Moon Dog led him to Number Six with a half dozen quick strides. He was reaching to knock on the door when Caleb caught his arm.
"Hold on a minute, Dog," he said in a low, sort of conspiratorial voice, not wishing to announce his arrival prematurely.
Moon Dog half turned toward the younger man and looked at him questioningly.
Caleb smiled weakly and made a self-conscious attempt to brush his hair into place with his fingers. He tried to swallow, but his mouth felt as dry as dust bowl sod, and he couldn't find enough spit to lick a stamp. His hands were shaking with a fine, barely noticeable, tremor, and he could feel his quickening pulse beating in the hollow just below his Adam's apple. His stomach fluttered nervously, and there was an involuntary warming rush in his groin. Goddam, he cursed silently as the unmistakable signs of anxiety began asserting themselves. What the hell's wrong with me, he questioned himself squaring his shoulders resolutely, and he took a deep breath as though oxygen could cure his nervousness.
Why is it always like this, he wondered; why did he always react to the possibility of sex with a giddying burst of nervous excitement? It made him feel idiotic and inadequate; like a timid, overeager schoolboy; like that time when he was just a kid and the Thornberrys stopped by the farm on their way to a vacation in Florida. They brought their daughter, Diane, a gorgeous, sophisticated girl, who was a precocious two years older than he at the time. She quickly became bored with the adults' small talk and yawned a time or two without attempting much to conceal her disinterest in the discourse. Old Judge Montcastle recognized the girl's restlessness, and he suggested to Caleb, as an excuse to let her out of the house for a while, that she might like to go out to the barn to see their newest Arabian foal. The girl brightened some at that suggestion and eagerly allowed Caleb to lead her through the house and out the back door toward the barn. No sooner had they stepped off the back step and out of sight from the parlor and her parents, than Diane fished a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of her blue jeans pocket and offered him one.
"Here, Caleb, you want a smoke?" she said, while adroitly shaking a cigarette out of the package in his direction.
"Uh, uh, no, thanks," the boy stammered, and, when she shrugged him off nonchalantly, tugged the cigarette out of the pack with her lips and lit it with a battered old Zippo lighter, he thought she was just about the most worldly girl that had ever spoken his name.
He led her behind the barn, and she leaned against the paddock fence, blowing smoke rings into the still summer air, while he pointed out the coal-black stallion, Night Redeemer, which had sired the new-born foal.
"He's big," she commented after her eye had followed the line from his pointing finger to the dark horse standing alone atop a small rise on the far side of the paddock.
"He's actually pretty small for an Arabian," Caleb corrected, thinking the girl was pretty ignorant about horses in spite of living in Kentucky.
"Not the horse, silly," she replied without taking her eyes off the stallion. "His dick. See? It's almost dragging the ground."
Caleb was so shocked at the girl's casual reference to the horse's private parts that he jerked back from the fence and nearly tripped over his own feet. There was a tearing sound as the top strand of barbed wire snagged his shirt sleeve and ripped it open. He was blushing furiously at his awkwardness when she turned toward him, and, while grinding out her cigarette butt with a slow, deliberate twisting of the toe of her shoe, sized him up with an intuitive grin.
"Oh, gosh, look what I've gone and done; made you tear your shirt." If she was sorry, he couldn't tell it from the sound of her voice, which wasn't in the least remorseful.
"My own fault, I tripped," he replied tersely, but the deepening red on his neck and cheeks betrayed the lie, and she smirked at him knowingly.
"I bet you've never done 'IT,' have you?"
"Uh, huh, what?" he responded haplessly. 'It,' 'it,' what's 'it?' he wondered; darn girls always talking in riddles; did you bring 'it,' did you like 'it,' you think she would let you do 'it?' 'It' was nothing but an indefinite pronoun, he recalled from the lessons of his ninth grade English class and Mrs. Parrish's oft-repeated exhortation, "'
it' doesn't mean anything until you put something with 'it' to give 'it' definition.
" Girls liked to use 'it,' he figured, 'cause it gave them the advantage over you; you never could be sure what they were asking, so if you said 'yes' and they didn't like that answer, they could just change the question without telling you, and get the answer they wanted in the first place. He found out about that trick the hard way once when Lizzy Morgenstern had asked him if he wanted to do 'it' with her, and he had said 'sure,' and, after he had kissed her a few times, he put his hand on her knee, and she slapped him so hard it brought tears to his eyes and she jumped up yelling that 'it' didn't include 'that,' after which he had been pretty skittish about discussing, much less attempting, 'it.'
"'IT,' you know, with a girl," she pressed, and she sounded a little strident, like she thought anybody with any sense ought to know what 'it' meant.
"I, uh, dunno…" he replied shaking his head in confusion. Whatever 'it' was this time, he was pretty sure he hadn't done 'it,' but admitting he hadn't done 'it' was another matter.
"If you don't know, that means you haven't done it," she retorted smugly.
He blushed redder, digging his hands into the depths of his pockets to conceal his embarrassment. "No, uh, no, I guess I haven't," he stammered, and she appeared to enjoy his discomposure.
"Oh, hell," she sighed as though he was the biggest disappointment ever to have come along in her young life. "Come on and show me the stupid foal."
He pulled the heavy, sliding barn door open enough so she could slip inside, and he followed her into the dim interior of the looming structure. Diffuse, slender beams of sunlight filtered into the darkness through a few narrow cracks in the siding and through an occasional gap in the loft flooring just above their heads. Their eyes gradually adjusted to the faint light, and he led her down the center of the barn toward a stall near the middle. The dark air was cool and smelled of hay, and horses, and of old, oiled leather. They were timeless and familiar smells, and they comforted him.
They walked slowly, picking their steps carefully for the floor was rough and uneven, and she clung to his arm for stability in the darkness. As they neared the center of the barn, the hay loft flooring above them opened and a large, cathedral-like chamber complete with a vaulted ceiling loomed over their heads. Stacked bales of hay surrounded the edges of the loft opening and reached upward toward the peak of the roof. They stepped under the opening, and immediately heard a noisy flapping of wings in the deep gloom high up near the ridgepole of the barn as their presence unsettled a roosting pigeon. The noise startled her, and her fingers tightened on his arm. She stopped and looked up toward the sound.
"What was that?" she whispered uncertainly.
