With its false promise of spring, the chinook wind gusted down from the Black Hills and drove Leonard out of the double-wide trailer home. Anxious to escape his wife's grief, he drank in the warm westerly breeze before hurrying down the porch steps and onto the gravel of the driveway. The wind scattered the clouds across a hard, blue sky like the horses now darting about in Wade Bunning's corral across the pasture.
Leonard hoped to avoid his neighbor, but Wade was outside the fence studying his two horses who danced skittishly at the far end of the small corral. The unusual March heat didn't seem to bother the old ex-Marine. He still wore a military fatigue jacket. After years of hard use, it was nearly as tattered and spotty as the horses' winter coats. Wade stood as he always did, militarily erect with his right arm stretched across his body to cradle the maimed left.
"Leonard," he acknowledged in the curt, commanding voice of a Marine sergeant as Leonard neared. A deep indentation--courtesy of the same spade-wielding Japanese that had devastated his hand during the battle for Okinawa fifty-five years earlier--ran like a pink and scarred gully from his right brow up into the crewcut of grizzled white hair, giving it a deep, unnatural part.
"Morning," Leonard replied. "Good weather. "
"As long as it lasts, " Wade replied, then scowled and gestured with his good hand toward the horses. That hand held a jar. "Something's been chewing on them so I bought some of that ointment the vet charges you an arm and a leg for. I was about to use some, but since you're here, let me ask you a question--You ever seen anything like that before?"
Leonard checked the animals. Cass was normally a lazy pinto mare who lay on the ground as often as she broke into a trot. Today, she shook her head anxiously near the gate as if desperate to escape the corral. Dried blood ran down from gashes on her fetlocks, making it look like her legs had rusted instead of bled. The roan stallion, Tony, looked no better.
"Never have," Leonard answered.
"Bet you're not sorry it happened to the roan," Wade said.
"Can't say that I am," Leonard admitted.
"I could still shoot him for you."
Leonard was tempted to take the old man up on the offer this time, not because the horse had killed his boy, but because it would pry a piece of Wade's cheap heart out of his tough body. Tony was an evil-tempered horse--that was why Wade had gotten him for a song--but Danny's death wasn't the roan's fault.
The corral plank the stallion had kicked into Danny's face was rotten. A good piece of wood might have killed his boy as well--Leonard would never know that for a fact--but he was sure it would have stayed nailed to the post better than the used lumber Wade had picked up cheap after a barn fire near Custer.
Instead, he said, "No need to shoot him, Wade. He didn't know what he was doing."
"That's true ," his neighbor said. "I'm still willing to do it, though."
Leonard held his temper despite feeling that his life had become doubly unfair. Not only was Danny gone, but he had to spend precious energy reassuring Wade that it hadn't been his fault.
Bunning's offer to shoot the horse was the nearest thing to an apology that would ever come out of his mouth. Tight-fisted as the man was, Leonard's neighbor had made it obvious numerous times that it was a point of honor to repay debts promptly, and he clearly considered Danny a debt to be repaid.
"Dogs, you suppose, Leonard?"
"Most likely."
"Maybe old Yeager's at it again."
"That dog couldn't catch a snail if he had a tornado up his rear end. You saw to that, Wade."
Wade shrugged. "What else could I do?"
"Chased him away. Talked to Ted."
"Wouldn't have done any good, Leonard. The dog had horses on the brain. Couldn't think of anything else. Something drastic had to be done to get his attention off them. I could have just as easily killed him, you know."
Nothing could shake Wade's belief that justice had to be rough to be effective. His war service had seemingly engrained that code into Wade's brain as deeply as the horses were wired into Yeager's mind.
The neighbor squinted up at the hill across the road into the foothills and asked, "Suppose it could be some dogs from those fancy new houses?"
"I don't think so," Leonard answered. "Most of those people seem to have brought their city dogs with them, and they're not good for much but eating Alpo and lying around all day. But you never know. These packs seem to form out of nowhere, sometimes."
"Ruth and I were out at an auction near Wasta last night," Wade asked. "Did you hear anything?"
Leonard shook his head. "I was over at the Legion Hall. Didn't get back until late."
Wade's steel-grey eyes narrowed at this news. Leonard had known the man long enough to recognize this as a sign of disapproval of his drinking--the man was curiously prudish for an old Marine--but he was determined not to let Wade's sour attitude add to Debra's unspoken condemnation of any act that smacked of enjoyment.
Somehow, he couldn't explain to his wife that pleasure had nothing to do with it. It was simply something--anything--to do. A man who couldn't act--even if it was drinking a beer--was headed for more trouble than he could manage. He stood patiently, waiting for his neighbor to speak when he ready to do so.
"Pistol time," Wade said finally, patting the sheathed Buck knife on his right hip as if a holstered gun instead.
The remark aggravated Leonard because he suspected Wade welcomed the opportunity to shoot another dog so he could demonstrate his marksmanship. The man's accuracy was legendary among the coffee crowd at Buffalo Creek Cafe, and he took every opportunity to brag on it as if it restored the respect and authority he'd had as a non-com in the Corps.
Leonard was about to give Wade a piece of his mind concerning the maiming of animals when a quick, furtive movement in Bunning's kitchen window caught his eye. Even in that brief instant, he could see that his neighbor's wife had lost weight, and he was suddenly and guiltily happy to see that Ruth suffered in some manner.
Leonard had always thought of Ruth Bunning as mashed potatoes somehow caught up in perpetually flowered dresses. She was as short and stocky as her husband, but lumpy in the fashion of East River farm wives from the old-line German communities. She still retained the cold warmth of those women. They seemed to want to show their love for everything in the world and, at the same time, do everything in their power to conceal it as if its sudden appearance would be hideously self-revealing.
Leonard never knew which way to jump with her or with Wade since the old man shared much of the same quality. But now the tables had turned, he thought with some bitter satisfaction. Ruth had avoided them since the funeral with the same industriousness she brought to every other part of her life.
"Where you off to, Leonard?"
"For a walk," he answered. "I need some air."
"Debra still bad?"
"Yes."
"She don't come out much."
"She doesn't come out at all, Wade."
"That's not right. Grief will eat you up if you let it. I lost friends in the war, but I kept going."
"Friends aren't your only child," Leonard said pointedly. "She just doesn't know the road out of it, that's all."
Wade gave him a sharp glance. "Sounds like you don't expect her to stop grieving."
"I don't. She's been in the house all winter. Hasn't been past the front door at all. She's lost more weight than I have."
"You're doing better, though?" his neighbor asked.
Leonard was ashamed to admit it--it seemed like such a betrayal of Danny--but he nodded and said, "I'm stronger, I guess."
He paused, not wanting to share anything with the man who may have killed his son, but the compulsion was irresistible. Talking was the only power he had over Danny's death. "It makes Debbie unhappy to know that."
"One of you has to carry on."
"She seems to think I'm dishonoring his memory. She says men don't understand a mother's loss."
"Maybe not. They understand a father's loss, though," Wade said. "And what kind of father would give up living? That's the worst kind of honoring a memory."
"I suppose," Leonard replied, "but we're barely talking now."
"I could send Ruth over. Give her a woman to talk to, if that's the issue."
"I don't think that's a good idea for either one of them," Leonard said.
Wade glanced back at his house. "I thought women was supposed to support each other in times like this."
"Sometimes, they're not any better at it than men," Leonard replied. "They just don't want to admit it."
"You want me to talk to her?" Wade asked. "You know me, I don't mince words."
"Jesus, no!" Leonard said. "You least of all."
"Sometimes the direct approach works best," his neighbor said.
When Leonard didn't reply, Wade asked, "Where you walking to?"
"Up to the cafe. I haven't been there in a while."
"That's a long way."
"It's only a couple of miles."
"That Alberta Clipper's due to come down out of North Dakota. Why don't you drive?" Wade said. "Then, you won't get caught if it surprises us."
"The front's not supposed to be here until late tonight. A walk is what I need."
"I could drive you up there," Wade said.
Leonard regarded the man with surprise. For Bunning to make an offer of generosity--and three of them in this conversation--was an enormous sacrifice on the old man's part. Perhaps, Leonard thought, Danny's death had affected his neighbor more than he thought. Nevertheless, he was not in the mood for company.
"No thanks, Wade," he said. "I'll just go up and get some coffee for the exercise."
"Well, ask around about dogs, will you?" Wade said. "See if anybody else has had any trouble."
"Sure," Leonard agreed.
"You ought to get back to teaching and coaching," his neighbor said. "Take your mind off it--for a while, anyway. Work cures most everything in time. Besides," Wade added in an attempt at what passed for humor, "the wrestling team has gone down the tubes."
Leonard couldn't tell Wade that he hated the teenagers in his classroom and the gym now for simply being there. He was in no shape to teach anyone, so he nodded to end the conversation, then walked to the highway and turned east.
Beyond Hilltop Cemetery, the Badlands hovered as if the gusting, warm wind had abruptly lifted the eroded spires and slumps inches above the earth. It gave him the feeling that the land had broken as loose as his life, but he was sure--reasonably sure--that it was simply the grief grinding its path through his soul. He stayed well off the asphalt to avoid the thunderous pressure waves of the tandem lumber trucks that charged down from the Hills like blustering buffalo.
As he approached the Niederlander's mailbox, Ted's two peacocks set up a cry from the yard. A chill ran up Leonard's back. Ted's indulgence in the birds had always amused him before. He enjoyed listening to their exotic evening cries so like lost, beautiful souls, but now the trite comparison that had always seemed to pop into his mind simply nauseated him. They sounded like his wife, caught up in the depths of her anguish.
Or, rather, he corrected, she sounded like them.
Debra was a loving woman in the stolid Hills manner, but she was not very good at life, Leonard had discovered not long into their 20-year marriage. She simply didn't know how to live it, so she did her best to imitate those she saw around her. He suspected that she was mimicking the peacocks when she wept. To her, their cries would act more as the sound of grief than any cry of anguish she could produce from her own soul. He shook his head, not to clear his mind of this thought, but to admit to himself that he didn't suspect her of imitation--he knew it.
It was a bone-hard fact.
Leonard knew his boy--his hard-working, obnoxiously loving teenager--had no place in her sorrow. It had become grief for grief's sake because Debbie didn't know how to live that part of her life any more than she did any other part.
Danny had been lost twice over.
A blast of air from a passing National Guard humvee shook Leonard out of the emotion that he'd tried so hard to be rid of, but couldn't shake. It was like an endless Moebius strip he found himself treading whenever he let his guard down. He couldn't be jealous of all the children in the world for the rest of his life, he realized that, but it was like laying down the only club he had to beat some recognition of his pain into a world that hadn't had the decency to stop when Danny died.
The wind died down for a moment, and Leonard heard a familiar high-pitched "Yip" behind him. Yeager was in the ditch, doing a three-legged lope. The old lab mix was a friendly and tirelessly inquisitive dog who poked his nose into everything and had the disastrous habit of bothering Wade's horses.
Yeager had seemed to regard it as a great sport to spook the animals and drive them around the pasture or corral until the ex-Marine had neatly taken out the mutt's front leg with his pistol. Only Wade would take such an opportunity to rid himself of a problem and demonstrate his marksmanship at the same time, Leonard thought. Anyone else of his mind would have taken out their 12-gauge and blown the dog away.
With remarkable endurance, the dog had escaped and made it all the way back home where one of Ted's boys found him and got him to the vet. The amputation of the shattered limb didn't seem to have affected the dog's temperament at all.
In fact, in some ways, he seemed happier as if the previous obsession with the horses had been blown right out of him by the bullet. He hobbled along as usual, the red tongue waving like a saliva-ridden pendulum from the mouth.
Leonard waited for the mutt, knowing the lab expected at least a minimum scratch behind the tattered ears before proceeding on to other dog business. When the wet nose poked at his hand, he stroked the broad head as it busily investigated the smells on the strong wind. The dog snuffled loudly, sounding like it had a train engine stuffed up its nose.
After a moment, Leonard realized he was checking out odors himself. Somehow, Yeager had managed to coat his fur with a mixture of manure and dead fish that someone had probably dumped into a ditch. Like most dogs, the Lab had the ability to roll in the damnedest things and come out happier for the experience. For the first time in his life, Leonard envied this ability. After a few minutes, the three-legged dog trotted away, satisfied with the amount of attention it had received.
The wind pushed Leonard across the road and toward the shortcut up through the cemetery, but he realized he was not eager to take the short cut. He stuck to the highway, taking the long way around to Highway 40, then turning north, listening without interest to the whine of radials on warm asphalt as the sparse, tourist-free winter traffic rushed by.
A few people who knew him honked. He waved at them without looking up and went past the Conoco pumps into Buffalo Creek Cafe. Curses floated out from the "casino", a tiny room where the video poker machines performed their ceaselessly patient ransacking of gullible pockets.
He walked past the rack of tourist attractions literature that seemed to multiply each year like the infestation of grasshoppers in a dry summer and found a seat in the restaurant beneath the ox yoke mounted on the wall. Dust covered the yoke as well as all the other Western memorabilia posted on the walls and hanging from anchored bolts driven into the heavy beams of the vaulted ceiling.
There was no one else in the dining room except for Willie Determan who occupied his usual spot in the corner. Willie hadn't been bright before he'd smacked his head up against a slab of Hills granite when he fell off the Harley. The accident had not only taken more of his intelligence, but had added a moodiness and violent outbursts of temper on top of it.
As far as Leonard was concerned, Willie was lucky to have a sister like Tammy who could tolerate his extreme ranges of behavior. She would have loved her brother if he'd turned out to be a serial killer of the worst kind. Tammy couldn't help herself. She cared about her family the way other people breathed.
Leonard shook himself, unnerved that desire had surged through his body at the thought of Tammy. It made him feel unclean and ashamed as if he'd suddenly begun a betrayal of his son's memory. Wanting to run home and take a shower, he started to rise, then sat quickly when Willie's sister came up to his table, menu in hand.
"Well, hi, stranger!" Tammy said. "We haven't you seen you here for a while."
She always gave him the same greeting, whether she'd seen him two hours earlier or not for a month, and he'd always found it annoyingly monotonous, but today it was reassuring, like returning to your childhood home and finding not a thing had changed, just as you'd hoped.
"I'm fine," he said.
Tammy screwed her face up into mock critical judgment as she looked him up and down.
"What's wrong?" Leonard asked.
"You look like a horse that needs to be put down," she answered. "A bag of bones."
"Why, thank you very much, Tammy."
"The horse would probably have more hair, though."
Leonard smiled in spite of himself and said, "You can put me down out back if you want, but I'd like some breakfast first."
"Well, okay, but don't try my patience and sit here all morning. My aim isn't what it used to be, and I'm anxious for the practice."
"I promise not to move."
"Shoot, Leonard, what fun is that?"
"You gonna give me that menu, or you going to stand there looking prettier than three sunrises?" he asked.
The words that came out of his mouth startled him, and Tammy gave him a quick, appraising look before offering him the menu, then snatching it away.
"I know what you want, but this Special ain't on the menu," she teased, pointing a Bic at her chest. "You'll have to settle for regular food."
"Fine," Leonard replied, "but nothing with spice in it. My stomach can't handle it."
Tammy said, "I'll start you off easy with a small bowl of corn flakes and coffee."
"Sounds good."
Tammy poured coffee, then took order to the kitchen. She helped her brother turn his chair around and turned on the Cartoon Channel before coming back to Leonard's table with the cereal. She put the bowl down in front of him and said, "Eat."
Leonard did as he was told, spooning the corn flakes into his mouth without much interest in the taste.
"Here," Tammy said, taking the cereal spoon out of his hand and giving him a tablespoon to replace it. "You're eating like you're some fancy gourmet or something, but I know you, Leonard. You can't put on airs around me."
"I'm not really hungry."
"Same thing my youngest tells me. She wants to be anorexic or something. Thinks it's the thing to do. What's your excuse?"
Leonard chewed on the cereal and glared at her as he asked, "Do I look like I'm wasting away?"
"You sure do," Tammy said "You've lost more weight than hair, which is a change for you."
"Thanks a lot," he said. "Where's Bill?"
"Changing the subject, huh?" Tammy said. "You know damned well where Bill is, and that's nowhere near the house."
Leonard was embarrassed by his stab at her. Like water, nastiness seemed to seek its own level in his mind and, sooner or later, found an exit.
"I can't imagine why," he said to make amends. "If I had someone like you at home, I'd been hurrying back to make sure some of the local boys hadn't set up camp."
Tammy accepted his attempt at an apology with a wry twist of her mouth. "You ain't a cowboy wannabe who thinks bullriding is an excuse for not working at a real job."
"It'd be different if Bill was good at it," she added with a sigh. "Then, he might send some money home instead of bedding any woman he can find, and I wouldn't have to pull double shifts like I am today."
"Why do you stick with him?" Leonard asked.
"I'm not," Tammy said. "I don't mind saying that a divorce is in the works. I get the mortgage and the kids, and he gets scot-free."
Desire shot through Leonard again at the news of Tammy's impending freedom, and he tucked into his cereal with a vengeance to cover his embarrassment. The smell of frying eggs and steak floated from the kitchen.
"Sounds like Bill's got no claim on you now," he said. "You ought to get out."
A conspiratorial smile crossed her face. "Who says I ain't?"
Another emotion flooded Leonard's body. This time it was jealousy. He finished the cereal quickly.
"You're the one who ought to get out," Tammy said.
"That's why I'm here."
"I mean, really get out."
"I saw Wade just before I came up here. Says dogs are after his horses."
Tammy wasn't impressed. "Changing the subject, huh, Leonard? Well, I haven't heard anybody talking about dogs, and everyone comes through here sooner or later, you know that, Leonard. Wade probably just wants to pop another Yeager to make up for his crippled hand."
"I saw the horses," he said. "Something got at them."
"Maybe so, but I'd lay odds it wasn't dogs. He left another one of his bargains in a bad spot, and the animals got into it. Barbed wire or something like that. He's such an old fart."
"I'm an old fart," he reminded her.
"You sure are," she said. "But you're not a cheap old fart. You're a hungry old fart, and a waitress always appreciates that more."
Leonard smiled.
Sudden chatter turned Tammy's head toward the entrance. "Gotta go for a while, hon. The Highway Patrol's here to hold court as usual. Guess they bagged their limit of speeders today."
Leonard acknowledged Burl Swanson and his partner as they entered the restaurant with three local ranchers. The patrolmen waved at him politely, then sat on the far side of the room while Tammy brought them menus and their daily quota of joshing from the slim waitress. He finished the corn flakes and set the bowl aside to consider the thought that had been nagging at him because of what she'd said about Wade.
Had Wade really shot the dog's leg off to make up for the loss of his hand? It was possible, but Leonard doubted it. Wade didn't seem the type to harm defenseless animals simply to make up for a wartime wound they'd had nothing to do with. He was too much the Marine to do something that dishonorable. He was sure that was the case with Yeager.
Then, a shock ran through him.
But was it true of the horses?
With them, it might not be a matter of honor. It might be a matter of justice, and Wade practiced a crude brand that might even include himself. It was a logic that said if Leonard and Debra were suffering from the loss of a loved one due to his negligence, then Wade Bunning had to suffer too.
Another jolt ran through Leonard's system.
Wade loved those horses.
"Oh, damn!" Leonard swore in a voice that cut through the conversation in the restaurant.
Burl Swanson turned to look at him.
"You okay, Leonard?" the Highway Patrolman asked.
"I'm fine, Burl, but you can answer me a question--have you heard any reports of dog packs around here?"
"Not lately."
"Anybody else?" Leonard asked.
The ranchers all shook their heads.
Leonard got up quickly, dropped a $10 bill on the table, and headed for the door.
"You got more breakfast coming!" Tammy called after him.
"Later."
In a moment, he was out the restaurant and walking hard up toward the cemetery, taking the shortcut across the pasture despite the presence of Jerry Wanamaker's two Black Angus bulls.
When he crested the hill, the wind hit him hard, whistling among the granite markers. It was already shifting out of the north and had a distinctly cooler edge to it. He paused for a moment by Danny's grave, then hurried down the path that led to the highway.
Forty minutes later, he found Wade straightening tack in the small stable. Behind the old man, the mare and roan stepped restlessly within their stalls.
"Wade," Leonard said. "Leave your horses alone."
"What are you talking about?" his neighbor asked, looking up from bridle he was untangling with his good hand.
"You know what I mean, Wade. Don't bother them any more. You don't need to. It's all right. Danny's gone, and there's nothing you can do about it."
The ex-Marine met him with an unblinking gaze, but Leonard was not fooled. Wade rubbed obsessively at his bad hand as if his good fingers could knead life back into it. He'd known the man long enough to recognize when Wade Bunning was ill at ease.
"Keep your knife in the sheath," Leonard said. "Let those horses be."
When his neighbor said nothing, Leonard demanded, "You hear me? Leave them alone."
A long moment passed before Wade nodded.
Leonard let out a deep breath and left the stable. He cut across the pasture and around the chokecherry bush to the double-wide. He hesitated for a moment on the porch, reluctant to go in, then opened the door and went through the living room to the kitchen.
Pulling a beer from the refrigerator, he drank half of it before he had the courage to check on Debbie. He went down the darkened hallway to her bedroom and knocked lightly. He entered without waiting for an invitation because he knew there would be none.
His wife lay as he'd left her earlier, staring at the ceiling. He'd managed to get her dressed in her favorite blouse and slacks in hopes of provoking interest in getting up, but she lay across the unmade bed as if it were a funeral bier. She'd lost so much weight that she looked like a child lost in her parents' clothing. Her blonde hair lay tangled about her pale cheeks. The blue eyes saw nothing but her own sorrow, he was sure of that. He sat down beside her.
"Do you want something to eat?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"You need to eat, Debbie."
"I don't want anything," she said in a voice that had become perpetually edged with tears.
"You still need something, or you'll get sick," he said.
"I don't care."
"I was just talking with Wade."
Debbie turned her head away.
"He's been cutting up his horses with a knife."
"He's the kind of bastard who would do that," she said without even asking why Wade would do such a thing.
"I think he's been doing it because he's sorry about Danny. He loves those animals. It must kill him to do it."
"I doubt it," she said.
"He's trying to make it up to us the only way he knows how."
"Well, tell him to stop, then, because he can't ever do that," Debra said bitterly. "A horse is not a son."
"I did tell him to stop. The horses don't need to suffer, too."
When his wife didn't respond, he said, "I've got some oxtail soup out there I made. Why don't you have a cup?"
"Go away."
"I stopped by Danny's grave a while ago," he said.
"Trying to make up for not thinking about him?"
"No," he said. "I was just saying goodbye."
"You'd already let go of him, Leonard. Why pretend you hadn't?"
"No, I hadn't. I have now, though."
"Bastard!"
"No."
"That's what you are! Get out of here! Leave me alone!"
Exhaustion settled on Leonard as he went to the living room, dropped into the recliner, and closed his eyes.
When the phone startled him awake, it was dark and the ringing competed with loud groans from the ceiling as the cold winds gusted against the house.
He picked up the receiver and heard Wade's urgent voice. "Leonard, can you meet me down by the creek?"
"What for?" Leonard asked.
"I need some help with Ruth. She's taken a fall in the pasture down near the creek, and I need to get her into the truck and back to the house before she freezes."
"What the hell's she doing out there in this weather, Wade?"
"She went looking for that damned stupid mare, I think. It's always down by the water."
"Is Ruth conscious?"
"Yeah. It's her leg or her ankle, I think, but I can't tell for sure," Wade said. "Hurry over, will you? The paramedics are coming, but she's got nothing but a light jacket on. I'll meet you by that old cottonwood."
Leonard hung up and ran to the closet for his parka.
"Ruth's taken a fall!" he yelled to Debra. "I'm going over to help Wade."
There was no answer as usual, so Leonard pulled his hood up and went out into a wind that cut out of the north with razor-honed teeth of cold and sleeted snow.
He crossed the yard at a run and vaulted over the barbed-wire, keeping the distant blackened limbs of the cottonwood in sight as best he could through the swirling gusts of white. Tangled brush caught at his sleeves and slowed him down before he burst out into the path that led down to the creek.
He ran by the shell of the Studebaker Wade had never done anything with, then was past the clutching thorns of Debra's favorite wild rose and at the cottonwood. Leonard stopped, breathing hard, and looked about for the truck.
It wasn't there.
Beating through the willows drooping over the creek, Leonard hollered for Wade, then leaped across the ice at a narrow spot and searched for the truck on Elmer Swanson's land.
When there was no answer, he stopped himself from rushing around aimlessly and tried to think. The only answer that made any sense was that Wade had gotten Ruth into his pickup by himself and headed home, but there was no chance that the old man could have gotten there before him.
A sharp craack! hushed the howl of the wind for a second.
At first, Leonard thought the shot had come from Wade's place, then realized it had sounded from his own home. Cursing, he fought back through the brush, then was into the yard and through the door. The smell of smokeless powder hung heavily in the air. Leonard rushed down the hallway, ramming his thigh into the humidifier and knocking it into his path. He fell over it, swearing, then was up and into Debra's bedroom.
His wife sat bolt upright in her bed, Wade's Beretta clasped between her hands. Her eyes were wide with shock. Wade lay on the carpet, groaning as he groped with his bad left hand at his now fingerless other hand. Blood spurted down into the worn carpet.
"He-he didn't say anything!" Debra said in a shaky voice. "He j-just came in, made m-me take the gun, then put one hand over the end, and forc-forc-forced me to pull the trigger. I think he wanted me to kill him, Leonard!"
"Are you crazy, you bastard?" Leonard screamed as he dragged his neighbor up from the floor and slammed him into the closet doors. Wade groaned and spit blood as the fists dug into his stomach. When the rage cleared from Leonard's brain, he let Wade drop to the floor again. He took the Beretta from his wife's hands and said, "I'll call Ruth."
He went back to the kitchen and put the pistol on the counter, then sat down and punched in the number. "Ruth," he said. "This is Leonard....Yes, you heard a shot. Wade's hurt. No, I didn't shoot him, not that I didn't want to. You'll probably want to come over here now."
As Leonard hung up, Wade staggered out of the bedroom into the hallway, confusion and anger etched across his haggard face. "Your wife is a lousy shot," he said. It was an accusation.
"Where do you think you're going?" Leonard asked.
"Home," Wade said.
"You're in shock. Just lie down and rest, so I can get a bandage on that hand."
"I need to go."
Leonard got up and said, "Look, Wade, I'd be more than happy to continue to beat you senseless and send you the way of my boy, so just give it up, will you?"
"No," Wade repeated. "Help me to the door."
"You insane old shit!" Leonard screamed at him. "I don't want to help you do anything!"
The man swayed, but stayed up and stumbled down the hall and into the living room toward the door. Grunts--barely audible--escaped his neighbor's lips. Leonard kept his hands by his side, afraid he'd be more likely to kill Wade than help him.
"You can't go outside," Leonard said, relenting when Wade stumbled into the old recliner and hung over the worn headrest. "You'll freeze. Let me call for help."
"You called Ruth," Wade said. "She'll get me back."
"She can't do everything by herself."
"She'll do it. Get the door."
Leonard pulled it open, and his neighbor lurched out onto the porch as Ruth's steps pounded up onto the boards. Without a word, she took her husband by the arm and guided him toward the driveway. Leonard watched them for a moment, then went back to the bedroom.
Debra still lay on the bed, crying hard. He sat down and pulled her erect, then hugged her tightly. He looked over her shoulder out the window. The old couple fought toward home, their heads bowed against the heavy, gusting wind. Blood spotted the snow behind them.
"They're gone now," Leonard said.
Debra's body stiffened abruptly. She tilted her face up at him. It was a gesture he'd seen at least a thousand times during their marriage. This time, though, the pleading nature of it was gone. Wade had given her the gift of real emotion, and the snake of it uncoiled within her eyes, eager for room.
Leonard pushed his wife down on the bed, rushed out of the house and into the stinging antiseptic of the blizzard. He turned his back to the storm and thought through his options quickly.
He couldn't go to Wade's place, and it was impossible to go back into the house--he simply couldn't cope with Debra at the moment. Conditions were close to white-out so it would be too dangerous to drive to Buffalo Creek Café although the thought of Tammy's company was tempting.
The glow of Wade's stable light winked in and out of the driving snow, and that made Leonard's decision. Using the pasture fence, he pulled his body along, ignoring sharp bites of the barbed wire. Reaching the light pole, Leonard got his bearings when the wind blew the air clear for a moment, then ran across the yard and into the stable. The smell of warm hay and manure struck a welcome blow at his nose. Cass and Tony backed toward the far side of their stalls as he entered. Their eyes flared in the stable light.
"It's all right," Leonard soothed. "It's all right."
He felt his way to the tack room and flipped the light switch. After a quick search, he found the jar of ointment and a rag and returned to the horses, moving slowly so as not to spook the animals.
"It's all right," Leonard said in soothing tones as he opened the jar and found that the medication hadn't been touched. "It's all right."
The deep-dive literary meditations presented as stories, poems, and essays in The American Poet Who Went Home Again, A Mosaic of My Soul at Work, have captivated and inspired readers ever since its first paperback publication in 2008.
