Chapter One
Six months before Polly Cain drowned in the canal, my sister, Nona, ran off and
married a cowboy. My father said there was a time when he would have been able
to stop her, and I wasn’t sure if he meant a time in our lives when she would
have listened to him, or a time in history when the Desert Valley Sheriff’s
Posse would have been allowed to chase after her with torches and drag her back
to our house by her yellow hair. My father had been a member of the sheriff’s
posse since before I was born, and he said that the group was pretty much the
same as the Masons, except without the virgin sacrifices. They paid dues, rode
their horses in parades, and directed traffic at the rodeo where my sister met
her cowboy. Only once in a great while were they called upon for a task of real
importance, like clearing a fallen tree from a hunting trail, or pulling a dead
girl out of the canal.
Polly Cain disappeared on a Wednesday afternoon, and at first people were
talking kidnapping. An eleven-year-old girl was too young to be a runaway, so
they figured someone must have snatched her. But then they found her backpack
on the dirt road that ran alongside the canal, and soon they called my father.
For the two days that the sheriff’s posse dragged the canal, they traded in
their white tuxedo shirts and black felt Stetsons for rubber waders that came
up to their armpits, and they walked shoulder to shoulder through the brown
water. I passed them on my way home from school. It was only April, but already
the mayflies were starting to hatch off the water, and I watched my father swat
them away from his face. I waved and called to him from the side of the canal,
but he clenched his jaw and didn’t look at me.
“We found that girl today,” he said when he came home the next afternoon. I was
making Kool-Aid in a plastic pitcher, and he stuck his finger in and then
licked it. “Tangled in one of the grates.”
“Is she dead?” I asked and he stared at me.
“You stay away from that canal when you’re walking home, Alice,” he said.
“Will there be a funeral?” I pictured myself like a woman in the movies,
standing beside the grave in a black dress and thick sunglasses, too sad to cry.
“What do you care?”
“We were partners in shop class. We were making a lantern.” The truth was that
Polly had been making the lantern while I watched. She had been a good sport
about the whole thing and let me hold it when our teacher, Mr. McClusky, walked
by, so that he would think I was doing some of the work.
“I don’t have time to take you to a funeral, Alice,” my father said, and he put
his hand on the top of my head. “There’s just too much work around here. I’ve
already lost two days.”
I nodded and stirred the Kool-Aid with a wooden spoon. There was always too
much work. My father owned a stable. Between posse meetings he gave riding
lessons and bred and raised horses, which he sold to people who fed them apple
slices by hand and called them “baby.” In the mornings my father and I fed the
horses while it was still dark, and I would walk to school shaking hay from my
hair and clothing, scratching at the pieces that had fallen down the front of
my shirt. In the afternoons we cleaned the stalls and groomed and exercised the
horses. It was foaling season and my father didn’t like to leave the barn even
for a minute, in case one of our mares went into labor. It was just as well. I
didn’t have a black dress.
“You’ve been a trouper, kid,” he said. “When your sister comes back, things
will calm down.”
He always did this – talked about how my sister would come home and everything
would be the way it was. For a while I’d wondered if he might be right. It had
all happened so fast. Nona met Jerry on a Sunday, and on Thursday she packed
four boxes and a backpack and went off in his pickup truck. Jerry rode broncs
on the rodeo circuit and married my sister at a courthouse in Kansas. My father
said that Jerry would break his spine riding broncs, and Nona would spend the
rest of her life pushing him around in a wheelchair and holding a cup for him
to drool into. She wasn’t the marrying kind, my father said. She wouldn’t be
satisfied to spend her life on the outside of an arena, cheering for someone
else.
But the months had passed, and Nona’s letters were still filled with smiley
faces and exclamation points. Compared with the horse-show circuit, she wrote,
rodeos were a dream. She and Jerry ate steak for dinner and slept in motels,
which was a big step up from horse shows, where we ate granola bars and drank
soda pop and slept in the stalls with the horses so that no one could steal
them during the night.
Her letters were always addressed to me. They opened with “Baby Alice,” and
closed with “Give my love to Mom and Dad.” I would leave the letters on the
counter for my father to read, which he hardly ever did, and after a few days I
would go up to my mother’s room and read the letters aloud to her.
My mother had spent nearly my whole life in her bedroom. Nona said that before
we came along, our mother had been a star in horse shows, had won left and
right, and even had her picture in the paper. She said that one day, when I was
still a baby, our mother had handed me to her, said she was tired, and gone
upstairs to rest. She never came back down. My father moved into the guest
bedroom so as not to disrupt her, and we were careful to take our shoes off
when we walked past her room. She didn’t make much of a fuss. She didn’t call
for extra blankets or crushed ice or quiet. She just stayed in bed with the
curtains drawn and watched television without the sound. It was easy to forget
she was there.
I would sit on her bed and read Nona’s letters to her by the blue light of the
TV screen, and she would pat my leg and say, “Real nice. It sounds real nice,
doesn’t it, Alice?”
I would breathe through my mouth to filter the sour, damp scent of her yellow
skin and oily hair. My mother made me say the name of the town each letter had
come from, and what I thought it looked like. I pictured the rodeo towns as
dry, dusty places with dirty motels and lines of fast food restaurants, but I
tried to be inventive: McCook, Nebraska, had chestnut trees lining every
street; Marion, Illinois, had purple sunsets; and Sikeston, Missouri, had a
park with a pond in the middle where people could feed ducks. When I couldn’t
think anymore, I would say that I had to go to the bathroom or that I had to
help my father in the barn, and I would creep out of her bedroom and shut the
door behind me.
After Nona left, my father said, we were lucky to get Sheila Altman. She lived
on the other side of Desert Valley and went to a new school with computers and
air-conditioning. Sheila Altman had blue eyes and a soft voice. She said “If I
might” and “Would you mind,” and never forgot to say “please” and “thank you.”
I wanted to rip her baby-fine hair out in tufts. When her mother drove her to
our house, Sheila would rush into the stable to kiss the horses and feed them
carrots she had brought from home. Mrs. Altman would get out of the car with
her camera and checkbook and watch her daughter scramble into the barn. “Well,
Mr. Winston,” she would say, “you’ve got your work cut out for you today.”
Mrs. Altman had told my father that for the past few years she had spent
thousands of dollars to send Sheila to equestrian camp, where for one week she
got to care for a horse as if it were her own, feeding it, grooming it, and
cleaning its stall. My father had jokingly said that he would let Sheila clean
his stalls for half that, but when Mrs. Altman gasped and said, “Really?” he
didn’t falter.
“For this girl?” he said. “Absolutely.” After that Mrs. Altman drove
Sheila across the valley every day after school and paid my father to let her
groom our horses and muck out our stalls. While Sheila was there, my father was
chipper and lighthearted. He told her what a hard worker she was and said he
didn’t know how we had managed without her. After she was gone, he would rub my
back and say, “You give that girl anything she wants, Alice. Talk nice to her.
Sheila Altman is our meal ticket. And she doesn’t have attitude like your
sister.”
My father had always said that Nona had a wicked tongue and an ungrateful
heart, but he usually smiled when he said it. She threw fits like nobody’s
business. When she was thirsty, she shrieked. When she was hot, she cried. And
when she was mad at my father, her face would get so tight and rigid that it
looked like it might split apart right between her eyes.
My father was being kind when he said I didn’t have the temperament for
showing, because what he meant was that I didn’t have the talent. I couldn’t
remember to smile and keep my heels down and my toes in and my elbows tight and
my back straight all at the same time. When I focused on smiling, I dropped my
reins, and when I thought about sitting up straight, my feet slipped out of the
stirrups. My father said that he needed me more outside the ring anyway, but I
saw how it was. We had a reputation to maintain and a livelihood to earn. In
the end, I wasn’t good for business.
But Nona was good enough for both of us. She smiled and laughed and winked at
the judges. Outside the ring she would let little girls from the stands sit on
her horse. While she showed them how to hold the reins and where to put their
feet, she would aim her voice at their parents and say, “You’re a natural!”
Then she would flash her smile at the mother and say, “My daddy gives lessons.
You all should come out sometime.”
Yellow Cap was the last horse my father bought for her. He was a palomino – the
flashiest, biggest, most beautiful animal in the ring. The first time I saw
him, I thought he would kill my sister for sure, but Nona mounted him easily.
She jiggled the reins and said, “There’s my boy.” Yellow Cap’s neck arched, and
his body tucked, and they rode around the arena like they were under a
spotlight. My father watched from the sidelines with prospective clients and
said, “That horse would walk on water if she asked him to.”
The day after Polly was pulled from the canal, we didn’t have shop class.
Instead, the whole sixth grade was taken into the gymnasium and invited to pray
if we wanted to. Then we were told to go home and talk with our parents about
what we were feeling.
When I got home, Mrs. Altman and my father were gathered around Sheila, who was
wearing my sister’s show clothes.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Altman was saying. “I’m not sure about the color.”
“I was just thinking that,” my father told her. “I was just thinking the same
thing about the color.”
“She looks better in red.” Mrs. Altman made a circular motion with her finger,
and Sheila gave me a shy smile as she turned around to let her mother see the
back.
“We have a red shirt,” my father said. “Alice, go up to Nona’s room and get the
red shirt.” Sheila stared down at the pavement, and I dropped my backpack and
went into the house.
I had to pick my way between piles of ribbons and trophies to get to the
closet, and when I opened it, Nona’s smell was gone from the clothes. I pushed
my face into the different fabrics, trying to find a trace of her, the sweet,
powdery scent of her deodorant, the fruity smell of her lotion, but there was
nothing.
My mother’s door was open a crack when I passed it, with the red shirt still on
its hanger.
“Alice, is that you?”
I creaked the door open and braced myself against the wave of stale air. My
mother was propped up on three pillows, and the TV light flickered across her
face. I arranged my feet in the doorway, careful not to let them cross the line
where the hallway carpet changed into the bedroom carpet.
“Be my good girl and close the window.” She tossed her pale hand limply at the
wrist and sighed. “Those little white bugs are coming in. I’m afraid they’ll
bite me in my sleep.”
“Mayflies don’t bite, Mom,” I said, but I crossed the room to close the window.
“I hate them,” she said. “Filthy things. Off that horrible water.”
In the glow of the TV the mayflies looked gray and sickly, and I tried to fan
them out the window. I could feel my mother’s stare on the back of my neck.
“Would you like to stay and tell me what you learned in school today?” She
patted the bed beside her.
I held up the red shirt. “I have to take this to Dad.”
She blinked at me for a second and then looked back at the television. “Better
hurry, then.”
Sheila really did look much better in red, and my father sold Nona’s shirt to
Mrs. Altman for twice what he had paid for it.
In shop class I didn’t know what to do with the half-finished lantern. I was
afraid to weld, and I didn’t think I could tape the pieces together. But the
boys couldn’t get enough of welding, and several of them bid for the chance to
finish the lantern for me. In the end I accepted an offer of three dollars and
a Pepsi, and then watched while they pieced my lantern together.
Mr. McClusky told me that it would be a nice gesture to give the lantern to
Polly’s mother, and after school I practiced what I might say when I rang
Polly’s doorbell. I had barely known Polly and had never met her mother, but
such a heartfelt gesture would probably make her cry. Maybe she would ask me to
stay and visit. She would make me tea and feed me gingersnaps while she ran her
fingers through my hair. “Come back anytime,” she would say. “Stay the night if
you want.”
But while I was practicing the right way to make my gesture, I noticed the
places on the lantern where I had smudged the paint by touching it to see if it
was dry. Polly’s mother probably had rooms full of perfect things Polly had
made over the years: neatly sewn beanbags from home ec, symmetrical clay pencil
holders from art, the kinds of things that when I made them always came out
crooked or lumpy. Giving her a crummy lantern would only confuse her. Instead
of taking it to Polly’s house, I wrapped the lantern in notebook paper and put
it in my backpack. I walked home along the canal, sipping my Pepsi and wishing
I had let the boys paint my lantern too.
My father was sitting in front of the barn, polishing Nona’s show saddle, when
I got home. His face was red, and the skin around his lips looked tight and
drawn. “Your mother’s been crying all day,” he said when he saw me. “Where have
you been?”
“At school, like I always am.”
“Don’t use a tone with me.”
I stared at me feet.
“Now you go upstairs and be sweet to your mother. Tell her how much you love
her. Make her feel special. Then come back and help me. There’s a million
things to do. I’m sick of doing all the work around here.”
I looked at him. Nona wasn’t coming back. Not ever. “Maybe Sheila Altman can do
it when she gets here.”
My father stood up then, and he seemed bigger than any human being had ever
been. For a second I thought he might hit me, and I tried to gauge the distance
to the house. I might be able to outrun him. But then he put his hands up to
his face, and his shoulders sagged. “Please, Alice,” he said through his
fingers. “Please.”
Upstairs, my mother’s face was streaked and strands of her hair clung to the
damp patches on her cheeks.
“Why are you crying, Mom?” I asked from the doorway. I meant for it to sound
sweet, but it came out tired. “Are you sick?”
She let out a cry when she saw me. “Come here to me.” Every part of my body
went stiff, but I thought of my father with his face in his hands, and I held
my breath as I crossed the room to her. She pulled me into the bed with her and
pressed my head against her shoulder.
“He sent you up here, didn’t he? I’ve been a nuisance today.”
“Dad’s worried about you,” I told her.
Her hair fell across my face and I tried to lift my head to breathe. “I used to
be able to make him smile,” she whispered. “He used to look at me like I was a
movie star. Do you believe that?” She sighed and straightened herself. Then she
bit her lip and looked down at her hands. “She was smart,” she said quietly.
“Smart to leave when she did.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“She would have been used up here. She would be old fast, and used up. And now
she gets to travel to new places and meet new people.” She turned her head away
from me.
Her nightgown was wrinkled, and in the light of the television her skin looked
dull and heavy. “I made you something,” I told her. “In school.”
“You did?” Her mouth opened and she touched her hand to her chest. “Really
truly?”
I rummaged in my backpack. “It’s a lantern,” I said. “See? You put a candle
here and then you can hang it and it will light your room.”
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The God of Animals
by Aryn Kyle
Copyright © 2007 by Aryn Kyle.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Scribner
Copyright © 2007
Aryn Kyle
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3324-5
