Black River by S. M. Hulse Read Free Book Online Page B

hind hoof resting so the toe just touched soil.
    After a few pointedly silent minutes, during the last of which it looked to Wes like Dennis wasn’t doing anything but running thoughts through his head, Dennis stood, shut his fencing pliers into the battered toolbox and started toward Wes with a careless, loose-jointed stride. On the other side of the fence, the black horse followed at a pace’s distance. There was something awkward in the way the animal moved, a deliberateness to each step that Wes recognized.
    â€œWait here,” Dennis said, walking past Wes without even glancing at him. About enough to make Wes turn around and leave.
You’re here for Claire,
he reminded himself.
    Dennis headed for the outbuilding near the house, where Wes’s father used to have his workshop. The black horse raised his head over the fence and swiveled his ears toward Wes. It was an old horse, he saw now. A smattering of colorless wiry strands tarnished his black mane, and short white hairs edged the long angles of his face. The hollows over his eyes were deep enough for a man to sink his thumbs into.
    â€œYou hear that fence now?” Dennis called from inside the shed.
    Abruptly the horse stepped back from the rope, lifting his head high, and a short ticking noise sounded every couple seconds, regular as a metronome. “It’s going.”
    Dennis ambled back, pulling a T-shirt over his head. Wes felt Dennis’s eyes on his long sleeves, on the sheen of sweat Wes knew must show on his face. He pushed his hands into his pockets. “Listen,” Dennis said. “Sorry about all that shit I said earlier. Should’ve kept my mouth shut.” He forced the words out like a nauseated man who just wanted to vomit already and be done with it.
    Wes accepted the apology with a short nod. “These your animals?”
    â€œThis one is,” Dennis said, reaching a hand over the fence to gently slap the side of the black horse’s neck. The horse turned, and Wes saw that while the near eye was normal, a deep syrupy brown, the far one had a white around it, like a human eye. It was unnerving, robbed him of the vaguely benevolent gaze most horses had. “His name’s Rio.”
    â€œYou get him from Farmer?”
    â€œYears back. That sorrel and the mule are his.”
    Wes watched Dennis rub Rio’s face, and thought it was a small miracle that a man who’d loved something so much as a child still loved that same thing so many years later. Most folks were mercurial in their passions, changing quick from one to the next, or they cultivated a whole slew of interests, parceling out a little time and energy to each in turn. Maybe to really love something you had to be born with it, had it pressed into your soul before you even took a breath, so that it was something you could neither explain nor deny. The fiddle was like that for Wes. For Dennis it was horses. When he was a kid he’d spend entire afternoons watching the broodmares slowly meander around Farmer’s pastures, and his favorite toys were his plastic horses. He’d had dozens of them, and increased his herd every Christmas and birthday. All of them, Wes remembered, had names and complicated made-up histories that Dennis could recite on the spot and never varied. Once, he dropped one on the floor and its front leg snapped in two. Cried so hard you would’ve thought they’d had to shoot the thing in the head. Wes spent the night in his father’s workshop, measuring and drilling tiny holes into each half of the broken leg and setting it with a pin and glue. Took three tries to get right, and he finished four hours before he had to go back to the prison. Put an end to the tears, though.
    Wes wondered if Dennis remembered that. It had been a gray horse. Dappled gray. “We didn’t talk about your momma yet,” he said instead.
    â€œRight.” Dennis started walking back toward the house, didn’t