Bridge of Clay(119)

    And it felt like such a long time then, both quiet and calm at the mattress edge, and the dark not too far away.

He said, “Penny and Michael Dunbar.”



* * *



—

On the roof he showed her where he liked to sit down, part hidden amongst the tiles, and Carey listened and looked at the city. She saw those pinpricks of light.

“Look there,” she said, “Bernborough Park.”

“And there,” he said, he couldn’t stop himself, “the cemetery. We can go—if you don’t mind, that is. I’ll show you the way to the gravestone.”

Pulling her into the sadness made him guilty—more guilty than he already was—but Carey was open, oblivious. She’d treated knowing him like some kind of privilege—and she was right to, I’m glad that she did.



* * *



—

There were moments when Clay was torn open—so much he’d kept from the surface. But now it was all flooding outwards; she could see in him what others couldn’t.

It happened that night on the roof.

“Hey, Clay?” She looked out at the city. “What have you got there, in your pocket?”

In months ahead, she would push too soon.



* * *



—

At Bernborough, late March, she raced him.

She ran like a girl who could run the 400, and didn’t mind suffering for doing it.

He chased her freckly outline.

He watched her bony calves.

Only when they passed the discus net did he come round her, and she said, “Don’t you dare take it easy on me,” and he didn’t. He took the turn and accelerated; at the end they were bent and hurting. Their lungs were sore and hopeful, and did what they were there for: Two pairs of burning breath.

    She looked over and said, “Again?”

“No, I think that one’ll do us.”

It was the first time she would reach for him, and link her arm through his. If only she’d known how right she was: “Thank God,” she said, “I’m dying.”



* * *



—

And then to April, and a race day, which was something she’d been saving.

“Wait’ll you see this horse,” she said, and she spoke, of course, of Matador.

She loved to watch the bookies and the punters, and those spendthrift men in their fifties: all of them unshaven arse-scratchers, their odor of drunken westerlies. Whole ecosystems in their armpits. She watched them with sadness and affection….The sun was setting around them, in many more ways than one.

Her favorite was standing at the fence, the grandstand at her back, while the horses entered the straight: The turn was the sound of a landslide.

The calls of desperate men.

“Come on, Gobstopper, you bastard!”

It was always a long wide wave—of cheer and jeer, love and loss, and many open mouthfuls. Weight gain was pumped to its limits, of the shirts and jackets that dammed it. Cigarettes at many angles.

“Move your Goddamn arse, Shenanigans! Go, son!”

The wins were won and worshipped.

The losses were all sat down with.

“C’mon,” she said that first time, “there’s someone you should meet.”



* * *



—

Behind the two grandstands were the stables; a length and breadth of shed rows, and horses all within them—either waiting for their races, or recovering.

At number thirty-eight, he stood enormously, unblinking. A digital sign said Matador, but Carey called him Wally. A groom, Petey Simms, wore jeans and a tattered polo shirt, cross-sectioned by a belt. A smoke was erected upwards, at the platform of his lip. He grinned when he saw the girl.

    “Hey, Carey kid.”

“Hey, Pete.”

Clay got a better look now, and the horse was bright chestnut; a white blaze, like a crack, down his face. He flicked the flies off his ears, and he was smooth but rich with veins. His legs, like branches, were locked. The mane was cut back, a little shorter than most, for he somehow attracted more filth than any other horse in the stable. “Even the dirt loves him!” That’s what Petey used to say.

Finally, the horse blinked, when Clay came closer, his eyes so big and deep; an equine kind of kind.

“Go on,” said Petey, “give the big bugger a pat.”

Clay looked at Carey, for permission.

“Go on,” she said, “it’s okay.”

She did it herself first, to show him to be unafraid; even touching him was a front-on tackle.

“Bloody ’orse bloody loves her,” said Petey.

It was different from patting Achilles.



* * *



—

“How’s the big fella?”

The voice from behind was desert-like.

McAndrew.

Dark suit, pale shirt.

A tie he’d been wearing since the Bronze Age.

Petey didn’t answer, though, because he knew the old man didn’t want one; he was talking only to himself. He wandered in and ran his hands along the horse, he went lower for a look at the hooves.

“Spot-on.”