Part 2
The rope slipped against Daniel’s palm when the horse moved his head. He looked down at it, loosened his grip, and reached for the stall latch.
It resisted. He hadn’t opened that particular door in months, except to sweep out the corners.
“Hang on,” he said, though the horse wasn’t pressing him.
He lifted the door slightly and worked the latch free. The bay entered, crossed to the far wall, and stood beneath the boarded window while Daniel brought water and hay.
That window had once admitted the first sunlight of the day. Timber used to stand in it with one hind leg resting, his coat bright enough that Evelyn would stop in the aisle just to look at him. Daniel had put him there because the horse seemed to like the light.
Years after selling him, Daniel had covered the opening with planks. One sash had rotted. Repairing it would have required ordering glass, taking measurements, and spending an afternoon in a stall he no longer used.
Boarding it had been easier.
Now he checked the water bucket hook three times, though it had held perfectly well for decades. The bay drew hay from the rack and chewed while Daniel remained beside the door.
Outside, someone’s dog barked beyond the orchard. Daniel switched off the aisle light and went to the house.
He woke often that night. Each time, he listened for the trailer, or the horse, or some sound he couldn’t have named. At dawn he dressed before the alarm and went out with the feed scoop.
The bay stood facing the covered window. His muzzle rested near a seam between two boards, where a thin current of cold air entered.
Daniel set down the scoop.
“There’s no view there anymore.”
The horse breathed through the opening. Dust trembled on the edge of a plank.
By the following morning, Daniel had arranged the veterinarian’s visit and worked out a feeding schedule. He hadn’t settled on a name. The auction papers called the horse only a bay gelding, and there’d been no one left at the sale who could offer anything better.
He arrived at the stall carrying hay against his side and coffee in his other hand. The horse turned from the window and waited while Daniel wrestled the hay through the opening without spilling his drink.
“Beacon,” Daniel said suddenly.
One ear tipped toward him.
“That’ll do, won’t it?”
Beacon pulled a stem from Daniel’s sleeve.
Daniel sat on the barn threshold to finish his coffee. Mist lay between the apple rows, with the upper branches showing clear above it. There were fewer leaves every morning now. The harvest crates stacked near the shed smelled faintly of bruised fruit.
He preferred the orchard this way, after the picking crews and the noise. There was work left, but no hurry that required conversation.
Inside, he made toast and ate it at the counter. The kitchen table stood behind him with four chairs tucked beneath it. He’d eaten most of his breakfasts standing since Evelyn died six years earlier.
He was rinsing the cup when he glanced toward the barn.
Beacon’s stall door was open. Daniel had opened it to give him access to the small paddock, but from the kitchen he could see the paddock was empty.
He left the cup in the sink.
The horse stood in the orchard, well beyond the fence, between two old Northern Spy trees. His head was low, though he wasn’t eating. The grass there stayed green longer than the grass above it because the ground held moisture.
Daniel reached the gate and stopped.
Both slide bolts were drawn back.
He remembered fastening them the evening before. He’d installed the second one himself after winter winds kept worrying the first loose. His hands did the work without his having to watch them.
He checked the metal keepers, then looked again at the horse.
Evelyn had put a little aluminum chair between those trees every September. For twenty years, she’d carried it out after supper, sometimes with a book she never opened. She liked to sit where she could see down both rows while the light came under the branches.
Daniel hadn’t walked into that hollow since her death.
He stepped through the gate, suddenly aware that he’d come outside without his coat. Beacon raised his head when Daniel approached but made no attempt to move away.
Daniel clipped on the lead and took him back.
At the gate, he tested each bolt, pushed against the frame, and tested them again. The horse waited behind him with a piece of dead grass caught in his mane.
That evening, Daniel called Roy Tuttle.
Roy had kept horses longer than Daniel had owned the orchard. He listened through the account of the stall and the window, then through Daniel’s explanation of the gate.
“Some of them learn hardware better than the people who make it,” Roy said.
“I’m less concerned about the latch.”
“Then say what you’re concerned about.”
Daniel rested his elbow on the kitchen counter. “He went straight to Evelyn’s spot.”
Roy let the silence run a little before answering.
“A horse can carry a place around in his head a long time. Especially a place he knew young.”
“This one came from the Kessler sale. Before that, Bedford County.”
“And before that?”
“I haven’t got a history.”
“Well, there you are.”
“Roy.”
“All right. Maybe your wife had good taste in places to sit. Maybe he does too.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead. A laugh escaped him, small and unwilling.
Roy added, “You’ve also got apples, in case that’s slipped your mind.”
After the call, Daniel warmed soup on the propane stove. A low flame hissed beneath the pot. The radio beside the breadbox played a country station from Fenwick, the same station Evelyn had left on whenever she worked in the kitchen.
He was wiping a spoon when a familiar guitar passage began.
His hand stopped over the dishcloth.
Evelyn used to hum along with that song without seeming aware she was doing it. Daniel could remember the places where she’d leave out a word because she was reaching into a cabinet or turning a page. A sustained note from the steel guitar followed the singer’s voice.
He reached for the radio.
A knock came from the barn.
Daniel waited. After several seconds, it came again: a hoof against a board, measured and hollow.
He left the music playing and went outside.
Beacon stood at the front of the stall, facing the house. Both ears pointed toward Daniel as he entered. There was hay left in the rack and water in the bucket.
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
The horse brought his muzzle over the door.
Daniel stood close enough to feel warm breath at his collar. He raised a hand to the broad jaw and held it there. Beacon lowered his head, and a few pale strands settled across Daniel’s cuff.
“You’ve got something to tell me?”
The question sounded foolish in the quiet barn. He didn’t take his hand away.
When he returned to the kitchen, the song had ended. He turned off the radio and pulled out a chair.
The soup had thickened in the pot. He ate some without tasting much, then opened the drawer beside the stove. Under spare batteries and a packet of birthday candles lay Evelyn’s cloth-covered journal.
He’d opened that drawer only a handful of times since her death. He took out the book, brushed a crumb from its cover, and placed it beside his bowl.
He didn’t open it. When he went upstairs, he left it on the table.
The next morning, he found Beacon at the boarded window again.
Daniel stayed in the aisle, watching the pale muzzle test the narrow seam. Roy’s words returned to him: a place he knew young.
Timber had been three when Daniel bought him in the spring of 2001, a quarter horse cross from a breeding farm outside Beldon. Bay. Four white stockings. Too much energy at first, until Evelyn learned to settle her hands and let him walk.
She’d been forty-two and delighted to be a beginner at something. For weeks, Daniel heard her laughing at herself from the riding field. By autumn, she no longer needed him at the gate offering advice she hadn’t requested.
They’d had more than two years of that. Orchard rides before the day’s work. The path above the hayfield. Evelyn coming back with loose hair and mud on the hem of her jeans.
Then she got sick.
Bills arrived in batches. Daniel called a farm manager near Beldon, agreed to a price, and signed the sale papers at the kitchen table. He didn’t watch the trailer leave. He told Evelyn the horse had gone to a good property, and after that he didn’t ask.
Twenty-three years without asking.
He stepped into the stall and examined Beacon as if looking harder could make the years lift away. The back was different. The mane was wrong. The young horse he remembered had filled every space with movement.
Beacon let him look, then turned his nose toward the window.
A truck crunched into the yard. Through the barn doorway, Daniel saw Beth Rourke step down from the cab and reach for her examination kit…
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