The Secrets She Keeps (35 page)

“Where is Irma? Or Cliff? What’s happened?” Nash drops to her knees, too, beside Lilly. There are bath towels around, from upstairs where they keep them for the guests.

“Irma left to do the shopping, and Cliff, hell, I don’t know. Lilly, she was out by the ring. The horses came through. The mustangs. They’re out there! That airplane…flying so low! She started running. And the blood…I could see it. I could see it on her legs! I came after her,” Jack says.

“Ambulance,” Ellen says. “You’ve called the ambulance?”

“No ambulance out here. Washoe’s supposed to get one next year,” Danny says. “I tried to call Doc Bolger, but no one’s answering. There’s no way to tell where he might be. He’s maybe with Mrs. Grosvenor, she’s dying of—”

“Go! Danny, go look for him! Find him!” Nash says.

Lilly makes a strange huffing sound. It is not so strange, really, because Nash and Jack and Danny, too, they’ve seen this before; they were there, each of them, when Rosie gave birth to Maggie, and when Lady foaled Little Britches. There was not this much blood, though. This is a lot of blood, so much, too much, and Nash’s shoes are wet, and so are her knees and her hands. She wipes one on her skirt, before she brushes Lilly’s hair from her face.

“Help me,” Lilly says.

“We’re here. It’s all right.” This doesn’t seem to be Nash’s own voice, and this is not all right, but she just keeps smoothing Lilly’s hair and looking into her eyes, which Lilly shuts tight before crying out again.

“Ellen, what do we do?” Hadley asks. But this is clearly beyond Ellen’s expertise. Ellen’s wayward husband, Eddie, likely brought her to the hospital and waited in a room with cigars in his pocket, as nurses in crisp white slipped a mask over Ellen’s mouth and nose. She would have drifted off, only to wake up later with a bundle in her arms.

“We…” Ellen says. “We…”

Nash hears Veronica on the phone in the kitchen. She is shouting. There are the words
early
and
hurry
and
you bastards
.

Lilly squeezes Nash’s hand. She squeezes so hard, and then she bears down. Ellen is down at Lilly’s feet. “I am just going to…” She lifts Lilly’s dress and gasps. “Remain calm.”

“It’s fine, Lilly,” Nash says. “We’re here.”

“You hang on,” Jack says. “You be strong. Danny will be right here with the doctor.”

There is no way to know if this is true. The desert is a big place, and Doc Bolger could be anywhere.

“The baby,” Lilly says. She bears down. Her mouth opens and twists in a scream, but this time, no sound comes out.

“There’s a head,” Ellen says.

Lilly is shivering. Her bare legs tremble. Her arms tremble. Her skin is cool to the touch.

“Blankets,” Ellen says. Hadley heads for the stairs.

Lilly thrashes her head to the side, and she looks at Nash. She looks at her straight on. “Promise,” she says.

“Anything.”

“He can’t know.”

“All right,” Nash says. She doesn’t know what she is promising, only that right then she would promise Lilly anything.

“Ever.”

“Okay.”

“Beanie, either.” She breathes hard. “Too much—” She bears down. “Shame.”

“Don’t worry, Lilly. You’re going to be all right.”

“Vow,” she says.

Nash takes both of Lilly’s hands. “I do. I promise. I give you my vow.”

Lilly bears down.

“Your baby is coming,” Ellen says. “Your baby has black hair.”

“My,” Lilly says. She puts her hand to her chest.

“Your heart,” Jack says. Nash sets her own hand there. Lilly’s heart is beating so fast that it gallops and thunders. It’s wild and frightening. Nash thinks she hears the sound of it right here in the living room. No, that sound is just outside, matching the beat and the force of the heart under her palm.

Lilly bears down, but it doesn’t seem like enough. It feels weak, and there is no logical way Nash should know this. It is instinct. Animal instinct, and Jack must know it, too.

“Put your hands in,” he says to Ellen. “Both your hands. Pull the head. This is going on too long.” He keeps his voice measured, but it’s a command.

Nash and Jack look at each other, and she can see how afraid he is. It seems like so much time has passed since they came home, and she can see that this is partly true. The sky is turning shades of burning orange and red.

“Yes,” Ellen says. “Yes, I will,” as if she is at a party, accepting an hors d’oeuvre from a tray.

Hadley runs down the stairs with a blanket yanked off Alice’s bed, and she covers the upper half of Lilly’s shaking body. “He is almost…Dear God, he is almost…”

Lilly shudders. “Get him away,” she says. “Tell him to go!”

“It’s all right, Lilly,” Nash croons.

“It’s all right, darling,” Jack says.

“Make him go away!” she cries.

“The baby’s coming,” Ellen says. “He’s coming! I feel him!”

“Oh, my God,” Hadley says. “Look at him.” Veronica has her arms around Hadley. They are both crying.

Ellen is crying now, too. Tears are rolling down her face between Lilly’s knees. “You have a son, Lilly. You have a beautiful son.”

There is so much blood, and Lilly is breathing so fast. Fast and hard. She is hyperventilating. Her skin is so cold.

Nash leans down and sets her cheek on Lilly’s. “He’s here. Beanie is here.”

There is all that blood everywhere, and the baby finally cries out, and Jack says, “Thank you, Jesus,” when he hears it. Lilly’s skin is white. It is white as the moon the night she stepped from the swimming pool. Something is wrong with her eyes. Nash has never seen anyone die before.

—

Nash trembles. She is so, so cold, even with Harris’s arm around her. Her niece Callie takes her hand. It is so dark out. Near the leg of that piano, there is a mark in the floor; it is still there, the place where Nash gouged in her nails in grief.

“Do you understand? I kept my vow for all these years, but I can’t anymore. I have to find him. I must see him. That baby, that
man
—he has a right to know his story, before I’m gone,” Nash says.

Nash’s other niece, Shaye, kneels beside her, too. “He will, Nash. He will. We’ll make sure of it,” she says.

It was so dark out. Before I left, I set down my thermos of coffee and my camera. Near the leg of that piano, there was a mark in the floor; it was still there, the place Nash gouged in her nails in grief. I knelt down and ran my fingers across it. My own life, my story, my time at the ranch, even—it all seemed so ordinary compared to this.

“Oh, you,” I said to Tex. He wanted to come along. He told me that with his eyes and the way he sat, especially well behaved, by the door. Hugo could manage this sort of thing only for a few moments before he’d turn big circles of excitement. He was a bit of a bull in a china shop, the beast, but that’s who he was, and you loved him for it. “You have to stay,” I said to Tex. “I’m sorry. I apologize.”

The ranch and the entire valley looked so different before the sun came up. It stretched out and beyond into darkness and more darkness. It could make you afraid of falling, and wisely so. Falling should be feared, or at least done with caution.

I followed the directions to the Flat Creek Trailhead, where we visitors would meet before driving up in the bureau truck to the designated viewing site. That was the plan. When I arrived, the truck was already there, parked with its headlights still on. A man leaned against the door and sipped from a travel mug.

“Morning!” he said. His breath made puffs in the cool predawn air. He cupped his hands around his mouth and nose and huffed briefly to warm them. I’d have recognized that shiny head anywhere.

“Steve Miller,” I said. “Cowboy and musician.”

“I can play the fool, that’s about it.”

“Where is everybody?”

“You’re it. Had a tourist couple from Colorado coming, but she’s not feeling well. Drinking and losing too much money gambling can bring on a case of the flu.”

“Too bad,” I said, though I was glad to be on my own. I was never good at making morning small talk. Bed-and-breakfast weekends were something Thomas and I avoided. We both needed more coffee before listening to stories about the other guests’ children and their recent bike trip to Santa Fe.

“We were supposed to go to this nice, safe little spot a good half mile away. That’s so no one runs out to take a photo and gets trampled by wild animals. Or so that no protesters leap in front of the chute and get themselves killed, let alone jeopardize weeks of work and tens of thousands of dollars. But you don’t strike me as a runner or a leaper, in spite of that camera you got.”

I held my hand up in a promise. “I am not a runner or a leaper.”

“Then follow me,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“As close as you can get without a horse and a hat.”

—

Morning dawned, casting a golden glow over the rangeland. The tenderness of the light was shocking, and each hill looked poetic. Everything felt full of hope from that magic trick of a new day. Steve Miller escorted me to the side of the chute where the horses would be led in, and we knelt behind a long panel of orange netting. There? Really? It all seemed unwise—Steve Miller could lose his job, and I could lose my life in that spot, ground level with those pounding hooves. Still, Steve Miller knew those horses better than I did, and even though I was flushed with nerves, I could see how eager he was. I could feel the anticipation in the air.

I wondered where everyone was. It seemed like we were the only two people even awake. But then I looked closer. There was Lorraine on Cactus, waiting at a discreet distance; a few other BLM guys, too. Each was in place.

Steve checked his watch. “The helicopter should be coming any minute.”

“Where is it now?”

“Not far, I’m guessing. The pilot floats around out there for a bit first, getting an idea of where the different bands are. By now he’s probably moved them together, and they’re likely heading in our direction.”

“How does he move them together?”

“Positioning the helicopter, getting close, hanging back a little. Pretty much after that, they’ll come forward on their own. When they get near the site, though, he’ll close in—”

I heard it before I saw it. The helicopter rose over the hill, like the bad guy in a movie, or maybe like the hero, just before the world might end. And then I saw the horses themselves, cresting the hill and barreling down. They stampeded, manes flying, tails whipping behind them, their group a single mass as they surged forward. There was the
wup-wup-wup
of the helicopter, and the blows of hooves, and what it sounded like most was a cataclysmic storm, and what it looked like most was beauty and more unfathomable beauty. I gripped Steve Miller’s arm as the helicopter swooped low as a hawk.

“Here’s Kit,” he said, and then I saw him. It was fast—all movement and muscle. Kit ran out, leading Jasper, and then he crouched at the ready beside him, right in the center of the open wings of the chute. I grabbed Steve Miller’s arm again, looked at him for confirmation that this was the intended plan. It couldn’t be, could it? He was sure to be trampled. But Steve Miller’s gaze was fixed. His eyes were on Kit, and so I dared to watch.

The horses charged forward, and the very second before they reached him, Kit leaped out of the way and let Jasper go, and that pilot horse took over like the leader he was. Kit flung himself away and lay flat on the ground, as the mustangs followed Jasper in.

The horses galloped down the chute. They were right next to us, close enough that the dust spit toward our faces as the immense bodies stormed past. The noise was mammoth. So much noise that even their heavy breathing sounded mighty and mythical. I held my own breath. Their eyes were wild, and I forced my own frightened eyes open. They were a cyclone of nature, both primitive and evolved, and as I huddled there, I felt like a creature of the earth, the same as they were. They were dirty and rough, strangers to the shiny, well-bred animals you saw on a racetrack. I could smell them. These horses were worn and life-wise, and when they arrived at their shocking destination, they banged against the holding pen with mighty crashes; iron against iron as the gates clanged with the weight. They vocalized with their high-pitched brays:
Ee-e-ee-eee
. They were beautiful but not, suffering but saved, victims and perpetrators, defeated yet triumphant in the way they were
still there
, full of fury and will.

“Watch,” Steve said, and I turned my attention to where he directed, back to the open rangeland. Two mustangs had broken from the pack, and they ran frenzied figure eights just beyond the entrance. Out of nowhere came a man I’d seen before at the site: the old guy with the big belly. He was on his horse and had a rope looped around his arm, which he spun in a circle in the air; then there was another familiar face doing the same, and they worked the two stray horses closer until they, too, veered in and headed past us.

The helicopter whipped up and then disappeared back over the hill. It was all, every bit of it, the most magnificent and unreal thing I had ever witnessed. It had gathered me up, too; I hadn’t taken a single picture. It would all have to remain right there in my own changed heart and mind, same as the earthquake fault that day, same as a thousand other critical junctures that had no photographic proof.