Funerals for Horses (23 page)
After lunch Simon bathes, and I borrow a pair of scissors from May, and ask Simon’s permission to groom him. He nods, wide-eyed, and asks how short his hair will be, and if I’ll leave a mustache.
“A mustache? Oh, yes, I think we should. Don’t you? As far as the hair goes, it’s going to go pretty short, because it’s so tangled. But it’ll grow fast.”
I cut just below each matted knot—through the center of some—and brush out what’s left. He doesn’t fuss, though I’m sure it pulls. When I can comb through it, I even it out as best I can.
I trim his beard close to the skin, then lather his face with soap and shave him with a borrowed razor. He holds still, seeming to almost enjoy the attention. I make faces at him, to suggest how I’d like him to hold his mouth, to help me shave more closely.
I towel away the last soap, and he looks almost like Simon again. The eyes have changed, he’s too thin, but the mouth and mustache look familiar; the hair is blonde again, because it was never white. The surface was only bleached by the sun.
He says, “I want to go home now.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Because you came all this way to find me. How did you find me, Ella?”
“I’m not sure. I just tried to think like somebody who knows you. Why did you try to shoot my horse?”
“So you wouldn’t ride away again. Thanks for coming for me, Ella.”
The blanket May gave him to wear has fallen off one shoulder, and I see the angry scars of sunburn blisters, deep and maybe permanent, and I want to touch them, as if my touch could heal somehow. I want to know how someone could allow such a thing to happen. Before I do, I see the scars on my own wrist, as I reach out, and the overlay of the two brings a sense of quiet, of no questions, in my mind. I ask too many questions anyway.
“How do I look?” he says.
I ask May for a mirror, and she gives me a small hand-held one, and smiles at Simon, and runs a hand over his short, clean hair. I hold the mirror for him, and he sees himself. His face changes, from surprise to embarrassment to something I can’t read, or don’t dare.
“Kind of short.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’ll grow fast. When we get to the next town, I’ll buy you a hat.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s your money, actually.”
I turn the mirror around and look at myself. My hair is tangled, my face clean, red, windburned, the scar on my chin still visible. My eyes are the same, only better. I sigh in relief.
“What do you see, Ella?”
“Just me, Simon. Only me.”
Everett comes in and shakes Simon’s hand, and he likes Simon, and Simon likes him. I don’t have to ask this, I know. But then, I think, everybody likes my brother Simon. Everybody always has.
We sit out on the porch, and Everett smokes, and I keep my feet propped up, and the cool air of evening washes over us like a river, washes us away, but not too far, and we are as close to home as we will come on our way home.
I hear Everett tell Simon that the man he was is not gone, only joined by other men he was, but knew nothing about.
I leave them there to talk.
In time Everett brings a pile of wood out to the yard and sets it beside me, where I sit staring north, toward Sam’s house, and beyond. He builds a fire with three or four sticks, then throws on another two when it’s burning well.
“What’s that for?” I ask.
“Keep it burning for three days. It’s a funeral offering. It will help you mourn.”
“I thought there was no tradition.”
“Well, you needed one, so I made one up.”
I sit cross-legged in front of the fire until sundown, defying the stiffness in my legs. I feed it wood if it appears weak. I watch the cold northern landscape through its waves of heat. I watch the sparks and smoke and ash rise, always rise, with the heat, like the things we discard, whether they were part or all of what we thought we were.
The moon, which is also rising, smiles across this moment. My brother Simon comes to sit with me at dark, brings me dinner, and I thank him and set it aside. He sits in silence with me for a long portion of night, and rises from time to time to feed another stick of wood into the flames.
I lie down and stare at the stars, because the heat hurts my eyes. The stars are always cool. The stars never change. Or, if they do, within our lifetime the change is unnoticeable.
Simon speaks up in the stillness.
He says, “I’m sorry I tried to shoot her.”
“I’m sorry I tried to shoot you.”
“You did? Oh. Well, anyway. You missed.”
“I’m not cut out for this stuff.” I sit up, close beside him, and loop my arm around his shoulder, and kiss him on the temple, and lean my head against his. “What happened, Simon? When did everything fall apart for you?”
He seems to know the answer sooner than he shares it. “All along, Ella. I guess nobody noticed.”
I look to the moon, hanging three-quarters full over the horizon. It says, see what I told you? Things have been shifting all this time.
“Why did you leave your checkbook in your coat pocket, Simon? Did you want me to find you?”
He considers this for a long time.
“Checkbook?” he repeats. He seems confused, and I realize he has no memory of owning a checkbook at all. I nod at the moon, nod my understanding.
He begins to speak again, then catches himself.
“What?”
“Oh, you get mad when I talk about Mrs. Hurley.”
“Maybe I’ve gotten better at it in my old age.”
He sighs, like he isn’t sure enough to try, and it reminds me so much of twelve-year-old Simon, it gives me goosebumps. “You know the last thing she said to me before she died?” I expect a rehash of just what she said to me. Take care of that sister of yours. Pretty much negating the value of the whole deal, turning it into a weak admonition not to turn on each other. “She said if I ever needed someone to lean on I should remember my sister Ella. She said you’re a lot stronger than you look.”
I laugh, and say it’s not the first time she was ever wrong.
“She wasn’t wrong. She was never wrong.”
She was wrong, sometimes. But not about this. She knew I would turn out strong. She knew Simon would break under the strain. She noticed, and she tried to tell me. But I don’t try to say all that to Simon.
“Well, she wasn’t perfect, Simon. By her own admission. Remember what she used to say? ‘I have two major flaws, both in my own eyes, and the eyes of the Lord. A taste for strong spirits and a feel for games of chance. But I go to church every Sunday, and if the good Lord took exception, he’s had ample chance to mention it by now.’” I even get the voice down fairly well.
Simon stares, wide-eyed, and for a minute I think I’ve angered him. Then I see he’s amazed and impressed.
“You really do remember.”
“Yes, I really do.”
He leans back and closes his eyes. “She was right in the long run. When will we go home, Ella?”
“When the fire goes out. Then we’ll be all done here. Then we’ll go.”
He falls asleep beside me, and I stroke the slight remainder of his hair. I build up the fire before I go to sleep.
“Tender, amazingly hopeful.” -Kirkus Reviews, of Becoming Chloe
“Vibrant and heartbreaking.” -Publishers Weekly, of Becoming Chloe
By the bestselling author of Don’t Let Me Go and Pay It Forward, this captivating short story collection features ALWAYS CHLOE, the long-awaited novella sequel to Becoming Chloe, Hyde’s award-winning novel.
Jordy and Chloe are living above a restaurant in Morro Bay, the first place they landed after their trip down the Big Sur Coast. But Jordy has a boyfriend now, an old flame who’s come back into his life in a big way.
Chloe stretches herself as far as she can go to give them her blessing, but her issues about living--or even sleeping--alone turn this happy reunion into a potential disaster. Chloe stops eating, stops sleeping, stops paddling her beloved and battered blue kayak in the bay.
No one knows how to help her. When her friend Old Ben, the man who runs the fuel dock nearby, gives her some advice, his words could either save the day or send her out to sea forever, depending on her unique mind’s understanding of them.
A heart-wrenching stand-alone novella, and an answer to the many readers who asked for a sequel to Becoming Chloe, ALWAYS CHLOE is ultimately about the struggle to balance others’ needs with our own--and exactly how expansive and forgiving the human heart can be.
This collection also includes four previously published short stories, including Breakage, which won honors in the Tobias Wolff award, and The Lion Lottery, which was cited in Best American Short Stories.
Fiction:
Always Chloe and Other Stories
Electric God/The Hardest Part of Love
Earthquake Weather and Other Stories
The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance
The Long, Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of Pay It Forward
How to be a Writer in the E-Age...And Keep Your E-Sanity
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of 20 published and forthcoming books. Her newer novels include
When I Found You
,
Second Hand Heart
,
Don’t Let Me Go
, and
When You Were Older.
New Kindle editions of her earlier titles
Funerals for Horses
,
Earthquake Weather and Other Stories
,
Electric God
, and
Walter’s Purple Heart
are now available. Her newest ebook title is
The Long Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of PAY IT FORWARD
, her first book-length creative nonfiction. Forthcoming frontlist titles are
Walk Me Home
and
Where We Belong
.
She is co-author, with publishing industry blogger Anne R. Allen, of
How to Be a Writer in the E-Age...and Keep Your E-Sanity!
Her best-known novel,
Pay It Forward
, was adapted into a major motion picture, chosen by the American Library Association for its Best Books for Young Adults list, and translated into more than 23 languages for distribution in over 30 countries. The paperback was released in October 2000 by Pocket Books and quickly became a national bestseller.
Love in the Present Tense
enjoyed bestseller status in the UK, where it broke the top ten, spent five weeks on the national bestseller list, was reviewed on a major TV book club, and shortlisted for a Best Read of the Year award at the British Book Awards. Both
Becoming Chloe
and
Jumpstart the World
were included on the ALA’s Rainbow List, and
Jumpstart the World
was a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards.
More than 50 of her short stories have been published in The Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train and many other journals, and in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts and the bestselling anthology Dog is my Co-Pilot. Her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and the Tobias Wolff Award and nominated for Best American Short Stories, the O’Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have been cited in Best American Short Stories.
Catherine is founder and former president (2000-2009) of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with Americorps members at the White House and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.
For more information, please visit the author at catherineryanhyde.com. You can also learn more about Catherine by picking up your copy of
The Long Steep Path
! (
http://www.amazon.com/The-Long-Steep-Path-ebook/dp/B00B27KYVK/
)
