and held it loosely in his palm, as if it were a stone he might sling.
“Fuck it,” he said finally, slipping the phone back into his pocket. He bent to grab the boy by the jacket but the boy pushed his hands away and climbed to his feet on his own. They walked to the passenger’s side and Billy opened the door and waited for the boy to get in.
“Keep your head back.” He found him a mechanic’s rag already red to press to his face and he shut the door and walked around and swung in behind the wheel. He got a cigarette in his lips and tapped up another and looked at the boy with the rag pressed to his face and put the pack away. He lit the cigarette and looked at the boy again. Then he leaned to grope under the seat and he found the bottle by feel and brought it up and unscrewed the cap and held it out.
“Here,” he said, and the boy lifted the rag to look. It was a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, half gone. He took the bottle and tipped it up and the whiskey splashed cold into his mouth washing away the copper taste of blood and running down his throat in a cold burn. He handed the bottle back, shuddering, his eyes weeping and a great hot snake uncoiling in his gut.
Billy checked the bottle for blood and tilted down a deep swallow and restashed the bottle under the seat and turned the key. Electric guitar burst forth and he snapped it off. He sat a long moment looking at his windshield, shaking his head. At last he flipped the wiper lever and they both watched as the blood spread across the glass, smearing away the world in bright arcs of gore.