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  He stared off into the distance for so long that I thought his thoughts had drifted off. “I just think one of these times I’ll go down and maybe I won’t come back.”

  Something clenched in my gut, because I knew exactly what he meant by go down. He meant that one of these days he’d take a ride on the party train and not get off. The textbook reaction from my end would have been to say something like, Don’t talk that way, but there wasn’t any point. Justin was going to do what Justin wanted to do, no matter what anybody said. “Let’s focus on today,” I urged, and I had the disturbing sense that this crazy project, The Horseman, the foster shelter, Mama Louise’s basketball courts, was his way of trying to keep from going down—one final last-ditch effort. A commitment so huge, so important he couldn’t bail on it. So insane, it couldn’t possibly happen unless he held it together. “You’ve got a lot of work to do here. You have to build those basketball courts for Mama Louise.”

  Nodding, he straightened and took a breath, then glanced at Amber, who was headed our way across the pasture. “Guess we better get on it.”

  “Guess so,” I agreed, happy to be back in safer territory, even if it did include one large impracticality in the form of The Horseman. How could I, in good conscience, continue encouraging him to believe this film was a good idea? Then again, how could I not? “Justin?” I said. When he turned my way, some idiotic comment about checking into rehab was on my tongue. Rehab never worked for him, because he didn’t want it to. Most of the time he was more stoned in celebrity rehab than he was outside it.

  “Yeah, Nate?”

  “If you know you’re going down, you tell me. Don’t go there by yourself.” So much for swearing off. So much for telling myself that no matter what, I wouldn’t sign on for another one of Justin’s frenetic roller coaster rides—up, down, up, down, then eventually off the edge, wherever the track ran out. I was right back there with him, climbing into the front car so I could pad the landing when he hit bottom.

  The last time I tried to get between Justin and self-destruction, I ended up wrapped around a guardrail on the Pacific Coast Highway. I still wondered if the only reason he hadn’t gunned it off the edge was because I was in the car with him. He wasn’t looking to commit murder, just suicide.

  A plethora of talk show truisms about codependency and destructive relationships ran through my mind. Dr. Phil would probably accuse me of being Justin’s enabler, but Justin was perfectly able, all on his own. He was going on this trip, even if I didn’t. The only question was whether I would opt for potential destruction or self-preservation.

  Then again, what was there to preserve, really? A life in which I sat in a cabin, surrounded by pristine silence, trying to write something that mattered, but ending up with stuff that went straight in the trash? Afternoons spent with Oprah and Dr. Phil filling the room with white noise, so I could avoid the larger question that had whispered in my ear as we teetered on the guard rail, looking down at the ocean from what was left of Justin’s slick red Ferrari.

  Why am I here? If there isn’t more to life than this, then why bother?

  Yet, even as I was thinking it, I was trying to wake Justin and pull him from the car. I was thinking, Just a few more minutes. Hang in there, buddy. I’m not ready to go yet.

  In my head, as those frantic seconds stretched out, Mama Louise was quoting bits of Scripture. I was surprised how clear they were when it really mattered.

  Mama Louise was a firm believer. All those years ago, when I called to tell her I’d be sending her the money for the Comet, a little each paycheck, she said she didn’t care about the money.

  She wanted me to repent in prayer, because she’d already forgiven us both.

  She told me again I should stay away from Justin—the things that were broken in him could only be fixed by someone bigger than me.

  At eighteen years old, the greater implications of that went right over my head. When I repeated the conversation to Justin later, I said she gave me some God talk, and the good news was that she hadn’t called the police about the car, and she didn’t intend to. We were in the clear, but I was going to send her five hundred for the car. He snorted and pointed out that the car had been just sitting beside the driveway doing nothing, until the two of us got it running. We did her a favor hauling it off. …

  Amber caught up with us under the tree. “Looks like we mi-ight be in for a little weather.” When no one answered right away, she shot a quizzical look back and forth between Justin and me, her brows lifting curiously over wide, blue china-doll eyes. “Is everythin’ all ri-ight?”

  “Yeah, fine,” Justin said, then flashed her one of his hunk-o’-the-year grins the girls all loved, and added, “Come on, babe, let’s go see the stupid horse.” He looped an arm over her shoulders, and she didn’t seem to mind, but she didn’t snuggle in, either. She just tucked her hands in her pockets.

  “You finish signing autographs?” he asked.

  “I did,” she answered. “I felt kinda bad, though. I meant to bring some tour T-shirts and CDs and stuff with me this mornin’. I forgot to grab the bag on my way out. Those guys work so hard all day.”

  Justin glanced down the fence toward the group of construction workers, now headed back to the ranch buildings. “They get paid. Man, I can’t believe how much it costs to pay all of them. Let ’em buy their own CDs—we’ll get some of it back.”

  Amber pulled away, frowning at him as if she wondered whether he meant it. She didn’t know him very well. He meant it.

  “That’s not very ni-ice.” She motioned in the direction of the departing workers. “The man in the red ball cap, Osvaldo, he’s got a little girl in the hospital with cancer, and she’s a big fan. She likes you, too. You could send her some of your movies, and then she wouldn’t be bored all day long, layin’ there in chemotherapy.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Justin said. “No problem.”

  “I don’t guess there’s probably DVD players in the hospital, though,” Amber observed as she and Justin started toward the gate, her petite red cowboy boots falling a little heavier under the weight of Justin’s arm, or the DVD question, or both.

  “We’ll send her a DVD player, too,” Justin offered.

  Amber was pleased. A bouncy mass of blond hair twirled over her shoulder as she smiled up at him. “That’s a super idea. One of those little kind from Wal-Mart you can use in your car or anyplace.

  I got my baby brother one for his birthday.”

  “Cool,” Justin said.

  Amber glanced over her shoulder, like she’d just realized I wasn’t following. I was standing under the tree, watching the interaction between the two of them and thinking that she was way too nice to get involved with The Shay. He’d destroy her before all of this was over.

  “You comin’, Nate?” she asked.

  I waved an affirmative and started toward the round corral, where Lucky Strike was galloping along the pipe fence, alternately pinning his ears and charging at the spectators. Lauren stepped toward him, and the horse reared onto his hind legs and pawed the air. I found myself quickening my pace in spite of the pad of burrs now compacted into the soles of my flip-flops. It didn’t seem like Lauren should be locked in with the horse when he was in a mood like that. Now that he was trapped and separated from the other horses, Lucky Strike was even more agitated than before. With his dark brown coat sweat-streaked and foamy, he looked like the dangerous renegade from some late-night western rerun—Fury or The Black Stallion. This would be the scene where the man-killer horse injured its inadvertently trusting trainer. …

  Lauren didn’t seem worried.

  Taking a spot on the fence with the rest of the group, I studied the details of the scene as Lauren slowly worked the horse toward submission. I took in the horse’s eye, the trainer’s eye, the slight movements of her body, the responses of the horse, the silent way she guided and directed the animal’s actions, built a bridge of communication where there had been fear. I took in the coppery gl
int of sunlight on Lauren’s hair, the sheen on the horse’s coat. Overhead, clouds blotted the sun as the minutes ticked by. Shadows slid over Lauren’s skin, skimming her shoulder, her arm, her waist, soundlessly circling her, stroking the horse with silent fingers, pulling them closer, as if neither felt the wind rise or heard the thunder rumble, as if there were nothing in the world but the two of them, and all that mattered was unity.

  Watching Lauren slowly break down the barriers, I understood the magic that the screenplay had tried, and failed, to convey. Together, she and the horse were poetry in motion, a carefully composed sonnet of shadow and light, of breath and body, fear and trust.

  When Lucky Strike came to her in the center of the ring, this time with no lariat, with no restraint of any kind, a collective hush fell over the onlookers. Even Mimi stopped prattling about having felt a raindrop and gasped, “Oh, look.”

  I hadn’t even realized Mimi was talking until she stopped.

  Frederico muttered something in Italian. I didn’t know what it was, but in my mind it translated to, Wow, that was incredible.

  As quickly as the moment came, it was gone, fleeting like something so bright and clear the eye shouldn’t take it in for long.

  A streak of lightning split the sky overhead, the horse bolted, and rain started to fall in earnest. Our first lesson in horse whispering was over almost before it began.

  Willie, Frank, and Lauren took the horse to the barn, and the rest of us scattered to our respective vehicles to wait out the rain. I took shelter in the Horsemanmobile with Justin and Amber, although after the fact I wished I’d made another choice, because when the rain persisted and we left the ranch, I became a hapless prisoner on an unlikely mission to the nearest Wal-Mart to purchase DVDs and DVD players for children in a nearby cancer ward. After a few rather strange phone calls and an extensive buying spree at several stores, we burst into the children’s wing like Santa Claus after a technology conference. We surprised Osvaldo’s daughter, then handed out DVDs, equipment, and autographs up and down the hall before gathering the children in the rec room to sing several songs.

  When the fun was over, and the children—including Justin— were tired, we headed back to Daily. We ended up at Frank’s ranch with Willie, Mimi, Frederico, and Frank. Frank burned hamburgers for us, and we talked horseman talk as the storm rolled away, leaving behind a sunset that was bigger than life. While the others stood on the back porch enjoying it, I perused the living room, taking in dusty picture frames with rodeo championship belt buckles inside, and a collection of award saddles perched here and there around the room like furniture. One of them had Lauren’s name on it—1989 Daily Goat Tying Champion, Won by Lauren Eldridge. A picture of Lauren hung on the wall above. She was mounted on a big gray horse, a little girl with a big smile, a smudge of dirt across her nose, and curly ponytails. She was wearing pink chaps and a big cowboy hat, holding her leg out of the way to display the printing on the saddle. There were similar pictures throughout the house, sprinkled among dusty haphazard displays of rodeo memorabilia, outdated calendars, and family photos. But the most interesting thing about the house wasn’t so much what was there, as what wasn’t.

  Even though we remained through supper and for several hours afterward, Lauren never showed.

  Chapter 11

  Lauren Eldridge

  I couldn’t face driving the road to my father’s house, especially with a storm brewing overhead, so I did the grown-up thing and made excuses when our first session with Lucky Strike rained out. Yelling through the rain with my car window down, I told Dad I was going to visit with Aunt Netta and Imagene for a while, then I drove away before he could protest. By the time I got back to the hotel, he’d already called Aunt Netta to see if I’d “made it home all right,” but what he really meant was that Aunt Netta should baby-sit me through my first thunderstorm back home. No doubt he was afraid I’d suffer some kind of sad flashback to the night of the flood and feel the need to run away again.

  Actually, it turned out to be a good afternoon. Any afternoon spent in the Daily Hair and Body with Aunt Donetta, Lucy, and Imagene was guaranteed to be a good one, and entertaining, which was the reason I went there in the first place. We visited with the regular Friday cut and curl customers, ate pecan pie Imagene brought over from the café, did yoga with a hunky on-tape muscle man who looked like Frederico, and spent the remainder of our time discussing whether or not to cancel tonight’s big feed at Aunt Donetta’s place, due to the weather. After the decision was made, along with a number of cancellation phone calls, Uncle Ronald was instructed to pull Mr. Ham from the oven and turn off the timer, and the big feed was delayed until tomorrow, which was just as well, because that would give us a chance to call even more people. With no plans for the evening, we went to Imagene’s house to admire her vegetable garden in the rain, eat leftover pork chops, and watch tapes of Dancing With the Stars—a girls’ night, Aunt Netta called it.

  When it was over, Aunt Netta shuttled me back to the hotel, rather than to her house. “We just went ahead and moved yer stuff to room 5. There’s no sense you stayin’ with all that junk in my sewin’ room when we got empty space at the hotel.” I smelled a rat, because she scanned the alley as we passed and muttered, “Now, I wonder where those boys are. … ”

  “Probably still at Dad’s,” I answered, and hopped out of the car before she could proceed with instructing me to look after her celebrity customers, or whatever else she was cooking up. “You know Dad. He’ll keep them up all night, telling rodeo stories.”

  Aunt Netta frowned, showing obvious displeasure. “I hate for you to be stuck here alone. … ”

  “Aunt Netta, I’m fine,” I said quickly. “In fact, I have some grades to finish up and post online, so I can use a few hours of quiet. Thanks for the girls’ night.” We shared a hand-hug through the window, and I trotted into the hotel, waving a quick toodle-oo to let her know I’d be just fine on my own, no matter where those boys were or when they returned to the hotel.

  I spent the evening listening to the whispers of the old building while finishing my grade book online and then crashed early, dead to the world—a victim of a short night and a long day.

  On Saturday morning we repeated the procedure from the day before—breakfast meeting at the café, drive to the ranch, unsettled horse in the round pen while the would-be horseman looked on sourly, Willie touted the horse’s potential, and Amber murmured encouragement.

  Just as Lucky Strike was beginning to settle in to our workout, Aunt Donetta’s voice squealed through the barnyard and sent the horse skittering to the far side of the enclosure. “How-deee! I canceled some wash-and-curls so I could come watch. Did I miss anythin’?”

  She appeared at the fence in a flurry of bright clothes and big hair, and trailing a cloud of perfume that remained potent even in the open air. Aunt Donetta never made a subtle entrance anywhere she went. When she showed up at the last minute for Sunday services at Daily Baptist Church, the organist usually just stopped playing prelude music, because the fact was that no one could meditate while Aunt Netta was on her way up the aisle shaking hands, kissing babies, and inquiring after the health of people who had been on the prayer list.

  Eventually, Brother Ervin would move to the pulpit and make some joke like, Well, Donetta’s here, now we can get started. Aunt Netta would laugh and bat a hand, like she couldn’t imagine what he was talking about, then she’d slip into the Eldridge pew, third row on the left, all the while explaining over the heads of Betty Prine and the sour-faced old ladies of the Daily Literary Society why she hadn’t made it to church until the last minute.

  She always had some wild story—stray kitten in the ditch by the road, downed electric line she had to report, old Mrs. Kaufer’s house still dark at ten-thirty in the morning so Aunt Donetta thought she’d better stop by and check on things, the mayor’s basset hound, Flash, on the lam around town again, a rattlesnake in the truck engine, which buzzed all the way to town and scare
d Aunt Netta so bad she had to exit the cab via the ventilation slider in the rear window. Halfway through her escape, she thought she’d end up wedged for good, but prayer and the sound of that snake propelled her past the impossibly small opening and into the bed of the truck. It was a Sunday morning miracle, and sure enough, when Brother Ervin and the men went outside, there was a six-foot rattlesnake, looking strangely addled and oddly biblical, there on the church lawn. Baily Henderson, Tam Moody, and my brother, Kemp, captured it in a trash can, and Aunt Donetta won the rattlesnake roundup at the Daily Reunion Days the next week. The sign on her entry read,

  Division: Largest Individual Snake

  Submitted by: Donetta Bradford

  Capture method: Pickup Truck

  It was Aunt Donetta’s first and only time to be awarded the Daily Rattlesnake Roundup badge of honor—a custom-embroidered ball cap, a recycled trophy that had a cow on top, and a new .22 rifle, courtesy of Barlinger’s Hardware. Aunt Donetta gave the ball cap to Kemp because it wouldn’t fit over her hair, and she traded the rifle (over Uncle Ronald’s protests), for a new Salad Shooter and a gift certificate. She kept the trophy and displayed it on a shelf in the beauty shop as a conversation piece.

  “How’s everybody doin’?” she inquired as she elbowed her way up to the fence beside Mimi. Nate moved to let her have his spot, but she insisted they all snuggle together in the gap between posts. “Oh, hon,” she said to Nate. “You don’t want to miss any of this. The things Puggy can do with a horse are just … well … amazin’.”

  I had the mortifying realization that she’d just used the nickname. Right there in front of everyone. Good gravy. Next she’d be telling the potty training story.