Dear John (20 page)

“All you have to do is grab near the hoof and tug while you tap the back of his leg here,” she said, demonstrating. The horse, occupied with his hay, obediently lifted his hoof. She propped the hoof between her legs. “Then, just dig out the dirt around the shoe. That’s all there is to it.”

I moved toward the horse beside her and tried to replicate her actions, but nothing happened. The horse was both exceedingly large and stubborn. I tugged again at the foot and tapped in the right place, then tugged and tapped some more. The horse continued to eat, ignoring my efforts.

“He won’t lift his foot,” I complained.

She finished the hoof she was working on, then bent next to my horse. A tap and tug later, the hoof was in place between her legs. “Sure he will. He just knows you don’t know what you’re doing and that you’re uncomfortable around him. You have to be confident about this.” She let the hoof drop, and I took her place, trying again. The horse ignored me once more.

“Watch what I do,” she said carefully.

“I was watching,” I protested.

She repeated the drill; the horse lifted his foot. A moment later I mimicked her exactly, and the horse ignored me. Though I couldn’t claim to read the mind of a horse, I had the strange notion that this one was enjoying my travails. Frustrated, I tapped and tugged relentlessly until finally, as if by magic, the horse’s foot lifted. Despite the minimal nature of my accomplishment, I felt a surge of pride. For the first time since I’d arrived, Savannah laughed.

“Good job. Now just scrape the mud out and go to the next hoof.”

Savannah had finished the other six horses by the time I finished one. When we were done, she opened the gate and the horses trotted into the darkened pasture. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but Savannah moved toward the shed. She had two shovels in hand.

“Now it’s time to clean up,” she said, handing me a shovel.

“Clean up?”

“The manure,” she said. “Otherwise it can get pretty rank around here.”

I took the shovel. “You do this every day?”

“Life’s a peach, isn’t it?” she teased. She left again and returned with a wheelbarrow.

As we began scooping the manure, the sliver of a moon began its rise over the treetops. We worked in silence, the clink and scrape of her shovel a steady rhythm that filled the air. In time we both finished, and I leaned on my shovel, inspecting her. In the shadows of the barnyard, she seemed as lovely and elusive as a wraith. She said nothing, but I could feel her evaluating me.

“Are you okay?” I finally asked.

“Why are you here, John?”

“You already asked me that.”

“I know I did,” she said. “But you didn’t really answer.”

I studied her. No, I hadn’t. I wasn’t sure I could explain it myself and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

Surprising me, she nodded. “Uh-huh,” she acknowledged.

It was the unqualified acceptance in her voice that made me go on.

“I mean it,” I said. “In some ways, you were the best friend I’ve ever had.”

I could see her expression soften. “Okay,” she said. Her response reminded me of my father, and after she answered, perhaps she realized it as well. I forced myself to survey the property.

“This is the ranch you dreamed of starting, isn’t it?” I asked. “Hope and Horses is for autistic kids, isn’t it?”

She ran a hand through her hair, tucking a strand behind her ear. She seemed pleased that I remembered. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

“Is it everything you thought it would be?”

She laughed and threw up her hands. “Sometimes,” she said. “But don’t think for a second it earns enough to pay the bills. We both have jobs, and every day I realize that I didn’t learn as much in school as I thought I did.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “Some of the kids who show up here, or at the center, are difficult to reach.” She hesitated, trying to find the right words. Finally she shook her head. “I guess I thought they’d all be like Alan, you know?” She looked up. “Do you remember when I told you about him?”

When I nodded, she went on. “It turns out that Alan’s situation was special. I don’t know—maybe it was because he’d grown up on a ranch, but he adapted to this a lot more easily than most kids.”

When she didn’t continue, I gave her a quizzical look. “That’s not the way I remember you telling it to me. From what I remember, Alan was terrified at first.”

“Yeah, I know, but still . . . he did get used to it. And that’s the thing. I can’t tell you how many kids we have here who never adapt at all, no matter how long we work with them. This isn’t just a weekend thing; some kids have come here regularly for more than a year. We work at the developmental evaluation center, so we’ve spent a lot of time with most of the kids, and when we started the ranch, we insisted on opening it up to kids no matter how severe their condition. We felt it was an important commitment, but with some kids . . . I just wish I knew how to get through to them. Sometimes it feels like we’re just spinning our wheels.”

I could see Savannah cataloging her memories. “I don’t mean that we feel like we’re wasting our time,” she went on. “Some kids really benefit from what we’re doing. They come out here and spend a couple of weekends, and it’s like . . . a flower bud slowly blossoming into something beautiful. Just like it did with Alan. It’s like you can sense their mind opening up to new ideas and possibilities, and when they’re riding with a great big smile on their faces, it’s like nothing else matters in the world. It’s a heady feeling, and you want it to happen over and over with every child who comes here. I used to think it was a matter of persistence, that we could help everyone, but we can’t. Some of the kids never even get close to the horse, let alone ride it.”

“You know that’s not your fault. I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of riding, either, remember?”

She giggled, sounding remarkably girlish. “Yeah, I remember. The first time you got on a horse, you were more scared than a lot of the kids.”

“No, I wasn’t,” I protested. “And besides, Pepper was frisky.”

“Ha!” she cried. “Why do you think I let you ride him? He’s just about the easiest horse you can imagine. I don’t think he’s ever so much as shimmied when someone rode him.”

“He was frisky,” I insisted.

“Spoken like a true rookie,” she teased. “But even if you’re wrong, I’m touched that you still remember it.”

Her playfulness summoned a tidal wave of memories.

“Of course I remember,” I said. “Those were some of the best days of my life. I won’t ever forget them.” Over her shoulder, I could see the dog wandering in the pasture. “Maybe that’s why I’m still not married.”

At my words, her gaze faltered. “I still remember them, too.”

“Do you?”

“Of course,” she said. “You might not believe it, but it’s true.”

The weight of her words hung heavy in the air.

“Are you happy, Savannah?” I finally asked.

She offered a wry smile. “Most of the time. Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, which made her laugh again.

“That’s your standard answer, you know. When you’re asked to look into yourself for the answer? It’s like a reflex with you. It always has been. Why don’t you ask me what you really wanted to ask.”

“What did I really want to ask?”

“Whether or not I love my husband. Isn’t that what you mean?” she asked, looking away for a moment.

For an instant I was speechless, but I realized her instincts were correct. It was the real reason I was here.

“Yes,” she said at last, reading my mind again. “I love him.”

The unmistakable sincerity in her tone stung, but before I could dwell on it, she turned to face me again. Anxiety flickered in her expression, as if she were remembering something painful, but it passed quickly.

“Have you eaten yet?” she asked.

I was still trying to make sense of what I’d just seen. “No,” I said. “Actually, I didn’t have breakfast or lunch, either.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got some leftover beef stew in the house. Do you have time for dinner?”

Though I wondered again about her husband, I nodded. “I’d like that,” I said.

We started toward the house and stopped when we reached a porch lined with muddy and worn cowboy boots. Savannah reached for my arm in a way that struck me as being remarkably easy and natural, using me for balance as she slipped off her boots. It was, perhaps, her touch that emboldened me to really look at her, and though I saw the mysteriousness and maturity that had always made her attractive, I noticed a hint of sadness and reticence as well. To my aching heart, the combination made her even more beautiful.

Nineteen

H
er small kitchen was what one would expect from an old house that had probably been remodeled half a dozen times over the last century: ancient linoleum floors that were peeling slightly near the walls; functional, unadorned white cabinets—thick with countless paint jobs—and a stainless-steel sink set beneath a wood-framed window that probably should have been replaced years ago. The countertop was cracking, and against one wall stood a woodstove as old as the house itself. In places, it was possible to see the modern world encroaching: a large refrigerator and dishwasher near the sink; a microwave propped kitty-corner near a half-empty bottle of red wine. In some ways, it reminded me of my dad’s place.

Savannah opened a cupboard and removed a wineglass. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never been much of a wine drinker.”

I was surprised when she didn’t return the glass. Instead, she retrieved the half-empty bottle of wine and poured a glass; she set the glass on the table and took a seat before it.

We sat at the table as Savannah took a sip.

“You’ve changed,” I observed.

She shrugged. “A lot of things have changed since I last saw you.”

She said nothing more and set her glass back on the table. When she spoke again, her voice was subdued. “I never thought I’d be the kind of person who looked forward to a glass of wine in the evenings, but I do.”

She began rotating the glass on the table, and I found myself wondering what had happened to her.

“You know the funny thing?” she said. “I actually care how it tastes. When I had my first glass, I didn’t know what was good or what was bad. Now when it comes to buying, I’ve become pretty selective.”

I didn’t fully recognize the woman who sat before me, and I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she went on. “I still remember everything my folks taught me, and I hardly ever have more than a glass a night. But since Jesus himself turned water into wine, I figured that it can’t be much of a sin.”

I smiled at her logic, recognizing how unfair it was to cling to the time-capsule version I held of her. “I wasn’t asking.”

“I know,” she said. “But you were wondering.”

For a moment, the only sound in the kitchen was the low hum of the refrigerator. “I’m sorry about your dad,” she said, tracing a crack in the tabletop. “I really am. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about him in the past few years.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Savannah began rotating her glass again, seemingly lost in the swirl of liquid. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure I did, but as I leaned back in my chair, the words came surprisingly easily. I told her about my dad’s first heart attack, and the second, and the visits we’d shared in the past couple of years. I told her about our growing friendship, and the comfort I felt with him, the walks that he began taking and then eventually gave up. I recounted my final days with him and the agony of committing him to an extended care facility. When I described the funeral and the photograph I found in the envelope, she reached for my hand.

“I’m glad he saved it for you,” she said, “but I’m not surprised.”

“I was,” I said, and she laughed. It was a reassuring sound.

She squeezed my hand. “I wish I’d have known. I would have liked to go to the funeral.”

“It wasn’t much.”

“It didn’t have to be. He was your dad, and that’s all that matters.” She hesitated before releasing my hand and took another sip of wine.

“Are you ready to eat?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, flushing at the memory of her earlier comment.

She leaned forward with a grin. “How about I heat you up a plate of stew and we’ll see what happens.”

“Is it any good?” I asked. “I mean . . . when I knew you before, you never mentioned that you knew how to cook.”

“It’s our special family recipe,” she said, pretending to be offended. “But I’ve got to be honest—my mom made it. She brought it over yesterday.”

“The truth comes out,” I said.

“That’s the funny thing about the truth,” she said. “It usually does.” She rose and opened the refrigerator, bending over as she scanned the shelves. I found myself wondering about the ring on her finger and where her husband was as she pulled out the Tupperware. She scooped some of the stew into a bowl and placed it in the microwave.

“Do you want anything else with that? How about some bread and butter?”

“That would be great,” I agreed.

A few minutes later, the meal was spread before me, and the aroma reminded me for the first time of how hungry I actually was. Surprising me, Savannah took her place again, holding her glass of wine.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“I’m not hungry,” she said. “Actually, I haven’t been eating much lately.” She took a sip as I took my first bite and I let her comment pass.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s delicious.”

She smiled. “Mom’s a good cook. You’d think I would have learned more about cooking, but I didn’t. I was always too busy. Too much studying when I was young, and then lately, too much remodeling.” She motioned toward the living room. “It’s an old house. I know it doesn’t look like it, but we’ve done a lot of work in the past couple of years.”

“It looks great.”

“You’re just being polite, but I appreciate it,” she replied. “You should have seen the place when I moved in. It was kind of like the barn, you know? We needed a new roof, but it’s funny—no one ever thinks of roofs when they’re imagining what to remodel. It’s one of those things that everyone expects a house to have but never thinks might one day need replacing. Almost everything we’ve done falls into that category. Heat pumps, thermal windows, fixing the termite damage . . . there were a lot of long days.” She wore a dreamy expression on her face. “We did most of the work ourselves. Like with the kitchen here. I know we need new cabinets and flooring, but when we moved in, there were puddles in the living room and bedrooms every time it rained. What were we supposed to do? We had to prioritize, and one of the first things we did was to tear all the old shingles from the roof. It must have been a hundred degrees and I’m up there with a shovel, scraping shingles off, getting blisters. But . . . it just felt right, you know? Two young people starting out in the world, working together and repairing their home? There was such a sense of . . . togetherness about it. It was the same thing when we did the floor in the living room. It must have taken a couple of weeks to sand it down and get it level again. We stained it and added a layer of varnish, and when we finally walked across it, it felt like we’d laid the foundation for the rest of our lives.”

“You make it sound almost romantic.”

“It was, in a way,” she agreed. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “But lately it’s not so romantic. Now, it’s just getting old.”

I laughed unexpectedly, then coughed and found myself reaching for a glass that wasn’t there.

She pushed back from her chair. “Let me get you some water,” she said. She filled a glass from the faucet and placed it before me. As I drank, I could feel her watching me.

“What?” I asked.

“I just can’t get over how different you look.”

“Me?” I found it hard to believe.

“Yeah, you,” she insisted. “You’re . . . older somehow.”

“I am older.”

“I know, but it’s not that. It’s your eyes. They’re . . . more serious than they used to be. Like they’ve seen things they shouldn’t have. Weary, somehow.”

To this, I said nothing, but when she saw my expression, she shook her head, looking embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have said that. I can only imagine what you’ve been through lately.”

I ate another bite of stew, thinking about her comment. “Actually I left Iraq in early 2004,” I said. “I’ve been in Germany ever since. Only a small part of the army is ever there at any one time, and we rotate through. I’ll probably end up going back, but I don’t know when. Hopefully things will have calmed down by then.”

“Weren’t you supposed to be out by now?”

“I reupped again,” I said. “There wasn’t any reason not to.”

We both knew the reason why, and she nodded. “How long now?”

“I’m in until 2007.”

“And then?”

“I’m not sure. I might stay in for a few more years. Or maybe I’ll go to college. Who knows—I might even pick up a degree in special education. I’ve heard great things about the field.”

Her smile was strangely sad, and for a while, neither of us said anything. “How long have you been married?” I asked.

She shifted in her seat. “It’ll be two years next November.”

“Were you married here?”

“As if I had a choice.” She rolled her eyes. “My mom was really into the whole perfect wedding thing. I know I’m their only daughter, but in hindsight, I would have been just as happy with something a lot smaller. A hundred guests would have been perfect.”

“You consider that small?”

“Compared with what we ended up with? Yeah. There weren’t enough seats in the church for everyone, and my dad keeps reminding me that he’ll be paying it off for years. He’s just teasing, of course. Half the guests were friends of my parents, but I guess that’s what you get when you get married in your hometown. Everyone from the mailman to the barber gets an invitation.”

“But you’re glad to be back home?”

“It’s comfortable here. My parents are close by, and I need that, especially now.”

She didn’t elaborate, content to let her comment stand. I wondered about that—and a hundred other things—as I rose from the table and brought my plate to the sink. After rinsing it, I heard her call out behind me.

“Just leave it there. I haven’t unloaded the dishwasher yet. I’ll get it later. Do you want anything else, though? My mom left a couple of pies on the counter.”

“How about a glass of milk?” I said. As she started to rise, I added, “I can get it. Just point me to the glasses.”

“In the cupboard by the sink.”

I pulled a glass from the shelf and went to the refrigerator. Milk was on the top shelf; on the shelves below were at least a dozen Tupperware containers filled with food. I poured a glass and returned to the table.

“What’s going on, Savannah?”

With my words, she came back to me. “What do you mean?”

“Your husband,” I said.

“What about him?”

“When can I meet him?”

Instead of answering, Savannah rose from the table with her wineglass. She poured the remains into the sink, then retrieved a coffee cup and a box of tea.

“You’ve already met him,” she said, turning around. She squared her shoulders. “It’s Tim.”

I could hear the spoon tapping against the cup as Savannah sat across from me again.

“How much of this do you want to hear?” she murmured, staring into her teacup.

“All of it,” I said. I leaned back in my chair. “Or none of it. I’m not sure yet.”

She snorted. “I guess that makes sense.”

I brought my hands together. “When did it start?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I know that sounds crazy, but it didn’t happen like you probably think. It wasn’t as if either of us planned it.” She set her spoon on the table. “But to give some kind of answer, I guess it started in early 2002.”

A few months after I’d reupped, I realized. Six months before my father had his first heart attack and right around the time I noticed that her letters to me had begun to change.

“You know we’ve been friends. Even though he was a graduate student, we ended up having a couple of classes in the same building during my last year in college, and afterwards, we’d have coffee or end up studying together. It’s not like we dated, or even held hands. Tim knew I was in love with you . . . but he was there, you know? He listened when I talked about how much I missed you and how hard it was to be apart. And it
was
hard. I thought you’d be home by then.”

When she looked up, her eyes were filled with . . . What? Regret? I couldn’t tell.

“Anyway, we spent a lot of time together, and he was good at consoling me whenever I got down. He’d always remind me that you’d be back on leave before I knew it, and I can’t tell you how much I wanted to see you again. And then your dad got sick. I know you had to be with him—I would never have forgiven you if you hadn’t stayed by his side—but it wasn’t what we needed. I know how selfish that sounds, and I hate myself for even thinking it. It just felt like fate was conspiring against us.”

She put her spoon in the tea and stirred again, collecting her thoughts.

“That fall, right after I finished up with all my classes and moved back home to work at the developmental evaluation center here in town, Tim’s parents were in a horrible accident. They were driving back from Asheville when they lost control of their car and swerved into oncoming traffic on the highway. A semi ended up hitting them. The driver of the truck wasn’t hurt, but both of Tim’s parents died on impact. Tim had to quit school—he was trying to get his PhD—so he could come back here to take care of Alan.” She paused. “It was awful for Tim. Not only was he trying to come to terms with the loss—he adored his parents—but Alan was inconsolable. He screamed all the time, and he began pulling out his hair. The only one who could stop him from hurting himself was Tim, but it took all the energy Tim had. I guess that’s when I first started coming over here. You know, to help out.”

When I frowned, she added, “This was Tim’s parents’ house. Where Tim and Alan grew up.”

As soon as she said it, the memory came back. Of course it was Tim’s—she’d once told me that Tim lived on the ranch next to hers.

“We just ended up consoling each other. I tried to help him, and he tried to help me, and we both tried to help Alan. And little by little, I guess, we began to fall in love.”

For the first time, she met my eyes.

“I know you want to be angry with Tim or me. Probably both of us. And I guess we deserve it. But you don’t know what it was like back then. So much was going on—it was just so emotional all the time. I felt guilty about what was happening, Tim felt guilty. But after a while, it just began to feel like we were a couple already. Tim started working at the same developmental evaluation center where I did and then decided that he wanted to start a weekend ranch program for autistic kids. His parents always wanted him to do that, so I signed on to work on the ranch, too. After that, we were together almost all the time. Setting up the ranch gave us both something to focus on, and it helped Alan, too. He loves horses, and there was so much to do that he gradually got used to the fact that his parents weren’t around. It’s like we were all leaning on each other. . . . He proposed later that year.”