I looked at Leroy.
“This place is all about bloodlines, right?”
He just stared.
“Cycles of these amazing horses making more amazing horses. Then those horses make more horses, and everything just keeps cycling. Right?”
“Sure,” Leroy conceded. “I suppose.”
“And so I was thinking... that, in a way, these horses don’t really die. I mean, they do die, everything dies, but there are all these little baby horses running around with Sarge’s blood coursing through their little pony veins making them these incredible little racers! And if there’s a horse that’s truly astonishing, a one in a million horse, then this can happen forever. He can outrun the grave. So, we need to get all of Sarge’s babies and we need to let them just run like hell, you know, to show that Sarge is not dead. He’s still running. He’s running so fast evenright now. And he will always be running, you know? Always.”
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes wide. Leroy watched me. His expression had not changed at all. He sucked his teeth. His mustache twitched slightly at the corners of his mouth.
“I think they should pull him in,” he said.
“What?” said my father.
“We’ll build Sarge a coffin and put it on a carriage. And all his children will pull him into the ceremony. Then we’ll unhook them and let them run, like you said.”
“I like it,” I said. “They’ll bring him home. To rest, right? Then they show that he still goes on.”
Leroy nodded. He squinted off into the distance, as if he were imagining the whole thing, visualizing every detail. And when I looked, I could almost see it, too: the horse-drawn carriage, maybe a band playing, bold flags and tapestries hanging from the oaks while the procession marched underneath. Leroy tapped his foot. Then, eventually, he smiled.
“Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s get started.”
10
Somehow, the horse funeral was a success.
By the light of a pink moon, they swung Sergeant Bronson’s frozen body through the sky with a crane to get him from the freezer to his enormous coffin. The next day they thawed and embalmed him. Then they groomed him and made him look like a show horse. Midafternoon, a jazz marching band walked a procession route lined with yellow and white carnations. And when the time came, the trumpet call sounded, and the little horses were untethered one by one.
We all just stood there and watched them run as fast as they could over the pasture, disappearing until they were specks against the horizon. By the end of it all, Leroy had tears in his eyes. I saw him wipe them away on the sleeve of his butterscotch-colored jacket before plucking a nearby carnation for his lapel.
On the flight back, Dad seemed pleased.
I watched him as he stared out the window at the wispy clouds just beyond the wing, a calm smile on his face. No animals had blown up this time, and he had a big check in his pocket. How big, I couldn’t tell you, but he kept touching it every once in a while to make sure it was still there.
“I probably didn’t take the time to tell you, Tess,” he said, “but thanks for your hard work the last couple days. That was, hands down, the best funeral I’ve done. And you’re a big part of it.”
“You’re welcome,” I said softly.
And, for the moment, I couldn’t think of anything terrible to add. It’s not like I felt like dancing or anything, but I was feeling slightly less awful. The funeral planning had been a helpful distraction. Also: Skip had given me his number before I left.
We weren’t likely to see each other again, but it felt good to know I wasn’t too far gone to attract a goofy-but-still-kind-of-hot cowboy. I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty, though, for not turning him down flat. If things had happened differently, I would be with Jonah right now in a tiny cabin somewhere, making sustainable yurts with gifted children in the mountains.
“Leroy was impressed I let you have a say in my business.”
My dad was talking again.
“He said his father never trusted him with the horses. Not until he was almost thirty. Can you believe that?”
“M-hmm,” I said.
I opened my Facebook account and started to scroll through Jonah’s pictures. The one, for instance, where he’s on a camping trip, standing in a stream, his hair mussed from waking, an unlit cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. And the one where his arms are covered in scrabble tiles and he’s caught mid-laugh on a dorm floor.
“Leroy doesn’t have any kids. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he has to pass on his legacy.”
I looked at the pictures people started posting after his death. A high school photo where he has long hair and he’s crammed in a Porta Potti with four of his friends (complete with the caption “I’ll always remember you like this, J. Much Love”). The first communion photo his aunt posted where he’s wearing a white suit and looks a little like an R & B singer from the nineties. Her comment below said: “God got another angel today,” as if he had actually died at the age of seven and not eighteen.
