Deanna finds out
Deanna found out at noon that same day, when she called on her lunch break to check on him, and he told her. I was not there for that call. Dad told me later he kept it short.
She called me five minutes later.
“You went behind my back,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “I did. The same way you did.”
“That’s not the same.”
“It’s the same thing, Deanna. I just did it in the other direction.”
She was crying. I could hear it. “If he gets hurt on that ride, that’s on you. I want you to know that. I want you to remember I said it.”
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“I will remember,” I said. “And I’ll be right behind him the whole six miles. Same as every year.”
“You don’t know what it was like. You didn’t find him.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t. And I’m sorry you did, Deanna. I mean that. I’m sorry you were alone back there by that flowerbed.” I waited. “But you can’t keep him safe by taking away the only thing that makes him want to get up in the morning.”
She hung up on me.
She did not come to Sunday dinner the next day. Or the one after. She still drove out every morning to check his pills, and she still called every day at noon, but she would not look at the pen when she was in the yard, and she would not say the horse’s name.
Three weeks
Dad rode every morning those three weeks. Not far. Down the creek road and back, a mile, then two, then three. I came over when I could and rode with him. Loren put a new mounting block by the pen, a sturdy one built out of railroad ties, so Dad would not have to swing up from the ground.
He hummed while he saddled. He always had. “Shall We Gather at the River,” mostly, and “I’ll Fly Away” on good days. I heard a lot of “I’ll Fly Away” those three weeks.
His doctor saw him one more time, the week before the ride, and said the same thing as in August. Good balance. Good bones for seventy-nine. Ride slow, ride with somebody, drink water.
I told Deanna. I sent it in a text, word for word what the doctor said. She did not answer.
Word got around church the way word does. Nobody said anything to me directly. But Elva, who has run the kitchen for every potluck since the Carter administration, caught my arm after service and said, “I hear Biscuit came home,” and patted my hand twice and went back to her coffee urn.
That was all. That was plenty.