Botero's Beautiful Horses Page 2

  Two months after his departure, Della received a phone call. The reception was poor. Della, it’s me. Willy. We made a mistake. You and I both did. We should have never got married. I should have said something, but I knew you really wanted to. So I didn’t. Say anything. I’m sorry.

  Willy, you must be drunk. Or on drugs or something. Get yourself back here so we can do what we said we’d do. Have kids. Raise a family. Willy? Are you listening to me? There was a silent pause before the line went dead. Della intended to ask him if he’d met someone, but she knew he hadn’t. Willy wasn’t ready to commit to Della. He wasn’t ready to commit to anything.

  A week later she received a short letter stuffed with some American money, and that was the last time she heard anything from her husband. Della couldn’t remember how long she’d held out hope that Willy would return and they could get back to normal. It may have been months or years. She was completely on her own, not a relative in sight, and depression settled like smog, making time difficult to account for.

  Della moved around every few years and had a few acquaintances but no close friends. She was married only in a technical sense but didn’t walk around feeling single either. She existed in a confusing purgatorial state that resulted in a shallow social life, and she rarely attended parties of any kind, but it was at one such party, more than nine years after her marriage, where she met up again with Sage Howard. He had grown a mustache but otherwise looked the same, and she told him so. Sage offered no such sentiments when he saw Della after the superseding years, and for good reason. Della had never considered herself beautiful, but for a time a certain grace of form lived within the shadow she cast upon the Earth. Since then she had gained about thirty pounds, and while it wasn’t difficult to coax a smile from her, she no longer exuded optimism. She felt like a forty-watt bulb coated with dust. She had worked at a fish processing plant for a while and once overheard some co-workers describe her as dour. Dour Della, they called her. Della thought she knew what the adjective meant but looked it up when she got to her apartment to make sure. Grim and surly. That’s how people saw her. Della worked hard at smiling after that and imagined herself as upbeat and sanguine. She asked herself why she’d let herself go but found no answers, except possibly the notion of hopelessness. Still, wherever Sage had been and whatever doorways had opened and closed over the intervening years, when they finally met again, Sage looked at Della like she was as good as he would ever get.

  I just want to get one thing out in the open, Sage said. I know nothing about what’s happened to Willy, and at this point I don’t care. I don’t know where he is. The last time I saw the bastard was in Panama eight years ago. He owes me money. He owes me plenty.

  There were only a few suitors pestering Della before Willy came along and not many that weren’t drunk after he left, and the emergence of Sage after so many years felt like a blessing or possibly a trick of fate. The two of them never mentioned Willy Hoffner again, and while the party progressed inside, they found seclusion in two hammocks in the backyard. The night was clear, and a sliver of a moon, that looked like a hammock in the sky, shone down on the two of them lounged between the willow trees.

  Do you do weed? Sage asked.

  Sometimes I do.

  Could this be one of those times?

  I think it could, Della said.

  The two hammocks were about four feet apart so Sage suggested Della settle into his hammock, as it was the larger of the two. Do you think it will hold us both? she asked.

  If it doesn’t, Sage said, we’ll crash to Earth together.

  It was a relief that Sage didn’t want to discuss the past, only the future. The way he described his vision of the time ahead of him, his confident tone of voice, gave Della the sense that she might be included if it suited her. The weed Sage smoked was the most powerful she’d ever experienced, and she saw more stars out that night than she knew existed. She and Sage giggled like two kids late into a sleepover, and Sage excused himself and went back to the party for something good to eat. That’s when Della noticed the smell of him, when he up and left, and while she didn’t want to say so out loud, Sage smelled like sage, and she was sifting through whether he had always smelled like sage and that was how he’d got his name, when a sniggering Sage returned with four apple fritters wrapped in a paper towel, and they settled into the hammock again.

  Is Sage your real name?

  Yeah, why?

  Just wondered. I like the name Sage.

  Della didn’t know the couple that owned the party house, but Sage did. The man let his dog out for a pee, and he bounded out to the hammocks and licked the remnants of apple fitter off their hands. Soon the owner, Bobby, came to the backyard with two beers.

  Thought you two would like something to drink, he said.

  Thanks, Sage said. What’s your dog’s name again?

  Barker, Bobby said. He’s just a pup, can you believe it? He’s still growing.

  The man didn’t have anything more he wanted to say and took his dog inside, and Sage and Della lay there drinking their beer. Too sweet or something, it didn’t taste like beer to Della, and halfway through drinking hers, she said, I’ve got to pee, but I don’t want to go in there.

  Sage didn’t want to go back inside either. He only had one joint left, and he wanted to keep it for the both of them. Pee over there, Sage said. Behind the tree.

  It’s easy for you being a man. You just pull out your extension cord whenever you need it and you stand on your feet.

  You don’t stand on your feet when you pee in the house, do you?

  No.

  Well, then. What’s the difference? Just pull off your panties and squat like usual. Come on. We’ll pee together.

  The two of them peed in earnest and then giggled again. They lay in the large hammock and smoked Sage’s last joint. A late summer breeze pushed its way between the houses and trees and gave them reason to snuggle closer together. I like that dog, Sage said.

  This has been a good night, Della said. The best I’ve had in a long time. Their voices grew soft and mellow like they were engineering something that was no one else’s business.

  Doesn’t it feel like a long night, though? Sage said.

  It does. I feel like I’ve been lying in this hammock for the last ten years.

  I’d like to go on a road trip, Sage said. Do you want to come on a road trip with me?

  Where are you going? I’ve got to work on Monday.

  Las Vegas.

  Las Vegas? What will you do in Las Vegas?

  I’m getting married.

  Married? What do you mean you’re getting married?

  I’m getting married, that’s all. I want to marry you. Della started laughing out of control. She could hardly breathe. You think I’m kidding, don’t you? If you don’t say yes, I’m going back into that party and I’ll find someone else.

  But I can’t get married. I’m already married. Technically anyway.

  Hell, that won’t matter. This is Vegas we’re talking about. If you’ve got the money, they’ve got the show. Maybe I’ll marry the damn dog. I’m leaving early. Eight in the morning. You coming or not?

  Most of what happened for the rest of the night Della could not fathom. She woke with sore hips in a double bed in a room she didn’t recognize, the smell of coffee in the air. A note on the bed read, Shower if you want to. Gone to get supplies for the road. The car is packed.

  She got up and looked out the window. A light rain had been falling for some time by the look of it. They would be driving away from the rain. Away from the rain and into something else.

  3

  Hart ferguson and his wife, Molly, had lived in Fernie for almost twenty years, Molly for forty years because she was born there. Her sister had escaped to Calgary when she graduated from high school, and she lived in the big city now, happily married, or so she said, with two kids and a well-paying job. Molly always thought she too would live in Calgary; in fact, there were days when she
still thought she’d like to. She met Hart in Calgary, and when they married, she assumed Calgary would be their home, but when Hart came to meet her family in Fernie, he fell in love with the place: the proximity of the Rocky Mountains, the Elk River, the nearby lakes. Calgary hadn’t yet bulldozed its way into the 20th century, but Hart saw it coming. In Fernie a man could wake up in the morning, stare up at the Three Sisters and fill his lungs with freedom.

  Molly had a reputation as a know-it-all, and she’d lived in Fernie so long she figured she deserved the title. People moved in and brought with them expectations of where they’d come from, and over time their outlook changed. When they ran into Molly, the change hastened considerably. Molly had married a dreamer, and for the first ten years living in Fernie, Hart would stand outside in all four seasons, his mouth gaping in awe, living the dream. The Fergusons had a boy, and for awhile it cemented them to the community. They lost him soon after he turned eight, and because they had no one in particular to blame for his drowning, Hart and Molly took turns blaming each other or feeling guilty, sometimes both at the same time. They didn’t discuss having a second child. Raising a child wasn’t like owning a dog. You didn’t grab another child and hope it would make things better. A second child would only be a reminder of the one that had got away.

  I see the new neighbour moved in today, Hart said.

  I noticed. I guess I’d better make a pie and take it over.

  I guess you’d better, Hart said.

  Hart did his share of talking when selling life insurance. In the past he had talked a lot to his wife, but over the years, he was less inclined to. Most of the words uttered around the house came from Molly, and because he had been out most of the day, he received a play-by-play description of the move next door.

  They have a TV, she said. It’s a small one though.

  I’ve been telling you for years we ought to get one, Hart said. Even the secretary in our office has a TV. If something happens in the world, you hear about it within the hour instead of the next day. They show movies too. Same ones we see in the theatre downtown. Just later is all.

  Molly knew this was the real reason her husband wanted a TV. Four or five times a year, a Western played at the local cinema, and Hart always went. Sometimes twice. Molly figured they’d get a TV of their own eventually, but she was in no rush.

  I see they have a little girl with them. The move has been hard on the little girl.

  And how do you know that? he asked.

  She cries like a fire hydrant. If you stick a sucker in a mouth like that, it generally does the trick. I guess they don’t know that.

  The next evening Molly took a pie next door. The husband and the wife and the little girl were inside unpacking, and she heard laughter when she stood at the front door, knocking. It was good to hear laughter in the neighbourhood. She introduced herself and pointed to her husband, Hart, who waved from where he was fixing the lock on their front door. Sage and Della were their names. Different names for sure, especially Sage. Molly wondered, if with a name like Sage, he was all caught up in the Western thing. That was all she needed: a neighbour coming over and encouraging her husband who already thought he was John Wayne. She didn’t catch the child’s name because soon after she arrived at the door the girl cried. Some kids didn’t take well to being moved around like that, Molly thought.

  Hart lay on the couch reading a Western novel when Molly got back. He didn’t ask for a full report, but he got one. The husband was to start work at the mine, and the wife would mind the child. Molly suggested Hart should drop in some night after supper and ask if they had insurance or not. Hart said, No, he wasn’t about to do that. Someday they’ll find out I sell insurance, and if they’re interested in buying some, they will, he said.

  That was the type of man Hart was. Half the town probably didn’t have insurance of any kind, and he knew that, but for some reason it didn’t bother him. His wife liked to have something to worry about, and she was always going to be better at that than he was. She read the newspaper daily, and once she’d read the catastrophic headlines common to the front page, she consumed the rest of the news with a modest smile on her face.

  She’s a stocky woman, Molly said. Her name’s Della. She wouldn’t have trouble staying on course in a north wind. The husband’s built like Ichabod Crane. Funny what brings two people together, isn’t it?

  Hart mumbled something from behind his book. It sounded like agreement and was enough to satisfy Molly. She found she liked going to bed earlier and earlier the older she got, and she was ready for bed now. She liked to be up before anyone else, as if that gave her some kind of privilege on a new day.

  Many things that happen to you when you’re little will warp you one way or another, but you don’t necessarily find out what they were. If raised by mean parents who locked you in your bedroom for months on end until you were ten years old and finally escaped, you could find someone to help and explain what had happened, but parents can get away with almost anything for the first three or four years, and as long as they smarten up after that, no one knows the difference. This applied to the raising of Stacey Emerald Howard since neither Della nor Sage had experience with child-rearing and no parents or relatives lived nearby to offer suggestions. That left the door open for Molly to fill the breach in the advice department.

  The next-door neighbour, who Sage early on dubbed Molly the Nose, didn’t like the way Stacey’s skin broke out in hives every week or ten days. Sage said the rash was just a phase that would pass in time, and Della hoped that was the case, but it wasn’t.

  Tell Molly the Nose to go piss up a rope, Sage said.

  Don’t talk that way around the house. Stacey doesn’t need to hear that kind of talk.

  Then ask me to step outside the next time you want me to talk about Molly the Nose.

  Molly the Nose understood persistence, and so it came time to take Stacey to a doctor. Della chose ancient Dr. McMillan, thinking he wouldn’t ask questions about someone he would probably never see again. Thick glasses rode part way down his nose, and he couldn’t seem to make his mind up, despite years of practice, whether to look through them or over them. He wrote a prescription for a salve of some kind, and despite the letters being large and rudimentary, Della had no idea what he’d written. He said the hives were likely a reaction to something Stacey had been eating. Had anything new been added to her diet, he wanted to know. They had no sound answer to that one nor to the question of whether her shots were up to date. The appointment came at the end of the working day, and Sage had made sure to accompany Della because he didn’t trust her to not say something stupid. Let me do the talking, he had said before they went in, then explained to the doctor that Stacey was born during a short stint of living in Ecuador and that while he thought she’d had some shots over the years, they’d lost the records because of a house fire. Then he asked if the shots were free. The whole time he spoke, Della stared earnestly at the black and white tiles between her feet until the doctor looked there too, as if he thought something must have dropped on the floor. While the doctor listened, he may have considered Sage’s story a tall tale, but he seemed willing to absorb it regardless of the consequences. He opened a file on Stacey’s behalf and made a series of appointments at the local clinic. Stacey never did come down with smallpox or TB, and such diseases didn’t stand a chance because she’d been pricked in the arm many times over. Della felt proud that if they handed her a sucker as a diversion, Molly’s suggestion, she never cried once getting her shots.

  The whole hives-prevention scenario set off other alarm bells for Della and Sage. They had no legal proof that the little girl was Stacey Emerald Howard, which meant they couldn’t travel out of the country with her in tow, and school was on the horizon. Della got in a flap and refused to leave the house for a few days just thinking of the consequences, but Sage stepped in and began a letter-writing campaign with Vital Statistics in Vancouver. He said he knew how to handle dumb-ass bureaucrats, and
eventually a birth certificate materialized, one that laid claim to Stacey Emerald Howard, a document that looked mutilated from the start and after a time went missing.

  The hives disappeared once they stopped feeding her peanut butter three or four times a day, and Molly the Nose, satisfied with the result of her intervention, kept herself on alert because she sensed she now lived next door to a family looking for answers.

  The Howards owned one car, and Sage needed it every second day to get to work, since he’d found Emery to carpool with, so Della had use of the car often enough to take Stacey places if she wanted to, primarily to the grocery store because she needed cigarettes. Della refused to buy a whole carton at a time in case she decided to quit. She knew how to drive in the snow but didn’t like to, so if more than three or four inches fell on the road, they got to town with Della on foot and Stacey in a sled during the winter months, and often the only reason they ventured out was a fading supply of Players Mild. In town, Della kept close watch on mothers tending to their kids in case she discovered what she ought to be doing that she wasn’t. On the days when they had a lot of snow but it wasn’t that cold, Della dressed Stacey in a jumbo snowsuit and left her out in the yard, where she entertained herself for a couple of hours. A two- or three-year-old could do a lot in a snowbank by herself. Della checked on her from the window once in a while and waved her way, and while Stacey didn’t seem thrilled by that part of her day, she did learn to be the kind of person who could spend time alone. Molly the Nose approved of the fresh air but said she needed to be around young kids or delayed language development would result. When Della explained the theory to Sage, he said maybe that was why Barker never learned to bark because they’d lived out in the country that first year, miles from other barking dogs.