'Is it okay for you to take time out like this?' 'Oh sure. If it gets busy, I'll go help.' It wasn't yet noon and the place was still quiet. Tom normally didn't like to eat much at midday and he rarely ate meat nowadays, but Hal had been so keen to cook him a burger he'd pretended he was up for it. At the next table, four men in suits and a lot of wrist jewelry were talking loudly about a deal they'd done. Not the normal kind of clientele, Hal had discreetly informed him. But Tom had enjoyed watching them. He was always impressed by the energy of New York. He was just glad he didn't have to live here.
'How's your mother?' he asked.
'She's great. She's playing again. Leo's fixed for her to give a concert at a gallery just around the corner here on Sunday.'
That's good.'
'She was going to come along today and see you but last night there was this colossal row and the pianist walked out, so now it's all panic to find someone else. She said to give you her best.'
'Well you make sure to give her mine.'
They talked about Hal's course and his plans for the summer. He said he'd like to come out to Montana for a couple of weeks and it seemed to Tom that he meant it and wasn't just saying it to make him feel wanted. Tom told him how he was going to be working with the yearlings and some of the older colts he'd bred. Talking about it made him long to get started. His first summer for years with no clinics, no traveling, just being there by the mountains and seeing the country come to life again.
The diner was getting busy so Hal had to go back to work. He wouldn't let Tom pay and came out with him onto the sidewalk. Tom put his hat on and noticed the glance Hal gave it. He hoped it wasn't too embarrassing to be seen with a cowboy. It was always a little awkward when they said goodbye, with Tom thinking maybe he should give the boy a hug, but they'd kind of got into the habit of just shaking hands so today, as usual, that's all they did.
'Good luck with the horse,' Hal said.
'Thank you. And you with the movie.'
'Thanks. I'll send you a cassette.'
'I'd like that. Bye then Hal.'
'Bye.'
Tom decided to walk a few blocks before looking for a cab. It was cold and gray and the steam rose in drifting clouds from manholes in the street. There was a young guy, standing on a corner, begging. His hair was a matted tangle of rat's tails and his skin the color of bruised parchment. His fingers spilled through frayed woolen mitts and with no coat he was hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm. Tom gave him a five-dollar bill.
They were expecting him at the stables at about four, but when he got to Penn Station he found there was an earlier train and decided to take it. The more daylight there was when he saw the horse, he thought, the better. Also, this way maybe he could get a little look at the animal on his own first. It was always easier when the owners weren't breathing down your neck. When they were, the horses always picked up on the tension. He was sure the woman wouldn't mind.
Annie had wondered whether to tell Grace about Tom Booker. Pilgrim's name had barely been mentioned since the day she saw him at the stables. Once Annie and Robert had tried talking to her about him, believing it better to confront the issue of what they should do with him. But Grace had become very agitated and cut Annie off.
'I don't want to hear,' she said. 'I've told you what I want. I want him to go back to Kentucky. But you always know better, so it's up to you.'
Robert had put a calming hand on her shoulder and started to say something, but she shrugged him off violently and yelled 'No Daddy!' They left it at that.
In the end, they did however decide to tell her about the man from Montana. All Grace said was that she didn't want to be up in Chatham when he came. It was decided therefore that Annie would go alone. She'd come up by train the previous night and spent the morning at the farmhouse, making calls and trying to concentrate on the copy wired by modem to her computer screen from the office.
It was impossible. The slow tick of the hall clock, which normally she found comforting, was today almost unbearable. And with every long hour that limped by she became more nervous. She puzzled over why this should be and came up with no answer that satisfied her. The nearest she could get was a feeling, as acute as it was irrational, that in some inexorable way it wasn't only Pilgrim's fate that was to be determined today by this stranger, it was the fate of all of them. Grace's, Robert's and her own.
There were no cabs at Hudson station when the train got in. It was starting to drizzle and Tom had to wait for five minutes under the dripping iron-pillared canopy over the platform till one arrived. When it did he climbed into the back with his bag and gave the driver the address of the stables.
Hudson looked as though it might once have been pretty, but now it seemed a sorry sort of place. Once grand old buildings were rotting away. Many of the shops along what Tom supposed was its main street were boarded up and those that weren't seemed mostly to be selling junk. People tramped the sidewalks with their shoulders hunched against the rain.
It was just after three when the cab turned into Mrs Dyer's driveway and headed up the hill toward the stables. Tom looked out at the horses standing in the rain across the muddy fields. They pricked their ears and watched the cab go by. The entrance into the stable yard was blocked by a trailer. Tom asked the cabdriver to wait and got out.
As he edged through the gap between the wall and the trailer he could hear voices from the yard and the clatter of hooves.
'Git in! Git in there, damn you!'
Joan Dyer's sons were trying to load two frightened colts into the open back of the trailer. Tim stood on the ramp and was trying to drag the first colt inside by its halter rope. It was a tug-of-war he would easily have lost had Eric not been at the other end of the animal, driving it forward with a whip and dodging its hooves. In his other hand he held the rope of the second colt who was by now as scared as the first. All this Tom saw in one glance as he stepped around the side of the trailer into the yard.
'Whoa now boys, what's happening here?' he said. Both the boys turned and looked at him for a moment and neither answered. Then, as if he didn't exist, they looked away again and went on with what they were doing.
'It's no fucking good,' Tim said. 'Try the other one first.' He yanked the first colt away from the trailer so that Tom had to step quickly back against the wall as they went by. At last Eric looked at him again.
'Can I help you?' There was such conten in the voice and the way the boy eyed hin. down that Tom could only smile.
Thank you. I'm looking for a horse called Pilgrim. Belongs to a Mrs Annie Graves?'
'Who are you?'
'My name's Booker.'
Eric jerked his head toward the barn. 'Better go see my mom.'
Tom thanked him and walked away to the barn. He heard one of them snigger and say something about Wyatt Earp but he didn't look back. Mrs Dyer came out of the barn door just as he got there. He introduced himself and they shook hands after she'd wiped hers on her jacket. She looked over his shoulder at the boys by the trailer and shook her head.
'There are better ways to do that,' Tom said.
'I know,' she said, wearily. But she clearly didn't want to pursue it. 'You're early. Annie's not here yet.'
'I'm sorry. I got the early train. I should have called. Would it be okay if I had a look at him before she gets here?'
She hesitated. He gave her a conspirator's smile that stopped just short of a wink, meaning that she, knowing about horses, would understand what he was about to say.
'You know how sometimes it's, well, kind of easier to get a fix on these things when the owner's not around.'