Taming the Star Runner (11 page)

He stared at Joe and thought of all the reasons why it wouldn't have happened to
him
.

“Orson came by and got me. He said he'd heard the twins pulled a job without cutting him in. I think they found a different fence, I don't know, I quit and I thought they did too. Orson said he was going to kick ass. That's all I thought he was going to do, honest, he said he was going to do a little ass kickin' and teach them a lesson. He'd been drinkin' and smoking grass and coke too. I was scared to get out of the van—he wasn't mad at me and I was trying to keep it like that. The twins were hanging out in the parking lot by the park and Orson got out and got them and they just climbed in; we've been doing more grass since you left, Travis, it's easier to get than booze. They were pretty stoned. And all the way up the mountain, he was driving up the mountain road, toward the reservoir, we kept drinking and smoking and it was like a foggy bad dream, like you can't wake up from, Orson ranting on and on about how they double-crossed him, how he was going to fix them. It was scaring me, man, but it was like it wasn't happening either. It just wasn't real. You ever have something happen, and it just didn't seem real?”

Travis nodded. He knew Orson's van. He could picture everything, the black night out the windows, the heavy smell of the grass, the glare of the dashboard lights on Orson's mad face. Crazy mad, drunk and stoned.

He pictured the silent twins, passing a bottle back and forth. It wouldn't seem real to them either.

“Anyway, Orson drove down one of those side roads, a dirt one, it was too bouncy to drink. Then he stopped and got out and rolled the side door open and made them get out. And me too. They ended up sitting on a log, Orson was still yelling and I was too scared to sit down with them. And he was waving a gun around. I thought it was just to scare them. I thought that right up to when he shot Billy in the head and he went over backward. Mike just sat there, staring at the ground. Orson said to me, ‘You do this one,' but I wouldn't. I didn't say anything but I wouldn't. Then he was yelling, ‘Look at me, damn you,' at Mike, but he kept staring at the ground, shaking his head. Orson shot him too. I thought I was next, but he drove me back to town, saying I knew better than to tell anyone.

“I got a bus to St. Louis and then hitched the rest of the way—the last guy got a little weird with me and I jumped out of the car…

“You know what I keep thinking about? Leaving them up there on the mountain, it was a real cold night and they didn't have jackets…”

Joe started shaking so his ice cubes rattled.

Travis finally said, “You sure they were dead?”

Joe nodded.

“When did this happen?”

“I think it was two nights ago, I ain't sure anymore.”

Travis found himself shaking. But it wouldn't happen to me, he kept thinking. I'd have jumped out of the van, grabbed the gun, knocked Orson out … He kept running it over in his mind, changing the story, fixing it.

Fixing everything.

​It crossed Travis's mind to try to hide all this from Ken, but he soon realized that wouldn't work. For one thing, Joe sacked out into a sleep that resembled a coma, and Travis would have to take Christopher's bed; but mostly Travis wanted somebody else to lay this on—he wanted help.

What was going to happen to Joe? He tried to keep that question at the top of his mind, but if he let down his guard for a second, he found himself dwelling on how close he had come to being in the same mess.

If he had hit Stan just a little bit harder…

Ken took it a lot more calmly than Travis had expected. They stayed up till two o'clock talking about it—at least they ended up talking. At first Travis tried to persuade him to get Joe on a plane out of the country. When Ken refused even to discuss that option Travis got a little wild, but by midnight he was worn out and facing facts. Ken was going to call the authorities first thing in the morning; he was going to do all that was legally possible; he was going to help find a good lawyer. Joe was going back.

It was settled and Travis had known all along this was how it was going to be settled and he didn't think Joe was going to be too surprised.

He wasn't. Travis finally had to go shake him awake the next morning; he ate his toast and drank his coffee and listened to the plans with dull indifference. Travis remembered when he'd worked for the vet: a couple of times people brought in dogs that had been hit by a car—they had the same look.

And Joe was tired. He was too tired to think of showering, but Travis made him, and ran his clothes through the washer and dryer. It might be his last private shower for a while.

For some reason that thought made Travis cry. He leaned on the washer and cried. The machine was noisy, nobody could hear him.

Joe was ready at last. He seemed to be walking in his sleep. Travis couldn't help remembering the bouncing bravado he'd managed himself, when the cops came for
him
, but then Stan hadn't been a friend, or really dead. He let Joe sit up front, even though he hated being scrunched up in the back.

“What's that?” Joe sat up and looked around, like someone trying to wake up.

“Thunder,” Travis said.

“We're under a severe thunderstorm watch,” Ken said. It seemed like a last-ditch effort for a normal conversation; they were reduced to talking about the weather.

“Does that mean like tornadoes and stuff?”

“Naw.” Travis reassured him with the line he'd heard: “Not this time of year.”

“I don't know,” Ken said absentmindedly. “A few years ago we had one on Christmas.”

Now he tells me, Travis thought. Actually, he hadn't really noticed the dark gray sky, it seemed such a natural extension of how everything was going—he would have been shocked and depressed by blazing sunshine this morning. The distant zigzag flashes through the blacker clouds to the west were like his thoughts, racing across his mind, the growing thunder like the march of doom.

Nobody tried to talk again. It was over quickly. They were in some building. It didn't seem like a police station, but there were policemen waiting to take Joe, men in suits to talk to Ken—Travis tried to take notes in his mind but everything blurred. Everything but the quick hug he gave Joe.

He was shaking.

“So what's going to happen?” he asked, finally breaking silence on the way home. The lightning was closer now, crackling like skeleton fingers across the sky, the thunder booming and rolling (giants bowling, he remembered from when he was little, he'd thought thunder was giants bowling—had he thought that up or had he seen it in a cartoon a long time ago?). But it wasn't raining yet. The hairs on his arms, on the back of his neck, stood and wiggled.

“Do I look like God?” Ken said. “How should I know?”

Not much, Travis thought, not with those bags under your eyes.

“I mean
legally
.”

“Sorry. Legally. Well, it depends on whether or not they catch this other guy. How much of his story is corroborated by the evidence. And a big factor is whether he's tried as a juvenile or an adult. How old is he?”

“Sixteen,” Travis said, then remembered, with a sinking feeling, that Joe's mom had held him back a year, before grade school. Joe was the only person he knew who'd flunked kindergarten. “Seventeen.”

“It could go either way.”

Travis stared out at the trees dancing in the wind.

“It wouldn't have happened if I'd been there,” he burst out. “I never liked that scuzz-ball Orson. I'd never have let them get suckered into working for him—if I'd stayed home this wouldn't have happened.”

“Maybe something else would've happened,” Ken said. Maybe it would have been you and your stepdad murdering each other. Fate and will—it's baffled better minds than mine.” In a minute he added, “Fate's what happens to you, and will is what you
make
happen to you.”

Travis just nodded, thinking, Geez, does he think I'm a moron?

“You know,” Ken said slowly, “I've got a friend who just got out of a Spanish prison a few years ago. He was in for twelve years, for five ounces of hash. And it could have just as easily been me. He's still in Spain, bartending. He didn't exactly pick up marketable skills in there. Why him and not me?”

“You used to do hash too?” Travis was shocked beyond belief. Sure, he knew adults smoked; the twins' stepfather had always shared his stash with them. Straight-arrow Ken? Never.

“What do you think—your generation invented sex, drugs, and rock and roll?”

Travis was quiet. Well, we've perfected it, he thought.

“We were in Spain at the same time, he came over on the freighter with me and Teresa—he tried to cross the French border, holding—we chickened out at the last minute … Here is old Achilles, kid, to tell you: You are not going to believe you were ever that dumb. Goddamn!” A bolt of lightning struck so close they heard the sizzle; the immediate thunder boom rattled the car.

Will and fate—he could will himself into writing a book, it was fate that got the right person to read it. Fate had kept him from one murder, God knows, at the time he'd meant to kill Stan: he was sure will would have kept him out of this one. What was it in the end? Which one had the biggest say in your life?

A gust of wind pushed at the car.

“You sure this isn't a tornado?” Travis gripped the dashboard.

“I'm not positive. I just hope we don't get caught in a flash flood.”

Flash flood. Great. Like there weren't enough complications in life with people—nature had to get its two cents in.

“She's filed,” Ken said suddenly.

“What?”

“Teresa. She's going ahead with it.”

Travis looked at Ken's drawn face. Maybe this was why he'd been so detached through Joe's ordeal, why he hadn't bothered to give Travis a be-careful-how-you-choose-your-friends lecture (although, at this point, Travis was having doubts he'd ever meant to—apparently some of Ken's friends weren't upstanding citizens either).

“You know what's one of the worst things about this? It's humiliating—it puts us in the same class as all the other jerks divorcing. I thought we were better than that.”

“I thought maybe you guys were going to get back together.”

Travis was thinking about the time Teresa'd spent the night. He'd been so sure it was a good sign.

“I thought so too. Maybe.”

A crackling fork of lightning lit a black cloud. It was incredible how far up that cloud went, like a tower. There was so much energy coming off this storm, it was more exhilarating than scary.

“What did you mean, that time you said, ‘It all started with the Cuisinart'?”

Ken gave a short laugh. “I'm sure it started long before that, but at the time, the Cuisinart got me to thinking, Now, what the hell does she need that thing for? Cooking is not Teresa's favorite pastime. Then I started thinking: Now, why did we buy an old farmhouse and redo it to look like a redone old farmhouse? I'd very carefully research cars, twelve years ago, to see what the best was. You know what I got? A BMW. I got rid of the thing last year, same time I got rid of the horses. But even as far back as college, the year Teresa and I backpacked around Europe, every goddamn college kid in America was backpacking around Europe.”

Ken, thought Travis, you are not making sense. He really hoped ol' Ken wasn't cracking up.

“Then we took up skiing. And skiing was on the cover of
Time
. And suddenly I knew what Brie was, and then Teresa, who doesn't have a sweet tooth, developed a taste for chocolate. Just the same time Brie and chocolate swept the nation. I'm sick of feeling like a lemming. I'm sick of
stuff
.”

“So, what does Teresa say?”

“She says let's enjoy a few things. She says, ‘You hate your job, get another one!' She says she's too old to sleep on sidewalks.”

“You going to get another job?”

Travis was trying to make some sense out of all this, and he wondered if Teresa felt the same way. She was the sensible one, it seemed to him.

“Another job? In this economy? I'm lucky to have a job. I have to think about Christopher—that's another thing. I used to always say I'd never send my kid to a private school unless I could guarantee him a private life, but now, what's going on in the public school system scares the hell out of me.”

Hell, he'll live through it, Travis thought, but then, why not a private school if that'd be better?

“I think you're really messing up, man,” Travis said.

“I probably am,” Ken agreed. “It won't be the first time.”

“Yeah, but it'll be the worst. Was my old man this stubborn?”

Ken laughed. “You think that's it, I'm just being stubborn?”

“I don't know what you're being but, geez, man, you want to keep Teresa and Chris, do something!”

Ken tightened his grip on the wheel as the car swayed in the wind. “Well, it's a lot more complicated.”

Oh, sure. That was a good excuse for not making a move. Travis promised himself, he swore, he'd always make a move. Even if it was the wrong move, at least he'd know he did something besides balk like a mule and mutter “complicated.”

As they pulled into the drive, they could see Casey racing around, trying to catch Sandman in the paddock. The rest of the paddocks were empty, except the one where the Star Runner was plunging and bowing, whirling and charging.

Why didn't she get him in first? Travis thought. He's going to jump out in a second. Then he knew: Of course, she'd look out for everyone else's horse first.

They both jumped out of the car—Travis had a hard time getting his door shut against the wind. The temperature was dropping rapidly. It was almost as dark as dusk, except for the weird strobing effect of the lightning.

“Don't touch the railing!” Ken yelled at him, then threw the gate open and ran to grab Sandman's lead rope from Casey.

“I'll get him in! Get the Star Runner!”

For a second Travis was surprised to see how easily Ken handled the nervous horse. Then he remembered: That was what Ken had wanted to do with his life, raise horses. He hadn't ever seen Ken near one…

There was a ripping sound, the sky splitting, and a finger of light touched the pecan tree at the back of the house. A crack and an explosion that deafened him.

This was death dancing around him in the skies, and for a second Travis wanted to run; then he broke loose from fear into a kind of crazy exhilaration. The Star Runner covered the paddock in one leap and took the five-foot railing in the next. Travis felt what it was that Casey felt: the Star Runner, to tame that Star Runner, it would be conquering worlds…

The railing was humming. The steel poles were vibrating and pulsating with energy. Don't touch it, Travis thought, it's death. He turned and jumped into the Jeep with Casey, he'd been aware of her, the sky, the storm, the battlefield play of earth and air, all at the same time. Their eyes locked for just a second, and they laughed out loud at the same time…

He seemed to hear Ken calling out, warning, but he was far behind now, they were racing like the wind, the earth was moving like a live thing under the wheels, the whole landscape was changed, charged, a different color, nothing familiar except that dark racing figure ahead.

The pasture gate was leaning, nearly flattened by the wind, and they charged on across it without stopping. They could gain on the Star Runner here, a long flat stretch except for the gullies that nearly threw them from the Jeep. They were gaining now, not chasing him, joining him.

Travis looked at Casey laughing into the wind and thought: I'll remember that profile to the day I die. No matter how it works for us later, I'll always have this…

The sky opened, lit to the ceiling, a light brighter than he could ever have imagined, showing huge towers and spires reaching to heaven—

He lay tasting dirt and aching and wondering at the stillness. The wind still tore across the land, the sky was still flashing, but it was quiet as a tomb.

He wondered if he was dead, then decided he hurt too much to be dead. He felt sad, as if he'd been awakened from a wonderful dream.

Casey! He pushed himself up and looked around wildly. The Jeep lay overturned in a small gulley. But then something stirred just a few feet away, and Casey slowly forced her way to her feet. He, too, got up. The center of the storm was farther away now, flashing behind them. He felt a few pelts of water. He limped up to stand beside her and she took his hand, winding her fingers in his.

No heat, no passion, just gratitude for a human touch.

“What is it?” he said. He realized then that he was deaf. And it didn't shock him like the desolation of her face.

There was nothing. Just the windswept pasture, the overturned Jeep, and the line of trees. The acrid smell of electricity, the smell of something burning … flesh burning.