45. Horses
Horses
The onions were ready.
Kain knelt at the end of the row with the soil dark from a rain the night before and the bulbs coming up easy in his good hand, one and one and one.
He set them out in a small pile and worked his way down the row.
The shoulder was a different shoulder than it had been a week back. The ribs gave when he bent, and they gave less than they had given.
He could pull an onion. He could pull a row of them if he took his time about it.
On the way past, he glanced at the saddle hanging in the open barn door. The saddle could wait. The saddle had been waiting and would go on waiting until the shoulder was ready.
He'd tried it again the day before, both hands and one, and the cinch had still gone slack on him.
The shoulder lifted. It didn't yet pull and hold at the same time. Jeremiah's rule still stood.
He had just set the last one on the pile when Roan whinnied from the pasture and a horse on the road answered.
Slow, he stood up and brushed his good hand off on his trousers.
Carol came up the lane on her mare and reined in at the gate.
"Hey," she called down.
"Hey, yourself."
"You look better."
"Mending."
"I can see that." She slid off the mare and tied her at the post. She nodded at the pile of onions on the path. "Box at the road?"
"I was just about to."
She picked up most of them. He took the rest in his good hand. They went around the house together and set the onions into the collection box one at a time, and she closed the lid on the full box.
"Production going through," she said. "Must be nice."
"It is. Potatoes will be ready before long. Late tomatoes coming."
"Tell me about them while I work on Roan."
She had brushed Roan to the hide in the year she had been at the farm and she still came at it as if the horse needed it. Roan was already at the gate by the time she had the brush off the peg.
She let him out into the aisle, leaned her forehead against his neck a beat, and set to brushing him end to end.
"Yes," she said to Roan. "He's been treating you well. He has. You wouldn't look this good if he wasn't."
"I've got good instructions to follow."
"Plenty of men have got good instructions to follow.
Plenty of them are still useless with a horse.
" She paused at the off-side, working along the flank.
"I rode out to Greyhaven once with my father when I was a girl.
There were horses in the streets that hadn't seen a brush since they were broke.
Matted, sore at the corners of the mouth.
One pulling a cart that should have been on a slow week of grass, not in harness, and the driver going at him with a stick. "
"You see that here?"
"A few. Not so much as in the cities. Not that I'm passionate about it."
"No."
She made the small short half-laugh that ran a beat and stopped, and bent for Roan's near foreleg with the hoof pick.
Kain picked up the broom out of habit. The shoulder didn't want to push it one-handed, but he managed. He swept the dirt and bits of hoof out the front of the barn.
The mare at the post lifted her head when his shadow went past the doorway and set it back down when she had him made out. She had been here enough times now to know the shape of the man who lived at this place.
He noted it without making anything of it.
"You're passionate about other things," she said, into the foreleg. "I just couldn't tell you what."
"Mm."
"I know what you do. I know what you're good at. That's two things. What you're passionate about is a third thing I don't have a word for yet."
He swept the last bits out the door. "Some men don't have one."
"Some." She moved to the next hoof. "Not many."
She picked through the four hooves. He watched her work from his back against the barn door.
The shoulder told him it had done its work for the morning. He let it.
When she was through, she put Roan back into the pasture, set the brush and the pick on the peg, and came up out of the barn.
"Come on."
"For what."
"Almost dinner. I'll make it."
He wasn't going to argue. She picked up the well bucket on the way past. He went into the kitchen ahead of her and got the stove going.
She brought the bucket in and filled a pot and set it on. "Simple stew. Where are the herbs."
"Top shelf of the pantry. Jars aren't labeled. They smell like what they are."
"Good. I don't read labels anyway."
She took down two jars and sniffed each. She added a pinch from one and a pinch from the other. She found the salt without looking and shook it in first.
"Salt comes in first," she said. "It brings out the rest. A man can dump in fistfuls of his other spices and not taste them when the stew's done. Salt up front. Then everything else."
"Didn't know that."
"Now you do."
She found a few carrots and potatoes in the back of the pantry. She set them on the block and went back in a beat longer, looking over what was on the shelves.
"You've more in here than you had a month back," she said. "Sasha's baskets show."
"She's eased off the morning ones. I told her to. I can cook again."
"Can you."
"I can boil water and add what comes to hand. The same as any man does."
"Mm." She held up a carrot. "These from Sam?"
"Jeremiah brought them by. My own garden's a step behind."
"Hasn't been from lack of help."
"I didn't say lack of your help. Without you the garden would've gone over."
She made the half-laugh again and chopped the carrots and potatoes with the small knife from the block, and tossed them in. She dipped a finger in to taste it without thinking about it. She wiped her hand on her trouser leg.
"Meat," she said.
"Can't hunt with the shoulder."
"So how have you been"
The back door creaked.
Ghost came in with a fresh rabbit in its mouth and laid the rabbit at Kain's feet. It looked up at him with its one good eye, and then it turned and went back out.
Carol watched the wolf go. Then she looked at the rabbit on the floor. Then she looked at Kain.
"Wash the teeth marks well," Kain said, and handed the rabbit across to her.
"Well, all right then."
She cut it up at the block while he set the bones and the rest on the small board he kept by the back door for that work. Ghost came back in, took the board, went out. The stew started to take the smell of meat.
She brought two bowls out to the porch and they took the chairs that lived out there. The sun was going.
They ate.
The chickens were quiet. The mare at the post shifted her weight, set a hind hoof, and stood again. Roan answered from the pasture without raising his head.
"I've been meaning to ask you something," Kain said, after a beat.
"Ask."
"How long does it last. The way the village has gone since the kill."
She took her time with her spoon.
"Until you do something else they have to look at," she said. "Or until enough time goes past that they get used to looking at you for it. Whichever comes first."
"And the wolf."
"The wolf will help, by and by. The town has been getting used to the wolf for a while now. It is mostly already a settled thing. The kill is the new one."
"Which is it, usually."
"Depends on the place. Depends on the man."
He nodded once. "I'd rather be just another resident."
"You aren't, though."
He couldn't argue with that.
They sat with it. Ghost came up onto the front lawn, turned twice, lay down with its chin on its paws.
Roan nickered low from the pasture, telling the dusk he was there.
After a stretch she set her spoon back into the bowl.
"You know what I want out of life."
"Tell me."
"A farm of my own."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Close enough to my father that I can ride over to help him and he can come and help me," she said.
"Not his place. Mine. Things I'd do my way.
I want a kitchen window over the sink that looks out at the field, so I can see the work while I'm doing the dishes.
I want a porch deeper than this one. I want a barn with a stove in the tack room for the winter mornings. "
"And."
"Horses."
"Horses."
"Bays. Chestnuts. Roans. Stallions and geldings.
As many as I can run. A paddock that opens out the back the right way.
I'd step out at the gate and whistle and they'd come.
" She set her bowl down on the porch boards.
"I know I can't have a farm of nothing but horses.
I'd put goats and sheep and cattle on it because that's what a farm is.
But the horses are the part I'm planning around. "
"Why horses."
"Because they don't lie." She wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her wrist. "A horse in pain tells you. A horse with a stone in its shoe tells you. A horse glad to see you doesn't make you guess. None of a horse is pretending. Pure existing. People could learn a thing from that."
"People mostly don't."
He took a slow spoonful and turned the bowl in his hand a quarter without thinking about it.
"Most of the men I rode with would've had the bays and the chestnuts running off them in a week," he said. "You'd have your barn the right way. They wouldn't."
"You think you would."
"I think I'd know to do what the woman who knew told me to."
She made the half-laugh, short, and let it stop. She didn't look at him when she did it. He didn't look at her.
He worked at the stew. The light had dropped another notch.
"Haven't told that to many people," she said, after a stretch.
"I'm glad you did."
"Speaking of farms." She set the empty bowl down on the porch. "I'm needed at my father's tomorrow morning. Big siding-board delivery. Don't ask. I'll be back along in a few days. Unless I see you sooner."
"Few days."
"Unless I see you sooner."
She took his empty bowl from his hand.
She came out the front and went to the post. The mare was already shifting.
She mounted. She lifted a hand. He lifted his.
She rode off down the road and the dust came up under the mare's hooves and settled back.
He stayed in the porch chair a while.
The sun went the rest of the way down by the time he got to his feet. He walked out to the pasture.
Roan came to the rail. He led the gelding in by the halter rope and brushed his neck on the way, the good side, with the one hand he had.
Ghost came in behind and went to the corner of the barn that was its corner now.
He stood in the doorway of the barn a beat, smelling hay and horse and the cooling air.
It had been a good day.