Horse Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2018 by Catherine Talley English Tillack

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: English, Talley, author.

  Title: Horse : a novel / by Talley English.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017039634 (print) | LCCN 2017051407 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101874332 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781101874349 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Families—Fiction. | Horses—Fiction. | Girls—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | GSAFD: Bildungsromans.

  Classification: LCC PS3605.N53 (ebook) | LCC PS3605.N53 H67 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017039634

  Ebook ISBN 9781101874349

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover photograph by Thomas Kelley / iStock / Getty Images

  Cover design by Jenny Carrow

  v5.3.1

  ep

  For Isabel, always

  And for Margaret, Catherine, Susan, and Anna

  Oh I miss you so

  and I long to know…

  —Lucinda Williams, “Death Came” The Ghosts of Highway 20

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Sonnet I

  Prologue

  Part One

  Found

  End

  Saddle

  Trail Ride

  Song

  Susanna’s Game

  Barn Cats

  Cat and Cat

  Teeth

  Roof

  Truck

  Car

  Cake

  Obsidian

  Foxhunt

  Susanna Told Teagan a Story

  Curriculum Vitae (Abstract)

  First Ride and Foxes

  Dobb

  Phone

  Mornings Are Repetitive

  Bedroom

  Ball

  Railing

  Robert

  Away

  Drink

  Injured

  Wait

  Blind

  Remember

  Part Two

  Hunting Hill

  Ex

  This Has Never Happened

  Infinite

  Versus

  Red Filly

  Kennedy Center

  Accident

  Definition

  Call

  She Knows Everything (About Riding Horses)

  Around Town

  Thought

  Robert Bought the Horse (Because It Bit Him on the Arm)

  Persimmon

  Turn Out

  Manners

  Troll

  Tall Boots

  Sleeping Over

  Omit

  Out to Lunch

  Girls’ School

  Night (Memory)

  One Night

  A Ghost

  Grave Site

  Late at Night

  Wedding

  Attend

  Invitation

  Image

  Reinterred

  Funeral

  Lesson

  Psychologist (Vampire)

  Hide

  Another Visit with the Vampire

  Run

  Return

  Part Three

  Ian (Obsidian)

  On the Bit

  Sift

  Ponying

  Afternoon

  Closet

  Doughnuts

  Cookies

  Skeet

  Fence

  Jonquil (Narcissus)

  Robert’s Visit

  Combined Training

  Spoons

  Fairy Tale

  Riding Lesson

  Last Ride (Though She Did Not Know It Yet)

  Lilly and Ian

  Feed

  Notify

  Build Your Own Horse

  New

  Conversation

  Artist

  Particular

  Portrait

  Grief

  Memorial

  Offering

  Letter

  Me, Ian, Robert

  Mammoth Cave

  Spirit

  Tree

  Woods

  Them

  Both

  Epilogue One: Cowboy Party

  Epilogue Two: Horseshoe Canyon

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  Reading Group Guide

  Sonnet I

  Now in the father’s place a horse is placed,

  accounted here is why the horse will stand.

  Love for the father’s love is all disgrace,

  a horse is waiting here, and not a man.

  And what was left behind compares to what

  now is, the first, the last, between undreamed.

  See there, the horse across a field, it trots,

  a memory may not be what it seemed.

  He was my father’s horse who is now mine,

  this love constrains what is and what is not.

  And though I see this time, it bends toward time,

  nothing is solved by what I have forgotten—

  not horse, not him, not me, or all our love.

  Prologue

  Ian was broken English. The language he spoke was horse, a form of sign language: it involved eye contact; it was mostly touch. The English saddle was plain, sloped up in front and back; the bridle had a noseband and a throat lash; the bit was a snaffle. Watch how the horse stood, and see how the rider swung onto his back. (I am reminded that a horse is not born able to carry a rider; the muscles of his back must strengthen over time. If the horse is well trained, then the rider can think a word, walk, rather than say it, and the horse will respond to a nuanced shift in the rider’s body, and follow the command.) See the rider, who feels a pull in her arms as the horse’s head moves with his stride; watch the swing of his rib
cage from side to side. The horse; the rider. The image was not new, but there was something to it: when horse and rider are one body within a web of language.

  ONE

  Found

  From a way off she saw the movement of the dog and knew it was after something. The dog leaped in and out of the weeds, huffing and panting, running along the bank. When she was closer she saw the gosling. She yelled at the dog. The gosling drifted to a submerged branch. She waded into the creek and the dog followed. She yelled and the dog turned and ran back up the bank. She captured the gosling and tucked it against her chest. The little bird gave a few hard nips on the soft fat of her arm, but she ignored it and climbed the bank, turning her back to the dog, who jumped up to get the bird. The gosling struggled, but she tightened her hold. The dog followed her at a distance before it turned and ran off. She opened the narrow gate and closed it behind her. The bird was warm and limp. Its head jostled as she walked over the uneven ground of the field. She wondered why it was alone. If the adult geese had been able, they would have fought off the dog, batting the air with strong wings, sticking out their narrow pink tongues and hissing and honking. She’d seen Canada geese at the creek before, and occasionally blue heron, with long legs, narrow head, and crest of feathers. With a free hand, she climbed where the fence was sturdiest, near a post, and swung her leg over, the wood sun-warmed and splintery on her bare skin. The pasture was for horses, and the grass was short. She could see Zephyr’s light shape under the lip of the barn’s green tin roof. She cut through the middle of the field. The horse lifted his head and flicked his ears forward. He dipped his head to the ground and grazed, then lifted it again. He turned and traced a thin ribbon of dusty ground through the grass, his habitual path. His head bobbed as he walked. She usually had a carrot for him. When they met, he sniffed her hand, then his ears flicked forward. His big nostrils flared. The down on the head of the gosling moved in his hot breath. The horse was white with brown spots, an Appaloosa, and he had one brown eye and one blue.

  She said, “No, Zep, not for you,” and walked on. Zephyr followed her. Duchess, the gray dapple mare, was coming up the hill. At the fence she let the two horses sniff the gosling and then let herself out of the field and walked between the wheel ruts of a dirt track, past the paddock connected to the newer barn. Beyond the barn was the yard of the house. Her mother was weeding in the garden. She recognized the familiar motions of her mother’s hands. The dog was on his side under the apple tree, as if dead in the heat. Her father had bought the dog. Barker. There was a trend in her family when it came to naming house pets. Her parents’ first dog was a black Labrador named Blackie, and there had been a cat with four white paws called Boots. A white rabbit had been Snow, and three chickens had been Cluck, Spots, and Mrs. Brown. Her own first pet was a guinea pig she called Piggy. And then Barker. The day her father brought him home, the puppy made a high-pitched yapping and didn’t stop. She called him Barker and that was his name. Her own family name was straightforward. French. She was Teagan French. Whenever she had to give her name she preemptively offered, French, like the language, to avoid having to say Yes, like french fries. There was also French’s yellow mustard, but nobody said Like the mustard. Teagan asked her father where their name came from, but he didn’t have an answer, except that he said he was pretty sure his ancestors had been English.

  Robert French came out of the garage, his white crew-neck undershirt smeared with grease. He wore worn blue jeans and a tatty leather belt. His weekend-project clothes. During the week his shirt would be clean and have a collar, his khakis would be creased, and his brown penny loafers would be spotless. His face was molded into a frown. He had obviously been trying to fix something. He seemed to like to try to fix things, even though it always made him angry in the end, or at the beginning, depending on how complicated the thing was. She guessed it was the lawn mower. She had heard him telling her mother that there was no point in buying a new one if the old one worked perfectly fine. It didn’t work; he meant that he was going to make it work. If Teagan had not been holding her own small project in her hands, she would have avoided the garage altogether and joined her mother in the garden, or slipped upstairs to her bedroom. Her father’s face lifted to look at what she held.

  “What’s that?”

  “I found a gosling.”

  “Gosling? A goose?”

  “A baby. A baby Canada goose.”

  “It could be a duck,” he said.

  “We never have ducks. Those Canada geese are usually at the creek.”

  “Is it hurt?” He peered closer.

  “I don’t know. It was by itself and there was a dog after it.”

  “Barker?”

  “No, I don’t know what dog,” she said.

  “Where was it?”

  “In the creek.”

  “You should have left it alone.”

  “The parents were gone. There was just this one and the dog was after it.”

  “Now Barker’s going to go after it,” he said.

  “Not if we don’t let him.”

  “How are you going to do that?” It was always like this. The obstacles set before her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to try to feed it?” he asked.

  “What should I feed it?” Now he would help her, when he could tell her what to do.

  “When your mother and I raised some baby chipmunks,” Robert began.

  She knew this story. The chipmunks had been found after a storm. Her mother and father had raised them and then released them into a tree in the yard, but they kept coming back, even jumping onto their shoulders. They had to drive off in their car and stay away for a weekend before the chipmunks would stop coming back to them. Robert, all in all, liked animals. He got along especially well with dogs. He had a special tone of voice for dogs. She had seen dogs strain against their leashes to thrust their heads under his hands.

  “We fed them dog food and bread soaked in milk. Try that. Put it in your bathroom. I’ve got to see if I can get this damn piece of junk lawn mower to start,” he said but walked through the kitchen door. Now that she had permission from her father, she hoped the gosling would live. Robert washed his hands. They were large and powerful, the knuckles thick. She had her father’s hands, wide palms, thick fingers. She looked under the sink for a dish towel.

  “Not those,” he said. “Don’t let it out of your bathroom or you’ll be cleaning up after it, or I’ll be cleaning up after it. And wash your hands.”

  From the narrow upstairs closet she pulled out a frayed bath towel. Her bathroom was a pastel yellow that she hated. She set the gosling on the towel. It walked off, but she caught it and put it back on, bunching the sides around it. It stayed and seemed to settle. The knobby black beak sunk down and touched the towel. It startled, then closed its eyes. Teagan left the light on in the bathroom and pulled the door tight. In the kitchen she looked for an opened can of dog food in the refrigerator. There wasn’t one. She took out bread and the milk. When she looked into the bathroom the bird didn’t stir. She tipped the milk down her own throat and ate the bread. In her bedroom she stripped out of her damp and sweaty clothes. Her shoes were smelly. She rubbed down her arms and legs with her T-shirt because they itched from the grass and her own salt. She pulled on fresh shorts and a T-shirt and lay on her bed, and thought about finding the gosling. She fell asleep and when she woke up the sky was indigo. She stretched and was thirsty. In the kitchen Barker wagged his tail and pressed his wide head against the inside of her knee. She patted him. Her mother stood at the double sink. Susanna French was picking out stems and cutting them. Two paper grocery bags full of flowers stood on the counter. This was Susanna’s method. When her garden was in bloom, she filled paper bags with her cuttings, then selected, cut, and arranged them in vases. Teagan often walked into a kitchen full of blossoms.

 
“Did Dad tell you what I found?” Teagan asked, a glass in her hand.

  Susanna poked a stem into her arrangement. “What?”

  “A gosling. It’s in my bathroom. Will you check on her with me?”

  “Where did you find it? By the creek?” Susanna asked, rinsing her hands. Teagan told the story and filled her glass with water and drank it down.

  “Did you put down some newspaper?” Susanna asked.

  “I forgot,” Teagan said. “Stay, Barker,” she said, shutting him in the kitchen.

  “I don’t know anything about a goose. We’ll have to look up how to feed it,” Susanna said.