FATE AND THOM

Fate and Thom



Fate drove the beat-up F-150 , which once could have been white, down the rutted path too narrow to be considered a road, a plume of red dust unspooling from his tires.
Thom did not look up. He was in the corral attempting to lasso a recalcitrant mare named Chocolate. The first time the horse slipped the rope with a dismissive shake of her head and a fade to the left. Thom coiled in the nylon lariat and with the next houlihan draped it over her head delicate as a necklace.
Fate slid off the torn bench seat and slammed the truck door, a layer of dust shivered off the cab.
"Need help?"
Thom glanced over at him, the silver belly sweat-stained Duke pulled low on his forehead masking his eyes in perpetual shade, the thin straight sunburned nose poking out, his smallish mouth, the coppery stubble that complicated his chin. He was two parts denim and one part dust.
"Rope yours," he responded over his shoulder, his arm hooked over his horse’s neck as if they were out on a heavy date. He fit the metal bit into the mare’s mouth and slipped the bridle over her ears fastening the chin strap.
Swinging the steel gate open, Fate scooped up a lariat and crossed the corral to a touchy bay mare named Honey. An alert young colt took advantage of the situation and declared her freedom in a spirited gallop out of the pen.
"I swear, sometimes I don’t know why I’m still your friend." Thom led his mare out of the corral kicking the gate closed in disgust. He tied the reins to the top railing and retrieved his rope.

1

"Don’t worry he’ll get a clue, or I’ll wallop his hide." Fate already had a loop around his horse’s neck and was leading her over to the rail.
The colt galloped to the barn where Thom’s saddle sat perched on a saw horse, his blanket on top, dipping his neck he gingerly clamped his teeth on the corner of the saddle blanket, lifted it, shook it, and dropped it in the dust. Thom took off towards him and the colt bolted around the corner, a loop was already widening at the end of Thom’s upraised arm.
His horse bridled, Fate was crossing back to his pick-up to retrieve his saddle and blanket from the bed when the onry colt reappeared, lassoed, trailing the slack rope. Fate twisted and ran to the gate swinging it open and shunting the colt in with a wave of his arm and a whoop. He clanged it shut.
"He sure is full of piss and vinegar, today," Fate remarked as Thom passed him and slipped the loop off the horse’s neck.
"Any and every day," he said to the braid as he coiled it.
Fate laid the blanket across his horse’s back and lifted his saddle. Thom busied himself slapping the dust off his saddle blanket.
"How’re your folks," Fate asked.
"Getting on, okay, I guess." Thom smoothed the blanket and hefted his saddle to Chocolate’s back . He strapped the cinch, slung the left stirrup over the horn and kneed the mare in the stomach to tighten the cinch. He unhooked the stirrup, gathered the reins and swung himself into the saddle.
Looking up, Fate said,"Hold my reins a sec, Thom." He returned to his truck and leaned into the cab. He pulled an object from the cab and slammed the door. When he turned his gun belt uncoiled in his hands like a fat brown snake. He buckled it on and shifted the holster on his hip.

2

"Now why do you need that? I thought that thing had caused you enough trouble and lawyers."
" This country is a jealous bitch take your attention off her for a second and she’ll bite you hard in the ass. I come prepared." Fate took a handful of rein and horn and swiveled himself up into the saddle. He pushed the balls of his feet into the stirrups, "Now where we headed?"
"Out there,"was Thom’s only reply as he swung his arm in a horizontal arc, taking in an expanse of sky and earth that filled and hurt the eyes. Immense red-orange buttes thrust up from the earth like abandoned prehistoric cathedrals, wide arroyos that in spring cradled streams were now where lizards scurried for shade. The land spread out like a red indian blanket dotted with the powder-green of sage and prickly pear. The distant blue mesas looking reachable by a short ride, were miles off, above it all was the broad blue sky where bales of clouds floated overhead pulling their purple shadows across the land, the sun pressed down with the heat of God’s open palm.
Fate kicked his heels into Honey’s sides and the bay thrust forward . Thom’s mount responded and the two friends galloped to the top of the rise where they reined them in as the dust swirled and settled. The land slanted down before them in a forty-five degree tilt opening up into a wide valley, scrub crowded a narrow path on the rock rim showing the way.
"You lead Fate, if you go over the edge, I’ll be right behind you."
" That’s what I like about you, pard. You’d follow me to the gates of Hell if I led the way. Gi’ up!"His heels touched hide and Honey set her hooves down in single file.
"So you getting a divorce?" The wind whipped around Thom’s words.

3

"I’m not. She is. She said, ‘that’s the last straw’. I said,’there’s no straws about it.’"
"And this all about you shooting’ her cell phone."
"She came home. I’m busy workin’ on the pump. She starts talkin’ to me, or I thought she was. I start talkin’ to her,’cause she’s makin’ no sense. I look up and she’s yakkin’ on the cell phone. That’s just rude, y’know?"
"Rude."
"So I stand up, yank the phone from her ear, toss it high, shuck my pistol and nail it. Boom! Nothing but a thousand pieces when it hit the ground."
"Think she’ll come around like before?"
"Naw, she got real pissy! She want’s a divorce. She has a restraining order, everything."
"Sorry to hear."
"Don’t be. I’d do it again. Made me feel real good. God, I hate her! Her and her tech-nol-o-gy!"
" I can’t understand you, Fate. Why were you holstered, working on the pump?"
"It’s right by the tool shed in back of the house. Do you know how many rattlers I’ve come across workin’ back there?"
"No offense, but I’m beginning to think guns cause more problems than they solve. Remember that Steve Earle song, ‘The Devil’s Right Hand’ ?"
"I don’t think of my gun as a ‘problem solver’ but a tool, like a hammer. As long as everything in this country either bites, stings, or sticks, I’ll remain shod."
"Just watch those nails."
Below them on the decline boulders the size of SUV’s lay tumbled in a pile, wedged together one on top of the other, sage and cactus poking through cracks and crevices. Like everything out here they hunkered close to the land and struggled to survive.

4

The horses picked and plodded their way down the pediment where a wide arroyo cut through the valley floor.
"So how’s it hangin’ with you, Thom? You goin’ to settle down?" Fate chuckled, twisting around in the saddle.
" There’s no percentage in it. Graze in new grass until it doesn’t taste sweet anymore , then move on. There’s always new meadow over the rise. Who needs barbed wire? Know what I mean?"
"What happened to you and that girl from Winona? I saw in the paper she’s marryin’ some guy out of state. I thought for sure she had her piggin’ string around you with ‘two wraps and a hooey’."
Thom’s face became a red scab bordered by the brim of his hat and the fierce blue sky.
"Just leave it, Fate! She’s nothing to me now!" Thom lashed Chocolate’s shoulders with his reins and kicked her sides. His horse shot around Honey forcing her to step to the side and flick her tail in agitation. "I have to take a piss," he called as he rode by. He stopped and jumped down tying his reins around some scrub. He faced away and unzipped.
"Just piss downwind, I don’t want any of your splatter," Fate shouted.
He ambled up on his horse. Thom was rubbing his face with his kerchief.
"Let’s go." Thom grabbed his reins, wiped his nose and threw himself into his saddle.
The riders rode on in silence. The horses clocked their progress across the valley in elongating shadows. Like beetles they crawled across the plain dwarfed by the red rock monuments around them and the wide sky above.
"You know," Thom, said into the wind, "there’s too much empty out here for anyone to feel at home in."

5

"What do you mean?"
"I’ve been thinking about pulling up stakes."
"You, leave?" Fate turned in his saddle. "Where would you go?"
"East, I guess. Somewhere East."
"East!" The word spit out of Fate’s mouth like a curse.
"Illinois ,Iowa , I don’t know, Indiana. I just know I need to leave."
"I visited a cousin of mine in Louisville two years ago, ‘bout killed me. My eyes felt clogged, too many buildings and vans, cars, trees. The noise was deafening. I had to struggle to get to sleep. And the smell, I’d rather roll in horse manure."
"Still..."
"That part of the country is played out." He pulled back on Honey’s reins and she stopped, they stopped..Fate’s shadowed eyes scanned the great rock wall in front of them, the red earth that stretched to the horizon, the hot blue sky above them where two turkey buzzards wheeled waiting for misfortune, searching for opportunity. "Out here is too much for one look. You need to stay where you belong."
"That’s just it, Fate. I don’t think I know where I belong anymore."
They started their climb along the rock shelf. Random boulders crowded the way, scraping their legs. Sage bunched up all along the side of the trail dispersing its fragrance as they rode . A chinook whipped across the rock face like a playful haunt and flipped Fate’s hat off his head sending it rolling like a crazy wheel bouncing over rocks until it lodged between two boulders.
Like reflex Fate’s revolver was in his hand. He spun in his saddle and shot past Thom, putting a neat hole through the crown of his hat.

6

The horses jerked at the report stomping their feet, swishing their tails.
Thom turned, "Shit, Fate what the hell you do that for!"
"My gun, my bullet, my hat. Besides, it failed me."
"The wind lifted it."
"It’s not on my head! That’s the point!"
"You need a stampede strap, not a gun. Well, go get it!"
Fate dropped off his horse and threw the rein over a bush. He picked his way over the detritus and grabbed for the hat as a small rock dislodged, ricocheted off another and knocked hard and resoundingly against a large boulder farther down. That was all it took to spook Honey after the gun shot. She bolted up the path sure of foot and swift. She made good distance in a short time.
Fate put his fingers to his mouth and whistled but she was gone.
Thom laughed, "Seems you need a ‘bomb proof’ to boot!"
Fate sat on a sienna brown stone and pushed his hat down on his head.
"Nice hole!"
"Shut it! And none of that ‘Devil’s Right Hand’ shit!" He scrabbled over the rocks and dropped to the trail. "Give me a hand up."
Thom reached down and Fate grabbed his forearm with a hand hard and dry as a stone. He threw himself on to the horse’s hip, scissored a leg over and sat up. He clamped his arms around Thom’s torso.
"This does suck," he whispered.
Thom laughed. "I came out here to sort things out and here you are shooting holes in your hat, stampeding horses and breathing your foul breath down my neck."

7

"You want me to sort out your life, pard? It’s a lot like mine, sorta this and sorta that and none of it makes a lick of sense, but we keep ploddin’ along because that’s all we dumb sonofabitches know how to do, and just like our horses when something spooks us we go runnin’ in the opposite direction as fast as we can go."
"You ever lie to yourself," Thom, asked.
"I’ll tell you what a bartender told me once. I was drinking mezcal and made some comment about that little pink worm that lies at the bottom of the bottle. And you know what he told me?" Thom was silent. " He said it was fear, the little red coward that lives deep inside our guts, that feeds on our lies to keep alive, and the reason people like me go to bars is to find strength at the bottom of a bottle to tell the truth to themselves so they can kill the coward inside."
"You believe that?"
"No, he just wanted me to buy another drink."
A desert wind came up like a coquette pressing her hot breath to their lips, toying with their hat brims, fingering the hole in Fate’s crown, trying to lift it off his head again. They both pressed hands to their hats. Dismounting before they reached the top of the rise, they walked the rest of the way to cool down Chocolate. The bay mare stood by the barn with a rear hoof tipped, as nonchalant as a woman on a cell phone at the mall.
Dust erupted from Fate’s underslung boot heels as he strided over to the horse and grabbed the slack reins. He jumped into the saddle and pulled back as he kicked her sides. She backed up and he tugged left and she swerved around backing in a circle like a circus pony.
"I know you don’t like this, Honey, that’s why we are doin’ it. You’re not ditching me again."

8

Thom uncinched the saddle and set it upside down on the ground and watched Fate put the horse through her paces. He removed the blanket and stored the saddle and rubbed Chocolate down. He watered the horses and dropped a flake of hay for each. Honey had worked up a lather before Fate called it quits and leaped down. He led her to the corral and tied the reins and removed and carried his blanket and saddle to his pick-up and deposited them in the bed. He went back to the corral where Thom still was and began rubbing Honey down. He looked over at Thom.
"This is the only place you and I fit. There ain’t nothin’ East that’ll do you any good."
"‘Spose. But I hate the staying as much as I hate the leaving".
"Suit yourself." He threw the towel over the railing and slapped Honey on the haunch and muttered, "bitch," under his breath.
They walked together out of the corral and made sure to latch the gate. Fate climbed into his dust laden pick-up and revved the engine. He cranked down his window as if to say something, but just hung his arm out and lifted his hand in a desultory wave as he backed around and pressed his boot to the floor . Thom raised his arm and shouted, "See ya," as the dust rose obscuring the glare from the rapidly receding rear window. Thom went back to his horses and led them one by one into the barn, took out the curry comb and brushed and brushed and brushed until the sun winked out on the horizon.

THE END