The Runaways

The pony came running through the rivermere suburb between two and three in the morning. Andrew Garth woke to the sound of drumming hoofs coming from way over on Canberra Road. He followed the sound with wonder and a mounting dread as the pony turned off Canberra onto Mclver, and when he heard it make another turn onto Cavanagh, he jumped from his bed and ran to the front door. He rushed out on the stoop as the pony turned down Gramercy Lane, his street.

The pony came at full gallop straight down the center of the narrow, one-block street. At the corner of his yard, it swerved across his lawn, passing within five yards of him, and then cut back out to the street. The night was dark, with no stars out, and the pony was going very fast; he caught only an impression of flashing, rolling-eyed desperation before it was gone. He remained on the stoop until he could no longer tell if he heard, or only imagined, the hoofs still faintly pounding over on Dundee Road. As he turned back into the house the telephone rang, and forever after the pony would stand in his mind for a messenger, sent to wake and alarm and ready him for what he had to do that night.

He picked up the telephone on the third ring and heard, "Hester, this is Hester . . . this is Hester," and he knew that she had been saying it over and over while the telephone rang.

"Hester Drummond?" He asked from habit, an old joke between them. He knew no other Hester.

"Look, Drew, can you . . . will you come over?" Her voice sounded odd, and he suddenly knew she was speaking through clenched teeth.

"I can and I will," he said. "Do you want to tell me what I'm coming for?"

Now there was a long silence. He could hear her breathing, in and out, quick and shallow, and he waited for the pony to come galloping toward him in the dark.

Her words finally came in a shrill, raw tumble of sound. "Fritz, Fritz," he heard her cry, "I've killed him, he's lying dead in the yard, so come. Please come. Please. Please."

His legs and arms were suddenly heavy. Fritz Drummond, who had been his closest friend and Hester's husband, had now been dead for four months.

"Hess, lie down and take it easy," he said. "I'll be there in twenty minutes or less. Whatever is wrong, I'll make it all right. I promise."

The telephone went dead at the other end, and he was alone in the dark living room. Childhood images of fear, crow-footed, batwinged and rateyed, crowded into his mind, and out of childhood he summoned a spell to banish them; suddenly he was aware that he was holding his breath and he let it go with a long, shuddering sigh. He put the receiver back in the cradle and went into the bedroom.

Nora slept on her side, one leg drawn far up under her, and the familiar sight made him smile. He began to dress, quickly and skillfully from practice, in the dark; and because the hours between midnight and daybreak had always seemed to belong to him, he felt an old pleasure well up inside.

Often he had wakened after midnight and, obeying some unexamined impulse, had got up and driven through the dark streets for hours. Once he had been told that this represented a withdrawal, perhaps even a sinister attitude toward life, but he knew this wasn't so. To drive through the night past the quiet houses under the late stars, to know that the world slept while he was alive and awake, never failed to fill him to the brim with an enormous tenderness for all living, sleeping things.

Dressed, with his shoes in his hands, he stopped at the bedroom door and looked back at Nora, who hadn't stirred. No need to wake her, he thought, for what can I say? That I love her beyond my telling but Hester belongs to me in a way beyond my understanding? That dead Fritz now lies dead again in Hester's back yard? And finally, that a pony has come running through the night and told me that I must choose between my wife's right and my girl's need?

When he turned onto Canberra Road, from where he had first heard the pony, he thought and wondered why it made him sad, that someone would be looking for the pony, and when they found it, gentle it and lead it back home. And from the ragbag of his mind he suddenly sorted out an old rhyme, unremembered since kindergarten, and he recited it aloud to the darkness rushing by.

I had a little pony,

Her name was Dapple-Gray;

I lent her to my buddy

To ride a mile away.

He whipped her, he lashed her,

He drove her through the mire;

I would not lend my pony now For anybody's hire.

He was quickly ashamed, aware that he had unconsciously changed the lady in the old rhyme to buddy, and had dishonored his dead friend. But why, then, must Hester kill him four months after his death?

"What now, Fritz?" he said aloud to his dead friend, who still seemed close at hand to him, "and where to? As long as you lived, I could keep the peace. But now, two women can whistle day or night and I'll answer, and I see nothing ahead but rough water."

The image of the running, frightened pony filled his mind. He slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator as he left Canberra Road for the expressway across the city to the Lackawanna suburb where Hester waited for him to come and bury Fritz forever.

Andrew Garth had the reputation of being a cautious, prudent man. He had been known to spend a week shopping for a pair of shoes, as much as an hour deciding on a toothbrush. Yet, out of a multitude of encounters, he had chosen one man and two women, and once chosen, he had never faltered in his devotion.

First, in point of time, was Fritz. Andrew Garth and William Frederick Drummond III had been friends all their lives. They were infants, they were children, they were boys, they were men and business partners. When Drew had married Nora Hoffman, Fritz had been his best man, and Drew had always supposed he would be the same for Fritz. Instead, he gave the bride away.

"Who else can give her away?" Fritz demanded. "Who else has she got but you?"

"You're three months older than I am," Drew protested, "and I'm not sure I approve of your marrying Hess. I'll feel like I'm giving her away to some old lecher."

"I gave you Nora," Fritz said evenly. "I'll take Hester and call it square."

He said in jest what could not be said in earnest. He had had three dates with Nora Hoffman before he introduced her to Drew on a double date. The next day Drew had Èome to him.

"This girl last night, this Nora Hoffman," he said, "what's the score between she and thee?"

"A draw so far," Fritz said, and then looked directly at Drew. He whistled softly and said, "I hope you live happily ever after, and I think I'll go fishing for the rest of the day," and got up and walked out of the office.

Back at work the next day, Fritz' eyes had revealed nothing. But he had given what Drew would have fought him for, and he must not now be cheated. The day he announced his plans to marry Hester, Drew went straightaway to her apartment.

"Do you want to marry Fritz?" he asked.

"Well, you needn't scowl so," Hester said. "Fritz loves me."

"Do you love him?" he asked.

Always she seemed to read his thoughts. "Fritz won't be cheated, Drew," she said. "I'll meet my obligations."

It was not the answer he had come for but he knew it was all he would get. And it seemed natural enough that he should give her away, for he felt that she did belong to him. His thoughts ended there, for he knew that he either didn't or mustn't belong to her.

That had been implicit from their first meeting. Three years before, when Nora was carrying the twins, he had sat in the office, alone. It was early in the morning, and Connie, the hunchbacked newsboy, had come in with the paper. On the way out, Connie had nearly collided with a girl coming in, and she had drawn back, frightened. Connie had given her his sad, mocking smile, and had drawn back, frightened. Connie had given her his sad, mocking smile, and had gone on. The girl remained in the doorway.

"To see a hunchback, first thing in the morning, is supposed to be good luck," Drew said. "Let's hope that Connie will bring us both good luck."

Always he carried in his mind's eye what Hester looked like standing in his doorway that morning, and how she advanced into the office until she stood directly in front of him.

"My name is Hester A. Floyd," she said, as though he had not spoken. "I can type eighty words a minute. I can take shorthand at one hundred and ten words per minute. I am also versed in all related forms of office work, such as (continued on page 30) filing, billing and double-entry bookkeeping. Are you in need of a trained, efficient, industrious and loyal employee?"

Her expression was a mixture of timidity and resolution, and he sensed that she had spent hours phrasing and rehearsing her speech. And he knew that she was scared to death and would never admit it, and very close to tears, but that no one would ever see them. And her appearance was startling, absurd and touching.

Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun which failed in its purpose to make her look older. There was too much make-up on her face, and he immediately knew it was her first time and that there was no one around to tell her better. The dress she wore neither fitted nor suited her and was at least three years out of style. His over-all impression was of a girl who had grown into her older sister's clothes, or who had outfitted herself from a missionary barrel.

Flustered by her directness, fearful of hurting her feelings, he said, "How old are you? Where are you from?" And, on sudden inspiration, "Have you run away from home?"

He remembered that she answered his questions in order. "I am nineteen years old. I came here from Worden. My mother died when I was quite young. I don't know about my father. I never have known. Will you give me a job?"

The state orphanage was at Worden, and he understood her clothes. "Then you've run away from the orphanage?"

She kept her eyes on him. "Yes, sir, I have," she said. "But if I have a job by the time they find me, they won't make me go back, now that I'm past eighteen. Will you give me a job?"

"Honey," he said, "if there's one thing the firm of Garth and Drummond don't need, it's an employee. There's hardly enough for Fritz and me to do."

"Do you know, sir, where I can get a job?" she askeÈ. "You're the first person I've asked, and I must get a job this morning. They are probably looking for me now."

"Now, you look here," he said, unaccountably angry with her, "you just can't go traipsing around this town, asking any and every man you see for a job. Why, hell, there are men I know who'd take one look at that dumb face of yours, and ..." he stopped and glared at her . . . "well, they'd give you a job, kid, but it might not be what you're looking for."

Her eyes stayed on him, her expression didn't change. "I see," she said calmly, so calmly that he knew she did see, which somehow made it worse. "But I'm not going back to Worden, no matter what."

She turned to go, and he stood up, his hands and face sweating in the cool morning air. "Wait a minute," he said. She stopped at the door and turned back.

When three-month-old Fritz was put in the crib beside him, family legend had it that he had clutched Fritz' finger and wouldn't let go. On his first sight of Nora, there had been a stallion quickening in his blood, and instant recognition. He glared in anger at this awful-looking kid, knew that she was going to walk away, and somewhere that morning she would find the man who would listen, would watch and study and calculate her cool desperation and would find something for her to do. So now he made his third choice.

"Fritz will shoot me," he said, "but you can start working for us. If you ask me why, you're fired on the spot." He walked around the desk and took her by the arm. "And now," he said, "the first item on the agenda is to find out what you look like."

When Fritz arrived, he was scrubbing her face in the lavatory. Afterward, Fritz watched while Drew dictated a letter to the orphanage which Hester wildly scribbled down, and he looked solemnly at Drew while they listened to the frantic pecking at the typewriter, and the wastebasket slowly filled with discarded sheets of paper. The letter was brief, Drew could have typed it himself in fifteen minutes, but when she brought it to him an hour later, he read it and handed it triumphantly to Fritz.

"There's not a single mistake in it," he pointed out.

Fritz nodded gravely. "Not a one, father," he agreed. "But we'd better get in a carload of paper if we expect to write many letters."

And still she would not cry or beg. "But I typed it," she said, fiercely and quietly. "I never typed before but I typed it. I'm smart and I can learn. You won't be sorry."

At the end of the day Drew found her a place to stay and took her down and enrolled her in night school. When he gave her her first pay check, he took her down to a beauty parlor and explained carefully to the operator just what he expected from her.

"A million dollars of my money and a million years of your time will never make a pretty girl out of her," he said. "But she's something even rarer, a damned handsome kid, so you do the very best you can with that thought in mind."

He told Nora about her and kept her informed. One night, after he had described a lecture he had given her on the proper way to walk, Nora had thrust out her underlip in the way she had when she was thoughtful.

"Say now, you're not reading anything into all this?" he asked.

It was a long time before she answered. "Playing God is hard work, Drew," was all that she would say.

But when he stood in the anteroom at Trinity Church, waiting with Hester for the bridal entrance, he was heavy in his mind. He had never touched Hester. Because it would have been too easy, he thought. Because not only his love but his honor was engaged with Nora. And yet, equally vague as it was strong, because he loved Hester, loved her so much that giving her to Fritz seemed too much to ask of him. Which was nonsense, and to banish such thoughts, he turned and smiled at Hester and made a joke of it.

"Hess, you're too sweet to give away," he said. "Let's you and I slip off somewhere and live happily ever after."

It was the wrong thing Èo say, or worse, the right thing said at the wrong time. For Hester turned on him with such a look of hurt and anger that he was shamed and alarmed. The look was brief, no one else in the room caught it, but he was glad their summons into the church came at that moment.

When Fritz and Hester returned from their ten-day honeymoon, Drew and Nora visited them, and the next week, Fritz and Hester returned the visit. Drew thought on both occasions that the usually taciturn Fritz was too talkative, and Hester he could not read at all. After they had gone he was thoughtful, and he turned to Nora.

"Do you think Fritz and Hester are happy?" he asked.

And Nora said, "No, not yet. But they are going to be. Fritz doesn't know that, but I think Hester does. And you just mind your own business, Mr. G., and let Hester row her boat all by herself."

The day after this visit, Drew watched Fritz ride away from the office at the day's end on his beat-up motor scooter. He stayed behind to finish up some work and was there a half-hour later when the telephone rang and Hester's tight, disbelieving voice told him that twentyfour days of marriage were all that Fritz and she would have.

Fritz had stopped off for a quart of milk and a loaf of bread a mile from home. He had come down Leslie Road, steering with one hand and holding the milk and bread with the other. It was almost dark, and although he had been meaning to get the light fixed on the scooter, he had not done so. As he came around the long S curve, apparently he saw the two cars approaching him, as the man in the first car saw him move well over to his side of the road.

When the lead car drew near him, the second car picked up speed and swung out to pass. This car was driven by a high school senior, a nice, soft-spoken boy. He said he saw Fritz, immediately, (continued on page 94)Runaways(continued from page 30) and meant to slam on the brakes. But in his sudden fright, he jammed the accelerator to the floor board, dragging Fritz and motor scooter on a crazy, twisting run down the road until the car ran into a ditch and the motor stalled.

After the funeral, Drew drove Hester home. He brought with him the only sovereign specific he knew, a bottle of whiskey. He sat with her until he finally knocked her out. He put her to bed and spent the rest of the night on the sofa. The next morning, she seemed quiet and composed, and talked sensibly about her going back to work. They both understood that she would not come back to work for Drew.

Two weeks later she did go to work, and for a few weeks seemed to be feeling her way into her new situation. Drew had gone to see her every day the first week after Fritz' death, and then, as she seemed to be doing so well, but mainly because she opened his own wound by reminding him that Fritz was dead, he cut his visits to once a week.

Hester had received ten thousand dollars from Fritz' insurance policy. One day she drove a fire-engine-red Thunderbird home. The next day she had a temper tantrum where she worked, and quit. She spent the rest of the day on a wild shopping spree. And a week or so after that Drew had taken some business associates out to the Green Onion and the embarrassed owner had taken him to one side.

"Drew, Fritz' wife was in here last night," the owner said. "She was loaded, and with Danny Chapman. You don't know him but he's no good. Will you tell her that Fritz was my friend, and if she wants to go to hell, then do it somewhere else, not in my bar?"

So Drew knew that Hester was still in mourning. And he reflected that there was no little book with a bright cover entitled How to Pick Up the Pieces After Your Husband Dies. But he went over and talked to her, long and earnest, about her behavior. She listened very meekly, and then she said something that disturbed him more than anger or tears would have done.

"You know, Drew," she said, "I wake up and I look around my room at the bed and the vanity, and out the Èindow and see the plum tree and the sunlight on the window sill, and I get so scared, Drew, I get so scared."

"Because it seems so unreal?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Oh no," she said. "Because it seems so real, you just don't know how very real it all seems."

But the fury passed; one day she was running wild and the next day she drove the Thunderbird down and sold it. She gave her clothes to the Salvation Army and began wearing plain skirts and blouses. She left off lipstick and rouge and returned to wearing her hair combed back into a bun. And she bought a dog, a long, lean tall beauty of a Doberman pinscher, who growled deep in his throat whenever he saw Drew.

"That dog doesn't like me," Drew said, "and I damned well don't like him."

"Oh, you two should get on famously," Hester said. "You both have my best interests at heart."

Drew vaguely comprehended the car and the clothes, the drinking, and even Danny Chapman. After all, he thought, to roar down the road in a red Thunderbird is sailing into the wind. But now she stayed at home, refusing to move to an apartment or to share her house with another woman or a married couple, as he suggested. And her attitude toward the dog baffled him; in the middle of a caress she would strike it savagely. And most curious of all, she gave it no name.

The growing remoteness in her face and her abstracted conversation disturbed him more and more on each visit. There was something he must do for her, he was the only one who could, he felt, but what?

"The first time I saw Hester," he said to Nora, "she was headed straight for an open manhole. And I didn't save her to set up light housekeeping for a damned black hound."

Nora's answer had been cryptic, oracular. "Then save her again," she said. "Save her as many times as you like. As many times as she needs. But don't lose yourself doing it."

• • •

These thoughts were thick and festering in his mind as he turned the last corner and saw the lights. Every light was on, and in the surrounding darkness, the house lay drowned in light. The blaze of brilliance was more terrible than a scream. He parked his car and stood outside the light, clenching and unclenching his fists, his lips moving in dread.

Fritz forgive me, Nora forgive me, he thought, and marched into the light.

At the door he called her, and receiving no answer, he pushed the door open and walked in. He moved toward the rear of the house, his heels making a small sound on the bare parts of the tile floor. From the entrance into the dining room he saw her, and stopped stock still.

"Hester," he said, "I'm here now."

She was standing on the side porch, erect, with her hands straight down at her sides. As he drew up behind her, she made no move, as though she had elected to be unaware of him. He put his hands on her shoulders and turnedher slowly to face him.

His hands went up and cupped her face and, twining his fingers into her hair, he tilted her face up to him. She looked up at him, dull-eyed and unseeing, and he leaned forward and kissed both her eyes. Then he placed his forehead against hers and held it there, and as he did so, he was aware that it was a gesture he made to his daughters when they were hurt or grieving.

"You are loved, Hester, you are loved," he said. He had known he was going to say it, but the inexorable truth in the sound of the words nevertheless took him by surprise.

She made a small effort to start away from him, but he held her, and a long shudder went through her. He held her until she quieted, and when he let her go, she stood before him, submissive as a child waiting for punishment or forgiveness.

For the first time he saw the hammer in her hand. He reached out and took it from her, gently disengaging it from her unwilling fingers. She turned away from him, making a confused, violent gesture toward the back yard. He walked past her to the door leading to the yard.

The dÈg lay in a patch of darkness at the foot of the steps. Standing on the top of the back steps, he knew that it was dead. He thought sadly that it finally had a name. Fritz lay cold in Dunhill Cemetery and he lay at the foot of the steps. And now he must be buried a second time, and then stay dead forever, so that Hester might live. Again his thoughts seemed to shame him and dishonor Fritz, but what else could have made the pony run through the night?

He spoke, quietly, over his shoulder. "Do you have a shovel?" The words rang loud and silly, and slightly obscene.

"I think there's one in the utility room," she said. Her words were spoken as though her tongue moved carefully through some old, forgotten language.

When he returned to the back yard with the shovel, she was sitting on the back steps. He surveyed the yard and decided on a spot in a far corner of the yard where there were no trees. He walked off a rough estimate of the size of the grave needed, and began to dig.

Fritz' house lay on the outer edge of Lackawanna, the nearest house was three blocks away, and he felt that he and Hester were alone on an island of light in a world of darkness.

After a few minutes' steady digging, he removed his shirt. He stopped thinking and began to lose himself in the steady rhythm of shoveling dirt. When he finished he came back to the steps, minded to ask Hester for something that belonged to Fritz, a shirt, a robe, anything, but instead he bent and wrapped the dog in his own shirt, and carried it to the grave. He dropped the hammer in beside it, and after he had covered the grave, he walked back and forth, patting the dirt down with his feet.

He washed off the shovel and put it away. Now we begin, he thought, and we make no mistakes. He returned to the steps.

"Is there any beer, Hess?" he asked, and when she nodded, "Go fetch me a beer, Hess, and come sit with me."

While she was gone he bruised his mind with a sudden vision of Nora, quietly sleeping. Bitterly he thought, I have caught my pony, gentled its trembling into quietness, and having come this far, there must be no lack of love. By some hell-sent chance he loved two women and there was nothing he could do about that. But his sense of honor was troubled, and a feeling of hideous error sickened inside him.

Fritz, he thought, I only intend a kindness in the dark. And if I lay cold in a Dunhill grave, and Nora were lost, would you go find her and bring her back? But Fritz was dead, there was no answer, and he was alone.

They sat on the steps while he drank the cold beer and felt the tiredness slip away. From time to time he put the beer can down and ran his fingers through her hair or squeezed her shoulder. He spoke only once, to say, "Hess, we've run a long way, but there's no more running now."

He tilted the beer can and drank the last swallow. He stood up and drew her to her feet. "Let's go inside," he said, "before you catch a chill."

She went quickly into the house and he turned off the lights as he followed. He caught up with her as she gained the center of the living room. He took her to him and kissed her with the unhurried seriousness of a man giving artificial respiration. When he released her, he held her face again between his hands and repeated, "You are loved, Hess, you are loved," and she broke away from him and went down the hall.

He caught up with her in the hall and put his arm around her and they went in the bedroom together. Before he reached for the light switch, he took one more look at her, a look which she returned steadily and then she turned her back on him.

In the darkness again, hope for her, dread for himself, raged in his mind. If this be the right true end of love, he thought, why is there no fury in the blood, no pawing at the ground? And if I love this girl, why am I afraid, not for her, but for me? And last of all, who gallops through the night, Hester or I?

He reached for her in the dark, and when he touched her, she spokÈ, saying one word only, but he could not catch the word. In a cruel mix of bursting love and a lather of terror, he undressed her quickly and led her to the bed. He sank down beside her to perform his last sad task to ransom her from the dead.

And she spoke again, first in fierce whispers, then in a wordless babble, and then she turned her face into the pillow. But out of the babble had come the word she had spoken, not once but several times, and he had to know that word, and he took the pillow away from her, and when she spoke again, he heard it clearly and he cried out like a blind man suddenly vouchsafed the light.

"Fritz, Fritz, Fritz, Fritz," she cried.

As she had cried out over the telephone. "Fritz, Fritz," she had cried, "I've killed him." And he had misunderstood her meaning, as perhaps she had misunderstood. Fritz lay dead in Dunhill Cemetery, and Andrew Garth was buried in the back yard.

He understood, and did not understand, he knew and did not know, but his fears lay buried, and his true purpose came to him. He did not move from where he was. Slowly he caressed her until she was at peace with her body, and then he dressed her in the dark, as one dresses a child. He got up and put on his clothes. He came back to the bed and sat down on the edge. He lighted a cigarette and waited, thoughtless as an amoeba. After a while, she reached for it, and he knew that he could open whatever door she still kept closed to him.

"Why, Hess?" he asked, and both knew he meant, "Why did I have to die?"

"I called you Fritz." she said. She said it like the girl who had said, "Will you give me a job." She fell silent and he waited.

"You hung the moon," she said. "You pushed the stars around. You had no right to do that, and then to give me away like I was property."

"You did belong to me," he said.

"Like property," she said. "On my wedding night I called your name, and I hurt Fritz so badly, and then he was dead, not before I knew that I loved him, but before I could tell him, before I could show him. But not you. You were still here, still looking at me as though I still belonged to you. Like property."

"And the dog?" he asked, for he knew they could talk about anything.

She made a sudden whimpering sound, and then calmed herself. "He was beautiful, brave and noble," she said. "He would follow me to see that I came to no harm. At night he slept just outside my bedroom window. No matter what the weather." She fell silent again, and he waited.

"At night," she said, "I put on one of Fritz' shirts. It does no good but I do it. And tonight I went out on the back steps and you, no, not you, the dog came up and tried to push me back in the house, as if I belonged to him, and I struck him, and he caught Fritz' shirt in his mouth and he tore it, and I couldn't stand it, and it happened."

She cried then. He made no move and let her cry herself out. "I killed him," she said. "And for the first time I felt free of you, and I wanted to run and tell Fritz that I belonged to no one but him, but I knew also that he was dead, I never really knew that before, and I called your number."

"And now it's all over," he said.

Her voice was harsh. "No, I killed him," she said. "I killed him and until the day I die I'll live with that, and every day I'll be sorry."

She cried and then she slept. He sat and watched her propped against the pillow sleeping until the daylight began to march across the room. He knew it was time he left. He got up and, bending over, he kissed her, both her closed eyes, and then placed his forehead against hers. When he straightened up he saw that she was awake.

He was vaguely grateful that she made no move to get up. "What will you do now, Hess?" he asked.

"Today I'm going to leave this house," she said. "And tomorrow I may go to some other town. But leaving this house is all I've got on my mind."

"Then I won't see you again?" he asked.

"Neither you nor Fritz," she saiÈ. She smiled at him, but he couldn't read the smile. "Chunk me a cigarette and go home to Nora, where you belong," she said.

• • •

It was broad daylight when he got home. Nora was in the kitchen when he came in the house. He straddled a chair and watched her make the coffee. She smiled at him but didn't speak; it was their custom. When the coffee was made, she poured two cups and brought them to the table. She sat down across from him, and after a while she put her hand on the table. He reached out and covered her hand with his, as he did every morning. They sat in silence until the first cup of coffee was drunk, and she got up and poured another.

"Where is your shirt, feller?" she asked.

"A pony got loose last night, and I went out looking for him," he said, "and I guess I lost it somewhere along the way."

"Lost the pony or the shirt?" she asked.

"No, I caught the pony," he said. She fixed her patient, curious gaze on him.

"Why didn't you bring the pony home?" she asked.

He smiled. "Now what would we do with a pony?" he asked. He reached out and covered her hand again.

In a moment he would begin with the hoofs sounding way over on Canberra Road and he would tell the story, and when he finished they would sit in the kitchen and drink coffee until the girls woke up and the world became daily again.

But for now he sat, thinking of Hester, seeing her moving about her house, making ready to leave it. He wished her well, and as he did so he was caught up in a vision of the pony again. It was running across an open field in bright sunshine, and he saw it slow down, then stop and begin to crop grass, moving slowly across the field. And while he watched, butterflies danced between the pony and the sun, and he saw that the pony was making its way toward a group of horses standing far off in a semicircle, waiting for the pony to join them.