The Gentling Box Read online

  I stopped, my heart racing madly. She cried out in pain, her head snapped. She was jerked backward out of sight. I heard the garbled sound of Mimi’s voice cut off, and then, before I thought to spring forward, I heard the crack of a whip and the caravan lurched beyond my reach.

  From the other side of the clearing I heard Lenore scream, saw the long rectangle of yellow light from the flung open door to our caravan. She spilled down the steps, arms outstretched, calling my name, sobbing. “They took Mommy,” she wept in my arms.

  I held her, saw the satisfied Roms come untethered from Zahara’s abandoned wagon—like horses set free to crop they roamed away, nodding smugly. I held my daughter in my arms, fingers moving over the crown of her head, I touched her scalp. The skin felt hot and damp with crying.

  Looking out over the tumble of her dark hair, I pressed my daughter more tightly to me—as if I could somehow shield her from the flickering shadow of the barrel-topped wagon racing through the night. Lenore trembled against my chest. “They took my Mommy,” she said.

  And I wanted so much to take away her pain.

  -18-

  “Both of them!” Lenore said, pounding her small fist against her knee. I nodded, thinking of the old woman’s screeching words, but not really listening. We’d been following the trail of Old Joseph’s caravan all night. At daylight we found the small signs of encampment: the remains of a cookfire, the scattered bones of a roasted hare, a forgotten mug that once held coffee or tea. But mostly Lenore and I watched for the light scarring of wheel ruts or looked at overhanging branches for clues to their passage: bent leaves, snapped twigs.

  “The gypsies went the other way,” Lenore said, pointing at their patrins—heaps of twigs and stones the troupe had left as trail markers along the way. I caught a hint of anxiety in her voice.

  “Probably meeting Vaclav and his father at a pre-arranged place. I want to get your mother away before they meet up, and then all of us—Auntie Zahara, too—will go back to Hungary.” It would be so much easier to take on the old man and his son alone, without the rest of the troupe. In my mind’s eye I saw Vaclav and Joseph sleeping in bedrolls close to the caravan; I would creep up on them. My hand went to the pistol I’d shoved in the waistband of my trousers. Guns were quick; the hulking Vaclav and the old man were slow.

  “I didn’t know he meant both of them,” Lenore said miserably, and this time I left off planning my ambush, and looked at her. Her mouth was set in a small tight line, her eyes dark with worry.

  I halted the rumbling wagon and turned to her. Under my gaze a cringe swept up her shoulders, over her face. Fear touched her eyes.

  “Lenore,” I prompted, and her voice spilled out in a rush.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she began. “I heard Mother and Vaclav talking. Mommy didn’t seem to like Auntie Zahara,” and I nodded, aware that Lenore had heard our violent argument. “Vaclav said Auntie Zahara was a witch, that a witch made up her spells and curses with the plots she hatched in her head. ‘When it’s over, we’ll be free,’ they said. ‘We’ll be free of the demon inside her brain!’”

  Lenore’s hands twisted helplessly in the lap of her ruffled skirt. “It didn’t seem so bad, I didn’t think it was a bad thing if Auntie turned into a quiet woman.” She paused. Her eyes flitted anxiously, her gaze fell on the stilled horses. “I swear it. I didn’t know that Vaclav was lying, that he was a traitor, and he meant taking mommy and—”

  Panic spiraled through me. “Lenore, Lenore,” I said, grabbing her narrow shoulders. “What are you saying?”

  She collapsed against me, her voice was thick with crying. “Gentling,” she sobbed, “they said gentling was the only—”

  “Gentling!” I shrieked. “Oh, Christ!” A shudder wracked me. I was suddenly cold, shaking.

  “I didn’t tell you I overheard them, because I kept telling myself Auntie Zahara will be all right—only a little different—like the horses. You told me once that lots of horses live through it.”

  Remembering a day when Lenore was helping with the horses, I felt the sting of my own tears. “What’s that, Papa?” she’d asked, pointing one chubby finger. It was for my work, a gentling box, I told her, glossing a truth I thought was too painful for a five year-old child to hear. It was for my work—but I never used it, never gentled a horse, never told her how it was done. For some horsemen, the gentling box was a tool of trade—no different from the grinding stone used by a knife sharpener; but for me it was so much more sinister—a hangman’s noose, an executioner’s axe.

  “Lenore, Lenore,” I said, mourning inwardly, not wanting to punish her for what was partly my fault. Out of kindness we lie to our children, and those lies come back to hurt us most.

  “And then I didn’t tell, because I was afraid you’d be mad at me for not telling sooner.” I understood she’d been suffering more than me during our long campaign through the night. Wanting to do the right thing and fear of my anger had made Lenore feel she was in a steel-jawed trap.

  I soothed her while Vaclav’s words rose and fell like hammer-strokes in my brain. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Old Joseph and his son knew Mimi had claimed the hand of the dead, I thought, as an icicle of fear plunged through my belly; and they’d used Mimi’s anger at Zahara to trick her.

  “I didn’t know he meant Mommy, too,” Lenore wailed again. I put my arms around my daughter to keep from seeing the haunting, broken look on her face that said she was sorry now and knew—because she learned the hard way—that too late was always too late.

  I felt her move from my embrace. I clucked to the team and the wagon began to move slowly over the road. Lenore found a handkerchief, blew her nose.

  “Are these horses gentled?” Lenore asked. I caught the note of hopefulness in her voice, and without wanting it to be so, my mind and heart were dragged back in time:

  There’s hardly any light. It’s very early in the morning, and while there’s a part of me that is still a sleepy boy of eight who would rather be sitting with his mother eating porridge by the fire, listening to her soothing voice, waiting with her while she waits, baking bread, then filling the caravan with the smells of a good supper, I’m proud to be walking alongside my tall father. Mother is at home, waiting for both of us: My father has told me I’m old enough now to be learning there’s more to the business than camouflaging a mare’s gray muzzle. We’re going to gentle some horses.

  There’s a mat of frost on the ground, and the soles of our boots make a muted crumping sound as we cross the fields. My father’s big hand suddenly snakes out, halting my forward progress. I look up at him, seeing the dazzle of gold hoop in his right ear, the small cloud of breath forming around his black brush of a mustache. “See there,” he sighs softly, and my gaze follows his pointing finger.

  On a distant slope is a small herd of wild horses, grazing, nickering lightly, tossing their heads. Watching the moving pattern of the grass, I know we’re downwind; and although we see the shapes of the horses, they’re not aware of us.

  “Move softly, Imre,” my father says, and I watch him hoist the leather strap that holds the big rectangle of the wooden gentling box a little higher on his shoulder. We skirt the edge of the field to advance on the wild horses at an angle. I’m trundling a small wheeled wagon heaped with hobbles. Some are made of iron—sets of rings joined by links; some are made of leather—thongs attached to wooden posts you hammer into the ground. My father, who is an expert, will do the roping. I will set the hobbles. “Keep out of kicking range, son,” he reminds me in a whisper, as we hunker on the edge of the field, the gentling box set on the ground between us.

  The sun comes up and I watch my father swing the rope time and again, and each time the rope spirals through the air like a slow glittering snake and he snares a horse, I bolt up out of the grass and fasten the heavy rings or the leather thongs to those angry, spirited forelegs. I’m happy with the joy of running, with the feel of the wind stinging my cheeks, with watching my father’s g
raceful work, with his praise at my deft movements as I tether the herd.

  I count fifteen. There are no more hobbles left on the small red wagon, I call to my father, and he moves toward me.

  “We’ll let those go,” he says, sounding a little winded after his labor, and jerking his head toward some half dozen or so horses circling in a mad dash across the field.

  Grunting, my father hefts the box onto his shoulder and approaches the first horse. I walk at his side. “Steady now,” he says softly, and the horse gives out a huge chuffling snort at the same time it dances sideways; but its legs are caught in the iron ring. Its eyes are rolling in fear.

  My father opens the wooden box. “Get a browband on him,” my father says, sifting through the gear, “and keep away from his mouth.” My father means I should take care I’m not bitten, and I’m cautious, on the alert for a show of those long teeth.

  I’m told I’m a tall boy, but it’s a stretch for me to reach up and attach the harness works—the browband, the strip of leather we call a crown piece—and twice before I can slip the iron bit in place, the horse nearly knocks me aside with its great head.

  “Ready,” my father calls. Moving forward swiftly, he attaches a round wooden ring to the browband. He cinches the worn crisscrossed leather straps that fasten it to the crown piece behind the horse’s ears. “Here, stand on this,” he says, pushing the gentling box toward me with one nudge of his foot. “Hold the cap steady.” I climb on to the box, find myself level with the top of the horse’s ears. My hand moves along the thick jaw, over the horse’s smooth brown hide. I make soft noises with my tongue and teeth to soothe him.

  “Hold the cap,” my father says again, and my eye is drawn to the circle of the wooden band. Now I see there are really two bands—like circles nesting within one another—separated by a small metal flange.

  “The outer band keeps the pressure steady,” my father explains. “See those holes?” I stand on tiptoe, crane my head and nod. There are two holes drilled in each of the bands.

  “Line them up,” my father says while he is twirling the wing nuts on a pair of big greasy screws sticking out from either side of the wooden bands like gray moths. It’s simple, the bands slide clockwise, they rotate easily, but I concentrate on getting them right.

  “Right,” my father says inserting the two thin needle-nosed spikes he has hammered on his anvil into the holes on the outer band. I watch not really comprehending, but before I can ask my question, the needles pass through the inner circlet, rest against the broad bony expanse of the horse’s brow.

  “Hold the cap steady as you can,” he says, and his big hands come up, quick as a heartbeat. His broad thumbs twist the screws, and suddenly, all too suddenly, I understand the mechanics of this contraption.

  I hear myself screaming, “No, don’t!” and my hand jerks wildly, knocking one of his off balance, and he is screaming at me, “There’s no pain if it’s done right, they’re animals, they don’t feel a thing!” But the horse is screaming, screaming in terror and pain, nearly going down on one knee, his great head rolling, his eyes glazed, his lips drawn back, his body flecked with sweat. And my father is screaming at me, that if I’d held the cap steady this wouldn’t have happened, it’s nothing, it’s like going to sleep. His voice is rough, his movements swift and hard; he brushes me aside, I lie stricken on the ground watching his hand reach sideways and his fingers turn the other screw. I hold my breath.

  The second needle penetrates the hide, the skull.

  The horse staggers, the sound of its scream is cut off. I see the light in its eyes die out—as quick and sudden as snuffing a lamp. I hear my father saying, “The horse is going to be as gentle as a lamb and on its feet before we finish the next.”

  The light in its eyes is dead, and something in me dies. Two thick runnels of blood drip down the length of its dazed face. The horse stands dully, blinking back the bloody streams.

  My father picks up the box, I watch his retreating back as he moves on to the next, already wall-eyed from the smell of blood and men and terror. I see my father’s head turning toward me, and I know he’s going to tell me to be a man, to be a Lovari, a horse trader, but before he says those words I’m on my feet running.

  A small boy with a gold hoop in his ear, white sleeves billowing, I’m waving my arms and running; running toward the horses, wanting them to run. The wind is a sob in my ear, my eyes are blurry with tears. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know what it was!” I cry, and the herd goes skittish, the horses take short awkward hobbled steps.

  “I didn’t know what it was,” I shout, lifting my own small eyes to their huge glossy ones. They look back at me with something like sorrow, like understanding.

  My father is cursing under his breath, calling me a worthless boy. There is a high whinnying shriek, then the sound of one of the horses I helped hobble falling to its knees. The smell of blood and horse foam drifts across the tips of the waving grass.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper to a pale long-maned mare, her head dips twice, daintily, like a woman’s when she nods. Soon her creamy face will be red, slick with the trails of blood, and it will be too late. My hand reaches out to slip the peg, release the tether.

  I hear my father’s heavy tread, his hands and clothes are dotted with horsehair and blood. I hear the wooden bands, the metal spikes rolling inside the box.

  Hurrying, I tug at the hammered peg. He sees what I’m doing, shouts, “Stop it!” The peg comes out of the ground bringing up a huge clot of earth. I slap her flanks hard to make her flee.

  The horse runs in one direction, I race off in another. Out of breath, I stop, cup my hand over my brow: I see the top of her pale head rocking over the field, and it makes me think of the rush of the white-capped sea. She made it, I think, when she’s no more than a flying speck in the distance. Around me I see the work done by the gentling box. They were wild horses, now their eyes are dead, dumb. They nose each other, sniffing clotted blood, placid as milk cows. They plod along, as lead-footed as the sullen, foolish farmers my father will sell them to.

  I run toward the woods. Behind me I hear my father shouting, “What’s the matter with you? Come back here! After it’s done they don’t remember.” And I keep running. Because somehow, that seems most terrible of all.

  ***

  “Are they, Papa? Are they gentled?”

  Lenore’s voice broke through and pulled me back from the hellish vision of the worst memory of my life. “No,” I said, praying with all my heart that it wasn’t so; because, she, of course, meant the horses, but I was thinking of Mimi, of Zahara. I clucked to the team, flapped the reins, got them running. Visions of my small wife and her pretty cousin flitted in my brain: I saw them sitting under a tree shoulder to shoulder, their long hair mingling across their breasts. Their eyes were closed like those of sleeping saints. Round their heads, malignant haloes kept watch while the blood dripped down their faces.

  A groan escaped me. In my mind’s eye, I was seeing them in death: the long needles meant for the thick skulls of horses impaled their waxy brows, penetrated too deeply. But if they lived—my thoughts broke off, and I saw Mimi’s glittering violet eyes dulled to idiot vacancy, her mouth turned up in a fool’s perpetual grin. I saw Zahara dragging her feet, shuffling like an old bewildered woman who suddenly finds herself in her kitchen and begins to weep because she has forgotten how she got there, or why she came. Dear Christ, if they lived! I screamed inwardly, a lump burned in my throat.

  Afterwards they don’t remember, my father’s voice echoed in my head. And if they were gentled, if we were too late, I thought, driving the team in a fury, that would be most terrible of all.

  -19-

  It was Lenore who first saw the smoky skybound trail of their campfire above the trees. I pulled the caravan to a halt. The old man and his son were less than a quarter of a mile away. The brush and trees along the road formed a dense, impenetrable thicket. I could see a bridge in the distance. It seemed likely Josep
h stashed his rickety caravan by the water, while he and Vaclav went into the woods on foot. Were my wife and her cousin penned in the wagon? I was fairly certain Mimi and Zahara had been force-marched through the woods, but a mistake on my part might cost their lives. I would check the old man’s caravan first, and if they were inside I would get them out and disable the wheels.

  I handed Lenore the reins, slipped down from the box, formulated my plan. “Do you see that bridge?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, holding the worn leather reins tightly between her small fingers.

  “There’s a chance Vaclav left the caravan there and followed the stream into the woods.”

  “To be near water.”

  “Yes. If it’s there and if your mother is inside that wagon, I’m going to fire three shots in the air. Then—and only then, Lenore, I want you to drive toward the bridge. Otherwise stay here.”

  “If she’s not—” Lenore whispered, biting her lip.

  “Then I’ll take her and your aunt out of the woods and bring them right here.” If only, I thought, Joseph didn’t use the power of the hand to sniff me out and stop me.

  Her eyes drifted over the lonely road, the darkening sky, the thick brush, then rested on the carriage lanterns. “Will you light the lamps before you go?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking the light would be a comfort to her, and there was little chance Vaclav or Joseph would see the glow. If he knew I was coming, it wouldn’t matter anyway. “Are you afraid, Lenore?” I asked, lighting the roadside lamp.

  “No,” she said trying to sound brave at the same time she nodded and her eyes showed yes. I looked at her, and she ducked her head. “A little,” she said. She leaned across the box and I kissed the top of her head. She put her small hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be gone long, Papa,” she said softly.