And then there’s the dog. Gwen’s mother waits on the dog, as if she’s doing some sort of penance for forgetting it in the first place. She feeds the raggedy thing canned tuna fish and cooked chicken, in spite of the fact that the dog has twice tried to bite. The stupid beast sits by the front door and howls, and when Gwen is forced to take it for a walk after supper, the awful creature will not follow unless Gwen tugs and curses and, finally, begs it to come along nicely.
Last night, when she called her friend Minnie to complain and decompress, Minnie wasn’t home. Her mother said she was sleeping at Pepita Anderson’s house, but that’s nothing more than a code all the girls use, a fake friend, a disembodied name given to parents when you want to be out all night. The old Pepita excuse, Gwen planned to tease Minnie, if she ever got to talk to her. Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself. I hope you had a whole bunch of fun, because I sure am not having any. If she were home, Gwen would probably be over at the Shopping Center; at least she could spend some money and feel better. Here, when she wants to get away from her mother there are only these silver fields, and the fading light, and the woods filled with things that are probably watching her—raccoons and weasels, and hopefully nothing more.
As she walks along this empty road, Gwen realizes that nobody knows her. No one could begin to imagine what it’s like to be her. Ever since she got here, she’s been desperate to get back to California, but if she’s really going to be honest, what is she going back to? She’s a loser, that’s the truth. She hates school, she hates all her friends, except for Minnie—who, when you come right down to it, is even more of a loser—she hates her last two boyfriends, both of whom she had sex with for reasons she can’t remember anymore. Admittedly, the sex was nothing. She’d heard so much about it, but it turned out she was floating outside her body while she did all those things. It wasn’t love, that’s for sure. It was all so nothing. If a nuclear bomb fell from the sky, would it really matter? Wouldn’t it be better to be blown away, completely and utterly, before she screws up the rest of her life?
She started to think like this at the funeral parlor, and she’s been morbid ever since, going over weird concepts. What, for instance, will she do with the rest of her life? Now that she’s here, with no outside stimulus—no TV, telephone, mall, pot, boy—who is she really? Why can’t she go back to being the way she was before she came here, when she barely thought at all?
Gwen puts out her cigarette on the road, crushing the embers beneath her boot. She leans on a rickety wooden fence, and reaches into her pocket for a scarf. But before she can loop the fabric around her throat, she begins to feel a tingling sensation on the back of her neck. It’s as if someone was breathing on her; either she’s going crazy, or someone is right there behind her. She might have turned and run home without stopping to see what sort of creature breathed out such warm air, if she hadn’t then heard a noise, one so small it resembled a question mark. Even before she turns and sees Tarot, Gwen feels as if she’s entered into a dream. This night, with its dark and silver edges, this horse on the other side of the fence who has come to her without being called. And perhaps that is why she has no second thoughts as she slips through the railings and goes into the pasture; it’s a dream, and it’s hers, and she’s desperate to see what happens next.
Up on the hill, Hank grabs one of the youngest dogs, who’s begun to yelp, and gives it a shake. He wants to see this, and he doesn’t want some idiot dog to announce his presence. Hank tries to be responsible in most things, and usually he is. He knows he should climb down the hill, fast, and stop this girl. If she stays in the pasture, she could get hurt. Tarot has charged at much lesser things—at the wind, for instance, at butterflies and bees. But Tarot seems completely hypnotized, maybe because the girl is so beautiful against the blue-black sky, or maybe Hank is the one who’s been hypnotized. In fact, the only time Gwen has even seen a real live horse has been at county fairs. She doesn’t even think to be afraid. She’s comfortable enough to stand beside Tarot and talk to him when most grown men would run. That’s what she’s doing down there in the field, where frost coats the soles of her borrowed boots. She’s telling this evil old horse that he’s gorgeous, and he seems to like what he’s hearing. He steps closer to Gwen, carefully, slowly, as if to hear more of whatever she has to say.
It is very odd, indeed, to see the horse everyone called a killer trail along, mild as can be, as the girl heads toward the rotten stump Hank should have pulled last spring. It had been a huge maple tree, before lightning split it in two. Ken Helm took it down, in exchange for the wood, and Hank was supposed to come here with some dynamite and get rid of what was left. Now, he’s glad he forgot. What remains of that old maple is the perfect height for this girl to get onto so she can throw herself onto Tarot’s back. When she nearly falls off, she gives Tarot a little slap, which, in other circumstances, would have sent him racing.