Light to the Hills: A Novel (25)

After, when the boys had dug the grave behind the farthest corner of the garden, where the sweet peas grew wild, Rai’s habit of wandering in the woods just before sunrise stuck with her. It was then she felt her mama was still near, humming her familiar songs as she picked petals and collected the autumn webs of the orb spiders. Her pa and brothers seemed to carry on without trouble, but Rai had been untethered. Even a year later, nothing seemed to hold her to the earth; the easy surety of one day fading into the next had been rent, and try as she might, Rai couldn’t piece it together as it had been. Her pa spent more time in the free town down the mountain, and no matter how she dreaded it, Rai knew it wouldn’t be long before he came home with a new wife to take the reins.

Rai thought back to the deft way Amanda’s hands had helped her piece together the pie, and she knew Beady Wick had passed on to her only daughter some useful skills. After hearing Amanda’s daddy preach that service, she was certain Amanda must have a firm grasp of the Good Book as well. She wondered what it must have been like growing up a single child in a preacher’s house, a life so different from her own. Plain Jane half bucked to rid herself of a horsefly, and the tug of the reins in her hands brought to mind her husband’s horse sense. She’d told Beady about Harley training that colt, but it wasn’t the force of him she’d been drawn to. It was his patient gentleness.

Harley MacInteer was working his way back east from Lexington when Rai’s pa heard tell of a feller who could break a horse in the space of an afternoon. Before the day was out, he’d led Harley to the pen behind their barn, where their wall-eyed Appaloosa fidgeted and carried on. Rai had peered out the cabin’s window at the tall, wiry figure leaning on the fence with one foot braced against the lower rung, and her abdomen fluttered like the muslin curtains in a stiff breeze. She’d been mortified when the man turned his head and caught her staring.

Pa had bet the man he couldn’t ride the horse by sundown. She didn’t know what he’d wagered, but this particular colt was wild by anyone’s standards. The feller worked all afternoon, driving the horse around the pen until sweat streaked its sides. Rai’s pa watched the sun trek westward across the sky, a smirk playing on his lips.

She found herself rooting for the man as she started supper. On her way to fetch eggs, she cast a long glance toward the pen to watch as the man stood quietly at the center with the horse facing him, its head hung low and sides heaving. As Rai stared, he placed a hand on the horse’s flank and rubbed his slick withers. The horse barely flicked his tail.

“I’ll be.” It was her brother Clarence who’d come up behind her.

Rai watched the man’s hands as he rubbed the horse down, head to toe, whispering low and soft. The rest of Rai’s brothers and her pa gathered alongside the barn as the sky faded to orange and pink. Her pa’s eyes skipped back and forth between the pen and the sun, and he fiddled with the buttons on his overalls.

The man planted his left hand on the horse’s withers and faced his tail. He leaned against the horse and pulled down so that the colt could get the feel of him. Then, in one quick motion, the man swung up on the horse’s back, his arms and legs rubbing up and down the horse’s neck and sides. For a moment, the beast’s ears pricked forward and his head raised up, startled.

“Ha,” Rai heard her pa say under his breath. “Here we go.”

The horse turned his nose to the boot that pushed against him. Then, his hooves started forward as he walked on, calm as if he were out to pasture. The sun slipped below the horizon, leaving the sky in a dusky haze of purple, and the man slid off the horse’s back.

Rai’s pa shook the man’s hand. “Darndest thing I ever saw. I’m beat fair and square. That horse is yours.”

“Naw,” the man said. “You can keep the horse.” The heat in Rai’s abdomen rose to the roots of her hair as the man met her eyes across the yard. “How about I stay for dinner instead?” Rai couldn’t hold back the smile that curved on her lips.

Three months later, she’d wrapped her arms around Harley’s waist as she rode behind him on the spotted horse, heading east toward Harley’s family’s land. Their life together was lean but joyful. Rai allowed there were times when she’d get her dander up and act just like that spotted horse, running herself ragged and worried. Harley knew just how to tame her, though, with his low voice and slow and easy manner. He could touch her shoulders just right and lean in as he exhaled near her neck, and she’d soften with a peace that settled as lightly as snowflakes. Harley made her feel planted and sure, safe to send down roots and even blossom if she chose.

Rai thanked the Lord, not for the first time, for wild spotted horses and hoped Harley had remembered to dose Finn with the tea she’d left. She clucked to Plain Jane to pick up the pace toward home.





Chapter 9


Amanda timed her trips into town for when the post and mercantile would be less busy and she’d be less likely to run into the Peepers. If she went early enough, she could check in at the WPA office and pick up whatever items she and Mooney needed from the mercantile before most others were done with morning chores. Not that she had anything to hide, not that she was ashamed, but some nuts just wouldn’t crack, and she simply didn’t see the point in the effort. The Peepers were members of the Women’s Temperance League, a self-organized committee from a church on the hill, but their concerns went beyond the demons of alcohol. Their mission extended to rescuing souls from most any backsliding or behavior unbecoming.