Horses All Over Hell: Stories

By Ryan Blacketter

Horses All Over Hell follows the twin tensions of Marty's drinking and Joanna's newfound religious sobriety--in a small Idaho city on the Snake in the early nineties. In "Starlings," Marty and Aunt Darlene enter Joanna's bedroom with a sack of beer late at night, seeking to revive her old, drinking self. "They Work at Night" features Marty's escalating drinking. Also presented is Joanna's intense new friendship with an artist named Lucy. In "Sending Those People Home," ten-year-old Cory laments that his mom isn't like the other church mothers. He keeps her best photographs under his bed. Despite this family's troubles, and whatever their fate, they ache for each other and make their own, often poignant gestures toward love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jul 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532689918

Ryan Blacketter

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Ryan Blacketter has received a literary grant from the Oregon Regional Arts and Culture Council and a prison teaching grant from the Idaho Humanities Council. His stories have appeared in the Antioch Review, Image, Crab Orchard Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Boise, Idaho. Ryan discusses a lesson learned from the prisoners he taught in north Idaho My Rain Taxi Review of Books interview can be purchased on Paypal for five dollars The Thousand Pages: Tips for Transitioning to the Novel

Book preview

Starlings

Cory, his father, and his little brother were checking sports news in the living room when her footsteps creaked the ceiling. It’s Mom, Cory whispered. Let’s go, let’s go. His father gripped the chair arms and narrowed his eyes at the sportscaster, as if he wasn’t happy with the scores. Wind hissed in the window screens. Curtains flapped shadows on the wall. Tiny houses skated across the card-table Monopoly board, landing with a tink tink on the hardwood. By the front door, his little brother, in his red vest and gun belt, shook the truck keys.

Most days after work, his father wanted to leave before she got downstairs. The ceiling was creaky and they always knew when she was out of bed.

She’s coming, Cory said, with her Bible.

Tired of getting run off my own property.

When she came into the living room, Matt dropped the keys and sucked his bottom lip. What Cory did was lay on the couch and pedal in the air, but that didn’t help—they were caught. His mom held the open Bible on her arm. She would read through the crickets and the cool air off the river. By then, he’d chew on a couch pillow, and Matt would whine for an early bed.

Her summer dress showed cut fruit falling. Black hair fell wet down her back. She was turning pages, looking for a place to start.

Okay, boys, their mom said. It’s not the end of the world.

Pretty soon and I’ll dig a three-man grave out back, their father said. You can bring over a hundred TV preachers and read over us all you want.

I hate televangelists, she said. Well, I don’t hate their souls.

Matt drew his cap gun and fired two warning shots.

Let’s go eat at Aunt Darlene’s, Matt said. Why don’t you like seeing Aunt Darlene anymore?

I love my sister. She turned a page. Especially sober.

Christian sobriety hour has arrived at last. Boys, fetch my Sunday smile. My box of angel thoughts.

Cory touched his father’s arm. He loved fetching things. What should I get?

Fetch me a beer, how about.

He yanked an Oly off of the plastic holder in the fridge and offered him the can in his two hands. His father cracked it open, letting it drip on the Chinese rug before he sipped.

I’ll be in hell before I see what such a good looker is doing with Jesus.

Need anything else? Cory said. Dad! Dad!

Matt stepped in front of his brother. You need cigarettes, Dad?

Shut up. Cory stepped in front of Matt. Before you can fetch cigarettes, you have to be able to climb the counter and reach the top of the fridge.

Hey, their mom said, let’s turn that off a minute.

"Turn off the TV?" Cory said.

When is the food going to be? Matt said.

Couple hours, baby.

Matt fired three shots at her feet. The air smelled like matches.

I want some food, he said.

Put your gun away, honey.

He put out his cigarette halfway so that it continued to smoke in the ashtray. I’ll listen a half hour, then I’m heading to the bar.

You go out Fridays now, too?

Just read, if you’re going to read. My favorite part’s when the Lord says, ‘Have any fun and I’ll fly down with my rope and plastic bag.’

God doesn’t talk like that, Marty—especially not in front of the boys.

He sat cross-legged. His cowboy boot moved with his heartbeat.

Maybe you don’t listen hard enough, he said.

I know I never heard him straight, going out all the time, drinking myself blind.

He kicked a wicker basket full of lady magazines out of his way, and the front screen door made the stretching noise.

When his mom sat on the couch, she rested her head on ten fingertips, with the Bible in her lap. It was time to pray or time to be sad—Cory wasn’t sure. The fridge settled, the electric hum dying. His father had called Aunt Darlene on the phone and told her that his wife needed a beer. He said he’d been thinking about the year before, when the three of them used to go out drinking. Those days were good times.

It was true. Cory wanted to go back to the time when his mom drank. She had been sad a lot then, too, but her mood always jumped after dinner. His parents laughed together in front of the TV. She’d get sad again late at night, but it was okay. Once, she woke Cory and promised she’d never leave this world before it was her time. You won’t ever go away? he said, faking his worry. He liked her coming into his room and saying weird things. Her voice was slurry, soft. Her tears ticked in his hair. Her sweet beer smell was part of her.

The fridge started to hum, and she raised the Bible to her chest. Before she started reading, he knelt on the floor and laid his head on her lap. She didn’t touch his hair, she didn’t rub his back. She didn’t tell the boys that there was nothing wrong, that their father was okay and everything was fine, like she used to.

I want to eat at Aunt Darlene’s, Matt said.

Try and listen, boys, she said. I know it’s not easy. A scratchy sleepiness caught in her voice. Go, she said, I will send you far away, to the Gentiles.

After work on Monday, his father tapped the horn and the boys jumped the porch, Cory with binoculars around his neck. They motored up the bald mountain, heading for Aunt Darlene’s diner at the top. Cory glimpsed town. Smoke blankets unfolded out of Potlatch chimneys, their shadows riding desert hills behind. The paper-mill smell of cooked broccoli and mildewed laundry was a good one, but his father said he hated it, and Cory did too.

Semis crept down the highway, braking, past Runaway Truck signs. The signs showed arrows pointing at gravel roads that ran to sky.

Bet you one of these rigs is going to lose its brakes on the way down. He sipped his beer. Every so often, one’ll fly right over the top of the ramp. Who’s to say it’s not this one, or that one?

Matt started pointing at the semis, to jinx them. This one! No, this one!

Sure would be a rough ride to the bottom. Ten tons of weight, and no brakes.

Cory looked at his father through the binoculars. He was a faraway scruffy jaw.

Hey, I told you not to fix those things on me.

I’m looking out the wrong end.

Even so. Give ‘em here. He clunked the binoculars into the glove box.

Dad, Cory said, do the truckers go to heaven?

His father brushed at nothing on the dashboard.

They settled the truck to rest in the empty dirt lot and stepped inside Big View Diner and Gift. A ladder ran to a square hole in the ceiling, where Aunt Darlene had an apartment.

He shouted at the ceiling hole, Where you hiding, girl?

She didn’t answer. His father kicked at a loose floorboard.

House on fire! he said, and chuckled.

The TV burst on up there, loud as usual. Aunt Darlene’s big soft butt, in brown pants, shifted down the ladder. Instead of hugging the boys, she walked tiptoe behind the counter, her pants scratching together—tiptoe, although she was in bare feet and no heels. She disappeared behind the lit-up box, hotdogs wheeling inside of it. She dropped ice-cubes into a glass and her rings clinked a hidden bottle.

Five people all day and I’m looking at three of them, said Aunt Darlene. I’ll put a sign out front, Big Zero Nothing. She tipped the glass empty and stirred a new one. I’m not myself. I don’t know what happened. I must’ve fallen asleep after lunch. I never sleep in the daytime. I’m always up and doing things. You know that. Nobody comes in anyway. The new has worn off this place. Nobody will ever come see me again.

We’ll wait outside a bit. He said it softly. You sit with a cool drink for a couple minutes. Nothing wrong with that.

I’m fine. She stepped into view and lit a cigarette with a shaky hand. Aunt Darlene will be just fine.

Cory knew about adults, how they flickered before coming all the way on.

The three of them slid into a booth. It smelled like the hot plants and newspapers in the windows. Cory shaded his eyes. The glass was spotted with dirt and old rain.

The town of Laroy was a square of green at the mountain base. The Clearwater River traced the bottom of town, and the Snake Canyon bordered the right side. They lived on the edge of the canyon, by the far cliffs, but Cory couldn’t see their house past the trees.

He heard the starlings, though. At the beginning of summer, a million birds had filled the trees in town. They liked to whistle all at once, pestering the day.

Listen, he said. Can you hear the birds?

You can’t hear them, Matt said.

Maybe they’re stuck in your head, his father said. Like when you get a song stuck, you can almost hear it.

Aunt Darlene uncoiled the window shade. A dark shadow carpeted the white floor and wall. Some hungry looks on you men today. Let me put on a quick face upstairs while you have your drinks. Where on earth are my shoes?

After they ate, she dumped their tray of hotdog doilies and chip bags and Mountain Bar wrappers, then fit her stomach into the booth, next to Cory, with a full glass for her and a new beer for his father. She pressed his hand.

Everything okay? she said. At work?

He shrugged. He was a corrections officer at a correctional facility.

You never talk about it, Aunt Darlene said.

Nothing to tell about. He scratched his faded 6T Triumphs tattoo. Eight hours talking to men who wouldn’t lift an axe to chop out of a damn coffin.

Can we watch TV here tonight? Cory said.

Our mom wants to read to us, Matt said. We’re Asthmatic Catholics now.

"Charismatic, she calls it, his father said. But I like yours better. You boys go look around the shop."

The boys climbed out of the booth. In the gift-shop side of the room, Matt shook a little sand-filled statue of a man reading a paper on the toilet, the words saying, On Vacation. Cory turned the squeaky postcard rack, spying Aunt Darlene between the cards. She had big hands, with soft, dimpled knuckles. Her voice rolled along the walls.

"Joanna’s a person tries on hats, to see if they fit. Remember those paint-splotched overalls last year, when she was painting that mural on your basement wall? What did she call it, I’m a skinned rabbit in the dark or some bizarre thing?"

"Tree at Night, it’s called," his father said.

"But there was nothing there, no picture. You could hardly see anything. Aunt Darlene drank. She was always like that, deciding to make drawings or write poetry or run off and travel God knows where, but never going far with anything."

I liked her better scratching around in the basement. All she does now is read in bed and sleep. Makes me sick thinking you sisters aren’t friends anymore.

All the church people hate me, she said. "In the checkout line yesterday Mrs. Pruitt says to me, ‘Oh, what’re you reading?’ and you know what