For the first time, Tom was now looking at him and he was saying something too, though what, Grace was too far off to hear. She bit her lip as she watched, willing the horse forward. Go on, he won't hurt you, go on. But he needed no urging other than his own curiosity. Hesitantly, but with a confidence that grew with every step, Pilgrim walked to Tom and put his nose to the rope. And once he'd sniffed the rope, he started sniffing Tom's hands and Tom just stood there and let him.
In that moment, in that quivering touch between horse and man, Grace felt many things connect. She couldn't have explained it, even to herself. She simply knew that some seal had been set on all that had happened in the days just passed. Finding her mother again, riding, the confidence she'd felt at the party, all this Grace hadn't quite dared trust, as though at any second someone might snatch it all away. There was such hope however, such a promise of light in this tentative act of trust by Pilgrim that she felt something shift and open within her and knew that it was permanent.
With what was plainly consent, Tom now slowly moved one hand to the horse's neck. There was a quiver and for a moment Pilgrim seemed to freeze. But it was only caution and when he felt the hand upon him and realized it brought no pain, he eased and let Tom rub him.
It went on a long time. Slowly Tom worked his way up until he'd covered the whole of his neck and Pilgrim let him. And then he let him do the same on the other side and even feel his mane. It was so matted it stood like spikes between Tom's fingers. Then, gently and still without hurry, Tom slipped the halter on. And Pilgrim did not balk nor even for a moment demur.
The only thing that bothered him about showing this to Grace was that she might make too much of it. It was always fragile when a horse took this step and with this horse it was more than fragile. Not the eggshell but the membrane within it. He could read in Pilgrim's eyes and in the quiver of his flanks how close he was to rejecting it. And if he rejected it, the next time - if there was one - would be worse.
For many days Tom had worked for this, in the mornings, without Grace knowing. He did different things when she was watching in the afternoons, mainly flagging and driving and getting the horse used to the feel of a thrown rope. But working toward the halter was something he wanted to do alone. And until this very morning he hadn't known whether it would ever happen, whether the spark of hope he'd told Annie about was truly there. Then he'd seen it and stopped, because he wanted Grace to be there when he blew on it and made it glow.
He didn't have to look at her to know how much it moved her. What she didn't know, and maybe he should have told her before instead of being such a smartass, was that it wasn't all now going to be sweetness and light. There was work to come that might make Pilgrim seem cloaked yet again in madness. But that could wait. Tom wasn't going to start now. This moment belonged to Grace and he didn't want to spoil it.
So he told her to come in, as he knew she must long to. He watched her prop her cane against the gatepost and come carefully with only the slightest sign of a limp across the corral. When she was nearly up to them, Tom told her to stop. It was better to let the horse come to her than her to him and with barely a nudge on the halter rope he did so.
He could see Grace biting her lip, trying not to tremble as she held her hands out below the horse's nose. There was fear on both sides and it was surely a greeting of a lesser kind than Grace must remember. But in the sniffing of her hands, then later of her face and hair, Tom thought he saw at least a glimpse of what they once had been together and yet might be again.
'Annie this is Lucy. Are you there?'
Annie let the question hang for a while. She was composing an important memo to all her key people on how they should handle interference from Crawford Gates. The basic message was tell him to go fuck himself. She'd switched the answering machine on to give herself peace so that she could find an only slightly more veiled way of saying it.
'Shit. You're probably out chopping off cow's balls or whatever the hell it is they do out there. Listen, I… Oh, just call me will you?'
There was a troubled note in her voice that made Annie pick up.
'Cows don't have balls.'
'Speak for yourself kiddo. So we were lurking there, were we?'
'Screening, Luce, it's called screening. What's up?'
'He fired me.'
'What?'
'The son of a bitch fired me.'
Annie had seen it coming for weeks. Lucy was the first person she'd hired, her closest ally. By firing her, Gates was sending the clearest possible signal. Annie listened with a dull sinking in her chest while Lucy told her how it happened.
The pretext had been a piece on women truck drivers. Annie had seen the copy and though predictably preoccupied with sex, it was a lot of fun. The pictures were terrific too. Lucy had wanted a big headline that said simply MOTHERTRUCKERS. Gates had vetoed it, saying Lucy was 'obsessed with sleaze'. They'd had a stand-up fight in front of the whole office during the course of which Lucy had told Gates bluntly to do what Annie was trying to find a euphemism for in her memo.
'I'm not going to let him do this,' Annie said.
'Kiddo, it's done. I'm gone.'
'No you're not. He can't do it.'
'He can Annie. You know he can and, shit, I'd had enough anyway. It's no fun anymore.'
There were a few seconds of silence while they both thought about that. Annie sighed.
'Annie?'
'What?'
'You better get back here, you know? And quick.'
Grace came home late, bubbling with all that had happened with Pilgrim. She helped Annie serve supper and told her while they ate how it had felt to touch him again, how he'd trembled. He hadn't let her stroke him as he'd let Tom and she'd felt a little upset at how briefly he tolerated her near him. But Tom said it would come, you just had to take it a step at a time.
'Pilgrim wouldn't look at me. It was weird. Like he was ashamed or something.'
'Of what happened?'
'No. I don't know. Maybe just of the way he is.'
She told Annie how, later, Tom had led him up to the barn and they'd washed him down. He'd allowed Tom to pick up his feet and clean some of the compacted filth out of them and though he wouldn't let his mane or tail be cleaned, they'd at least managed to get a brush to most of his coat. Grace suddenly stopped and gave Annie a look of concern.
'You okay?'
'I'm fine. Why?'
'I dunno. You looked sort of worried or something.'
'Just tired I guess, that's all.'
When they were almost through eating, Robert called and Grace went and sat at Annie's desk and told the same story all over again while Annie cleared the dishes.
She stood at the sink washing pans and listening to the frenzied clatter of a bug trapped among corpses he maybe recognized in one of the fluorescent lights. Lucy's call had cast a reflective shadow that even Grace's news had failed fully to dispel.
Her spirits had lifted briefly when she heard the scrunch of the Chevy's wheels outside bringing Grace back from the corrals. She and Tom hadn't spoken since the barn dance though he'd scarcely been out of her thoughts and she'd quickly checked her reflection in the glass door of the oven, thinking, hoping, that he'd come in. But he'd just waved and driven off.
Lucy's call had hauled her back - as in a different way Robert's did now - into what she knew with dulling acknowledgment to be her real life. Though what she meant by'real', Annie no longer knew. Nothing, in a sense, could be more real than the life they'd found here. So what was the difference between these two lives?