“What do you want me to do?”
Just an old talking doll whose string has been pulled once again, he thought disgustedly, listening.
5.
Barney Cannon had left his daughter about a hundred acres of prime pastureland west of Parkerville, south of McMinnville. Most of the western portion of it was now probably leased to other ranchers; Glenda was not interested in cattle. But set in the northeast corner, like an emerald in a haybale, was the twenty-acre parcel called EastWind Farm.
EastWind had always looked more like an artist’s conception of a ranch than a working operation. It’s perfectly white, straight fences enclosed lush, uniformly verdant fields (thanks to cheap federal water) where gamboled the Arabians, dainty but strong. Like Glenda herself.
But as Sam drove up the oleandered drive on Tuesday he noticed a few flaws in Xanadu. The horses were as sleek as ever, but a broken railing by the entrance was sloppily patched and stringy weeds wrapped themselves around fence posts. He passed the modest brick ranch house — luxury was reserved for the horses — and pulled up in front of the stables, where a window had been boarded up with plywood.
That broken window would have been replaced immediately in Barney’s day, he mused, getting out of the car. But then Barney had been dead for three years now. He wondered just how well Glenda and EastWind were doing without Daddy to fall back on.
The stables seemed to be bereft of human life, although several horses whinnied and stamped in their stalls. An intense, familiar aroma permeated the place: hay — no attar of roses but plain old alfalfa; horse manure — definitely the ordinary variety; horse urine, horse dander... he sneezed violently.
Damn.
Sam had not lied to Claire: he could ride perfectly well. He had learned young; all his little friends rode, and dreamed of rodeos and roundups. But his own cowboy aspirations had been squelched around age eleven when it became humiliatingly clear that he was acutely allergic to horses. Not to the animals themselves, perhaps, but to their by-products, and their whole way of life. Out on the trail he was fine, but as soon as he entered a barn...
He sneezed again and was fumbling for a Kleenex when a brusque “What do you want?” interrupted him. A teenage girl was regarding him suspiciously over the top of a stall door that said “Barney’s Pride”; her broad face was freckled and her reddish hair drawn back in a ponytail, and from the haze of dust settling behind her, it seemed that she had just mucked out the stall.
“Hi,” Sam said, backing away from the lethal cloud. “I’m supposed to meet Glenda here at two. I’m Sam Cooper.”
“She’s out riding,” Ponytail said in a hostile voice and turned back to her task. Sam walked back outside and settled onto a barrel; he was not a vain man, but he would just as soon have his nose stop dripping before Glenda showed up.
He had waited ten minutes and was starting to feel irritated when there was a thunder of hooves, a flash of white mane and gold hair, and Glenda rounded the barn and galloped straight towards him.
Well, he knew this game. He sat relaxed and unflinching, and at the last moment she pulled up five feet in front of him, slid off, and called commandingly, “PEGGY!” Ponytail came hurrying out of the barn and Glenda handed her the reins.
“Cool him down, I rode him pretty hard. Didn’t want to keep Sam waiting,” she said with a grin in his direction that seemed to intensify the girl’s sulkiness; she glared at him as she led the horse away.
Glenda pulled off her gloves and extended her hand.
“Howdy, Sam. How are you? You’re looking good,” she added with a frank glance that momentarily stripped away his composure. His face grew hot and his gaze shifted to his feet. He reminded himself that in the years since Glenda he had slept with a number of women quite successfully, had gained no weight and lost no — almost no — hair, and in fact probably looked better than usual since he was wearing a shirt Claire had bought him. He passed a hand over the soft material, obscurely reassured.
Neutrally he responded, “You’re looking good too,” which was expected but true. Breathtakingly true. He had thought she might have begun to erode, like EastWind — it had been impossible to tell what lay under the mask of makeup she had worn during the Rodeo Parade — but she looked great: taut, trim, tan, a little weathered, but all the more appealing for it. Her face, with its high cheekbones, slanting eyes, and delicate mouth, had been kittenish in youth. Now it was truly beautiful.
“Well,” she said after this moment of mutual appraisal, “I sure do appreciate your coming out, Sam. Let’s go into the tack room; I’ve got the letters in there. Wait a minute” — she sat on the barrel recently vacated by Sam — “let me get out of these boots.”
In an instant Peggy materialized. “I’ll do it, Glenda,” she said, kneeling at her feet in an attitude of adoration more abject than the act required. Pubescent hero-worship? wondered Sam. Or something more? Whatever the emotion, it probably explained her ill will towards him.
He followed Glenda down the length of the barn, struck by how small she suddenly was. He had forgotten that; on her white stallion she was an Amazon, and riding boots gave her height, but actually she was very petite. Back in high school, in that era of exaggerated gender differences, he had found her doll-like diminutiveness adorable, but now... he was six foot one, and Claire was tall and long-limbed, and he liked that, he realized with something like relief. With Glenda he would feel like a child molester—
“Got a cold?” she asked, looking back. He had sneezed.
He hesitated. “Yeah,” he said finally.
They entered the tack room, which was like a bunkhouse without the bunks: a potbellied stove, a cot in the comer, saddles, bridles, boots, and other horsey paraphernalia strewn about. Next to the door was a big oak roll-top desk, piled high with papers. Sam picked one up at random; it was a vet’s bill, second notice: “Is there some reason why you haven’t responded...?”
The letters were locked in the top drawer of the desk. There were five of them, printed in the completely anonymous typeface of a dot-matrix printer: so much for typewriters with “e”s out of alignment and letters snipped from the London Times. Perched on the comer of the desk, Sam held the letters gingerly and opened them one by one.
The first two were merely mildly pornographic, suggesting nothing that Sam hadn’t imagined himself once upon a time, and he was uncomfortably aware of Glenda watching him expressionlessly. The third was longer, and slightly sadistic. But the last was different: three ominous words in the middle of the page.
“Since I broke up with Eddie,” she said, “I’ve gotten letters twice.” She hesitated. “Both times, I was going out with somebody. He seemed to know, somehow. No matter how discreet I was. But this time — I don’t know what set him off.”
“Did he ever threaten you before?” By now it was tacitly accepted that they were talking about Eddie Froelich.
“In the letters, you mean? No. But when we were married he used to... to knock me around occasionally. Nothing serious.” She smiled wryly. “Nothing broken.”
Oh, of course. Of course Eddie would “knock around” women. He was a bully and a whiner, and Sam felt his face flush with anger.
But then why was she protecting him? Was it possible, after all this, that she still loved him? Had she ever loved him? He had always wanted to believe that she hadn’t, but knew very well his feelings about her couldn’t be trusted.