I recognized him almost immediately. And the images started to flood my brain. They were all of Georgia: Georgia with her horse, Georgia leaping fences, Georgia falling to the ground in the barn when I’d spooked her horse.
The image kept repeating—Georgia falling, Georgia falling, Georgia falling. It didn’t scare me. I’d seen her fall. It was in the past. And she was fine. But then I wondered if maybe she wasn’t. I wondered if this man—the man on the side of the road, the same man I’d seen in Georgia’s barn when Sackett reared up and kicked Georgia, the man I’d painted on the side of that same barn because he kept coming back—I wondered if he was trying to tell me something. Not about his life, but about Georgia’s.
And so I turned the Jeep around and went to the fairgrounds. I didn’t park in the lot, but crept around from the side, weaving around the outbuildings and the horse trailers as if I had any idea where I was going. I thought I caught another glimpse of the shadowy man—or was it just a flash of light, a cowboy needing a smoke? I came to a stop, stepped out of my Jeep, and called Georgia’s name. I felt ridiculous, and I stayed still for a minute, unsure, unwilling to join the masses that moved beneath the colorful carnival lights a hundred yards away. I was more comfortable watching from the dark.
Someone ran into me from behind, making me lurch forward and stumble, careening into me and then away from me, disappearing into the night without apology and without giving me a chance to push back. Drunk cowboy. But after that there was silence, peppered only with the stomp and snort of the animals penned and quartered nearby. I didn’t want to go any closer to the animals; I might cause a stampede of my own.
I headed toward the carnival and walked the perimeter, searching for Georgia from the sidelines. And then I saw the man again. Georgia’s grandfather. He was standing by the darkened entrance to the arena. He didn’t call to me. They never did. They just filled my head with their memories. But no images came. He just stood in a swath of pearly moonlight. And I walked toward him until I was back to where I’d started. He disappeared as I approached, but something gleamed at my left, disappearing around the chutes, beneath the grandstands, closer to the animals. And that’s when I found Georgia.
Georgia
I TOLD MY PARENTS what happened at the stampede. I had to. I also told them that I thought it might be Terrence who had tied me up. Moses came inside with me and stood anxiously by the door, not making eye contact with anyone in the room, his eyes glued to the floor. My parents urged him to sit, but he refused and they finally let him be, ignoring him as studiously as he ignored them.
What was already a late night became much later as my parents reacted with alarm, unending questions, and finally a phone call to the sheriff, who fortunately lived on the outskirts of Levan and not on the other side of the county.
My parents called Moses’s grandma and told her he would need to stick around to tell the sheriff what he saw. She ended up coming right over, bustling in the back door like it was ten am instead of two am. She patted Moses’s cheek and gave him a squeeze before she moved to me and wrapped me up in her arms. Her head only came to my shoulder, and her grey curls tickled my chin, but I immediately felt safer. Better. She sat down at the table and I went and showered the dirt from my skin and hair while we waited for the sheriff to arrive. I was sore and bruised and there were rope burns on my wrists and a wide scrape on my left cheek. The back of my head ached and even my lips felt tender from where my face had been shoved into the ground. But worse than all of that was the sick fear in my belly and the sense that I’d escaped something truly awful.
When I walked into the kitchen with my head in a towel and my body swathed in polka-dotted pajamas, Sheriff Dawson was sitting at the kitchen table, a Pepsi at the ready and a slice of pie in front of him, thanks to Mom, the unfailing hostess. Sheriff Dawson was lean and fit in his brown sheriff’s uniform, his blonde hair parted and neatly combed, his blue eyes bright in a tanned face that revealed his preference for the outdoors. He was in his late thirties or early forties and had recently been re-elected sheriff. People liked him and he liked horses. That was a pretty good resume for the people in our county. I didn’t see him losing his job any time soon. He and my dad were talking about breaking Lucky when I settled down at the table next to Mrs. Wright. Moses was seated across from the sheriff, and the sheriff started asking him questions right away. Moses was quiet and guarded and he kept looking at the door like he couldn’t wait to bolt. It reminded me of Sunday school, and the thought almost made me smile. The interview didn’t take long; Moses gave the briefest answers ever recorded.
He went to the rodeo with his grandmother. His grandma nodded helpfully. He came to see me ride. Mrs. Wright nodded again.
He did? The thought made me squirm and feel all warm inside. He continued in a quiet tone, giving the barest of details.
He was parked near the animal pens, standing next to his Jeep, trying to decide whether to go to the carnival for a couple corndogs and a caramel apple or to just head home. Someone had bumped into him from behind. He didn’t see who it was. A cowboy, he thought. Not especially helpful, I thought. But I couldn’t add anything to that description either. He thought he heard someone call out, scream even. And he found me. He untied me, he brought me home. The end.
Then Moses stared at the sheriff and repeated the same answers when Sheriff Dawson pressed him a little harder. Sheriff Dawson asked why he was parked by the pens instead of in the parking lot.
Moses answered that he didn’t want to walk.