Read Online Apocalypse by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online Page B

delighted her, were no one’s business but her own. She spoke her mind about most things, but she had her private affairs, the hidden matters she kept to herself.
    Cally knew something strange was happening, but was afraid to say it. Her children knew, and were not afraid, but merely watched, their heart-wrenching eyes veiling their alien thoughts, in the manner of children everywhere. Gigi, however, as was her habit, saw what she saw and spoke her mind about it. To Homer, when she finally got home to fix him some supper.
    She had spent her day at the stable, of course. She liked it there, and often went there at odd hours: dawn, dusk, late in the day when young wives like Cally Wilmore had to rush home to meet the children after school and make dinner. Gigi had decided some time back that her husband could fix his own supper if she was not around. Her husband, Homer Carville Wildasin, protested only by not eating, not so much as a sandwich, going on a sullen, silent hunger strike when she was not home to feed him. He went hungry a lot.
    The young wives, they didn’t have the gumption to stand up to their husbands. “How did you get Homer to buy you Snake Oil?” that little twit Cally had asked her, out on the trail one day. Cally’s husband, Mark, insisted that she wear the silly velveteen-covered hard hat and ride only the “guaranteed dead safe” horse he had bought her, and the poor thing didn’t know what to do about it. The goose. Gigi knew the younger woman liked her; Cally’s admiration amused her because it was based on misapprehension. There were quite a few things Cally didn’t know or understand about her. Cally was a nose-picking square, and an innocent. Gigi took sour pleasure in coaching her on the facts of life as she perceived them.
    Women out riding together, blessedly, did not talk coffee-klatsch chat, did not talk of recipes or carpet cleaners or diaper service or any of the usual church-supper topics. They conversed more deeply, about husbands, children, horses, husbands, rides past, things seen, things felt. And guilts, joys, childhoods (their own), adolescence, maturity and hope. And husbands. And men in general. Men were fair game, for horses were the domain of women bold and crazy enough to claim it. Some of the boarders at Shirley’s stable were vacuous teenage girls, but none were men or boys. Gigi knew what men were for. Men provided the peripherals—photos, tack boxes, admiration—and the support services—horseshoeing, vetting, oats and hay and money.
    â€œDid Homer take much convincing?” Cally had asked, kicking at her plodding Dove, while Gigi floated ahead on Snake Oil’s airy trot.
    â€œNope.”
    â€œThe man must be a saint,” said Cally.
    â€œNot hardly,” Gigi shot back. “If I didn’t have cancer I wouldn’t have no five-thousand-dollar horse. But I do. I’ve got six kinds of cancer, and I can have anything I want.”
    Shirley and Elspeth, riding beside her, turned widened eyes and did not speak. Cally, who was more accustomed to death and talk of death than they were (though reticent about sex), whispered, “Cancer?”
    â€œThere’s nothing like it for getting your own way. AIDS don’t work, because it’s your own dirty fault, the way you get it. But with cancer you’re just a poor soul.” Gigi glanced around at three stunned faces and bowed her mouth in a droll inverse smile. “My word, women! No need to faint. I been dying since I was born.”
    Cally gave her a startled glance. “You’ve been reading Dylan Thomas?”
    But the blunt, hard-bodied woman was simply stating the truth as she saw it. She had been born with malignant tumors on her infant body. Doctors had cut them off, and then some few years later had attempted to improve her yet further by removing a large, bright-red birthmark from her arm. They had put radium on it—this