Eli had brown eyes, just like mine, and my mom said he had my smile, but the rest was Moses. His hair was a mass of black curls, and I wondered if Moses’s hair would have looked like that if he’d ever grown it out. It had always been cropped so short it was stubble. I wondered what Moses would think if he saw Eli, if he would recognize himself in our son. And then I would push those thoughts away and pretend I didn’t care, making Moses faceless once more so I couldn’t make comparisons.
But Eli was like me in other ways. He was full of energy and walked at ten months. I chased after him for the next three and a half years. He laughed and ran and would never hold still, except when he saw a horse, and then he’d be quiet and calm, just like I told him to do, and he would watch like there was nothing better in the world, nothing more beautiful, and no place he would rather be. Just like his mom. Other than the little kid drawings and the occasional food mess that he enjoyed smearing everywhere, he showed no inclination to paint.
I couldn’t stay home and take care of him though, not all the time. My mom watched Eli three days a week while I drove an hour north for school at Utah Valley University, which had been my plan, even before Eli changed my priorities. Dreams of following the rodeo circuit and being the top barrel racer in the world were laid by the wayside. I decided to follow in my parents footsteps. Horses and therapy. It made sense. I was good with animals, horses especially. I would be doing what I loved and maybe I would learn something along the way that would help me come to terms with my relationship with Moses. I settled into my life in Levan. I had no plans to leave. It was a good place to raise Eli, among people who loved him. My parents had both been born there, and their parents, with one grandmother tugged over the ridge and into our valley from Fountain Green on the other side of the hill. In the cemetery, five generations of Shepherd grandfathers lay beside their wives. Five greats. And I was certain I would one day lie there too.
But Eli beat me to it.
Moses
I DIDN’T STOP TO THINK. I didn’t go back to Gi’s and tell Tag what I had found in the cemetery. I was filled with a thundering outrage that I wore to mask the quiet horror of the truth. I drove straight to Georgia’s and strode around the house to the corrals and outbuildings beyond. She wasn’t in the round corral anymore. The horse she’d called Cuss was in the pasture, grazing near the fence and his ears perked up as I approached. He whinnied sharply and reared up, like I was a predator. I found Georgia filling the water trough, and like Cuss, her head came up, her back stiffened and she watched me approach with trepidation.
“What do you want, Moses?” She muscled a bale of hay nearer to the fence and reached for a pitchfork to divvy it up to the horses that watched me warily, unwilling to approach, even if dinner was served. Her voice was harsh, loud, but underneath I heard the panic. I was scaring her. I was big and I was male, and I was feared. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t the reason she was afraid. She feared me because she had convinced herself she never knew me. I was the unknown. I was the kid who painted pictures while his grandmother lay dead on the kitchen floor. I was the psycho. Some even thought I had killed my grandmother. Some thought I’d killed many people. I really didn’t know what Georgia thought. And at the moment, I didn’t care.
“What do you want?” she repeated as I took the pitchfork from her hands and finished the job for her. I needed the distraction. Her hands fell helplessly to her sides and she took a step back, clearly unsure of the situation.
“You had a son.” I continued to spear the bale of hay and shovel it over the fence in sections, not looking at her as I spoke. I never looked at the family members. I just kept talking until they interrupted me or screamed at me, or sobbed and begged me to continue. Usually, that was enough. The dead would leave me alone once I delivered the message. And I would be free until the next time one of them wouldn’t leave me alone.
“You have a son and he keeps showing me pictures. Your son . . . Eli? I don’t know what he wants exactly, but he won’t leave me alone. He won’t leave me alone so I’m here . . . and maybe that will be enough for him.”
She hadn’t interrupted me. She hadn’t screamed at me. She hadn’t run. She just stood with her arms wrapped around herself and her eyes fixed on my face. I met her gaze briefly and looked away again to a spot just above her head. The bale of hay was gone, so I leaned against the pitchfork. And I waited.
“My son is dead.” Her voice sounded odd, as if her lips had turned to stone and could no longer easily form words. My eyes glanced off her face once more. She had, indeed, turned to stone. Her face was so still it resembled the sculptures in my books. In the muted light of the golden afternoon, her skin was smooth and pale, just like marble. Even her hair looked colorless, thick and white and spilling over her shoulder in that long braid that reminded me of the heavy rope that Eli kept showing me, rope that spun in the air and fell in a sinuous loop over the horse’s head, the horse with colors on his back.
“I know he is,” I said mildly, but the pressure in my head increased exponentially. The water was rising, pulsing, and my levies were close to bursting.
“So how can he show you anything?” Georgia challenged harshly.
I swallowed, trying to stem the tide and met her eyes again. “You know how, Georgia.”
She shook her head briskly, adamantly denying that she knew any such thing. She took a step back and her eyes shot to the left, as if she was preparing to run. “You need to leave me alone.”