Funerals for Horses (18 page)

I realize then how far I have come. How much I have accomplished. I have done the impossible. I have defied death and probability. What remains is out of my control.

It’s also the only part that matters.

I sleep on Simon’s bed, on the dry overalls, the dry cave floor, sheltered from the wind. I dream about madness.

In the morning I am still in Simon’s house alone.

THEN:

I drove Simon and Sarah to the airport in Simon’s Oldsmobile, soon to become my own.

“I’ll call you every day,” he said.

“You don’t have to call every day, Simon.”

“Well, at first. And you can call collect, anytime. Day or night.”

“I don’t have to call collect, Simon. I work two full-time jobs. I’ll be all right.”

He hugged me, which I know was hard for him, and Sarah hugged me, and whispered that I could always change my mind. When they stepped onto the plane, terror mixed with relief. It had been so hard to watch them go through all that. Was this really what I inspired in those around me?

Simon and I had moved shortly after the Shane incident, into both halves of a tiny duplex on Silver Lake Boulevard, not a mile from Willie’s house.

He married Sarah at city hall, downtown. They honeymooned at a Malibu hotel for the weekend. They lived in one side of the duplex, I lived in the other, quietly, without expectation, allowing each day to look and feel much like the one before.

Simon quit school to work a second job, and when he announced his plan to move to Sacramento, where Sarah’s father had offered him a job with his investment firm, he seemed to take for granted that I would come along.

That I would even need to think it over sent him into an uncharacteristic snit.

“Ever since you met Shane you don’t need me anymore.”

He looked embarrassed the moment his words hit the floor, lying like an animal needlessly killed.

I left for my own apartment. If only Shane were the issue, I would need Simon again. Apart from a postcard, though, forwarded from our old Hollywood address, Shane was gone.

I rose at five forty-five to join Willie on her morning walk around the reservoir. This was nothing special. I did it every day.

“Why do they even call this a lake?” I said, my voice carping and cool. I pointed to the barbed wire strands which topped the chain-link fence, the steep concrete of its sides. “I mean, have we been living in the city too long, or what?”

“What’s on your mind, Ella?”

She wore a red bandanna tying back her unruly hair, no makeup—her usual morning outfit. She had proven, with that simple question, why Simon was wrong to say I could get a new counselor in the new city. Maybe he could just leave Sarah, marry a new wife once he settled in.

“Simon’s going to move to Sacramento.”

“Oh. That’s a pretty big something.”

“I guess.”

“Are you going to move with him?”

“He wants me to.”

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

We walked in silence, to the far end of the reservoir, around the bend, back toward home, keeping up the brisk pace that Willie liked.

“He’s not Simon anymore,” I said on the home stretch. “I still remember when he was. But what good does that do?”

“But you still love him?”

“Well, yeah, but it just doesn’t make that much difference if he’s there or if he’s not. He’s gone either way, you know? It’s because of me. You know that, don’t you?”

“What is?”

“This thing about Simon not being Simon. He’s doing that for me.”

“Care to elaborate on that?”

“Doesn’t matter now. He’s going.”

She had said it sounded like I’d made up my mind.

I watched their plane taxi down the runway, but I turned to leave for work before the wheels lifted off.

He called in the morning, but what was there to say?

For three weeks running I followed a careful routine. Morning walks with Willie, work, sleep. Laundromat on Sunday, grocery shopping Thursday afternoon. On the days I worked only one shift, I caught up on my sleep.

Everything went fine until a holiday forced a day off. I loved to work. Life was always in perfect order, from the beginning of a shift to the end of it. This life held what my other life so painfully lacked. A rule book. An order of moments. Show up. Count the cash drawer. Initial the register tape. Sign in. Smile at the customer. Ring up the customer. Give correct change. If there’s no customer, wipe the glass on the refrigerator cases.

In time of any doubt, ask the boss, and he’ll differentiate right from wrong.

I probably could have survived on just one of those jobs. Financially, that is.

On Presidents’ Day the bank was closed, and it fell on my day off at the market. I woke in the morning without a plan. I lay on my back on the couch for most of the day. Called Willie at work, but she was busy with a patient.

I filled the Oldsmobile’s tank, drove to Santa Monica, watched the waves come in by the last light. They have no plan, I told myself, but they keep busy all day long, just doing the same thing over and over. They ask no questions. I told myself that maybe I ask too many questions. I drove back through Topanga Canyon, wove through Coldwater Canyon, Laurel Canyon, watched the lights glow inside each of the houses, looking warm. Something warm existed in each of those homes. For a split second I almost thought back to Mrs. Hurley, but I stopped myself before it had gone too far.

I cut through Hollywood, drove up into Griffith Park, circling the observatory parking lot until I found a space. I made it through the door into the telescope area just moments before closing time.

Virgil seemed glad to see me.

“Ella. How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in ages. Where’s Simon?”

The question surprised me, as though I thought he should know. Everybody should know.

“He moved away.”

“Really?” I heard all the questions he didn’t ask, and it was just as well. It took some hunting on his part, I know, to find one that might sound properly supportive. “So, how does it feel to be on your own?”

I shrugged, my gaze fixed on a chart of the solar system. “All right, I guess. Until today. I don’t have anything to do today.”

I thought about seeing Willie, just ducking out right then, and finding her at home, because it was important, what I needed to say, to know, and I knew Willie so much better. But my feet stayed stuck, and I realized I hadn’t sought Virgil by whim or accident.

“Well,” he said. “You’re here, that’s something to do. Come on. You want to look at the moon?”

“But you’re closed, aren’t you?”

“Not to you.”

I pressed my eye to the lens, and saw the moon dead full. I saw mountains and valleys and craters.

“Where is he?” I said.

“Who?”

“The man in the moon.” I’d never seen a full moon through the telescope, and I always thought if I did, I’d see him.

“Well, you get closer up, it kind of ruins the illusion.”

Without realizing I was going to, I told Virgil about my resentful disappointment on the night of the moon landing. He listened well—one of Virgil’s steadfast traits.

Then he said, “You know, I felt that way, too, just a little. And I couldn’t have been more surprised. Here I am, a scientist. But I guess part of me is still a mystic. Or just a dreamer. It always seemed so ethereal. Tell anyone and I’ll deny it.”

I smiled and pressed my eye to the lens again, because it was easier and safer to talk that way.

“Simon wants to be an investment broker.”

“Okay.” I could tell by the way he said it that he wouldn’t state his feelings on the subject until I’d stated mine.

“Is that a good thing to be, Virgil?”

“Well, it depends. Anything’s a good thing to be if that’s what you want.”

Now, I felt, we were nearing the heart of the issue.

“How do you know what you want?”

Virgil scratched his chin, the way he always did when thinking. It made him look more like a scientist.

“I guess you just go by what you feel.”

“Damn!” I shot it out hard, full of disappointment. Wouldn’t you know it would come down to that? So what about me— how would I ever know?

“What’s the matter, Ella?”

I didn’t dare say what I was thinking. I wanted Virgil to be pleased with me, happy and surprised at how I turned out. No talking to DeeDee, or letting on that I couldn’t feel. Even Simon didn’t know that.

“Well, it’s just that... he was going to be an astronomer.”

“I know, Ella. I remember. But maybe that was just a childhood dream.”

My mouth fell open, my eyes came up to meet his, and I know I didn’t hide my amazement. I forgot to even try. A childhood dream? There are dreams for children and others for grownups? My god, how far behind had I already fallen?

“I never had a dream, Virgil. Ever. I never wanted to be anything. Just happy.”

Virgil smiled. “That’s all any of us want to be, is happy, Ella, that’s all a dream is. It’s just an idea of what will get you to happy.” His face took on a helpless, sympathetic look. This was an exchange in a foreign language to me. I guess it showed.

I said, “I never had a single idea of how to get to happy. I guess that’s why I never did.”

“What are you, seventeen, eighteen years old?”

“Nineteen.”

“It takes most of us a little longer than nineteen years. It takes some all their lives.”

I realized then what it was, what chewed at me, like mice in a dark corner of the cellar, but I never once said it out loud. I only ever had one dream, once, in my whole life, and it was to make Simon happy. And I worked hard for it, too. Sent him back to school to find it, but he picked up and walked away. Didn’t Simon want to be happy? I wanted it badly for him—couldn’t some of that rub off?

As if Virgil read my mind, he said, “There are a lot more easy opportunities in investments than in astronomy.”

I asked what easy had to do with anything, but he didn’t answer. Just before I left, he said he was surprised, pleasantly surprised, to see me again, to see how I grew up. He couldn’t quite find the words to say more.

If he could have spoken the truth, without fear of hurting me, I think he would have said he was surprised I grew up at all.

People could have said things like that in front of me. I liked the truth, if I ever heard it. But no one ever did.

No one except Shane, and Shane was gone.

As I step out into the cool morning, Yozzy wanders up to greet me, and I offer her a hatful of water, which she gratefully accepts. I wish I had more to give her, or to give myself, but we have drunk almost all the water already.

I have two pieces of beef jerky left. I chew on one slowly, remembering the warm faces of Everett and May.

It’s about six-thirty, I’m guessing, which means five-thirty in California, and I wonder if Willie is out, walking briskly around the concrete lake. And I wonder, is she thinking about me now? Someone has to think about me now.

The sky is empty, the landscape empty. I slip back inside Simon’s house, into cool shade, and it’s empty. Tears come, and I let them, comforted by the flow of them on my cheeks, like company.

Did I really come all this way to find emptiness, which I held in such a vast supply at home?

I will not leave until I know.

Hours later the moon comes out, before dusk, and it asks, what if you never know? What if your question has no answer?

I hear Yozzy’s hooves against the stone; she asks for more water. I give her the last, though I’m thirsty. I eat the last piece of beef.

I look to the moon, who smiles and says, if you need to find even more emptiness, you could always die here yourself.

I decline.

I look around for Yozzy, but she’s out on the open plain, seeking better grazing. I pick up her hackamore and blanket, throw my bedroll on my shoulder. Will she be relieved when I tell her we’re going home? Or will she be disappointed in me, and will I see that in the depth of her dark, liquid eye?

I never learn.

As I cup my hands to call her name, I see a shadow, east against the mesa. Fear grips me, running along my belly like river water. It never occurs to me it might be Simon, which is as it should be, because then, as he comes closer, I feel no disappointment.

I dive back inside Simon’s house, but that’s a mistake, because surely he is coming this way. Whoever he is, I am in his house. Whoever he is, he is not Simon. I watch him from the sheltered darkness. He is a wild man. A white man, but not one of us. His hair, thick and tangled, shines white and fine in the dying sun, his unmanageable beard just slightly darker. An older man, but strong enough to be dangerous. He comes close, to Simon’s fire pit, and I’m trapped inside his house. He carries a rifle and drags the gutted carcass of a deer. His eyes appear gray in the slant of light. He wears dirty underwear and a tattered blanket thrown as a cape across his shoulders.

He leaves the carcass in the dirt, and I see he also drags a burlap sack filled with gnarled pieces of fallen branches, which he lays on the ground in a careful order. He must have traveled far, I think, for a bag of wood like this.

He works methodically, shoveling handfuls of dirt into the fire pit to form a new, drier floor.

He pulls a long hunting knife from its sheath, hidden somewhere beneath his cape, and shaves thick curls of kindling from a soft branch.

He is faced partly away from me, and as I watch his profile, he moves with a certain grace, but it’s an angry grace, I think, a grace I might not have recognized yesterday, or the day before. Then I realize I am looking at my brother Simon’s killer. What else can he be? He is not Simon, but he has Simon’s wallet. Or he did. He is not Simon, but I followed him from the spot of Simon’s ordeal.

I wonder: Is my mission only to kill the man who killed my brother? Or to bring him to justice, to bring Sarah her answer, so she can wear black, and start slowly over? So that I can sleep, and return to marginal sanity, knowing I have done the only thing left worth doing?

If so, I hope it brings something more than emptiness. His rifle leans against the stone wall of the mesa, and I know I must take him now, win or lose. I must use my only weapon: surprise. I must not let him corner me here.