CHAPTER16.ORG
Cary Holladay's new collection of linked stories, "Horse People," follows members of a prosperous family in Orange County, Virginia, from the Civil War and beyond.
The book opens with "The Bridge," set in 1861, in which mill owner Henry Fenton hires a crew of locals to guard a bridge over the Rapidan River from Yankee troops. Bonnie Hazlitt is a disgraced unwed mother, the Pratt brothers are 70-year-old twins, and Burrell is a young boy with only one eye and a name that "rhymes with squirrel." The recruits are also expected to visit the sickbed of Fenton's 28-year-old wife, Mary Jane, who is dying.
In this passage, Burrell looks forward to telling Mary Jane about the animals he has imagined during his night watch:
"Animals come by then, trotting, lolloping, slithering, flying, padding, powered by their invisible hearts, their eyes bright as coins. ... He thinks he's dreaming when herd animals appear: goats and sheep, one or two as if ark-bound. They have business to tend to. He could reach out and pet their flanks, their hides. He tries, and they swerve out of reach. Porcupine, bear, turkey, squirrel, and pig. Their nighttime travels have a dapper purpose and camaraderie. Snakes move fast at night, and toads jump high as Burrell's shoulder. Tortoises, he swears, nearly gallop. They have no fear of him, this boy crouched at one end of the bridge, proud of missing his sleep."
The bridge guards are happy to have a sense of purpose, while Mary Jane dreams of childhood memories, her own dead daughter, and the woman Henry will marry after she is gone.
Henry Fenton remarries and has other children, including the good-hearted Richard, who grows up to marry Nelle Scott, a harsh, privileged daughter of Yankee parents. Nelle and Richard go on to raise seven sons, but breeding horses is Nelle's true love, until she meets and begins an affair with horse trainer Ben Burleigh. In the central story of the family arc and one of the strongest in the collection, "Nelle on the Grass," the title character struggles to reconcile her reluctant roles as wife and mother with her feelings for Burleigh: "A thin cloth will smother you as well as a thick one," she thinks. "Richard's eyes are river-gray; his eyes in photographs are those of his ancestors."
Nelle tells many of the stories from her point of view, but in "Hollyhocks," her son Dudley offers a poignant perspective on growing up in the troubled Fenton family. Set at Christmastime in 1951, the story chronicles tensions between the brothers and their different wives. Dudley is the next-to-youngest son and the only one unmarried. He assuages his loneliness with alcohol and Pamela, his younger brother's wife. Late at night, Dudley and Pamela share a private drink by the Christmas tree and the news that Pamela is pregnant with her first child. He tenderly imagines her as a mother: "Dudley knows his feelings for her will never change. She is his age, and she will put on weight with each child, and her hair will go gray early . . . but to him, she'll always be breathtaking."
For the most part, "Horse People" presents an unflattering view of a wealthy family, whose unhappiness and preoccupations often pale in significance to the suffering experienced by those around them. The outsiders moving through this insulated and often heartless world include a woman pushed from a cliff by her husband; a madwoman run over by the wagon intended to transport her to an asylum; a gypsy family whose fortunetelling goes terribly wrong; the stable boy offered room and board and precious little else after his father commits suicide; a young house cook sent forth from his home deep in the woods to support his family as his father lies dying from a spider bite; and a gentle horse trainer stabbed to death by his wife.
Holladay, an associate professor of English at University of Memphis and director of the River City Writers Series, crafts intimate portraits of her characters as they confront birth and death, compassion and cruelty, memory and loss, and the many guises of cowardice and courage. She uses the struggles of the peripheral characters to hold a mirror to the Fenton family's comfortable yet troubled lives. It's a vision they only glimpse themselves and never fully comprehend.
Chapter16.org is an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.
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