Call If You Need Me by Raymond Carver Page A

of the bathroom and I heard the bedroom door close. I went inside and put another block of wood on the grate and waited until the flames began to move up the bark. Then I went into the other bedroom and turned the covers back and stared at the floral design on the sheets. Then I showered, dressed in my pajamas, and went to sit near the fireplace again. The fog was outside the window now. I sat in front of the fire and smoked. When I looked out the window again, something moved in the fog and I saw a horse grazing in the front yard.
    I went to the window. The horse looked up at me for a minute, then went back to pulling up grass. Another horse walked past the car into the yard and began to graze. I turned on the porch light and stood at the window and watched them. They were big white horses with long manes. They’d gotten through a fence or an unlocked gate from one of the nearby farms. Somehow they’d wound up in our front yard. They were larking it, enjoying their breakaway immensely. But nervous, too; I could see the whites of their eyes from where I stood behind the window. Their ears kept rising and falling as they tore out clumps of grass. A third horse wandered into the yard, and then a fourth. It was a herd of white horses, and they were grazing in our front yard.
    I went into the bedroom and woke Nancy. Her eyes were red and the skin around the eyes was swollen. She had her hair up in curlers, and a suitcase lay open on the floor near the foot of the bed.
    “Nancy,” I said. “Honey, come and see what’s in the front yard. Come and see this. You must see this. You won’t believe it. Hurry up.”
    “What is it?” she said. “Don’t hurt me. What is it?”
    “Honey, you must see this. I’m not going to hurt you. I’msorry if I scared you. But you must come out here and see something.”
    I went back into the other room and stood in front of the window, and in a few minutes Nancy came in tying her robe. She looked out the window and said, “My God, they’re beautiful. Where’d they come from, Dan? They’re just beautiful.”
    “They must have gotten loose from around here somewhere,” I said. “One of these farm places. I’ll call the sheriff’s department pretty soon and let them locate the owners. But I wanted you to see this first.”
    “Will they bite?” she said. “I’d like to pet that one there, the one that just looked at us. I’d like to pat that one’s shoulder. But I don’t want to get bitten. I’m going outside.”
    “I don’t think they’ll bite,” I said. “They don’t look like the kind of horses that’ll bite. But put a coat on if you’re going out there; it’s cold.”
    I put my coat on over my pajamas and waited for Nancy. Then I opened the front door and we went outside and walked into the yard with the horses. They all looked up at us. Two of them went back to pulling up grass. One of the other horses snorted and moved back a few steps, and then it, too, went back to pulling up grass and chewing, head down. I rubbed the forehead of one horse and patted its shoulder. It kept chewing. Nancy put out her hand and began stroking the mane of another horse. “Horsey, where’d you come from?” she said. “Where do you live and why are you out tonight, Horsey?” she said, and kept stroking the horse’s mane. The horse looked at her and blew through its lips and dropped its head again. She patted its shoulder.
    “I guess I’d better call the sheriff,” I said.
    “Not yet,” she said. “Not for a while yet. We’ll never see anything like this again. We’ll never, never have horses in our front yard again. Wait a while yet, Dan.”
    A little later, Nancy was still out there moving from one horse to another, patting their shoulders and stroking their manes, when one of the horses moved from the yard into the drivewayand walked around the car and down the driveway toward the road, and I knew I had to call.
    In a little while the two sheriff’s cars showed up