Part 16 (2/2)

I bought some and talked with her about cheese for a couple of minutes before getting around to the question I really wanted to ask. ”Is Billy Boudreaux around, by any chance?”

”There's no one here by that name. Maybe you're looking for Frank.”

”Frank?”

”The owner. He's around here somewhere.” She pointed across the driveway, where half a dozen hay bales surrounded a big brown cow. ”He'll be doing a milking demonstration right over there in about fifteen minutes.”

”Thanks,” I said. I took off across the pumpkin patch, past a sign that said Sugar Pie. As I was crossing the road I saw that the field in front of me was made up of long rows of dry-looking dirt. I thought of the potato patch Lila had shown me that day, forever ago, when I visited Dorothy with her for the last time. I had a pit-of-my-stomach feeling, a s.h.i.+very sort of reaction that caused me to turn slowly in my tracks, toward the house rising up at the end of the driveway. I'd hardly noticed it at first, obscured as it was by a row of fir trees almost as tall as the house, but by looking between the trees now I could see the wraparound porch and dormer windows, the ramshackle additions on the west-facing side of the house.

I had been here before.

IT WAS AN INSTINCT, MORE SO THAN A FULLY formed idea, that pulled me across the pasture to the old horse. When I was within ten feet of the animal, she lifted her head and regarded me.

I was sideways to her, something Lila had taught me. ”A horse's vision is peripheral,” she had said. ”If you approach them straight on, they get spooked. And don't look them in the eye right away-that's what predators do.”

”Hi, girl,” I called out, proceeding very slowly. The horse stomped and swished her tail. As I drew closer, she took a few steps away. I stopped and stood still for a minute. Finally, I held out my arm, wis.h.i.+ng I had an apple or carrot to offer.

The horse was old and swaybacked, graying, with protruding teeth, rheumy eyes, and a white stripe down her face. I stepped closer, and this time she didn't back away. Soon I was close enough to feel her warm, moist breath on my arm. I patted her very gently on the jaw; she snorted and blinked.

”Hey there,” I said in a quiet voice.

She stomped weakly and swished her tail again. A fly landed on her left eye. She blinked, but the fly remained there. I shooed it away and began petting her flank. She inched closer. Her fur was thick and s.h.i.+ny, and when I touched it, to my surprise, I didn't experience the same revulsion I'd felt as a young girl whenever I touched a horse. She had that distinctive horse smell-dirt and oats and sun.

A horse is just a horse, I told myself. Don't all horses, to a layperson, look the same?

”How old are you?” I said.

I heard footsteps behind me, and turned to see a man in jeans and a plaid flannel s.h.i.+rt walking toward me from the direction of the barn, carrying a small bucket. ”Thirty-one,” he said. ”She's old but tough.” He came around on the other side of her and ran his hand along her back. ”Just like me, huh, old girl?” he said, hugging her around the neck. He looked at me and said, ”We're getting all our old-age symptoms at the same time-arthritis, failing eyesight, stiff legs, the works. My wife tells me that pretty soon she's going to have to put me out to pasture, too.” He reached into the bucket and pulled out a turnip, which he cut into small pieces with a pocketknife before offering it to her on the flat of his hand. She nibbled it slowly.

”You must be here for Farm Trails weekend,” he said. ”We're a lot busier than usual this year. Must be a slow day in the city.”

”This is your farm?” I asked.

”Mine and my wife's. As of 1983. Back when we bought it they only had a few cattle-it was an apple farm in those days-but we expanded over the years, and in 1998 we turned it into a fully organic operation. Now we have nine hundred cattle. Still small as dairy farms go, but more than big enough to keep us busy. I'm Frank Boudreaux,” he said, offering me his hand.

”Ellie.”

His handshake was firm but not too forceful, and I could feel the thick calluses where his fingers met his palm.

”It's a beautiful piece of land,” I said.

”We think so.” He patted the horse, who nuzzled her head against his shoulder. He pulled out a couple of blackberries, and she took them from his hand. ”When my wife and I bought the farm, we just thought of it as a way to go off the grid, make ends meet, and have a better quality of life. We never dreamed of all this.” He tended to the horse while he talked, checking her ears, dabbing her eyes with a damp cloth. Finally, he dumped the remaining turnips on the ground in front of her and said, ”I'm about to milk Tabitha. That's pretty much the day's main attraction, if you want to join us.”

I couldn't figure out how to tell him why I was really there. Instead I just smiled and said, ”Wouldn't miss it.” I patted the horse's flank and ventured a question, unsure if I was ready for the answer. ”What's her name?”

”Dorothy. I'm surprised she didn't run away from you. She doesn't usually take too well to strangers.” Frank glanced over at me. ”Hey, are you all right?”

”We're not strangers,” I managed to say.

”Come again?”

”Dorothy and I go way back. I knew her before she came out here, back when she was being stabled in Montara.”

He did a double take then, studying my face. ”What did you say your name is?”

”Ellie.”

”Enderlin?” he asked.

I nodded.

He looked at the ground. For a few seconds neither one of us spoke. Finally he looked up. ”You're not here to milk the cow, are you?”

”No.”

What he said next completely took me off guard. ”I think I always knew you'd show up one of these days. In a way, I suppose I've been waiting for you.”

”You have?”

”Yeah. I'm glad you're here. I want to talk to you.” He looked up the hill, fl.u.s.tered. ”Unfortunately, I've got all these kids over there, waiting for me to put on a show. Why don't you stick around? This afternoon, after everyone is gone, we can sit down and talk.”

”Okay,” I said. I was beginning to feel a bit dizzy, like everything was happening too fast. I didn't know what to make of this man, this place. Part of me wanted all the answers. Another part of me, I realized, wasn't prepared for this.

For the next few hours, time took on a hazy, unreal quality. I sat on a hay bale in the circle of children while Frank showed us how to milk Tabitha. The children had a go, one by one, followed by their reluctant parents, and then it was my turn to sit on the little metal stool. I'd never milked a cow before, and it was nothing like I thought it would be. The teat looked like a finger, or a flaccid p.e.n.i.s. When I squeezed and pulled, squirting the milk into a plastic cup, Tabitha lifted her tail and released a large, wet dollop of s.h.i.+t. This delighted the children, one of whom promptly declared it ”grosser than gross.” I declined to drink the milk, even though everyone else had drunk theirs.

”Drink it!” someone yelled. It was the little boy who had been chasing the dog, Rowdy. Then the other kids joined in, until they were all chanting, ”Drink it! Drink it!” So I did. It was warm and weirdly sweet, and it was an effort to get it down.

”I'm not cut out for farm life,” I'd said to Lila once, when we sat just a stone's throw from this very spot, on the porch of the big white farmhouse. We'd been sitting in rocking chairs, drinking lemonade. The lemonade was tart and pulpy, with little bits of sugar that hadn't melted. ”I like this part,” I'd said, as the ice cubes clinked in my plastic cup. ”The lemonade, the porch, the rocking chairs. It's like something out of The Waltons. But I wouldn't care for the rest of it-digging for potatoes, slopping the pigs, mucking the horse's stall, waking up at the crack of dawn.”

”You'd get used to it,” Lila said.

”I don't think so.”

She rocked back and forth, her face turned to the sun, and she talked to me with her eyes closed. ”You have this idea of what your life is, what it should be, and you're afraid to veer too far from it. But if you had to-I mean, say, for argument's sake, the big one hit and the city went up in flames, and somehow you ended up living in the country, and the only way you could survive was to raise your own food-you could do it. You might even like it. You might decide it actually suited you better than the life you have now.”

”Would I have MTV?” I asked, pouring myself a second helping of lemonade from the cold metal pitcher.

”No.”

”Would I get to drive into the city to shop and borrow books from the library?”

”No, all the stores burned down. The library, too. There's nothing. You have to make your own clothes out of drapes, just like Scarlett O'Hara. For entertainment, you have to tell stories in the evening by firelight.”

”Couldn't do it,” I said. ”I'd starve and go naked and ultimately die of boredom.”

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