Somehow it happened. Willie must’ve had too much ale. Not like Willie who’d used to be a drunk but had reformed, to a degree. Could not burn off the alcohol like he’d done. Your liver starts to weaken. Once you turn fifty. Telling Hazel when she brought him his chocolate cream custard pie and coffee about the old days in Horseheads, when him and Ethel had been kids. And Hazel nodding and smiling politely though she had other customers to serve, and tables to clear. And Willie hears this loud old-man’s voice asking, “D’you know why Horseheads is named like it is, Hazel?” and the young woman smiles saying no she guesses she don’t, Willie is all but touching her elbow to keep her from running off saying, “There was actual horseheads here! I mean actual horse-heads. A long time ago, see. We’re talking like-1780s. Before the settlers came. Some of ‘ em were Judds, see. My people. Me and Ethel’s people. Great-great-great-great somethin’, if you figured it. A long time ago. There was this General Sullivan fighting the Iroquois. Had to come up from Pennsylvania. There was three hundred horses for the soldiers and to carry things. They fought the damn Indians, and had to retreat. And the horses collapsed. There was three hundred of ‘em. It was said the soldiers had to shoot ’em. But didn’t bury ‘em. You can see you wouldn’t, huh? You would not bury three hundred horses if you were near to collapsing yourself, huh? Fighting the Iroquois that’d as soon tear out your liver and guzzle it as look at you. They did that to their own kind, other Indians. Tried to wipe ’ em out. The Iroquois was the worst, like the Comanches out west. Sayin‘ then it was the white man brought evil to this continent, bullshit! The evil was in this continent in this actual soil when the white man showed up. My people came from somewhere in north England. Landed in New York right where you was born, Hazel, ain’t that a coincidence? ”New York harbor.“ There ain’t many folks born in ”New York harbor.“ I b’lieve in coincidences. The settlers pushed all the way out here. Damn if I know why. Must’ve been a wilderness then it ain’t exactly Fifth Avenue, New York, now, huh? Anyway, the settlers come out here, a year or so later, first damn thing they see is these horse skeletons all over. Along the riverbank and in the fields. Three hundred horse skulls and skeletons. They couldn’t figure what the hell it was, there was not much knowledge of history in those days. You’d hear things by rumor I suppose. You could not turn on the radio, TV. Three hundred horse skulls all bleached in the sun so they called it ”Horseheads.“” Willie was panting by this time. Willie had reached out to grasp the waitress’s elbow by this time. In the Blue Moon everybody had ceased talking and even the jukebox had gone abruptly silent where Rosemary Clooney had been singing just a minute ago. Could hear a pin drop it would be reported. Ethel Sweet would be stricken to the heart next day. Hearing how her big brother Willie had gotten drunk and lovesick over Hazel he’d done a favor for and would have reason to think she would do some favor for him not wishing to consider would a woman that young and pretty wish to marry a man his age, and girth.
So Willie starts to stammer. Flush-faced, knowing he’s made a spectacle of himself. But not knowing how to back out of it saying, guffawing, “Anyway, Hazel. That’s how ”Horseheads’ came to be. What you got to wonder, is why’d they stay here? Why the hell’d anybody stay here? Poke through the grass there’s not one or two or a dozen horse heads there’s three hundred. And you decide to stay, settle down and stake out a claim, build a house, plow the land and have your kids and the rest is history. That’s the twenty-four-dollar question, Hazel, God damn ain’t it?“
Hazel was startled by Willie’s vehemence. Loud-laughing and red in the face as she’d never seen him. Murmuring some muffled words not overheard by anyone except Willie, the waitress slipped away from his grasp and hurried through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
Willie’d seen the repugnance in her face. All that talk of horse skeletons, skulls, “Horseheads”-he’d ruined any beauty the moment might have had.
Next morning, Hazel Jones and the child were gone forever from Horseheads.
It was an early, 7:20 A.M. Greyhound bus they’d caught out on route 13 with all their suitcases, cardboard boxes, and shopping bags. The Greyhound was southbound from Syracuse and Ithaca to Elmira, Binghamton and beyond. Hazel would leave their room spic-and-span Ethel Sweet would report. Her bed and the child’s cot stripped of all linens including the mattress covers and these neatly folded for the wash. The bathroom Hazel and the child had shared with two other boarders, Hazel left equally clean, the bathtub scrubbed after she’d used it very early that morning, her towels folded for the wash. The single closet in the room was empty, all the wire hangers remaining. Every drawer of the bureau was empty. Not a pin, not a button remained. The wicker wastebasket in the room had been emptied into one of the trash cans at the rear of the Inn. On the bureau top was an envelope addressed to mrs. ethel sweet. Inside were several bills constituting full payment for the room through the entire month of April (though it was only April 17) and a brief note, heartbreaking to Ethel Sweet who was losing not just her most reliable boarder but a kind of daughter as she was coming to think of Hazel Jones. The neatly handwritten note would be shown to numerous individuals, read and reread and pondered in Horseheads for a long time.
Dear Ethel-
Zacharias and I are called away suddenly, we are sorry to leave such a warm good place. I hope this will suffise for April rent.
Maybe we will all meet again sometime, my thanks to you and to Willie from the bottom of my heart.
Your friend “Hazel”
5
It was an old river city on the St. Lawrence at the northeast edge of Lake Ontario. It looked to be about the size of the city of his earliest memory on the barge canal. On the far side of the river which was the widest river he’d ever seen was a foreign country: Canada. To the east were the Adirondack Mountains. Canada, Adirondack were new words to him, exotic and musical.
Observers would have assumed she’d traveled south with the child. Instead she’d changed buses at Binghamton, traveled impulsively north to Syracuse, and to Watertown, and now beyond to the northernmost boundary of the state.
“To throw them off. Just in case.”
That shrewdness that had become instinctive in her. In no immediate or discernible relationship with available logic or even probability. It was keeping-going, the child knew. He’d become addicted to keeping-going, too.