Marc Gilbert looked at Marc the horse. Marc the horse looked at Marc Gilbert. Neither seemed pleased.
“Dominique!” Marc called from the door of the barn.
“Yes?” she said, cheerily, walking across the yard from the house. She’d hoped it would take Marc a few days to find the horses. Actually, she’d hoped he never would. But that was in the same league as the Mrs. Keith Partridge dream. Unlikely at best.
And now she found him cross-armed in the dim barn.
“What are these?”
“They’re horses,” she said. Though, it must be said, she suspected Macaroni might be a moose.
“I can see that, but what kind? These aren’t hunters, are they?”
Dominique hesitated. For an instant she wondered what would happen if she said yes. But she guessed that Marc, while not a horse expert, wouldn’t buy that.
“No, they’re better.”
“How better?”
His sentences were getting shorter, never a good sign.
“Well, they’re cheaper.”
She could see that actually had a slight mollifying effect. Might as well tell him the full story. “I bought them from the slaughterhouse. They were going to be killed today.”
Marc hesitated. She could see him struggling with his anger. Not trying to let it go, but trying to hold on to it. “Maybe there was a reason they were going to be . . . you know.”
“Killed. No, the vet’s been to see them and he says they’re fine, or will be.”
The barn smelled of disinfectant, soap and medication.
“Maybe physically, but you can’t tell me he’s okay.” Marc waved at Marc the horse, who flared his nostrils and snorted. “He isn’t even clean. Why not?”
Why did her husband have to be so observant? “Well, no one could get close to him.” Then she had an idea. “The vet says he needs a very special touch. He’ll only let someone quite exceptional near him.”
“Is that right?” Marc looked at the horse again, and walked toward him. Marc, the horse, backed up. Her husband reached out his hand. The horse put his ears back, and Dominique grabbed her husband away just as Marc the horse snapped.
“It’s been a long day and he’s disoriented.”
“Hmm,” said her husband, walking with her out of the barn. “What’s his name?”
“Thunder.”
“Thunder,” said Marc, trying the name out. “Thunder,” he repeated as though riding the steed and urging him on.
Carole greeted them at the kitchen door. “So,” she said to her son. “How’re the horses? How’s Marc?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” He looked at her quizzically and took the drink she offered. “And how’s Carole?”
Behind him Dominique gestured frantically at her mother-in-law who was laughing and just about to say something when she saw her daughter-in-law’s motions and stopped. “Just fine. Do you like the horses?”
“Like is a strong word, as is ‘horses,’ I suspect.”
“It’ll take a while for us all to get used to each other,” said Dominique. She accepted the Scotch from Carole and took a gulp. Then they walked out the French doors and into the garden.
As the two women talked, more friends than mother and daughter-in-law, Marc looked at the flowers, the mature trees, the freshly painted white fences and the rolling fields beyond. Soon the horses, or whatever they were, would be out there. Grazing.
Once again he had that hollow feeling, that slight rip as the chasm widened.
Leaving Montreal had been a wrench for Dominique, and leaving Quebec City had been difficult for his mother. They left behind friends. But while Marc had pretended to be sorry, had gone to the going-away parties, had claimed he would miss everyone, the truth was, he didn’t.
They had to be part of his life for him to miss them, and they weren’t. He remembered that Kipling poem his father loved, and taught him. And that one line. If all men count with you, but none too much.
And they hadn’t. Over forty-five years not a single man had counted too much.
He had loads of colleagues, acquaintances, buddies. He was an emotional communist. Everyone counted equally, but none too much.
You’ll be a man, my son. That was how the poem ended.
But Marc Gilbert, listening to the quiet conversation and looking over the rich, endless fields, was beginning to wonder if that was enough. Or even true.