The Maui Effect (Man-Made Trilogy #1)

Out to Pasture

Dane

Sometime during the past year, unbeknownst to Dane, his mother had retired from the airlines and opened up her land to a small herd of horses, all rescues. Beyond the olive trees, they followed a hard-packed path that used to lead to dusty earth, pepper trees and rattlesnakes. Now there were five horses in a fenced pasture all beelining toward Dane, Belinda and Isla. Hooves thundered on the ground as they snorted and whinnied and kicked.

“They don’t like it when I’m late,” Belinda said.

Isla stopped and sat, eyes bugging out, and Dane was having a hard time imagining his mom owning horses. The only animal they’d ever had was a stray one-eared cat named Bob who took care of himself. Belinda went into a small shed and came out with several metal bowls of pellets and set them on the ground.

“These are my gurus. Horses are great teachers to those who are willing to listen. The more time you spend around them, the better,” she said.

He pulled up next to the fence, and the animals loomed over him in his wheelchair.

Belinda pointed out who was who. “The black one is Captain, and the dappled gray mare is Peony. This skinny guy over here is Cabernet, he’s my newest and I’m still trying to fatten him up. The paint horse is Leo, short for Leonardo, and that pinto, believe it or not, is called Dane. He came to me already named,” she was quick to add.

“Do you ride them?” he said, imagining himself on a horse instead of a wheelchair.

“Only two of them, occasionally, Captain and Dane. I prefer just to be around them and absorb their fabulous auras.”

It seemed bizarre that his mom had a horse named Dane, but then everything in his life had gone sideways lately, so why not this?

“Do you want to stand up, stretch out a little?” Belinda asked.

He did want to get out of the wheelchair; he hated the thing. “Sure.”

She helped him to standing and he leaned against the fence and watched as they finished eating. Tongues slurped, tails swished, then Dane the horse farted.

Belinda laughed. “Come here, you big stinker.”

Dane trotted over and opened his lips in a funny horse smile. He began sniffing Dane’s arm and tickling him with his chin hairs.

“Does he bite?”

“He nibbles.”

The horse then lowered his head to Dane’s waist and sniffed around. He moved down Dane’s legs, blowing hot air onto his knees, all the way down to his feet. Then he worked his way back up and turned his head so they were eye to eye. Long lashes. Pale blue irises. A deep well of compassion. Dane was suddenly choked up.

“Horses are mirrors,” Belinda said, quietly.

Dane would have stepped away if he could have, but instead closed his eyes for a few moments. When he opened them again, Dane was still there, still peering into him. He took a deep breath, unsure he wanted to be here. The day had hardly even started, and his world had already been bent and folded and tucked in a back pocket.

Back at the house, in the harsh morning sun, Dane noticed how much the place needed work. Windows needed to be rehung, gutters sagged and weeds crept through the floorboards of the front steps. It was a big place for one person to keep up, especially a fifty-three-year-old woman. Or was his mom fifty-four? He had lost track somewhere along the way.

He couldn’t stop thinking about his father. “Do you have any pictures of Butch?” It felt too weird to say my dad .

“Just a few. Hang on.”

Belinda left him on the patio, and came back with a small plastic photo album. Butch was thin with dark hair and Dane’s smile. In several of the shots, his arm was slung casually around Belinda, who beamed out at the camera, her face half hidden by rivers of thick golden hair. They looked like kids.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen these. We were so young and full of life,” she said.

Dane glanced at her and felt a stab of sadness. To walk away from someone you loved at that age took a lot of guts. He tried to imagine how his life might have turned out differently if this man—this stranger—had taken a different path. Family outings to the beach and picnics in the redwoods. Or more likely drugs and drinking and fights. Maybe Belinda, in her imperfect way, had saved him from an even uglier life.

He was suddenly tired. Bone-tired.

“I’m going to go back to bed.”

This time, she let him.

Heat collected wherever his clothes touched his skin. The next few days were some of the hottest on record, and Dane was restless and itchy and brooding. His mother put him on a regimented schedule and he didn’t have the energy to protest.

It went something like this: wake up and take a cold shower, drink a celery pineapple mint ginger smoothie—Yeti would have been proud—feed the horses and let them nuzzle you for a while, meditate on the patio, eat oatmeal with nut butter, berries and maple syrup, read a few pages from The Book of Secrets , get poked full of acupuncture needles by Dr. Xiao, fall asleep on the table and wake up feeling like you’ve been inhabited by a whole hive of honeybees, eat more, watch a documentary on yoga or meditation, perform stretching and strengthening exercises to the sound of crows and Krishna Das, watch the sunset with lime sparkling water, eat a salad, pass out.

The nerve pain in his legs and feet still made appearances, but it was no longer the dominant force in his life. And the pills were loosening their hold.

“When you focus on other things, you forget about the pain,” Belinda said.

She had every second planned out, and he was coming to see a certain logic in this. There was no time for fear, no time for anything other than the task at hand. Meditating was the hard part, lying on the hard wood floor alone with his thoughts, usually of ‘Iwa. He imagined her hiking through the cloud forest or at Uncle’s strumming her guitar, eyes lasered in on him alone. He saw her on the rock at Waikula, dripping wet and waiting for him to kiss her. Had she really meant it when she said not to contact her? That question swam at the edge of his consciousness, day and night.

On the first two days, nothing unusual happened, but on the third day, the knot in his chest began to move up to the base of his neck, swelling and sharpening, then slowly make its way into his throat. For a moment it felt like he might choke on this living ball of sadness, but instead tears began streaming from his eyes, until the yoga mat beneath his head was soaked.

“Why are you doing this, Mom?” Dane asked Belinda late one afternoon as they sat on the patio and watched the sun sliding down behind the pepper branches. “Why now?”

She pulled her knees into her chest, and stared at her long, elegant toes, not saying anything for a while. “I was so young and clueless when I had you—not to mention selfish and terrified. I told myself that you were better off spending all your time with the Mizunos because they were a real family, and so solid, you know? The only thing that made me feel better was surfing, so I took off every chance I could. I was just a kid myself with no idea what to do with her own child. How sad is that? I know I can never make up for lost time, but this is me trying.”

Nothing would give him back those years, but being with her now gave him an unexpected sense of well-being. An unwavering feeling that he wasn’t alone. Maybe that was mother love for you. A bond that couldn’t be broken, even after a lifetime of hurt.

On day five, Dane woke up with a tingle of expectation. Not quite hope, but for the first time since the accident, he was looking forward to something. To seeing the horses, especially Dane, who had a fondness for nibbling on his legs—a soft, whiskery sensation that Dane could actually feel. After an ice-cold shower, he and Belinda went to the pasture. Sunlight danced on the grass and the horses trotted around, all muscle and grace. Isla had become friendly with them and dashed off to make her rounds.

It felt good to be around his mom with no real agenda, and for the first time in his life, she was really there with him. Not about to dash off to catch a plane, not searching for surf, not disappearing with one of her boyfriends, who she never brought to the house. Seeing her from this new vantage point thawed the cold edges of hurt that had accumulated over the years.

Belinda stood on the other side of the fence brushing Peony, and Dane sat in the wheelchair as the other Dane hung his head down so Dane could rub his neck. His breath smelled pleasantly like oats and alfalfa and quite similar to the juice his mom had made for him that morning. The big horse was remarkably patient, but eventually he moved back a little. Not wanting to let him go, Dane kept his hand on his neck, purely for balance, and felt his legs pushing him up and up, until he was standing.

He grabbed the railing, glancing down at his legs to be sure he wasn’t imagining it. “Whoa.”

His mom turned. “Dane! What just happened?”

“I stood up! On my own!”

Belinda hopped up and down, clapping. “I knew it was coming soon!” She rushed over and wrapped herself around him from behind, laying her cheek on his shoulder blade. Her arms were strong, her scent flowery.

Dane had wanted to believe the doctors, but had also been afraid. In his mind, no hope was better than false hope. Horse Dane whinnied and snorted, and Peony and Captain trotted over to see what the fuss was about.

“They know this is a big deal,” Belinda said, stepping away and pressing her nose against horse Dane’s.

Dane bent his knees slightly, moving up and down, and reveled in this newfound ability that he once took for granted hundreds if not thousands of times a day. The human body was a study in miracles all its own.

“You’re going to come back from this even stronger, I promise. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that disasters are blessings in disguise. It may take a while for it to hit, but you’ll see,” she said.

“Yeah, give me a minute.”

“It’s not a race. But this is a first step. Literally.”

If only he could call ‘Iwa and tell her the news.