The Shadow Catcher

“Tell me something,” she said after a while. “Which horse is it?”

“All of them.”

“—every horse?”

“Every one I’ve ever met,” he said. “They just know me. We just fall in love. There has to be a reason why…”

“—you’re a very special boy, is why. And we’ll have to find a way to make sure that doesn’t change.”

“—even if it means we have to be apart?”

That was a condition Clara did not want to have to think about — because unlike Hercules, she had not found an entity, other than herself, to act as a repository for her sorrow or in which to store the memories of what their parents were in life, the space that they had filled, the way they’d sounded. It had not yet been a year since their deaths and yet she found she had to struggle to recall the fleeting things about them — the shape of her father’s hand, the timbre of her mother’s laughter — and she needed Hercules at hand to validate the little she remembered and the sum of what they’d lost. If Hercules should be parted from her, if he should ever go from her daily life — as almost certainly, some day, he would — her diminishment would double.

But she was also on the brink of an enriched life, a potentially growing family, rather than a decreasing one, and she could not allow a yearning for the past to sabotage the happiness that was her future. Besides, she was not convinced that Seattle was the less enlightened choice than this backward rural one for Hercules’s education and well-being — until Mr. Silva, the farrier, paid her a visit two days later, bringing with him a tall stranger.

The Curtis women had, oddly, treated her marriage with gloomy passivity, Eva showing signs of nervous curiosity only when Clara told her of Edward’s partnership with Rothi. She gave scant notice to Clara’s wedding band and seemed interested only in knowing if this Mr. Rothi was a single gentleman. Asahel had made himself invisible ever since her return so she was alone, without counsel, when Mr. Silva stepped up on the porch and rapped on the screen door, his hat in hand, and introduced the stranger.

“This is Mr. Touhy, miss, he’s from Tacoma.”

Clara held her left hand up for the gentlemen to see and said, “It’s missus, Mr. Silva. Mr. Curtis and I were married just two days ago.”

“Which one, ma’am?”

“—Edward.”

“—oh well congratulations, I didn’t know. Mr. Edward, he’s a fine gent. Mr. Touhy, here, breeds fancy horses.”

“You’re a long way from Tacoma, Mr. Touhy. What brings you to the island?”

“Actually miss—missus—he’s come to take a look at Hercules.”

Clara asked the gentlemen to sit, which they did, not comfortably.

“I don’t know if Hercules has told you, but I’ve been coming by most every week to give him skills.”

“He has told me, Mr. Silva, and I’m grateful to you.”

Nevertheless, she kept her eyes on Mr. Touhy.

“Hercules is very fond of horses,” she explained.

“Well that’s an understatement,” Silva grinned. “I’d say, frankly, Hercules is one in a million.”

“…and what would you say, Mr. Touhy?”

Touhy ran his hat brim through his fingers and told her, “I would say the boy has got the touch.”

“He talks to horses,” Mr. Silva chimed in.

“—yes, I know,” Clara told them.

“Well do ya know nobody does that?”

“What do you want, Mr. Touhy—?”

He wanted to apprentice Hercules to his breeding ranch. Clara’s instinct was to forestall making a decision until Edward had returned so he could advise — she knew nothing of the kind of life they were describing and Edward, after all, had been apprenticed to his father from the age of six and seemed to have come out the better for it in terms of working for a living and being trained in many skills. But when she called Hercules from the barn to join them it was clear the boy knew what he wanted. Asahel could not be found and rather than allow Hercules to leave with Mr. Touhy, as the gentlemen suggested, Clara agreed that either her husband or her brother-in-law would deliver the boy, pending an inspection and approval of the site, itself.

That night Clara sat up waiting in the kitchen in the dark for Asahel to finally come to get his supper. She struck a match and startled him and said, “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Call it what you will.”

She lighted the lantern and told him, “A man named Touhy came to visit me today.”

“…the horse breeder.”

“—you know him?”

“He has a reputation. — a good one.”

“He wants Hercules.”

Asahel sat down across the table from her with a plate of cold ham and cold potatoes, and began to eat.

“I’ll miss him.”

His manner, his dispassion, seemed as cold to her as his plate of food but she chose to let it ride and said, instead, “I need your help,” then tempered the request by adding, “Hercules and I do. I trust you. You know I do. Will you take him out to Tacoma and tell me what you think?”

“Why not ask your husband?”

“Because I’m asking you.”

“—or because you know Edward wouldn’t do it?”

“Edward’s busy—”

“—when is Edward not?”

“Are you angry with me, Asahel?”