the waitress left, she said, “I don’t even know your name.”
“Chet Moran.”
She nodded, as if that were the right answer. “Do you know anyone in town who could teach this class?”
“I don’t know anyone at all.”
“Can I ask what happened to your leg?”
He was surprised by the question, but he thought she could ask him just about anything. He told her the simplest version: the polio, the horses, the broken bones.
“And you still ride?”
He said that if he didn’t ride, he’d end up in a wheelchair or a loony bin or both.
She nodded, as if that were the right answer, too, and looked out the window at the dark street. “I was so afraid I’d finish law school and be selling shoes,” she said. “I’m sorry to keep talking about it. All I can think about is that drive.”
THAT WEEKEND was the longest one he’d had. He fed the cows and cleaned the tack for the team. He curried the horses until they gleamed and stamped, watching him, suspicious of what he intended.
Inside, he sat on the couch, flipped through the channels, and finally turned the TV off. He wondered how he might court a girl who was older, and a lawyer, a girl who lived clear across the state and couldn’t think about anything but that distance. He felt a strange sensation in his chest, but it wasn’t the restlessness he had felt before.
On Tuesday, he saddled one of the horses and rode it into town, leaving the truck. There was a chinook wind, and the night was warm, for January, and the sky clear. The plains spread out dark and flat in every direction, except where the lights glowed from town. He watched the stars as he rode.
At the school, he tethered the horse to the bike rack, out of sight of the side door and the lot where the teachers would park. He took the fat plastic bag of oats from his jacket pocket and held it open. The horse sniffed at it, then worked the oats out of the bag with his lips.
“That’s all I got,” he said, shoving the empty plastic bag back in his pocket.
The horse lifted its head to sniff at the strange town smells.
“Don’t get yourself stolen,” Chet said.
When half the teachers had arrived, he went in and took his seat. Everyone sat in the same seat as they had the week before. They talked about the chinook and whether it would melt the snow. Finally Beth Travis came in, with her puffy coat and her briefcase. He was even happier to see her than he had expected, and she was wearing jeans again, which was good. He’d been afraid she might wear the narrow wool skirt. She looked harassed and unhappy to be there. The teachers chattered on.
When the class was over and the teachers had cleared out, he asked, “Can I give you a ride to the café?”
“Oh—” she said, and she looked away.
“Not in the truck,” he said quickly, and he wondered why a truck might seem more dangerous to a woman. He guessed because it was like a room. “Come outside,” he said.
She waited in the parking lot while he untied the horse and mounted up. He rode it around from the bike rack—aware that he could seem like a fool, but elated with the feeling of sitting a horse as well as anyone did—to where Beth Travis stood hugging her briefcase.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
“Don’t think about it,” he said. “Give me your briefcase. Now give me your hand. Left foot in the stirrup. Now swing the other leg over.” She did it, awkwardly, and he pulled her up behind him. He held her briefcase against the pommel, and she held tightly to his jacket, her legs against his. He couldn’t think of anything except how warm she was, pressed against the base of his spine. He rode the back way, through the dark streets, before cutting out toward the main drag and stopping short of it, behind the café. He helped her down, swung to the ground after her, gave her the briefcase, and tied the horse. She looked at him and laughed, and he realized he hadn’t seen her laugh before. Her eyebrows went up and her eyes got wide, instead of crinkling up like most people’s did. She looked amazed.
In the café, the waitress slid a burger and fries in front of Beth Travis and said, “The cook wants to know if that’s your horse out back.”
Chet said it was.
“Can he give it some water?”
He said he’d appreciate it.
“Truck break down?” the waitress asked.
He said no, his truck was all right, and the waitress went away.
Beth Travis turned the long end of the oval plate in his direction, and took up the burger. “Have some fries,” she said. “How come you never eat anything?”
He wanted to say that he wasn’t hungry when he was around her, but he feared the look on her face if he said it, the way she would shy away.
“Why were you afraid of selling shoes?” he asked.
“Have you ever sold shoes? It’s hell.”
“I mean, why were you afraid you couldn’t get anything else?”
She looked at the burger as if the answer was in there. Her eyes were almost the same color as her hair, and ringed with pale lashes. He wondered if she thought of him as an Indian boy, with his mother’s dark hair. “I don’t know,” she said. “Yes, I do know. Because my mother works in a school cafeteria, and my sister works in a hospital laundry, and selling shoes is the nicest job a girl from my family is supposed to get.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t know him.”
“That’s a sad story.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s a happy story. I’m a lawyer, see, with a wonderful job driving to fucking Glendive every fifteen minutes until I lose my mind.” She put down the burger and pressed the backs of her hands into her eyes. Her fingers were greasy and one had ketchup on it. She took her hands away from her face and looked at her watch. “It’s ten o’clock,” she said. “I won’t get home before seven-thirty in the morning. There are deer on the road, and there’s black ice outside of Three Forks along the river. If I make it past there, I get to take a shower and go to work at eight, and do all the crap no one else wants to do. Then learn more school law tomorrow night, then leave work the next day before lunch and drive back here with my eyes twitching. It’s better than a hospital laundry, maybe, but it’s not a whole fucking lot better.”
“I’m from near Three Forks,” he said.
“So you know the ice.”
He nodded.
She dipped her napkin in her water glass and washed off her fingers, then finished her coffee. “It was nice of you, to bring the horse,” she said. “Will you take me back to my car?”
Outside, he swung her up onto the horse again, and she put her arms around his waist. She seemed to fit to his body like a puzzle piece. He rode slowly back to the school parking lot, not wanting to let her go. Next to the yellow Datsun, he held her hand tight while she climbed down, and then he dismounted, too. She tugged her puffy coat where it had ridden up from sliding off the horse, and they stood looking at each other.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded. He wanted to kiss her but couldn’t see any clear path to that happening. He wished he had practiced, with the high school girls or the friendly secretaries, just to be ready for this moment.
She started to say something, but in his nervousness he cut her off. “See you Thursday,” he said.
She paused before nodding, and he took this for encouragement. He caught up her hand again and kissed it, because he had wanted to do that, and it was soft and cold. Then he leaned over and kissed her