Wynne's War (7 page)

He had expected the animal to step about anxiously, but the only recognition she gave of bearing a rider was a brief snort and a slight toss of her head. Russell eased himself erect and sat there a moment watching the other horses in the corral, watching the day compose itself out of the scattering mists. He ran a hand back and forth across the filly's neck and then squeezed his thighs and took a gentle grip of the mane, turned the horse, and began to walk her toward the center of the bare-dirt corral. The horse stepped smartly, responsive, and Russell talked to her and told her she was a good horse, she was doing very good. He pushed the animal up to a trot and circled the pen, the other horses beginning to shy, several moving back under the stable's overhang. He made two circuits and then slowed the filly, tugging firmly on the mane, and walked her over to the fence. When he had her stopped, he reached down and patted the horse several times on the shoulder and then, shifting his weight, slung his right leg back over and dropped to the ground.

He stood there stroking the horse's neck and talking to her. He'd forgotten for several moments exactly where he was.

When he walked through the doorway the first thing he saw was Wheels crouched on his cot like a surfboard and both hands out in front of him, palms uplifted as though he was motioning someone to stop. Russell stared at his friend a few moments. He asked him what was going on.

“Tarantula,” said Wheels.

“What?” asked Russell.

“Tarantula,” Wheels said.

Russell leaned against the doorjamb. An enormous black and brown spider was crossing the hut a few feet from their cots, making its way forward in a strange and unsettling rhythm. They'd had tarantulas on the ranch where he was raised, but those were barely the size of a coffee cup and cautious to the point of invisibility. Their survival depended on remaining unseen. Whatever this creature's existence relied on, it clearly wasn't concerned with being detected. Something about its movements appeared to even welcome attention. Russell watched it travel the packed-dirt floor of their quarters, trying to think of something to reassure his friend. He cleared his throat, but just as he did, the spider reached the adobe wall, squeezed itself into a crevice Russell had yet to notice, and was gone.

Wheels pointed toward the doorway.

“Yonder comes another,” he said.

Russell turned. A second spider, this one smaller than the first, was just entering the Quonset, making its way out of the morning light.

“I'll be damned,” Russell said.

“It's been that way for the last fifteen minutes,” Wheels told him.

Russell glanced at the man. He was still squatting atop the metal-and-canvas cot. Russell gestured at it.

“You're going to split that thing wide open,” he said.

“Ain't the cot I'm worried about.”

“It'll be your head you're worried about. Fall off and crack your damn skull.”

Wheels pointed back at the spider. It seemed to be following the other's path, crawling across the dirt floor, then reaching the wall and pressing its fat body down into the crevice.

“They been coming in through the door and then down into that hole.” He pointed one hand toward the entrance and the other toward the crevice. “Come right in through there, go down right over there.”

“How many?” Russell asked.

“Fourteen,” said Wheels. “Counting that one.”

“Reckon there's a nest in there?”

“I don't know,” said Wheels, “and I don't want to know.”

Russell cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “you want to get down off your rack and get something hot to eat, or you want to stay in here counting spiders?”

“Quicker, the better,” Wheels said.

They sat on Russell's cot lacing up their boots. Two more tarantulas came in and disappeared under the cinder block. One of them Wheels didn't notice, but when the second made its way into the hooch, he stood from the cot with one boot on and the other in a hand, his socked foot in the dirt. The corporal balanced on one leg and slipped his foot into the boot. Then he squared his cap on his head and stomped out of the bunker, trailing laces.

 

That afternoon, Russell followed Billings over to the stables, and the two of them stood with their arms crossed and a boot on the bottom rail of the corral. Ten horses were bunched on the other side, blowing and stamping, and two circled the pen at a slow trot. Several more were backed under the overhang of the aluminum-sided barn, staring out at them broodingly. The lieutenant glanced over at Russell and then back to the animals. He said they needed these horses broken before the spring thaw. He said they needed Russell to do it.

For a moment, Russell didn't say anything. The last month of his life swirled and then began to sift neatly into place. He understood why he'd been brought here. Or part of it, anyway. A sick feeling entered his stomach, but it was quickly absorbed by something else. Elation. He felt drunk.

“You need the horses to ride?”

“We need to be able to ride them, and we need to be able to shoot around them without getting thrown.”

Russell turned and stared at the lieutenant for several seconds.

“You want them gunbroke?”

“If that's what you call it,” the lieutenant said. “We don't want them going crazy.”

“Gunbroke,” said Russell contemplatively.

“Can you not do that?”

“I can do it,” said Russell. “You mind if I ask you why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you'd want them that way.”

“You're getting ahead of yourself,” the lieutenant told him. He gestured to the corral with his chin. “We have nineteen horses here. We need fifteen our men can ride and that aren't going to break their necks if they have to fire a rifle in the saddle. That clear enough?”

“It's plenty clear, Lieutenant. It's just—some of those horses you could put a saddle on right now and do pretty much whatever you want with, and some won't ever be able to do much of anything. It'd help to know exactly what you're wanting out of them.”

“Corporal.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“This isn't a mission briefing.”

“Yessir.”

“Don't ‘sir' me. All you need to worry about is getting these horses to where we can ride them. Shoot off them if we need to. Nothing fancy. Turn left and right. Back up. Stop. This isn't a rodeo.”

“What about your men?” Russell asked. “Have any of them even been in a saddle?”

“Ahead of yourself again, Corporal.”

“Roger that,” Russell said.

He stood for a moment. Then he asked the lieutenant how they'd managed to bring the horses into camp.

“Helicopter,” Billings said. “Flew them down from Camp Blessing. I don't know where they were before that.”

“What,” Russell asked, “—on a Chinook?”

Billings nodded.

“I'd liked to've seen that,” said Russell.

“No, you wouldn't,” Billings said.

When Wheels walked out to the corral sipping coffee, Russell had his elbows over the top rail of the pen, studying the horses. Wheels had seen Russell talking with the lieutenant, and he leaned against the corral there beside him.

“What was that about?” he asked.

“He wants these horses to where they can ride them.”

“Are any of them even saddlebroke?”

“Some,” Russell said. “He wants them gunbroke too.”

Wheels had been staring out at the horses. Now he stared at Russell.

“What in the hell for?”

“Wouldn't tell me,” Russell said.

“You ever gunbreak a horse?”

“'Course not.”

“Can you do it?”

“I can do it.”

Wheels considered this for a few moments. He sipped his coffee and then tossed the remains on the dirt. Russell turned to him.

“What kind of rider are you?” he asked.

Wheels shrugged. “I ain't Craig Cameron.”

“You said you had horses, right? On your farm?”

“Yeah,” Wheels told him, holding up the index and middle fingers of his right hand, “we had two horses. When they died, Papaw wouldn't buy no more. I don't think he could take seeing another one put down.”

Russell nodded. “But you can ride?” he said.

“'Course,” said Wheels. He gestured at the horse now rounding the pen—a chestnut with white stockings. “How many of them have been rode before?”

“No idea,” said Russell.

“Any?”

“We're fixing to see.”

He started with Fella, the filly he'd ridden bareback that morning. He had the Afghan groom who looked after the animals take the other horses to the square pen on the other side of the stable and then he sat straddling the split-rail corral, studying the filly where she stood looking at the horses who'd been led away. He thought that at least they were halterbroke. That was something. They'd allow themselves to be led, which meant someone had worked with them at some point. That was good and bad, depending on who it was, depending on how and how much. His grandfather was always leery of working a horse someone else had started, but that was the way it was.

They went into the tack room inside the stable, where brand-new saddles sat over sawhorses, brand-new bridles and leads and good leather reins. Wheels carried out a blanket and folded it over the rail next to Russell and carried out one of the smaller saddles, so new it creaked. He balanced this on the top rail next to the blanket and then stood there, waiting on Russell.

“How you want to do this?” he asked.

Russell didn't answer. He was watching Fella with great intensity. She looked remarkable in the afternoon light—chocolate splotches over white, white stockings, a brown and white tail. Her face was brown with a strip of white that traveled between her eyes and on down her nose. She wore a Gatsby leather stable halter with a brass snap and buckles and a brass tie ring on the underside of the noseband. He heard Wheels clear his throat behind him.

“Russ,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Where you want to start?”

“At the beginning would be nice,” said Russell, and he threw his left leg over the rail and dropped down into the corral. The filly had turned to face him, and when his boots touched the dirt floor of the pen she raised a front hoof. One ear twitched away a fly. Russell had on his Oakleys, but as he approached, he slid the sunglasses up and seated them on his head so the horse could see his eyes. He had the ten-foot lead rope gripped loosely in his left hand, and he came up with his right palm raised, talking to the horse. He was saying, “Hey there,” and “Hey now,” and the horse lowered her head, then raised it, and he clipped one end of the lead rope to the tie ring and then ran his hand along the horse's jaw, back toward her neck. She felt loose beneath his palm; she hadn't started to tighten on him, but she was alert now, watchful.

He slipped two fingers under the halter's throatlatch and pulled the filly's head gingerly to his chest. The halter had been cinched a notch too tight, and whenever he tugged on it, a tremor ran across the horse's ribs: you could see it start in her shoulder and shimmer like ripples on a pond.

“How long you been wearing this?” he asked the horse.

He unbuckled the crownpiece, backed the strap a notch, and rebuckled it. He gave another tug and watched the horse and then he unbuckled and backed the strap another notch. He looked into the horse's eye.

“That's better, isn't it?”

The filly's breath was hot against his forearm. Russell turned and looked at Wheels leaning against the corral.

Wheels said, “What—it was chafing her?”

“Yeah,” said Russell, turning back to the horse. He ran his hand back and forth across her neck, then stepped alongside and ran his hand across her shoulder and down her side. She didn't as much as twitch, but when he paid the rope from left hand to right and brushed it over her brown hindquarters, she stepped quickly away from him and shook her head.

“You see that?” said Russell.

“I saw it,” Wheels said.

Russell coiled the rope back over his left hand and stood there breathing. She was tensing on him now, the muscles flexing under her coat.

“Yeah,” he told her, “I don't blame you.”

He gave her slack and stepped back a few feet. The horse stared at him several moments, perfectly motionless. Then she blinked and raised her head slightly, nostrils testing the air. She took a step toward Russell and then she took another. She stood there, tentative. Then she came forward on cautious hooves and nosed Russell's hand.

“I'll be goddamned,” Wheels said.

Russell turned and gave him a smile. He turned back to the horse, paid rope into his right hand, about six feet of rope, started spinning the long line so that one end touched the filly's hindquarters. The horse immediately backed away and turned counterclockwise, and Russell followed her, still swinging the rope, just brushing its end over her stifle, always aiming for the stifle, though it would sometimes land on her point of hip or gaskin. As much as the horse relaxed when Russell would pet her, she quivered at the slightest touch of the rope. She circled and Russell followed, swinging the long line, just touching her, touching her, touching her, the rope's end describing an arc through the air, brushing that same area on her rear left leg.

When he stopped swinging the rope, the horse stopped also—stopped and stood with her ears twitching, swishing her tail. She wasn't irritated yet, just a little unsure, and Russell took the time then to step over and begin to rub his right hand down her neck and shoulder, across her flank. The horse exhaled and gave a brief shake of her head. He turned after a few minutes of this and looked at Wheels.

“You've done this before,” Wheels said.

Russell nodded. He asked Wheels if he'd seen the corral panels in the stable.