RIDER
The boy hears the stream of water falling into the tank. He feels relief when he hears the sound. He is glad that the windmill is still working. If it should break down, it would have to be fixed and he isn’t sure if he would be able to do it.
He notices a movement in the road that runs down to the house. At the same time he feels excited and apprehensive. Visitors are very rare. The movement is still just a black blob against the reddish rocks of the hill. But it is already clear to his young eyes that is a huge, black horse with a rider leading it.
The thin stream takes a long time to fill the pail. At last it is full, but before he picks it up to carry it into the house, he looks up at the approaching horse and rider again. Now he can clearly see that the horse is limping, it seems as if has trouble with its left foreleg. The horse is tall, it has to be nearly seventeen hands and coal black. As the two approaches he sees that it has a white patch on its forehead. As it approaches it becomes clear to him that it is a magnificent animal. Under the silky smooth coat the muscles on the breast and hindquarters ripple like polished steel.
He picks the pail up, hurries to the back door of the house, splashing the water over the rim. The woman and her son watches the approaching stranger from behind the curtains. She has been left alone on the farm the last five years after her husband’s accident and still lacks the confidence to be as bold and outgoing as he was. On the other hand she has never been as outgoing and open to strangers as he was.
The man leads the limping horse slowly and gingerly towards the water. They see from the movement of his lips that he is talking to the horse, but they can’t hear what he is saying. The horse is extremely thirsty. It drinks a long time before lifting its head. It turns its ears in the direction of the house and the low hills behind it.
The horse neighs softly. The woman catches her breath, says, “What a horse!”
Her son says, “He is a beautiful beast.”
His mother says, her breath coming slightly faster, “Go! Go ask him to come in!”
She hesitates, then gains confidence, “Tell him to put the horse in the stable. There has to be enough fodder in there somewhere.”
When he hesitates, she urges him on, “Go, go on, I don’t want to appear unfriendly!”
The rider is not tall, but thick-set and heavy, his shoulders would hardly fit into the frame of a door. He has a bushy black beard and long hair which pops out from under the rim of his hat.
The boy puts his hand out: “We are...my mother says you may stable the stallion.” He smiles, trying to sound friendlier, “He’ll have to rest at least a week before that leg will heal.”
The rider scarcely touches the boy’s hand, touching the palm only slightly with his heavy fingers, pulling it quickly back again.
“You spilled nearly all the water before you reached the house. Why were you in such a hurry?”
His light grey eyes look sharp, he isn’t joking.
The boy blushes, looks down, finds no answer, but the man speaks again: “You know something about horses?”
The boy feels relieved. “Yes, I love to ride ...”
The man cuts in, rather brusquely, “I see no sign of horses on this farm? ‘
The boy feels taken aback again, “ No, they have all died of the horse sickness.”
“You live too close to the river. You brought them in too late in the evenings and let them out too early. It is then when the horse fly and gnats infect them.”
The boy, flustered, becomes defiant, “I was still very young when my dad died. I still make mistakes!”
The stranger does not answer, looks at the water in the through, says, “Your dad has died?”
“Yes. Five years ago. I was eight then.”
The horse has finished drinking, lifts its head, neighs softly and rubs it against the man’s arm. The man holds the reins loosely in his muscular right hand, “Come!”
The horse follows without him pulling at the reins.
The woman approaches them from the house. She is beautiful and striking. There is a certain pride in the way in which she holds her body. She walks lightly, upright but with a suppleness; touching the earth with toe and heel so that the soft curve of her hips sways gently from side to side. On her suntanned face a shy little smile flickers.
“Welcome!” She holds her hand out to him, “I am Cora, Cora Malan. It seems as if you have problems with your horse.”
The man takes her hand in his. The palms are thick and fleshy, the fingers short and strong: “Ruurd van Eck. Your son?”
Inexplicably she blushes slightly: “Nico. Yes.” She smiles lovingly at the boy, “He is really my only help and support in these difficult times.”
She tries to steer away from their situation, worried that he will think she is griping, says, “You have a first name that I haven’t heard before.”
“Ruurd?” He looks fixedly at her, says only, “Yes.”
After the evening meal, they stay in the kitchen. The wood stove is still warm and she puts three pieces of hardwood into the burner. She’ll ask the boy to chop some more tomorrow. He likes to do it, he says it will give him muscles, make him as strong as his dad was. She wants the man to have a good time with them, but he seldom talks about himself and if at all, it is only fleeting references to very general things. The previous year’s drought, horse sickness, how it happened that his horse became lame in the front leg. Never about himself. What he obviously loves to do, is to ask questions.
How did her husband die? How old was he then? And she? Did he inherit the farm? From whom did he buy it? What was her maiden name? Where is she originally from? Where did she meet her husband? What happened to her own parents, and her in-laws?
He seems especially interested in the farm, says, “ One ought to do better here. This is a not a bad part of the country.”
She feels the blood rushing to her face again. She knows that what he says, is true, but it is the way in which he refers to it, which makes her uneasy. He has a very authoritative, even over-bearing way of stating the obvious.
“It is already going better. I was not used to farming... m...my son was still too young to take over.” She smiles lovingly in the direction of the boy, “He is learning fast... growing up just as fast too.” Her beautiful face radiates from the inside as she continues: “He will be tall, like his father was. Tall and lean and strong...”
She gets embarrassed but the stranger says nothing, he keeps looking into the fire in the stove. Two tiny flames are reflected in his eyes.
After attending to his horse in the morning, he walks off into the veld. The boy did not go into the stall with the man, unsure if he would be welcome there. He heard him talking to the horse, in a low, soothing voice, talking as if the horse is his friend, and can understand him. The boy felt a pang in his heart, remembering how his dad too could talk to horses, sometimes even whispering close to their ears.
Not before close to supper did the man return. That becomes a daily routine. If he is not looking after the horse, massaging the strained muscle, he visits everything on the farm. At the kraal he picks up the stones that has fallen out of the walls, put it back. He lifts the heaviest stones with absolute ease.
When he is with the boy he criticises him relentlessly. He points at a sagging corner post, “This post is rotten, you have to cut a new one.”
He does not offer to help with it.
Later he says, “It doesn’t seem as if you had such a love for your dad if one sees how it looks in the cemetery, with the weeds and grasses growing all over the grave.”
The boy becomes ashamed, then feels a hot anger rushing to his head, “My mother said that it was all right, soon I will be stronger and able to do more, then I will clear it regularly!”
“Why don’t you have any help on this farm?”
“We had, but we had to let them go. We could not pay them, or feed them.”
The grey eyes become little stinging spots, sharp as needles, “This is an excellent farm. One can live well on it if you know how and are prepared to work and build it up. It needs a lot of building up.”
That night the boy, cries in his pillow. He misses his father so much that he feels the pain running down his arms into the palms of his hands. The same intense pain which he felt when he had received the news that his father had died. His dad was tall and sinewy, but also as strong as an ox. And although he was patient and slow to anger, once his anger was roused, he could become like a madman. “I am like that too” he thinks and the pain becomes nearly unbearable.
He remembers how his dad could laugh. Laugh that the sound of it would reverberate from the inside of the flat, uncovered roof overhead.
On the third day the stallion’s leg seems a lot better. The day is much warmer than the previous ones and he sees his mother and the man strolling along the road. He sees how they talk, sometimes stopping, his mother using her lovely hands to stress a point. The man never uses his hands when he talks, mostly they hang idle at his sides, but he often clenches them into fists. Sometimes, but very seldom, he’ll use a fist to emphasize something which he feels strongly about. All these things the boy, struggling to fix a fence with one set of pliers because he could find the second pair nowhere, sees and the feeling of apprehension and fear grows in him, especially when once he sees his mother laughing. Although he knows how easy she finds it to laugh, he doesn’t want her to. Not when she is alone with the stranger.
On the fifth day the man saddles the horse and rides off into the veld. The horse shows no signs of discomfort. The rider sets off at a full gallop and when he returns the horse glistens with sweat but at a subdued pace it bends its proud neck, chomps at the bit and from time to time moves sideways as if it can’t curb its impatience to be off. Again the boy is overwhelmed by the beauty of the horse. Beneath its graceful movements lurks a power and pride that is clear to anyone knowing anything about horses.
The man says that the horse has healed completely. He does not say thank you or show any gratitude towards the son and his mother. He does not talk about leaving. The woman and the boy do not ask him about it.
The boy is tired of the work of the day and goes to bed early. He immediately falls asleep and he sleeps like a log.
Something disturbs him, he comes out of a dreamless sleep as if he is pulled from a deep pit. Then it hits him and within one movement he is out of the bed and in the middle of the room. It is his mother calling out. He listens carefully and hears her pleading: “No, no...don’t do that! Please...please!”
In an instant he knows that the stranger must be harassing his mother and the blood rushes to his head so that he can hear his heart thumping like a horse’s hoofs in his ears. In the corridor he takes the gun from the rack. After his father’s death they developed the habit to keep it loaded but not cocked.
Without even realising it, he cocks the gun as he moves swiftly to the door of his mother’s room. The door creaks open and when he is in the middle of the room he realises that the man is not aware of him. The moon is exceptionally bright outside and in the creamy light falling through the window he sees the naked man on top op his mother. Blinded by a terrible rage he sees the white buttocks moving and he hears his mother still pleading, moaning.
An icy calm comes over him, a calm in which he grimly think that the rider doesn’t know that he is quite an outstanding shot. He sees the big, hairy head next to his mother’s on the pillow. Still undetected, he moves closer so that the barrel of the gun is just a few centimetres from the back of the head when he squeezes the trigger.
Above the roar of the gun in the enclosed space rises his mother’s scream. .
She struggles to get the dead man off her, to cover her naked body. More penetrating than the sound of the gun her scream cuts through his ears, so intense that he staggers back to get away from it.
At last his mother talks to him, scolding him: “Why did you do that? Why did you do that? What are we going to do now?”
She falls to the floor, weeps uncontrollably : “Why? Why? I...I...was so...lonely!”
The boy crosses the moonlit yard. In the stable the moonlight is streaming through the open door and the openings close to the roof
The stallion neighs softly as it recognizes him.
He holds the barrel of the gun nearly against the white patch as he squeezes the trigger.
(2521 Words)
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