Behind the Bonehouse by Sally Wright Page B

at Carl, his hands on his hips, his old tan sport jacket tucked behind them, his face hard, his mouth pinched under his Sunday Stetson, when he said, “Your mama’d be ashamed. ’Least mine wouldda been, if I’d carried on like you.”
    â€œYou! Who do you think you are?”
    They turned away from the rail, Alan walking fast enough Jo had to trot to keep up. Toss walked backwards for a minute, straightening his tie as he stared at Carl, then he turned and followed Jo and Alan on their way to the grandstand stairs.
    Toss got waylaid by Virgee’s owner, and the trainer who worked for him.
    But Jo and Alan climbed the stairs together, her hand tucked under Alan’s elbow. She could feel the anger in the iron in his arm as he took the stairs fast. “Alan?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œI haven’t seen Carl since November, but I think he looks different. Did you? Thinner, maybe, or—”
    â€œI was trying to keep myself from picking him up by the neck and crushing his windpipe with my thumbs.”
    â€œI think you did rather well.”
    â€œNo. I should’ve ignored him. He wanted to get me going, and he did. I stood there and insulted him in public when I should’ve walked away.”
    â€œStill—”
    â€œWhat do you think of Wilder’s chances?” Alan was telling her he was done talking about Carl.
    And Jo squeezed his elbow, as she said, “Hey,” to a farmer who lived up the road. “He’s alert without being nervous, which is good. He’s fit, and he’s fast. But I never have an opinion. There’re too many other factors. Heart. Guts. Getting out of the gate without getting mugged. Luck, as much as anything.”
    As it turned out, Wilder Son came in second. Though neither Jo nor Alan could’ve told you if you’d asked them two weeks later. Their world cracked in two in between. An avalanche swept in from the outside and drove everything before it.
    Monday, April 6th, 1964
    Alan woke up at two. His left leg ached the way it always did, the scarred tendons and sliced muscles more usually than the bone grafts. He stretched it and kept it moving for a minute—and used it to remind himself that he was alive when too many others weren’t.
    Tens of thousands of vets were in much worse shape still. He’d seen them from his hospital bed after he got back from France. He’d watched, and worried for them, and tried to help whatever way he could for more than a year in the hospital, and what he’d seen still woke him up in the darkest part of the night and made him pray for the faces that floated across his brain.
    He turned over on his right side away from Jo, trying not to wake her, and listened to Emmy dreaming on her bed on the floor next to Jo. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, so he slid out of bed in his boxer shorts, and grabbed a T-shirt from the chair by the door.
    He walked through the living room, then passed the front stairs and went on into the dining room, where he turned right, along the length of the table, and limped down two ten-foot-wide steps into the farm office/ studio/study, and on through to the kitchen. He drank a glass of water, staring out into the silvery dark, then opened the back door and walked out under the arbor toward the big oval pond.
    He heard the screen door slap behind him and looked around, disgusted with himself for having waked Jo, and saw Emmy trotting toward him across the wet grass, a shadow moving in dappled moonlight under the lace of the locust.
    He’d sat down in an old Adirondack chair just past the willow by the pond, and she came and lay down beside him, and he stroked her smooth head and rubbed her warm ears, telling himself that he’d been wrong, even though he’d been justifying himself ever since it’d happened.
    Why did I do what Carl wanted? He set out to goad me, and I fell for it like a fool.
    It’s not that I don’t