In the Shadow of Alabama Page 6

  “I don’t want it,” she says.

  “Do you mind if I take it home with me?” I glance nervously toward the second bedroom, where Sandra is still busy, keeping my voice soft so that Sandra does not come swooping in to claim them.

  My mother shrugs. “What good is it going to do your father? Even if he got it before he died, what was he supposed to do with it?”

  “Come on, Mom, what is this all about?” I ask her. “You must know why that woman brought it all the way from Boston.”

  “I don’t know,” she says, without doing the voice-drop thing, which tells me that she really doesn’t know, and she picks up the folded flag from the table and heads for her bedroom. “I am going to lie down.” I kiss her good night and watch her shuffle away like a dispirited dandelion. I look at the album lying on top of the kitchen trash. If it is thrown out, I may never learn what Rowena Jackson’s father meant to say to mine. If Sandra sees it there, it will disappear until the records wind up on eBay.

  I quickly take the album, wrap it in a plastic grocery bag, and stuff it into my suitcase before Sandra can even know it is gone. Then I go to the freezer for more ice cubes. Sandra hears the freezer door open and is next to me in a flash.

  “Don’t finish up the ice cream,” she says. “I may want some.”

  “You can have it all.” I sigh. “You can have everything.”

  And, satisfied, she returns to the bedroom.

  Chapter 7

  I have gained a new appreciation for New York sun. It has variations and nuances that are not found in Arizona sun. New York sun is not your enemy, while Arizona sun is out to kill you. New York sun is bright and cheery, offering comfort in the spring, friendship in the summer, commiseration in the winter. Arizona sun is all about murder.

  It’s morning and I am back home in New York. The late-May sun feels sweet on my face, warms my back like the body of a lover. David could not meet me at the airport last night, so I took a cab home. Malachi was waiting by the front of the barn when I arrived.

  “I’m not glad I went,” I told him after he gave me a welcome-home hug.

  “Didn’t think you would be,” he cheerfully agreed.

  “But you told me to go.” I tried not to sound accusing, but I was still upset by Rowena Jackson’s words.

  “No”—he gave me a teasing smile—“I said you would regret it if you didn’t. There’s a difference.”

  I went into the house, brought my luggage upstairs, and unpacked before taking a long, hot shower. David came home two hours later and stayed in the kitchen without coming upstairs to greet me. He could have done at least that, I thought. I mean, my father died. There is a protocol to observe.

  There was a clatter of pots and pans. I figured he was probably making his favorite late-night dinner, an omelet. I dried off and went down to sit with him. He acknowledged me with a smile and a nod. Why not a kiss? I thought.

  He is such a nice-looking man. I sat there, watching him whip the eggs, then snip in fresh chives, the chives courtesy of Malachi. He has straight, light brown hair that gets blond in the summer and is a bit shaggy lately, making him look like I imagine he did in college. Blue-gray eyes and a square face with high cheekbones. And a sweet smile. What makes a smile sweet? I wondered. The length of his lips? The way the corners pick up?

  When he was finished cooking, he lifted the omelet pan and waved it slightly toward me, raising his eyebrows, asking without words if I wanted to share the eggs. I shook my head. “So, how’d it go?” he asked, sliding the eggs onto his plate. I can’t help but notice that the bottom is a little browned; it’s not as perfect as he usually makes it.

  “Not so great,” I said. I wasn’t being evasive. I was still trying to sort it out. Plus I was annoyed that he hadn’t called me. “Hot.”

  “Well, yeah,” he agrees. “Phoenix.”

  And that was it.

  He sat up until very late, working at his computer. I went to bed and waited for him. He finally came in after 1 a.m. and immediately turned over on his side, away from me.

  He didn’t propose.

  * * *

  The morning sun is comforting as I ride, replacing the cold emptiness that David left with me when he drove off to work. We barely spoke, and I felt a gorge of anger rise. What is going on? Don’t I at least get sympathy points?

  I am riding MoneyTalk, a big chestnut ex-racehorse sent to me for retraining. Training horses is sort of an avocation born of my love for horses, the biggest pets I could find after I grew up. I like solving their problems, replacing their suspicions with trust. I wish someone could do that for me.

  The sun hasn’t yet risen high against the sky.

  MoneyTalk is an off-the-track Thoroughbred, OTTBs as they are called by horse people. Raced as a youngster, done in by the age of three, and sent away to the “sales,” where most of the broken-down racehorses are purchased for slaughter and sent to France for meat. He was lucky, though, to be rescued by a woman who saw past his thin, bony frame, his “big knee,” his frightened eyes. Even though I breed Friesians, I also encourage people to buy OTTBs, because once the racetrack gets out of their system, they make very fine riding horses.

  The trick, of course, is to get the racetrack out of their system.

  * * *

  I am thundering around the riding ring now, at a full gallop that I didn’t ask for or want. MoneyTalk has taken off with me in the mistaken belief that he is coming down the home stretch at Belmont.

  “He’s grabbed the bit,” I call out to Malachi, who has become just a dark blur on the fence line. MoneyTalk has clamped his teeth on the bit in his mouth, his back muscles hardening like concrete underneath the saddle, his flanks taut against my legs as he stretches his body long and low to the ground in an effort to gain speed. Of course, if he had shown this talent at the track, he’d still be racing.

  “Circle, circle,” Malachi yells up at me as he casually opens a tin of sardines, peeling the lid back and spearing them with a plastic fork. “Make a small circle,” he calls, then pops a fish into his mouth.

  I struggle to turn the horse into a circle, but his jaws are clenched on the metal bit like they are bolted together. It is a little like trying to turn a house around on its foundation using a pair of shoelaces. The wind is pushing into my face, my hands are going numb from pulling, and I have a real fear that I won’t be able to stay on much longer. I struggle to bend his face to one side, to break his hold, but he is fighting me.

  Malachi is still yelling, but his words are getting caught on the wind and disappearing.

  After another tour of the ring, I realize what he was saying, for me to drop my grip on the reins; I push the reins at the horse, loosening my hold, which drops the bit in his mouth. My brain had locked in panic mode and forgotten that racehorses get faster the more you pull back, just the opposite of pleasure horses. It was the signal Money was waiting for and he gives in to me and eases to a slow canter. Then I wiggle the bit in his mouth, sliding it back and forth, and he softens, slows even more, finally breaking to a trot, then a walk. I catch my breath, and, just as Malachi taught me, I ask the horse to canter once again. We canter until I feel him slowing his rhythm. I break him to a walk, let him rest a little, and ask him to canter one last time. His body finally relaxes underneath me as he understands what I want from him, this easy, leisurely gait, and we walk, finished for today.

  “Guess he found fourth gear.” Malachi chuckles from the fence, spearing the last of the sardines. He delicately blots his lips with a napkin from his shirt pocket. Misha and Lulu meow a duet under his feet, and he gives them the tin to lick out.

  “He’s strong,” I agree and take a deep breath so my lungs can catch up with my pounding heart before I dismount onto surprisingly shaky legs. A few more sessions and MoneyTalk will find his balance and understand that we do not gallop off with our rider, that it just creates more work because he will still have to canter when he is done running away. Horses do not like to do extra wo
rk and learn quickly what they should do to avoid it. Malachi takes the horse from me and walks him back to the barn, where he will untack him and sponge him down with Vetrolin and cool water. My heart is still thumping.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” I say, following them into the barn.

  “Yes, you are,” Malachi agrees.

  * * *

  Malachi rubs MoneyTalk down with the liniment and sets up his legs in bandages. He does both sets of legs, left and right, passing his hands under Money’s left side—old racetrack habits—although Malachi has never admitted to working on a track. Has never admitted to working anywhere, come to think of it, except this farm. He claims no past, no history, as though, like Athena from Zeus, he had sprung, full-grown, from the grassy fields and knotty woods that surround the farm.

  “So, I’ve been thinking about that music album since I got home,” I remark to Malachi as he expertly sets up the last bandage, tight and neat, around Money’s back leg. “I mean, for what that lady spent flying it to Phoenix, she could have hired a band for my father’s funeral.”

  “You know it weren’t about the music,” Malachi grunts. He is still neat and clean while I am covered with more dust than a rodeo clown.

  “Then, I’m very curious to know what it was about,” I say.

  The phone rings in the house, jangling the barn extension.

  “I say, let well enough be.” He throws a cooler over Money’s back. “It’s all ancient history, and history belongs in the past.”

  He puts Money in his stall and throws him a flake of hay, then brings in the two-year-old Friesian colt. We have a potential customer coming to look him over. It would make David very happy if I sold a horse or two during the coming fiscal year. Or any fiscal year. Malachi begins to groom the colt, trimming off the whiskers, neatening up the hair around his ears, brushing the silky black feathering on his legs. He dabs a bit of Vaseline around the eyes and muzzle to highlight them, an old horseman’s trick.

  The phone rings again, then stops. Malachi works silently. Thirty minutes later, when he is finished, it rings again. It is Sandra’s pattern to call every half hour throughout the entire day until I answer.

  “You want to get that?” Malachi finally asks.

  “No,” I say. “We have a client coming for the colt. I want to help get him ready.”

  “No, you don’t,” Malachi says. “You always mess things up.”

  I do. I don’t like selling my young horses; I want to keep them all. I always manage to murmur the wrong thing in front of a prospective buyer, like, “He’s a nice horse. Hardly bucks and rears anymore.” Or, “Once he stops biting, he should be a safe horse to have around.”

  Another ring.

  “Definitely sounds like your sister,” says Malachi. “Go answer it. She might be getting divorced again this week.”

  “Divorce is so last week,” I reply. “This week she’s probably disowning her cat and her kids again.”

  * * *

  “Did you steal that album?” Sandra asks as soon as I pick up the barn phone. I guess it didn’t take long for her to figure out where the album went.

  “You mean the one Mom was going to throw out?” I try not to sound defensive. “What makes you ask?”

  “Because it belongs to Dad’s estate,” she says. “And I’m entitled to one half if Mom doesn’t want them.”

  “Actually once Mom put it in the trash, it technically ceased to be part of the estate,” I say. “It was an act of—of—uh—dis-cardation, which officially removes it from the estate and puts it up for grabs.” I’m thinking I probably should have run that terminology past David.

  “Don’t give me that legal talk,” she snaps. “Those records could be valuable collectibles.”

  “Didn’t you take all of Dad’s clothes back with you?” I remind her. “And his books and his tools? Not to mention his Air Force pins and his college ring and the gold watch, even though Mom said to leave it in the drawer?”

  “I’m keeping it all for Mom for when she moves in with me.”

  “Actually, Sandra, she said she wanted to stay in Phoenix,” I remind her, realizing I should stop, because I don’t want to continue bickering. I have always backed away from arguing with her, because she is a human escalator. She brings every discussion to the top floor of anger. “You even took his old shoes,” I add. “Plus you took all the old inventory from Mom’s shop.” Sandra had sat up several nights in a row feverishly packing up ugly faded gift wrap, wrinkled ribbons, mugs that said I LOVE ELVIS, ceramic owls wearing big black eyeglasses and mortarboards on their heads printed with CONGRATS, GRAD. I had watched her whisk the stuff into cartons while wondering whether there was a gene for pack rats with bad taste.

  “I might have wanted at least something from Dad,” I tell her, even though it’s mostly not true. “I still might.”

  This gives Sandra pause. She hates to give anything up. “You should be more sympathetic,” she finally says. “I need things for my eBay sales. I could be divorcing Harrison any day now, and I have to protect myself financially.”

  “I’m sure there’s a huge market for twenty-five-year-old moldy wrapping paper,” I say and we hang up.

  * * *

  Malachi has finished with the black colt and has brought Lisbon, my white rescue Thoroughbred, in from the field. Lisbon has gotten into another scrape with Toby, the official ringleader of the three black geldings that he is turned out with. Under Toby’s direction, the other horses had cornered Lisbon and kicked him, and now there is blood streaming down his back leg, staining his white hair a menacing red. I turn on the cold water and unwind the hose so Malachi can wash off the blood and check the scrapes.

  “Sandra wants that album,” I tell him, handing him the hose.

  He runs cold water on Lisbon’s leg until the bleeding staunches, then goes to the medicine cabinet for antibiotic spray. A few minutes of rummaging around and he comes back with a sheepish look.

  “What was I going for?” he asks.

  “Blu-Kote.”

  He returns with a can of Blu-Kote antibacterial and sprays a blue patch on the white hair to seal over the wound before continuing our conversation. “Do you need it?” he asks. “The album, I mean.”

  I think about it. “No.”

  “Then let it go,” Malachi says. “Your dad is gone. What difference does it make?”

  “But my father—that Rowena woman called him a—you know.” I can’t bring myself to say the word. “I want to know why she called him that.”

  “If somebody called my father a murderer?” Malachi says softly. “I would just leave it alone.”

  He finishes with Lisbon and puts him in his stall. “I guess it’s a good thing this horse won’t fight back, or I’d be spraying antiseptic on the whole damn herd,” he says. “He’s a powerhouse of a horse.”

  “They’re all geldings in his paddock,” I complain as I slide the lock on Lisbon’s stall door. “Geldings are supposed to get along.”

  “This horse has been abused.” Malachi makes a face. “Abused horses get all twisted in their heads. They learn fear—they’re afraid to fight for themselves.”

  “But he’s been with me for three years,” I counter. “He should be over it by now.”

  Malachi points a blue-stained finger at me. “I keep tellin’ you, you gotta separate him from the others before he gets badly hurt. Toby knows this guy’s a coward, and he’ll never let up on him.” He lets out a long sigh. “Black and white, it’s nature, they’ll never allow him into the herd. That’s the way rules go. If you want to worry about murder, worry about his.”

  * * *

  Murder is on my mind. And my father. And I can’t reconcile the two. I decide, finally, to find Rowena Jackson, of Boston, Massachusetts, and talk to her.

  That night I look for her on the Internet. I find a Dr. Rowena Jackson, who teaches biology at Boston University. I write down the number to call tomorrow morning.

  It is my Rowena
Jackson.

  I thank her for the album, inquire about her father, her return flight, and commiserate about how hot it was at the funeral, reminding her it’s a dry heat. Then I ask her.

  “You said something,” I start. “You mentioned how your father was very angry once and called my father a—” I can’t finish the sentence.

  “Murderer,” she says. “My father says he was very angry at the time. But he’s regretted it deeply, deeply. That’s what he always wanted to tell your father. He wanted to apologize and ask his forgiveness.”

  “Why would he say something like that, anyway?” I ask, relieved that she knew what I wanted from her.

  “Oh, it had something to do with that incident while they were in the army together,” she replies. “You know, that horrible bus thing. He thought your father was responsible for getting his best friend killed.”

  Chapter 8

  All VA hospitals smell the same. Of sour old men pungent from sickness and bad hygiene, dreaming old dreams, staring with blank eyes into their past.

  We are in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and I am following Rowena Jackson through gray-blue corridors, across stained tile floors, stepping over suspicious puddles and into odd-shaped shadows cast from poor lighting.

  I am going to meet her father, Private First Class Willie Jackson. He is ninety, and in frail health. She was pleased that I had contacted her, and had called me back later that night to tell me how eager he was to talk to me.

  “His mind is good,” she had told me over the phone. “He remembers everything, but the rest of his health isn’t so great. He’s been deaf since the war. Has high blood pressure, diabetes—lost a leg to it. His heart bothers him, too. I’m sure you understand the heart thing.”

  No. I never understood the hearts of men.

  * * *

  Willie Jackson is sitting in his wheelchair, facing the window, and all I see of him, at first, is the back of his head and a steel-gray crew cut. I expected him to be small, diminished by old age, but he is tall, slim, and quite erect, singing to himself while serenely contemplating the clear water-blue Massachusetts sky. As I draw closer, I hear the words.