The October Horses Read online

  I nodded, staring at the photos one by one. When you’re in palliative care, time stretches out and nobody expects you to do things quickly, so you’re free to answer at your leisure.

  “I dreamt of a horse,” I said finally, clearing my throat. “He was … amazing.”

  “Was it a black one?” She asked eagerly. “A big horse on the beach?”

  “A black horse in a green field,” I said, shaking my head. “His eyes ...”

  “Oh yes, I know. Like he could see to the bottom of your soul. I dream about him nearly every night. He’s coming to take me home. Is he coming to take you home, too?”

  Her eyes were fixed on me glassily, too bright in the dim light of the room, and I could make out the flushed patches on her cheeks.

  Probably a fever, I thought, worriedly. She’s hallucinating.

  “Well, is he?”

  “Er, I’m not sure,” I said, wondering if I should buzz the night nurse.

  “No, I don’t think he is coming for you yet.” She dropped her voice down to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you want to know why?”

  “Um, not really …”

  “It’s because there’s something important you have to do first,” she said insistently, half-sitting up in bed. “Your life’s purpose is calling.”

  “I have no purpose,” I said flatly, suddenly realized how depressingly true that was.

  “Oh, but you do,” she said, her eyes blazing. “He told me that you are going to take care of my horses. You’re the one who will look after my October horses. You’re a rider, too, aren’t you?”

  “Uh, I’ve never …” I broke off, looking at the hopeful expression on her face. What harm would it do to humour her if it made her happy? She was clearly rambling. She probably wouldn’t even remember any of this in the morning.

  “Sure, I ride. I like horses.” At least the second part wasn’t a lie. I liked one horse. The horse from my dream.

  “I knew it. That’s what he told me. And he told me to tell you that this is your second chance. So don’t waste it.”

  And then before I could respond her head dropped abruptly to the side and she began to snore.

  Well, that was bizarre, I thought in astonishment. She doesn’t know anything about my future or my life’s purpose. She’s just a crazy old lady.

  But inside of me, a seed of hope began to stir.

  Chapter Four

  I can admit now that before I got sick I had been one of those people who just sort of floated through life.

  I think I had a happy childhood. I had friends, although maybe not best friends. I was marginally good in school, lukewarm at sports, average in art, and terrible at music, much to Angelika’s delight. I liked to read books but didn’t have any particular favourites, and I never stuck with anything long enough to have a true hobby.

  I graduated in the middle of my class and enrolled in my first year of university in a field I didn’t care about because I couldn’t think of anything better to do. I met my first real boyfriend, Duncan, who was nice but not thrilling, and then I became sick. End of story. That was my whole life before the dream in a nutshell.

  One day I was too under the weather to go to class and the next, I’d collapsed on the floor of Duncan’s dorm room, hardly able to breathe, and was rushed to Emergency by ambulance. At first, they thought it was just a bad case of pneumonia, but then there were tests and more tests, and the doctors were saying things like surgery, chemotherapy, and guarded prognosis.

  My life sped up exponentially after that.

  I was in and out of the hospital non-stop, whisked out of my dorm room and back at home, sleeping in my old childhood bed. Then there were months at the hospital, moving floors so often that I hardly knew where I was on any given day.

  Finally, there was nothing more anyone could do for me and I was transferred to what was supposed to be my final resting spot, Shady Grove. The last station on the train ride.

  I glanced over at the photo of Gretta and the big red horse. Wondering what made one person live their lives full-tilt toward a series of never-ending goals and another person just let life sort of happen.

  I had never had a burning passion to do anything like my sister had. Even as a very little kid she’d thrown her heart and soul into every new hobby as if her life depended on it. When she’d discovered music, it was like she’d untapped a gift that was already inside of her, just waiting to get out.

  It made me a little jealous, honestly. It didn’t seem fair that the universe had gifted her with yet another talent when I’d had nothing. But, as much as I’d spent my life really disliking her, I had to admit that she’d worked her tail off to make her dreams a reality. Nobody could fault her for that.

  I hadn’t had an all-encompassing hobby like my dad, who was a literature and history fanatic, and had filled the basement of our childhood home with dozens of little table-top dioramas of famous battles and historically significant moments. He’d even become sort of famous for them in some circles. Not my cup of tea, but clearly a passion that he’d devoted a good part of his life toward.

  My mom was crazy about cooking. She spent all of her free time in the kitchen creating spectacular desserts and dinners. The second she got home from her nine-hour work shift she’d disappear into the kitchen to unwind. She’d pour a glass of wine and play some cooking show on the little portable television and just create things until it was time to go to bed.

  I could see, from listening to them, that that unquenchable zest for life, that desire to make things happen, was inside Gretta and Lorne, too.

  “Do you remember how it all began?” Lorne said, startling me out of my thoughts.

  Gretta had been sleeping a lot that morning. She hadn’t mentioned our conversation from the night before and had seemed more tired than usual. She kept drifting off in the middle of her conversations with Lorne and I could tell that it was upsetting him.

  “You said to me, Lorne, I’m going to the Olympics, just like that, one day over breakfast. And low and behold if you didn’t start training for it like it was a done deal. Of course, we didn’t have any money, sponsors, or a horse. You didn’t care though, you said, Lorne, I’m going to buy a racehorse that’s going to take us to the Olympics.

  “I never knew how you pulled these crazy ideas out of thin air, but I was always happy enough to go along with it. Of course, we had no idea what we were getting into.”

  He broke off, his eyes shining as he replayed some long-ago memory.

  I stared dreamily at his face, but my medication must have kicked in and, the next thing I knew I’d blinked, and there I was dreaming of horses again.

  This time I wasn’t alone. Gretta was beside me, her two frail hands clutching my arm. We stood at the edges of a rain-soaked muddy track, caught in the middle of a pelting storm, thunder rolling overhead and the ground vibrating with the raw power of a dozen oncoming horses.

  They approached us like a freight train, bodies so slick with grey mud that they were all the same colour, like they’d broken free from the earth in some primal eruption. The ground shuddered as they ran past. My teeth rattled in my head and I felt the breath squeeze out of me, my heart pounding to the overwhelming rhythm of their hooves.

  “See,” Gretta said, squeezing my hand, “see?”

  The rain had slicked her grey hair down against her skull and mud from the horse’s hooves had spattered her cheekbones but her eyes shone and she looked more like a little girl than like an old woman.

  A horse neighed nearby; a clear clarion call that went right through me. I woke up with the sound still echoing in my ears.

  I sat straight up in bed, gasping for breath, my partially-amputated lung struggling to keep up.

  What was happening to me? As far as I knew I’d never seen a horse-race in my life. I hadn’t even bothered to watch one on television. But this dream had been so heart-wrenchingly real, and so, so beautiful, that tears were streaming down my face.

  Both Lorne
and Gretta were staring at me with very different expressions. Lorne looked alarmed and like he was debating whether to buzz for the nurse, and Gretta was beaming and nodding at me like she’d been on the race track with me the whole time.

  At that moment, it seemed quite possible that we had stood side by side on that track and shared the same dream.

  I took another rasping breath and fumbled weakly for the button that would raise my bed into a sitting position.

  “See,” Gretta said, touching Lorne’s arm gently. “She’s just like us.”

  Lorne muttered something under his breath and looked away, his jaw set in a stubborn line.

  “Don’t be like that, go on,” Gretta said, laughing, “just humour me, I know what I’m doing.”

  He sighed as pulled himself slowly to his feet and moved stiffly toward my bed, holding something in one hand.

  “Gretta wants you to have this,” he said grudgingly as he came closer. He limped as he walked, though the rest of him looked incredibly strong for a man of his age. His fingertips were calloused when he carefully dropped a little necklace into my hand.

  It was a simple silver chain with a charm. A racehorse running with its neck outstretched, ears flattened, every carved inch of it saying forward. The rider crouched low on its back, only a passenger on an unstoppable missile. Again, I heard the thunder of hooves.

  Lorne stared at me hard as he turned back to Gretta and I knew it belonged to her, that it had been an important part of her, and that he didn’t want to give it up.

  I promise to give it back to you as soon as she passes, I thought, but to Gretta I said, “thank you, you don’t have to give me this. But it’s beautiful.”

  “I want someone to carry on my work,” Gretta said, beaming at me encouragingly, “our work. I think you understand.”

  I didn’t, but one sharp look from Lorne and I knew enough to just smile, nod, and humour her.

  “Of course, thank you.”

  Lorne sat back down at his card table and began to deal out another round with only the little thwack, thwack, thwack sounds to convey his disapproval.

  “It began with a horse,” Gretta said, smiling over at the photos on her dresser, “a big, red horse.”

  “Ripple,” I said and Lorne looked up at me with a flash of surprise.

  “Yes, that was our boy. He was training when we got there. The sun was hardly up and he blazed down that track like a comet, fire trailing in his wake. We thought he was the fastest thing we’d ever seen.”

  “Turns out he wasn’t fast for a racehorse,” Lorne said, coming out of his sulk. “And he was clumsy, too. He didn’t know where to put his feet. They couldn’t wait to sell him to us.”

  “He was still growing.” Gretta smiled. “He was only two then. By the time he was four he was over 17 hands high and wide as a house.”

  “A monster,” Lorne said.

  “Our beautiful monster.” Gretta gazed at her husband with so much love in her face that I felt like an intruder watching them. I had to look away.

  I stared at the maple tree swaying in the breeze outside, the little, silver racehorse clutched in my hand so hard that I felt its tiny hooves digging into my palm.

  Chapter Five

  Gretta lived for three more days.

  Each morning, Lorne would arrive to visit before the sun came up. He’d pull the little side-table against Gretta’s bed and play endless games of Solitaire.

  When Gretta was awake they’d speak quietly together and when she drifted off it was only the flap, flap sound of the cards slapping quietly against the table in a purposeful rhythm.

  I lay there, too exhausted from using my lungs all on my own to do much more than stare at the ceiling and think.

  Way back, during the treatment phase of my illness, the upper lobe of my left lung had been cut out and I’d never really had a chance to adapt to the loss before the raging infection that had started my abrupt, downward spiral kicked in.

  It’s not like you even need two good lungs anyway, Angelika had said, you’re not an athlete or a musician. You don’t need that much air to read books.

  She’d been trying to be funny, to lighten the situation, but it came out sounding mean as heck and my dad had told her that maybe she should go home.

  I had actually been starting to enjoy her visits. We hadn’t spent much time together voluntarily since we were little kids and I had forgotten how funny and sarcastic she could be. It was a good antidote to all the tears and anxious worry my parents showered down on me.

  It’s okay, she can stay, I wanted to say. But the tube in my throat wouldn’t let me get the words out and she’d flounced out without a backward glance.

  She’d gotten her revenge that afternoon by finding my hapless boyfriend wandering the hallways and dragging him back to our childhood home to have her way with him. Actually, it turned out, they’d been sleeping together for a couple of weeks, but that was the day they got caught.

  “You’re having another good day,” my mother said in surprise, sinking tiredly into the chair beside me. She was still in her hotel uniform and she pulled her shoes off as soon as she sat down, wincing as she rubbed her feet. I knew she saved money by taking the bus from The Whitley Hotel where she worked as a front desk manager and then walking the four blocks from the bus to the hospital. This was after a full shift of working standing up; they were only allowed to sit down on their half-hour lunch break.

  My parents had decided to go down to one car at some point and my dad was always lugging home books and student papers from the university so he was the one who usually got to drive.

  Being in palliative wasn’t at all like the movies where your friends and family live at your bedside the entire time. Many illnesses stretch out for weeks or months, or even years in their final stages. Even well-meaning, loving family has to go back to work and resume their lives at some point. They still have to eat and pay the bills.

  “There’s my girl,” Dad said, striding into the room a few minutes behind Mom. He’d spent the summer attempting to grow a beard to look distinguished enough to impress his students, but so far it was looking pretty patchy.

  We were all pretending that this partial remission thing was our new normal even though I could see the deep worry-lines around my dad’s eyes and the defeated sag of my mom’s shoulders. In some ways, this illness was harder on them than it was on me.

  “All right, let’s hear it,” I wheezed, “I want to know all about your day. Tell me what’s happening outside.”

  It wasn’t something I’d ever dreamed of saying to my parents before I was sick. I would have rarely given a second thought about how their days had gone. But now I loved hearing about the world outside of Shady Grove, and all those minute, boring details that made up a normal person’s life. A late bus, a homeless person feeding pigeons, being caught in a summer rainstorm without a coat; all those tiny, beautiful, insignificant details that, when combined, made up such a rich and vibrant tapestry.

  My parents were great storytellers and they could make any bad situation seem hilarious with just a few carefully placed words. Maybe not a sick daughter type of situation but everything else.

  “Hey, what’s this?” my dad asks, zeroing in on the chain I’d wrapped around my wrist.

  I hesitated, glancing over to make sure Gretta was still asleep and Lorne hadn’t come back from the cafeteria. I didn’t know if Gretta would even remember giving me the charm; old people forgot things all the time.

  “Just a present,” I said quickly, covering it with my other hand.

  “Nice.” He pulled up a chair beside my mom and sat down, opening his multi-level lunch box. It was the metal kind that kept his home-made meal hot and packed enough for two. Even though my mom was the cook in the family she had to work longer hours. So, every day, dad rushed home from his summer-school classes so he could cook healthy food for the two of them and then come visit me.

  Today, he had rice and steamed vegetables smothe
red in some sort of delicious-looking sauce.

  My stomach rumbled loudly in response to the food, taking us all by surprise.

  Usually, I had to focus on something else while they ate because the smells and sounds of food being swallowed made my overly-sensitive stomach heave. But that day I could smell the nutty undertones of the rice, the tang of lightly steamed vegetables and the sweetness of the sauce. For the first time in forever I wanted food.

  I squeezed the little racehorse between my fingers, remembering the steady gaze the black horse in my dream had given me, and wondered what was happening to me.

  Chapter Six

  On the next day, Gretta didn’t wake up very much.

  I lay there listening to Lorne’s steady voice as he murmured on and on, reminding her of every last detail of the life they’d had together. He didn’t seem to be able to stop talking, even when she started snoring and he couldn’t pretend that she was paying attention to him anymore.

  Finally, he drifted into silence and I glanced over from where I’d been staring out the window. The look on his face was shattered, so broken and vulnerable that I gasped out loud.

  His eyes flicked upward, meeting mine and for a moment I was imprisoned in his gaze, unable to look away.

  “How did you two meet?” I blurted, saying the first thing that came to my mind. Anything to get him to stop staring at me in that haunted way.

  He sighed heavily and rubbed a hand across his eyes, looking down at Gretta’s sleeping form again.

  “We”—he cleared his throat a couple of times—“we both worked at the same barn when we met. We hit it off right away; we had the same philosophies when it came to training and handling horses, and we shared the same dreams of one day being able to make our living riding. We also shared an appalling lack of money. We had champagne tastes on a ramen noodle budget, I’m afraid.