Word Gets Around Part 17

"It was just a kiss," he pointed out with a grin that made me feel as if I were melting. "My fault completely. The aura of Camp Nikyneck overwhelmed me."

"You know about Camp Nikyneck?" I stammered.

"You hang around a place a little while, you learn its history," he said in a way that made me wonder how much Daily history he knew. "You find out a few secrets. Your dad told a story about the Indian paintings at the party yesterday."

"Ahhh." Back in the day, my father was famous for getting run out of Camp Nikyneck by the sheriff, and occasionally by the Baptist preacher, who was known to cruise the river bridge at night, tagging teenagers with his flashlight like a hunter spotlighting deer.

Nate laughed softly, and we started walking again. "Sounds like your dad had quite a reputation."

I nodded. "My father was one of Daily's wilder products. Legend has it that if he hadn't met my mom, he would have been lost to the evils of wild horses and wild women. He never gave up the wild horses, but he only had eyes for my mom. Even after she died, I can't remember him ever showing interest in anybody else."

"Ever wonder if that kind of thing just doesn't happen anymore?" Nate dribbled a smashed c.o.ke can between his feet like a soccer ball, then kicked it down the alley.

"Sometimes." I felt a deep, painful tug inside. When I married Danny, I wanted the real thing so badly that I convinced myself to overlook the obvious and see things that weren't there.

"The concept keeps writers working, anyway," Nate mused, then he didn't say anything more. We came to the hotel, but neither of us reached for the door.

Tell him. Be grown up about this. I took a deep breath, felt him watching me. "Nate. I'm not ... ready." He didn't try to interpret the vague revelation, just waited for me to define it. "For anything.

I just ... " Why was this so hard? Why did I feel like I was killing a relationship, giving up something that mattered? It was a couple of kisses. He'd probably think I was crazy for even bringing it up.

"When I left Daily, I was ... there was a reason. There are reasons I haven't been back."

Nate nodded, seeming unsurprised. "It doesn't matter." His gaze caught mine, gripped it tight. I felt a pull somewhere deep in my soul.

"But it does." How could I explain this? How did I summarize something I hadn't ever let myself put into words? "When I moved back here after college, I wasn't ... alone. I was married.

It wasn't ... we were ... we were just young, I guess. Impulsive. Danny and I had this plan to take a few years off school to travel and try to make the National Finals Rodeo. Two years ago, we were coming home from a show. The weather was bad. It was dark. There was water over the crossing on Caney Creek Road when we got there. We should have turned back, but we didn't. Danny thought we could make it through. It was stupid. It was a single careless moment. It cost his life, and the life of Pastor Harve's son, Harvard Jr."

A sad, rueful sound burned my throat, then escaped. "Harvard was there to put road cones up to block the low-water crossing before he went off duty ... but he found us there. He should have waited for the fire trucks to come, but I think he knew ... he knew I couldn't hold on much longer."

Nate sighed, and I felt his sympathy, palpable like a bitter scent in the air, making it hard to breathe. I didn't want sympathy. I didn't want to tell the story again. I didn't want to be the grieving widow who remembered those last angry moments, that final ugly meaningless fight I could never tell anyone about. I just wanted it all to be over.

Part of me knew it would never be over. This story, the past, would always travel with me. It would linger around every relationship, like a shadow only I could see at first. I'd always wonder how long to wait before revealing it, how much to tell, in what light to cast those who couldn't speak for themselves. I didn't want to be the one left to live with what had happened, left to tell the story. I wanted to have been swept down the creek, my last memory one of arguing over a barbecue sandwich and a crumbling life.

"I just ... I'm not ready to move on," I choked out.

I didn't wait for an answer, just opened the hotel door and went inside. I stole quietly up to my room so Aunt Netta wouldn't hear me, then sat down on the bed and felt heavy, and sad, and lonely, and guilty. I was useless here. I was useless to everyone. I couldn't think about the future. I couldn't change the past. I was trapped, turning around and around in the same box, wondering why the scenery never looked any different.

On the deepest level, I knew I didn't deserve any better. I had no right to sculpt future plans or make peace with the past. Why should I have that right, when Harvard and Danny couldn't do the same?

Outside, the early bells rang in the steeple of Daily Presbyterian, and shortly after, the Daily Baptist bells chimed in, pointing out that on top of everything else, today was Sunday. I hadn't even considered going to church until now, or wondered whether, with all the movie excitement going on, Aunt Netta would have plans to round everyone up for church. There was no way I was ready to march off to Sunday service and sit there with all the hometown folks studying me, so I opted to do the grown-up thing and sneak out before the question could arise. After dressing in a hurry, I left behind a hasty note scratched on the back of a deposit slip from my checkbook, tiptoed out the back door, and headed to the ranch to check on Lucky Strike and the goat.

My father and the rest of the crew showed up at the ranch late in the morning, ready for another day of Horseman preparation. Nate wasn't among them. Aunt Netta said he'd decided to spend some time reading a copy of the novel on which the screenplay was based, and working on the script. I felt equal parts of disappointment and relief when he didn't show up.

He hovered in my thoughts as the day wore on. When I looked at the live oak tree, when the nanny goat rubbed her head against my leg to have her ears scratched, when Justin hung his hat on the fence right where it had been yesterday, I thought of Nate. I envisioned him dropping the hat on his head and smiling. I wanted him to be there to see that with the rea.s.surance of the goat, the relationship between horse and horseman was beginning to progress. I wanted Nate to give me the thumbs-up, and wink, and point out that he'd been the one to capture the goat in the first place. I wanted him to laugh as he joked, And you told me this one was too big. ...

The glimmers of triumph seemed incomplete without Nate.

As the goat rubbed against Justin Shay's leg, I backed away, allowing Lucky Strike to move closer ... an inch, then another, then another, until Justin stretched out his hand. His eyes widened with a look of wonder as the horse breathed over his fingers. I imagined the little boy, abandoned by his mother in the cruelest of ways, finally reaching beyond his wall of self-defense.

From across the corral, my father smiled at me and nodded his approval. I realized I'd looked his way because I knew he would do that. Leaving Justin and the horse alone in the round pen, I circled the fence, slipped my arm around my father's waist, and laid my head on his shoulder.

He squeezed me in the crook of his elbow. I smelled the faint scents of grease and leather, livestock and hay. "What's that for?" he asked, his voice scratchy and rough.

"Just because you're a great dad." It was an unusually tender admission for the two of us. Love between us, while seldom spoken of, had always been understood, but I realized again how fortunate I was to have him. How foolish I'd been to isolate myself from his care.

"I think I got lucky," he said, and cleared his throat, embarra.s.sed by the sudden display of affection. We focused on the corral, watching the horse-horseman-goat bonding continue as Willie gave instruction and Amber offered quiet encouragement and the a.s.surance that she knew Justin could do this.

"I'll be dogged," my father said as Lucky Strike lowered his head and allowed the horseman to stroke his nose and scratch his ears. The horse blew out a long, contented sigh, nibbling tenderly on his goat's itchy spot, which made the goat close her eyes and bleat softly. "You worked a miracle," Dad added, as if he'd been worried it wouldn't happen.

"We're still a long way from being able to impress some director," I pointed out. For one thing, there was no goat in the script, and right now, the cooperation of the goat was essential.

"We'll get there," Dad a.s.sured. "You hungry? Lunch'll be ready soon."

"No," I said, which wasn't true, but I didn't know who was bringing lunch today, and I didn't want to risk running into Pastor Harve or Miss Beedie. "I think I'll just stay out here and work with the horse."

Sighing, Dad scratched his boot back and forth on the bottom rail of the fence. The sound traveled along the metal, a dull echo preceding his words. "Harve and Miss Beedie asked about you yesterday."

"I'm sorry I missed them." The words were tinny and false, like the sappy, electronic tune from a musical greeting card. "Tell them h.e.l.lo for me ... if you see them, okay? Tell them ... " A lump rose in my throat, and I pretended to be choking on dust. I could feel my father watching me, his expectation heavy.

"You might ought to tell them yourself." One thing my father didn't tolerate well was weakness. In the West, a man stood on his own two feet, even when the wind was stiff and the going was hard-likewise for a woman.

Every muscle in my body tightened, knotted with the familiar tension that, for the past two years, had accompanied the idea of being home. I knew sooner or later the honeymoon would be over, the welcome-home barbecues would end, and everyone would expect the hard work of healing to begin.

From the corner of my eye, I could see my father chewing his mustache, his jaw tightly set, his eyes narrowed against the sun so that they were barely visible, like pale blue marbles tucked amid crinkled old leather. "They'd like to hear from you."

"I'll go by Caney Creek Church when I get a chance." The lie tasted bitter coming out. That church was on the other side of the moon for me. I couldn't imagine stopping by the little white church, trying to make the idle chit-chat of survivorhood-How are things? How are you? Are you feeling all right?

Harvard was such a good man.

How are your grandkids? I bet they miss their dad. ...

We could talk about O.C.'s football games at UT, and how much Harvard would have liked to be there to cheer him on. We could talk about Teylina's college scholarship and how determined Harvard was that his kids would get out of Daily, go to college, work somewhere other than the Sheriff's Department.

Leaving the church, I'd pa.s.s the road to the cemetery, where the funeral took place as I lay in the hospital in Austin. Harvard's funeral there, and Danny's memorial service at his family's church in Dallas, were like fiction to me, stories other people told that weren't real, the details carefully manufactured.

If you never went to the final resting places, it was as if the funerals never happened. In my mind, I still expected to see Harvard duck and take off his hat as he walked into the cafe, all six foot six of him blocking the light from the doorway. I still expected to see Danny rattle through town with a shiny new pickup truck we couldn't afford, with a horse trailer behind. Danny never unhooked the horse trailer, whether he was hauling livestock or not. The trailer, boots, spurs, and cowboy hat were part of his ident.i.ty. He valued being a cowboy more than anything.

He would have loved the idea of The Horseman being filmed in Daily. He would have hated that the leading role was being played by some down-and-out superstar who knew nothing about horses. Danny liked horses better than he liked people. He was a good cowboy.

I wished that had been the last thing I'd said to him. I wished my final words were something other than, I can't do this anymore, Danny. I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of living this way. ...

If only I could erase it from my memory as easily as I'd struck it from the public record. Surrounded by the flowers, and the condolences, and the sympathy, I couldn't reveal that our life had been falling apart before the flood. What would have been the point of letting everyone know that as Danny drove into the water, we were arguing about barbecue sandwiches and the fact that he'd signed the paperwork for a new pickup without telling me?

Life changes in the blink of an eye, and all the things you thought were so important turn pale. You awaken to what's left of the picture, trying to find something you recognize, something comforting.

Only there isn't anything. ...

I left my father and walked to the barn alone. He went to lunch with the crew, then came back with a sandwich for me, and Aunt Donetta tagging along with a giant gla.s.s of iced tea. She was worried that I wasn't drinking enough and might become dehydrated in the heat. Dad pointed out that the Methodists had supplied lunch today. In other words, it would have been safe for me to go to the tent and partake with the rest of the crew.

We concentrated on The Horseman because the rest was too difficult to talk about. As soon as the remainder of the group returned from lunch, we went back to work.

By the end of the day, progress had been made, but I was boneless and exhausted. I had to give Justin Shay credit for his stamina and determination. After developing a rudimentary knowledge of how to move the horse around the ring, then bring him back to the center without the use of halters or ropes, he was like a kid with a new toy. Even when everyone else was ready to pack it in and head home, he wanted to keep going.

Willie finally entered the round pen and talked him into leaving. "C'mon, son," he said, resting a hand between Justin's shoulder blades. "Let's go to the house. You done a good day's work. I promised Mimi I'd be back in time to take her to dinner. She's pretty bored, settin' out there at Frank's place." He slapped Justin's back, and Justin seemed pleased. They wandered off shoulder-to-shoulder, Willie telling some tale about cowboys and chuck wagons, while I collected the horse and led him to the barn. The goat followed, s.n.a.t.c.hing bits of gra.s.s along the way.

I lingered in the stable until after my father, Willie, and Justin were gone. Around the house, the workers had finished up and either gone home or moved to the construction trailers in the back yard. The stablehand, Joe, retired to his apartment and began cooking something that smelled good. My stomach rumbled, and I found myself wondering what Nate was doing for an evening meal and how the script was coming along. While she was watching us work the horse after lunch, Aunt Netta had mentioned (loudly enough to be sure I heard) that Nate was working back at the hotel, downstairs in the beauty shop, where the lighting was good and he could spread out his notes. She said she hoped he didn't get lonely down there later on. I pictured Nate among three decades of hair equipment, old cartoons torn from Farm Bureau calendars, and Aunt Netta's favorite mottos painted above the mirrors in her favorite color-red.

G.o.d uses small things for great purposes. It was a powerful statement if you believed it, if you could have faith in it. Without faith, it was just a bunch of letters strung together, meaningless.

I wanted to believe it again, to feel it.

I didn't know where to begin.

When I got back to the hotel, Nate was still downstairs surrounded by stacks of papers. He was sitting in one of the old vinyl chairs with his feet propped up and a fifties-style cone-shaped dryer above his head. He smiled as I came in. "Well, there you are," he said, as if this morning's conversation had never happened. I was relieved when he didn't bring it up, but in another way, I was disappointed.

"It got kind of quiet upstairs," he admitted in a way that hinted the script writing wasn't going well. "I thought a change of scenery might be good." He waved an arm vaguely toward the papers and sticky notes littering the room.

"Can I help?" I asked.

He studied me, seeming surprised, then smiled in a way that was open to interpretation. "I hope so."

"Let me see what you have so far." I felt the warmth of his invitation as I crossed the room and stood looking over his shoulder.

"Just a minute," he said, rising from the chair to retrieve something from the other side of the room. I watched as he gathered notes and sc.r.a.ps, which were tucked among the chairs, dryer bonnets, and wall shelves according to some organizational system only he understood.

Sitting down beside me again, he handed me the first newly rewritten scene, hastily scratched on notebook paper that looked like it had been in Aunt Netta's drawer since I graduated from high school.

"Don't expect too much," he said, seeming defeated.

"I'm sure it's better than you're making it sound." I looked up, caught the reflection of the two of us in Aunt Netta's mirror, read the lettering overhead. Someone had stuck a Post-It note over the sm in small, so that now it read, G.o.d uses all things for great purposes.

Chapter 18.

Nathaniel Heath A strange thing happened as the week went by. I started to feel at home in the quirky little berg of Daily, Texas. I developed a routine that felt comfortable, and for the first time in a long time I was actually productive, in terms of writing. I got up early in the mornings, worked on the script, then went for a run before breakfast. The postman and the old gents waiting for the cafe to open began to recognize me and call me by name. Shopkeepers waved as they made ready to open their stores.

Once, a trio of little girls setting up a lemonade stand spotted me jogging past their house. "That's the movie guy," one of them whispered, then they got on their bikes and followed me down the street, asking questions about the film, but mostly, they wanted to know if there might be little girls in The Horseman. The inquiry was nothing new. Movie mania had gripped Daily. The postman, Harlan Hanson, thought there should be a postal representative in a scene or two. Donetta and Lucy thought a beauty shop would be good-everyone knew the beauty shop was the heart and soul of any Texas town with a population under two thousand. The princ.i.p.al at the high school offered to stage a Friday night football game, because it's not small-town Texas without Friday night football. The girls in the hardware store thought the horseman should come in for nuts and bolts, and the man in the feed mill was certain that, like all ranchers, the horseman would stop by for feed.

The Baptist preacher, Ervin Hanson, thought there should definitely be a church in the movie. Daily Baptist being the largest in town, it was the logical choice, of course. The sheriff's deputy, Buddy Ray Baldridge, wanted me to know he'd starred in Daily High School's production of Grease, and he'd be happy to arrest somebody on camera. Bob, the owner of the cafe and president of the Chamber of Commerce, was in favor of a cafe scene. The countertoppers even demonstrated their acting skills for Frederico when he went down to breakfast one morning. They wanted him to be sure to share the information with Justin, because Justin had started lying low after a few reporters pa.s.sed through town in response to rumors of his presence there. To their credit, the Dailyians could keep a secret when they wanted to. They buzzed Justin on his cell when there were strangers nosing around, and everyone was careful not to talk Horseman talk if outsiders were near. When the coast was clear, the movie talk flowed like sweet tea at a Donetta Bradford picnic.

Including requests for bit parts, the film would be about ten hours long, depending on whether or not we included Miss Lulu's RV camp by the swimming hole at Boggy Bend and the Tonkawa cliff paintings. Lauren laughed when I told her that on one of our early-morning walks. She usually happened to be in the alley as I was coming in from my jog, and we power walked-more like strolled, really-while talking shop. We stayed away from Camp Nikyneck, though we did amble down by the river once or twice. We just didn't stop to look at the petroglyphs.

Lauren was hard to figure out. Given her reservations about The Horseman, she'd been surprisingly willing to take some vacation time from her university job to stay on in Daily to help. I tried not to take that as anything personal, but when we were together, we fit like Lucy and Ricky, without the romance. Every once in a while, in the middle of working or strolling and talking about horses and life, I'd look up and find her watching me. For a moment I'd be lost in the color of her eyes, the shape of her face, the smoothness of her skin. I'd never been lost in another person before, not even during the starstruck high school days of the Jennifer Pope affair.

It was a strange feeling-a little creepy, but not unpleasant, except for the fact that she didn't feel the same way. Occasionally, I thought she did, but she never gave any indication that she wanted to cross the just-friends line again. I could understand that, even if it was inconvenient. After something like what she'd been through, it would be hard to move on with life.

All the same, I thought about her when we were together, and when we weren't. When we were working, we'd laugh about something, she'd look at me and I'd think she was ready to let down the barriers. I'd gaze into her face, and I'd see her like Sleeping Beauty, locked in the tower. Then the window would close again.

I recognized myself late one night on the Discovery Channel's Planet Earth series. There was this bird of paradise strutting around with his feathers fluffed up, putting everything he had into the dance. Unfortunately, no one was watching. I empathized with the bird.

I resolved to quit thinking of Lauren in anything other than friendly terms. Hot pursuit wasn't my normal MO, anyway. I figured if a girl wasn't interested, she wasn't interested. End of story. Aside from that, what was I really going to do with some small-town Texas chick? Once Dane made his visit here and either rocketed The Horseman into reality or killed it, I'd be back home, and Lauren would be teaching anatomy to a bunch of college kids who probably would never know there was so much more than neck bone-connected-to-the-jawbone inside that pretty little head of hers.

Lauren was smart-really smart. She had an insight into people, both the fictional kind and real kind. She understood the deeper motivations of the horseman, Sarah, the female lead, and Sarah's autistic son. Sarah was a lot like Lauren-intelligent, perceptive, and beautiful but wounded after her gambling-addicted husband committed suicide and left her with nothing but a used-up racehorse and a mountain of debt. Sarah was trapped, afraid to look back, unable to move forward. The more I wrote Sarah, the more she became Lauren. Sometimes when we were working on the script, I thought Lauren noticed. Occasionally, when we were laughing about the latest Bigfoot sighting around town, and the growing volume of theories about the creature's ident.i.ty, I thought she remembered that night at the ranch.

She was careful never to mention the kiss, even when Bigfoot came up in conversation. We talked, instead, about recent sightings from cars pa.s.sing in the darkness on the rural road, twice by the postman on his route early in the morning, and once by Joe, the stablehand, who was burning candles near his Blessed Virgin statue and wouldn't come out of his barn apartment at night. Even the construction workers staying in the camp trailers near the ranch house were keeping their spotlights and weapons at the ready, but the creature was elusive.

Pearly Parsons had the distinction of having experienced the closest sighting. According to Pearly, "It was standin' at the other end of the fencerow, near nine foot tall and covered all over with hair. It was tryin' to push down the top strand of barbed wire." Pearly went for his gun, but by the time he got it out and grabbed a flashlight, the beast was gone. Only a quiver in the wire remained to testify to its existence. Fortunately, a Pearly Parsons fence could withstand anything, even mythical man-beasts with a case of don't-fence-me-in.

"W-w-wonder how-how come it don't jus-just climb over, climb over?" asked Doyle. "Be-bein' nine f-f-f-foot tall." The creature was growing each time a new story came in.

"Maybe it ain't too agile," the Baptist preacher suggested. He smiled after he said it, to indicate that he was just playing along.

"For heaven's sake, all'a you hush up." Imagene, behind the counter, had heard enough. "You'll have Nate here thinkin' he's trying to make a movie in a looney bin." Smiling at me apologetically, she wheeled a finger beside her ear. "I been livin' not two miles across the field from the Barlinger place all my life, and never seen anything but farm animals, coyotes, jackrabbits, and once in a while a fox or a bobcat or two. If there was a eight-foot-tall hairy man livin' around there, I believe I'd know it."

"Nine-nine f-f-foot," Doyle corrected, and Imagene smacked a plate down in front of him.

"Hush up and eat," she said, and hurried off to wait tables. I liked Imagene. She was practical and she cut the pie in large slices. She fell squarely in the Bigfoot-naysayer group, but that didn't stop the countertoppers from theorizing about the creature's ident.i.ty. Having seen it for myself, I couldn't help pondering the question on occasion, even though I wouldn't have admitted it to anyone.

After almost a week of sitting in the beauty shop working on the script with Lauren while platonically eating to-go food from the Daily Cafe, I was about a thin half-inch from either kissing her or saying something that would cause her to once again explain her tragic past and tell me she wasn't ready for anything other than friendship. To keep from losing my mind, I pondered the Bigfoot question. Finally, I suggested we go out to the ranch and see if we could spot the thing again.

Lauren frowned sideways at me. "We should stay here and work on this." She pointed to the disorganized jumble of papers. "We only have the rest of today and tomorrow before M. Harrison Dane shows up here on Monday."

I felt the crushing weight of expectations and the looming deadline, which was probably as responsible for my desire to go AWOL as anything. "We could have a month and we wouldn't be ready."

Lauren rolled her eyes, then blinked hard and rubbed them. She'd been putting in long days, leaving for the ranch early to work with Lucky Strike before Justin and crew showed up each day. Mostly, I stayed behind to continue my efforts at turning the script into a masterpiece, using a laptop and printer Donetta had borrowed from the local school. She had let me take over the exercise room and half of the beauty shop, so I could tape scene and sequel notes and character attributes to the walls, the front window, the exercise equipment, creating giant storyboards and character sketches. In the evenings, Lauren and I discussed everything from technical details to characters. Usually, Lauren fell asleep in the chair before I finished working. Sometimes I stopped and just watched her, and wondered what she dreamed about.

Tonight, I was feeling the pressure of Dane's imminent arrival, along with another more vague realization. My time here was almost up. Two days from now, Dane would have come and gone, and the string of long evenings in the beauty shop with Lauren would come to an end.

"Come on, Puggy," I urged. "Live a little."

She seemed to think about it for a minute, as if tempted by the possibility. The scene stole into my mind-moonlight, pretty girl, me, whippoorwills singing in the distance, the trees swaying slightly in the night breeze ... Bigfoot. The tape screeched to a halt. Who was I kidding? Lauren was only interested in the script. That was it.

She seemed to come to the same conclusion. "I'm sorry. I know I'm not much fun. I'm just ... worried about ... my dad. I can't stop thinking about what's going to happen if this movie thing falls through, and ... "

Swiveling my chair to face hers, I took her hand and held it in both of mine. "We'll make it work." I wasn't sure if that was confidence or delusion in my voice, but I noted dimly that I actually believed my own rhetoric. Somewhere along the way, I'd come to see the movie as a reality. Without consciously thinking about it, I was planning the next several months based on the project. I was envisioning trips back to Daily, home-cooked food, stays in Suite Beulahland, and Lauren. The project and Lauren were intertwined in my mind. I wanted both.

"It's not you, Nate." Her eyes were filled with a tender regret, a lingering sadness I wanted to wash away. "You're an amazing writer. The way you put words together, you've captured things I can't even solidify in my mind. If anyone can make this project work, it's you. It's just that there are so many variables, so many things that stand in the way of this ever becoming an actual movie." Her fingers tensed in mine. I laid them flat, smoothed a hand over them, tried to imagine how I would write this scene.

There were a million things I wanted to say to her, but no words seemed right. It's so much easier to write about emotions than to live with them.