White Horses Page 10

  A half hour later no one had yet stopped for them. “Jesus Christ,” Silver said. “Let’s start walking.”

  They walked in single file by the edge of the road for nearly a mile, and finally, a station wagon stopped. Teresa and the collie got into the back, Silver sat in front.

  The driver switched on the radio—loud—and, aside from the voice of the disc jockey, they were silent all the way into town. Teresa and Silver were let off on Divisadero Street, three blocks down from their own house. Silver held the door open for Teresa, Atlas jumped out and shook himself, then Silver slammed the door of the station wagon shut, and he started walking.

  “I want you to understand something,” Silver said when they were only a block away from home. They stood on a street corner. He twisted his knuckles, and they cracked, one at a time. “Nothing happened back there, understand?”

  Teresa nodded her head yes.

  “I was drunk,” Silver told her.

  That night there would be no stars, that night would be so hot everyone in town would sleep on rumpled sheets, wrinkled with sleeplessness. Through the bedroom wall, in the very next room, Silver would toss and turn, and Teresa would hear his every move, as she always did. But now, out in the sunlight, Teresa swallowed and turned to avoid Silver’s eyes. She hadn’t been drunk, she could have run, could have gotten away, moving faster than mosquitoes over the river, traveling on wings that were invisible with speed.

  “When you go inside just act like nothing happened,” Silver warned her.

  “All right,” Teresa agreed. “All right,” she whispered.

  “Good,” Silver said. He breathed easier. He patted her head. “I knew I could trust you,” he said. “I knew you’d keep your mouth shut. And anyway,” Silver told her as they began to walk once more, “it’s not as if anything really happened. Nothing did.”

  As they walked up the porch steps Teresa thought about the turning of the hawk’s wings, she remembered the smell of dry grass and the depth of the jade-colored water that swallowed her up as she swam in circles. If she tried, she knew she’d be able to forget: everything could be erased, every memory wiped away by unmoving, unforgiving air. And by the time they had walked into the house, and the screen door had slammed behind them, what had really happened between them was already disappearing. Soon, Teresa wouldn’t remember anything more than a brief kiss in the shadows on a day where everywhere else it was summer, and more than a hundred degrees.

  THREE

  THAT SUMMER ENDED with a good crop of tomatoes and yellow squash, it ended with a rash of fires up in the hills where the grass was golden and parched. Teresa was ill in late summer, she had one spell after another. If she could have she would have slept forever, she wished for a constant stretch of deep blue sleep, she wanted to avoid the high temperatures, the August butterflies, the look on Silver’s face each time she passed him on the staircase landing.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Dina asked her daughter. “You’re always hiding in your room, you never talk to anyone. Are you antisocial? Are you sick?”

  “It’s nothing,” Teresa insisted. “I just want to be by myself.”

  “Oh, of course,” Diana teased. “You’re such good company.”

  “Leave her alone,” Bergen advised Dina. “Being fourteen years old is no picnic.”

  “I survived it.” Dina shrugged. “Everyone does.”

  Up in her room, Teresa tried to clear her mind. She wanted desperately not to think—but it was no use. In spite of herself, she found she was going back into the past more and more every day. She sometimes found herself thinking about King Connors. If she strained she could almost hear him, out in the driveway at work on his truck before the sun had risen, then driving away while the morning was still bitter and dark. Up in her room Teresa found it wasn’t so easy to forget. Late at night she heard Silver open his bedroom window and let the midnight air inside, she felt every step when he paced the floor. So when her sleeping spells came Teresa wasn’t afraid—she wished for them, she wanted them. she couldn’t think of any better escape route out of her room and into the night.

  But she was lonely, there was no way around that, and so when Maureen from next door suggested that they start a babysitting service, Teresa quickly agreed. Anything was better than thinking about the past or listening for Silver to come home late at night. Teresa worked every weekend, every night she could. She sat in other people’s houses, she kept the children up long past their bedtime, grateful for their company and the distraction of card games and bottles and tears. Maureen and Teresa pooled their earnings; in a month they had nearly a hundred dollars saved. It was just as well that Teresa had a job, because there was no longer any money left in King Connors and Dina’s savings account, and if Teresa wanted anything extra—a new blouse or a paperback book—she had to dip into the babysitting money, carefully noting her withdrawal in the blue notebook Maureen kept in her desk drawer.

  It happened so quickly that Dina was taken by surprise one Monday in October—she had no money, not a cent. And when the payments could no longer be made on the house, and mortgage and tax bills filled a brown wicker basket, Arnie Bergen bought the house on Divisadero Street. The detective handed the deed to the house over to Dina the minute he had it, and to everyone’s amazement Dina didn’t put up a fight, she didn’t tell Bergen to mind his own business, she didn’t rip up the deed and throw herself on the mercy of the First National Bank. Instead, she kissed Bergen’s cheek, folded the deed into a coffee can, and then hid the can in the back of the kitchen cupboard. There was no reason Bergen shouldn’t buy the house, Dina explained to Teresa: he had money saved and few expenses, it was a good investment and he was a dear friend, a godsend. Teresa thanked Bergen by baking him a chocolate cake, which, in spite of his high blood sugar, he ate and proclaimed the best he had ever tasted. When he got into his car to drive back home to San Francisco at the end of the weekend, Bergen found a violet-colored envelope on his dashboard. Inside was a thank-you card with Dina’s signature scrawled in pale ink, ink that rose off the paper and surrounded Bergen with gratitude.

  Now that the house no longer belonged to him, everyone thought about King Connors. If he came back the house would look just the same to him. A mirage of plywood, a roof he had tarred only a few years ago, an oak banister he had restored with paint remover and steel wool, the stain of dark oil out in the driveway. But it was too late, and everyone knew it—King would never come back to Divisadero Street. How could he take off his work-shirt and go to the refrigerator for a beer when Bergen owned everything, even owned the yard where King Connors had always wanted to plant lemon trees, side by side, close to the house, so that the scent of early lemon flowers would wrap around the back porch. Bergen’s name was on the deed now, even though Dina was the only one who knew where the deed was stored. Silver resented living in another man’s house. If Silver was rarely home before, he was home even less now—on weekends, Teresa and Dina knew he wouldn’t come back at all, he wouldn’t set foot in the house until Arnie Bergen had driven back to San Francisco.

  It was easy for Silver to escape on weekends; he had finally bought a car, a blue Chevy with white leather seats. He was no longer concerned with weekday schedules, with dirty dishes and back doors. He had quit his job at Leona’s Restaurant; he possessed a new sense of time, one that had nothing to do with a time clock. On weekdays, when Teresa went to school, Silver didn’t get home until dawn. He would sleep till afternoon, then at two or three he would wake and dress in one of the pairs of blue jeans he insisted Dina iron. After coffee and breakfast, Silver would leave the house and drive downtown to the Dragon. There he would meet Angel Gregory.

  Silver had become a runner for Gregory; he drove all night to Oakland or south San Francisco to pick up packages wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, he sat on the last stool in Mission Street bars, one eye watching the door, just making certain that a midnight raid wouldn’t keep him from driving back to Santa Rosa and deli
vering the merchandise to Gregory. When it came down to cutting and selling the dope, Silver was only a bystander, a mere messenger. Silver made the connections, but Gregory owned the connections, and the most important one was a man called Vallais. The big money belonged to Gregory, but Silver brought home two hundred dollars a week, enough to buy the Chevy, enough to satisfy him for the moment, but just for the moment—before long Silver was certain he’d be able to trade in his Chevy for something worthwhile, he’d drive to San Francisco in a brand-new sports car, the metal would glow as he drove across the Golden Gate Bridge in the moonlight, every window open, every bit of starlight shining on his face.

  True, at the beginning of the summer Silver had sworn he would never work for Gregory, but it was better than working at Leona’s and far better than dealing with punks like Eddie and Roland. Besides, Silver didn’t plan to be a runner forever, he planned to be the boss.

  “Where do you go?” Dina asked one day when Silver came down to the kitchen for coffee. It was nearly four in the afternoon. “Where are you every night?” Dina said as she placed a cup and saucer in front of her son.

  “I have another life.” Silver smiled. “A secret life,” he told Dina. “In the daytime I’m only a poor boy, ah but at night …”

  “At night?” Dina asked.

  Silver walked to his mother and stood very near. “A millionaire,” he whispered.

  Heat spiraled around Silver, as if something was burning under his skin. Dina pushed him away. “A millionaire? Then how about paying some of our bills?”

  Silver went back to the table and picked up his coffee cup. “Why should I?” he said. “You’ve got Bergen for that.”

  “Arnie Bergen doesn’t pay my bills,” Dina said.

  “All right,” Silver shrugged. “If that’s what you say.”

  “If you think something is going on between me and Arnie you’re wrong.”

  “Don’t give me any of that crap,” Silver said. “Who do you think you’re kidding? Not that I care. It’s your life.”

  Dina went to the back door and kicked it open with her foot. She was embarrassed to admit that she was indeed involved with a man her son didn’t approve of. “Get out,” she told Silver.

  “Oh come on,” Silver said. “You don’t want me to go.”

  “I mean it.” Dina’s mouth was tight, but as soon as she began to imagine a house without Silver, a house without that smell of fire, she regretted kicking open the door.

  “You’re not serious,” Silver told his mother. He finished his coffee and left the cup on the drainboard near the sink. “What would you do without me?” he asked as he picked up his car keys from the counter. “After all,” he told Dina as he walked out the door, “I’m your favorite.”

  It was true that he was her favorite. If it had been Silver and not Reuben who had jumped off the train in Los Angeles, Dina would have cried herself to sleep for months, she would have lit candles on the anniversary of that day every year for the rest of her life. It was not that Silver resembled anyone, though he had the same dark eyes as Dina’s father and King Connor’s long legs—it was because he was so much himself that Dina loved him more than her other children. She would have sacrificed the others to save Silver in a minute, and every time she looked at him she was sure he was the perfect stranger that she had known forever.

  Dina had always heard about men like Silver, he was just like those outlaws her own father had called Arias—his name for the men who appeared out of nowhere, who rode white horses across the mesas with no particular destination other than red deserts, the cool waterholes, the streams that had cut their way through miles of black rocks. These Arias weren’t lost men. Dina’s father had made that very clear. They were riders who knew the way back to the cities they had come from; they knew the way home, to places as far away as Virginia and New York, as distant as Spain. But they never turned back, never went home, they were always traveling west, always moving toward the sun.

  Dina’s father was a settled man, he knew he would live to see each rosebush he planted flower and bloom. He owned a building-supply store that had been his father’s before him. He never complained, never threatened to run off to another life. Still he had an eye turned toward the hills, and when Dina was a child she and her father took nightly walks. They left Dina’s mother at home and walked so far that they could no longer see any houses.

  “Ghosts,” Dina would whisper when they heard a noise from far away, a sound that might easily have been a branch breaking or the first hint of thunder.

  “An Aria,” Dina’s father would tell her. “A man who travels at night.”

  In time, Dina discovered how her father knew about such men. When he was a boy, Dina’s father had run away from home. He left in the middle of the night wearing heavy boots and carrying a leather pack filled with fruit and bread. He had gone off to the hills, to the place called the Black Mesa, where the rocks were moon-colored and cold. There had been an argument at home—the boy’s father sometimes spoke more harshly than he felt and the argument had been petty, about something as stupid as clothes not hung in a closet, chickens not fed. All the same, Dina’s father was a boy with a sense of honor; he headed toward the hills and stayed away without any thoughts of returning home. He wandered for three days, but on the fourth his food ran out, suddenly his boots didn’t feel warm enough, he seemed much too far from home. And then one evening, soon after dusk, Dina’s father met up with an Aria, a man who appeared on horseback, riding out of the east.

  The rider carried thick saddlebags and wore a belt studded with turquoise. When he stepped off his horse he didn’t have a shadow, and Dina’s father found himself wishing that his own father was by his side.

  “If you’re lost, you don’t belong out here,” the Aria said, and Dina’s father had to agree that he didn’t. “As long as you know that,” the Aria told the boy, “as long as you know you belong at home.”

  The Aria shared his dinner with the boy. The moon had risen and a great hawk circled the sky while the Aria wolfed down his food and then cleaned his pots with black sand. Dina’s father noticed that his companion wore a silver gun, a pistol. Every star was brilliant, ten times its usual size.

  That night the boy couldn’t sleep. He imagined wolves and bears and untamed horses with diamonds set into their hoofs. At dawn the Aria lifted Dina’s father onto his horse to take him back to Santa Fe. Every moment propelled the boy backward in time; he kept a watch for coyotes, he held on tight to a man who was so comfortable on horseback it seemed he had ridden across the mesa forever.

  As they rode, sand flew into the boy’s eyes; all the same, they got to Santa Fe much too quickly. The rider left him on the edge of the city, outside a bakery. They had barely spoken to each other, but when the Aria turned and rode off, leaving him on a street where cinnamon and cloves fell onto the sidewalk in dusty patches, Dina’s father felt as though his heart was breaking. He would have given anything to be in the Aria’s boots, or just to have followed behind, riding a pony who knew every command from a simple nod or the click of his tongue. But the Aria had guessed the truth right away—Dina’s father didn’t belong out there—he was a city boy who hadn’t the nerve for black nights and even blacker desires.

  No matter how hard he tried, Dina’s father couldn’t forget that rider, and on nights when there was thunder, when it seemed that wild horses ran across the mesas, Dina’s father always looked toward the hills, and Dina could see his skin electrify with longing. Each time there was a rumor that someone had climbed over a garden gate to steal oranges or water. Dina’s father was quiet; he looked down at the sand, searching for something timeless, something that couldn’t be seen with the eye.

  When her father had first begun to talk about the men in the hills, Dina was a girl of ten. She wondered if she might run away and join them. She imagined that there were women alongside the men, women who wore ruby earrings and were able to start a fire by rubbing sand between their fingers. When sh
e told her father her thoughts, he laughed out loud. These women you’re thinking of aren’t in the hills, Dina’s father told her, they live in houses at the edge of the city, their front doors are always unlocked, dinner is always cooking on the stove, ready to be served at a moment’s notice. These women never know when their men will be home, or for how long. They never know if their men will bring home gold or just a bad case of lice. Some of them are married to Arias, and some of them aren’t, but all of them wait in the doorway and sleep alone almost every night.

  When the moon is full, that orange color it sometimes is, then the Arias may take these women with them. On these nights the women know why the Arias are gone from home so much, they know why their men don’t really have a home, and never will. In the moonlight the women shiver, not because they’re cold—it’s the beauty of the night that chills them, it’s knowing that until the next time they ride across the mesa they have to be content with windows and doors, with houses that are never warm enough and roofs that leak every time it rains.

  Soon Dina stopped thinking about riding off into the night, but she had decided to ignore her father’s advice. Don’t ever look for one of these men, he had told her. These men are like wolves, they come out of the silence when you least expect them. They’re partial to precious stones and cold blue loneliness, and sometimes they’re evil and sometimes they’re just proud, but they never act like we do. They don’t think about right and wrong the way we do, they never care about yellow roses along a stone wall or dinner served on a china plate or someone to talk to. Any man who tells you he wouldn’t give his skin to be one of them is a liar, Dina’s father told her, although the smart ones know they’d have to give more than just their skin. But a woman who goes looking for them deserves every damn thing she gets, and what she’ll get is loneliness, day and night.