Taming the Star Runner

Travis just nodded, thinking, Geez, does he think I'm a moron?

"You know," Ken said slowly, "I've got a friend who just got out of a Spanish prison a few years ago. He was in for twelve years, for five ounces of hash. And it could have just as easily been me. He's still in Spain, bartending. He didn't exactly pick up marketable skills in there. Why him and not me?"

"You used to do hash too?" Travis was shocked beyond belief. Sure, he knew adults smoked; the twins' stepfather had always shared his stash with them. Straight-arrow Ken? Never.

"What do you think--your generation invented sex, drugs, and rock and roll?"

Travis was quiet. Well, we've perfected it, he thought.

"We were in Spain at the same time, he came over on the freighter with me and Teresa--he tried to cross the French border, holding--we chickened out at the last minute ... Here is old Achilles, kid, to tell you: You are not going to believe you were ever that dumb. Goddamn!" A bolt of lightning struck so close they heard the sizzle; the immediate thunder boom rattled the car.

Will and fate--he could will himself into writing a book, it was fate that got the right person to read it. Fate had kept him from one murder, God knows, at the time he'd meant to kill Stan: he was sure will would have kept him out of this one. What was it in the end? Which one had the biggest say in your life?

A gust of wind pushed at the car.

"You sure this isn't a tornado?" Travis gripped the dashboard.

"I'm not positive. I just hope we don't get caught in a flash flood."

Flash flood. Great. Like there weren't enough complications in life with people--nature had to get its two cents in.

"She's filed," Ken said suddenly.

"What?"

"Teresa. She's going ahead with it."

Travis looked at Ken's drawn face. Maybe this was why he'd been so detached through Joe's ordeal, why he hadn't bothered to give Travis a be-careful-how-you-choose-your-friends lecture (although, at this point, Travis was having doubts he'd ever meant to--apparently some of Ken's friends weren't upstanding citizens either).

"You know what's one of the worst things about this? It's humiliating--it puts us in the same class as all the other jerks divorcing. I thought we were better than that."

"I thought maybe you guys were going to get back together."

Travis was thinking about the time Teresa'd spent the night. He'd been so sure it was a good sign.

"I thought so too. Maybe."

A crackling fork of lightning lit a black cloud. It was incredible how far up that cloud went, like a tower. There was so much energy coming off this storm, it was more exhilarating than scary.

"What did you mean, that time you said, 'It all started with the Cuisinart'?"

Ken gave a short laugh. "I'm sure it started long before that, but at the time, the Cuisinart got me to thinking, Now, what the hell does she need that thing for? Cooking is not Teresa's favorite pastime. Then I started thinking: Now, why did we buy an old farmhouse and redo it to look like a redone old farmhouse? I'd very carefully research cars, twelve years ago, to see what the best was. You know what I got? A BMW. I got rid of the thing last year, same time I got rid of the horses. But even as far back as college, the year Teresa and I backpacked around Europe, every goddamn college kid in America was backpacking around Europe."

Ken, thought Travis, you are not making sense. He really hoped ol' Ken wasn't cracking up.

"Then we took up skiing. And skiing was on the cover of Time. And suddenly I knew what Brie was, and then Teresa, who doesn't have a sweet tooth, developed a taste for chocolate. Just the same time Brie and chocolate swept the nation. I'm sick of feeling like a lemming. I'm sick of stuff."

"So, what does Teresa say?"

"She says let's enjoy a few things. She says, 'You hate your job, get another one!' She says she's too old to sleep on sidewalks."

"You going to get another job?"

Travis was trying to make some sense out of all this, and he wondered if Teresa felt the same way. She was the sensible one, it seemed to him.

"Another job? In this economy? I'm lucky to have a job. I have to think about Christopher--that's another thing. I used to always say I'd never send my kid to a private school unless I could guarantee him a private life, but now, what's going on in the public school system scares the hell out of me."

Hell, he'll live through it, Travis thought, but then, why not a private school if that'd be better?

"I think you're really messing up, man," Travis said.

"I probably am," Ken agreed. "It won't be the first time."

"Yeah, but it'll be the worst. Was my old man this stubborn?"

Ken laughed. "You think that's it, I'm just being stubborn?"

"I don't know what you're being but, geez, man, you want to keep Teresa and Chris, do something!"

Ken tightened his grip on the wheel as the car swayed in the wind. "Well, it's a lot more complicated."

Oh, sure. That was a good excuse for not making a move. Travis promised himself, he swore, he'd always make a move. Even if it was the wrong move, at least he'd know he did something besides balk like a mule and mutter "complicated."

As they pulled into the drive, they could see Casey racing around, trying to catch Sandman in the paddock. The rest of the paddocks were empty, except the one where the Star Runner was plunging and bowing, whirling and charging.

Why didn't she get him in first? Travis thought. He's going to jump out in a second. Then he knew: Of course, she'd look out for everyone else's horse first.

They both jumped out of the car--Travis had a hard time getting his door shut against the wind. The temperature was dropping rapidly. It was almost as dark as dusk, except for the weird strobing effect of the lightning.

"Don't touch the railing!" Ken yelled at him, then threw the gate open and ran to grab Sandman's lead rope from Casey.

"I'll get him in! Get the Star Runner!"

For a second Travis was surprised to see how easily Ken handled the nervous horse. Then he remembered: That was what Ken had wanted to do with his life, raise horses. He hadn't ever seen Ken near one...

There was a ripping sound, the sky splitting, and a finger of light touched the pecan tree at the back of the house. A crack and an explosion that deafened him.

This was death dancing around him in the skies, and for a second Travis wanted to run; then he broke loose from fear into a kind of crazy exhilaration. The Star Runner covered the paddock in one leap and took the five-foot railing in the next. Travis felt what it was that Casey felt: the Star Runner, to tame that Star Runner, it would be conquering worlds...

The railing was humming. The steel poles were vibrating and pulsating with energy. Don't touch it, Travis thought, it's death. He turned and jumped into the Jeep with Casey, he'd been aware of her, the sky, the storm, the battlefield play of earth and air, all at the same time. Their eyes locked for just a second, and they laughed out loud at the same time...

He seemed to hear Ken calling out, warning, but he was far behind now, they were racing like the wind, the earth was moving like a live thing under the wheels, the whole landscape was changed, charged, a different color, nothing familiar except that dark racing figure ahead.

The pasture gate was leaning, nearly flattened by the wind, and they charged on across it without stopping. They could gain on the Star Runner here, a long flat stretch except for the gullies that nearly threw them from the Jeep. They were gaining now, not chasing him, joining him.

Travis looked at Casey laughing into the wind and thought: I'll remember that profile to the day I die. No matter how it works for us later, I'll always have this...

The sky opened, lit to the ceiling, a light brighter than he could ever have imagined, showing huge towers and spires reaching to heaven--

He lay tasting dirt and aching and wondering at the stillness. The wind still tore across the land, the sky was still flashing, but it was quiet as a tomb.

He wondered if

he was dead, then decided he hurt too much to be dead. He felt sad, as if he'd been awakened from a wonderful dream.

Casey! He pushed himself up and looked around wildly. The Jeep lay overturned in a small gulley. But then something stirred just a few feet away, and Casey slowly forced her way to her feet. He, too, got up. The center of the storm was farther away now, flashing behind them. He felt a few pelts of water. He limped up to stand beside her and she took his hand, winding her fingers in his.

No heat, no passion, just gratitude for a human touch.

"What is it?" he said. He realized then that he was deaf. And it didn't shock him like the desolation of her face.

There was nothing. Just the windswept pasture, the overturned Jeep, and the line of trees. The acrid smell of electricity, the smell of something burning ... flesh burning.

Nothing. He gazed at the empty pasture.

It was raining now, harder. It felt like tears, it felt like blood, on his face.

Chapter 14

Travis lay on his bed, going over his manuscript. He was absentmindedly correcting things, the technical stuff mostly, cutting description, fiddling with a comma, trying to figure out how to let people know what a character was saying without writing word for word what he was saying. "He swore" worked pretty good, but he needed something else too...

He turned down the music.

Through the open window he could hear the mockingbirds fighting over what was left of the pecan tree. He rolled off the bed and pulled his desk chair to the window.

The revisions were beginning to bore him, now that the novelty of the editor's marks had worn off. The book was okay, and the reality of publication (it was really going to happen!) could still stop his breath, but he wasn't living this book anymore. He just wanted it done.

He listened to the birds. He had a great appreciation of the sense of hearing now, after being stone deaf for two days and panicked that it might be forever.

He folded his arms on the windowsill and rested his chin on them.

Spring wasn't bad. Fall was always his favorite time of year, but spring wasn't bad at all.

There was the realtor, in her navy suit and plasticized hair, showing someone around the property. The economy was bad, it was a bad time to be selling, but every once in a while someone came to look.

He had to keep his room straighter.

Teresa had filed for divorce, but now she was dragging her heels about going through with it. Christopher had started bed-wetting and both Ken and Teresa seemed unduly freaked out about it. Travis thought if it'd bring them together again he'd personally load Chris up with juice every night. And a couple of nights he had.

He was tired of their story and wished for a happy ending.

But now he thought stories didn't have endings, only pausing places.

Joe's story was still stuck on whether he was an adult or a juvenile, but Orson was going to get to sit on death row while his ending was being debated.

It was funny, the thought of what might have been, had he stayed--"what if?"--could still make Travis sick with dread. But the memory of the storm, of racing lightning, when he had been so close to death he could have reached out to touch it--that only brought an odd kind of joy.

Faintly, he could hear Casey yelling, "Heels. Heels! Heels!" He smiled. They were good friends now, close in a real funny way, free to fuss at each other, or laugh when no one else got the joke; she only had to raise an eyebrow to let him know what she was thinking, and sometimes she seemed to read his mind. They had a deal together, to quit smoking.

But something was gone. The intensity of a flaming candle, a laugh in the face of danger. He tried to remember the heat he had felt for her before, but it was fading now, like the memory of the storm, like the memory of the Star Runner, who, after all, had been just a horse.

Casey was still a good trainer. She still did well at the shows, she had a waiting list of people who wanted to ride with her. But there was something missing ... he still loved her, but not the same way.

But he couldn't, wouldn't, believe that he missed the horse.

He could hear the realtor, in the house now, chirping about moldings, whatever they were.

He didn't much care about the place selling--Casey had already found another barn--except maybe it would cheer Ken up. Ken had promised him he could transfer to East River High, and it looked like he'd get to start with summer school, since he was flunking English. (This was going to be great in interviews, he thought. "The year I sold my book I flunked English." Ha!)

He would be in classes with Jennifer. He had gone with her and some of her friends to get pizza, to movies, they were a little preppy for him but he could get along with them. He had never felt so protective of anyone as he did of Jennifer.

He looked at his manuscript. It was just a stack of paper, pretty soon to be a book, but it wasn't the whole world anymore. Nell (he could call her Nell now) was nagging him to begin another one right away, so he'd have a good start on it before this one came out.

"Get going now," she warned him, "or you'll freak at the reality of the audience, once reviews come in."

Yeah, yeah, sure, Travis thought. But anyway, he did have an idea...

He pulled his chair up to the desk and rolled a blank piece of paper into his typewriter.

He sat there, waiting.