If Wishes Were Horses (40 page)

“I think you are wrong there,” Latrice said, handing her a dishcloth to dry her tears. “He can’t keep his eyes off of you."

“Well, he hasn’t made any move toward me. He doesn’t even look at me these days.”

“Exactly. He is containing himself, as a gentleman should do. If you want something differently, you’ll have to go to him.”

“Oh, Latrice, I don’t want to end up like Corinne!” Etta said and broke out in fresh sobs.

“Why should you end up like Corinne? Roy’s dead, and your mother’s dead.”

“I’m afraid that if I make love with Johnny, I’ll never be able to let him go. I’ll end up losing my body and my soul.” With her mind filling with morose pictures of herself as a lost woman, Etta sat staring at the linoleum.

Latrice said, “I do see your point, however, you could just as well sleep with him and find relief, and find, too, that your mind made it out to be much more than it is. Making love with a man is a wondrous thing . . . but it can also be a little disappointing.”

“You seem to have more knowledge about this area than I ever knew,” Etta observed dryly. She was perturbed that Latrice had not said something more soothing.

“I have a lot of experience in things that you never knew about.”

Then Etta dared, “So what about Obie? Is it all you imagined?”

Latrice gave her a look. “It is more, although my imaginings had never been much,” Latrice said and pushed her hip against the screen door, opening it to carry a pan full of grain out to the chickens Obie had given her and leaving Etta puzzling about her answer.

Etta decided she did not like speaking about intimate things with Latrice. It was just too embarrassing and certainly no help.

She went to the door and saw Johnny riding one of the horses around in the big corral, chasing around several other horses, playing as he sometimes did. She sighed, thinking that she had a very good imagination.

Johnny helped load the two horses he had trained for Jed Stuart up into Smart’s truck, then slammed the tailgate closed. He gave Jed an overview of what he thought the prospects were for each horse, and Jed paid him.

“Can you take two more horses?” Jed asked him. “I picked up two fillies the other day. All I want right now is for you to break ‘em.”

“Give me a couple of weeks. I’ll let you know,” Johnny said. He felt restless, the thought of committing himself to the responsibility of training more horses at that minute seemed beyond him. He still had Harry Flagg’s four and the lessons he had going, and he felt trapped by all of it.

As Jed drove away, Johnny saw Etta come out on the back porch. She was carrying a basket of laundry for the line. She paused at the top step and looked his way. It was like heat came out of her eyes and fell all over him.

Etta had been looking at him a lot lately, as if she was just waiting for him to say the word and she would jump naked into his arms.

Johnny wanted to say the word, but caution kept his lips shut. This was not all good sense and valor on his part. For one thing, there was the problem of where they could do it. His single bunk in the barn did not add up to the romantic imaginings in his mind, and he couldn’t see strolling past Latrice and up to Etta’s bedroom. The thought of Latrice looking at him tended to cast cold water on his desire.

Johnny kept wondering where having sex would get them both. He felt fairly certain that Etta would take this as a commitment on his part. He himself felt it would be commitment, and he felt trapped enough, without digging in deeper.

She went to the clothesline, and he turned and rounded the barn, sauntering over to where Obie was working on Etta’s car. She’d finally managed to get enough money to buy the needed parts. It looked like Obie had most of the motor spread out around him, while he bent all the way underneath the hood. Johnny took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve.

“Whew, it’s hot.”

“It generally gets that way ‘bout now in Oklahoma,” Obie drawled. “Hand me that half-inch over there.”

“Why is it that the particular tool you need is always just out of reach?” Johnny asked, handing over the tool.

“One of them Murphy laws, I reckon.”

Johnny stood in the shade of the barn and watched Obie for some minutes. He asked if Obie thought he might get the car going sometime soon, and Obie said he thought he’d have it by the following afternoon. Johnny had heard the car start once, but it wouldn’t keep running, so Obie had to tear it all down again. Something about clogged fuel lines and a messed-up carburetor.

Johnny said, “Well now, seein’ as how it’s so hot, why don’t you take a break for a couple or three hours? I’d like you to drive with me and see somethin’.”

Obie glanced over at him. Johnny tried to look casual, but he figured Obie picked up a sense of his intensity, because Obie set down the socket wrench and said, “Okay. You can buy me a beer on the way.”

After a stop for cold beers, Johnny drove south along the highway for nearly an hour, the windows down and the wind buffeting their ears, with country music blasting over this. Every once in a while Obie would say, “I hope what you have to show me is worth the distance.”

What Johnny had to show him was a small farm of a hundred and sixty acres, plantings of alfalfa and cotton, fields that usually grew winter oats and maize, and a small orchard of apples and peaches. It had a house, a tin barn that had two rough stalls and room for two more, a second tin hay barn of a large size, a number of falling-down sheds that needed to be torn down, and two fenced corrals. The house was of fieldstone, solid, with two bedrooms and a small extra room made of the closed-in porch. It had a fireplace in the living room, too. There were forsythia bushes in the frontyard and half an apple tree in the backyard; a large limb had split out of it in a wind, and it lay dead on the ground.

Johnny showed Obie how he could fix the barn with four stalls and a tack room and how he wanted to build new corrals and a training pen. He showed him how the house had a small room upstairs and about all it really needed was painting.

“It’s all fine,” Obie said. “Mighty fine. You must have searched for this one, boy.”

Johnny nodded. He had searched, and this was as close as he could come to the best that he could afford. “The man who owns this is willin’ to rent it to me, and if I decide to buy, he’ll take part of my rent as payment for the purchase price,” Johnny said.

Obie propped his foot up on the dead limb that was still connected to the apple tree. “Is this what you want for yourself . . . or for Miz Etta?” he asked, fixing Johnny with a hard eye.

Johnny sighed heavily. “Both, I guess. I’ve thought for a long time about settlin’ down and starting a stock-raisin’ business. I’d like to . . . well, the long and short of it is that if I want Etta to go with me, I got to have her a place to go to. I don’t have a lot of money, Obie, but I thought this place was pretty nice.”

“It is very nice. The house is real nice, but"—Obie pulled at his ear—"I’m not sure Miz Etta would leave her place if you bought her a mansion."

Johnny looked over across the grass growing tall and waving in the wind.

“It doesn’t have to do with you, John,” Obie said. “It has to do with where Miz Etta feels secure. She has scrapped hard for that place. Ever since Mr. Roy brought her there, she has had to try to survive. And once you scrap for a place, it becomes part of you.”

After a moment, when Johnny stared at the ground, Obie asked, “What’s wrong with stayin’ up there with her anyway? She’s got a good start there.” He pointed a bony finger at Johnny. “You have a good start there. Why you want to leave that, boy?”

Johnny shook his head. He had trouble finding an explanation for something he didn’t quite understand. “Because it’s hers. If I marry her there, I’m just comin’ in to what she already has—just fallin’ into it is how everyone’ll see it. Like I married her for all that. Maybe this place isn’t so much as what she’s got, but it would be somethin’ I could give her.” Saying it out like that, he felt foolish. He couldn’t give her nearly as much as she already had, so he didn’t know why he was even trying.

Obie said, “Now, John, don’t discount yourself, boy, when it comes to givin’ to Miz Etta. You have a lot to offer her just in yourself.”

Johnny shook his head sadly. “You know what I am, Obie? I’m a man who never got past the eighth grade, and I only got that far because I skipped a grade. I’m a man who hasn’t lived in any one place since I was thirteen years old. I can’t hardly imagine doin’ so. It makes me a little sick to even think of it. The truth is that I dream of marryin’ Etta like a man dreams about Marilyn Monroe. But when it comes to the actual fact of marriage, I don’t know if I could stick it out day after day. I guess that’s some of why I want to start my own place, scrap for it like you said, and you got roots to hold you there. But even if I do that, I may not be able to stick it out. Etta knows this, too.”

Obie looked like he felt sorry, and this was embarrassing, so Johnny quickly said they needed to get on back.

“I got Miz English comin’ for a lesson this afternoon.” He started for his truck, turning his eyes and mind away from the small rock house.

“That woman’s comin’ around for a bit more than ridin’ lessons,” Obie observed as he bent himself into Johnny’s truck. He thought a bit of teasing might cheer the younger man. And he also thought Johnny could use a bit of warning about a ripe middle-aged woman who wasn’t getting what she needed at home.

He said, “You know that Miz Winslow is a woman who is bored at home and lookin’ around. Woman like that can be dangerous. You might better watch out.”

Johnny glanced at him as he headed the truck down the country lane. “All women are dangerous,” he said in a dispirited tone. “They really get a man tied up.”

“Well, I can’t argue with you there,” Obie said, thinking of Latrice.

Obie felt profound gladness for having at last obtained Latrice’s favor, however, such favor appeared so often in jeopardy that he felt constantly walking against the wind.

“You and Latrice are gettin’ along pretty good, aren’t you?” Johnny asked, drawing him from his thoughts.

Obie sort of smiled. “Yeah. ‘Course Miss Latrice is not one to let a man get too very certain. She gives, and then she takes back about twice.”

“Are you gonna marry her?” Johnny asked.

Obie shrugged. “Miss Latrice is not one who favors marriage a whole lot. Don’t get me wrong . . . she’s strong about propriety. It’s just that she has her ways and she is not a woman given a lot to changin’ them. She don’t look kindly on my kitchen, either,” he admitted a little sheepishly, “which I can’t say as I blame her, bein’ as she’s been enjoyin’ that fancy one up there at the Rivers place for quite some time now.”

He gazed out the window and recalled lying in Latrice’s featherbed. “There’s a lot to be said for small favors, John.” Then he pulled at his ear. “Truth to tell, I kinda like my space, and Miss Latrice does, too. I’ve lived a goodly time by myself, and I might not accommodate myself so well at this late stage, if Miss Latrice came in my place and went to fixin’ everything up. She feels about the same, so it’s workin’ for us.”

“What if they up and move?”

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to go along. We’d work it out, I guess,” he said. “You just got to live one day at a time, John. All of them together are too much.”

Obie reflected that there were many things the years took from a man but they also gave. He was older than Johnny and had learned the difference between true pride and ego pride. He supposed he had faced the fears inside himself long ago and had gotten past them in the manner of a man who trusts himself and his God.

“You know,” Johnny said, breaking the thoughtful silence. “Long as I have my hands, I don’t need a woman for anything.”

Obie laughed long and hard at that, then he observed, “Hands can do a lot, boy, but they can’t kiss. And yours can’t make coffee as good as Latrice’s by a long shot.”

Harry Flagg tried to talk Johnny into taking his horses over to New Mexico to race them, but Johnny told him no. He finished getting the horse that had gone through the barn fire back into some semblance of normal and sent it back to the owner, and every once in a while a guy or gal would come out and bring a horse for a day or two for Johnny to evaluate and tune, but this was the most he would allow. He steadily refused to take on the responsibility of any new horses.

Etta rented two of the now-empty stalls to a couple of barrel racers, so Johnny found himself being drawn more into that sport. Etta began riding at play-days and pasture rodeos around the area. Johnny was proud of Little Gus’s abilities, born a lot from Johnny’s own training, and he was proud of Etta and the gumption she displayed. She continued to be frightened about racing around turns, but she didn’t let that stop her.

Each Saturday and Sunday, Johnny would load Little Gus and drive past the back door of the house for Etta to race out and hop in the truck, saying, “Let’s go!” and they’d be off for five or six hours. Johnny more or less went along for the ride—a driver and helper with the horse and admirer of Etta.

She’d race Little Gus around the barrels a time or two, and on occasion, when she was in high spirits from winning the jackpot, she would consent to a match race on a straight track. More often that not, she won then, too. Almost always she made money enough to cover their expenses of entering and had some to bring home, too.

A couple of people wanted to buy Little Gus. Once Etta came to Johnny and said, “I just got an offer to buy Little Gus for three thousand dollars.”

“Well now,” Johnny said, with a smile. He thought what she told him was a pretty good thing, but Etta was not looking at him like it was.

“Do you think I should do it?”

Johnny had come to understand that Etta had moments when she truly wanted him to tell her what to do, yet if he did, she’d always back away from whatever he told her.

He said, “What do you want to do?” He was thinking that she did not want to sell the horse, that she would never want to sell the horse, so why didn’t she just accept it? Of course, he knew it was not wise to say this. Words of this sort tended to bring out her fire.